PRWD

In this issue

• Recruiting
• E-commerce Usability Training
• Paul Rouke’s Masterclass
• Benchmarking Application
• Client testimonials
• Apple iPad

We Are Recruiting!

We have just started advertising for 2 new positions. Take a look to view details and please pass on if you know anyone who might be interested.

• User Experience Designer
• PHP Developer

Upcoming E-commerce Training for Econsultancy

Details of Paul’s next training course for Econsultancy are below:

• Course – E-commerce Usability and Best Practice for Online Retailers
• Time – 9.00 – 4.30pm
• When – 29th April 2010
• Where – BSG House in London
• Cost – £545 + vat (cheaper for Econsultancy members)

If you are interested view full details of the training course and how to book online.

Masterclass – Generating More Leads and More Sales from your Website

You may recall that last month we explained about a new masterclass that Paul is delivering, aimed at SME’s looking at ways in which they can improve the performance of their websites and online marketing activities.

We have now added a new Masterclass page onto our website which:

• Explains what the masterclass is about
• Provides a range of testimonials from people that have attended so far
• Provides some sample slides
• Provides details of what you will learn
• Provides examples of who should attend

Take a look at the new masterclass page:

http://www.prwd.co.uk/masterclass

Usability Benchmarking Application

Next month we will be officially launching an alpha version of our usability benchmarking application. To get an idea of what this is all about take a look at a screenshot of the homepage that is currently in the works:

Screenshot of our Benchmarking Application homepage

Client Testimonials

Over the past few years we have made a big effort to ask our clients for testimonials. We usually use the excellent Google Docs forms facility to create online feedback and testimonial forms, and this has ensured we have captured a range of really valuable feedback on the work we have done.

This is all well and good, but apart from featuring different testimonials on our case studies, we didn’t (up until a few weeks ago) have a central location where you can view all our client testimonials.

This has now been tackled with another new page on our website featuring a wide range of our client testimonials.

Take a look at the new testimonials page:

http://www.prwd.co.uk/clients/testimonials

Apple iPad

And finally, in case you have so far missed seeing the fanfare of Apple’s new product iPad, take a look at the iPad guided tours (note you need Quicktime to view the videos)…

As with the iPhone Apple is once again delivering one of the most intuitive user experiences available, and my word its here to stay…

Enjoy the rest of your week!

PRWD

Thanks to a post on landing page optimisation by the irrepressible Avinash Kaushik from Google, I’ve recently discovered Fivesecondtest, a free web application which lets you very quickly gain insights from web users on individual screengrabs.

Having tweeted about how good it is and then subsequently having the usefulness of the application questioned, as a follow up to my responses (clarity of proposition, targeted landing page, key conversion pages) I thought it would be worthwhile providing a bit more meat on the bones.

The meat comes in the form of this post on Econsultancy titled – Take five seconds to test your call to action and USP.

This fairly comprehensive post covers areas including:

• what is the application
• how does it work
• why use it
• examples of what you can test and possible objectives
• benefits of this type of testing
• notes to bear in mind
• plus questions to people with differing roles and responsibilities who might find it useful

Take a look at my article and feel free to make any comments, either here or on the Econsultancy post.

**UPDATED**
The User Experience Buyer’s Guide 2009 is now available for download on the Econsultancy website.

For clarification this is the same at the Usability Buyers Guide, with just a different name..

As a usability training partner for e-consultancy since the start of 2009, we were delighted to be included in their Usability Buyers Guide 2009. The buyers guide, which will focus on the UK market, will be promoted to Econsultancy’s 80,000+ registered users and beyond and is expected to be available on their site in June 2009.

To get an idea of the extensive buyers guides that Econsultancy provide you can see details of the 2008 Usability Buyer’s Guide, including an option to download a sample of the full guide.

Further details of our work and involvement with Econsultancy can be seen on the following links:

• Training Course – Usability and Best Practice for Online Retailers
• Expert Blog Post – Amazon Relying on Brand Credibility Instead Of Good Usability
• Expert Blog Post – Usable Internal Business Systems – Just A Pipedream?
• Expert Blog Post – House Of Fraser – A User Experience Review

Once the 2009 usability buyers guide is published we’ll provide a link and further details.