PRWD

Our February 2010 newsletter (register here) featured an overview of our 2 very different propositions. Below is the newsletter in full.

Since we started over three and a half years ago, we are really proud to have worked with a wide variety of clients, from micro businesses through to blue chip brands. With ‘usability’ at the core of what we do, this has led to two quite distinct sides to our business proposition:

1. Online strategy development plus usability focussed website design and development for SME’s
2. Training, consultancy and conversion optimisation for larger businesses and blue chips

Proposition 1 – Usability Focussed Website Design and Development

How Serious Is Online For Your Business?

This is the primary question which helps us determine the types of SME businesses we work with, as it helps differentiate how much emphasis a business places on ‘online’ to generate enquiries, leads and sales for them.

Our usability services that are realistic for SME’s

Although there are many usability activities that will be out of budget for many SME’s, this isn’t to say that these companies can’t benefit from the principles of ‘good usability’ to help them improve the effectiveness of their website and online marketing activities. Using 2 industry leading platforms, Drupal content management system and Magento E-commerce, our web solutions are not only technically smart, but they have usability principles at their core.

Primary ways we help SME’s embrace and benefit from usability include:

• using the free web analytics tool Google Analytics to track and monitor visitor activity
• carrying out guerilla style usability testing (more on this explained in this presentation on improving online performance)
• considering how their website currently caters for their key target customer (messages, information, services, useful tools, easy contact methods)
• using another free tool Google Website Optimiser to test a different version of their primary action pages on their website
• calculating the potential sales and profit improvement they can expect to get using a ROI calculator (either for lead generation websites or for e-commerce websites)
• treating their website not just as a complimentary promotion of their business but with the potential to become an intregal part of their sales and marketing activities

Our usability services that aren’t realistic for most SME’s

There are a wide variety of our services within the ‘usability’ field which, realistically, aren’t going to be used often by SME’s due to budget constraints. These services include:

• usability testing in labs
• field studies
• focus groups
• expert evaluations
• card sorting
• in-house usability consultancy
• full user-centered design processes
• information architecture planning and development

What is your current on-site conversion rate?

This is another pivotal question which not many SME businesses can answer in full confidence. One of the reasons we developed our online conversion improvement calculator is to help demonstrate the sales and profit impact of improving your website through better use of web analytics, landing page optimisation and split testing.

Its worth listing out here the different types of conversion we generally look to improve, dependant on what the aims of the website are for the business:

• Online enquiry submission
• Online application completions
• E-commerce puchases
• Download of documents
• Newsletter subscriptions
• Monthly subscription sign-up

Proposition 2 – Training, Consultancy and Conversion Optimisation

Improving On-site Conversion Rates and Staff Productivity

For larger and blue chip companies we are often asked to provide services to help improve on-site conversion rates as well as improving staff productivity:

Services we provide in this area include:

• Advanced Google Analytics training
• In-house usability consultancy
• In-house workshops with retailers
• Public training on e-commerce best practice
• Public training on usability and user experience
• Public training on usability for financial companies
• Diagnostic reviews of company intranet systems
• Conversion improvement projects
• Usability testing
• Expert evaluations
• User and customer research

Our 60 Second Pitch

We are currently taking part in the new LEAD programme (a leadership and business development process), and we are often asked to provide our ’60 second pitch’. This is where it gets interesting! As explained in this newsletter, we have two very different propositions dependant on the type of business looking to utilise our services and expertise in usability and web development.

As we are working on our two 60 second pitches, please get in touch if you feel your business could benefit from some of our services, whether you are working in a SME or a blue chip company!

Enjoy the rest of your week,

PRWD

Tags: newsletter, Usability