Daily Research News Online no. 1329 - New Website Evaluation Platform from Netusability

New Website Evaluation Platform from Netusability

December 18 2001

'Launching a new business in the present climate is a challenge, but we have identified a strong need for an integrated online measurement solution,' said Peter Chaplin, Chief Executive Officer, Netusability. 'The market is scattered with fragmented offerings, measuring the old metrics, rather than providing businesses with real insight into performance and ROI. Netusability is well positioned to address this issue with software and services that use the task-model approach, focusing on the alignment of business online goals with visitor tasks, to ensure businesses are providing a good online experience for customers whilst maximizing website profitability.'

Netusability has also acquired all of the assets and intellectual property of Troba, Inc., so adding a San Francisco office and 10-strong team in the US. One of the key values that Troba provides is continual monitoring of real customers conducting real business on a website. This website monitoring product, along with the usability testing product, that form part of Netusability's Customer Experience Platform, will roll out in January 2002.

In all, the suite will offer a range of compatible and complementary software solutions to fit into a business's website profitability improvement programme, including:

Website monitoring (Netu Monitor) - Monitors site visitors as they attempt to complete real tasks that affect critical business goals, measuring the impact on the goals, and highlighting problem areas for further investigation. Additionally, the monitoring software provides suggested fixes to help prioritise development and usability efforts.
Usability testing (Netu Analyst) - Enables test participants from anywhere in the world to evaluate websites by performing set-tasks with an innovative onscreen approach.
Online research (Netu Researcher) - Enables recruited or retained customer panels to evaluate websites by performing specific set-tasks. Tasks can be set to include attitudinal questions, allowing eBusinesses to question customer behaviour and understand the perceptions held by their target audience.

Netusability also offers a fast-track 'Jumpstart' service for website evaluation. Expert consultants work closely with business managers to understand their goals, and then map out their website in the form of a task model, matched with these goals. For example, a business goal may be to 'sell online'; and a typical visitor task may be to 'find and buy book'. Using accepted research disciplines, along with tools from the Netusability software suite, the service aims to help businesses understand customer online behaviour, pinpoint problems that may be affecting sales, customer retention etc, and make relevant changes to the site.

Headquartered in London, UK, along with the newly-opened San Francisco office, Netusability employs a 35-strong workforce and is looking to expand into other regions over the next few months.

All articles 2006-22 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas unless otherwise stated.