Proving the value of user experience design to organizations and clients

  • Article

One of the recurring themes I see time and time again is digital design & user experience, its growing importance in the market place and how our customers are demanding more from their web channels.

Sometimes I’m asked by customers to help justify why digital design is worth investing in, it has been raised by both partners and customers in the last week, serendipitously I came across this article on Proving the value of user experience design to organizations and clients

  • The article starts by reminding us that companies exist to make money, which is always a good place to start,
    • why does a company have a website?
    • What does it exist to do? Increase sales, reduce call centre traffic? If we don’t know it is very hard to prioritise what to be done.
  • It goes on to mention The $300 Million Button, where a simple design change resulted in an enormous revenue lift, which brings to mind the choice of blue for Bing being worth $80 Million (Designing Bing: Heart and Science ) or Expedia on how one extra data field can cost $12m
  • It also discussed the 3 A’s
    • Acquisition. Getting new users to come to your site/service,
    • Activation. Getting those new users to make their first conversion,
    • Activity. Getting those first-time visitors to come back for more
  • It ends with a link on How to Measure the Effectiveness of Web Designs and a video on someone talking about the ROI of user experience

In short whilst SharePoint 2010 provides a wonderful unified platform powering some of the best internet sites out there, the success often comes from the execution and being clear on what is trying to be achieved and focusing on that aim in everything we do.

have a great weekend!