What is Conversion Thursday?

Conversion Thursday Manchester is an inspiring and exciting bi-monthly networking event that centres around online conversion and web optimisation. Conversion Thursday is already held in six cities across Europe, having begun in Barcelona. We hold the events at comfortable and relaxing venues that provide the perfect setting for debate and discussion of the important issues in online conversion and marketing.

The evening begins with a brief round-table discussion about recent events in the digital arena, then we have an interactive quiz (with prizes for the best team), before moving on to our main presentation of the evening. After the presentation, people are welcome to hang around for another drink and network with other attendees.

Who is it for?

Conversion Thursday is open to anyone interested in improving the web and increasing online business, including online marketeers, conversion and SEO/PPC experts, and web analysts. This free event is a fantastic opportunity to meet like-minded professionals, and build long-lasting relationships within the industry.

Conversion Thursday is sponsored by Applied Web Analytics and Elisa DBI.

When and where?

• Date: 24th February 2011
• Time: 5.30 – 9pm
• Location: Bar 38 in Manchester (downstairs)
• Event Twitter Tag: #CTMan

Registration

• Register for FREE online

Details are below of an upcoming event I’m talking at, at MMU in Manchester. I must say I’m really looking forward to it, and there should hopefully be quite a large number of people attending.

“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/

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.

Presentation Slides

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.

Online Fashion 100, in the words of Leon Bailey-Green, is:

a collection of inspirational, interesting and influential people in the online fashion industry

Just some of the names and brands that are on the list include:

• MIRIAM LAHAGE of Koodos.com
• NATALIE MASSENET of Net-A-Porter and theOutnet.com
• ANDREW CURRAN & SARAH CURRAN of My-Wardrobe.com
• DAN WAGNER of Venda and OSOYOU.com
• NICK ROBERTSON & HASH LADHA of ASOS
• ROB JONES of Harvey Nichols
• DAVID WALMSLEY of John Lewis
• RICHARD BRASHER of Tesco
• NANCY CRUICKSHANK of http://www.videojug.com/ and TMG
• JULIA REYNOLDS of Figleaves.com

Download a pdf of the complete Online Fashion 100 rundown

It’s safe to say that the event should have a real buzz about it and I’m looking forward to meeting up with some of the Online Fashion 100 select plus other movers and shakers in the fashion retail business.

How much focus do the retailers place on a good user experience?

Following my recent usability and benchmarking article on Econsultancy I’ve published another article looking at some of the pureplay and high street fashion retailers when it comes to key areas of the online customer experience and usability best practice.

Pureplay fashion brands that feature include ASOS, my-wardrobe, Net-a-porter, Koodos and The Outnet.

High street fashion brands that feature include Harvey Nichols, Miss Selfridge, Topshop, Next and New Look.

Take a look at the article and feel free to get in touch if you would like more information.

Conference Overview

Coping with and emerging from this recession in a stronger and profitable state are quite simply what most businesses wish to achieve. This major How-Do half day conference in Liverpool has drawn together five outstanding speakers whose collective expertise can help companies achieve just that.

In the current challenging economic climate, companies who not only survive, but actually thrive, are those who can develop and utilise a true competitive edge. If you want to guarantee your business the opportunity to implement ideas that will help make it more productive, more pro-active, more competitive and ultimately more profitable, then this conference is for you.

How-Do has brought together an outstanding panel of speakers for this conference at Liverpool Science Park, all of whom are focused on providing the type of insight and information that can make a real difference to the success of your organisation.

Areas Covered

The speakers including myself will be covering five key areas of your business:

• learning first hand from Google on what’s really working online
• how to develop and win new business
• more effective communication and engagement with business media
• improving the performance of your e-platforms
• reviewing and developing your strategy in a crowded marketplace

The Panel Of Speakers Are

• Andrew Barke (Google)
• Paul Rouke (PRWD)
• Bill Gleeson (Liverpool Daily Post)
• John Leach (Winning Pitch)
• Eva Berg-Winters (PricewaterhouseCoopers)

Booking Information

Delegate tickets are £88 + VAT early booking/charity rate (for bookings before 22nd May or whilst tickets last), £118 + VAT thereafter. Places are limited and you can book online to reserve your place. If you have any queries please contact Cathryn O’Grady on 07918 174176, or by e-mail cath@how-do.co.uk.

Full event details and resources

You can view further information from my presentations, including the video clip on User-centered design from a companies perspective, at the events page on our main business site.

In addition below are the presentations I gave on the night…

An introduction to usability

Usability for customer facing websites

Usability for internal software systems

Event Details

• Title: Usability: What’s The Use?
• Date: 28th January 2009
• Time: 6.00pm – 9.00pm
• Venue: CUBE (Centre for the Urban Built Environment), 113-115 Portland Street, Manchester M1 6DW
• Cost: FREE!
• Official Event Page: http://usabilitywhatstheuse.eventbrite.com/
• Manchester Digital Page: http://www.manchesterdigital.com/event.asp?action=view&id=68805

Quick Registration

Overview

For the digital sector, usability and user experience are more than new fads.

These topics, and their perceived value to businesses, have been talked and written about many times, but lets get it straight: just exactly what is the use of usability to a company looking at improving their performance, ROI and staff efficiency?

In this FREE event Paul Rouke, User Experience Director at PRWD, and 2 guest speakers Judith Garman of AbilityNet and Pete Bagnall of SurfaceEffect, will be providing a range of real-life examples and industry insights which will help reveal some of the tangible benefits businesses can gain by embracing usability and user experience.

Through the course of the evening you will see why usability can play a significant role in the likes of e-commerce websites, B2B websites, lead generation sites, intranets, internal software systems and the development of bespoke web and software applications.

The event will be followed by drinks, some food and networking.

Itinerary

18.00 registration
18.30 seminar
19.50 discussion
20.15 drinks, food and networking

Who Should Come

• Procurement staff
• Business owners
• Heads of IT
• Heads of marketing
• Consultants
• People wanting to know about usability and its importance to businesses

Target Sectors

• Public sector
• Retailing
• Manufacturing
• Digital and creative
• Leisure and Tourism
• Business and Consumer Services
• Financial Services
• Education and Training

Event Leader Paul Rouke of PRWD

Paul is the User Experience Director at PRWD.

Having worked for 7 years in user experience at the UK’s biggest home shopping group, Shop Direct Group, Paul Rouke founded PRWD in 2006. PRWD is an acronym for ‘Productivity without Difficulty’, which reflects their approach to developing online platforms and systems which focus on allowing users to be more productive and efficient with their time whilst having an enjoyable, problem free experience.

Paul has led the development of PRWD’s best practice driven e-commerce platform UCDcommerce, as well as leading the design and development of an internal resource planning system. All platform and system development work PRWD carry out follow a User-Centered Design process, an approach which will be explained during the course of evenings event.

Paul has worked in a range of sectors including the public sector, financial services, travel and tourism, retailing and manufacturing.

Paul has applied his usability experience and expertise on well know brands such as Kays, Littlewoods, JD Williams, The Co-op, The Cotswold Company and Additions Direct, as well as a wide range of SME’s.

Paul is a member of the Usability Professionals Association (UPA) and an active member of the Northern User Experience Group.

Guest Speaker Judith Garman of AbilityNet

Judith is a usability and accessibility consultant with AbilityNet’s web services team.

Judith’s background is in software development and HCI (Human Computer Interaction), she has a Masters of research Degree in Usability from Lancaster University. Judith is a strong believer in user engagement being critical to the development of usable and accessible systems and champions this belief in all her work.

Prior to joining AbilityNet Judith worked for HSBC for 2 years as a senior usability consultant working on national and global projects across a range of devices and software. She has also worked with Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications and Orange in usability and customer experience. Her work has included e-commerce sites, Intranets, staff-facing applications and mobile devices. Judith has experience of a wide range of user testing techniques both lab-based and in the field.

Judith is a member of the British HCI group and the Northern User Experience group.

Guest Speaker Pete Bagnall of SurfaceEffect

Pete is the Principal Interaction Design consultant at SurfaceEffect Ltd. He’s a strong advocate of user centered design, and has taught user research methods at Lancaster University, and at the British Computer Society’s Human-Computer Interaction conference for several years.

He’s also a practicing designer, and has worked on projects ranging from online pharmacies to project management systems, in the UK and the USA, for bluechip to small clients.

He can advise clients on developing solutions based on firm user needs, providing radical or conservative design as appropriate. Despite being a technologist by training he insists that technology must serve human needs, and not become a straight-jacket

We started with a few mulled wines on the Albert Square European market, followed by a sumptuous meal at Tampopo (highly recommended if you haven’t yet tried it!).

We finished off with a few drinks in Beluga, exchanging stories of Christmas parties which have not gone according to plan (think people having a few too many drinks and people letting off steam with one another!) plus looking ahead to 2009 and the projects that we will be working together on.

In reference to the post title, I’m referring to the fact that the clients we invited out are some of our long term clients who we have built extremely strong relationships with – so this certainly won’t be the last time we share a meal with these clients!

Oh and before I forget, I hope readers of our blog have a fab Christmas and a prosperous New Year!

Luke’s talk was a great overview of the state of usability, touching on a wide variety of topics. In particular, he highlighted the tension between functionality and aesthetics from a number of different angles, pointing out that a functional but drab interface might score well for usability, but lack any emotional weight. Likewise, whilst it’s certainly possible to allow artistic impulses to run wild, the lack of usability input into interfaces can result in designs which look great but fail to deliver for users.

He explained how his own role at ThoughtWorks – a global company employing over 1100 people – has become ever more central as the importance of usability has moved up the agenda and gained acceptance amongst software developers, managers and clients alike. Often it’s hard to make a case for usability simply by talking or writing about it – customers can be dubious about what sounds like a costly exercise in something they don’t understand – but it’s often easy to get people on board once they begin to see the results. The modern approach of making extensive use of visual prototypes rather than written software specifications allows for much higher-quality feedback from the customer early in the development process, leading to better project execution in the long run.

Luke concluded by saying that he felt that there is a considerable benefit to combining modern usability techniques with ‘agile’ software development, a process which involves rapid prototyping and a willingness to change course to satisfy customer feedback. This is something that I’ve written about before, and it was great to encounter someone from such a successful company extolling the virtues of that approach. Events like last night’s are a great way to spread best practice amongst the software development and usability community and many of the attendees came away enthused by what they had heard.

This is a hugely exciting event which should be a great day for PHP developers to listen, learn and discuss many interesting topics with each other. After the success of the initial social gathering, it’s great to see the final announcement.

There’s currently a call for papers underway, giving potential authors a month to submit their presentation abstracts. I see from Twitter that Jonathan Wage (lead developer of the Doctrine ORM library, which we have used here at PRWD) has put in a proposal and I’d certainly look forward to hearing what he has to say, with the launch of Doctrine 1.0 set to happen shortly before the conference.

Needless to say, I’ll be attending and I hope that as many others do so too. I expect that PHPNW will become a regular and important fixture in the development conference calendar.

Further Information

The conference website is here, PHPNW Google Group is here, and an Upcoming.org event for the conference is here.

Although in attendee numbers it was very small, the quality of attendees (backgrounds, specialisms, industry experience) and the subsequent discussions on all things user experience and usability, made me compelled to consider:

What can be done to raise the exposure and therefore credibility of this very focussed, passionate group

In the 1st instance I have posted my first article on the NUX blog, where I have given my thoughts to how the group is currently promoting itself, followed by a quick mind dump of potential areas where the group and our activities can be marketed to help build its credibility and scale in the North West.

Calling all passionate people involved in UCD projects (usability consultants, information architects, user interface designers, developers)… the NUX group needs you!

When we are already getting the likes of a usability guru from Sage, an ex usability consultant at HSBC (now at Ability Net) and one of the original founders of WordPress attending the most recent event, the NUX group already has a fantastic foundation, and with more people contributing to the blog and attending the monthly events, the exposure and credibility of the group will certainly increase.