Generating Insights: Using Competitive & Market Assessment to Shape Your Content Strategy

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AGENDA

1.  Introduction

2.  Competitive Assessment Overview

3.  Step 1: Getting Started

4.  Step 2: Gathering Data

5.  Step 3: Analyzing Results

6.  Step 4: Creating Recommendations

7.  Q-and-A

01 INTRODUCTION Content strategy overview

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§ Senior Manager, Content Strategy at SapientNitro in Chicago, IL

§ 15 years experience in content, digital and communications strategy

§ Previous clients and employers include Allstate, Sears, HSBC, Walgreens and Northern Trust

§ Passionate about large enterprise sites (including intranets) and exploring the intersection of business and audience needs

ABOUT LAURA BLAYDON

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ABOUT SAPIENTNITRO INDUSTRY-LEADING CLIENTS PARTNER WITH SAPIENTNITRO

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CONTENT STRATEGY AT SAPIENTNITRO

Content strategy is the systematic, thoughtful approach to surfacing the most relevant, effective and appropriate content at the most opportune time, to the appropriate user, to achieve a company’s strategic business objectives.

Content Governance

Content Delivery

Content Experience

What is the content experience for the end user? What goes into a digital solution, and to which user(s) is it targeted?

What model is necessary to acquire, create, maintain and optimize content?

What operational processes and mechanisms are required to ensure the continued success of content?

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CONTENT STRATEGY LIFECYCLE

SapientNitro’s approach to content strategy provides a flexible framework for achieving content success.

Building from this approach, we’ve tailored a process to fit the unique needs, goals and focus for any content project.

02 COMPETITIVE ASSESSMENT OVERVIEW Who needs a competitive assessment, and why

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COMPETITIVE ASSESSMENT: WHAT IS IT?

§  An in-depth look at direct and indirect competitor experiences, generally conducted during the project discovery phase

§  An exercise to inform an understanding of one’s relative position in the marketplace and identify gaps and areas of opportunity

§  A targeted view of digital (desktop, email, mobile, social experiences) and non-digital (print, in-store, call center) experiences

§  A complement to other research activities including user research, persona creation and stakeholder research

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WHEN IS IT NECESSARY?

A competitive assessment is needed when:

§  An organization is just starting up, is entering new markets or is introducing new products or services

§  An established business is looking for a way to benchmark against peers and “change the game”

§  New data is needed, either to evaluate new channels and/or competitors, or to bring findings up to date

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WHY IS IT IMPORTANT?

Competitive assessment:

§  Provides a broad view of what others are doing and how they’re doing it

§  Yields insights that can be used to inform tactics and to define an overall strategic approach

§  Offers valuable perspective on creating a truly differentiated strategy

§  Provides a baseline so that future performance can be measured and monitored

03 STEP 1: GETTING STARTED Ensuring your assessment is set up for success

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When determining the number and type of experiences and competitors to evaluate, keep the following in mind:

§ Your stakeholders will generally have opinions about which competitors should or should not be included.

§ The complexity of your project is highly correlated to the number and type of experiences in scope.

§ Not all competitors will have all the features/functions/content you’re looking to evaluate.

IDENTIFY YOUR COMPETITIVE SET

WITHIN INDUSTRY …

AND/OR OUTSIDE OF INDUSTRY …

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§ Navigation labeling

§ Content organization

§ Information hierarchy

§ Visual design of navigation

§ Interactive charts/tools

§ Mobile/tablet capability

§ User profile

§ Social media integration

§ Feedback forms

§ Error messaging

§ Ease of use

§ Use of expected interaction design conventions

§ Form design

§ Brand alignment

§ Editorial voice and tone

§ Content “personality”

§ Professionalism/credibility

§ Content comprehensiveness and usefulness

§ Content usability

§ Multimedia content

§ Education content

§ Home page content

Areas of focus could include some or all of the following, as determined by business and audience needs, available resources and the project budget/time line.

DEFINE THE ASSESSMENT SCOPE

Navigation & Organization

Features & Functionality Interaction Design Engagement Content

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The resources you have available could drive the scope of the work, and vice versa. A few tips:

§ The more resources are involved, the more communication and coordination is required among team members.

§ A competitive assessment may be broad or deep, but one that is both broad and deep is osten extremely labor-intensive.

§ When working with a diverse team, one discipline will generally need to act as the lead.

DETERMINE RESOURCE NEEDS

Resources could include user experience architects, content strategists, visual designers,

digital strategists, technologists and others.

04 STEP 2: GATHERING DATA Gathering inputs to inform your assessment

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For any competitive assessment, a spreadsheet is your best tool for:

§ Capturing initial, qualitative findings

§ Assigning quantitative scores

§ Ranking competitors by scores

§ Totaling scores by areas of evaluation

§ Identifying overall patterns

LEARN TO LOVE (OR LIKE) EXCEL

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§  Have a well-defined, documented methodology for gathering, evaluating and scoring, including:

§ Amount and type of qualitative data

§ Definition of each score

§ Ensure all parties involved in data-gathering are aligned on the process

§ Refine your approach as needed during the assessment, based on findings

PERFECT YOUR METHODOLOGY

SAMPLE SCORING KEY

Superior !Provides an exceptionally good experience Satisfactory!Meets basic user needs" Unsuccessful!Does not meet basic user needs" Failure!Provides a very negative experience" N/A Lacks a particular feature or quality"

4. 3. 2. 1. 0.

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Even if only one person is gathering and analyzing data, inconsistencies will happen.

You can minimize these by:

§ Setting aside time to review raw qualitative and quantitative data at key points throughout the process to ensure consistency.

§ Performing a final review of data to clean up outliers and edit qualitative findings as needed.

CORRECT FOR INCONSISTENCIES

Product content is robust and features links to related information from individual product pages, which is helpful. There appears to be more detailed product information than virtually any other site in the review. The majority of the non-product content is concentrated in the Resources section, which contains news (primarily press releases), events and research articles (located in the Library section), as well as product information and information geared toward investment professionals. The information that appears to be the most robust and have the most potential value to end users, in the Library section, is organized only by date and author and is therefore difficult to locate by topic, making this section not as useful overall. The news content is similarly poorly organized and therefore not useful, although the number of users who would actually be reading this information is likely limited.

Forms, phone, email options From this:

To this:

Hmm … which one did the content strategist write?

05 STEP 3: ANALYZING RESULTS Identifying key insights and patterns

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Goals for your analysis include the following:

§  Identifying patterns in the data for each competitor, and for the competitive set

§  Highlighting overall themes that can be used to frame the analysis and guide recommendations

§  Finding any outliers in the data, which could be the result of a unique competitor or inconsistencies in the evaluation process

ANALYSIS GOALS

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Qualitative assessment involves reviewing detailed findings and identifying themes, both within each competitor’s experience as well as across the competitive set.

Excerpts reveal positive and negative findings:

The home page main feature uses unnecessary animation to present some of the product information. The drop-down in the main navigation contains the entire product catalog and is overwhelming. Product landing pages are confusing and exhibit poor information architecture.

The site contains a very confusing, disjointed presentation of product information. Product listings are inconsistent in multiple places. Product detail pages offer plenty of information, but they are also poorly formatted. PDFs are completely separate from the rest of the product information.

Competitor #4: Competitor #3:

The site devotes the entire "above the fold" area on their site to guiding users to product detail pages and analysis tools. Product detail pages provide very robust information and are easily digestible. Related documents are easily accessed in the sidebar of each page.

Competitor #1

QUALITATIVE ASSESSMENT

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An effective quantitative assessment requires “horizontal” and “vertical” analysis across competitors and areas of evaluation.

QUANTITATIVE ASSESSMENT     Client   Compe+tor  1   Compe+tor  2   Compe+tor  3   Compe+tor  4   Compe+tor  5  Interac+on  Design  Error  messaging   3   4   4   1   2   3  Interac3on  visual  design   2   3   4   1   2   1  Ease  of  use   3   2   3   1   1   2  Uses  common  design  conven3ons   2   2   4   2   2   2  Form  design   2   3   4   3   3   2  Average  score   2.4   2.8   3.8   1.6   2   2  Naviga+on  and  Organiza+on  Naviga3on  labeling   2   3   3   2   2   2  Content  organiza3on     2   2   2   2   2   2  Memorability   3   2   3   2   1   2  Informa3on  hierarchy   2   3   4   1   2   2  Naviga3on  visual  design   2   3   3   1   1   2  Average  score   2.2   2.6   3   1.6   1.6   2  Content  Product  informa3on   3   4   4   2   2   2  Comprehensiveness  and  usefulness   2   4   2   2   3   2  Content  usability   2   2   3   1   2   2  Mul3media  content   2   4   3   2   1   1  Research/educa3on   2   4   2   1   3   2  Home  page   3   3   3   2   2   2  Average  score   2.33   3.5   2.83   1.67   2.17   1.83  Features  and  Func+onality  Interac3ve  charts/tools   0   4   4   3   0   2  Tablet/phone   2   3   3   3   1   2  Account  system   1   3   4   3   2   2  Social  media  integra3on   3   1   2   2   1   3  Feedback  mechanism   1   1   1   1   1   2  Average  Score   1.4   2.4   2.8   2.4   1   2.2  Personality  Brand  strength   2   3   3   2   2   2  Editorial  voice  and  tone   2   3   3   3   2   2  User  engagement   2   3   3   1   2   2  Professionalism/credibility   2   4   3   2   3   3  Average  score   2   3.25   3   2   2.25   2.25  OVERALL  SCORE   2.08   2.92   3.08   1.84   1.8   2.04  

06 STEP 4: CREATING RECOMMENDATIONS Determining an approach based on findings

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1.  Document the high-level themes from your analysis.

2.  List improvement opportunities that relate to each theme and address major gaps identified in your findings.

3.  Show findings in a summary view as well as a prioritization chart, as appropriate to the project.

4.  Know your audience and present findings and recommendations accordingly.

ORGANIZE YOUR FINDINGS

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Where possible, use charts and graphs to illustrate scores and facilitate understanding of results. Also consider whether additional information, such as a feature or tool comparison chart, could be useful.

USE VISUAL ELEMENTS

Client  

Compe+tor  1  

Compe+tor  2  

Compe+tor  3  

Compe+tor  4  

Compe+tor  5  

Establish a visual language throughout final deliverable(s), and use charts and graphs to illustrate key comparisons.

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Visual references are useful for orienting your audience to the specific components of an experience your findings reference, as in the following financial services example.

PROVIDE VISUAL EXAMPLES

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Organizing findings by business objective, priority and feasibility allows stakeholders to see a path to immediately implementing “low-hanging-fruit” recommendations.

Sample recommendations (excerpt):

ALIGN WITH BUSINESS OBJECTIVES

Business Objectives Recommendations Priority Feasibility

Increase Credibility §  Create more “thought leadership” content.

§  Clearly reference media mentions and awards throughout the experience.

§  High

§  Medium

§  Medium

§  High

Strengthen Brand §  Create editorial guidelines to aid in the creation of clear, consistent content.

§  Audit and update current content to ensure it accurately reflects the brand voice.

§  Define a common vocabulary for use in specific areas.

§  Critical

§  High

§  High

§  Medium

§  Medium

§  High

Improve Customer Satisfaction

§  Provide opportunities for customer feedback. §  High §  Medium

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A well-executed, robust competitive assessment yields valuable insights that can be used to inform short-, medium- and long-term content strategies.

CREATE A PLAN FOR THE FUTURE

If you’re ambitious, you can use assessment findings as a platform to:

§  Jump-start business planning and prioritization sessions

§  Create a case for a more focused, sustained measurement program

§  Develop a strategic road map to guide future content creation, feature/functionality development, authoring capabilities, etc.

§  Secure the necessary resources to successfully execute your plan

07 Q-AND-A

© 2013 SAPIENT CORPORATION | CONFIDENTIAL

THANK YOU! Laura Blaydon Senior Manager, Content Strategy SapientNitro lblaydon@sapient.com