This document summarizes a project to iteratively improve the United States Mint's website over more than a year starting in 2012. The goals were to improve the customer experience and satisfaction without negatively impacting outdated core technology, prepare customers and media for larger upcoming changes, and buy time until a new e-commerce solution launched in 2014. Major pain points identified through customer research included inconsistent navigation, an outdated shopping cart, and confusing product pages. Improvements were made within constraints of separate contractors managing different sites and the fragile underlying e-commerce technology. Stakeholders were regularly involved through bi-weekly meetings to discuss design mockups and provide feedback.
EQengineered: Rationalizing the Tension Between User Experience and TechnologyMark Hewitt
In this green paper, get more insight into how CMOs and CIOs will embrace collaboration to ensure that their organizations remain competitive in today’s customer-driven and technology-led economy.
Michael B. Marshall has over 20 years of experience leading large, complex projects in program and project management roles. He currently works as a Senior Program Management Consultant, leading client transition initiatives. Previously he has managed projects involving business process redesign, system migrations, and outsourcing contracts worth over $1 billion. He has a Master of Business Administration degree and certification in project management.
The document provides background on the author's experience in digital marketing and search marketing over 12+ years. It then discusses the concept of "MoLoSo" - the mobile, local, and social web - as identified by Google Chairman Eric Schmidt as the next big trend in internet technology. Several facts about rising mobile usage and effects on clients are presented. Suggestions are made to set up listings on local directories and review sites to benefit clients. The document ends with a chart on ranking factors from an SEOMoz study.
This document discusses developing an IT architecture for a global retail bank to meet expanding consumer expectations. It proposes using a Total Quality Management model with three principles: satisfy customer expectations, satisfy supplier expectations, and continuously improve processes. The scope is the sales and fulfillment functions. It analyzes key business components and identifies six priority solution enablers to modernize the architecture using a Quality Function Deployment approach.
The document discusses internet marketing and new product development processes that can be digitized. It outlines several key topics related to speeding up new product development, including the importance of rapid prototyping and testing, getting early customer feedback, setting industry standards, and leveraging alliances to bring products to market quickly. Modular design approaches that allow parallel development help reduce time to market.
The document discusses Internet marketing and new product development processes that can be digitized. It outlines several key topics related to speeding up new product development, including the importance of rapid prototyping and testing, getting early customer feedback, setting industry standards, and leveraging alliances to bring products to market quickly. Modular design approaches that allow parallel development help reduce time to market.
Increase Conversions & Maximize Your ROI with Mobile SearchBrian Jones
The document discusses the results of three phases of testing mobile search marketing campaigns. In each phase, the company separated mobile and desktop search campaigns and made adjustments to bidding and ad text for mobile. While impressions and clicks sometimes decreased with these changes, key metrics like conversion rate and cost per lead improved, showing that managing mobile campaigns separately can significantly improve results. The document provides best practices and recommendations for mobile search marketing.
EQengineered: Rationalizing the Tension Between User Experience and TechnologyMark Hewitt
In this green paper, get more insight into how CMOs and CIOs will embrace collaboration to ensure that their organizations remain competitive in today’s customer-driven and technology-led economy.
Michael B. Marshall has over 20 years of experience leading large, complex projects in program and project management roles. He currently works as a Senior Program Management Consultant, leading client transition initiatives. Previously he has managed projects involving business process redesign, system migrations, and outsourcing contracts worth over $1 billion. He has a Master of Business Administration degree and certification in project management.
The document provides background on the author's experience in digital marketing and search marketing over 12+ years. It then discusses the concept of "MoLoSo" - the mobile, local, and social web - as identified by Google Chairman Eric Schmidt as the next big trend in internet technology. Several facts about rising mobile usage and effects on clients are presented. Suggestions are made to set up listings on local directories and review sites to benefit clients. The document ends with a chart on ranking factors from an SEOMoz study.
This document discusses developing an IT architecture for a global retail bank to meet expanding consumer expectations. It proposes using a Total Quality Management model with three principles: satisfy customer expectations, satisfy supplier expectations, and continuously improve processes. The scope is the sales and fulfillment functions. It analyzes key business components and identifies six priority solution enablers to modernize the architecture using a Quality Function Deployment approach.
The document discusses internet marketing and new product development processes that can be digitized. It outlines several key topics related to speeding up new product development, including the importance of rapid prototyping and testing, getting early customer feedback, setting industry standards, and leveraging alliances to bring products to market quickly. Modular design approaches that allow parallel development help reduce time to market.
The document discusses Internet marketing and new product development processes that can be digitized. It outlines several key topics related to speeding up new product development, including the importance of rapid prototyping and testing, getting early customer feedback, setting industry standards, and leveraging alliances to bring products to market quickly. Modular design approaches that allow parallel development help reduce time to market.
Increase Conversions & Maximize Your ROI with Mobile SearchBrian Jones
The document discusses the results of three phases of testing mobile search marketing campaigns. In each phase, the company separated mobile and desktop search campaigns and made adjustments to bidding and ad text for mobile. While impressions and clicks sometimes decreased with these changes, key metrics like conversion rate and cost per lead improved, showing that managing mobile campaigns separately can significantly improve results. The document provides best practices and recommendations for mobile search marketing.
Este documento discute dos conceptos útiles para la organización del trabajo en una redacción digital: la modularidad y la redacción en dos niveles. La modularidad implica pensar el sitio como un conjunto de pequeñas unidades informativas independientes en lugar de intentar cubrir todo. La redacción en dos niveles propone una redacción para actualizaciones en tiempo real y otra redacción para desarrollos más complejos y de menor velocidad.
The study examined how victim and defendant sexual orientation and juror attitudes affect decisions in a rape trial. Jurors with more negative attitudes toward lesbians and gay men found the defendant less guilty, regardless of other factors. Significant main effects showed more negative ratings of guilt when the victim was homosexual and when jurors had negative attitudes. An interaction revealed more negative guilt ratings for a homosexual defendant when the victim was female compared to male. The findings suggest victim and defendant sexual orientation and juror attitudes impact rape trial decisions.
Aissatou Seck has over 5 years of experience as a security officer and in package handling roles. She is bilingual in French and English, accomplished in securing facilities, and has strong computer, communication, and organizational skills.
Tarea desafio VI -Intervención conceptual – técnica en fase de testeoEUCD
Tarea desafio VI -Intervención conceptual – técnica en fase de testeo
Alumnos: Karina Durán, Florencia Fuertes, Guillermo Fernández, Samara Larrosa, María Noel Saavedra, Romina Solsona
Craig and Melissa had a blessed year celebrating their four year anniversary. They renewed their lease in Chicago while many of Craig's siblings moved or changed jobs. However, the year was saddened by the loss of Melissa's sister Cindy after a long battle with diabetes. Craig wishes everyone a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, reminding that in the end family and friends are most important.
Caitie brown’s eng 4 u summative assignmentCaitie Brown
This document summarizes a presentation by Larry Smith on having a great career. Smith is an economics professor who coaches students on finding careers they love. He argues that unless one pursues their ultimate passion, they will fail to have a great career. Smith conveys this message by stating people will fail if they do not try, listing reasons for failure, and urging finding a passion. He ends his talk with an open-ended sentence to motivate action.
This document provides biographical information about Andrea Victoria Paradiso, an artist who works in polymer clay sculpture and jewelry. It outlines her background and experience working with polymer clay since 2012, highlights commissions she specializes in, and lists accomplishments such as having her work published, participating in gallery shows and competitions, and collaborating with polymer clay companies.
Un granjero escocés pobre llamado Fleming oyó los gritos de auxilio de un niño atrapado en un pantano cercano. Fleming rescató al niño, quien resultó ser el hijo de un noble. Como agradecimiento, el noble permitió que el hijo de Fleming recibiera la misma educación que su hijo, lo que eventualmente llevó al hijo de Fleming a convertirse en el renombrado Dr. Alexander Fleming, descubridor de la penicilina.
The document discusses findings from a UK home insurance survey. Key findings include:
1) Younger consumers aged 18-35 want tools to help choose coverage and manage their policy online.
2) Insurers need to work harder to acquire first-time homeowner customers in this age group.
3) Older consumers still want easy-to-understand information when researching options.
The survey found the industry makes it difficult for customers to evaluate and purchase policies online. Admiral in particular needs improvements to its value proposition and building trust with customers. Direct Line's website design is more appealing and intuitive for customers.
This document provides guidelines for organizations to become faster, better, and leaner by adopting a new database like MongoDB. It discusses how companies like MetLife and Telefonica have successfully used MongoDB. MetLife built a 360-degree view of customers in 3 months using MongoDB, saving significant time and money compared to a relational database. Telefonica improved performance by 100x and time to market by 4x using MongoDB to consolidate subscriber data. The document then provides a playbook for organizations, including prioritizing strategic projects, adopting agile development, embracing failure, using technology to recruit, and participating in open source communities.
The Digital Transformation Lifecycle contains a set of phases in which each phase is interconnected with the before phase. It gives a highly useful sequence of phases and instructions Digital Transformation performer, executant.
A "how-to" guide on creating successful websites or Apps. The three elements are (1) Design for User Tasks (2) Design for Flexibility (3) Design for Measurement. The presentation introduces numerous practical methodologies, e.g., The Application Mountain, The Water Mill Development Model, Onion Governance, and the User Task Matrix. Practical examples are taken from work at Scandinavian Airlines, Tryg Insurance, and Maersk.
Flexible development frameworks allow organizations to adapt quickly to changing business needs. Traditional "waterfall" approaches are too rigid for fast-growing companies that need to constantly improve their products. A flexible framework delivers high-quality products through an incremental process that optimizes costs and promotes collaboration. MiTOS is a flexible enterprise application framework that consists of modular backend and frontend layers for common and industry-specific functions. It allows customized solutions to be built efficiently on a shared infrastructure and adapted easily to different business requirements.
Nine Novel Tactics for Software Product Managment in the New Digital AgeCognizant
High-tech companies looking to develop innovative solutions in this digital era can employ these powerful techniques based on Agile software development, user-centricity, data analysis, social media networks, KPIs, cohort analyses and more.
The document describes a student project to build a website for Inchem Corporation. The website will provide information about the company and its chemical products and services. It will have separate interfaces for users and admins. The user interface will allow customers to learn about the company and products, and place orders. The admin interface will give admins control over managing services, orders, finances and communicating with employees. The project aims to help Inchem expand its chemical business through an online presence. Key features of the website include separate access control, a centralized login, and dynamic content for users and admins.
1) Rich Internet Applications (RIA) allow for more dynamic and interactive experiences compared to traditional web applications through technologies like AJAX, Flex, and Silverlight. They enable instant feedback, system-initiated interactions, and modular components that can communicate without full page refreshes.
2) Some key benefits of RIA include providing instant feedback to users as they interact, allowing the system to proactively update information for the user, and developing applications as modular components that can independently and dynamically communicate with each other.
3) However, fully realizing the benefits of RIA requires overcoming perceptions that they are only for animations and reconsidering traditional web design approaches which assumed linear interactions. Designers must learn
online food delivery system projects.docxAKHILPATEL92
Rapid technological advancements have disrupted multiple sectors, including communication, banking, and business. Before the Web's advent, businesses were confronting obstacles in connecting with the customers, boosting service speed, and monitoring the business climate. The Web bridged the gap and played a crucial role in transforming the business climate completely. Also, emerging technological trends are forcing companies to adopt and integrate new technologies to improve customer experience.
Though technology disrupted conventional business practices, it also empowered small businesses to strive to broaden their horizons. The feeders attempt to leverage the Web's potential for bridging the gap between customers and business. Big players like Uber Eats have adopted technologies that quickly address and resolve customer's issues. Feeders.com is an effort to boost the capabilities of a newly launched restaurant that provides online food delivery services. Feeders currently are being operated in a single city. They don't have much muscle in allocating massive sums of money for improving customer experience, and their complaint management is also incapable of managing compliments quickly. The venture is in infancy; therefore, the quick attention to complaints can provide a competitive advantage. Also, having a well-functioning complaint management system can facilitate a healthy flow of information within the organization.
Feeders will integrate an online complaint management system in the form of a portal on its site. With the site, users will be able to provide feedback related to the taste, food delivery, and any other issues. The integrated mechanism, then, automatically sorts the complaints. Moreover, the constructed portal will serve as a bridge between customers and the restaurant staff. Presently, the team manages complaints manually, which consumes a considerable amount of time.
The website of the restaurant is also not upgraded. So, the team is required to redesign the site and in order to improve its user experience. The program will automatically schedule the complaints to notify the right person. Proven and time-tested methods were utilized in the design and development of feeders.com. Languages like HTML, CSS, PHP, and MySQL are widely popular languages that are commonly used to execute such operations.
To execute the project on time with no errors, a significant amount of attention has been given to each and every phase of the project. Effective project management, neat and clean coding, excellent test planning, and detailed documentation helped the team deliver a high-quality, fully functioning web portal.
Este documento discute dos conceptos útiles para la organización del trabajo en una redacción digital: la modularidad y la redacción en dos niveles. La modularidad implica pensar el sitio como un conjunto de pequeñas unidades informativas independientes en lugar de intentar cubrir todo. La redacción en dos niveles propone una redacción para actualizaciones en tiempo real y otra redacción para desarrollos más complejos y de menor velocidad.
The study examined how victim and defendant sexual orientation and juror attitudes affect decisions in a rape trial. Jurors with more negative attitudes toward lesbians and gay men found the defendant less guilty, regardless of other factors. Significant main effects showed more negative ratings of guilt when the victim was homosexual and when jurors had negative attitudes. An interaction revealed more negative guilt ratings for a homosexual defendant when the victim was female compared to male. The findings suggest victim and defendant sexual orientation and juror attitudes impact rape trial decisions.
Aissatou Seck has over 5 years of experience as a security officer and in package handling roles. She is bilingual in French and English, accomplished in securing facilities, and has strong computer, communication, and organizational skills.
Tarea desafio VI -Intervención conceptual – técnica en fase de testeoEUCD
Tarea desafio VI -Intervención conceptual – técnica en fase de testeo
Alumnos: Karina Durán, Florencia Fuertes, Guillermo Fernández, Samara Larrosa, María Noel Saavedra, Romina Solsona
Craig and Melissa had a blessed year celebrating their four year anniversary. They renewed their lease in Chicago while many of Craig's siblings moved or changed jobs. However, the year was saddened by the loss of Melissa's sister Cindy after a long battle with diabetes. Craig wishes everyone a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, reminding that in the end family and friends are most important.
Caitie brown’s eng 4 u summative assignmentCaitie Brown
This document summarizes a presentation by Larry Smith on having a great career. Smith is an economics professor who coaches students on finding careers they love. He argues that unless one pursues their ultimate passion, they will fail to have a great career. Smith conveys this message by stating people will fail if they do not try, listing reasons for failure, and urging finding a passion. He ends his talk with an open-ended sentence to motivate action.
This document provides biographical information about Andrea Victoria Paradiso, an artist who works in polymer clay sculpture and jewelry. It outlines her background and experience working with polymer clay since 2012, highlights commissions she specializes in, and lists accomplishments such as having her work published, participating in gallery shows and competitions, and collaborating with polymer clay companies.
Un granjero escocés pobre llamado Fleming oyó los gritos de auxilio de un niño atrapado en un pantano cercano. Fleming rescató al niño, quien resultó ser el hijo de un noble. Como agradecimiento, el noble permitió que el hijo de Fleming recibiera la misma educación que su hijo, lo que eventualmente llevó al hijo de Fleming a convertirse en el renombrado Dr. Alexander Fleming, descubridor de la penicilina.
The document discusses findings from a UK home insurance survey. Key findings include:
1) Younger consumers aged 18-35 want tools to help choose coverage and manage their policy online.
2) Insurers need to work harder to acquire first-time homeowner customers in this age group.
3) Older consumers still want easy-to-understand information when researching options.
The survey found the industry makes it difficult for customers to evaluate and purchase policies online. Admiral in particular needs improvements to its value proposition and building trust with customers. Direct Line's website design is more appealing and intuitive for customers.
This document provides guidelines for organizations to become faster, better, and leaner by adopting a new database like MongoDB. It discusses how companies like MetLife and Telefonica have successfully used MongoDB. MetLife built a 360-degree view of customers in 3 months using MongoDB, saving significant time and money compared to a relational database. Telefonica improved performance by 100x and time to market by 4x using MongoDB to consolidate subscriber data. The document then provides a playbook for organizations, including prioritizing strategic projects, adopting agile development, embracing failure, using technology to recruit, and participating in open source communities.
The Digital Transformation Lifecycle contains a set of phases in which each phase is interconnected with the before phase. It gives a highly useful sequence of phases and instructions Digital Transformation performer, executant.
A "how-to" guide on creating successful websites or Apps. The three elements are (1) Design for User Tasks (2) Design for Flexibility (3) Design for Measurement. The presentation introduces numerous practical methodologies, e.g., The Application Mountain, The Water Mill Development Model, Onion Governance, and the User Task Matrix. Practical examples are taken from work at Scandinavian Airlines, Tryg Insurance, and Maersk.
Flexible development frameworks allow organizations to adapt quickly to changing business needs. Traditional "waterfall" approaches are too rigid for fast-growing companies that need to constantly improve their products. A flexible framework delivers high-quality products through an incremental process that optimizes costs and promotes collaboration. MiTOS is a flexible enterprise application framework that consists of modular backend and frontend layers for common and industry-specific functions. It allows customized solutions to be built efficiently on a shared infrastructure and adapted easily to different business requirements.
Nine Novel Tactics for Software Product Managment in the New Digital AgeCognizant
High-tech companies looking to develop innovative solutions in this digital era can employ these powerful techniques based on Agile software development, user-centricity, data analysis, social media networks, KPIs, cohort analyses and more.
The document describes a student project to build a website for Inchem Corporation. The website will provide information about the company and its chemical products and services. It will have separate interfaces for users and admins. The user interface will allow customers to learn about the company and products, and place orders. The admin interface will give admins control over managing services, orders, finances and communicating with employees. The project aims to help Inchem expand its chemical business through an online presence. Key features of the website include separate access control, a centralized login, and dynamic content for users and admins.
1) Rich Internet Applications (RIA) allow for more dynamic and interactive experiences compared to traditional web applications through technologies like AJAX, Flex, and Silverlight. They enable instant feedback, system-initiated interactions, and modular components that can communicate without full page refreshes.
2) Some key benefits of RIA include providing instant feedback to users as they interact, allowing the system to proactively update information for the user, and developing applications as modular components that can independently and dynamically communicate with each other.
3) However, fully realizing the benefits of RIA requires overcoming perceptions that they are only for animations and reconsidering traditional web design approaches which assumed linear interactions. Designers must learn
online food delivery system projects.docxAKHILPATEL92
Rapid technological advancements have disrupted multiple sectors, including communication, banking, and business. Before the Web's advent, businesses were confronting obstacles in connecting with the customers, boosting service speed, and monitoring the business climate. The Web bridged the gap and played a crucial role in transforming the business climate completely. Also, emerging technological trends are forcing companies to adopt and integrate new technologies to improve customer experience.
Though technology disrupted conventional business practices, it also empowered small businesses to strive to broaden their horizons. The feeders attempt to leverage the Web's potential for bridging the gap between customers and business. Big players like Uber Eats have adopted technologies that quickly address and resolve customer's issues. Feeders.com is an effort to boost the capabilities of a newly launched restaurant that provides online food delivery services. Feeders currently are being operated in a single city. They don't have much muscle in allocating massive sums of money for improving customer experience, and their complaint management is also incapable of managing compliments quickly. The venture is in infancy; therefore, the quick attention to complaints can provide a competitive advantage. Also, having a well-functioning complaint management system can facilitate a healthy flow of information within the organization.
Feeders will integrate an online complaint management system in the form of a portal on its site. With the site, users will be able to provide feedback related to the taste, food delivery, and any other issues. The integrated mechanism, then, automatically sorts the complaints. Moreover, the constructed portal will serve as a bridge between customers and the restaurant staff. Presently, the team manages complaints manually, which consumes a considerable amount of time.
The website of the restaurant is also not upgraded. So, the team is required to redesign the site and in order to improve its user experience. The program will automatically schedule the complaints to notify the right person. Proven and time-tested methods were utilized in the design and development of feeders.com. Languages like HTML, CSS, PHP, and MySQL are widely popular languages that are commonly used to execute such operations.
To execute the project on time with no errors, a significant amount of attention has been given to each and every phase of the project. Effective project management, neat and clean coding, excellent test planning, and detailed documentation helped the team deliver a high-quality, fully functioning web portal.
The project planning report outlines the steps to develop a new company website. Step 1 identifies that a website will boost sales and recognition by providing product information, availability, and payment options online. Step 2 defines the project scope as providing online transactions and ensuring security before launching by May 8, 2015. Step 3 involves fact-finding through surveys and user testing to understand customer wants. Step 4 analyzes costs, benefits, and technical requirements. Step 5 evaluates the feasibility from operational, technical, economic, and scheduling perspectives. Step 6 recommends moving forward with hiring a web vendor to develop the site within budget and timeline.
The document discusses how lean principles can be applied across an entire enterprise to create value for customers. It emphasizes identifying and aligning value streams across design and manufacturing. Removing waste through continuous flow and pull systems is key. Integrating people, processes, and IT helps overcome challenges. E-business is important for reaching new markets and tightening supply chain linkages to enable the lean enterprise.
Digital Transformation and the Marketing ProfessionalMatthew W. Bowers
Defining and understanding digital transformation and the marketing role. How can marketing drive transformation? what are the tasks, strategies and things that can help.
By delving deeply into customer experience, business process design and operating model change, organizations can more effectively move from 'doing' digital to 'being’ digital.
Gwinnup Communications helped Therma-Tru with several marketing projects including redesigning their trade show booth structure, improving their lead fulfillment process, redesigning their website, establishing marketing communication timelines for product launches, creating a database to track marketing projects, and improving their plant tour experience and showroom. The case studies illustrate how Gwinnup approaches challenges through exploring options, testing solutions, and collaborating with clients to implement improved processes and strategies.
Mobile Web – Strategy for Enterprise Success ijwscjournal
Today, enterprises are faced with increased global competition in an environment where customers are demanding faster delivery, better service and also want to gain significant and immediate business value by increasing productivity and reducing operational cost.
Spurred by unprecedented customer demand, each Industry cluster has developed its own source of comparative advantage. Even within a single organization, the business value chain is geographically fragmented. Such diversification and fragmentation of value chain drives the need for cross-platform Web applications over mobile channel. Mobile Web is the next logical transition in this evolutionary process and Mobile Web applications will continue to gain more prominence in the enterprises not just to improve the return on investment in their existing system landscape, but also to expand global reach and improve operational efficiency of their mobile workforce.
This paper outlines the critical business needs to rapidly create flexible Mobile web solutions across all lines of business. The paper enlightens the benefits offered by enabling web applications on Mobile devices and also addresses the current business challenges in developing Mobile Web applications.
This paper is intended for all business domains irrespective of application portfolios.
Mobile Web – Strategy for Enterprise Successijwscjournal
Today, enterprises are faced with increased global competition in an environment where customers are demanding faster delivery, better service and also want to gain significant and immediate business value by increasing productivity and reducing operational cost.
Spurred by unprecedented customer demand, each Industry cluster has developed its own source of comparative advantage. Even within a single organization, the business value chain is geographically fragmented. Such diversification and fragmentation of value chain drives the need for cross-platform Web applications over mobile channel. Mobile Web is the next logical transition in this evolutionary process and Mobile Web applications will continue to gain more prominence in the enterprises not just to improve the return on investment in their existing system landscape, but also to expand global reach and improve operational efficiency of their mobile workforce.
This paper outlines the critical business needs to rapidly create flexible Mobile web solutions across all lines of business. The paper enlightens the benefits offered by enabling web applications on Mobile devices and also addresses the current business challenges in developing Mobile Web applications.
This paper is intended for all business domains irrespective of application portfolios.
Mobile Web – Strategy for Enterprise Success ijwscjournal
Today, enterprises are faced with increased global competition in an environment where customers are demanding faster delivery, better service and also want to gain significant and immediate business value by increasing productivity and reducing operational cost.
Best practices for launching site redesignsAlex Grinyayev
The document provides best practices for minimizing problems when launching a website redesign. It recommends engaging users during the design process through techniques like online card sorting to improve design. It also suggests previewing the new design with users well in advance and collecting feedback. Additionally, it advises educating executives on what to expect in terms of issues like call center spikes. Proper preparation of call centers is also important to handle expected short-term traffic increases. Following user research, usability testing, and being open to delaying the launch if needed can help ensure a high quality redesign.
This chapter focuses on the execution of e-business projects and emphasizes the importance of tightly coordinating tactical execution to support the overall strategy and vision. It outlines a process for e-business tactical execution that includes defining projects, establishing teams, developing plans, managing requirements, and adopting and measuring outcomes. Successful execution requires addressing both technical capabilities and organizational readiness, maintaining communication, and focusing on customer needs and pain points.
Ken Wong is seeking a director level role providing technology solutions. He has over 20 years of experience managing projects and technology teams in the banking, telecommunications, and insurance industries. Some of his key accomplishments include defining a 5-year technology roadmap that delivered business objectives, managing successful product launches, and architecting customer migration programs involving billions in daily transactions.
1. 1
Keeping Customers Happy While Making Major Website Improvements
Chris Noonan Sturm, PMP1
1United States Mint, 801 9th St. NW, Washington D.C. 20220;
chris.noonansturm@usmint.treas.gov
ABSTRACT
With more than $300 million in numismatic Web sales annually, the United States
Mint is one of the top 100 retailers by volume in the nation. This case study describes
how Agile, iterative improvements to a federal bureau’s website with an e-commerce
component -- usmint.gov -- were made over a period of more than one year starting in
Fall 2012 to improve the customer experience. Project management challenges in-
cluded gaining buy-in from stakeholders, coordinating contractors, mitigating risks to
outdated core technology, communicating changes to the media without negative re-
action and to customers without a reduction in sales or satisfaction. Results included
positive media reaction, a dramatic reduction in customer complaints, and, most im-
portant, a 94 customer satisfaction rating from ACSI, one of the highest ratings in the
federal government and higher than many private industries.
Problem and Opportunity
The United States Mint’s website – usmint.gov – has two components that
serve two major functions: inform the public about the bureau’s mission and opera-
tions (information website), and sell numismatic products to the public (e-commerce
website). These two functions are supported by two separate website infrastructures
and contractors. The e-commerce site, which provides 78% of total numismatic sales,
suffers from an aging infrastructure and outdated customer experience, putting the
business at risk and causing many customer complaints. To resolve this, the Mint em-
barked on a long-range plan to modernize the entire e-commerce business solution,
including non-web systems, which will take at least two years.
As a short term solution, the Mint Web Team launched its Web Improvement
and Integration Project in Fall 2012 to make Agile, iterative improvements to both the
e-commerce and information websites. The goals of the project: 1) improve the front-
end customer experience, or user experience (UX) as it’s known in the field, and cus-
tomer satisfaction with the website without negatively impacting the antiquated core
technology of the e-commerce website; 2) prepare the media and customer base for
the larger website change coming in the future by introducing them to smaller, itera-
tive website changes; 3) buy time and goodwill of customers by improving the web-
site as much as possible in the short term until the new e-commerce solution launches
in late 2014.
A few words about the word “iterative” in the context of this project are nec-
essary. Website refresh projects, especially those related to design and functionality
2. 2
improvements, are often executed on a grand scale as web redesign projects with con-
crete lifespans, funding, etc. This is often termed the “once and done” or the “launch
and leave” approach. (McGovern, 2013) However, as any savvy website manager
knows, a website is never done and can never be left – it’s ever an exercise in contin-
uous quality improvement. (McGovern, 2007) The best, most effective approach to
managing and improving a website is to make changes iteratively, implementing
small improvements over time that as a whole make a substantial difference for the
customer experience. In this sense, the Web Improvement and Integration Project is
iterative in that there is no great reveal, but a series of small reveals, all of which add
up to a much better whole.
The project is also iterative, in the Agile sense, in that it regularly involves
customers in usability testing of concepts for new interface designs such as a new
online shopping cart and new product description pages. The customer story is critical
to the clarifying the goals of each improvement, to collaborating with internal cus-
tomers, to conveying development and design tasks to the contractors, and to com-
municating with media and customers. Throughout, the team is open to any modifica-
tions to requirements at any time within the product schedule. Web work, due to its
never-done nature, lends itself to an Agile approach, even if it’s not executed perfect-
ly. (McLachlan, 2013) As General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the architect of the D-Day
invasion of Europe during World War II, is often quoted to have said, “Plans are use-
less, but planning is essential.”
Analysis, Pain Points, and Constraints
The United States Mint is very robust about constantly tracking customer sat-
isfaction and integrates the customer into many facets of its numismatic business. The
Mint conducts in-person focus groups around the country, does phone and online sur-
veys, and performs usability studies – all on an annual basis. These practices provide
the Web Team with ample data to review and analyze to identify customer pain points
with the e-commerce and information websites. The team reviewed past usability
studies on previous designs, analyzed metrics and customer emails, gathered input
from the Mint’s Call Center representatives, and consulted internal stakeholders. Res-
olutions to the pain points were identified, prioritized, and a tentative schedule devel-
oped that was open to change. The sprint for each improvement was usually a month
and was not necessarily related to the previous one or the next one. The pain points
and remediation improvements covered the gamut and included issues with infor-
mation architecture, site navigation, editorial content, page design, functionality de-
sign (buttons and forms), images, search, and more.(Nielsen, 2007). The major pain
points included:
Inconsistent and confusing site navigation: usmint.gov had three different site-
wide navigation schemes, which changed depending on whether the customer
3. 3
was on the Information site, the E-commerce site, or the Education site (for
teachers)
Home page carousel with no user controls and deployed with Flash (not mo-
bile friendly)
Separate site searches for information and e-commerce sites and no best bets
Confusing and redundant product release schedule pages
Product description pages with few images, small images, no zoom, and too
much text, and no ability to cross-sell / upsell products (you might also like)
Confusing shopping cart pages that did not conform to industry standards
Poor, confusing error messaging
The team faced several constraints during the project. First, usmint.gov is essen-
tially two websites managed by two contractors – one managing the e-commerce site
and one managing the information site. Implementing changes that cross both sites
required close coordination and communication across the two contractors, which
was not current practice.
Second, the existing, antiquated technology of the e-commerce website imposed
constraints on the scope of the changes. Due to the fragile nature of the underlying
technology, the Web Team had to be careful to limit improvements to the frontend of
the website -- interface, design, and editorial content, the presentation and content
layers. The improvements could not touch business rules, logic and related code. In
addition, the contractor managing the e-commerce site could not make changes “on
the fly.” While the contractor managing the information website could make changes
to that site at any time, the e-commerce contractor could only make changes once a
month during a technical build. Due to the high risk of changes impacting old code,
the contractor must conduct extensive testing before putting even the smallest chang-
es into production. The monthly build constraint, which is not typical in website man-
agement, required much advance planning.
An interesting point can be made here: It’s important for website managers to
understand the layers that comprise a website. Web managers that don’t have a good
understanding of the layers (content, presentation, code, database, infrastructure, net-
work, etc.) may believe that there are limits to what they can do to improve the cus-
tomer experience. In actuality, improvements can usually be made constantly to the
aspects that have the most impact on the customer – the front end content and design
that the customer interacts with and reacts to. The layers of a website can be defined
differently, depending on the point of view, but the point is that knowing they exist is
important. (Heilmann, 2005). Understanding the layers enables the manager to be
more proactive in working with contractors. Bring proposed improvements to them –
don’t wait for them to take the initiative – and reassure them that what you propose
won’t hurt their infrastructure.
Stakeholder Involvement and Communications
4. 4
The e-commerce website is critical to the Mint’s numismatic business, which
involves the sale of collectible coins, medals, and bullion. As such, many internal
customers have an extremely critical stake in any changes to the website’s content
and design. And any change, even for the good, brings risk. Without the internal cus-
tomers’ input, feedback, and support, the Web Improvement and Integration Project
would fail. The most critical internal customers are the Product Managers, who over-
see all aspects of a numismatic product’s lifecycle, and Customer Operations, which
is responsible for customer interactions involving commerce transactions, including
the Call Center.
To regularly involve these stakeholders, all proposed web improvements were
presented and discussed at bi-weekly web communications meetings. Design mock-
ups (or comps) of new interfaces and pages were presented for comment and feed-
back. In many cases the feedback was actionable and fed refinements to the new
screens. The process also helped internal customers become comfortable with the
concept of constant and continuous improvements to the website, a new approach in
their experience.
During these internal collaborations, it was more effective to bring a proposal
to the table to get discussion flowing rather than a blank sheet of paper asking for re-
quirements and ideas. It’s difficult to overstate how important design mock-ups of
new screens were for communicating with all involved. The mock-ups, of very high
quality and created by a web designer, enabled the team to tell the customer experi-
ence story in a powerful, easy-to-understand fashion and obtain buy-in. More im-
portant, they were critical to showing the contractors exactly what the requirements
were for the customer experience. The moral: Use images to communicate about
change whenever possible.
One of the most important sections of any e-commerce website is the shop-
ping cart. If the cart is confusing, unclear, and hard to understand when filling out
forms, a sale can be lost. Industry standards and conventions for how the shopping
cart customer experience works have evolved, and customers expect online stores to
conform to those standards. Unfortunately, the Mint’s e-commerce site’s shopping
cart did not continue evolve, so its screens were trapped in time. Because these
screens are so important, usability tests were conducted with customers to gather
feedback and input on the new shopping cart before it was launched. (Biddle, 2013)
They provided excellent feedback on problems with screen progression and editorial
content. Customers welcomed the new shopping cart design with more white space,
less clutter, more efficient use of text, product images, and industry standard ap-
proaches. (See Figures 1 and 2.)
5. 5
Figure 1: Old shopping cart screen
Figure 2: New shopping cart screen
6. 6
Public Outreach and Messaging
Changing the design and functionality of a public website is challenging.
Website managers don’t have the luxury of taking the website down for a while to
make changes. Like electricity, the site has to be available 24/7/365. So changing a
public website is like putting new tracks down in front of the train while it’s roaring
down the track with passengers aboard.
And visitors accustomed to using a site a certain way can be confused by
changes to the familiar, which can have a negative impact on customer satisfaction
and on business. You are moving the customer’s cheese. Even if it’s better cheese,
it’s different cheese. They may not like it.
To complicate matters further, the Mint’s customer base skews older – 61 per-
cent of Mint customers are 55 or older and 30 percent are 65 or older. Senior web us-
ers have their own special requirements when it comes to meeting their customer ex-
perience needs. According to Nielsen, half of seniors in a study keep a cheat sheet of
instructions for how to use the websites they visit often. (Nielsen, 2013)
Lastly, the Mint’s every activity is very closely watched and reported upon
daily by the numismatic trade press and bloggers such as Coin World, Numismatic
News, Mint News Blog, CoinNews.net, Coin Update, and more. Any change in the
Mint’s website is quickly reported and commented upon.
To mitigate these issues, the centerpiece of the communications plan was the
development of a “visual tour” for each major improvement rollout. A visual tour is
several screenshots of the new web pages with annotations calling out what is new
and explaining its value to customers. The tours educate internal stakeholders and the
Call Center, who rely on the tours explain web changes to customers. The visual tour
for each rollout is shared with Public Affairs staff in advance of the deployment so
they can send it to the trade press in advance of their print deadlines. The press then
publish the screenshots in their print publication and online. This enlists the numis-
matic media as a partner in educating customers about upcoming changes. All visual
tours are also published on the Mint’s website. (See Figure 3.)
7. 7
Figure 3: Visual tour with annotations explaining new Product Description web
page.
Results
The first substantial website improvements rolled out in September 2012 and
continued almost monthly until February 2013, when the pace slowed to every other
month or so. Customer compliments began coming in, the flow of customer com-
plaints dropped, and positive media coverage began. Coin World lauded the im-
provements in an editorial titled “Mint makes improvements that show revived cus-
tomer focus” and About.com’s numismatic guide wrote “I like these new website
changes and I hope they continue over the coming months and years. Finally, the
Mint is starting to show that it considers the customer to be ‘number one.’ ”
But the most impactful result is a sustained improvement in website customer
satisfaction scores based on the Foresee customer survey taken by visitors to us-
mint.gov over the past two years. In February 2012 the website’s ACSI score was 76.
But by the end of 2012 it was up to 80 or higher, and stayed at that level for almost
two years. Analysts say that an increase of five points, and then sustaining the im-
provement, is a significant achievement.
In February 2014, the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) an-
nounced that the Mint was among the top federal websites for customer satisfaction in
2013 with a 94 rating, saying that “the very best federal agency services continue to
rival the private sector.” This finding was based on interviews with 1,448 users cho-
sen at random and contacted by phone and email. (American Customer Satisfaction
Index, 2014).
8. 8
High customer satisfaction with the website is critical because it is deeply
connected to the Mint’s strategic goal to responsibly expand the numismatic program
and to federal requirements to use the web to communicate to the public about mis-
sion and operations. Some 78% of numismatic sales come from the catalog website,
so keeping customers satisfied and positively engaged in using the website is critical
to sustaining online sales and revenue.
The other silver lining to the project? It cost the Mint no additional outlay in
funds or task orders. All work was conducted by federal staff and contractors within
the terms of their existing contracts.
Conclusion
Websites are organic, imperfect, and absolutely essential to almost every or-
ganizations’ mission. While large web projects will always be with us, it’s a nimble
web manager who is able to make lemonade on a regular basis from lemons he or she
may have inherited, using analysis and iterative approaches to change the customer
experience for the better. She/he should not be shy about shaking up the status quo,
because a static website is often an ineffective website. With strong outreach and vis-
ual communication to internal and external customers, the website manager may very
well find audiences open to, even excited about change. Keeping the media involved
early and often can result in a powerful partner in selling the benefits of change to
customers. And thanks to the Agile principles of focus on the customer and rapid de-
velopment, results are seen in weeks rather than years.
REFERENCES
American Customer Satisfaction Index (2014). “Citizen Satisfaction for Federal Gov-
ernment Falls as Users Encounter Difficulties with Government Websites.”
http://www.theacsi.org/news-and-resources/press-releases/press-2014/press-
release-federal-government-2013
Biddle, Toby (2013). “Shopping Cart Usability: Why a simple, honest checkout pro-
cess (usually) wins.” UX Magazine
http://uxmag.com/articles/shopping-cart-usability
Heilmann, Christian (2005). “Three Separated Layers of Web Development? Think
Again.”
http://christianheilmann.com/2005/06/16/three-separated-layers-of-web-
development-think-again/
McGovern, Gerry. (2013). “Changing the Launch and Leave culture.” New Thinking
http://www.gerrymcgovern.com/new-thinking/changing-launch-and-leave-culture
McGovern, Gerry. (2007). “The Web is Messy.” New Thinking
http://www.gerrymcgovern.com/new-thinking/web-messy
McLachlan, Gordon (2013). “Applying Agile Development to Web Projects.”
http://8gramgorilla.com/applying-agile-development-to-web-projects/
Nielsen, Jakob (2007). “10 High-Profit Redesign Priorities.”
http://www.nngroup.com/articles/10-high-profit-redesign-priorities/
9. 9
Nielsen, Jakob (2013). “Seniors as Web Users.”
http://www.nngroup.com/articles/usability-for-senior-citizens/