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.

The point of my post is that its vital for businesses not to take a top down, one-size fits all approach when they (or their agency) are analysing site traffic and conversions.

We’ve recently started working with translation services business The Translation People to help them improve their online conversion rate. As with almost all businesses who have analytics installed, although there was no advanced traffic segmentation in place (apart from the standard paid/non-paid traffic sources and a few other) in order to get a realistic view of which visitors they should be looking to convert.

Cutting to the chase, as I describe in my Econsultancy post, by creating and applying an advanced segment which identified which visitors are likely to be good prospects, we were able to see that only 10% of all traffic where good prospects for thie business.

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.

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.

Top Tips for Increasing Your E-commerce Conversion Rates

Below are a few top tips for improving both the usability of your e-commerce site and small changes which can help improve conversion rates. Further resources are provided at the end of the article.

Search and Navigation

• Make search an integrated and intelligent piece of functionality – if it isn’t, visitors will quickly dismiss the tool as something that will help them find what they want, and in turn could consider jumping over to a competitor site.
• Provide predictive/suggestive search results – benefits include reducing the number of ‘no results found’ pages, promoting saving information which will appeal to shoppers, plus exposing some of your product catalogue which the shopper may not have realised existed
• Allow visitors to filter your product range by relevant attributes (price bracket, specification, colour, size etc) – the easier you can make it for shoppers to find products which match their requirements the more likely they will be to purchase from you

Shopping Basket

• Don’t hide your delivery costs until the checkout process – even if a shopper can specify a more expensive delivery option in checkout, at least ensure your standard delivery charges are provided
• Make it clear what payment options are available, before the checkout process – especially important if you don’t accept debit card payments like www.booking.com
• Promote free delivery options clearly, if you provide them – this can play a significant part in persuading visitors to both make a purchase, but also increase their order value if it means triggering a free delivery level

Checkout Process

• Rule number 1 – enclose your checkout process. There are a range of key reasons why this is so important for retailers, one of which is ensuring you are focusing the shoppers mind on the 1 key action you want them to do – place their order with you. More advice on why you should enclose your checkout process can be seen in the resources at the end of this article
• Make it absolutely clear the levels of security you provide – concerns over credit card fraud are here for the long term, and you should make sure your visitors have every confidence in you to keep their details secure
• Pay close attention to how to present forms – by adopting form field best practice you make the checkout process more streamlined and you keep the shopper in a positive buying mood. Straight to the point error messages that point the finger at the visitor is one way of putting a small usability barrier in front of them

All Areas, Especially Shopping Basket and Checkout

• Carry out split testing and multi-variate testing – alongside best practice principles, this is one of the primary ways of affectively measuring the differences in click-throughs and engagement when adopting different designs, buttons, colours and messages

Looking for More Best Practice Tips and Advice?

If you are interested in gaining a much greater understanding of how small but integral changes can be made to e-commerce sites to help improve conversion rates, then the upcoming training course on the 23rd April in London is for you.

There is also funding currently available which could cover the cost of the course.

Below are further details on what will be covered in the days training course:

Product page best practice

• how to introduce best practice into your customer experience
• how some of the biggest e-tailers are following or defining best practice
• how to cross-sell and up-sell affectively
• how to introduce persuasion architecture

Shopping basket best practice

• pros and cons of the most popular implementations
• understand the impact you can have on consumer confidence
• how to channel customers into the checkout process

Checkout process best practice

• the rational behind enclosing the process to reduce checkout abandonments
• a framework for delivering a best practice checkout process
• how to reduced usability barriers to completing forms during your checkout process

Advanced user experience techniques

• how to engage and delight customers with memorable interactions

Useful resources

• best practice tips for search implementation
• benefits of suggestive/predictive search (scroll down the page)
• benefits and best practice for multi-faceted navigation, for both users and retailers
• the importance of enclosing your checkout process
• form field best practice, vital for checkout processes

Paul Rouke:Like ourselves at PRWD, you are a big advocate of multi-variate testing (MVT), A/B testing and in-depth web analytics to measure and improve website performance. If you had 60 seconds to sell in multi-variate testing what would you say?

Good question. Here is the summary of thought:

• Your customers are the real experts about the design of your site, the landing pages, forms, copy, pictures, offers and calls-to-action
• Anyone who has an opinion at your workplace (including you) will be incapable of correctly guessing what works best for customers
• If you develop your website through guessing, you may get optimal results sometime shortly before the heat-death of the universe
• If you have any traffic, just use it for testing

MVT allows you to experiment by slicing up pages/emails/processes to use different versions of ‘stuff’ shown to customers. You might change the size, placement or colour of buttons or different graphics and copy text.

MVT takes your traffic and then shows people these variations to find which works best for your business goal. It’s like taking all your ideas, putting them in a barrel, stirring them around and seeing the best stuff bubble to the top.

There are side benefits too:

• You don’t have to agree a single design so all those annoying ideas that you end up arguing about in meetings? Test them instead!
• Since you don’t agree ‘one design’ those pesky meddling co-workers can still voice their opinion but as part of a controlled test
• You end up doing things that work for customers, not implementing 3 rounds of changes from your signoff chain
• The customer has spoken – now shut up. If someone called Tod from marketing really likes the blue button and the customer converts 10% better on the red button, guess we’ll go with that one then, eh Tod?

If you don’t do MVT, expect to continue spending time in meetings arguing about underlines, dropdowns, colours and copy text that nobody reads anyway. If your life is empty enough to need filling like this, MVT isn’t for you – knock yourself out.

This is the best technique for optimising conversion that I’ve come across, ever. I still blend this with UCD, usability testing and lots of other techniques as optimising broken stuff gets poorer results. A checkout process that sucks can only be optimised to suck a little bit less.
When it comes to experimenting with traffic, MVT saved my life and cancelled time-wasting meetings.

Paul Rouke: I have seen that you are currently reading Avinash Kaushik’s book Web Analytics – An Hour A Day. Avinash is also the Analytics evangelist for Google. How would you rate Google Analytics as a business class web analytics tool?

I think Avinash is one of the most inspirational authors on analytics, optimisation and insight. If you don’t read his stuff, go do it now.

I think Google Analytics has improved immensely and I know people using it quite happily for enterprise class analytics. However, this is because they are good analysts and business people, not just because of the tool.

I’ve seen too many analytics implementations fail abysmally, regardless of product or price. The main reasons are that:

• People haven’t done the business analysis to work out what ‘real’ reporting or KPI stuff is needed
• You don’t employ a part or full-time analyst ‘champion’
• Not enough time and effort is spent on implementation, data validation and training

You can’t just spend cash on a product and expect stuff to magically happen. People often switch around vendors hoping this will help and then make the same mistakes. It’s like buying expensive designer houseplants and forgetting you turned the last lot crispy within a week.

Paul Rouke: Which of the more advanced features of Google Analytics, such as personalised segments, funnels and goals do you personally use in your consultancy roles, and how have these insights helped to inform design decisions and convince key stakeholders of a need to improve?

I look at segments of customer traffic all the time. A particular interest of mine is looking at conversion funnel segments – where they come from and how they perform in A/B or multi-variate tests. I’ve used segmentation to optimise for a specific channel so this is shown only to those visitors. This means that you get better results than one set of creatives for general traffic.

Can you imagine a store where you walked in and it was all laid out with the offers and products you wanted, within easy reach and had a helpful sales person to give you a really good introduction?

Dynamic MVT allows you to shape-shift your page to fit the incoming traffic segment based on test data. Type a different keyword or phrase into google – you get a different landing page, a different experience and the site gets a higher conversion rate.

Paul Rouke: We are recently launched phase 1 of a user-centered designed internal business system, and I’ve presented on the subject of why this approach is vital, with a key business case being the age old adage of ‘time is money‘. Have you experienced internal business systems which would benefit from the likes of user testing and a more user-centric design approach, and have you actually being involved in projects for developing internal software and systems which have adopted a user-centric approach?

Internal business systems should be looked at for usability wins just like customer facing services. Intranets, Wiki systems, bespoke applications and particularly customer service back-ends can all show cost savings from training, faster processing and more effective ‘task conversion’.

Paul Rouke: Online usability within the financial sector can play a huge part in encouraging visitors to complete application processes, take out a loan and compare financial products. I notice you have also worked at PricewaterhouseCoopers. What have your experiences being within the financial sector and how well has user-centered design being embraced? Can you name any companies who are embracing a user-centric approach?

I wasn’t involved in UX work at PWC but I do come across a lot of financial sites that have particularly nasty forms that expect customers to jump through ‘hoops of fire’ to complete them.

I was helping two friends research and buy car insurance recently and was struck by how disjointed the process can be. The aggregators (who give comparisons) are improving a lot but are not perfect.

Many applications have to be finalized through the insurer’s site and these sometimes don’t copy the details or have different ways of asking questions. Some websites have forms that are bleeding *vast* amounts of potential cash, given the high cost of customer acquisition in this sector. A focus on analysis of bailout reasons, error rates on forms and general usability would save multiples of the budget required. A 1% lift in conversion through insight is probably worth decades of usability spend.

I used Morethan the other day, filled out a quote and took a phone call. When I finished talking I tried to complete it and it said ‘ your session has timed out’.

Since it hadn’t yet asked me my email address, how could I sign back in to complete it? I guess their reporting just has me down as some poor chum that wasn’t interested – the reverse is true. I appreciate security concerns over the data but how many of us complete this stuff at one sitting, or never get interrupted? In the RW (Real World), life is not single tasking. If you aren’t monitoring this stuff and fixing it, who’ll do it for you?

Paul Rouke: When developing new applications, software and e-commerce platforms, we combine user-centered design with an agile development methodology. Have you worked on projects that combine these 2 disciplines, and if you have, how did you find it?

Agile development methods aren’t new but they are ‘trendy’ with some companies. All I’ll say is that having stand up meetings does not an Agile process make . UCD and Agile type methodologies go together extremely well because rapid user testing and prototyping allows you to fit with an iterative release strategy (small, nimble releases not large monolithic developments).

This also blends well with optimisation work because you can prioritise stuff that has a large customer impact or bottom line improvement and release this incrementally. If your site loses 7% of form fillers because of a couple of errors, you need to get these fixed and live quickly.

My advice to people that focus on Agile is to think of a Venn diagram where there are ‘Experienced Project Managers’ in one circle and ‘Agile approach’ in another. The intersection of the two is the place to look at but I’d rather have experience and cross train someone with Agile. Exposure to these methods or training courses doesn’t make someone good at the core skills of project management.

Paul Rouke: Who do you rate as you your biggest inspirations in the world of usability and user experience?

Hard to list all of them:

• Don Norman, Jakob Nielsen and Jared Spool for inspiring me generally
• Alan Cooper for ‘The Inmates are running the asylum’
• Seth Godin for ‘Permission Marketing’
• Steve Krug for the most usable usability book, ‘Don’t make me think’
• Jim Sterne, Eric Peterson, Hurol Inan and Avinash Kaushik for Web Analytics ‘training’ and being ‘Data Junkies’
• Hurol Inan for ‘Search Analytics’
• Luke Wroblowski and 37 Signals for their work on forms usability.

Paul Rouke: I am a huge advocate of multi-faceted navigation, especially for sites with high levels of content. What have been your experiences of this type of advanced navigation, and which sectors has been most pro-active in giving their visitors the power that comes with this advanced, personalised way of navigating large product and content sets?

My experience might be different to yours but I’ve seen a lot of implementations with electrical goods online. If you are looking for a stainless steel fridge where the door fits on the left hinge, with a certain height, colour and price – faceted filtering is ideal.

How to present large result sets and allow a visitor to flip the data, shrink it, expand it and reset it is one of the biggest challenges I’ve ever had. Faceted filtering software and services are very good (there are even open source projects like SOLR now). However, you need to ensure the interface presented doesn’t undo the nice data handling underneath. A library without an index is just an unusable place and so are faceted filtering systems without a good UI.

Craig is a User Experience champion who provides the insight and connection between organisations, people, products and their customers. He has worked on large scale UX, optimisation and product launches, helping grow companies with designs that delight the customers and drive commercial success. He is currently working on a number of page and funnel conversion projects and is always interested helping businesses solve tough problems. You can read more or contact him through his profile on Linkedin.

Paul Rouke: I know you have spent time doing User Experience (UX) work for Lovefilm.com, a site I regularly use and enjoy from a usability perspective. How was user-centered design embraced within LOVEFiLM, and what are some of the big ROI success stories?

Well, LOVEFiLM as a company puts a lot of work into analytics, insight, research and customer focus for operations and product design. They are a rarity in being able to manage a balance between phenomenal growth and keeping the VOC (voice of customer) at the heart of all they do.

UCD is probably too narrow a term to cover all the customer facing techniques they use but it’s at the heart of their product design from conception to launch. The user experience of the service as a whole involves optimising every touch point, online and offline, with customers or potential customers.
LOVEFiLM has recently featured in The Sunday Times Microsoft Tech Track 100, number 2 with the fastest growth.

The big ROI success story is in terms of supporting the growth of the site whilst delivering an excellent and improving user experience. I’ve personally driven hundreds of changes that ranged from just delighting customers all the way through to large percentage lifts in conversion rates.

Paul Rouke: In your experience at LOVEFiLM and with other retailers, how have user reviews and ratings affected conversion rates? Do you have any recommendations for retailers considering implementing this type of customer insights, from the likes of Bazaarvoice and Reevoo?

It’s difficult to pick one review site that has enough of an industry spread to make an impact as an independent. If you’re into your customers though, you need to hear what they are saying and there are sources I’ve used to monitor brand mentions in press, forums, blogs and social networks.

I’ve also grabbed feedback from customer trial groups and panels during product development. Regular independent surveys ensure that LF and their competitors are benchmarked on key service elements. This helps identify exactly which bits of a great service really drives the word of mouth and NPS (Net Promoter Score).

The one aspect of reviews I need to mention though is the sheer volume of ratings and reviews on the LF website – these help people to find films they want to watch. I regularly use IMDB and LOVEFiLM to research films I’m interested in, as well as find stuff that I may not have heard of.

Paul Rouke: I understand you’ve worked at John Lewis as a usability and e-commerce consultant. How much was user-centered design part of their processes, and what were the biggest usability barriers that you had to tackle?

I was involved for several years with the John Lewis Partnership and their sites just improve with age. At the start of their e-commerce curve they were really blazing a trail with usability/user experience, web analytics, browser testing, performance & load testing, conversion optimisation, site monitoring, search analysis, email compatibility etc.

This is stuff that companies use commonly today but few organizations were doing this 8 years ago and JL still do all of these and more. Working there as a freelancer, I could see that they really understand and look after their partners (the employees) and customers – something which really comes out if you work there or shop with them.

The biggest hurdle when promoting usability was to get people to understand how it could not only improve the commercial success of a product but also save development time. Manufacturers have long ago grasped these principles, as they can’t afford to launch a new car, just because people over 5’8 won’t fit. Building websites without customers is expensive because you are launching sub optimal stuff all the time.

We had a usability roadshow that went out and sold the concept and the results to many divisions and departments in JL. Showing people a passionate and simple explanation of the techniques and results had a long lasting impact. I was contacted the other day by someone who worked with me at JL and then made UX a big part of their career –you have no idea how chuffed I was.

Paul Rouke: As you know I used to work at Shop Direct Group, another major player in blue chip retailing. How well do you feel John Lewis compare to other blue chip retailers such as Shop Direct Group, Next and House of Fraser when it comes to usability and customer experience?

Maybe I’m biased but John Lewis, Waitrose and Ocado all have services that are simply brilliant. There is a level at which the sites work and what the physical service is like that gives me a good feeling every time I use them. Whether I’m hunting for something in a department store, having groceries delivered or reading an email – they are all good experiences. There are some physical stores or online retailers who’ve made me feel like I’m inconveniencing them when I’m asking for help – I don’t get this impression with these folks.

There are too many online companies with stuff that doesn’t work at crucial influencing points in the relationship. This could be a nightmare form for an insurance quote, a poor checkout process, emails that won’t display correctly, slow or unsolved customer contact, a site that takes an age to load, search and navigation that doesn’t match ‘your words’ for things or landing pages that aren’t ‘what you came for’. All of these can have enormous commercial impact, depending on your business model.

The good news is that there is an opportunity, particularly with the downturn, to differentiate yourself and make your online spend work smarter. The answer here is to get under the skin of your customers and find priority areas where it works for both of you. A small amount of time fixing an application form or a checkout process gets you more money from the traffic you already have. Right now it’s not about pushing the spending slider to get more out the other end – it’s working to optimise what you’ve got.

Paul Rouke: Internet Retailing has launched their ‘Inspiration Index’, which covers 6 dimensions, 2 of which are ‘customer experience’ and ‘moments of brilliance and delight’. Which online retailers would you include as inspiring you the most?

Well, apart from JL, I would list the following sites as having utility or customer experience that rocks:
www.zoopla.com – A property site for renting, buying, researching and being nosy about what other people paid for theirs. It’s such a clean and usable design, it manages to do everything you want without complexity and very swiftly. I expect this site to win more awards and grow their customer base hugely – good user experience underpins this.

www.amazon.co.uk – I’ve used them for years and I’ve had no incentive to use anyone else for a lot of purchases. I find the stuff, it comes, I hardly ever need to contact anyone, it’s cheap and just works. The design hasn’t changed radically, the reviews are really helpful and the faceted search (narrowing/expanding) is really useful.

www.Directgov.co.uk – I know it’s not a retail site but deserves a mention here for freeing us online junkies up from visiting places in the RW (Real World). I renewed our car tax the other day in about 4 minutes and it was much better than previous experiences (don’t ask me about TV licensing grrr….). Directgov are doing a lot of user experience work involving UCD, testing and analytical insight and this seems to be percolating through in online products.

www.imdb.com – The best place for film info, pictures, quotes and to resolve arguments. Whether you are building a library, expanding your knowledge or looking to rent or buy, I still find more here on this site. The design is sometimes criticised but this isn’t what I want it for.

Paul Rouke: We have been running a poll on our usability blog asking for visitors to name the high street retailers you would least like to see go bust (hypothetically speaking of course!) in the current recession. Having worked with a variety of high street retailers yourself, who would you vote for?!

I’d hate to see anything happen to Waitrose (for loads of things), Aldi (for nice stuff at a good price) and Maplins. I have a magnetic attraction that works at long distance to pull me towards gadget or electronics shops. I found myself stopping outside Maplins the other week and thinking that there wasn’t ANYTHING I really needed in there (blank DVDs? Er, batteries? Hmmm, let me think…)

I racked my brain and then reasoned out that I was thinking that MAYBE just MAYBE they had something I might need, if only I knew it was there. Then, feeling satisfied I’d sussed myself out, spent the next 30 minutes finding things I never knew I needed and looking at everything, just to be absolutely sure.

I did plan on including the full Q&A on this one article, but with another 9 questions remaining I think a 2nd post is in order in the next week or so! The 2nd part will feature questions and answers on some of the following topics:

• multivariate and split testing, the benefits and the business pitch
• some feedback on Avinash Kaushik’s book Web Analytics – An Hour A Dayweb
• segments, funnels and goals in Google Analytics
• financial companies who are adopting a user-centric approach online
• multi-faceted navigation, how not to undo good intelligence with a poor user interface

Hopefully this 1st part has been as interesting to read as it was for me to carry out and I’ll look forward to publishing the 2nd half of the session next week.

My presentation slides and further usability resources from the event are also available for reference.

Manchester Digital Introduction and Usability Primer

Usability – Stripped Bear from Paul Rouke on Vimeo.

An introduction to Usability: What’s The Use? by Shaun Fensom from Manchester Digital, followed by a short primer to usability by Paul Rouke, User Experience Director at PRWD.

No matter how many job titles there are in the usability and user experience field, at least all professionals share 1 common goal…

Usability – The Importance For Internal Business Systems

Usability – The Importance For Internal Business Systems from Paul Rouke on Vimeo.

Paul Rouke, User Experience Director at PRWD, talks about the importance of usability for internal business systems, specifically around staff productivity and process efficiency.

The presentation touches on common barriers to staff productivity, some of the main reasons for these barriers, plus a short video of a manufacturing company who are embracing user-centered design as a way of combating the traditional software development issues on a companies productivity.

The presentation also asks business owners a few key questions, such as do you listen to your staff, do you staff waste valuable company time doing repetitive tasks, and do you know what is the on-going cost to your business if you use un-usable software systems.

Usability – The Importance For Websites and Online Marketing

Usability – The Importance for Customer Facing Websites from Paul Rouke on Vimeo.

Paul Rouke, User Experience Director at PRWD, talks about the importance of usability for businesses communicating with both new and potential customers.

Featuring a case study of how a company improved their revenue-per-employee by 95% over a 2 year period, along with some attendee participation, this 17 minute presentation touches on a wide variety of websites and activities, such as lead generation sites, information portals and search engine marketing campaigns.

Most significantly conversion rates for e-commerce websites are discussed, where usability can have a remarkable affect on a companies bottom line, if the right decisions are made in making improvements.

PRWD, An Acronym for ‘Productivity Without Difficulty’

Productivity – A Wikipedia definition

Productivity in economics refers to measures of output from production processes, per unit of input. Labor productivity, for example, is typically measured as a ratio of output per labour-hour, an input. Productivity may be conceived of as a measure of the technical or engineering efficiency of production.

read the full definition of Productivity on Wikipedia

Types Of Productivity We Improve

Without Difficulty – An Answers.com definition

Something not easily done, accomplished, comprehended, or solved. A laborious effort; a struggle.

read the full definition of Difficulty at Answers.com

Types Of Difficult User Experiences We Rectify

A few examples which you may relate to are as follows:

• removing confusion when submitting an application form online
• removing being overwhelmed when using a business system
• removing concerns of trust and privacy when considering an online purchase
• removing complexity when navigating through large sets of information or products
• removing frustration when a website doesn’t do what you need it to do
• removing frustration that the business system makes your job less productive

As you can see from the examples provided above, combining productivity and ease of use can relate to any number of web applications, business systems, marketing activity and brand experiences.

Delivery ROI Through The PRWD Acronym

By focussing on productivity metrics whilst removing difficulties for users when using a system, we deliver return-on-investment in a way which we have recently documented in a case study on User-Centered Design.

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