PRWD

We’re delighted to be speaking alongside one of our partner companies Sigma at an upcoming event. Full event details below:

• Title: Usability: What’s The Use?
• Hosted by: The Department of Information and Communications MMU
• When: Wednesday 4th May 2011, 12:00pm – 14:00pm
• Where: Manchester Metropolitan University, Sandra Burslem Building Room 2.10, Oxford Road, M15 6BH
• How to book: Book online on our Eventbrite page

Event Overview

For websites, good usability is a matter of survival. If a website is difficult to use, people leave. If the homepage fails to clearly state what a company offers and what users can do on the site, people leave. If users get lost on a website, they leave. For intranets and applications the question is one of productivity. In many organisations employees waste inordinate amounts of time searching for and assimilating the information they need to do their jobs. This lost time has a real, tangible value so ROI for designing internal systems with User Experience in mind, and spending some time testing and improving the usability of the system, is pretty compelling.

As people with a strong User Experience focus we don’t need to be convinced of the value of good usability, but for many companies who are thinking of revamping their site, intranet or portal it isn’t quite so clear cut.

Areas Explored

In this seminar we will explore:

• How good user experience can make a real impact on the effectiveness of your site
• Hints and tips on user-centered design for websites and applications
• Why user testing is important?
• The direct link between usability and revenue generation in eCommerce websites
• Some case studies of real projects where user experience has been key to success
• Design principles for mobile websites and app interfaces

Speakers

PRWD

PRWD provide a range of usability and conversion optimisation services for websites, intranets and business systems, and is run by usability expert Paul Rouke.

Sigma

Sigma is a leading specialist in user-centred design, information management, web technologies and strategic IT consulting.

Usability resources

We’ve got a wide variety of usability articles, case studies and presentation slides available online if you would like to learn more on usability for both lead generation and e-commerce websites.

This is our February 2011 e-newsletter. To subscribe simply visit our website and you’ll find a sign-up box at the bottom of every page.

Welcome to our February newsletter. Since last month a fair bit has happened at PRWD, so this months newsletter is full of links, news and upcoming events. Enjoy!

Event Speaking

This month there are 2 events that Paul Rouke is speaking at:

• Usability & User Experience 101 – tonight, 10th Feb – register for FREE here – http://bit.ly/UX101 (twitter event tag #UX101)
• Conversion Thursday Manchester – Thursday 24th Feb – register for FREE here – Conversion Thursday Manchester (twitter event tag #CTMan)

Tips & Best Practice articles

This month we have published 2 articles on external sites:

• Smart Insights – User Testing 101 – Should we go guerrilla?
• Econsultancy – Shopping basket best practice from ASOS

The ASOS article include comments from ASOS eCommerce Director James Hart, including a 3% uplift they have seen through changing the wording on their proceed to checkout button. Interesting stuff if we do say so ourselves!

In addition Paul has been interviewed for comments which will be appearing in an Internet Retailing supplement within the Sunday Telegraph on the 20th February.

Usability Resources

This month we’ve published a blog post providing links to a wide range of best practice articles, usability tools and industry commentary posts on usability and user experience.

• Usability & UX Resources, Tools and Presentation Slides

Training

Over the next few there are 2 training courses that we are delivering for Econsultancy:

• Usability & User Experience – 16th Feb in Manchester – details & booking here
• E-commerce Usability & Best Practice – 1st March in London – details & booking here

Client News

Over the last four weeks we’ve been working with some fantastic clients on some pretty diverse usability and user experience projects.

• Lakeland – User Testing
• Lakeside Hotel – Expert Evaluation and Page Redesigns
• TicketSense – Wireframing, Prototyping and Visual Design
• Smart Insights – Information Architecture and User Interface consultancy

Over the next month or so we’ll be adding further details of both these projects to our client pages, and we might even get a press release out… for the time being you might like to take a look at the new website for Lakeside Hotel, one of the most prestigious hotels in Windermere, which we have helped in improving the customer experience (although there are still many of our recommendations that require implementing).

In the meantime we have published a case study of one of our recent projects with Speedo.

New Partner – What Users Do

Over the last month we have developed a partnership with remote user testing service What User Do. Along with our lab based, moderated user testing that we provide for our larger clients, by providing remote user testing through What Users Do makes a lot of sense for us, and we are already working with them on a very exciting customer research project.

Take a look at more details of What Users Do and our other partners.

Thanks for reading and enjoy the rest of your week.

The PRWD team
PRWD

Details are below of an upcoming event I’ll be speaking at, at MMU in Manchester. I must say I’m really looking forward to it – there should be a good mix of students, industry professionals, agency staff and client side people attending.

With 300 tickets available in all it should be a pretty well attended event.

“Usability & User Experience 101″

• When: Thursday, February 10, 2011 from 5:00 PM – 7:00 PM (GMT)
• Where: Michael E. Porter Lecture Theatre, MMU Business School, Aytoun Street, M1 3GH Manchester
• Who with: Paul Rouke, Head of Usability at PRWD
• Twitter Hashtag: #UX101
• Register for FREE: http://saschoolux101.eventbrite.com/
• Tickets: At the start there were 100 tickets available for students and 200 for the rest of industry

Event Overview

In this event, Paul will introduce you to usability and user experience, and provide you with a range of insights, tips and best practice that can be used when working on web projects.

The talk will cover key site areas such as homepages, landing pages and enquiry pages, and will include time for questions both during and after the talk.

You’re encouraged to tweet about the talk before, during and after, using the hashtag #UX101.

About Paul Rouke

Paul is Head of Usability and founder of PRWD, a Manchester based usability consultancy who help businesses generate more leads and more sales from their websites.

Paul is a usability consultant, trainer and speaker who absolutely loves sharing tips, advice and customer insights to SME’s through to blue chip companies on how they can improve their usability and on-site conversion rates.

Paul works with a range of well known and respected brands including Speedo International, Lakeland, JD Williams, Econsultancy, Smart Insights (run by Dr Dave Chaffey), The Royal Mail and The Scout Association who all recognise the increased sales and profit they can gain by investing in improved on-site usability to improve their conversion rates.

Paul is one of Econsultancy’s well respected training team, and he delivers two courses, Usability and User Experience and E-commerce Usability and Best Practice. Paul also writes articles for Econsultancy’s award winning blog, sharing tips, advice and recommendations.

In addition to working with Econsultancy, Smart Insights co-founder Dr Dave Chaffey brought Paul in to be the expert commentator on usability and conversion optimisation for Smart Insights, a digital portal and consultancy who provide advice and software to help businesses succeed online.

Paul’s business PRWD also has a usability blog sharing tips and advice and company news. You can follow Paul on Twitter for his latest insights, links and commentary on all things usability and conversion optimisation, or if you prefer you connect through Linked In.