What we do: Helping you create a great plan

All great systems start with a plan. Sadly this planning stage is often neglected in the rush to get started. However, we firmly agree with the great architect Frank Lloyd Wright:

“An eraser on the drawing board, or a sledgehammer on the building site”

In other words, make your choices and mistakes on paper and it will save you a lot of money redesigning the technology later.

Defining a decent plan for the website need not be difficult, but it is not a skill that is really taught at college and is not a service that is regularly offered by most agencies. It does, however, save time and money, while also delivering the best results.

Our assessment and planning services

So which is it, planning or assessment? Well, the truth is, it is both. We provide a service that assesses where you are now, and helps you plan for where you want to go. As they say:

“You can’t get where you want to go without knowing where you are now.”

Most organisations invest both money and staff time in maintaining their website and digital communications and so they need to ensure they are getting a return on that investment. Often, their website is the first point of contact between the organisation and their target audience, yet they regularly have difficulty answering the following questions:

• What is the website for?
• What do we want our users to do?
• What are our users looking to do?
• How is the site currently working (if an existing system)?
• Who else is doing this well online and what can we learn from them?
• What are the priorities for us and the scope of the task ahead?

How the planning process works

We have distilled years of web design experience into a simple strategic planning process that answers these key questions. This process produces a vision for the development of the website, supported by well-structured rationale. We document all research and recommendations, including a simple management summary, and provide a visual prototype for presentation to key stakeholders.
We use a range of tools during the review including:

• SMART web objective definition (no more than five)
• Target audience definition (sometimes supported by personas – no more
• than five)
• User journey definition (the target audiences are given tasks they want to carry out that seem both realistic and of high priority)
• Peer review of other similar sites both within and outside your sector
• Site usage analysis (normally a review of your Google Analytics reports)
• Expert review of your current systems and website
• Initial prototype for internal stakeholder presentation and user testing
• Audience research and user testing

Download our  UI_audit_process here.

Getting results

Usability audits regularly improve key business metrics by over 80% , including:

• Conversion rates – sales or lead generation
• Target feature usage – users clicking links to crucial information or features
• Site readership – the amount of time users spend on the site

“The UI process helped deliver a 100% improvement in site performance year on year for the Morgan Stanley Great Britons website.”

What types of system does this work for?

We have carried out this type of digital communication planning exercise for a range of systems including:

• Websites
• Direct digital marketing systems
• Learning environments
• Social software

In our experience this exercise is most often applied to websites, but it is just as valuable for learning systems and email campaign tools. This process works equally well for any set of interactions in which it is important to get the best results and a user-centred design approach is required.

We believe that giving more time to considering your users, customers or members at an early stage will, ultimately, give them a much better experience and deliver better results for you and them. This can only build loyalty and ultimately create better digital relationship between you, and that is what it is all about.

What can we do for you?

Find out what a difference we can make to your business!
Get in touch now!