Background

Enterprise Nation offers events and other member benefits to help entrepreneurs start and grow a business. The community for small businesses has over 70,000 members and 9,000 business experts.

The community members have various levels of expertise and a wide range of user needs. Enterprise Nation needed help to understand their users and how they interact with the website. They wanted existing members to know how to get support and potential members to understand the offering and then sign up.

Approach

Guerrilla interviews

I carried out guerrilla interviews with 14 people during an Enterprise Nation one day event. I took any opportunity to quickly grab people and find out what they thought of Enterprise Nation. Although I had aims for the interviews, I was flexible to tailor my questions to each individual’s circumstances and stage of business.

The findings revealed that most people were not aware of the range of benefits that came with an Enterprise Nation membership. I got a sense of what features people were using and what support they needed to develop their business. After hearing from a range of attendees, the different user groups and their needs started to take shape.

Surveys

From the preliminary findings, I knew what questions to ask in a survey for further insights. I wrote a survey for each user group, built and launched it in Survey Monkey, and promoted it with mailers. I included questions for Net Promoter Score (NPS) and Price Sensitivity. To minimise response bias, I put the score based questions at the start of the survey.

The surveys received 671 responses. I analysed the results to understand how members use their benefits and what they perceived to be the most and least useful aspects of the membership. I used the Van Westerndorp Price Sensitivity Meter to suggest suitable pricing based on improved member benefits. I wrote up my findings from the survey, turning vast amounts of data into meaningful insights with statistical significance. Small business members were most interested in the educational material and discounts, whereas business experts were most interested in marketing opportunities.

The findings helped Enterprise Nation understand their members. The NPS revealed the perceived value of the membership, backed up by insights into member’s backgrounds, reasons for engaging, and the challenges they need to overcome.

Google Analytics

I used Google Analytics to measure the performance of the Enterprise Nation website. In particular, I looked at the user flow of the signup process to identify the stages users dropped off. A number of users were dropping off at the profile details page, where there was a long form. I noted conversion rates from the homepage and start of the signup flow to benchmark ROIs.

Google analytics revealed where issues and opportunities for improvement were. While other research findings indicated why they may have arisen. By combining the findings from various research methods I could describe where issues lied and suggest how to fix them.

Deliverables

Redesigned homepage and signup flow

Working in a team of designers, we agreed the content to persuasively describe the Enterprise Nation offerings and prioritised it according to user expectations. I sketched designs for the homepage and iterated on ideas – including interaction in the page elements to balance the information needs of different user groups.

The finished homepage redesign, conveyed the brand with a new look and feel. A strong information scent and obvious interaction controls ensured that different user groups could discover the content they needed. The new homepage made it clear what Enterprise Nation does, and aimed to help potential and existing members make the most of the support on offer.

The sign up flow was simplified to maximise conversion. Previously, a long list of member benefits were shown in the first step of the signup flow, where they added little value. The redesign brought member benefits onto the homepage as a shorter list of the most attractive benefits. This would entice users to sign up. Furthermore, the long personal details form was shortened to the essentials, to minimise drop offs. After sign up, users were then asked to complete their profile details so that Enterprise Nation could get the statistics it needed on its members, such as diversity.

Return on investment

User analytics indicated that the redesign was hugely successful. A few months after the launch of the new website I measured sign up conversion rates. Direct, paid signup conversion rates of those starting the signup process increased by 154%.

Although it is likely that the redesign played a large part in the improved conversion rates, it is worth considering the impact of outside factors, such as seasonality or marketing efforts. To accurately measure the impact of the redesign, we could have run two live versions of the website and A/B tested the redesign vs the original website. Furthermore, to know how each aspect of the redesign contributed to the change in conversion, an A/B test of the homepage redesign vs signup flow redesign could have been performed.