Paul Rouke and PRWD on User Centered Design

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.

You don’t need to be a Wall Street trader to work out we’re going through a bit of an economic sticky patch. Businesses and consumers alike are finding it hard in the current climate. So how can you make your online business work as hard as it can in these times of woe?

Firstly, turn down the panic button; online spending is on the increase (sales in the first quarter of 2008 are up 50% on last year, NMA 15.05.08), so there’s currently a good opportunity to earn your keep, but you’re going to have to work extra hard for your share, as competition online is hotting up.

Here’s my 3 primers on how to do it

1. . Position your business for long term growth and opportunity. Many businesses go the wrong way by not taking advantage of opportunities they would have otherwise snapped up. Don’t forget things can only get better! You’ll need to be ready to swoop in and pick up all the business your competitors won’t be prepared for after this period by pushing forward with your business growth instead of shying away.
2. Invest but wisely. There’s no point simply having an e-commerce website unless it is efficiently converting your traffic. Ensuring the usability of the site is at its best so that consumers have a problem-free shopping journey is a must. But spending your pennies to make improvements can seem like a hard call in times like these. That why here at PRWD we drive cost savings by using the open source web frameworks built with PHP. Investing in web improvements using such technology will save you money whilst providing substantial return on your investment, if a User Centered Design approach is used.
3. Take advantage of marketing you business online for free by using social networking and blogs to stimulate interest in the online world. 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.

Yesterday evening I was in great company at the Just The One (JT1) Summer BBQ, chiefly organised by Ian Jindal, at Flow Interactive’s offices in Clerkenwell, EC1.

Along with exchanging views on the UK retailing industry and the usability market, I was down in London speaking to E-consultancy about potential collaboration between them and PRWD. More on this in due course.

I must firstly compliment head chef for the evening Ian Worley, Director of User Experience at Flow, for providing a superb feast from the BBQ (the Beef Skirt marinated in Chimichurri sauce was devine!) along with a couple of others from Flow.

Moving on to the conversations, Ian Jindal’s influence in bringing together the likes of the MD of Bazaarvoice, the Head of E-commerce at Otto and the Head of Web Services at WPP allowed for some really stimulating conversations. Coupled with the fact the hosts Flow are usability advocates and dedicated to User Centered Design, it was no surprise that user experience was one of the primary topics being discussed, which naturally meant I had plenty to say indeed!

My only regret from the evening was not having the time to speak to all the attendees, although I’m sure at the next event this can be addressed. For the people I did spend time chatting to, a few follow up comments from me..

Theresa, we should definitely talk more soon on me potentially becoming part of the Customer Engagement Unit. The Q&A session I mentioned which will be of interest was on Findability for Web Design and Marketing over on Dave Chaffey’s website.

Rob, to confirm I would be very interested in exploring collaboration opportunities between cScape and PRWD in areas of user centered design and customer experience. Lets talk some more.

Gavin, it was great to chat with you about some of the usability and accessibility challenges you are faced with when managing the WPP website, and the move towards Sharepoint 2007 at some point in the future sounds like one meaty challenge! Oh and on a lighter note, Buzz Quiz TV should definitely be added to your roster of interactive and engaging PS3 games - it will give some of your fingers a rest from Guitar Hero!

Camilla, thanks for your kind words about me having the drive and ambition to build my own business, and it was great to share stories on different areas of buying psychology. And keep seeking that killer idea that will allow you to develop your own business!

Geke, it was great chatting to you about product and user research, and thanks for your keen interest you had in our usability methods and our business model, not to mention our recruitment strategy centered around psychometric profiling. Our recruitment partner in this is Psycuity.

Lee, sorry we didn’t get too much time together before you headed off, and once you’re back from your extended holiday we should definitely get together to further discuss collaboration opportunities - I also need to take you through our business model for UCDcommerce, our blue chip retailing capability and e-commerce platform.

Joris, after seeing your name many times on Fred Hopper literature during my days at Shop Direct Group, it was great to chat with you and share views on the state of the blue chip retailing sector, and the penetration (or lack of) of highly experienced usability experts within the UK and European market. We most certainly need to explore collaboration opportunities!

John, its great to hear the scale of demand you have for UCD services at Flow, and I’ll look forward to exploring opportunities for PRWD to provide additional consultancy and UCD resource for your business. As I mentioned the Manchester based agency we provide these types of services for is Fast Web Media, recent winner at the NMA awards in the Consumer Products and Services category for their work with Coors.

Chris, it was great to finally meet you in person, and it was interesting to compare the challenges faced by Otto Group and Shop Direct Group in attracting the younger, more web savvy shoppers through the likes of your Oli brand. Congratulations on the launch of your new Freemans website also - following my user experience review of House of Fraser which Ian found extremely useful, if time permits I will look at doing a UX review of your new site!

Carol-Ann, it was great to catch up with you and reminisce on our Shop Direct days, and best of luck with your involvement in the re-platforming of the Otto group retailing sites - a necessary evil I’m sure!

Last but not least is Ian himself! Once again Ian it was unfortunate that my train back up north trimmed my evening (don’t mentioned the 1.5 hour delay I ended up with!) but I was intrigued with your explanation of how P-XML is one of your new passions. Oh and not to mention your totally merited trupet blowing (and live demo) for the new viral iPhone game for Carling!

And that’s a wrap. Just seeing the length of this post its probably for the best that I didn’t speak to everyone!

So to all you attendees, feel free to add your comments on how you felt the evening went…

Following the recent launch of our UCDcommerce platform, we’re now beginning to brainstorm potential straplines for the platform, which will feature on the new logo (hold your horses, we’ve not got to that yet!) and website (when designed and developed).

Straplines Following My Blue Chip Retailing Background

To recap on my reasons why I decided to begin developing UCDcommerce 12 months ago, this came off the back of my 7 years commercial experience in User Centered Design for Shop Direct Group, the UK’s biggest shop at home group. PRWD certainly wasn’t going to settle for any off-the-shelf or mid level e-commerce platform, instead we were going to be in complete control of how our platform will evolve, based upon client, but most importantly users, requirements.

With a continual evolvement of UCDcommerce planned, my initial strapline ideas very much revolved around our aim to deliver enterprise level e-commerce solutions to blue chip clients (both existing and new), and I must admit I was very happy with these 1st ideas.

If you’d like to see my ideas 1st hand, download a pdf mindmap of my initial strapline ideas for UCDcommerce.

Alternatively I’ve listed them out below:

• blue chip e-commerce intelligence
• user centered enterprise e-commerce
• remarkable e-commerce solutions
• harnessing consumer intelligence
• user driven e-commerce
• where business goals meet user goals
• consumer driven e-commerce
• engage, convert and retain customers
• results driven e-commerce
• enterprise level intelligence

What do mean they are corporate and boring!?

Following my personal initial brainstorming the team got together, and although the consensus was that these straplines certainly encompassed the vision and strategy for UCDcommerce, they have a strong leaning towards being corporate and ultimately boring. In addition Katie felt that although users/consumers are key drivers for our platform, these straplines lacked more of a commercial focus. To quote Katie,

“Most of these straplines aren’t selling the benefits to the seller, only the user, and they could be more fun!”

Not one for ignoring constructive criticism, I embraced our teams views and we swiftly moved on to thinking of how to combine the user benefits and the commercial objectives for our User Centered Designed e-commerce platform.

Oh and adding some fun and personality into the strapline where high on the agenda!

Straplines Following Group Brainstorming

You can download a pdf mindmap of our group strapline ideas for UCDcommerce.

Alternatively, they are listed out below:

• converting shoppers to buyers
• driving shoppers to buy
• from shoppers to buyers
• from surfing to spending
• user experience drives sales
• more than a shopping solution
• selling, the right way
• consumer driven e-commerce
• engage and convert shoppers
• because happy users spend more
• because satisfied users increase sales
• because users want to enjoy shopping
• if they enjoy shopping they’ll buy

And the new strapline is…

We’ve not decided yet! Alongside the strapline we are developing the long term strategy for UCDcommerce, and therefore we’re making sure that we don’t rush in making the right decision.

We’d be interested in finding out your views on which straplines resonate best with you, knowing that UCDcommerce is all about delivering user centered shopping experiences which provide engaging shopping experiences, resulting in increased conversions, referrals, basket sizes and repeat visits for our clients.

This article is Part 3 of 4 focussing on User Centered Navigation and Findability within PRWD’s E-commerce Platform.

Dynamic Categories and Shop by Situation

To reference the introductory article on user centered navigation and findability, “No two web users will exhibit exactly the same browsing behaviour when navigating an e-commerce site”.

Similarly, different visitors will have different reasons for visiting the site, and therefore their ’situations’ can be very different.

Dynamic categories centered around user driven situations and customer groups provide a unique way for our client to group products across their whole catalogue which suit the wants and needs of particular customers.

Using Persona’s to Target Groups of Customers

During the initial analysis phase of the User Centered Design process with Contact Packaging, it became clear that there were specific situations which their existing (and potential) customers are in. From here we were able to develop a series of persona’s to reflect the customers in these different groups, enhancing the effectiveness of the User Centered Design process that was underway.

With this customer analysis and persona’s we developed a method for Contact Packaging, using the PRWD tag engine, to create dynamic categories which specifically target groups of potential customers.

Objectives for Providing Dynamic Categories to Target Customer Groups

• There should be no limit to the number of customer groups that can be created
• Customer groups can be created and put live within 1 minute
• Customer groups should drive conversions from Search Engine Marketing campaigns
• Customer groups should be visible throughout the store, encouraging usage
• Customer groups should enhance the effectiveness of the tag engine, including the tag cloud available under the search facility
• Customers fitting any of the ’situations’ should be encouraged by how they are being recommended a range of products which may suit what they are looking for, which in turn provides a more personal and intelligent shopping experience

The key to the dynamic categories and shop by situation interactive tool is that it isn’t intend to suit all visitors, and even for visitors which fall into one of the situations, it isn’t expected that they will be interested in buying all of the product suggestions.

Instead, the shop by situation is intended to compliment the wide range of other navigation methods available, whilst providing a more intelligent and personalised way for visitors to browse products from a wide range of categories which may well match their buying wants and needs.

The 1st Step on the Ladder for Shop by Situation

The 1st iteration of our Shop by Situation functionality certainly meets all the objectives set out above, but from our business perspective this is simply the 1st step on the ladder for this type of functionality. As we strive to enhance user engagement and provide even more personalised product suggestions, the flexibility we intend providing our clients will provide even more intelligent ways to target customer groups and increase relevancy for these customers browsing the store.

Comments please…!

Have you seen this type of navigation method used? How effective do you feel this method of grouping products could be for different types of products? I’ll look forward to hearing any views and comments on this post!