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Four design tips to ensure ROI on
your web site redesign
When designers look to tackle
a new Web site or refurbish an
old one, they are doomed to
lackluster results and
underperformance – that is,
unless they follow these four
guidelines. Forrester
Research, in a recent report
examining the best Web design
firms, finds that in order to
improve ROI, companies must:
Focus on understanding
users.
The key here, Forrester says,
is creating and implementing
customer personas to guide the
design effort. The use of
personas helps companies focus
on serving the most important
goals of their most important
customers. The result is
shorter design cycles and
improved site quality,
Forrester says.
Adopt a scenario-based
methodology.
Forrester says that customers
and prospects arrive at sites
with goals in mind. By
crafting clear paths to
content and function that
satisfy those goals, companies
quickly see their ROI
increase. The key here,
Forrester says, is to design,
build and test sites for the
actual user scenarios they
must support. How long does it
take to get from making a
buying decision to finishing
up an actual purchase? The
best sites make key tasks easy
and intuitive to accomplish.
Cultivate design smarts
across the whole team.
Forrester says that everyone
involved in the design process
– from HTML coders all the way
up the CEO or executive
champion – should know the
site’s target users and their
most critical goals. Even
lower-level team members,
including stakeholders from IT
and marketing, should be able
to draw lines from business
goals (like generating qualified
leads) to corresponding user
goals (like configuring the
right product and then finding
a dealer who sells it),
Forrester says. Project
managers must be able to
defend content, navigation and
presentation decisions based
on how well they support user
scenarios.
Exercise project
discipline.
When looking to design or
retool an existing site, focus
on the flaws with the highest
impact on the customer, and
then test and optimise the
fixes, Forrester says. Make
sure any change you make is
focused on your customers, and
continuously revisit those
changes to ensure they support
the site’s overall goals. |
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