Just by looking at the previous homepage and the new version, you will get a good idea of how the new Manchester Central website has been radically improved. But as is so often the case, the devil is in the detail.

Bigger images, user-focused navigation, copy that answers key questions that user have and a personable, friendly tone of voice. The combination leads to a best in class website that amounts to a massive improvement on their previous effort.

Before:

After:

What the new design does best:

1. Simplify and remove clutter

We all know that sometimes focusing on what to leave out rather than what to add-in is key, right? Good. The new Manchester central website does a great job of removing unnecessary information and providing an experience with a much clearer focus on the important actions they want users to take, whether that is to find suitable information or make contact directly.

The contact page is a great example of how information has been stripped back to the bare necessities.

Before:

After:

2. Replace drab text with icons, imagery and strong visual clues

As a continuation from the first point, reducing text is an important goal. For many of you this will be a recap on Steve Krug’s Third Law (from “Don’t Make Me Think” – if you haven’t read it, you should).

“Get rid of half of the words on each page, then get rid of half of what’s left.”

It’s amazing how often the number of words on a page can be reduced without any loss of value to the user. It forces content producers and designers to think creatively about how they present information. The new Manchester Central website relies heavily on imagery and iconography that are simpler, more aesthetically pleasing and much easier to digest.

Before:

After:

3. Display logos and text that build credibility

Using logos that bring credibility to your business are a really valuable persuasive asset to use on your website. It’s best when they are well-known brands that users will recognise as you can gain some benefit from the association, for example the investors in people logo below.

Even if the brands are less well known, it can still have a really positive effect because they allow other potential exhibitors and event managers to empathise with the events being run and start to imagine their logo in that space.

After:

4. Provide a personable experience

This won’t be the case for every business or website, but giving a face to the business will allow people to picture who they will be working with and help users to start developing relationships with key members of the team.

The following examples are some of the best we’ve seen.

From the Organisers page:

Meet the full team:

From the Services page:

Could you remove some clutter from your website? Could your replace text with more inviting content? Provide evidence of credibilty? Make it more personable? Let us know if you have seen any of these techniques work first-hand. Before you go, we’ve included a couple of links that you might find useful.

Useful Links:

• Manchester Central Goes Live
• 7 Ways to Delight Visitors
• SmartInsights Webinar: The Most influential Persuasive Design Priorities for 2013
• 5 of the Most Influential Techniques to Persuade Visitors to Buy

In early 2012 Manchester Central came to us with ambitious visions for developing a new best in class website which would become central to their worldwide marketing strategy. It was an extremely exciting project to be a part of and it became one of our favourite projects of 2012. At the time of writing there are still very few businesses who truly embrace the concept of adopting a user-centered design approach when embarking on a redesign.

PRWD were brought in to deliver the first crucial phase of business and customer analysis and establish the foundation of the user-centered design process. This included evaluating the online user experience of other leading venues from across the world and spending considerable time with event organisers and planners.

Engagement, Personality and Persuasion

A key question that we aimed to answer was “how can we captivate, engage and persuade new visitors arriving at the website to make contact with us?”.

The primary deliverables from this initial phase of business analysis and consumer understanding were an in-depth website redesign blueprint and critical buyer personas. Following this we worked closely with Manchester Central to appoint the most appropriate design and build agency who would best  follow through on the user-centered process that we had initiated.

The appointed agency were the exceptional team over at CTI Digital for final creative and build. Underpinned by fantastic support from the team at Manchester Central, the new website is now live and we’re really proud – to put it mildly. The website is packed with persuasion and built specifically with key users needs in mind.

On go live, Angie Robinson, Chief Executive at Manchester Central, had this to say:

“We believe we now have one of the best websites in the conference and events industry. Our approach to redeveloping the website has been entirely client-led and this is the way we will continue to work going forward. Our mission to deliver a five-star service in all that we do should transcend all our offline and online activities. We’re incredibly proud of our new website and we’re determined to lead the way with new innovations and developments.”

Louise Jones, Head of marketing & communications at Manchester Central added:

“This has been an incredibly interesting and exciting journey for us. The detailed research, testing and subsequent planning that we undertook has allowed us to develop the first phase of what we believe is a truly groundbreaking website for the industry. We’re committed to delivering an online experience that will absolutely deliver what our audiences need and working with the team at PRWD allows us to do just that.”

A press release has been published since the launch which provides further information on the project.

Case study

This project deserves far more explanation than what we have provided here and if and when we get time (our Q1 and Q2 of 2013 are looking exceptionally busy so you could be waiting a while) we do plan on developing an in-depth case study. But for now, please do provide a comment on what you think about the website and general user experience it provides.

Following on from my article I published on Econsultancy ‘Shopping Basket Best Practice from ASOS’ (link under the slides), I was delighted to be asked to be the first person to present at the very first Conversion Thursday Manchester on Thursday 24th February 2011.

The meet-up was superb with some of the great and the good of the analytics and conversion industry attending. Below are my presentation slides.

Useful Links

• Shopping basket best practice from ASOS
• ASOS
• over 15 articles on e-commerce usability best practice
• Conversion Thursday Manchester (and the event Twitter tag #CTMan)
• E-commerce user testing service
• E-commerce usability & best practice training

Recently I was very privileged to be asked to provide some industry commentary for an article which was to be printed in an Internet Retailing supplement going in the Sunday Telegraph.

Click the cover to view the full supplement as a PDF.

The 16 page supplement was published on 20th February 2011 and features articles on the following:

• Retail opportunities in the age of the multichannel customer (pg 2) – Ian Jindal, Editor in Chief at Internet Retailing
• Switching on to mobile retailing (pg 4) – David Smith, Managing Director at IMRG
• The importance of good website design (pg 5) – by me, inc. comments from Max Childs from Scene7
• Good service: its all in the delivery (pg 6) – Garry Farwell, Head of Supply Chain, Royal Mail Marketing
• Going multichannel: builing around the brand (page eight) – Jonathon Brown, Head of Online Selling at John Lewis
• Making your online security pay (pg 10) – John Wilson, Editor of retailfraud.com
• Getting to know you: consumer insight (pg 12) – Neil Mason from Foviance

Download a PDF of the Supplement

Extract

Below is an extract from the article I contributed to, including 3 key tips for retailers.

When a retailer or brand comes to design their website, thinking about the needs of the end user is of paramount importance.

If you’re a retailer, the question isn’t: ‘Do you have a website?’ It’s: ‘What kind of website do you
have?’ In 2011, after all, a brand without an online presence isn’tjust unthinkable. It’s suicidal.
Paul Rouke is from PRWD, a consultancy which provides a range of usability services for websites, intranets and business systems.

“A well-developed retail website, which has been developed with the end-consumer in mind, has the ability to transform a business,” he says.

Good experience
And this, ultimately, is the key point: end consumers should never be underestimated. “End consumers are the most important part of website design,” says Paul. “However good your website looks, it might fail when it comes to being a good experience for them.” The best way to overcome this is through ‘user-centred’ design: i.e., involving the people who will be accessing the site right from the start of the design process, via market research and focus groups, etc.

Top tips for retailers

Think like an end user
Whatever your site sells, you need to understand the requirements of your end users from the very start of the design process — so undertake focus group and market research, etc. Otherwise, you may encounter issues after the design process has been completed

Learn from your rivals
Undertake competitor analysis. No doubt there will be existing retailers in your industry selling online; and, potentially, there may be a number of things you can learn from them.

Define usability goals
3 Ask yourself about the different goals your consumers have. Some will be looking to find an item as quickly and as efficiently as possible and make a purchase. Others will want inspiration and ideas and be able to compare products side by side. Others will want to log-in and check the status of their order.

Useful Links

• Internet Retailing
• The Telegraph
• John Lewis
• IMRG
• Usability Consultancy PRWD

Also a quick thanks to Ian Pollard, Account Manager at RedEye International, for locating the pdf of the supplement.

Whether its referred to as user research, customer research, field studies, qualititive research or one of the other terms used, finding out the wants and needs of people who use websites, intranets and software is a crucial part of designing usable solutions which deliver return-on-investment.

Here I want to share with you 5 tips when conducting this type of one-to-one research:

1) Give the person you are speaking to the confidence that their input is truly valued

Many people, especially those who have never taken part in this type of research before, think that there input won’t be valuable, for any number of reasons. This could include:

• they don’t use the website or system often
• they have never done this type of activity before
• they have never been asked for their opinion before
• they don’t feel their role is very important, so why would their opinions be important

We tend to give people cofidence in these situations by:

• explaining to them the approach that the user research is taking
• re-iterate during the meeting how valuable their views and insights are
• explain that this isn’t just a one-off experience and that gaining input from people such as themselves is a fundamental part to the website or intranet improvement process going forward
• ask whether they would like to be involved in further elements of the research and design process

It can be quite remarkable experiencing a persons confidence grow, from at the start where they are very apprehensive and introverted to becoming very passionate and open to sharing their views.

2) Give the person your full attention – keep your head up!

Rather than try and carry out the face-to-face meeting as well as making notes throughout on the key points being made, simply voice record the meeting (asking permission first of course) to allow you to give the person your full attention.

Benefits of voice recording the meeting include:

• the conversation is much more natural
• it ensures you will never miss a vital piece of feedback whilst you are making a note of a previous comment
• you are paying much more attention to what the person is saying, which in turns helps you think of which questions and prompts should follow next
• the person feels fully engaged rather than looking at the top of your head for parts of the meeting
• if you to choose to quote the person in the research report and findings work you do after, you ensure the quote is 100% accurate and note based on your notes

A few things to consider on voice recording meetings:

• if like us, due to the sheet amount of valuable insights and comments that each meeting contains, you choose to get full transcriptions of each meeting, this is a very time consuming exercise and one which we definetly recommend you outsource
• you may also be thinking of video recording the meetings, especially if (as I will come on to later) you also use these meetings to carry out user testing. You need to be aware that this will usually highten the sense of apprehension for the person which can affect their confidence in fully engaging with the process

3) Ask open, probing questions

Being asked to share your views on a particular website or company intranet is very much a one-off scenario (unless of course you are adopting a true user-centered design approach and will be engaging with that person throughout the design and development process). However familiar with a system the person is, it takes certain types of questions to get people to open up and share the types of insights that will be of most value in your research.

Typical questions we might ask include:

• Can you describe the reasons why you typically [add in different user scenarios]?
• Can you explain the approach you tend to take when [add in different user scenarios]?
• What improvements do you think would make your job/experience easier and more effective?
• At [add in various areas of the website or intranet], what information are you looking for and why?
• Can you explain a situation where you haven’t been able to find what you are looking for, and what have been your next steps?

It is vital that your questionning doesn’t lead the person down a particular route on purpose – the more natural and open ended you make the questionning the more likely you are of gaining really valuable insights.

4) Bring the user research to life by incorporating user testing

Providing the research you are doing is for an existing website or company intranet, bring a greater degree of engagement and value to the research by incorporating user testing into the meeting.

Website testing or system testing, not user testing
Its vital to stress at this point that when you explain about this to the person, you are clear that you are wanting to test the usability and effectiveness of the website or system, not their capabilities or ability to remember where certain information is.

Key points when incorporating testing to user research:

• avoid the temptation to use a lab testing environment – let the user work in their own comfortable surroundings, whether this is at home or at their desk at work
• don’t let the person blame themself if they are having trouble with a particular task for a scenario
• plan ahead with typical scenarios, and be as descriptive as possible
• ensure that the scenarios you are asking them to experience have some correlation to their potential wants and needs
• explain about the importance of them adopting the think out load approach, which you need for both your own benefit during the meeting but more importantly for when the voice recording is transcribed
• once it is clear they are unable to complete a task at a certain point, prompt them in the right direction and then let them continue on with their think out loud approach

5) Don’t rely on first impressions

Quite often the person that you are speaking to immediately makes it clear that they know their input won’t be very useful. This can be for a number of reasons:

• they only ever use a very small element of the website or intranet, and that can be explained in a matter of seconds
• they hardly ever use the website or intranet
• they are against change within their organisation and so they aren’t wanting to disrupt anything
• they dismiss the very fact that you are asking for their feedback, and are apprehensive that what they say will make any difference or actually be used to actually make improvements

This where the first four tips all come in to play – by giving confidence to the person, providing your full attention, asking probing questions and bringing the session to life by letting them use the website/intranet for themself, you will often find that the people who on first impressions seem to be offering the least amount of valuable feedback actually turn out the complete opposite.

Summary

User research is a highly valuable way of gaining end user insights, but it isn’t something that comes easily. There are many elements to carrying out successful user research and I hope these tips will come in useful for people who are already carrying this type of research, or who are considering it.

Further reading

You may also like to take a look at some of these related articles and presentations.

• article – top 8 business benefits of user testing
• presentation slides – 3 tips to improving online performance (step 1 is on gorilla user testing)
• video interviews – Royal Mail interviewing me on tips for good usability
• article – using the power of crowds to test your call to actions