Paul Rouke - Usability Professional

“Shifts in online business objectives are becoming apparent, from increasing traffic to optimizing on-site conversions & sales”

This is a quote taken from the recent trending report by Econsultancy (Measurement, Analytics and Optimization: Market overview) that I tweeted about which led to the following twitter conversation with @techvs:

@techvs – Hi Paul. Who is presenting this as ‘new and innovative’? It is as old as the sea for the enlightened few. Logical & obvious.
@paulrouke – I agree, although the enlightened few have yet to convert the masses who still focus on traffic over on-site conversions
@techvs – that is SO SO true. I am still surprised by number who do not recognise / understand / work the sales process
@paulrouke – this need for enlightenment is a main reason why I developed my conversion optimisation masterclass – http://is.gd/bs9v8
@techvs – trying to teach the old master? I remember (trying) to do it before mobiles, PC’s, etc – database was paperwork! Happy days
@paulrouke – fingers crossed I won’t be making the same comments in another 2 years! Surely the penny will drop at some stage for website owners
@techvs – It hasn’t dropped for the majority in the years since I started in 89….why now? People follow the crowd – down the wrong road
@paulrouke – good point. Also, wait till they hit the roundabout with a new exit called Social Media Marketing Avenue – more traffic anyone?

At PRWD we are continually banging the ‘conversion optimisation‘ drum, and the challenge of educating, enlightening and winning over the majority of business owners (apart from the ‘enlightened few; as @techvs described) is something that I genuinely love doing.

The New Challenge – Social Media Marketing is More Sexy Than ‘Usability’

As I eluded to in my final tweet, there is a very real possibility that alot of businesses will miss the ‘turnoff’ for improving the usability and conversion rate of their online presence and instead follow the bright lights down the social media marketing road. So rather than making sure their existing website has been correctly configured with analytics, allowing them to accurately track their on-site conversion rates and ROI from any SEO and SEM that they invest in, they may well proceed with investing in new, exciting and sexy social media strategies to drive yet more potential customers to their website.

Education, Education, Education

One of the ways in which I tackle the challenge of educating business and website owners about the importance of on-site performance measurement and conversion optimisation is by delivering my masterclass, succinctly titled ‘Generating More Leads and Sales from your Website’.

The masterclass description goes as follows:
Learn a range of tools, tips and techniques so you can understand how your website is performing for your business and how you can improve it so you can get more visitors to ‘do what you want them to do’ once they arrive on your website (enquire, place an order, call you, request quote, download brochure, sign up to your newsletter).

Sample slides from the masterclass

Calculating the ROI of improved on-site conversion rates

As well as the educational element, another vital tool in helping to demonstrate the sales and profit impact to businesses by improving the conversion rate of websites can be seen in our e-commerce conversion optimisation calculator and our lead generation conversion optimisation calculator.

So, More Traffic or a Better Conversion Rate?

Why not both I would say! Just don’t ignore the significant opportunities to improve your on-site conversion rates before investing in driving traffic to your website…

In summary I’m looking forward to PRWD continuing like many other conversion optimisation focused businesses such as FutureNow to beat the ‘optimising on-site conversion rates’ drum.

Anyone care to join us?

At PRWD our work involves working with SME’s all the way through to blue chip brands. With usability, or making websites more affective at generating leads and sales, at the heart of what we do, this is no surprise.

What is interesting is to look at the key differentiators between our SME clients and our other much larger, well known clients.

• Budgets - of course budgets vary significantly, from a few thousand pounds to ten thousand pounds and upwards
• Expectations - SME clients tend to feel like online can’t always play an integral role in their sales and marketing activities, but bigger brands expect much more from the online channel
• Traffic versus conversions – SME’s will rely mainly on traffic generation techniques to increase enquiries and sales, where bigger brands look at both traffic generation and visitor conversion (to varying degrees I must add!)
• Are all visitors potential customers? – SME’s will tend to treat all site visitors as ‘potential customers’, especially when viewing web analytics, whereas bigger brands focus on segmenting their traffic information to identify which visitors are more likely to convert into an enquiry or sale

What Usability Doesn’t Mean for SME’s

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

• user 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 Usability Does Mean for SME’s

This isn’t to say that SME’s can’t benefit from the principles of ‘good usability’ to help them improve the effectiveness of their website and online marketing activities.

Primary ways for SME’s to 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)
• consider how your website currently caters for your key target customer (messages, information, services, useful tools, easy contact methods)
• use another free tool Google Website Optimiser to test a different version of your primary action page on your site
• calculating the potential sales and profit improvement you can expect to get using a ROI calculator (either for lead generation websites or for e-commerce websites)
• treating your website not just as a complimentary promotion of your business but with the potential to become an intregal part of your sales and marketing activities

Masterclasses for SME’s and Micro Businesses

I am delighted to not only be taking part in the first official LEAD programme (a leadership and business development programme) delivered by TMI with 17 other managing directors of micro businesses, but I am also delivering a masterclass to these business owners on ways in which they can start to improve their websites to generate more business. The first masterclass I am delivering is on Monday 15th March 2010, and it is open to non LEAD business owners by prior arrangement.

What SME’s Can Learn About Usability To Increase Profits

For the masterclass which is delivered over two and half hours, the outline of what I will speaking about is below:

• Google Analytics – how you can use this free tool quickly and efficiently to understand whether your website is performing well
• Online enquiries – how you can encourage more visitors to make an enquiry
• E-commerce – best practice advice if you are selling online to encourage more people to buy from you
• Case studies – how to improve online enquiries
• Making the move from offline to online sales/marketing strategy – myths, considerations, opportunities

Masterclass Plans and Objectives

My plan is certainly to make the masterclass sessions very engaging with lots of participation from the SME business owners who will attend. I would say the three main objectives for this masterclass are:

1. Generate genuine awareness of what tools and techniques SME’s can use to improve their websites
2. Demonstrating that ‘usability’ isn’t just for big businesses, and that any size business can benefit from better measurement and usability led improvements
3. Planting the seed for business owners to consider making online a much more integral part of their sales and marketing strategy

Summary

As this article points out although there are many usability led activities which aren’t feasible for many SME’s, there is absolutely no doubt that micro businesses and SME’s can benefit from improved usability of their website and online marketing. If you are in this position or have friends and colleagues who run small businesses, feel free to give us a call to see how PRWD can help increase your sales and leads from the online channel.

I was recently contacted by the publishers of The Royal Mail’s quarterly SMART magazine to see whether I would be willing to take part in a ‘Ask The Expert’ business clinic in their next edition. They had come to know of me having looked on the Econsultancy expert trainer team page that I feature on, with me being one of their external e-commerce trainers.

It would involved me providing 200 words of advice to the business Justin Guitar looking for expert advice and guidance on a particular challenge or objective they have with their e-commerce business.

Naturally I was delighted to provide some recommendations (see below) and you can also view the full article as a pdf which includes the companies business challenges, my recommendations, plus feedback from the business owner having seen the advice I had put forward.

Download the full business clinic article from Royal Mail (pdf)

Paul Rouke's advice on Royal Mail's ask the expert clinic

By taking part in this Ask The Expert business clinic I was then asked if I would take part in a range of ‘1 minute mentor sessions’ on video, which provide businesses who go on to the Royal Mail’s SMART portal with expert tips and advice in areas such as marketing, improving conversion rates, improving efficiency, multi-channel retailing and delivery options.

More information and links to the videos will follow soon, although you may well find the videos by taking a look at the SMART portal.

I have just written an article over at E-consultancy entitled ‘Usable Internal Business Systems – Just a Pipedream?‘.

I would recommend having a read as the usability issues that I talk about are what we have all experienced during our working lives, and there is extensive research provided which proves that the majority of business systems and software solutions in the market don’t value usability anywhere near as highly as we would always advocate.

The article includes my:

• evaluation of the enterprise level software market
• industry analysis on the lack of importance placed on usability in software
• advice on how businesses can attempt to improve the usability of their existing systems
• advice on how User-Centered Design should be embraced for businesses looking at bringing in new internal software systems
• summary of why usable internal business systems shouldn’t be a pipedream

Further reading

• User-Centered Design for Lean Manufacturing Business System Improvements
• User-Centered Design and Agile Development
• User-Centered Design Process Overview
• PRWD Press Release – Bringing User-Centered Design Into A Manufacturing Business

A study carried out jointly by BITKOM and Oracle found that ‘More than 50 percent of German companies use the means of communication provided by web 2.0.’

So why are UK companies taking so long to catch on? Below are a few issues which I think are to blame.

Afraid of the unknown

For many, the online world is something they are still getting to grips with and at first it can be a daunting task to keep up to speed with the continually changing online landscape. But we all know not to knock it until you’ve tried it, and those who aren’t are getting seriously left behind.

Not buying into the idea of ‘web 2.0’

Frequently I hear ‘but we have a website, we don’t need anything else’. These little figures from Microsoft digital advertising solutions, speak for themselves:

• 73% of UK social networkers have visited the personal space of a brand
• 16% have had a dialogue or sent a message to a brand
• 68% will visit a website related to what they have seen or read on a friend’s site

It’s not enough to simply have a website – consumer’s use a range of different networks and sites to find out about your business and brand.

According to research by Hitwise (Hopkins, 2006) , social networking site MySpace is responsible for more Traffic flow into the HMV.co.uk music portal than both the Yahoo and MSN UK search engines.

Confusion on how to measure the results

There’s no jiggery pokery involved, and compared to some forms of activity this is one of the more tractable and measurable activities. On the simplest level of measurement; conducting searches to determine the number of times a brand was mentioned on forums and blogs is a good self analysis tool. However there are some pretty smart ways and means of tracking conversations about your brand which range from monitoring online share of voice within a particular sector, analyses of content and tracking micro blogs to name a few.

Not sure where to start?

A good starting point is a company blog, something that we here at PRWD could help you set up. It gives your customers and possible consumers the opportunity to see a more personal side to the company and allows them to participate and comment – and as marketeers and usability professionals know the key to building brand loyalty is getting the consumer highly involved with the brand.