Brand Usability

Websites and products are frequently assessed for their usability. Usability essentially measures if the product fulfills its intended purpose. Usability testing measures how your customers perceive different aspects of your product from packaging, user manual and the product itself. It can be summed up as a measurement of user experience for your products.

Why usability? Products need to be able to perform and fulfill its intended purpose. Usability testing enables your to measure if that purpose was achieved or not. Imagine Apple iPhone which looks visually great but making a phone call is painfully challenging. We know that is not the case. In fact, most would agree that iPhone not only looks great but also a highly usable communication device.

What about usability for brands? Is your brand usable to your customers? How can we measure that? They can be seen through these lenses; Recall, Visibility and Accessibility.

Recall
Brands that forms top of mind recall stands out and win. It’s a fact that they occupy a territory with their target audience. Hurray if you are one of these brands like Coke, Starbucks or McDonald’s. Most brands or underachieving ones need to work a lot harder to attain this status. However, that does not stop your brands (underdog ones too) from achieving top of mind recall. A highly usable brand is one that is easy to recall, stands for something (aligns with your customer's needs) and memorable.

Visibility
Is your brand easy to locate or navigate to? Does your brand have the right visibility, in the right channels where potential tribes congregate and engage? Not only brands need to think about having the right visibility, it must also think about how easy is it to locate your brand in the shortest and most convenient manner. Be creative about using social networking and viral tools to your advantage. Being heard is challenging but not being heard is far worst.

Accessibility
Are there ready channels which your brands can be conversational? Do you have a brand story which your customers are able to share and talk about? Can your brand be summed up in 10 seconds on what it stands for? Are your product benefits clear? If not, time to revisit this aspect of usability which makes your brand accessible or conversational.

Please leave your comments, if any.