The Business Problem

Gaining new leads within the competitive water treatment consulting industry.

City Water technology (CWT), a family-run water treatment consultancy, came to us with the belief that UX could help them find and retain business leads.

The managing director, Bruce Murray, had been responsible for building ongoing client relationships from before the digital era, but with plans to take a step back into semi-retirement, this strategy was no longer tenable. At the same time, CWT was losing out to tender bids from bigger companies and not getting enough reference work in certain geographical locations to gain inter-state credibility.

I connected with the team’s family-charm that was clearly a big factor in their success, and was excited to discover what drives the industry how learning more might uncover a new business strategy.

Assumptions

Is the problem really within digital?

We knew that CWT’s lead-generating challenge could be a symptom with an array of causes, so our kick-off meeting focused on questioning an array of business practices before we considered the impact of addressing their website.

We asked Bruce and Audrey, about their client engagement processes, tender bids, business strategies and CRM usage. Although there were clearly some areas for improvement, it appeared that they had only considered their online presence to the extent of assigning it to staff-member to do in their spare time, and as such were missing any real digital strategy.

The plan

Pragmatically targeting the low-hanging fruit

We generated a roadmap to cover the two-and-a-half weeks which focused on discovery. We would have been happy to present them with synthesized research in the form of deliverables such as competitive analysis, insights, personas and demographics, but wanted to leave the small company with something they could take away and implement for the sake of quick-wins.

Website Review

Not putting the best foot forward

Doing an evaluation of their home-grown website was our starting point; we wanted to see what story their website told without pre-conceptions.

We logged a website with a T-shaped information architecture whereby the primary information was hidden 3 levels deep. There was extensive usage of industry jargon, an absence of calls-to-action and it was hard for both of us, as laymen, to determine their story or value proposition.

Interestingly, their services contained an array of 'under construction' pages and was 36 items long despite their tagline: ‘water treatment specialists.’ We made some suggestions and set them aside for later:

• Make the CWT home-page clearly state what the company offers and answer users key questions so they aren’t frustrated and leave immediately
• Re-consider which services CWT should prioritize in line with their competencies and business goals
• Upgrade case studies in a digestible & modern format to better reflect CWT’s long-standing reputation.
• Change content structure and re-write copy in plain language, going as far as developing content guidelines
• Re-jig information architecture to be flatter
• Generate a consistent visual look and feel and make design responsive

Competitive Analysis

Attributes of a succesful water treatment consultancy

A competitive analysis helped us locate patterns, industry standards and value differentiators for key players in the surrounding market.

There were a few core pages that CWT had not addressed which were present in all of their competitors websites, including case studies and news/blogs. The presentation of past projects was also a major point-of-difference, something that their primary competitor did very well. Lastly, we learned that a few competitors had client portals to manage projects and keep businesses updated on their work.

Stakeholder & Client Interviews

Getting to the insights that drove ideation

Feature Prioritization

Using stakeholder workshops & impact-effort matrices to determine MVP

We used two methods to determine a vision to minimum viable product; first, we mapped our ideas and implications from research on an impact-effort matrix and finally created low-fidelity mockups of modules in Balsamiq for a prioritization & feedback session with our point-of-contact for the project.

Information Architecture & Modular Components

An integrated and self-referential content strategy

Due to time constraints we ran an open card sort based on the ranked features internally, though it would have been ideal to conduct this with stakeholders and industry clients.

During this process I noticed an opportunity for content to be integrated across modules throughout the website, such that projects, skills & people could be linked and referenced on their requisite pages. This would better enable CWT to promote the names & faces of their staff, show off reference projects and highlight their specialized skills in an interconnected way.

We suggested a tagging system with 3 categories, but had to consider issues that may arise:

• What if an engineer leaves CWT? Either remove/hide their tag or de-emphasize them by greying them out/changing their status.
• What if no currently employed engineers worked on a project? Engineers with overlapping skills could be shown in that place – but this distinction would need to be clear to users.
• What if a service or skill no longer has a competent engineer? Either set skill levels (competent / master) or determine if it’s a current strength or area you want to expand in and train or hire.

Wireframes

Giving the high-impact features form

With a total sprint duration of 2.5 weeks, we were able to perform primary and secondary research, ideate an array of concepts, whittle them down to most impactful and achievable and then present a medium-fidelity solution with detailed documentation and justification. At a high-level, our solution represents:

• A shift from quantity to quality in representing services & case studies
• Taggable modules that reference and support one another, importantly building the profiles of the engineers who will form the relationships that make business happen.
• A way for potential clients to quickly evaluate if CWT can meet their current, and often urgent, need.

Service Need-Finding Tool: Groups services under straightforward industry, outcomes-based, categories (Risk Mitigation, Optimisation, Process Design, Innovative Practices), giving user a broad view of CWT’s capabilities while highlighting those related to their need. These are tied to summaries and calls-to-action.

Case Study Timeline: Showcases CWT’s extensive project experience and ties into the need-finding module to reflect the services being sought by the user. It would cross-reference content from other modules and display notable engagements, successful outcomes, skill expertise and involved engineers.

Expertise & Approach: Provides a concise, branded summary of the company, breaks down CWT’s water treatment expertise into three key pillars (process engineering, optimisation assessments, management systems) and gives users an idea of their client engagement approach. It’s an opportunity to focus on areas of competence as well as promote services CWT might want to branch into.

Our Experts: Builds the profiles of engineers and other staff in the organisation, empowering them as experts who are accessible to manage their client relationships and projects. It also acts as a base to link individuals to skills, case studies, research and contact information.

Book-a-Workshop Module: A dedicated module that enables users to book workshop meetings with CWT engineers. This idea is dependant on CWT formalising workshop format & content (whiteboarding or lunch-and-learn’s).

Impact Visualisation Module: Aggregates stats and visualises the impact of projects. E.g. work on Orange City Council plant = CWT helped X houses receive clean water. This infographic module is dependant on CWT’s ability to consolidate key data.

Location-Specific module: Use geo-targeting to showcase state-based news & engagements, such as research papers or projects, to clients across different markets. This idea is dependant on CWT having enough state-relevant content (beyond the eastern seaboard).

Testimonials: Seek positive reference quotes from clients to act as validations for the user need to mitigate risk and “look good.”