Q: How have you balanced a requirement to deliver an engaging website experience with the need to

maximise conversion through an efficient sales conversion infrastructure?

Response:
Getting the balance right between brand experience and enabling the visitor to complete the transaction
quickly and easily is at the heart of an effective web solution, and this consideration is often at the heart of
our solution design. Set out below are some of the key inputs to this question which we will consider in
depth:

1. Set clear targets

In order to get the balance correct, it is firstly vital to establish what is the correct balance! Define clear
and prioritised objectives, measures and targets associated with the website, such as:
• Brand affinity
• Product interest (product content consumed)
• Product engagement (add to basket rate, basket size)
• Product purchase (basket conversion)
• Product review (% reviews submitted)
• Ongoing responsiveness (responses to eCRM communications)

2. Establishing effective reporting and analytics

While this may sound obvious, it is a critical step to ensure that your core analytics are aligned with the
website scorecard established above, along with any other tools used to assess user performance

3. Incorporating usability into design

Critical to the development of a successful site is to ensure that the designs are tested at a number of
different stages with a range of consumer representatives. It is well known that fixing a usability problem
at the low-fidelity wireframe stage costs a tiny fraction of fixing it later on. We will always seek to
incorporate a range of user-testing techniques throughout the development

Only once these have been established and agreed, can we then look at creating a solution which aims to
deliver the correct balance between all of the elements.

4. Understanding role of site within total digital influences

Of course, the website does not operate in isolation and an important consideration in understanding and
creating the right balance between brand and conversion are the users’ journeys to the website, and how
their performance changes based on this source. Traffic from a google search for a specific product is
likely to be highly committed to the product already, and demonstrates why traffic source must be used to
isolate site performance.

5. Engaging conversion

Of course, the question presupposes that the

answer is either/or. In actual fact, we believe
that combining a rich brand experience
alongside key elements of the conversion
process can deliver against both objectives
very successfully.

6. Ongoing improvement

While every effort will be made to create a site

that is as good as it can be, the limitations of understanding the complexities of user interactions with the
site will never be fully understood before launch. An important part of launching any site is to establish a
process of continual improvement. There are several tools and techniques, both quantitative and
qualitative, that we use to look to improve performance, including automated multivariate testing tools
such as Maxymiser and Google Optimise. Both of these can be used to adapt the site and improve
performance, though it is important to understand their limitations as well as their strengths and to avoid
relying solely on these to improve performance.