Good Business Matters

Helping a consultancy generate leads during COVID-19.

The Problem

The website is blah.
It isn't generating any new leads.

Good Business Matters (GBM) is a strategic marketing consultancy that specialises in branding and marketing for responsible businesses. With digital presence now being more important than ever, GBM approached us to help them redesign their website into a lead generating machine.

My Role

UX Research
Prototyping & User Testing
‍Awesome Presentation Slides

Remote Team

Peggy Wei
‍Jeremy Sariaatmadja
Joseph Lee
Sam McMillan

Timeline

2 Weeks | May 2020

The Solution

We found the website was only PART OF the problem.

Lead generation doesn't always start with a website. It starts with building relationships through face-to-face networking.

We proposed workshops & webinars.
And designed a slick website that encouraged more face-to-face opportunities.

The Outcome

Our research validated a proto-persona and helped inform business strategies going forward.

GBM is updating their website with our recommendations.

Go to Hi-Fi Prototype ↓

Users rated our site

9/10

Approachable

Our Process

1

Research

2

Define

3

Ideate

4

Prototype & Testing

Research |

Okay so, what are we working with here?

Strategic marketing consulting.
For-purpose and for-profit business.
B2B lead generation.
As with anything unfamiliar, I started with putting on my detective hat. So that the end product wasn't just a pretty website, we did our research into Good Business Matters (GBM).

First, I wanted to understand the business.

Client Meetings
Consulting Proposals
I wanted to know:
  • What GBM's value proposition was
  • Who GBM's previous clients were and the people making decisions
  • How GBM came to work with them

We learnt GBM have not actively tried to generate new leads in years. Most of their previous clients were people they had connections with or people who attended their workshops.

GBM's competitors appeared authentic and transparent, offered info packs or workshops and aligned themselves to only working with responsible businesses and brands.
They also had PERSONALITY.

We evaluated the current website.

Heuristic Evaluation
Survey
I wanted to know:
  • the current state of the website
  • information architecture and user flow
In a survey, we gauged what users thought of the current website. 50% of those who responded were business owners.

24

Survey Responses
"Too ambiguous." 
"Feels fluffy."
"Convoluted and overcomplicated"
These were some of the things users said about the current website.

And used analytics to gain behavioural data.

Google Analytics
Hot Jar
I wanted to know:
  • how people were directed to the website
  • what information they were looking for and where they were clicking

Bounce rate was 70% meaning most people clicked out of the site before visiting another page. Not good.

Visitors looked for 'About Us' and 'What We Do'.
But, our survey told us users found it TOO WORDY and were confused by what GBM actually did.

With an understanding of the business, competitors and the website, we looked to understand the USERS.

We came in at a time when the company was starting to pivot in a new direction. They themselves had little idea of who their customers would be. GBM were still in discussions of defining their ideal clients going forward.

I joined in a meeting and helped them workshop their ideal client persona. Taking this back to the team, we sought to validate this proto-persona.
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We needed to talk to CEOs/business owners that were already embracing purpose in their business.

After creating a list of social enterprises and NFPs in Melbourne, we HUSTLED like crazy and cold-called everyone from that list to find out their experiences around working with a consultant.

The result was 19 interviews and a Miro board of hard-earned insights.

19

Interviews
We talked to businesses ranging from startups to established businesses, with people who have and haven't worked with GBM before.

79%

were responsible businesses

11

CEOs/Founders

68%

Female

Define |

Miro board of hard-earned research and sweet, sweet insights.
We clustered themes from our interviews.

Three key themes emerged from our interviews.

58%

said FACE-TO-FACE interaction was most important with a consultant.

"It's pointless doing it on the phone. You need to be physically present with somebody to fully understand them."
This would be a difficult challenge to overcome due to COVID-19 restrictions.

27%

were UNAWARE of consultants specialising in responsible businesses.

"There's no consulting firm I know of in this space. There's so few, people tend to call me to help them."
Identifying this market gap was good news for GBM!

36%

were concerned about COST.

"Lot's of them charge very high fees that don't match the value they provide."
This told us we needed to demonstrate that the business's value offer was worth the cost.

We distilled our research into one persona, Jane (38), CEO of a social enterprise.

  • Jane is looking for a consultant with values that align with hers
  • She doesn't know who she can trust with consulting
  • She is wary of the cost and ROI

From our interviews, we noticed the younger businesses tended to believe consulting was unaffordable, while the more established businesses were more concerned about the value that consulting could add to their business.
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Both young and established businesses had ASSUMPTIONS that were barriers to them engaging with consulting.


So, Jane's journey map starts from when she launches her business to now when her business has grown to a point where consulting is viable.

Jane's journey map starts from when she launches her business to now.


We formulated that lead generation can begin at any time in Jane's journey, even BEFORE she's thinking of seeking out consulting for her business.

Ideate |

Working with our Client to Design for Jane

In a remote co-design workshop with our client, we defined the problems we were trying to solve based on Jane's pain points and ideated both digital and non-digital solutions.
We defined these as How Might We's.

HMW start a relationship with Jane?

HMW create more opportunities for face-to-face interaction?

HMW let Jane know that there are consultancies that specialise in her industry?

We ideated with Crazy 8s (a first for our client!), placed the ideas on an MVP Matrix, and voted for the best ideas.
Mapping out everyone's ideas on an MVP matrix. And yes, we do love Miro.

As FACE-TO-FACE interaction was such an important theme, it was not surprising that the winning idea was non-digital. The MVP we voted on was WORKSHOPS.

While 'workshops' started off in the High Value/Easy quadrant, our client posited that they weren't actually as easy as they sounded...and moved the post-it into the Difficult quadrant.
For me, the amazing thing here was how we started with the aim in the brief to generate leads for the business but we flipped the perspective from the business to Jane, and our client started thinking about how to solve Jane's needs and pain points.

It wasn't only about generating leads anymore, it was also about humanising Jane and her problems.

While we started with the aim to create an inspiring website for lead generation, the solution we landed on was not a website at all!

Before we even TOUCHED the website, our research helped inform GBM's business strategies going forward. That's pretty awesome.
Action shot of working remotely. Multiple windows, multiple tabs. Lots of action.

For the website, our goal then became encouraging face-to-face interaction and communicating that GBM specialises in the responsible businesses space.

After ideating website features with the team, we prioritised things about the user flow and website pages that could be improved, based on user insights that it was TOO WORDY and CONFUSING. These were: 
  • Friendly language, less jargon
  • Let users know 'What We Do' on the home page
  • Clear and accessible case studies
  • Video and testimonials
  • Interactive Contact Form
We also added in a 'Workshops' page on the website to test whether the Jane's in the world would find this valuable.
Workshopping the user flow and information architecture to incorporate prioritised features.

Prototype & Testing |

2

Iterations

13

User Tests

4

Days

Low-fi Prototype → 4 User Tests

First, we wireframed the website pages and user flow in a low-fidelity prototype.
I mocked up the Contact page. Click the image to see the other pages.

I learned the importance of having SOME content.
75% users didn't scroll down the home page, and clicked to the other tabs instead. This was because they were looking for CASE STUDIES and OUTCOMES.

So we put content on the home page and redesigned the case studies pages.

Mid-fi Prototype → 9 User Tests

Showing what we did, and business owners' feedback from user testing.

We showed 'What We Do' information on the home page but chunked down and less wordy.

"I love the short and sharp this-is-who-we-are" 

Got rid of jargon.
Used language that social enterprises would use e.g. ethical, sustainable, responsible.

"It's clear and concise"

Interactive contact form asking the user about their business so that GBM can specifically cater communications to their business.

"I like this, it's quick without commitment"

78%

scrolled down the Home page first

Hooray! They found what they needed to know without clicking around the website.

Added a video to About Us.

We'd seen great videos GBM had on other socials that went unused on the website, so this was a way to test whether users would click on it. They did.

Users were looking for any kind of information that would tell them more about the people behind the business.
"A short paragraph about each person and their experience would be nice"

Case studies were organised into sections. Subheadings let users find the information they wanted easily.

"I love the sectioning...the 'this', 'problem', 'clear products'" 

Even just the knowledge that GBM ran workshops raised their credibility.

"Makes them seem like they know what they're talking about"

The Result?

60%

described GBM as 'ethical' or 'social'

Great news! User testing on 9 business owners confirmed we were able to show Jane that GBM was a consultancy SPECIALISING in the ethical businesses/social impact space.
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7/10

Trustworthy

9/10

Approachable

7/10

Overall Experience

More great news! Being approachable is so important for GBM because we want to encourage users to contact them, especially face-to-face conversations.
And this was just at mid-fidelity.

High-fi Prototype & Next Steps

We moved to high-fidelity to address the original goal of the brief and recommended important next steps. These were:
  • Gather video assets for the site
  • Consider holding workshops and webinars to position GBM as experts in the space and to network
  • Handing over the design to a developer to build and publish

High-Fidelity Prototype

Presenting the final design (in all its glory).
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Back To Top ↑

OUR IMPACT

"You all carried yourselves very professionally and went about this project diligently and with a lot of goodwill."
- GBM Co-Founder

REFLECTION

What I Learnt

  • RESEARCH IS POWERRR. Even though the brief started out as a website redesign to generate leads, our RESEARCH proved to be just as valuable to the business, if not more. Our insights, persona and journey map showed there were real business owners with real problems, and GBM could bank on that in their new business direction.
  • INVOLVING THE CLIENT IN THE PROCESS BENEFITS EVERYONE. We as designers were able to understand business goals and resources, identify reasonable winning solutions, and design with both USERS and the BUSINESS in mind. Our client could see what we were doing and why, every step of the way, and bring 'Jane' to other areas in the business.

What I Could Have Done Better

  • FOCUSED ON QUALITY NOT QUANTITY. In trying to redesign the entire website and web experience, we were able to boost GBM's friendliness and approachability. However, I think the time we spent doing that could have been better utilised with iterating on ONE thing. If we focused on only the home page, we could have achieved more tests and iterations on driving lead generation.
  • EXPLORED THE FACE-TO-FACE PROBLEM IN A POST-COVID WORLD. This problem is a whole other sprint within itself. Given more time, I would have tested out ideas such as a 'meet for a coffee' button or a 'book in our calendar' feature. These were ideas that came up during ideation but never incorporated because we prioritised other aspects of the website.