Paul Rouke - Usability Professional

Since my last post there has been a fair bit going on at PRWD, some of which I can talk about and some of which we can’t make publically available as its work through partner agencies.

Testing Testing 1, 2 3

We’ve been busy working with some of our existing clients such as Contact Packaging (selling printed tape) and new clients such as The Translation People (providing document translation services) in optimising their conversion rates through analysis and testing (split and mutli-variate).

Event Speaking

Following on from my successful and rewarding presentation at the recent How Do conference in Liverpool, Rob Knight (PRWD’s lead technical architect) has spoken at an event titled Developing With Adobe AIR, which had a keynote from Adobe. Rob’s presentation was titled Business Systems With Adobe AIR and it featured the work we’ve done with a manufacturing company to deliver a user-centered designed business system for them. We have also developed a micro-site detailing our business systems and e-commerce services for manufacturers.

Case Studies

We’ve also released a couple more case studies of some of the work we have been doing and the results we’ve had, in particular on improving online sales by 400% for one of our clients and a technical case study on using Adobe AIR for business systems.

Twittering

I’ve been twittering over the past few weeks (not consistently I hasten to add!) and along the way picking up quite a few new followers, some of which I would put in the spam category. We have also been updating the PRWD twitter account although you tell its alot younger than my personal twitter account!

Featured Supplier In Econsultancy’s User Experience Buyers Guide 2009

We were delighted to be asked to feature as one of the 26 agencies who specialise in user experience and usability in Econsultancy’s annual guide on this topic. I also spent time providing feedback on a number of questions relating to the industry, and if you download the full version you will see various quotes from myself.

I was recently delighted to be invited by Fashshot to go along to the Online Fashion 100 event in London, on Wednesday 17th June in London.

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.

I’m highly honoured to have recently been asked by How Do to speak alongside Google and PricewaterhouseCoopers at a conference entitled Speeding up in the Slowdown on Thursday 4th June 2009 in Liverpool.

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.

Last night I attended a fantastic event with Manchester Fashion Network, a Q&A evening with River Island’s CEO Richard Bradbury.

Richard has certainly ‘done his time in retail’ as he’s worked his way up from his retail position in Great Yarmouth all the way through to becoming the Chief Executive Officer at leading fashion retail company River Island. At River Island Richard is responsible for the growth and expenditure of the continued success of the multi million pound turn-over that the top high street retailer secures.

It was a Q&A style evening, attended by around 90 people, where Richard talked very openly about his background, the River Island story and how it was originally born from the Chelsea Girl brand, the growth and importance of online for River Island, along with a range of questions from the floor, including a couple from me.

Questions ranged from what advice Richard would give to aspiring fashion designers (including a group from Manchester Met that I was sat with), how can new supplier’s best get their foot in the door and compete against supplier’s in the far east and eastern Europe, along with me asking about the their online operation.

My 2 questions where:

PR: You have mentioned about how successful your e-commerce site is for River Island. Can you provide some insights into what growth you have seen over the last 2 years with online, and what % of sales come through this channel compared to the high street?

In response Richard replied:

RB: Online is hugely significant for our business and is growing constantly, although I can’t share more than that! We have won awards for our website and we are currently on the 3rd generation.

PR: Your website is flash based, which is almost exclusive in the online retail sector. Is this an intended differentiator for your business (Richard had earlier talked about some of the ways River Island ‘do things differently’ and ‘do what works for them and their customers’), and what else can you tell us about your approach to online?

RB: We are actually in the process of moving away from our current flash based retail site. This evolvement has taken longer than we had anticipated although we are due to launch our new site later this year.

Later in the evening after the official Q&A’s had finished I grabbed a few more minutes with Richard, (who I must say is one of the most down to earth CEO’s I have had the pleasure of speaking to!) where I asked a few more questions regarding their e-commerce operation and the strategy for moving onto a much more trackable, personalised and best practice driven e-commerce operation.

Without disclosing too much here Richard shared some really interesting insights, and I’ll be watching with interest to see how 2009 shapes up for River Island business, in what is extremely challenging market conditions.

The videos from my presentations from Usability: What’s The Use? are below for watching.

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.