In Part One of this series I reflected on some of the lessons learned during this period and the reasons why now might be the perfect time to give your digital platforms a ‘health check’.
I focused on the importance of usability testing with real users as an invaluable tool to understanding how people are really using your products, and avoiding the personal biases and assumptions that sometimes drive digital project delivery.
In this second part of the series, I discuss the tools and techniques you can use alongside usability testing to take the understanding of your users to the next level, refresh your digital strategy, and set up ongoing performance metrics that can help drive continual improvement (which we’ll discuss in Part Three).
User Research
Alongside usability testing, user research can be a key component of your digital ‘health check’.
Whether we’re looking to gain insights into who the users are and what needs your product can solve (generative research), or whether we’re hoping to identify potential issues in a solution or an assumption (evaluative research), both qualitative and quantitative research can help.
Qualitative methods will help to answer the ‘why’, while quantitative will help with the ‘what’ (and ‘how’) questions.
Even if you have undertaken user research before, now is a good time to revisit and sense check the outcomes of that in the post-Covid world, as the users you may have known before may have different attitudes and priorities now.
In the last few months, many users had no choice but to adapt to whatever digital service was available. Some behavioural changes may be here to stay but not all will last forever. Those who understand the changing needs and behaviour of the user will have an advantage.
User research can include:
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User Personas
Building personas for your users is a crucial stepping stone towards getting accurate research results and creating the right solution as first we need to understand who these people are before we can seek to solve their problems.
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User Interviews
In addition to quantitative methods that answer the ‘what’, ‘how much’ and ‘how often’, interviews and other qualitative methods can be helpful to really understand answers to ‘why’.
Interviews, structured or unstructured, are one-on-one discussions with the right users using the product, to really understand their frustrations, their experiences and the tasks they are aiming to get done.
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Field studies
During these face-to-face sessions, the researchers can observe the participant in a real-life situation and are likely to see unpredictable, natural events that would not otherwise be mentioned by the user.
For example, at Dock9 we have undertaken field studies at broker firms when testing new lender platforms.
Every project is different, and the research methods used for a digital health check can be tailored to the company.
Advanced Analytics
“Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted, the problem is I don’t know which half.”
John Wanamaker’s famous quote from the early days of product marketing still rings true today. Many still rely on an element of speculation and guesswork when making decisions about their digital products.
Utilising analytics data alongside your qualitative research to make informed product decisions is commonly accepted best practice, however when applied to optimising your digital experiences, often that can be easier said than done.
With users engaging with your business across multiple channels (be that social media, your website, your portals, etc) accurately tracking behaviour with a single view of the customer and making informed product decisions can be a challenge.
And even when you have a powerful tool like Google Analytics in place on your digital channels, making the most of this abundance of data (through advanced tagging and analysis) is a skill set in its own right which can slow down your time to insight.
Fortunately a new wave of product analytics tools (such as Heap Analytics, Kissmetrics and Mixpanel) now enable digital, marketing and product teams to more easily understand how users are interacting with your product on a granular level and how these align with your short-term and long-term goals.
As part of a digital health check it is important to ensure your macro and micro conversions are well defined (through the whole user journey, from acquisition through to activation and retention) and configured correctly within a product analytics tool.
Competitor benchmarking
Your digital platforms don’t exist in a vacuum, so it can be useful to include an element of competitor benchmarking as part of your health check. This can give you an immediate overview of where you currently are in the market from a feature and experience point of view.
We typically benchmark against three to five competitors when undertaking this at Dock9, however this can vary and you may want to include ‘aspirational’ as well as direct competitors in this research.
Summary
I hope that parts one and two of this series of articles has provided some useful insight into what is involved in a digital health check. At this stage it’s also important to note that at Dock9 we see this as an iterative process and for many clients we have structured cyclical programs to constantly review and improve.
Gains can be marginal each time, but the overall transformation over a longer period will set you apart from your competitors.
In the upcoming final part of this series we will discuss how to bring the turn gained from usability testing, user research, advanced analytics and competitor benchmarking results into actions and measurable improvements in your digital platforms.
You can read Part One of this series on Digital Health Checks by clicking here.
Mark Lusted is the managing director of Dock9
