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return on investment
written by PAUL BOAG
This book accompanies season one of the Boagworld Show
2
This book is dedicated to Matthew Curry
for teaching me that making money from
websites does not make you evil.
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Building
websites for
return on
investment
How to ensure your website generates a
return on investment
Written by Paul Boag
Edited by Relly Annett-Baker
Preface
Why do you have a website?
It is such a straightforward question that it seems almost
absurd to ask but you might be amazed how many
website owners cant answer it at all. Even when they do
have a response it is often vague and unfocussed.
Common answers include:
Our competition have one.
We need an online presence.
Doesnt everybody have a website these days?
The reality is that few of us question what we gain from
having a website. This shortsighted view that we have a
website because, well, we have to portrays the website
as an expense that has to be paid and yet provides no
easily articulated benefits. In many ways it feels like an
arbitrary tax. You know that the tax must be paid because
it pays for services and whatnot, however, because it is
hard to articulate what exactly the benefit is to you, you
can end up resenting paying the tax.
When an organisation perceives its website as a costly
burden that provides no tangible benefit, their site is
never going to receive the investment it requires. This not
only puts budgets for further investment in jeopardy, it
also inevitably leads to management questioning the
need to have a web team working on the site. For
instance, perhaps your role?
If you are keen to see ongoing investment in your
website, not to mention job security for yourself, the time
has come to ask: What return on investment (ROI) does
your site offer?
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Does your website save your organisation money?
Does it generate income through ecommerce? Does it
provide leads for your sales team to follow up? In short,
does it create a tangible, trackable benefit that can be
presented to management as evidence that your site is
worth investing in? Ultimately, your senior management
want to understand what they get back from investing
money and energy into their online presence. It is down
to you to explain what those returns are for the business.
This book will help you do just that. We begin by
establishing the business objectives for your site. We
refine these objectives into specific, measurable goals.
We then look at improving your site in order to meet
those goals through a cycle of development, testing and
tracking. By the end of this book you will have a clear
idea of how to ensure your website provides tangible
returns for your business and how best to present those
to other people in the business so they understand how
valuable your site, and you, really are.
5
Content
CHAPTER ONE (7)
Using business objectives to inform decisions
CHAPTER TWO (23)
Measuring your successes and failures
CHAPTER THREE (37)
Becoming user focused
CHAPTER FOUR (67)
Creating your calls to action
CHAPTER FIVE (95)
A cycle of refinement
CHAPTER SIX (123)
Driving traffic
6
I have a confession to make: I am addicted to buying
gadgets. If it is shiny and new, and especially if it has an
Apple logo, I want it. Rarely do I question my desire, I just
find myself buying it. Even when I do ask myself why I
should need this shiny and new thing, I convince myself
with a few weak justifications like This will be what finally
boosts my productivity to 110% or I have to keep up
with technology for work, dont I? before handing over
my credit card.
Perhaps you judge me for my unchecked spending,or
how easily I am swayed by the shiny, shiny gadgetry?
However, just stop a moment and ask yourself: do you
carefully consider every expenditure on your site or are
you sometimes tempted by the idea of a shiny, new
design to fix all your problems? If so, you are not alone.
It is not enough to simply want a new feature or
design. You need to ask whether it provides a benefit to
the business. There is one question that, if you ask it over
and over, will become a mantra for developing your site
for greater returns.
Does this help my organisation fulfil our business
objectives for the site?
Chapter 1
Use business
objectives to
inform decisions
1. Why care about business objectives?
2. How to identify business objectives
3. Macro and micro objectives
4. Be specific
5. Avoid unrealistic objectives
6. Avoiding the blame game
7. Next Actions
Why care about business objectives?
In our haste to get a shiny, new website it is easy to
overlook business objectives. They are often considered a
nice to have, an optional part of the planning process, or
perhaps a bonus presuming time and budget allow us to
think about such things. However, ignoring business
objectives is a false economy. For a start, they are an
invaluable tool for making decisions.
Business objectives help decision making
Business objectives act as a plumb line which a project
can be measured against, for an unbiased evaluation.
While working on any web project there are countless
decisions to be made such as:
Functionality
User testing
Accessibility
Maintainability
Copy
and many more.
Business objectives allow us to make informed
decisions based on what return these individual aspects,
and expenses, will bring.
For example, if one of your business objectives is
Reduce cart abandonment at checkout, you can be sure
that investing in usability testing will be a valuable way to
find the cause.
9 Use business objectives to inform decisions
Business
objectives act
as a plumb
line which a
project can
be measured
against, for
an unbiased
evaluation.
Equally, we know that forcing users to register, an idea
often suggested by over enthusiastic marketing
departments, is a bad idea because users hate the
process and it will only increase cart abandonment.
Investment in the user experience design and copy will
pay rich dividends here.
Business objectives justify investment
Business objectives help us judge the quality of an idea
and justify the expense of implementation. This is
particularly important when dealing with senior
management. They can be used both to prove further
investment is justified and to defend money already spent
on the site.
However, decision making is not the only benefit.
Business objectives are also a communication tool.
Business objectives help senior management decide
whether to invest further in a website.
10
Use business objectives to inform decisions
Business objectives aid communication
Many web projects fail because of a lack of
communication between the different parties involved.
I've witnessed multiple projects where the developers
expectations were radically different from that of
management. Often these differences are not discovered
until the end of the project and this inevitably leads to
conflict. Having clearly defined business objectives helps
to ensure all parties are working towards the same
outcome.
I'm not claiming that this is the solution to all
communication problems, as different parties will
interpret business objectives in different ways. However,
working towards a common aim is a starting point for
improved communication.
Now the benefits of business objectives are clear, the
next question is: How can I identify what my business
objectives should be?
How to identify business objectives
In many cases, business objectives are pretty obvious. If
we run an ecommerce site together, increased sales is an
obvious objective. If we run a web design company, the
primary objective is probably lead generation.
However, on some sites the objectives are not so clear.
For example, what is the objective of a museum website?
What about a news website?
11 Use business objectives to inform decisions
Having clearly
defined
business
objectives
helps to
ensure all
parties are
working
towards the
same
outcome.
Every site has business objectives
The truth is that all websites have business objectives. It is
just that some are not as immediately obvious as our
ecommerce site or web design company.
Take our museum website. The primary purpose of this
website is probably to encourage more people to visit the
museum but, like most websites, I suspect our museum
has more than a single objective. The museum might
want people to sign up to their newsletter or they may
provide resources that research students will find useful to
encourage them to join the museum staff. Just because it
is not immediately obvious how you track these
objectives does not make them any less important in
defining where resources should be spent. In Chapter 2,
(Measuring your success) we will explore how to track
these less tangible goals.
Nebulous business objectives such as customer
satisfaction or improved perception of your brand, are
just as important as the measurable ones such as
purchases, signups or lead generation.
However, its not just the type of business objectives
that matters. It is also how you decide on them.
Work collaboratively to set objectives
At this point we might be feeling smug because we can
list our business objectives. It is something that we have
put a lot of thought into and so we feel ahead of the
curve.
However, could all of our colleagues who have a
vested interest in the website (our stakeholders) also
repeat the business objectives? Do they actually know
what they are? Even more importantly were they involved
in creating them?
12
Use business objectives to inform decisions
13 Use business objectives to inform decisions
At rst glance you may wonder what business objectives a charity like Buttery
Conservation could have beyond raising donations. However, they realised that the web
could be utilised to mobilise thousands of people to help track buttery populations
across the UK. This led to a site focused exclusively on this objective.
Business objectives cannot be created in isolation. It
must be a collaborative process with everybody agreeing
on the final outcome.
A few paragraphs ago, I mentioned how business
objectives can be used to assess ideas proposed by
various people internally within the organisation. Over at
our ecommerce business, our marketing department were
proposing that users were forced to register before
purchasing so they could get the skinny on our
customers. I suggested that if one of the business
objectives was to increase orders, you could argue that
this idea would be go against that objective as it
increased instances of cart abandonment. Where this falls
down is when the marketing department are not involved
in agreeing the business objectives. If that is the case they
are not going to accept them as a legitimate reason for
rejecting their idea.
That is why it is important to consult widely about
what your business objectives should be.
How you manage this process is entirely up to you.
However, I would give one piece of advice: Do not allow
your list of business objectives to grow too long and
always prioritise.
By keeping the list short you reduce the possibility of
different objectives clashing with one another. Also, by
prioritising the list, you ensure that when a clash does
happen the most important objective is obvious. It is also
important to remember that different objectives can
apply to different parts of the site. This is when you need
to start thinking in terms of macro and micro objectives.
14
Use business objectives to inform decisions
For business
objectives to
be most
effective they
need to be as
specific as
possible.
Macro and micro objectives
Depending on the size of your site and organisation it
may be necessary to think of your site as a collection of
smaller sites all with their own business objectives.
Take a University website. These sites are traditionally
extremely large and consist of many different sub-sites
trying to accommodate diverse audiences. In such a
situation, it is very difficult to expect the postgraduate
Physics departmental research sub-site to share the same
business objectives as undergraduate student
recruitment.
Website such as the University of Northampton have
such a broad audience that it requires both macro and
micro objectives.
In such a situation, I recommend having two levels of
objectives.
The macro objectives are those that apply across the
whole site. These define the priorities for top level pages
and especially the homepage. This goes someway to
defusing homepage and navigational disputes.
15 Use business objectives to inform decisions
The micro objectives are those that apply within an
individual sub-site. So where as the macro objectives may
place undergraduate student recruitment before
enhancing the Universitys research status, this would not
hold true for the research sub-site. In this case, they
would have their own specific micro objectives, for
example, they might want more subscriptions to the
research departments newsletter.
Notice that I mention these micro objectives should be
specific. That does not mean your macro objectives can
afford to be vague. All objectives should be as specific as
possible.
Be specific
One problem that occurs when writing business
objectives is that they often become vague, especially
when produced as part of a collaborative process. For
business objectives to be most effective they need to be
as specific as possible.
Take our news website I mentioned earlier. I suggested
our goal might be to increase advertising revenue.
However, this could be much more specific by identifying
how the revenue could be increased.
Instead of the vague objective of increasing
revenue, why not have two goals?:
By building community
This begins by establishing the right tone of voice.
The right tone of voice
If your website was a person, who would it be? Maybe it
is a business titan like Alan Sugar or a celebrity like
Johnny Depp.
56
Becoming user focused
We do not
building
relationships
with
websites or
corporations.
We build
relationships
with people.
The point is that your website should have a character.
Preferably one that is reflective of your culture and able
to build a relationship with your users.
Your sites character dictates how you write, what
images you chose and how you interact with users.
It will dictate everything from the customer emails you
send to the labels on buttons. Everything should have a
touch of your particular character.
The emails of print company moo.com are full of
character in the form of little moo, a fictional robot
that deals with your order.
57 Becoming user focused
However, establishing your character is not as easy as
it would first appear. On one hand your character has to
be representative of your organisations culture. If it is not
then the character feels false and is difficult to maintain.
On the other hand it needs to be a character that can
effectively communicate with your audience. A character
your audience will like and respect.
Unfortunately, many organisations have a culture that
is not particularly compatible with their audience.
However, if you want to build a community of passionate
users your culture will need to adapt.
That doesnt mean your sites character has to be the
same as your users. It just means your character has to be
one that your users like and respect.
The innocent smoothies company do a great job at
portraying a character that is fun, approachable and
socially responsible. They manage to engage the young
festival goer who attends the music events they sponsor
and a more elderly audience who knit woolly hats for their
drinks to raise money for charity.
Innocent smoothies engage a wide audience through its
socially responsible and yet fun character.
58
Becoming user focused
Having a single character doesnt mean you cannot
appeal to multiple audiences. It just means that your
website seems more human.
Learning to be a human
One of the biggest elements of being human is to be
genuine. One of the best ways to demonstrate that online
is by admitting when you make mistakes.
I am constantly frustrated by how many companies put
up this infallible facade. Its like the entire place is run by
machines that never make mistakes.
They are not fooling anyone. We all know that
companies are not run by perfect robots but by fallible
humans. We can except failings but we cannot tolerate
people refusing to take responsibility.
What is particularly interesting to me is that the
occasions when you mess up can also be the best
opportunities for turning the most harden cynic into a fan.
Photo sharing site avoided a major community backlash my
apologising for mistakes that it made.
More than once I have heard users tell tales on twitter,
facebook or their blog of situations where a company
online had screwed up but then bent over backwards to
make things right. These users have been so impressed
by the customer service they have received it has led
them to post about it and telling others how great the
company is.
59 Becoming user focused
Sometimes it doesnt even need to cost the company
anything. A sorry is often sufficient. In the early days of
Flickr they were plagued with outages which left paying
customers unable to upload or access their photography.
As you can imagine, they were far from happy.
However, the potential backlash was largely defused
by a single blog post entitled Sometimes we suck in
which Flickr admittedly responsibility, apologised and
explained what they were doing to rectify the situation.
For many users this was the point when they became
dedicated fans of the site.
Of course, showing the humanity of your organisation
online is a lot more than saying sorry. Its about showing
the full breath of human emotion from a sense of fun to
passion and enthusiasm.
Often the easiest way of showing a human side is to
allow people within your organisation to speak with their
own voice directly to the customer. It is easy to get angry
with Microsoft. However, it is much harder to criticise a
programmer when you understand the context of his job.
Microsoft allow you to see behind the corporate facade
and meet its employees on its blog Channel 9.
60
Becoming user focused
Another crucial part of being more human is to start
having conversations with your users rather than just
broadcasting at them like a TV or radio channel.
Speak with users, not at them
Traditionally marketing departments have dealt with
broadcast mediums such as billboard advertising or TV
commercials. However, the web changes all of that. It
allows a two way dialogue and that is something many
marketeers have struggled to grasp and adopt.
Since the launch of the world wide web the vast
majority of websites have focused on broadcasting
information to consumers. However, more recently we
have seen a shift that have allowed users to talk back
through tools such as Twitter and Facebook.
The CEO of sales retailer Zappos uses twitter as a way
to really engage with his customers.
This is a good thing because people like to have their
voices heard. As a website owner if you take on board
users comments and talking directly to them, you will see
incredible results. If you listen and act based on user
feedback those users will begin to feel like the website is
61 Becoming user focused
as much theirs as it is yours. Once they have made that
mental leap they will be as keen as you to see the site
succeed. This is the point where they move from being
passive consumers to active evangelists.
Constantly look for ways to give your users a voice.
Whether it is through commenting on your corporate
blog, a forum or by allowing them to submit user
generated content, you need to make users feel as
engaged as possible.
Although this kind of two way communication is good,
an even better option is to move to a community based
model.
Building a community
Building online communities has enormous benefits to
your business if done right. Communities bring with them
a sense of belonging that most people deeply desire on a
sub conscious level. It creates a loyalty that will keep
users coming back again and again.
Communities can also be mobilised to have a
significant impact and act as the most effective marketing
tool you will ever have.
Communities also work as a wonderful support
mechanism for new users, significantly reducing the
customer support burden for you.
Building a community is not particularly easy and not
something I can cover here. It takes time, commitment
and a genuine interest in community members. That said
if done right, it will transform your business.
Building community, engaging users and establishing
the right relationship will have a profound impact on the
happiness and enthusiasm of your users. However, there
is one last detail that will complete the picture - delightful
design.
62
Becoming user focused
If done right
having a
community
associated
with your
website will
transform
your
business.
Delightful design
In the early days of the web people used to surf for
fun. This rarely happens anymore. With the exception of
Youtube and a few others, most websites exist to serve
up information to users or allow them to complete tasks.
The web has become a utility and not a pleasure.
This provides a unique opportunity to stand out from
the crowd. If you are looking for a way to make your site
more memorable and encourage users back then make
your users smile and try to delight them.
Its possible to add some fun to any website no matter
how dull and uninspiring the subject matter. Take the
HTML email delivery service Mailchimp.
Sending out bulk email newsletters is not the most
exciting of activities. They are boring to create and
involve the user completing a number of relatively
complex steps.
63 Becoming user focused
Mailchimp adds
elements of fun to
their website that
makes a dull job
delightful.
Mailchimp have set themselves apart from the
competition by adding humour to the interface including
funny one liners delivered by the chimp and small design
details many might not even notice.
You may wonder what the point is if hardly anybody
notices. Where is the return on investment in this? The
return is two fold. First, that moment of delight for those
who do notice sets you immediately apart from the
competition by humanising your site and ensuring it is
memorable. Second, they tell their friends about this
hidden easter egg who in turn tell their friends. I have
heard Mailchimp mentioned time and time again because
of these added delights, just as I am now mentioning
them to you. When next you need to send out an email
newsletter, who are you going to think of?
Of course, adding humour like this is not appropriate
to every site. However it is always possible to add
something. Some hidden gem that makes somebody
smile or have a wow moment. These are the details that
set aside the truly great sites.
Best of all these kinds of details do not require huge
amounts of work. Many are a matter of minutes to
implement. The trick is not implementing them, but
realising their importance in the first place.
The mail chimps little comments are enough to make the
most serious of us smile.
64
Becoming user focused
Next Actions
This chapter is the longest in the book for good reason.
Putting users first offers the greatest return for your
business over the long term but doing so consistently can
be challenging. I recommend you begin this journey by
taking the following steps:
Action 1: Arrange monthly user testing
Following Steve Krugs advice about running monthly
user testing means that users are constantly at the
heart of your thinking. By testing with real users every
month and looking for ways to improve your
experience you can never forget to put them first.
Action 2: Start truly engaging your users
Now is the time to break away from talking at your
users so that you can begin engaging with them. Put
opportunities in place where users can feedback to you
whether through comments, twitter or facebook. The
more you listen to users the more engaged they will be.
Action 3: Look for ways to delight
Finally seek out opportunities to differentiate yourself
from the competition and encourage users to mention
you to friends. Every website can have delighters that
grab users attention and just make them smile.
The positive results of delighting your users cannot be
overstated. However, it is important to remember that it
is not the end goal. We do so to encourage more users to
complete your calls to action, so increasing your ROI. The
problem is that if your calls to action are not right it wont
matter how happy your users are. It is getting these calls
to action right that is the topic of the next chapter.
66
I have talked about Apple several times already in this
book. It seems to be a common theme among web
designers. We love to praise Apple. However, my first
experience of an Apple store was not a pleasant one.
After months of listening to Apple fans tell me how
great Apple products were I decided to buy my first
Macbook. All I had to do was walk into the store and buy
it. Unfortunately, this was harder than you would expect.
The problem was that the store didnt have the normal
visual queues I expected to find. There were no boxed
products to pick up and take to the cashier. Worse still,
there was no cashier! Where was I meant to pay?
After standing there looking like a fool for a few
minutes I wandered over to the genius bar. No, that
didnt look right. People were getting tech support, not
purchasing. What was I meant to do?
Eventually I asked an assistant and he dealt with my
purchase. However, I felt foolish asking and left the store
feeling flustered.
What I needed was some indication of what I was
meant to do. I needed a call to action.
Chapter 4
Creating your
calls to action
1. Why calls to action matter
2. Deciding on your calls to action
3. Motivating users to take action
4. Designing your calls to action
5. Following through on actions
6. Next Actions
Why calls to action matter
A call to action is the point at which you ask users to
respond in someway. That could be something as major
as placing an order or as trivial as clicking a link to
proceed deeper into the site.
Everybody presumes that calls to action are primarily a
business tool. This is true. However, as my story about the
Apple store demonstrates they are not only for the site
owners benefit. They also help the user too.
Where do you place your order in an apple store? Where
is the call to action?
69 Creating your calls to action
Why users need calls to action
You might think me foolish for being so confused by an
Apple store. However, I can guarantee that at some point
you have been to a website where you felt unsure what to
do next. This is often because the site owner has failed to
give you any guidance as to your options to progress.
They have failed to give you a call to action.
The web is meant to be a massive interconnected
network of pages. However, in reality a large number of
those pages are dead ends. This gives users only two
option, leave or go backwards. As humans we hate going
back over old ground. Therefore, the consequence of no
calls to action is obvious. Users leave feeling unsatisfied.
Every link on wikipedia is a micro call to action drawing
the user deeper into the site.
A good call to action makes your site sticky. It is draws
the user onwards towards a final goal. However, it doesnt
always need to be flashy or crude. In my opinion, one of
the sites with the most effective call to action is
Wikipedia. Every link is a call to action that draws you
70
Creating your calls to actionn
ever deeper into the site. Once you start reading
Wikipedia entries it is hard to stop.
Calls to action are not just about avoiding dead ends
that leave users feeling unsatisfied. It is also about
helping users complete a key task. Take the browser
manufacturer Mozilla. If users visit the website
getfirefox.com you can pretty much guarantee they want
to download a copy of Firefox.
Therefore, it is hardly surprising that the website
sports possibly the largest call to action known to man!
Mozilla know that the majority of their users only want
to do one thing, download Firefox. They make that as easy
as possible with an obvious call to action.
However to pretend that calls to action are only for
the benefit of users would be simplistic. They are also
beneficial to website owners.
71
The business benets of calls to action
Calls to action offer many benefits to business too. They
encourage users to become active participants with your
brand, product or site. They also allow you to track
whether the investment in your site is paying off.
Moving from passive to active
As any sales person will tell you, in order to bring a
potential customer to the point of sale you need to move
them from a passive state (a passive interest in your
product or service) to an active state in which they will
take some action to learn more about what you have to
offer. In other words it is not enough for them to agree to
listen to your sales pitch. They have to actively want to
hear.
A call to action attempts to move the user from this
passive state to a more active role. Once a user has taken
some kind of active step (even if it is only to sign up for a
newsletter) they have mentally transitioned to taking an
active interest in your offering.
In short, calls to action are an integral part of the sales
process. However, they are also an important aspect in
justifying investment.
Tracking return on investment
In chapter 2 (measuring your successes and failures) I
talked about success criteria. The idea of having
measurable ways by which you judge the success (or
otherwise) of your website.
It is these success criteria that validate the decision to
invest in your site and provide justification for future
investment.
Your calls to action are the steps that the user must
complete in order to meet the success criteria. Without
72
Encourage
users to take
a small action
before asking
them to make
a bigger
commitment.
the user taking these steps you would have no way to
track the effectiveness of your site.
Calls to action can be anything from completing an
enquiries form to printing a coupon. However, whatever
they are, it must be something that can be trackable so
success can be measured.
The restaurant chain Prezzo has a money off voucher as
their call to action.
Although we now know that calls to action should be
trackable, we havent discussed how to pick your call to
action. This is obviously a key part of getting users to take
action.
73
Deciding on your calls to action
In this chapter I have given a couple of examples of calls
to action. However, those were just the tip of the iceberg.
A call to action is anything that asks the user to move
from being a passive consumer to an active participant.
This could include something as everyday as the
common hypertext link. However, it could also include:
Purchase buttons
Signup forms
Download links
Checkout processes
RSS subscription
Vouchers
Telephone numbers
Email links
Contact us forms.
The list could go on.
Notice that not all of those lead to a sale. There is
often a perception that calls to action only apply to
ecommerce sites. This is not true. Calls to action can be
transactional. However, they could just as easily be a user
requesting information or signing up to a web app.
The calls to action on Boagworld are to encourage users
to subscribe to the podcast.
74
Also remember what I said earlier, every page should
have a call to action. Users should never be left at a dead
end not knowing what to do next. That said, not all calls
to action are equal.
Page level calls to action
In Chapter 1 (Use business objectives to inform decisions)
I wrote about micro and macro business objectives. The
same approach can be used for calls to action. When
writing a list of your sites calls to action you need to think
about those for individual pages as well as site wide.
These micro calls to action aim to do two things.
One, to keep the user on the site and, two, to move them
one step closer to your site-wide calls to action.
Boagworld also have page specific calls to action designed
to keep users engaged with the site.
One method to ensure every page has a call to action
is to use a content template, known as page tables in
content strategy. A page table asks the writer of a page
to answer a series of questions. These include:
75
More engaging
Is easier to test
However, it is probably the financial argument that is
the most compelling.
98 A cycle of renement
More nancially prudent
Redesigning a website is not cheap especially if the site is
big and you want to do the job well.
With big changes comes lots of uncertainty and that
means testing. Lots of testing. You need to test the
design, the content, the technology. It all needs to
checked and double checked.
Then you need to do the design itself. When the
design is going to be unchanged for 3 years everybody
wants to get it perfect. That means more testing,
discussion and iterations.
Once the design is approved it has to implemented,
which involves updating every page on the site. This is no
mean feat even presuming that you are not changing the
content, information architecture and technology too. If
you are, then you can add a couple of zeros to the price.
This is a massive capital expenditure to find every few
years and is rarely factored in to long term business plans.
It is money that has to be found from somewhere.
Compare that to the evolutionary approach. No big
redesign, no change in technology, no massive rewrite
and restructuring of content. Instead you simply have an
ongoing series of tweaks and changes. Best of all you are
not throwing away previous financial investments. Instead
you are building upon them in an attempt to improve the
site further.
In effect you replace that one off capital expenditure
every few years with an ongoing investment in your
website. If you are sensible you will probably end up
spending about the same, perhaps even less. However, it
is a lot easier to budget for and because it is building on
the past rather than replacing it, you will generate better
returns.
However, that isn't the only benefit of evolutionary
design. There is also the PR opportunity.
99 A cycle of renement
Building on
past versions
of the
website
rather than
reinventing the
wheel
increases
your return
on investment.
Creates more buzz
From a marketing perspective, evolution offers some
exciting opportunities. With periodic redesigns you only
get one opportunity on the day of its launch to tell the
world about your wonderful new website. However with
evolution things are different.
With an evolutionary approach you have regular
opportunities to promote new features, improved
usability and other aspects of your evolving website. This
helps to create a continual background buzz and leave
others with the impression that your website is a hive of
activity and innovation.
Google is able to generate significant interest in the
incremental changes it makes to its website, such as the
launch of Google instant.
Best of all this doesnt just attract new users in. It also
attracts existing customers back.
More engaging
I have already talked about the importance of repeat
users, and an evolving website is a great way to increase
their numbers.
If you are constantly telling your existing users about
new features and improvements to your site you achieve
three things:
100 A cycle of renement
Three: You leave users with the sense that they are
missing out on something and this encourages
them to return to the site.
In short, it gives you an opportunity to encourage past
users to return to the website. However, evolution also
helps existing repeat visitors.
Doesnt frighten users
The web is a complex place that is often hard to navigate.
Therefore when we find a way to get something done on
a website we stick to it. There maybe more efficient or
alternative ways to achieve the same thing but we stick
with what we know. We dont like to change.
Digg.com experienced a dramatic reduction in traffic
shortly after the launch of a radical redesign.
101 A cycle of renement
Unfortunately, when website owners redesign their
sites the user is suddenly confronted with enormous
change that undermines the ways we have been working.
Even if the redesign is more efficient we are so
overwhelmed by the sudden change that we hate it.
We have seen several high profile examples of this in
the past. When Facebook redesigned it caused a huge
backlash from their community. The same is true for a
recent redesign of social news website digg.com who
have seen a dramatic fall in traffic since its redesign.
Substantial redesigns risk alienating your existing users.
This is a dangerous area because you are alienating
your most passionate and valuable users.
Of course, with evolution you are still making changes
but they are on a much smaller scale and longer time
frame. It provides change for the user to adapt and
become comfortable.
You can also be more confident that evolutionary
changes will actually be an improvement.
102 A cycle of renement
Is easier to test
I have already talked about the cost of testing a site
redesign. However, no matter how thorough your user
testing you can never be entirely confident until it goes
live. Real users will always respond differently than those
in a usability lab and that is hard to account for. Also,
when redesigning you are changing so much. Its often
hard to tell what is working well and what is not.
However an evolutionary approach has two
advantages when it comes to testing. First, it can be
tested on a segment of your live audience. In other
words. you can present a change to only some of your
users and see how they respond before rolling it out to
all.
Second, because you are only testing a single feature
or tweak it is possible to be much more sure of what
works and what doesnt. When testing a whole redesign
there are just too many variables to account for. If the
user rejects the design it is hard to know exactly what it is
about the redesign they are rejecting.
Hopefully by now you are seeing the benefits of an
evolutionary approach. There are, however, certain
processes that need putting in place before an
evolutionary approach can be adopted.
Laying the right foundation
Hang on a minute I hear you cry are you saying you
never work on site redesigns at Headscape? No, I am
not saying that at all. In fact, it is still the norm for us to
work on complete site redesigns. However, whenever we
do, we encourage clients to think of it as the last.
In order to evolve a website over time you need to
have a firm foundation. Unfortunately this foundation is
often lacking.
103 A cycle of renement
If the user
rejects a
redesign it is
hard to know
exactly what
it is about
the design
they are
rejecting.
The problem is that the web is still relatively new. It
has been evolving at such a rapid pace that it has been
hard for any web designer to predict what building blocks
need to be in place for the future. Now though, things
are beginning to change. Best practice has emerged and
although there are still incredible innovations emerging it
is much easier to lay foundations that future development
can be built upon.
In fact I would argue there are only two factors that
need to be in place:
A flexible design
Let me explain what I mean.
Keep it separate
There was a time when the design, content and
functionality of a site were mixed together. This made it
hard to make changes to any one of the three without
having an impact on the others. Even something as
simple as changing a link colour could involve updating
every single page of your website.
Thankfully these problems are largely behind us and
most websites these days are written using modern
standards and content management systems.
However, things are not always as easy as they should
be. Sometimes web designers can be sloppy or things
have been implemented with speed in mind rather than
long term durability.
Sometimes content management systems do not help.
Although many websites have now been built with best
practice in mind their underlying content management
systems have evolved over years. As a result, they
continue to generate code that intertwines functionality,
design and content. This can prove problematic when you
wish to make a small change across an entire website.
104 A cycle of renement
However, the problem isnt entirely a technical one. If
you want to evolve your website then you also need to
ensure the design is flexible enough to accommodate
change.
Site wide changes can be expensive if the website is not
built correctly.
Ensure it is exible
If your website is to evolve, you will be constantly making
minor changes across the entire site. This will include
adding new content types and tweaking layout.
These kind of changes raise two issues. First, who
does them? Second, can the design accommodate them?
When I ask who does them, I am referring to whether
the website owner can (with a little training) make these
changes themselves or whether they have to return to the
web designer.
105 A cycle of renement
As you will read later in this chapter I do believe in a
close, ongoing working relationship between website
owner and designer. However, I also recognise that going
back to your web designer will become expensive. If you
have to pay for every tiny change it is going to stop you
experimenting and implementing incremental
improvements. I therefore believe that whatever design is
implemented by the web designer should be flexible
enough to accommodate changes by the website owner
at a later date.
My second question is can the design accommodate
changes? full stop. I come across many websites that
although beautiful are so hand crafted that change
involves substantial reworking. For a site that needs to
focus on ROI through constant refinement this can prove
damaging.
With this in mind I believe that websites focused on
ROI need to work within these two constraints. The
design is flexible enough to adapt overtime and the
website owner has at least some ability to make updates
himself.
How then is this possible? The approach that we are
increasingly taking at Headscape is modular design. By
that I mean we create an underlying grid system for the
entire website and then build a series of design modules
(elements such as navigation, news listings, and related
links) that can be dropped into this grid.
The clever part is that instead of just designing these
modules to work in a single location (e.g. The narrow
right hand column) they can also be used in any other
position and the design automatically updates to work in
that position.
For example a list of news stories might include an
image when displayed in the main content area because
there is ample space. However when placed in a narrow
column the images might disappear to work with the
available space.
106 A cycle of renement
107 A cycle of renement
Headscape used a
modular design on
the OU website to
give the client
maximum exibility.
This kind of adaptive design enables the website
owner to test out different positioning of elements
without the intervention of a designer and modules can
be recombined in new combinations for further templates
that need producing.
That is not to say all modules will work perfectly in
every combination. Certain combinations may draw the
users eye to the wrong part of the page or distract from
the primary call to action. That is why it is still good to
have an ongoing relationship with your web designer so
you can get their opinion on changes being made. This
brings me on to the next secret of successful websites; a
different kind of working relationship with your web
designers.
A different relationship
There is a problem in the way web designers and website
owners work together. It is a problem that leads to less
effective websites and website owners receiving less
value for money from their web design teams.
The problem lies in the constant cycle of redesign I
have already written about. In such a system the
relationship between web designer and website owner is
limited. The website owner decides what they want to
build and the web designer builds to that specification.
This all sounds perfectly logical however it means that
the website owner is missing out on one of the web
designers primary strengths; his knowledge of the web,
what others are doing and best practice.
Dont waste your web designers
For many years in my web design career I would receive
briefs from clients and simply respond saying exactly how
much it would cost to implement their ideas. Often I
108 A cycle of renement
Dont miss
out on your
web designers
primary
strengths;
his knowledge
of the web,
what others
are doing and
best practice.
disagreed with these ideas. In many cases I knew of a
better approach. I always wanted to know more about the
motivations behind the clients ideas and to work in
partnership with them to find the best solutions.
However, the relationship didnt enable that.
This kind of approach does not get the best returns from
your web designer.
These days I have a very different relationship with
most of my clients. I am more confident to challenge the
brief I am given and suggest alternative ways of solving
the clients problems. I also ensure there is always a
requirement gather phase where I get to understand the
business objectives and constraints.
This is a massive improvement for all involved. My
clients get the full value of my knowledge and skills
109 A cycle of renement
(rather than just a subset) and I am perceived as adding
value added services that differentiate me from many of
my competitors.
Even this is not the perfect solution. It falls down
because the invitation to tender still frames the scope of
the conversation. It is still the website owner who defines
what issues need addressing even if I now get to
influence how these problems are solved. I do not often
get to actually recommend what issues should be
addressed and define the priorities for future
development of the website.
There are some exceptions. I work with some
particularly savvy clients who understand if they include
me at the start of the process they get more value from
me and end up with a better website.
So what am I suggesting? What is the alternative?
By working collaboratively with their web design agency
Wiltshire Farm Foods have increased profits by 10,000%
over 8 years.
110 A cycle of renement
A better way
Instead of you creating a detailed brief covering
everything you want a web designer to build, why not get
the web designer to do it for you?
Beginning by commissioning a web design agency to
do a review of your website. Outline any problems you
perceive with the site and give the web designer some
guidance in terms of your business objectives. Dont
define what solutions you wants to these problems. Allow
the web designer to review the site and make
suggestions about how it could be improved to better
meet your business objectives.
The deliverable for this first micro project would be
a report outlining all of the things that the web design
agency suggest you do to improve your website.
Traditionally, employing a web designer has been a
huge risk. Because it cost so much to redesign a website
it is important you get the right agency. Failure to do so
can become costly. However with this new approach you
have the opportunity to get to know the web design
agency by using them on a very small self-contained
project (the site review). This provides you with the
opportunity to assess them and decide if you wish to
continue with them for the main build. If for any reason
you are unhappy there is nothing to stop you taking their
report to another web designer to implement.
Even after this initial report has been delivered, I
would still encourage you to use a micro project
approach. In other words, instead of implementing all of
the suggestions made by the web designer in his report,
split the work into a series of smaller projects.
Again, this allows you to limit the risk associated with
bigger projects and continue to build a relationship of
trust with your web design agency. If at any stage youre
unhappy with the work being produced there is nothing
111 A cycle of renement
Begin the
relationship
with a new
web designer
by asking
them to do a
site review.
This allows
you to
assess their
knowledge and
get their
perspective
on your site.
to stop you moving to a different web designer for the
next small project. These small projects are often referred
to as sprints.
The sprints
By now youve probably gathered Im not a fan of large
website redesign projects. They are expensive, risky, and
prone to slippage. They also fail to properly engage the
web designer in the process.
Instead, I believe that the most successful websites
come about because the website owner and web
designer work on small clearly defined projects. Each
project is completed in a short period of time (called a
sprint) that ranges between a week and month long.
What is a sprint?
To give you an idea of what a sprint might consist of, I
have provided a few examples below. Notice that each
sprint focuses on one key element and at no stage
involves redesigning large areas of the website, let alone
the whole thing! Some possible sprints include:
clicking a link,
pressing a button,
submitting a form,