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On Monday in sunny Reading we started our first wave of usability testing with market leading Bunnyfoot/Bunnyfield, the usability testing outfit who have offices around the UK (and the rest of the world!).

We were full of trepidation… what would the “users” say, how would the site stand up to robust and rigorous testing?

What we did know before it all kicked off was:

• 10 people were lined up to hammer the site for an hour each;
• That there were 5 men, 5 women – aged between 23 and 68;
• They all used Facebook and other social networking websites but had not used ours before;
• Their eyes would be tracked;
• What they said would be recorded;
• They would be videoed;
• We would get heatmaps showing where they looked;
• We would get gazeplots showing where they’d looked;
• We’d get an awful lot of information about how our target market interacts with our site!

So, what did we learn? Most importantly we learnt that the http://www.inapub.co.uk/ site is easy to use and more significantly would be used by our testers again. Of course we also found out about the one or 2 (ahem) issues that can be easily resolved or features that would help make it a better experience.

The testers became familiar with the website content and what they should expect very quickly indeed. The below gazeplot shows how one of our “testers” roamed our homepage in the first 2 seconds:

(NB the plot points show where the eye fixated and the size shows the duration – any duration above around 0.5 of a second is considered to trigger a cognitive response.)

We were told by the Bunnyfoot usability consultant that the above gazeplot demonstartes a good homepage because it draws the user across the key content quickly. Generally our testers started looking at the links to the pub events, then tracked up the page to read about the site.

To demonstrate this further, the below heatmap shows what our “testers” looked at on the homepage in the 1^st 10 seconds. Again this shows that the page is laid out clearly – attention has been paid to all the key actions. They read about the website, they notice the sign-up button and the login control; finally significant focus is paid to the events themselves – whether that be searching or looking at the currency of the events i.e. see today’s events.

The testers were given a few minutes to navigate around the website and were told to imagine they lived in Norwich – for the purposes of this test we used a “test site” with lots events and venues for Noriwch.

As expected all users searched for events in Norwich and were generally happy with the presentation of the results, some users browsed for events in Norwich and below we can see what grabbed their attention in the first 10 seconds of looking:

<More to follow>

We’re excited about this one – seriously excited! Our Twitter feed for pubs is now live AND it’s not just for pubs – any public events created on our site in one of our city feeds will be fed to Twitter to!

So what does this mean exactly? It means that any public event on our site can now be automatically fed to Twitter and be followed for free by any of the 2m or so UK adults that use Twitter.

An example event Tweet is shown here – the link will take you directly to the event detail page on our site:

“DJ’s playing till late, 15th May 2009 20:30 at The Edith Cavell http://tinyurl.com/owd3lj”

If you’re a pub and want us to manage your events and feed them to Twitter on your behalf every day, call us on 0845 230 1986.

Even if you don’t want your own feed we’ll be creating ones for towns & cities in the UK as appropriate – the first one is for our pilot city Norwich and by following this feed you’ll be kept up to date with Norwich events on Twitter.

We’ve got stack loads of other ideas about what to do with Twitter so watch this space for further updates.

We ran a questionnaire the other day to find out about people’s views on going out. Things like, do you find it easy to plan? do you need reminding? through to, do you want to know who is showing the football?! We had an excellent and speedy response! The average age was 33 – the youngest being 18 the oldest being 53 – we had a 80-20% split male female.

43% of folk go out every week with friends, whereas an amazing 10% go out daily (spot the 20 somethings…), around 41% go out with friends 1 or 2 times a month.

Unsurprisingly the mobile phone plays a huge part in the organisation of events around 60% of the communication that occurs in organising goes through the mobile via text or calls:

As we can see Outlook plays a key role in the creation of the event via email/calendar features.

77% of people use Google to help either plan where they are going to go or find out what’s going on around them, demonstrating Google as a big vehicle for user traffic to any event/venue site!

But the key metrics for us hinged around the following questions. The results are fantastic! Perhaps this will encourage more pubs to sign up and get their events on our site via our silver (we do it for you!) subscription:

Interestingly stereotypes stack up here – in that 62% of men would like to know who is showing the football as opposed to just 24% of women – with some women saying they want to know so they know NOT to go to that pub ! Age also plays a significant role here, with 58% of under 30 and 60% of 30 year olds saying they want to know who’s showing the football, as opposed to just 25% of over 30 year olds.

So there you have it! 67% of people say yes to being kept up to date with their local pubs events, special offers and promotions, and if you add the 20% who say maybe you have a whopping 87% positive response!!! This figure hardly changes between the sexes or the age groups; although females are (slightly) more likely to say yes and the likelihood of saying yes (slightly) decreases with age.

Obviously we didn’t test for every event a pub can put on – for example a chess event would be less popular than pool would be; and live music would obviously be more popular than probably anything else!

Pubs – don’t hang about, get yourself listed and on our site, after all, 71% of folk want to know if you’re showing the game tonight!!

Well it’s been a full on January and a frenetic February so far but we rapidly approach the launch of the new site! It’s imminent now, literally days away and we’re working like beavers to test as much as we can. This site is a quantum leap away from our existing live site. We’ll be launching new features, a new look and feel and an improved set of existing functionality! But what does this really mean?

New Features:

Event search

This is possibly the most significant, if one of the easier, new features we’ve implemented. We’ve been gathering the events of pubs (naturally this has been focussed on Norwich at the moment due to our Norwich Project) but with the new site we’ll be rolling out the event search. You’ll be able to find events by type, location or date and results are shown in a format to suit you – from just the plain old list, to calendar view, to map view.

Folksonomy

Strange name isn’t it, but what it really means is people adding tags to identify things – like “this event is a ‘Quiz’” or “we’re a ‘Live’ ‘Music’ ‘Pub’ and we also show ‘Sport’ including ‘Football’ on a ‘Bigscreen’”. People who create public content such as events, clubs and venues will be able to tag that content to help others find it! This is called a folksonomy – it’s a taxonomy created by folks!

Browse clubs, venues, events!

Once you have a folksonomy in place, it’s then possible to browse the events, clubs and venues using those tags! It’s never been easier to actually find what you want!

Create events without needing a club!

Up till now you’ve needed a club to create an event on the site, however, with this release comes the ability to create a standalone event. If you see a venue you like or an event you like, you just need to login to invite your friends – and they don’t need to register to set attendance, but if they do, they can get customised reminders!

Set attendance without logging in!

As I’ve just mentioned, the new site comes with simple attendance – regardless of the event type: public/private, club/standalone, venue/personal the invitees or club members can set their attendance by clicking a link in an email or by sending an SMS!!!

Control your reminders

We’ve implemented cascading reminder control – now you can configure your reminders at a global level, a club level or an event level. No more will you be out the loop on your events – although you could of course be out the loop if you want to be

Control your privacy

We’ve also implemented full control over which notifications you receive from the site. Naturally there are some which we have to send by default, but any which are not essential you can switch off!

New Design:

As this is such a major launch we needed a major facelift to go with it! The new site design draws upon all we’ve learned about how our users interface with the site, from those creating clubs and events to those running venues. Our favourite feature has to be the “Online Blackboard” for managed venues, here’s an example (bear in mind it’s test data):

Improvements:

And then there are the improvements! Of which there are almost too many to mention!

New Form Style

To make it easier to complete forms we’ve now included tips and help copy on the right hand side of the most important ones. Not all forms have this help text but we started with the most important first – over the year we’ll add to what we have.

More event details

Events (whether club or standalone) can now be public or private. That means you can create a standalone private event which is invite only, or make it public available to everyone! Or perhaps you’ve a public club which wants a private event (perhaps a board meeting) or a private club which wants a public meeting… you get the idea!

We’ve also added start date/time and end date/time giving you far more flexibility over how long your event runs – any option is possible now! For example

Start Date: 7^th May 17:00

End date: 8^th May 02:00

Finally, we’ve added those tags we mentioned and event cost/capacity note fields.

More than one venue!

It’s now possible to create an event with more than one venue too!!! This means that should you want an event to start somewhere, move on to a new venue at a given time and then go somewhere else then you can list them with dates and times. For example:

Title: It’s my Birthday

Venue 1: Pizza Express 7/7/07 at 17:00

Venue 2: Dog and duck 7/7/07 at 19:00

Venue 3: Bar Humbug 7/7/07 at 22:00

Venue 4: Pacha 7/7/07 at 23:30

Each venue will come plotted on a map on the event detail page which invitees or browsers will see. And there will be a link to a google map too! Public venues that are in our system will link to a venue detail page giving a full 360 degree detail for anyone coming to the event.

New Logged in Homepage

A new homepage with everything on it! We think it’s best to have a homepage which acts as a dashboard and shows you everything you’ve got on in one snapshot – well, soon that’s what you’ll have! You’ll also be able to set your location and see events which are happening around you; in the future as we get more events we’ll offer up push data feeds such as RSS or email.

There’s just too much to mention I give up!

But I will put on record right here and say a big thanks to everyone who has worked or contributed in both small and large ways to this launch! Again there are too many to mention but the biggest thanks goes to Phil who has literally made his fingers bleed I think getting this one ready!

Not long now…

Welcome to the first Inapub blog – we thought, New Year, new blog!

We’ve been very busy over the past few months building great new functions (still in test) for our website www.inapub.co.uk, giving it a spanking new design, speaking to pubs & breweries, and also asking some of our first users what they thought we should do.

We’ve also been running our campaign “The Norwich Project” which has seen over 25 central Norwich pubs sign up and list their events. This is great news if you live or go out in Norwich, now you can find out which pubs have quiz nights (The Hog in Armour, The Ribs of Beef, The Rose Tavern, Belle Vue, Garden House, The York Tavern, The Red Lion, Temple Bar, The Mitre & Kings Bar), who is showing specific football matches (The Wig and Pen, Temple Bar, Belle Vue), who has live music or Karaoke (The Playhouse Bar, The Reindeer , The Rumsey Wells, The Rose Tavern, The Plough, The Regal, The Mitre, The Ten Bells, Take 5, The Edith Cavell, The Hog in Armour), who runs a Poker night (The Regal, Kings Bar) and who has an all day happy hour (The Ten Bells)!!! You can also see when special one off events are organised or catch food offers & promotions. We now think it might actually be possible to live off the winnings from the pub quizzes, so let us know if you manage it!

We’re not stopping there though – our mission is to try and get all the pubs in Norwich, and then the UK and then THE WORLD ) to sign up and tell their punters what they’re up to!

Why?

Well, did you know that according to the British Beer & Pub Association there are 15million beer drinkers in the UK alone – 8 out of 10 cats, sorry, adults classify themselves as beer drinkers; and we sup in some 57,500 pubs; who themselves employ around 600,000 people! Did you also know that pubs sell around 1 BILLION meals per annum, incredible! This probably makes you think everything is rosy – oh no, things are getting generally worse for our good old beer trade, the BBC said in October that beer sales were continuing to slide; citing the economy and high taxes as the main reasons. But it gets gloomier still, Sky News say 4 pubs are closing a day (other sources say 5) and they say it’s because of the poor sales and the smoking ban. Most people are in agreement though, the pub is a central part of any community and that the current closure trend could threaten our social life.

Interestingly, Wikipedia say that the invention of bread and beer has been argued to be responsible for humanity’s ability to develop technology and build civilization. And in the newly aired BBC documentary “Oz and James Drink to Britain” Episode 1, aired 6th January 2008, Oz Clarke said “People actually started living in places, in communities, not because they wanted to do things like things like have houses, but because they wanted to brew beer. And once they were in communities they then wrote poetry and symphonies and invented the steam engine and started going on caravan hoilidays; that is civilisation; and the reason for civilisation is because we wanted to drink beer!” James May added “That was genuinely interesting… Shall we have a pint.”

So if the pub is supposed to be at the heart of the community and yet they are closing down quickly, they need help to communicate with us; the 8 out of 10 people who drink and the 15million of us who go out once a week, because while we roughly know where pubs are, wouldn’t it be great to know that tonight The Dog and Duck has a jazz night, tomorrow The Dick Turpin has a quiz, on Friday the Duke of York has a live DJ and on Saturday The Rose Tavern has 2 games of football on and The York Tavern have a buy one get one free offer on meals. And that’s where we come in. As a punter you’ll be able to find out what the pubs near to you are up to, granted we’ll only be able to tell you for the pubs who have signed up (that’s why if you’re in Norwich you’re sorted!), but as a pub you can get access to your punters through an online blackboard – and we’ll keep it up to date for you; just sign up to our silver service.

There you have it.

Watch out for the new site – we’ll be launching it VERY soon.

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