Feedback on First Impressions Activity
Written by: Jonathan Briggs
November 11, 2005 [2346 views]
In this activity I asked you to select a website for your examination case study. It was to be an ecommerce site or a potential ecommerce site where there was room for major improvement.
A big thanks to everyone who did the work and particularly those who got it completed on time despite the other work that you had for other modules. Please not that it should be possible to get each activity completed in a little over the normal workshop time allocated to a module although I would expect perhaps twice that time if you include your thinking.
Here are some comments which I hope that you will find useful in planning your case study.
Selecting a company
A number of you have phoned or emailed asking for approval for particular companies. I will not give this as it would be unfair on others who have not asked (and impossible to manage 120 requests). Instead I will give you clues as to suitable companies and you need to decide whether your company fits the model. You can change your mind.
Some of the companies could be too big. I have suggested selecting companies where someone like you could expect to be heard if you made suggestions. Big High Street or FTSE100 companies will have big ecommerce teams and are unlikely to listen to a lone consultant. I am not forbidding you from working on these but you might be making your preparation more difficult than it needs to be.
Some of the companies are definitely too small. A few seem to be almost amateur websites and the client will simply not have the knowledge or money to take your suggestions seriously.
Most were of an appropriate size. Make sure that you are interested in what they do or sell as this will allow you to research the market properly.
Explaining your choice
“It was the only company I could think of” is not a good answer. “I used to work for them”, “I know them well”, “My brother runs it” could be a quite a good answer but I want further reasons particularly about the opportunities for improvement or the addition of ecommerce.
Take particular care when suggesting companies that are already doing a good job, even if “there are a few ways it can be improved”. Make your lives easier by choosing companies with BIG opportunities.
How big is this company?
I asked you to indicate what you thought the turnover, online turnover and profit is of the company per year. Be clear that turnover and profit and value of the company are all different. Turnover is the total of all invoices sent out and even if a big number could still result in a small profit or even a loss.
A couple of you had online turnover that was bigger than total turnover? How could this be? Understand the difference.
You can find out some companies figures from their websites while for others you need to go to Companies House and look at their published accounts. You can search for news reports to confirm your own estimates.
Your smallest figure was £25,000 and the largest £750 million. How much would you expect a £25,000 turnover company to be able to spend on serious ecommerce? Where is that money going to come from? Very small companies find it very hard to borrow money and financing a web project from turnover is going to be tough.
Going online can have a significant effect on some businesses but only if tackled at the right sort of level.
Imagine a company that turns over £10,000,000. It might do 20% of its business online, £2,000,000. It might make a profit of between 10% and 20% if it is really efficient.
Very few companies are going to go online and immediately double their turnover; at least not without a huge marketing budget which would affect their profits.
Reflecting on your answers
Some of you clearly understand more about companies and money that others. Being a good analyst or designer means being able to do good research and also explain your thinking. You should be able to back up your answers with evidence and reasoning.
A few of you went right back to basics and looked at numbers of stores, estimated turnover and estimated profit. This was excellent. Others demonstrated how they had found information online that backed up their thinking. This is equally good. Understanding their competitors or similar companies in the market is another approach but be careful that they really are competitors.
Other people waffled or simply guessed without any justification. This is less good!
Be realistic and sometimes conservative in the types of improvement you think you can make. If you are feeling over confident read some of the books about the dotcom years to give yourself a dose of reality.
Identifying problems with the current site.
After the last activity you are getting better at this but you still need more detail. “Logo, layout, visitors” is not a good enough answer. You need to explain your thinking too without necessarily making recommendations. Look back through my comments on the last exercise.
Ideally you should define for yourself a mental checklist that will help you analyse a site: brand, information, navigation, design, customer experience, findability, barriers, decision support, integration etc. Make a list of the problems and then prioritise them according to how they affect the economic performance of the site.
Competitors
This is harder than it looks and is the subject of this weeks activity which will be published soon. You need to look for the leaders in each market rather than just other similar sites.
Finding information online
As you will now have realised a big part of successful work online is making the web work for you; finding information, tools and ideas. If you decide to work in this area of IT (and perhaps any other) you will need to spend a considerable amount of time online finding your own tools, forums and information sources.
Some of you went back and used the tools introduced in the Detective Exercise while others found additional tools such as Companies House. News sites are another significant source of intelligence but you need to learn to search well.
Advice you want from me
Sales figures
Private companies are usually very reluctant to share sensitive data even with some business partners. Public companies are usually more open publishing sales data every 3 months to keep their shareholders happy (and meet Stock Exchange regulations). There are some general figures that can be found in appropriate trade press and online about profit margins (0-20%), conversion rates (1%-8%) and traffic.
Why don’t the tools you have given work for my website?
They do. If Alexa or Traffic Estimate say they can’t estimate it means that the site has almost no traffic or is very new.
Are there more tools?
Yes there are lots. I will give you some more but I hope that you will find some too.
Is there a standard set of improvements that we can make?
Yes and no. The checklist I have given you above is worth running through but real commercial benefits come from helping an individual business improve in individual ways.
Understanding what happens inside the website?
I will show you some more information regarding understanding visitor behaviour. This is not normally publicly available as it is commercially sensitive.
How can I get a good exam mark?
I would expect many of you to be able to get a good mark from the answers you are giving here. The key is answer the question, show that you have thought about the specific case study and explain your answers.
How do we approach clients?
Carefully. If you want to work in this area you need to take it step by step and don’t start by trying to approach big companies on your own. Practise your skills on smaller businesses or friends and demonstrate that you can really make a difference. Find evidence for the suggestions you are making.
How much do things cost?
I will take you through an illustrative budget in a later session
What do you think?
