We have always looked to user surveys and feedback channels to inform site development and fortunately have always been blessed with our knowledgeable audience willing to share their views on what we are doing right and wrong along the way.

So we were excited to see how ForeSee, which lays claim to a tried and tested algorithm for measuring customer experience, saw the state of play for the current site.

For those not familiar with the ForeSee process, by chunking the site into different areas people could rate their level of satisfaction against them.

Then by linking those levels with indicated future behaviours, ForeSee were able to score the responses in such a way that allows us to focus attention on the aspects of the customer experience that have the biggest impact on our preferred future behaviour.

And for us that means engagement with our content and optimising conversions.

A sneak preview of our new blog homepage, coming soon. 

Working in digital means there’s no doubt our users and customers know what good looks like! As marketers we know that a brand and product is judged by how it’s packaged.

But also as an online publisher, the ability to find and use the content is as important as the content itself when it comes to how well we’re serving our market.

We’re well aware there’s lots we can improve on all these fronts: fresher design, mobile optimisation, easier navigation, better search, and the legacy processes which don’t always make sense… What should we tackle first?

The analysis identified that the biggest impact on customer satisfaction came from the site’s look and feel. It appears the visual appeal, balance of graphics and text, and content readability have the biggest bearing on our satisfaction score.

And the findings of the survey were that, compared to benchmarks for the UK and similar sites, we were found wanting, particularly by first time visitors.


The good news for us is that improved design is central to the site improvements we’ve got underway, so looks like we got our first priority right!

We’ll be continuing to run the survey after the site refresh and hopefully results from that phase will move the marker (and commercial results) in the right direction. We’ll report back then.

In the meantime, we’re sharing the initial presentation on results for the pre-launch phase here so you can explore the findings in a bit more depth.

All of these aspects feed into a product development program we are embarking upon, and we’ll continue to address our trials, tribulations and findings in later blog posts.

If you have experiences of ForeSee or other customer experience analytics tools, please do share! How have you used the findings, and did it live up to expectations?