These are regular, free seminars run in central London by Precedent digital agency. I definitely recommend them, Lyndsay Herbert never stops being inspiring.
Surface transformation:
- 7 years ago, Starbucks was heading for financial trouble
- Became victims of their own success – overreached and stretched themselves too thin, ended up disappointing their customers
- They tested what already worked, what people really liked about them
- Discovered a core of people who bought coffee online, made this better, incentivised loyalty, brought Starbucks into people’s homes
- Online was an easier place to start – from there they could improve their whole business – share prices shot up
Anthony Nolan:
- They had a huge content challenge, people at the top were too worried about scientific inaccuracy, they didn’t write copy for people, they wrote it for scientists
- If you can make your content better, you will do better
- Needed to appeal to their target audience
- They weren’t joining up their strategic approaches – advertising at football games but not providing anything equally appealing for people who then arrived on the site, users were confused at the discrepancy and left
- They also had squeamish issues with their demographic – didn’t shy away from talking a lot about blood in their content, which put people off
- Had to think about what would make people become stem cell donors
- The idea that they could save a life
- Had to get the team to understand it was ok to make the content accessible
- Created an 8 ways to save a life navigation heading, with easy calls to action
- Focused on the less extreme things, like spitting in cups rather than needles in spines
- They had an 8% increase in donors in the first year
Cardiff university:
- Worried about admission drops after fee hikes
- They spoke to students, found that they valued support above everything else
- Found that they liked challenges
- Wouldn’t let the agency touch the website, so Precedent created a microsite
- Made a problem solving game, the winner would get free tuition for life
- Gave it its own “Thrive” branding
- Campaign went global
- Became a sub brand for everyone talking about student success
- Filled every one of its places and found they had a better quality of student base than in previous years
- Success sparked transformation of the administration – they let Precedent change the website
- Put students at the heart of the interface
- Put students and the content people really wanted at the heart
Tip: Benchmark before change, measure throughout
Tip: Share victories widely throughout the organisation
Audience transformation:
- Gov.uk
- Becoming someone’s power of attorney was a lengthy process
- Stripped 17 stages down to four
- Hosted case study videos of the target audience talking about how simple it was
- Focused on empathy, realising it was a difficult situation for people and wanting to make it easier
Blackrock financial planning:
- Changes in the law meant no more commission – their whole business model was around commission
- They had to act quickly, find something else people really wanted
- Did market research, found resources were important to their audience
- Made themselves the place to come to find brilliant content
British Heart Foundation:
- “Their site was basically an organisational chart, they thought people came to the site and wanted an internal team to fit into”
- Marketing team had a huge challenge making internal teams think of people as people, not as siloed client groups
- Precedent redesigned the whole site, put people at the forefront
- Put the user need ahead of the business need
- Focused on the site’s top tasks
- First year the site live – 277% donation increase
- 74% increase in event registrations
- Used success to power other transformation throughout the organisation
John Lewis:
- They wanted to understand trends and analyse the behaviour of shoppers
- Identified something unique in their client base – a preference for click and collect
- Made the whole process amazing – navigation, choice, payment, pickup service flexibility
University on Aberdeen:
- They documented all the ridiculous internal processes over a few months to build a business case for major internal transformation
- Wanted the senior team to put the needs of students first
- Also wanted to improve the lives of staff working within these systems
- Then did surface transformation to improve quick win course information – make everything more accessible and easy to use for staff and students
- Used the success and positive feedback from this to implement further transformation
Transformation summary: How would you look if you were founded today? How would you look online?
Digital Becca 