• Patching of fundamental usability problems which could have been avoided by involving the design team in the selection of technology.
  
• Wireframes that have been completed by a non-creative person resulting in a fairly dull overall concept.


• Focus group testing of all the usability issues but no measurement/feedback on the effectiveness of the overall visual communication.
  
  

2. Design involvement throughout the process

This approach involves experienced creative representation from the beginning to the end of the project. This can be perceived as the more expensive approach. Usually it is most at odds with people who see designers as adding value only at a superficial presentation level and haven't experienced the first hand benefits of working collaboratively with a design team.

Some successful example engagements of this approach include:

• Seeking counsel from designers on factors like technology so as to ensure that any limitations are understood and considered as part of the selection process.


• Collaboration with designers on wireframes to establish the information architecture. Rather than just addressing basic usability and requirements, herein lies the opportunity for innovation to explore new and unexpected ways that users will ultimately interact with the interface. The wireframes process is the critical stage for a designer to demonstrate and test the intent of these ideas.


• Consultation with the designers on what types of feedback they need (beyond usability) which might help them refine the effectiveness of the overall emotional response of the UI.

It stands to reason that I would advocate the role of the designers throughout the project every time. And I have seen the benefits of doing so over and over again. I realise the topic is much bigger than this modest post tends to suggest and that there are many different types of projects and roles which might put my simplified argument to the test.

My ultimate observation is that any reluctance to work with designers in a more collaborative way usually stems from a naivety about the importance of the role. Ultimately the project can miss a good opportunity or lead into very real costs as the inevitable question is asked: "Where did we go wrong?"

Tim Kotsiakos, Creative Director

Labels: Design and Usability, Process and Methodology

One of the main tenets of software development is that the developer must aim to keep the application structure and code simple. What may seem like an ingenious solution at the time could in fact become the costly problem later on if it is difficult to read, understand, and modify. Reducing the complexity of the application makes it easier to understand, manage, support, and change. So decreasing the complexity reduces the total costs.

This approach of minimising complexity is not only important for developers, but also critical for business owners. I am often surprised by just how complex some businesses make their product rules or business rules. The first web project that I led (many years ago now!) had a client with what I expected to be a straightforward product offering. However, when we got to the details of the product rules (e.g. only the curved products can be brown, and only products 1, 5, 22, 45 can have special coating “x”), we encountered a can of worms. When I questioned the client about simplifying the rules, they admitted that although there was no clear rationale behind the rule, they couldn’t change them!

Businesses should be aware of the cost of complexity. Complex business rules will result in increased costs due to the IT applications that require the implementation of these rules. If your business could be managed with an out-of-the-box application, then your modification costs will be negligible, and upgrades will be simple.

Complexity extends much further than just your IT costs. There are the associated costs in getting your staff to understand the complicated product offering, and the costs when customers abandon a purchase because they are confused or frustrated with the complexity.

Businesses should have good reasons to justify making complex business rules.

At this point we could even start talking about Information Architecture and Usability. Both of these disciplines focus on making things easier for your users: easier to find something; easier to use something; easier to buy something. Just like the costs, the benefits are realised to further than the Web site. Good Information Architecture within a business can save a lot of administrative time, and enable staff to concentrate on value-added activities. Well thought out Information Architecture in a shop quite simply helps shoppers find the product they’re looking for in turn increasing sales.

Matt Watson, Technical Director

Labels: Process and Methodology, Technology

Looking at your site’s conversion rate seems to be a forgotten measure of a successful Web strategy. Instead, it’s more common to hear “we need more traffic”.

The conversion rate of a Web site is simply the ratio of the number of visitors who complete an action to the number of visitors who view the site. For example, if you had 30 sales out of 500 visitors your conversion rate would be 6% = 30/500.

If you actually had a conversion rate of 6%, you should be happy. The reality is most sites will have a conversion rate of less than 0.5%. This means you need 200 visitors to generate one sale.

Before ramping up an online marketing assault, it makes sense to improve your conversion rate first. An average pay-per-click visitor might cost you around two dollars. Working with the scenario above, if you wanted 10 sales you need to invest $4,000 in pay-per-click advertising.

If you could improve your Web site conversion rate from 0.5% to 2% you would only need to invest $1,000 to achieve the same result. Likewise, for the $4,000 investment you’d yield 40 sales instead of 10.

Let’s say your objective for the year was to achieve 10 sales per week:

Scenario A (0.5% Web site conversion rate)

520 sales = 104,000 visitors * 0.5% conversion rate
104,000 visitors * $2 ppc cost = $208,000 investment

Scenario B (2% Web site conversion rate)

520 sales = 26,000 visitors * 2% conversion rate
26,000 visitors * $2 ppc cost = $52,000 investment

The difference in investment between scenario A & B to achieve 520 sales is $156,000

There’s lot of assumptions in this example, and every Web site business is different, but principle of conversion is universal. The bottom line is; if your conversion rate is low, it’s an expensive exercise to increase sales just by driving more traffic to your web site.

Investing to improve your conversion rate through quality Web design & strategy creates leverage and a significant return on investment.

Tim Fouhy, Managing Director, Australia

Labels: Process and Methodology, Web marketing

Every now and then I hear stories of online campaigns that have gone horribly wrong. A Web site for example that’s been live for two years, but has never had its performance measured; an offline campaign that is supported by an online campaign which someone forgets to get up on time; a project that goes live, fails to meet the desired outcomes and has a redevelopment commissioned only three months later; or project that wasn’t backed up before a server crash, and had to be redeveloped again from scratch.

These stories come to me from clients, candidates and even the occasional potential client who discovers (after the budget is spent) that they made the wrong choice, and now need some advice. Whenever I hear these stories I am reminded that there are still a lot of Web cowboys out there.

For a Web cowboy, following process can be a real bore but a lack of it is at the heart of their mistakes. They prefer to saddle up, dig in the spurs and ride out, in any direction, into the open country. Forget risk analysis, forget road maps and forget milestones - just get out there and see what happens. Sometimes it works. Most often however it doesn’t.

A successful online project needs careful thought and a dedicated Account and Project Management team to make it happen. Before you get on the horse it’s important to ask where you are going, how you are planning to get there, when you want to arrive and what you want to happen once you reach your destination. And of course, before the bells and whistles are considered the most obvious question needs to be asked: how will this project deliver profitable results to our client?

Riding out with the cowboys can be exciting, and maybe even more fun (in that fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants sort of a way) and by cutting corners it may even end up costing you less. But like the Wild West of the past, law and order is necessary for ultimate success.

For your online project, having a professional and dedicated Account Manager will ensure you get control and accountability. The first step is to research and plan, asking questions about your audience to develop a profile of your users. Then determine the desired results, see if any legacy systems need to be considered, understand the fundamentals of your brand, and how your business works. Once that information has been shared your Account Manger can apply their expertise to develop a Road map – outlining long term goals and how to achieve them.

Meanwhile your Project Manager will don the Sheriff’s badge, focus on the detail and ensure your milestones are fence-posted. This way we’ll ensure you’re safe from being looted, and you’ll know what to ‘pony-express’ back to your stakeholders along the way.

Next time you meet a Web cowboy, consider the fact that you need some law and order to become a true success in the online frontier.

Pepi Ronalds, Studio Manager

Labels: Process and Methodology

Over the last 9 years Reactive has gone from humble beginnings to a market leader. It’s focus has changed as has its clients. The work is more strategic, more informed and more aware of it’s business intent. New offices have now opened in Sydney and London. Our org structure had changed to better service bigger business. Projects have increased in scope and variety. Quality of work has become more important than ever. And as ‘once-competitor-come-employee’ of Reactive the opportunity to re-brand was the perfect way for me to get to know the company from the inside - intimately. What I found was a significant gap between the story told by the existing brand and the real sprit of today’s Reactive. Different enough to require a ground up restoration.

It started with a marketing plan. Our management team used this as a reference throughout the process. We researched, brainstormed, discussed, and developed a plan. We identified three key requirements for the new brand; to communicate who we are, what we do, and (the bigger challenge) to describe what we are like. To assert our genuine point of difference.

It was acknowledged early in the process that the company’s key differentiator is it's quirkiness and human approach as well as it's focus on real results. As such the brand had to be approachable and whimsical whilst asserting the right amount of professionalism and sophistication. White and black are punctuated by a synthetic green colour; similar to the green used to display early computer operating systems. The type mark is a customized version of the typeface Klavika designed by Eric Olson. It sits proud and approachable. Keylines trail from the typemark in different directions and in different ways.

The trailing key lines suggest reactivity, movement, 3 dimensions, interactivity, depth, a network, motion or shape. They can appear abstract or simple depending on the requirements of the application. They trail from one side of the paper to the other side, resolving in the type mark. The brand appears in transition, having just changed or about to change. This reflects the nature of our company, of ourselves as individuals and our business.It’s great to be at the end of a thoroughly enjoyable process. Today we proudly launch our new Web site. I have a dozen boxes full of business cards, presentation folders, letterheads and followers which will be distributed to our staff. There are a dozen different word templates, fax templates, envelope templates, bills, invoices, email signatures and other internal documents which have been designed and will be used by all staff. All of this work was the contribution of many hard working people over the course of the last couple of months.

We hope you like the new us.

Tim Kotsiakos, Creative Director

Labels: Design and Usability, Process and Methodology, Reactive

The requirements phase is often not given the attention it deserves.

Albert Einstein once said "Requirements are the foundation of software"...well, maybe it wasn't Einstein, but it was someone smart.

The outputs of requirements gathering are the blueprint to your site - critical documents! They are used for quoting, planning, designing, building and testing your Web application. The requirements will give you artefacts to describe the behaviour of the system (such as wireframes and use cases).

Defects in requirements will have a cascading effect throughout the project. While fixing an error in the requirements phase is often 100 times cheaper than after the software is built.
Statistics show that investing up to 30% of the project budget on requirements documentation significantly improves the chance of a project successfully meeting budgets. Make sure you invest the time and effort in a detailed requirements phase - this will reduce the risks and give you peace of mind.

The requirements phase aims to define and document the scope of the system so it can be quoted and developed based on that scope. However, some projects just aren't suited to fixed scope. You might want a more flexible system, perhaps your business is changing, or your market is rapidly changing. This is where agile development comes in.

The concept of the agile approach is to break the system into smaller projects which are delivered in iterations with less documentation. Each delivery is quoted based upon the experience of the previous iterations. The risks are reduced by this approach, but it doesn't suit a fixed budget.

It's rare to find project sponsors who don't have a fixed budget. But time and materials work doesn't necessarily mean you need deep pockets. You can put controls around the hours that are spent, and re-evaluate your requirements after each iteration (fortnightly or monthly), thus keeping a tight rein on expenditure.

Matt Watson, Technical Director

Labels: Process and Methodology

If you're like many Australian marketers a significant part of your online budget is currently being spent in reaching prospective customers... driving traffic to your Web site... filling your sales funnel. In fact Australian business spent in the order of A$620 million in 2005 (60% growth over A$388 million spend in 2004) on banner advertising and Search Engine Marketing (SEM) and are expected to spend in excess of a staggering $700 million throughout 2006.

Dropping customers into the funnel is a critical part of the sales journey and generally, a function, marketers perform quite well. We're probably not so well-renowned, however, for converting prospects into customers... especially in the online channel. Which means a significant portion of marketers’ budgets are going up in smoke.

We're all aware of the financial benefits of the retention of existing customers, in contrast to the acquisition of new ones. And therefore if the objective of our acquisition strategy is to acquire with the intent to retain and grow, then we need to convert a significant portion of qualified leads. The dirty ROI acronym seems to be raising its ugly head again!

So how do we move prospective customers through the sales journey and past the narrow neck of the funnel?

Firstly, we need to understand the different types of customers we have and what their characteristics are (segmentation).

Secondly, we need to understand why these people visit our Web site. In terms of the acquisition activities, what stories are driving them to the Web site and what are they expecting from this experience?

And thirdly, now that we have the traffic, we need to understand how our visitors interact with the Web site.

People visit our site with varied intentions. For example, a person may come to our Web site in order to:

• Research a product or service
• Research in order to compare prices
• Buy a specific product or service based on prior research
• Browse without intent to buy

People who visit the Web site with each intention generally exhibit different behaviour. Therefore, if we can link that behavior with a specific segment we can understand how to best guide each segment along the customer journey and identify what barriers are preventing us from a sale.

Consider a 'financial services' Web site where there is great diversity in product offerings. We might consider segmenting people by 'sex' and 'age' (which can be triggered by the person 'self-identifying' via a number of means such as specific 'age-related' content) and then refine the segment based on prior interaction.

So, for example, if a 35 year old male looks at content related to travel insurance then it is more than likely that he may also be interested in additional home insurance given his absence from his home. This being the case (and assuming we have also qualified that he is in fact investigating this insurance for himself), we can serve up an offering that not only meets his insurance requirements but additionally removes the barrier of time-consuming and confusing product comparisons based on age, sex and other variables.

We have provided him the most appropriate and efficient solution by simply 'listening' to his actions and in doing so we have a greater opportunity to convert.

Listening to our customers is the critical path to conversion. Sam Walton, legendary founder of Wal-Mart, said it best, "Whenever you get confused, go to the store. The customer has all the answers, and all the money.

It's pretty simple really, and the key to good marketing. In terms of online marketing, all we have to do is gain the insight and understanding of the customer's journey by 'listening' to the data captured by our customers’ interaction to understand what’s happening now, combined with our end goals, to determine the barriers to sale.

If we know what the barriers are, then we can remove them.

Labels: Process and Methodology, Web marketing

If you're reading this article there's a good chance you're a marketer. You're probably a marketer who knows that the online channel is powerful and has earned its place within the marketing mix. And like a lot of marketers, you'll probably be the first to admit that it's hard to keep track of the changing world of online marketing, but are willing to try. The good news, then, is that you are not alone. However, there is some bad news too...

I'm guessing you're like most Australian marketers and struggle to demonstrate the value marketing brings to your organisation. And that's probably because you're not in a position to demonstrate how the activities that you perform contribute to the bottom line. As a result, you never get the budgets you want, spending half your time begging the CFO for additional dollars and the other half developing online campaigns that you know are going to fall short of the mark (because you don't have the budget to do it properly).

But don't despair, there's hope - and money - available to you. It's just a matter of knowing how to release the finances from the vice-like grip of your CFO. And it doesn't have to be as difficult as it sounds. CFO's tend to more easily distribute budgets if they know what the impact of the spend is on the bottom-line. Fortunately, that's pretty easy to do in the online channel, because almost everything can be measured if engineered correctly.

So what do you need to do?

Step 1. Define Objectives

Know what you are trying to achieve. Are you simply attempting to drive traffic, and if so, how will this affect the bottom-line? Probably very little. Or is your objective to sell, and if not directly, then indirectly? Hmm... I wonder which is the more attractive option to the bean counters?

Step 2. Develop the strategy

Know exactly how you are going to achieve those objectives. Have you written a marketing plan? What's more convincing: hyperbole or a documented approach backed up by research? Reduce perceived risk.

Step 3. Calculate the risk

Know what the benchmarks are for the activities you wish to perform. If your Web site is not eCommerce enabled, then make sure you understand the impact that customer loyalty has on sales conversion.

But before you move to Step 4, you need to address a critical part of the story - measurement.

If you want ongoing budgets, if you want buy-in from the CFO and the rest of the management team, if you want to actually get results, then you need to measure.

You must have the framework that will allow you to measure against your objectives and the trip-wires to allow you to identify any barriers that prevent your customers or prospects from making that journey.

We all know that marketing is not an exact science. It's very difficult to get things completely right the first time. We must understand what works and what doesn't - and then fix what doesn't and improve what does.

And be prepared to share (i.e. communicate to the CFO) the good with the bad. The bad does not look so bad when you can identify where the problem is and then recommend how to fix it.

And finally ...

Step 4. Sell the Concept

Understand that while you shouldn't have to, you do in fact need to sell the concept to the CFO (or whoever else it is that holds the purse-strings). In order to do so, you must (a) clearly communicate what you plan on undertaking; and (b) clearly communicate the financial benefits of the activity. Don't set unreasonable expectations but demonstrate that your objectives are in line with their objectives. Trust is critical in sales... but you know that.

Labels: Process and Methodology, Web marketing