"Reaction [beta]"
Shameless self-promotion: Etre in print! 21 Jan 2008
We're delighted to announce that a case study of ours has made it into the latest edition of the Nielsen Norman Group's "Usability Return on Investment" report. Published on Friday, the report examines how usability methods can be used to deliver real business value in terms of increased sales and conversion rates; traffic; and adoption.
For those unfamiliar with the NNG by the way, it's the user experience company founded by Jakob Nielsen ("The Guru of Web Page Usability" according to the New York Times), Donald A. Norman ("The Guru of Workable Technology" according to Newsweek magazine) and Bruce "Tog" Tognazzini (the "Leading Authority on Software Design" according to HotWired). We therefore consider it a great honour that they have seen fit to dedicate seven pages to a case study of ours.
The case study in question describes how we helped Eurostar increase its online revenues from £110 million to £136 million (an increase of 24%, or £26 million!)
To put this figure into perspective, if we were to give you 26 million pound coins and you were to count them at a rate of one per second - without taking any breaks to eat, sleep or go to the toilet - it would take you 301 days to finish. So if you started today, you wouldn't be done until 17th November!
In addition to helping Eurostar increase its online revenues, we also helped the company to increase its number of online sales by 19.5%; lower its email and call volumes by about a third (reflecting a shift of activity from those channels to the website) and boost its number of unique visitors by 24.3%!
How did we do it? Well, you'll need to buy the NNG report to find out (although if you visit Rosenfeld Media's site, you'll find a detailed description of the information-architecture-related aspects of the project that you can read for free!)
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4 comments so far
Simon 22 Jan 2008 06:01 PM
Jakob Nielsen has just published an alertbox article that summarises the findings of the ROI report.
Pete N 22 Jan 2008 08:02 PM
Do Eurostar state that this improvement in revenue was related purely to the UX improvements recommended by Etre, or were there other factors in the mix, like Advertising campaigns, changes in price structures, special offers and the rest of it?
Isn't this one of the main shortcomings in this kind of ROI story? It's more a case of "we may or may not have been instrumental in improved revenue for our client".
Doesn't have the same catchy-ness to it as your pound-coin counting imagery, though, does it?
Simon 23 Jan 2008 09:40 AM
Do Eurostar state that this improvement in revenue was related purely to the UX improvements recommended by Etre?
Nope and neither do we. As we say above, we helped Eurostar to achieve these results and, if you read the NNG report, you'll find that we are careful to prefix the metrics quoted with statements like: "While it's difficult to separate the impact of a user-centered design program from the other activities that go with the re-launching of a website (in particular, the marketing drive that follows thereafter)..."
Are there shortcomings with usability ROI stories? Of course, but there are shortcomings with all ROI stories. Businesses are complex entities and the projects they deliver multi-faceted - thus numerous factors contribute to the success or failure of any given project that they undertake to deliver. But should that stop us from attempting to measure return on investment? We don't think so.
In our opinion, the web design industry needs to be able to tie "soft metrics" like user effectiveness, efficiency, satisfaction and aesthetic appeal to "hard metrics" that align with strategic business goals like revenue, cost savings and profit, so that we can assist businesses in making better decisions about how they choose to invest their money and help them value their previous UE-related endeavours. At Etre, we are committed to this task.
The "ROI of UE" is certainly difficult to measure but, in the case of Eurostar, we are confident that the right metrics were tracked and that our user experience work had a strong bearing on the results that the company achieved. For example, we know that certain users were unable to transact on the site prior to our involvement (because our work determined that the site didn't support certain browser / OS configurations). Web stats now show that that these users can transact and are transacting - a factor that can be tied directly to the increased revenues that Eurostar has enjoyed over the last 12 months.
Nick H 23 Jan 2008 01:09 PM
I also believe that's important for the UX field to look for ways to quantify its contribution to a design project. All too often I feel squeezed by my clients to either "do it for less" or "justify the cost". While it may be difficult to agree a standard measure for evaluting the ROI of a web usability project, some of us need to provide this type of data (however limited). IMO, web clients who are already reasonably successful in their space seem less receptive to the "soft" metrics that would have won them over in years gone by. If we can't find a way of tying at least some of our work to the bottom line then we aren't keeping pace with the needs of *our* end-users (i.e. our clients).