Splendid. An ideas led design agency.

How to keep ahead of the game in an economic downturn

Monday 21 July 2008
posted by AJ
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Depending on who you listen to it looks like we might be in for some tough times ahead. Economic growth is slowing, property prices are falling, mortgage rates are rising and the darkening clouds of recession are gathering. If the American model is anything to go by this means consumers will soon be hanging up their shopping bags and tightening their belts and losing their appetite for spending wealth gains on consumption.

So what to do this year if you're an online retailer? Bring the sale season forward, drop prices and hope you can bag enough cash in the next quarters to see you through the lean months?

Whilst taking on a defensive stance is a common strategy in the high street, research suggests thinking smarter is what works in the online world.

Online enterprises are unique in that all customers visit businesses via a browser window which is for all intents and purposes identical across geographic and demographic user bases. This makes for a very level playing field in which participants are fundamentally bound by the same parameters. Within this small window competitors do not have the capacity to be bigger, brighter, louder, have more street frontage or be closer to home. They can only be better than their competitors.

In this environment it is clicks that count for users, and sites can be made or broken by how well they create a user experience online which matches or exceeds competitor offerings. These days web users are experienced and knowledgeable, they no longer have to put up with bad design and when confronted with it they will quickly vote with their cursor.

The basics of the user experience comes down to interaction design; i.e. how you can create a complex technical system that users (customers) find easy, engaging, and hopefully compelling to interact with. Visual design is important, but making something pretty counts for nothing if it doesn't result in sticky traffic.

You already know the companies that have mastered interaction design because they dominate the top of the online retail tables. The Amazons, Expedias, EasyJets, Tescos and Play.coms of this world are well versed in the art of user centred design and although they started with a viable business model they have overtaken the hundreds of competitors in their space to get to the top of the tree.

In the offline world the master of this discipline is Apple. As an icon of good useable design it's hard to go past the ipod to demonstrate just how potent getting the user interface right can be for a product or business.

Less obvious however are examples of how poor design can sink an idea just as quickly. Probably the best known interaction design catastrophes in the online world is that of the ill-fated Boo.com which went far too long on technology and three dimensional spinning shoes and far too short on usability.

There are thousands more where that came from, all united in the fact that you haven't heard of them and they have either gone bust or are well on the way.

The failure of companies to pay heed to interaction design is all the more astounding when you realise it is one of the most cost effective investments an online business can make.

With modern modular build techniques the web front end (visual layer) can be developed independently of the site infrastructure (business logic). This affords online businesses the opportunity to evolve and improve their proposition without making large investments in technical infrastructure.

If you keep an eye on the big players you'll notice they are making continual gradual improvements to their client interface. Earlier this year Play.com relaunched their site. This is not a functional step change, this is a refresh to improve the customer experience and clarify the site proposition. Similarly Ebay evolves their site design continually to cater to the increased complexity of the site.

We highly recommend businesses undertake some user testing. Putting yourself in the minds of your consumers is good, but getting their direct feedback is better and often surfaces issues you were unaware of. When we worked on OAG (the Official Airline Guide) testing revealed that users believed adding items to a "basket" would reserve a flight despite them not having provided any payment details.

From an investment point of view testing means you have a vast reduction in the risk of changing your site and can forecast with some certainty how changes will be received.

The benefits of good interaction design are evident in the numbers. With a new booking engine and site design GNER (now National Express Mainline) effected a 30% increase in site revenue and a 50% increase in percentage conversions.

On relaunch of their site last year Hays recruitment enjoyed a 25% increase in job applications and a 12% decrease in ineligible applicants.

Done well investment in interaction design will deliver your business better results with less effort. In our eyes it's a no brainer, especially in tough times. The only surprise to us is that it needs explaining.