How to help a UX team ahead of a new project

There are a few things ahead of a project kick-off that you can do to help your new UX team hit the ground running.

Install observation software

Being able to observe first-hand what users are doing on your platform is always going to trump asking people questions. You can fundamentally see where people are abandoning a process, miss-clicking a link or confusion over an unexpected interaction.

We always fall to Hotjar to help us observe users but also see scrolling behaviours and click maps.

Get your analytics in order

Google analytics is usually the platform installed but is regularly under utilised by owners that it is usually not telling us much in the way of what is happening. Make sure that you have your goals set up, events properly triggered and traffic filtered if you have a platform serving multiple purposes. E.g. Acquisition of new customers vs pre-existing customers logging in.

Gather your project team

There will be an abundance of information already available in your business or organisation. The individuals who hold this information need to be brought together to make sure that we aren’t repeating any unnecessary work or missing a valuable insight which could unlock a product defining solution.

These same individuals will also have a stake in the new product and making sure they are brought along on the journey will make things better and easier for internal politics as well as the end users.

Create a list of engaged users

“Our users/members/customers are highly engaged so we shouldn’t have an issue getting feedback.”

Result from this statement: 2 survey entries.

We have been in this position many times. Make sure that you are engaging your users early on so that there is enough time to build a solid list of users we can approach for feedback and testing. Sometimes this will involve incentivising but there is nothing wrong with that as the value you get back will be beyond what you need to get signed off through finance.

A simple way to start is using micro surveys through Hotjar asking a simple question that adds value to our process from day one e.g “why did you visit this website today?”. Once engaged you can follow up with an invitation to share their email for some larger survey and an entry into a prize draw.

It works. We had over 104 people sign up for research using this method without the incentive.