Effective Strategy for the Real World
Our analysts are some of the best in the business. They know how to effectively construct the basis of your site and build upon it with real-world user research. More importantly, our analysts get out of the office to better understand the real-world situations of people–instead of sitting at their desks crunching numbers that never fully capture the true experiences people have.
Audience Research
Our team really gets to know your existing audiences. This helps us learn more about what your online presence is doing for your real-world bottom line. We talk to and observe people through interviews, focus groups, field studies, online surveys and contextual observation. The result is knowledge – knowledge of the real people who comprise your markets and understanding of people’s motivations, desires and behaviors. Our brand of conscientious audience research yields clear profiles of the people behind the numbers, and provides a prioritized list of the requirements to not only meet but exceed your audiences’ expectations.
Persona and Scenario Creation
We approach every project from the perspective of the people who have to use it every day – and the people who will use (and maintain) the online experiences we create. Armed with knowledge from our audience research, we will work with you through a fun and engaging Persona Workshop to hone general audience profiles into up-close and personal sets of personas. Once defined, these personas and scenarios become our guiding muses, informing business, design, architecture and development decisions along the path of any project.
Benchmark Studies
After conducting in-depth studies to evaluate your competitors’ websites and the sites of other companies in your sector, we develop recommendations for you, based on what they’re doing right – and wrong – and give you the most effective way to implement that information. In addition, we have extensive expertise with touchpoint audits and documentation.
Information Architecture
Just as you wouldn’t build a house without a blueprint, websites shouldn’t be built without the use cases and wireframes of information architecture. We don’t bog down the process with over-documentation–we do reach consensus with clients regarding business, functional and interface requirements. Our IA documentation provides the level of direction and detail needed to guide design and development without constraining the decisions best made by designers and developers.
Content Strategy
We understand the difference between content for print and content for the digital sphere. Our experienced copywriters will work with you to develop a long-term content strategy – including what to say, how to say it, and when it should be said. Our results provide you with a brand-specific voice for websites, promotions, catalogs, ecommerce, help text and customer emails, to name only a few.
