Phase 1: Conversion Proposal
Conversion Strategies aim to convert someone (a user) from a passive viewer to an active participant with a business or service (generally online). Strategies tend to focus on specific types of users and ask: why do we want the user to convert? How do we want the user to convert? What is our follow-up strategy? Conversion proposals begin with an assessment of the current industry and stakeholders involved with the service. The assessment then guides the objectives, scope, and approach for conversion.
Students will begin by choosing one service from the provided list to redesign. In teams, students will complete a competitive analysis, brand positioning analysis, stakeholder analysis, and user experience audit. Based on the analysis, students will construct a proposal outlining a design strategy for influencing the users’ experience of the service.
- Define the scope and nature of the industry
- Determine who the competitors are and how they position their service
- Determine how your service currently positions itself
- Determine what the key success factors are in your industry
- Compare your service’s positioning to its competitors’ (using Perceptual Mapping (display service relative to their competition on a bi-axis grid))
- Identify/develop distinctive, differentiating and value-based brand positioning (a statement, key messages, and user value propositions)
Homework due Aug 25:
In your groups of two, complete a competitive matrix/table for the key competitors of your service. The attributes to which you should compare the competitors is as follows:
1 Essence: According to Landor, a leading brand consultant, it is “The distillation of a brand’s intrinsic characteristics into a succinct core concept”. Without such a distillation, a brand concept description can become a laundry list without clarity.
2 Reason for being or it’s aspiration. How it plans to serve customers and/or change the world for the better
3 Value proposition: What you get and why it is worth the money
4 Differentiation: How the brand is different from — and better than — its competitors
5 Persona: Personality, often expressed by adjectives (innovative, dependable, warm) or by analogy (“If this brand were a breed of dog, it would be a greyhound”)
6 Associations: Other entities that the brand brings to mind. Could be objects, products, brands, people, etc.
7 Range of authority: The conceptual territory or scope of the brand. Where the brand name will help it be successful
8 Audience: Those for whom the brand is intended and with whom it wants to build a relationship
9 Relationship: with customers, or better said, the customers relationship to the brand: do they see it as a friend,
a servant, a stern parent, a favorite relative, etc.
- Identify current and potential user groups
- Describe the values, lifestyles, activities, and objects with which the users’ identify
- Describe how the service would fit into the users’ routines and identity
- Identify and prioritize the users’ goals and expectations of the service
- Identify the business owners’ needs and expectations
- Identify current and potential third party needs and expectations
- Compare the critical issues and key themes among the stakeholders
- Propose ways in which the service can help all stakeholders achieve their goals
- Isolate the key areas of the service website
- Assess the typical journeys a user is likely to take while using the service website
- Highlight usability, experiential, and branding issues
- Propose potential opportunities and solutions
- Overview
- Contextualize the Service (Competitive Analysis and Brand Positioning)
- Stakeholders of the Service (User and Stakeholder Analysis)
- Current User Experience of the Service (User Experience Audit)
- Project Objectives (the critical issues and themes to address)
- Project Scope (focus and values the service offers)
- conversion strategy
- Project Approach (leverage points and strategies for influencing the user experience)
- Design Goals (specific results and factors/metrics for success)
- Summary