Web Site Redesign: prioritize stakeholders

So who is your day-to-day client for the redesign project? Does she have decision making authority? Does he have a boss to please? Who else has input on the project?Understanding and getting input from all relevant stakeholders is critical to the success of the project. But managing their expectations and prioritize their importance is just as critical.

A single point of contact (SPOC) is critical to take all the internal input, distill what is critical and DECIDE on what will and wont be accepted. That person must also be able to push back on some of his/her colleagues and not allow someone with lower importance insist on something or derail the project.

Face it, there is no way to make everyone happy. But there are ways to managing expectations.

Upfront, make it clear that input is welcome from all parties — business unit owners, customer relations, Marketing, Product, IT, R&D, HR, etc. — as part of the discovery phase. But do not invite all these disciplines to comment on creative design, copywriting, development. That’s inviting too many cooks into the kitchen, will delay the process and possibly muck up your project with political posturing.

Once you know what’s important to each stakeholder, it all gets prioritized against the main site goals AND THE VISITOR GOALS. Then you stick to your plan.

What do you think? Please post your comments.
Thanks.
-Roland

The growing phenomenon of ‘Internet’

This is hysterical and sobering news report circa the early 1990s explaining what the Internet is.

This jem found on Throw away your tv. With just a computer and a phone, you can connect to INTERNET! Check out this documentary.

Thanks to Marty at the BloatedTrout blog for digging out this jem.

What I learned:
People spend about $200 a year to be part of this exclusive global community.

The journalist explains about “little signs known as emoticons” and how to turn your head sideways to read a smiley or frowny face.

“The Internet is becoming part of our life every day much much more.”

“The Internet is growing like an embryonic brain, at a rate of 10% per month.”

My first exposure to the Internet was around early 1995. A friend showed me the Disney Web page using Prodigy. I was not impressed at the time.

It wasn’t until late 1996 I started diving seriously into it and shifting my career path accordingly.

What do you think? What was your first experience online? Has the Internet exceeded your wildest expectations? Please post your comments. Thanks.

-Roland

Web Site Redesign: Assess the Competition First

Part of your discovery research on a redesign project must include an assessment of what the competition is doing. Have your client define exactly who they believe their top competitors are. Try to break those down into several categories, such as: manufacturers, retailers and niche specialties.

What you should hope to achieve is an understanding what other companies in the space are doing, how they are talking to consumers and what unique approaches they have implemented.

Create a grid for basic comparison. Make each Web site a column and each row a unique attribute. Be sure to include the client’s site as well. Then methodically go through and identify what each site does. Examples:
- Types of consumer registration (newsletters, free trial, purchase, etc.)
- Types of customer support (24/7, online chat, email, phone, etc.)
- Types of consumer tools for decision making (product education, product comparison, etc.)
- Search Engine Optimization — have pages been optimized for natural search?
- Brand voice or essence — Does the copy speak to the consumer in a compelling way, or is it dry, corporate/marketing speak.

Be sure to sign up for any free stuff to get a sense of how the registration processes work and what types of email marketing they do.

This comparison is only limited by your imagination. But as you begin to cruise through each site, you’ll think of more points to evaluate.

Now you’ll be armed with good ideas to deliver on a best in class Web site.

What do you think? Please post your comments. Thanks.
-Roland

Web Site Redesign: Define How to Measure Success

To claim a project was successful, you have to define upfront how success will be measured. (And make sure the project owner and stake holders agree upfront!) Here are some examples:

- Improved user flow through the Web site. Getting a visitor quickly past the home page to a desired destination.

- Improved a specific activity on the Web site. That might be visits to a specific page, or registration of some kind, or just interaction with an application that educates the user.

- Improved a specific offline activity. Perhaps your migrating a portion of your customer service online to empower customers to self-identify solutions online without interaction with customer service or the sales group.

- Reduced visitor drop-off in a process. Perhaps you need to provide more information or reduce the number of questions asked or pages displayed.

I would argue that “increasing visits to a Web site” is not a self-sufficient result of a redesign project. It is dependent on other factors, such as improvement of natural search rankings or other marketing efforts such as paid search, online media, email marketing, offline marketing, etc.

So take the time early on to define your success metrics, then plan a redesign effort around achieving these results.

What do you think? Please post your comments. Thanks.
-Roland

Web Site Redesign: Define Your Goals

For any project to succeed, clear, attainable goals must be defined from the start. Why?

- To understand what is most important to your project owner and stakeholders.

- To ensure that the work can be focused correctly.

- To define the means to ultimately measure success.

- So at each major milestone, accomplishments can be checked to make sure they still support the overall project goals.

- To hold the project owner and stake holders accountable if they try to derail a project mid-way with unrelated goals or opinions.

What do you think? Please post your comments. Thanks.
-Roland

Web Site Redesign: Classic Client Mistakes

An enthusiastic client can be a great thing. Especially when he/she is committed to executing a project and willing to invest the necessary time to accomplish it.

From my experience here are classic signals a Web site redesign is being set up to fail:

- Client is reacting because a senior executive made a comment the site needs to be redesigned. Chances are, high-level decision makers are so disconnected from the day-to-day activities or decisions that were made, that their opinion is not well informed.

- Client sets unrealistic and arbitrary deadline as to when the revision needs to be live. Picking a date that feels appropriate and is not based on sound rationale just creates chaos. A project plan should be drafted first to understand and assess the work to be done. Then variables (scope, money) can be adjusted to shorten the duration if necessary.

- Client doesn’t allow time to assess direct competitors are doing.

- Client doesn’t permit interviews of key stakeholders.

- Client doesn’t act as the key decision maker among stakeholders. A single point of contact (SPOC) is critical to take all the internal input, distill what is critical and DECIDE on what will and wont be accepted.

- Client thinks a redesign can be done without benefit of any basic research to understand the consumer needs (not what Marketing wants). BIG RED FLAG. You need to understand how the site is currently being used, who is visiting and are their needs being met.

- Client wants to skip Information Architecture planning and jump straight to creative design. Defining the primary user types and carefully planning how to fulfill their needs from the home page is a critical step.

- Client doesn’t want to plan for Search Engine Optimization as part of the redesign, and would rather retrofit as a phase two. SEO tactics have changed considerably in recent years. It is critical to apply current best practices into design, copywriting and programming in order to improve organic search results.

- Client continuously causes scope creep and fails to respect freeze points in the project plan. Changing scope and making modifications along the way only creates chaos. It disrupts a careful plan, causes more work and money to be spent and probably extends the launch schedule.

- Client refuses to allow Brand essence or a “voice” to be defined. This is critical , especially for copywriting, in order to make sure the entire site has a unified message, and so post launch content enhancements tend to match what has been established already.

- The client fails to engage the in-house IT/development team early on and make sure they have the necessary experience to execute, as well as the resources to accomplish the project.

I might have missed a few. Do you have a client horror story to share? Please post your comments.
Thanks.
-Roland

Bad Customer Experience? Complain about it!

Recently we took our kids to the restaurant Mars 2112 in NYC as a birthday treat. They were excited and looking forward to it for weeks.

We waited patiently for an hour to get in. We took their 5 minute “rocket ride” to Mars. Inside, the atmosphere is awesome. It looks like a futuristic restaurant inside a cavern (in the 2 story basement of a Manhattan office building). The kids loved it. The waitress who took our order and the roaming “aliens” were friendly. Everything was fine until a server with a nasty attitude dumped our food on the table. While the kids didn’t notice, the 3 adults at the table wouldn’t stop talking about it.

To leave the restaurant, customers get to “beam” back to the lobby using their teleporter. You enter a room, door closes behind you, lights flash as you are demolecularized and reassembled back on earth. Then another door opens and you exit to the lobby/gift shop. Unfortunately they choose to leave both doors open and the kids could see straight through from the restaurant to the gift shop, which ruined the illusion. The kids would not stop talking about how disappointed they were.

This week I ordered a dehumidifier from Lowes.com. During the online order process, the Web site clearly promised me that I could pickup the product in store 2 hours after I received a confirmation email. The email arrived at 2:14pm. I arrived at the store at 5:45pm. They had 3.5 hours to pull the product and queue it for pickup. The store was not busy. The customer service rep immediately found my order in the computer. Yet it took 40 minutes for them to find the product and get me out of the store. There were a dozen employees in blue smocks standing around talking to each other. While the employees were friendly, my time was wasted.

What to do? COMPLAIN!

I filed complaints. I wasn’t nasty or angry, but I clearly explain that the company failed on a customer service promise.

Chances are you wont get anything more than an brief apology, but it is critical to bring things like this to the company’s attention. Otherwise, the company will blissfully go about business as usual.

How to complain:
1. Set your tone. Don’t be nasty or angry.

2. Do not nitpick about stupid things. Instead position them as suggestions for improvement.

3. Clearly explain the circumstances and why you think your expectations were not met.

4. Provide details (i.e. store info, product info, day/time, names of people you talked to, etc.) so the company can easily figure out what went wrong and who was responsible.

5. Post product reviews online to share your experience. But be fair and wait until after the company has had a reasonable chance to respond to your complaint. Then be sure to explain in your review what went wrong and how the company may or may not have tried to correct the problem for you.

Be sure to imagine yourself in their shoes. If you got an angry complaint with no details, how seriously would you take it? But if you get constructive criticism with details, then you can take meaningful action.

I hope this helps. Go get ‘em!
-Roland

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