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.

Econsultancy have published a new usability article of mine entitled:
Pureplay and high street fashion retailers – who values usability more?

In the article I’ve taken a look at the following high street and pureplay retailers from a usability perspective…

The pureplay fashion retailers I’ve taken a look at are:

• ASOS
• Net-a-porter
• My Wardrobe
• The Outnet
• Koodos

The high street fashion retailers I’ve taken a look at are:

• Harvey Nichols
• Miss Selfridge
• Topshop
• Next
• New Look

The five questions I posed to each of these retailers are:

1. How seriously are they taking cross-selling and up-selling in order to encourage higher average order values?
2. Do they make standard delivery costs clear before you get into the actual checkout process?
3. Are payment options and cards accepted clear prior to checking out?
4. Have they enclosed their checkout as a way of potentially reducing checkout process abandonments?
5. Do they provide clear customer service contact details during the checkout process?

Take a look at the article and see how these retailers stack up!

If you are a fashion retailer you might also like to read about the Online Fashion 100 event on the 17th June in London, organised by Leon Bailey-Green.

I’ve just uploaded my presentation slides from yesterdays enjoyable How Do conference in Liverpool, titled ‘Speeding Up In A Slowdown’. For information you can see details of the conference and speaker line-up, including a keynote from Google.

My 35 minute presentation (shown below) focused on 3 key areas that businesses need to consider if they want to make serious improvements to their online performance, and all on working with smaller budgets than what they would have had pre-recession:

• Understanding visitors – using gorilla user testing to actually begin understanding what visitors want and why they don’t complete their objectives
• Measuring performance – its not good enough to just have analytics installed on your site, you need to be looking at goals, funnels and developing advanced segments to truly begin understanding visitor behaviour
• Testing and improving – using split testing to make continual, incremental improvements to conversion rates, click-throughs from key pages and overal website performance

Using PRWD’s benchmarking application I have recently published an article on Econsultancy, looking at both Amazon and The Book Depository. The title of the article is Amazon relying on brand credibility instead of good usability.

This article will be followed by another one on our blog which will benchmark other retailers in the book market, and I’m looking forward to comparing how well pure-play retailers such as these 2 compare with bricks-and-mortar retailers such as Borders, Waterstones and WH Smiths.

The article on Econsultancy was set-up as follows:

If ever a retailer could get away with having exceptional cross-selling and up-selling functionality, yet provide a new visitor checkout process and web forms that break many usability rules, Amazon is certainly one of them. On the other hand one of Amazon’s competitors, The Book Depository, certainly appears to focus more on providing better usability throughout the buying journey, especially for new customers.

Following the recent e-commerce training course I delivered for Econsultancy, the usability benchmarking that is part of the course threw up some really interesting market insights. Although many retailers are featured in the course, providing examples of good and bad e-tail usability and best practice, I purposely refrained from including Amazon.

The simple reason was that as they are one the largest and most recognised online retailers, with the vast majority of their customers repeat buyers (I suspect), shoppers are much more likely to persevere during their shopping journey, even if there are more usability barriers than other ’smaller’ retailers.

How Amazon and The Book Depository compare…

Below are 2 of the graphs featured in the full article which provide an overview of how both retailers perform across key areas of the buying journey:

Amazon usability

Amazon usability benchmarking graph from PRWD

The Book Depository usability

The Book Depository usability benchmarking graph from PRWD

Take a look at the full article on Econsultancy to see more detailed benchmark reports along with some commentary as to what these retailers are (or are not) doing well from a usability and best practice POV.
In addition to this article within the next few weeks we will be interviewing The Book Depository to gain more insights into their approach to developing and improving their e-commerce platform, in particular when it comes to their conversion rates.

PRWD’s Benchmarking Application

You may have already read this if you have seen the full article and comments on the Econsultancy article, but if not below are a couple of insights into our benchmarking application in terms of its intelligence and flexibility:

• weighting of different recommendations as to their impact on usability/customer confidence
• weighting of different recommendations based on the type/size/age of business – ie. high street brand, pureplay retailer, start-up

If you would like to have your own e-commerce site benchmarked for usability and best practice against some of your competitors then please get in touch with us…