Asos.com

I love this site - too much for my bank balance!

ASOS (As Seen on Screen) is one of the largest online fashion and beauty As well as its own fashion label ASOS.com for women and men, it also offers a range of products from high street brands (e.g. French Connection), premium brands (e.g. Miu Miu) and independent UK designers.

Search, browse & inspire
ASOS has a wide range of products and does well at helping users find what they want by giving a range of searching options. It has a search function which searches through the whole site and is present on every page.

Users can browse by product type (e.g. trousers, skirts…), or brand, by fashion trend, by magazine article the product was featured in, or by celebrity (e.g. view products in the style of Sienna Miller). Users can also select to only view products which are ‘just in’ or products in the sale. Filters are then available to sort by size, colour, price and celebrity style. These filters (and the filters created whilst browsing can be removed again if wished.

ASOS is good at merchandising and through the site the user sees promotions and inspirational links to help guide them to offers and product sets.


Product details screen
The product display is very detailed giving many angles photographs and a zoom and drag function so the user can see all aspects of the product. ‘Catwalk videos’ are also provided for some products.

Very detailed product info given for sizing, material type, care instructions to help the user make the decision.

The returns and delivery policies are very obvious on the page to reassure the user.

Stylist recommendations of products which might fit with this one are also given at this point to push cross-sell opportunities.


Help
A detailed FAQ section is provided and also a ‘How to shop video’ to show users how to use the site, which is great for first time buyers.

eCommerce considerations

A while ago I was thinking about ecommerce sites - here's what I thought!

eCommerce sites will give the highest conversion rates if the following points are considered

User experience and look & feel

* The interface should be intuitive and the navigation should be simple and easy to follow
* Easy and visible access to help files should be given
* The site should be accessible6 for those who are visually or physically impaired

User workflow

* One click shopping should be an option to save user’s time (e.g. Amazon remembers card and delivery details if you want), or if this is not possible, the order and payment forms should be as short and simple as they can be

Search

* Different people like to use websites in different ways so users should be given a choice of how they want to find products. Some people will know exactly what they want so will want a quick, powerful search function. Some people will be less sure and want to be shown a range of the products on offer; these people need good browse functionality. Others will be looking for inspiration, those people may respond well to promotions, merchandising offers and ‘3-pack’ tiles.
* Post search filters are helpful to allow the users to drill down according to what is relevant to them. It is important to understand the users’ motivation and sensitivity. For example sites targeting bargain seekers will benefit from allowing easy filtering by price.

Personalisation

* Targeting particular products or service to users based on information about them gathered from their log in details, cookies, or history of activity on the site. Information and trends gathered from other similar users can also be used. It improves the user experience as they can then access information relevant to them more quickly. It increases the chances of a sale as users do not have to search for items they are interested in.

Customisation

* Allow users to customise the pages they view as they want to and record this information with their user account. This allows the user to remove irrelevant information and arrange content as suits them. An intelligent system will then learn preferences and update personalisation techniques.

User accounts

* Allowing the user to log in to manage their account details helps to keep customer records up to date.
* The account view should let them see their past history of purchases and where current purchases are in the shipping process to reassure users and also provide opportunity to cross-sell.

Relevant supporting content

* Technical information about the product helps users to come to their buying decision, such as sizing, washing or installation instructions.
* The product display should have high quality images. Trends are for sites to use zoom technologies to view the details, rotating images to see all angles, and video to see how a product moves or functions.
* Reviewing systems showing what other buyers in the community think of the product or the company can help to reassure the user of their purchasing decision. This is especially useful in lowering the perceived risk in high involvement purchases where perhaps the value of the purchase is large.
* Customer testimonials work in a similar way, this could be help where the buyer’s reputation could be at stake (e.g. a recruiter advertising on a fish4 wants to know that their brand will be handled correctly).
* Recommendations based on what the user or other similar users have viewed or bought before help to show users around the site and show them more relevant products and give them more choice.
* News and information about the marketplace can set the site up to appear as a market expert. This will drive more traffic to the site as users go there for information as well as improving SEO.

Pricing

* Discounts should be promoted to show users that they are getting the best deals
* Pricing packages will give users more financial options

Channel continuity

* Online and offline experience should complement each other. In a traditional retailer the customer should be able to take products bought online back to store and the store should know what online stocks.

Technical excellence

* The search engine should be powerful and reference all areas of the site, returning relevant results
* Component based system - no section is dependent on another, component can be replaced easily for simple upgrades
* Multivariable testing systems could be introduced so that the design and layout of the site can be optimised for maximum conversion quickly and in some cases by region or user type

Security and reassurance

* To enhance user’s trust of a site it should be obvious that their payment system is secure by using https and a well known payment mechanism such as PayPal or one endorsed by a major bank if the brand is not well known.
* The returns policy should be easy to find and if possible should allow the user to take an unwanted item back to a store.

Communications

* Marketing communications through channels such as email and banner ad should be used to promote new products
* Messages should be targeted and personalised to only give information that users are interested in
* Merchandising tools should be used to give promotions on price points and special deals
* Opt in / opt out procedures should be followed to ensure users are not spammed

Facebook knows all about me!

I think facebook is doing really well with ads, they obviously have so much information about their users so they can put this to use by making sure their advertisments are well targetted and relevant. I recently changed my status to 'engaged', straight away the ads all changed to "get your wedding dress here" / "wedding photography" / "Save the date cards" (what are they?! - that's another post).

To check I tried also changing my status to "Nicki wants a wii" and I got some ads for Wii Sports.

These ads are actually useful to me!

Web advertising - saint or sinner?

As a product manager I want my site to be engaging, well designed, simple to use, include useful content, and fun! I don't think adding tons of pop ups and ads to take up all the space and annoy my users is going to help achieve this.

However, we all need to make money, and our site needs to be commercial. Especially in these dire times.

Recently I had a project to look at my site and produce mockups with the designer for new ad positions.

I think by making keeping to a few rules we can minimise annoyance levels:

• The ads should be consistent - not in different places on each page
• They should obviously be advertisements - we are a personal financial information site which writes many articles about things like new credit cards, mortgages, bank accounts... our jornalists recommend ones they like for real reasons, not because we're being paid.
• We should try to avoid too many on one page, but we need to have some 'above the fold' as those are the ones people pay most for.
• We don't want ads which roll over the whole screen
• If possible we'd like to avoid ads with too much movement (although most do these days)
• The positioning should fit with our new page design, align with our borders and layout
• The content should be relevant to the page content, users don't mind seeing an ad if it's something which might interest them
• Each position should be commercial - if it wasn't going to give sufficient revenue, there's no point in taking up the space

We also have an issue because on our financial comparison page we want users to click on the products we offer there, that makes us the big bucks, not the advertising. Somehow certain moneysupermarkets seem to be able to put hundreds of ads on these pages and still be making a mint but with the amount of traffic they have maybe it is a different situation.

After several meetings and mockups we eventually settled on a banner and an MPU on most pages, keeping them in consistent positions and also fairly standard when compared to what most other similar sites are doing.

Hopefully we won't see a sudden drop in traffic when they go live soon!

In the future I hope we can start looking at other formats and methods other than straight web position ads, maybe like sponsorship of certain areas, or advertising in our video podcasts. These demos by google adsense for video give me a few ideas...

Agile vs. waterfall

First of all, what am I talking about?

The waterfall methodology is a very traditional way of managing software development. this is what I (and countless others) was taught at school and university and is a logical system which fits most projects across all manner of industries and business.

It fits the name as the diagram the model produces shows the project flowing from one discrete stage to the next, like a waterfall.

The main stages usually are:

Requirements specification
Design
Implementation
Testing
Installation
Maintenance / feedback

It suits larger companies as it's easy to report on, you can track what stage a project is at, and the idea is that it should give certainty around when the project will be delivered. The requirements and design stage are very important and produce many detailed and accurate documents about the project. Once the requirements have been signed off, they should not be changed. This means that someone new coming in should be able to understand all the details of the project simply from the documentation. It's good for multinationals who may have large development teams over several countries, everyone needs to be able to refer back to the same, correct set of documents.

Agile, on the other hand, as it's name suggests, tries to be a lighter and quicker method for managing projects which enables a team to change direction if necessary.

It places much less emphasis on documentation and more on face to face communications and producing working software quickly. The project will be broken down into smaller tasks which can be developed in 'iterations' (small 2 to 4 weeks worth of development). These tasks will produce prototypes or pieces of working code which can then be shown to the customer or internal business owners to get more feedback. You don't need to wait till the end of the project for feedback.

Within an iteration, the requirements for the team should not change, but requirements for the project as a whole can change and will feed into subsequent iterations.

The process involves daily short 10-15 minute meetings (scrums) for all of the small team to discuss what they are doing and any blocks they are facing. Business owners or customers can come along to those meetings but they shouldn't get involved in the discussion, they can come to the iteration planning to demo/review meetings to see what has been produced and what is planned for the next iteration. A simple addition I've found in my current role is to have the whiteboard which shows each task in the iteration and at what stage the task is at (to do, doing, done, blocked...), in a very visible place like the kitchen or the reception area. No-one can say they don't know what's going on!

I've found that the agile methodology works best for web development in smaller companies. The nature of most web projects mean that requirements are difficult to pin down 6 months or a year before (as the waterfall method would need). In the time taken between signing off the requirements and the project being completed the online market may have changed, the internal structure of a company may have changed, a competitor may have entered... it is a fast moving space. So developing in an agile way means that a team can adapt as necessary. It's still very important to have a vision and high level roadmap of where you want the product to get to, but the details of that don't need to be set in stone.

However, I did say "in smaller companies". I have worked on web projects in large companies and this is a different kettle of fish. In the larger organisation where your developers may be in another country, it could be difficult to have the level of face to face communication needed. Also many corporates have their own project management standards, it can be difficult for a central admin group to understand why your team doesn't need to (or can't) spend time filling it's hundreds of forms which the rest of the project will do. They need to sign off your work and to report up the progress of your team and they can't do that without you jumping through the same hoops as everyone else.

But for in a small, co-located team, it works well and is really motivating to see functionality being delivered often, and to know that what you ultimately produce will suit the needs of the customer and the market.

What is a product manager?

Weve been talking about this a bit at work recently so thought I'd record my thoughts here too...

I think it is always going to be difficult to give a definitive answer to what is a product manager in all cases, because all companies and teams have different structures and influences.

In previous roles I’ve been called a product manager, a business analyst and a project manager when really I’ve been doing similar day to day things.

I think some of the traditional tasks of a product manager are:

1. Understand customer needs through research, stats analysis, user groups, interviews…
2. Competitor and market analysis
3. Work with all stakeholders and business owners to create longer term vision and strategy for the product
4. Prioritise requirements, get agreement from the business and provide enough detail for development
5. Act as product expert to answer questions on functionality
6. Communicate out changes to the product and champion the product both internally and externally
   
7. Log feedback and integrate into requirements prioritising process

Exodus

We used Exodus to book our holiday, a trekking holiday specialist. We found them to be well priced, good for information before, and on the trek we were well fed and we had our own group 'toilet tent'. Only problem was that our bags got lost between Nairobi and Kilimajaro airport, so we had to start the trek in clothes from a 'hire shop' (small hut with old clothes they'd found left on the mountain), which wasn't nice, but wasn't really their fault either. The company on the Tanzanian side, African Walking Company, didn't really seem to understand our apprehension at walk up to 6000m in someone's old stockings and a t-shirt, which was a bit frustrating. We got them in the end though, and even though we must have spent an extra £150 on the hire clothes and porters to bring the bags up, it was worth it to have my own gear (especially my North Face Greenland down-jacket which I love to bits and I think actually saved me from getting hypothermia several times).

The holiday also included a few days in Zanzibar, which was a lovely place to relax after the walk, but I wouldn't go there again. I think you get better value, beaches and service somewhere like Thailand. Can't complain though as I did get proposed to on the beach!!! :-)

I quite like the Exodus website. You can see other travellers' reviews of that exact trip, and if you sign in can access community forums to meet the other people on the trip before you go. the forums are a bit clunky at the moment but the idea is there. They also have videos of the trip, and Google Earth videos to show you the route which is a nice touch and got me really excited before going!

Only problem I had with it, although you can book online, you can't then manage your booking or go back and check the details easily. I would have liked to have seen a screen with my booking details, showing dates when I had to do things by (pay deposit, get visa etc), and dates for when I could expect things from Exodus (final joining instructions, kit bags etc). This could be integrated with the existing 'my exodus' part which currently is really only useful for accessing the forums. I did mention this to one of the guys there (I do like to give feedback!) and hopefully they will implement that soon.

Kilimanjaro!

My fiance (Adam) and I recently went on a trip to Tanzania to climb Kilimanjaro. I trained hard but didn't make it right to the top due to altitude sickness. According to wikipedia it's caused by the low atmospheric pressure giving low CO2 levels which causes a rise in blood pH. To me that meant nausea, really dizzy with an awful headache and generally feeling like I was about to die. After walking for 4 days with no problems, on the summit night (we got up at midnight to start, and the temperature dropped to minus 20!) we started at 4700m and at about 5000m I started to have the problems, I carried on to about 5500m, but could continue up to the top (5,895m).

Anyway, I enjoyed the rest of the walk apart from that night. It was an amazing experience, the landscape was like nothing I'd seen before, we got to see a bit of the local culture (the porters are incredible) and the others in our group were a really nice bunch. I got into the camping more than I thought I would, it was nice to be away from everything, but I have to admit I enjoyed the first shower back at the hotel after 7 days!

I would like to try a high hike again sometime, maybe something in the himalayas. Although I'm not sure I'm quite as addicted as Adam who wants to go for a 7000m next!

Running and keeping fit

I enjoy keeping fit with running and love my gym (the third space in Soho - I love it, you can do any class in the world, there's a DJ and it looks like some cool bar rather than a gym) where I'm trying to get more into yoga and pilates to balance out all the running (according to the pilates instructor I'm completely mis-aligned and about to fall apart). I have actually just come back from a yoga class tonight, I got a bit ahead of myself and went to a normal class rather than beginners. With the crazy positions we were getting into I think I will be hurting tomorrow!

I try to run 3 or 4 times a week. Sometimes it's hard (especially if Adam comes with me!), but most of the time I enjoy it once I get out there. I'd like to do this all outside, we have a nice 10k Regents canal route near us, 

but there's not always the time so I sometimes just pop to use the treadmill. this is a bit better on my hips and knees too, which I seem to have problems with every now and then.

The photo is towards the end of my run and when I see this bit of the canal it's great to know there's only a few minutes left! Also this is where the Canadian geese tend to hang out in large gangs, have to be careful not to get too close or they will try to bite your ankles off!!

I like reading Runners World for tips on training, shoes, and forums. But it does look a bit dated now. Also with all these new maps and communities mash ups 

like mapmyrun , cool Garmin GPS running watches, Nike+ web integrated gizmos etc. I generally use gmaps pedometer as it's simple and does the job. I was quite excited about mapmyrun with all the training plans and social side you can set up, but the map routes themselves didn't seem to save properly last time I tried. 

I would have thought Runners World would be thinking about integrating some of this kind of stuff themselves. Hope so!

Brief work history and interests

I've been working mostly in London for about 5 years, in various technology type jobs for Reuters, fish4.co.uk and now The Motley Fool (fool.co.uk). I've focused on website product management and like to keep up to date with what's going on with the internet.

Further back - I took a degree in electronic engineering at Birmingham Uni. I enjoyed the course but decided I wanted to get more into the business side than be a pure engineer.

I have a lot of experience with finance related sites from Reuters and fool.co.uk, and also a big interest in eCommerce and portals from fish4. My latest projects with fool.co.uk include improvements to the mortgages area to increase the number of high quality leads coming through to mortgage advisors, and a review of current and potential ad slots on the site. How to monetize the site further without comprising it's design and usability is always a hard one.

I'm interested in how websites can become not only more usable but also more fun and relevant to your users. I think that's important if you want your site to stand out and for your users to return. I think this can be done through cool design, novel widgets, user generated content techniques such as tagging and social networks, and by allowing personalisation to suit the individual's needs.

That of course means I need detailed understanding of your users, which can be done through creating user profiles and personas to use during requirements gathering, and user testing and workshops to verify those requirements. I've been through varied ways of doing this, from structured 1 on 1 questioning to popping out into Soho with a wireframe idea to see if people get it! This is one of my favourite parts of the job :-)

In terms of processes, I've worked in quite varied positions for very different companies. At Reuters, we were mostly working in quite rigid waterfall project management processes, which I think is needed for the big global software projects there, but when working on websites agile processes can work better though as I've seen at fish4 and fool.co.uk.

I prefer this way of working myself, when done correctly it can be quicker and more flexible. You get small bits of functionality delivered often and as soon as they're ready, and can change direction if needed, rather than waiting for some gargantuan all encompassing master project which maybe have been spec'd 2 years ago and contains functionality which is no longer relevant. The scrum techniques I've been using also mean it's easy for everyone to know what's going on though the quick daily meetings and using visible tracking methods such as whiteboards, shared spreadsheets and team blogs.

It's not for everyone though. Small, co-located teams work best where everyone buys into the methods.

I could go on with these topics but sure I will go into more details with future posts. :-)