Matt Isherwood is the author of “Designing eCommerce Websites – over 50 UX Design Tips and Tricks for Great Online Shops” it’s number 1 Amazon seller, and reviews include a 15 year website design veteran who says “Matt’s densely-packed ebook has been a major eye-opener”. Matt’s worked at the BBC and onefinestay, and is now specialising in working with growing startups.
About Matt
Matt got into UX design while working at BBC almost ten years ago. Although back then not many companies were doing UX design the way they do now, BBC had a team of almost one hundred UX designers working across different platforms. Matt enjoyed the work, and it gave him a good grounding in the principles of UX design.
In 2011, he left BBC and joined Onefinestay, where he was the first and eventually only UX designer. He moved into product management and managing the eCommerce website, staying with the company from their start up of about thirty people to having over three hundred people across multiple cities.
Listen to learn why once someone enters eCommerce, they rarely leave.
Writing His Book
Matt’s book started as a workshop he’d been teaching for about four years with General Assembly and the consulting he’d been doing for about two years. After looking at analytics, heat maps, and user tests, he began to see the same problems coming up again and again.
Unique Selling Proposition
A Unique Selling Proposition (USP) is important, but can get lost on the landing experience. The USP isn’t about how a brand is better than someone else’s, but how they are different. Your USP is probably the reason you started your business in the first place.
Listen to learn more about USP and hooks.
Must-Have Starting Point Tools
Ideally, you’d combine a few tools. First you want quantitative tools that tell you what your problem areas are, such as Google Analytics. Then you’ll need qualitative tools to help find why your problems are problems, such as Hot Jar or usertesting.com.
Listen to learn how to run user tests and which tests to run.
The Number One Tip for Starting on the UX and CRO Routes
User testing is where you will find some of your richest forms of data. Put your site in front of people and let them browse it. There are always things you can learn, even with small amounts of traffic.
Listen to learn where to find testers in your target market.
eCommerce Book Top Tip
- The Brain Audit: Why Customers Buy (And Why They Don’t) by Sean D’Souza
eCommerce Traffic Top Tip
- Email mailing lists
- Partnerships
You can hear about all this on the podcast, for free – right now…
Tool Top Tip
Start Up Top Tip
- Don’t throw everything at your users. Try to start simply, particularly on your landing pages.
- Design your site for mobile.
Interview Links
Subscribe right now for free: itunes, Stitcher, Soundcloud or using any Podcast app
Like to be a guest? Fill in our contact form
Leave a Reply