AI 2018 Business Excellence Awards

4 Acquisition International - 2018 Business Excellence Awards 1 How to Ensure your Digital Project is not a Failure Dotlabel Customer satisfaction is vital to business growth and digital projects designed to increase it are high on the business agenda. It’s not surprising then that new digital projects are attracting higher monetary investments and increased planning and scoping timeframes, in the hope of delivering a product that can guarantee consumer engagement and set a company ahead of competition. Yet, 70% of projects do fail due to lack of user acceptance (1). Digital project failure can happen to any type of company, however large or small, anywhere in the world. Contributing factors usually include unclear objectives, poor communication between users, stakeholders and developers and lack of adaptability to changes. As a consequence, digital projects often end up falling short of serving the ever-evolving needs and expectations of their users. Still, businesses are continuing to initiate digital products or processes based on their own assumptions of their customers’ wants and end up wasting thousands of pounds in the process. User-centred design work allows for two-way communication between businesses and target audiences. Known as User Experience (UX), it places customers at the heart of a digital project; and helps businesses identify their requirements and expectations, map their online journeys and optimise the services they offer. Investing in user experience techniques should be the first step when businesses consider building an online product, as the cost of fixing an error after development is complete can cost 100 times that of fixing the error before completion (2). User Experience techniques It is estimated that by 2020 customer experience will overtake price and product as the key brand differentiator and with 88% of online consumers not returning to a site after a ‘bad experience’, (3) it is easy to see why marketers should make UX a priority. UX is more than just about the construction of a website, app or online portal; it goes beyond a business’s digital presence. The main principle is to really understand the needs of customers and stakeholders. This will help construct a picture of the user landscape in terms of how they interact with a business website; research and insight can also inform marketing activity beyond digital, helping enhance the entire brand. User experience works best when it’s bespoke, tailored to the specific product it’s being designed for. Research shows that spending 10% of the available budget on usability improves conversion rate by 83% (4). Expert UX insight is important to ensure that design, accessibility, structure, content and navigation of the product live up to relevant best practice and it won’t feel dated as soon as it’s launched. Carrying out stakeholder research across all levels of staff will help gain insight about the business goals for the product. It can identify the frustrations and workarounds that make an existing product difficult to use, as well as the desired functionalities of a potential product. It can also limit expensive change requests once the product has been developed and increase internal buy-in when the product is launched. With research indicating that it only takes five participants to find 85% of usability problems (5), user research through surveys, workshops and interviews is an invaluable tool to help pinpoint user satisfaction, expectations and frustrations related to use of a product. Thorough research would also involve analysing similar digital products developed by competitors, either direct (i.e. from the same industry) or indirect (i.e. from a different industry). Competitor benchmarking can highlight challenges but also identify different and innovative solutions that can be incorporated in a project. Research results can then be turned into actionable insight. Developers can use the data collected to create User Personas which are profiles of key end-users based on their attitudes, behaviours and expectations. Working alongside the stakeholders, developers will then determine a strategy aligned with the customers’ goals; they will create content specific to those customers, map their online tasks and define scenarios to ensure the user journeys are optimised for conversion and for the product to be tested against. Research, insights and content are all used to inform the development and creation of visual displays and examples of how the end product will look and work. Known as wireframes and By Matt Oxley, co-founder and Director of DotLabel www.dotlabel.co.uk Contact: Matt Oxley, Co-Founder and Director. Email: www.dotlabel.co.uk Dotlabel