Mission Impossible: Usability business strategy
14 August 2007 For some time I’ve been working with some web-designing friends of mine at Wired Internet Group, based here in Christchurch, New Zealand. We’ve been trying to develop a range of services around usability assessment.This is challenging, because in the local commercial environment, very few clients see any value in spending money on usability. A few of the big B-to-C transactional players have gone into this, but hardly anyone else sees usability as either important or (I suspect) affordable.
This has presented me with a few challenges in trying to build a career in usability.
"You can do the maths: paucity of clients equals paucity of income, right?"Right. So I’ve tried a few tricks.
First we ‘productised’ the website expert review, by building in some user interviews. Not a full round of testing, but a guided walk-through with three users, combined with a comprehensive review. This was good, but still entailed a bit of work, and limited uptake. We needed - I was told - a ‘leg opener’ to get clients on board.
So next we tried a rather clever trick involving analysing customer enquiries to some major brand sites. The idea was that this would reveal ‘stress points’ where users were asking for information that was on the site, but obscured by usability issues. Brilliant! Limited uptake: too clever for our own good.
Finally (and this does sound like the three bears, I know) we got it ‘just right’.
This offering was a short review of homepage usability issues, based on a standard assessment form that could be completed in about 20 minutes and gave a percentile score across twenty variables organised under four main criteria. The report was organised around the four criteria, illustrated with screenshots and focusing severely on a pithy summary and accompanying recommendations: in other words - saleable, action-oriented and brief.
So we had a winner – but how to sell it? Luckily the answer came from my web design service partners. A session spent uploading liquid inspiration with a PR consultant mate of theirs came up trumps.
The plan was that we identify a bunch of companies and undertake a comparative review of their homepages, using the form I had developed for the homepage review. We would rank them competitively and publicise the results in the media. Then we tell the companies that they could buy a full report detailing issues with their homepages, and recommendations for fixing them.
"Bingo – a successful usability service product!"After this we’ll try to up-sell them to the full site assessment or the enquiry analysis products we have previously devised. Hopefully.
So far, we’ve managed to get it to the media. You can see me do this on ASB Business, as broadcast on TV1, Monday 6 August. Just follow this link… http://tvnz.co.nz/view/page/411415/1273251 Look for the story headlined ‘Raising corporate awareness’.
Now we’ll start calling the businesses we’ve surveyed and try to get them interested in what they don’t know about how well their homepages are working for them. You can find out more from the Wired Internet group at www.wired.co.nz
We’ve also done a parallel exercise on the NZX Top 50, concentrating on investor relations. We’re launching this via the Stock Exchange itself, getting them to promote it as a free offering to their members – followed by a sales blitz. I’ll keep you posted.
Labels: business plan, information design, product, usability
posted by Bruce on Tuesday, August 14, 2007,
