Web’s key management metric: task completion
Supposing someone has to visit 20 pages on a website to complete a task, when with better management, they would only have to visit 5. Thus, the more page impressions, the more frustrated customers become.
If a website has lots of repeat visitors, does that mean they couldn’t complete their tasks on their first visits? If a website has increasing search behavior, is that because the navigation is so confusing that people are forced to search?
The trap of volume is a dangerous one. I have met people who told me that they wouldn’t remove old and out-of-date content from their websites because it might result in a drop in the number of page impressions.
Task management is based on the simple idea that your customers come to your website to complete common tasks as quickly and simply as possible. It measures success by how quickly your customers can complete these tasks.
Task management is not simply about transactions. It is easy to understand booking a flight as a task. However, finding out what the weather will be like tomorrow is also a task. Finding people, training, and job vacancies, are common intranet tasks. Understanding the policy on when you can book a taxi and claim it back as expenses is also an intranet task.
Reporting a pothole, contacting a councilor and checking what garbage goes in what bin, are common local government tasks. Finding details on a particular course is a common task for a prospective student visiting a university website. Researching the cure for an illness is a common health-related task. A common task for those who visit hotel websites is to get easy-to-follow directions.
Web task management measures success based on a simple question: Was your customer able to quickly complete the task they came to your website to complete? Answering this simple question demands a very different website management approach.
Task management is observation driven. It involves constantly observing customers in order to see how easy it is for them to complete common tasks. This observation needs to be turned into averages.
You need to be able to identify the average length of time it takes a prospective student to get the course details they want. You also need to be able to identify the average length of time it takes to find an expert using the intranet.
Once you establish averages, you can set a clear plan for improvement. Let’s say it takes an average of 7 minutes for a mother to find out what government support is available for her autistic child. Next year you can seek to reduce that average time to 6 minutes.
What is success on the Web? Your customers being able to do the things they need to do quickly and simply. It is time to break away from the old measures of quantity, and focus on quality. Task management focuses on the quality of the customer’s experience.
Managing the technology is organization-centric. Managing the content is organization-centric. Managing the task is truly customer-centric. Measuring the success of your customer is the superior way to gauge the success of your website.
Toronto Internet Marketing Guy says:
Added on May 28th, 2007 at 4:01 pmWouldn’t this be the same process that you would follow when you are developing / redeveloping a web site using personas?
For each persona we develop related ’scenarios’, which are the tasks that they would want to accomplish on the site. Then, as the site is developed we test each scenario to see how easy or difficult it is to accomplish that scenario.
Gerry McGovern (blog author) says:
Added on May 28th, 2007 at 4:36 pmVery much so. Scenarios are basically tasks. But I think we need to take tasks much deeper; that they not just become a key part of a development/re-development, but that they become the essence of the management approach.
Thus, we have task managers, not technology or content managers who are measured on an ongoing basis on how easy they make it for customers to complete common tasks.
James Bull says:
Added on May 29th, 2007 at 6:06 amI think there is a very important element of corporate social responsibility involved here.
On one hand about 35% of the population of developed countries have low literacy skills (granted, what that actually means may be debatable), most normal people actually do not get a thrill out of using the web, and the web is daily becoming more cluttered and difficult to use.
On the other hand, businesses and governments are pushing more information and functions onto the web. This is usually in the guise of “self-service” and “convenience”, which can be code for “it’s cheaper for us to do this than have people answer your phone call”.
From the public’s point of view, task completion on the web is often about doing things that have health, safety or financial implications. There is a corporate responsibility to make it easy.
There have been one or two court cases over web accessibility, and one restaurant that I know of (in New Zealand) fined for having incorrect prices on its online menu. I wonder how long it will be before someone sues a bank or government department for having a badly organised or designed website that is simply difficult to use?
Gerry McGovern (blog author) says:
Added on May 29th, 2007 at 9:21 amJames, I think you’re right. We need to xpand the whole concept of “web accessibility”. If a task is incredibly difficult and time-consuming to complete, then it is not accessible.
BonnieK says:
Added on May 29th, 2007 at 2:24 pmI think this is a brilliant way to track success. Any suggestions on the best way to find the average for a specific task? Would this require in-person user interviews, or is there a statistic package that can help us analyze clickstreams and logs to determine an average?
Gerry McGovern (blog author) says:
Added on May 29th, 2007 at 2:46 pmBonnie, based on the analysis we’ve done, the best way to do it is to take a representative sample of your customer based of about 15-20 people. You give them agreed tasks, video the results and compute the average from there. That gives you a benchmark. Next year you can show that you’ve (hopefully) reduced the average.
BonnieK says:
Added on May 29th, 2007 at 6:17 pmI thought that might be the best way. Last year, we conducted a usability study on our old design with a standard set of tasks and recorded the times. That should give us a good benchmark for the same tasks on our new design. Thanks!
Martha Roden says:
Added on May 30th, 2007 at 11:12 pmRegarding your latest New Thinking e-newsletter, “Web’s Key Management Metric: Task Completion,” I couldn’t agree more.
I just went through the most God-awful process to become HUBZone certified. HUBZone refers to a “Historically Underutilized Business Zone.†When a small business owner, like myself, lives in one these zones, she becomes more attractive to the Government as a subcontractor. So, by becoming HUBZone certified, I become more “desirable” and more job opportunities may come my way.
Anyway, I diverge. The entire process is done via the Web, a process that took me several hours, spread over several days, and involved multiple calls to the help desk. All in all, I had to visit 61 Web pages to complete the task (that includes application, editing, and authorization)!
Suffice it to say, I was pretty frustrated. Luckily, I took screenshots of all the pages I visited, documented the whole process, and sent my information to a Web developer involved in the HUBZone Website project. He was quite keen to find out where I had encountered my problems.
And that was only the tip of the iceberg! Before I even began the HUBZone certification process, I had to 1) register with Dunn and Bradstreet for a DUNS number, 2) register with Central Contractor Registration (CCR), and 3) register with the Small Business Association (SBA). All three of those registrations were done via separate Websites, involving many Web pages. As such, the process took many days and many help desk calls. Unfortunately, some of those help desk calls were toll calls; I had to pay for them.
Well, I stuck with it and finished the certification process, but I bet many people who were more faint hearted than I gave up completely. And I doubt many took the time to document their horrendous experience and email the information to someone who might be able to do something about it!
So, you are right. From the Web site visitor’s perspective, completing our task as quickly and easily as possible is all we really want to do, and we are only too often thwarted from our worthy goal!
Sincerely,
Martha Roden