Usability Consulting 

Over the past decade Reload Consulting staff have worked on some of the largest corporate and government website and intranet usability consulting, user centered design and web usability audit projects in Australia.

Through our involvement at an earlier stage of the website development process, we can assist companies to make an effective implementation of their total eMarketing strategies and improve your Return on Investment (ROI). Our input is both from a qualitative research perspective as well as from solid real-world experience.

Forrester Research estimates several costs of bad website design. The two most striking are:

Loss of approximately 50% of the potential sales from the site as people can't find what they are looking for.

Losing repeat visits from 40% of the users who do not return to a site when their first visit resulted in a negative experience.

Outcomes of our usability consulting programs

We provide our clients with outcome focused and detailed reports that present our findings in a clear and concise way for interpretation at all levels of your organisation.

All reports feature detailed recommendations and are supported by qualitative and quantitative feedback and data results from the various activities.

Our Usability Services

Utilising the latest tools and techniques, we offer a range of usability services to ensure that your website, Intranet or IT software solution effectively meets the needs of your users now and into the future.

Reload Consulting also provides advice on web accessibility issues for websites, Intranets, IT developments and search engines, and make suggestions for compliance with Australian legislation.

Our usability consulting services include:
• Workshops and planning sessions including business and online needs analysis
• Information architecture (IA) consulting
• Market Research including focus groups
• Stakeholder interviews - one on one or within group environments
• Expert assessment including heuristic design evaluation
• Accessibility compliance
• Competitive analysis
• Site surveys using tools that can benchmark data for long term anaysis
• Site log analysis for historical state analysis and evaluaton
• User observation using the latest tools and techniques

Reload Consulting’s usability testing methodology

The Reload Consulting usability testing methodology is our proven method of analysing, auditing and gathering business and customer requirements and turning them into user friendly website designs, Intranet designs, mobile application designs, software solutions and effective online experiences. The process is based around the three core phases below.

 :: Phase 1 Analyse the business & customer requirements
A key step is to identify your goals, business vision and your customers' needs, and analyse how the workflow around these requirements will function and be executed.

We consult with you and your customers to ensure we fully understand your requirements, objectives and goals. This process will then lay the groundwork for a successful project.

Tools used for this phase often include in-depth business consulting including state and needs analysis, web SWOTs, online surveys, focus groups, design heuristic and expert evaluation (including interface design, navigation and content) and other key solutions.

 :: Phase 2 Design and Information Architecture
Reload Consulting staff will develop a new information architecture (IA) menu structure for the website, Intranet or application and then will create several design concepts showing the home page or main screen, and some second-level pages or screens.

For this phase we use tools that are easily changeable (white boards and paper mock ups) and this phase often produces numerous iterations and changes to ensure all stakeholders have the best solution and outcomes. 

 :: Phase 3 Refinement

During this phase, we go back to the key stakeholders and users and gain insight and feedback on these deigns and IA structures.

We ask these users to perform real work tasks and track how they would use the website, Intranet or IT application in real life. Sometimes we need to perform more changes and iterations from Phase 2 above, before further testing and these refinements allow us to comprehensively understand and then meet your business goals, vision and user needs.

Content is also developed during this stage, once the IA and menu structure is agreed to.Tools used throughout this phase might include Card Sorting exercises, surveys, focused groups, interface design tools and so forth.  

We can customise a program to meet your specific requirements. Please contact us for more information.

Usability Consulting Case Study

Creative Business Benchmarker is a joint project between the ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation, the Queensland University of Technology and the Queensland Department of Tourism, Regional Development and Industry.

Reload Consulting has provided consulting services to the project since 2007 and provided a consultancy to engage the needs and requirements of users on the pilot study and also develop a functional requirement specification with the Royal Australian Institute of Architects. 

Key areas of the consultancy included usability workshops, stakeholder needs analysis workshops, online survey software tool selection, user centered Open ID security and authentication requirements and reports. 

Representatives from Reload Consulting met with various stakeholders to identify the needs of their target users and coordinated the business vision and goal setting from a user centered design approach. Reload Consulting also met with web designers, IT developers and hosting providers to ensure a holistic approach to the user focused outcomes.

The outcome was a comprehensive report featuring key recommendations for the user needs, stakeholder requirements and software tool selection to run the pilot. This has enabled a rapid development and turnkey solution for the CBIS pilot and allowed the various stakeholders to meet key criteria and milestone objectives.