Opinion Business case for a new user-friendly website

• Read time: 4 mins
• Tech level: low
• Key point: a business case bolstered with evidence is more persuasive
• Key resource: go straight to the 'Build a business case tool'.

Building blocks of a business case for a more user-friendly website 

Building a strong business case for a new user-friendly website can be viewed as its own skill set.

In most organisations, especially enterprise-size organisations, knowing the website needs to be rebuilt will not automatically lead to any improvements. A strong business case document can be the difference between a great idea that never eventuates and a realised web transformation project that produces a powerhouse website for your organisation.

Once you have recognised your website needs to be improved, you will probably need to build a business case for a web project or a business case for usability improvements.

Build your business case now

To make this process easier for you, we've created a business case tool that creates business case for you.

Create your own business case

How our online business case builder tool works

Find out more about how the online tool works or go straight to the business case builder. 

What does a strong business case contain?

A strong business case:

• articulates the reasons why the web transformation project is necessary
• provides evidence for the assertions with a list of substantiated facts
• links the project back to the organisation's over-arching business strategy
• covers the expected return on investment (ROI)
• outlines the practical steps that need to happen to achieve the goal
• justifies the costs and convinces senior managers that the project is essential to the development and growth of the organisation

These points can be used as a checklist against your business case before you submit the document to your boss.

Examples of business cases

Extra justification

Highlighting the short-comings of your current website may help to bolster your business case.

Need extra justification to support your business case?

Get a high level review of your current website:

• we’ll review your site
• we'll send you a report, and
• you can then choose the items you’d like to add to your business case.

Costs

If you need to include high-level costings in your website business case, this article talks about potential lost revenue resulting from an under-performing website. There are also these two 'ball-park' calculators that give you a rough idea of costings of a new large website using an enterprise size CMS:

• usability cost calculator
• enterprise website cost calculator.

Where can I get facts from?

Analytics

Use web analytics to measure, collect and analyse data to help build a strong business case. Analytics are a powerful tool for business and market research, and to assess and improve the effectiveness of your website.

Use analytics to gauge traffic and trends to help identify the strengths and weaknesses of your website. You can then use this data in your business case to outline how the new site can address any weaknesses and build on strengths.

Your sales or administration team

Your sales team, or your front line staff, are the conduit between your organisation and its customers. Members of the sales team are often the first to hear what the target audiences like and don’t like about your website. The sales team can also provide valuable feedback on how the website affects their ability to sell to customers. Ask members of your sales team to provide feedback on the current site based on the customer experience. Ask senior sales staff if they have collected any data that could contribute to your business case.

Benefits of working with a local team

Testing with real people

Getting members of your ideal audience to perform tasks on your website leads to a wealth of invaluable insights that will lead to a more successful website. In the world of websites this is called 'User experience' and there are professions that can carry out such research for you and then deliver actionable insights into your website and how to improve it.

Should I get a fresh pair of eyes?

Definitely. Ask a colleague to review your business case. Are they convinced by your proposal and the facts you present to back it up? Does the business case link to the business strategy and substantiate ROI? Can they understand the project plan and how it will be achieved? Do they feel the business case is compelling in terms of how it will contribute to the overall development and growth of the organisation?

Alternatively, you can contact Polished Pixels for assistance in building a strong business case. All of our team members have previously worked in large organisations. We understand the frustrations that come with wanting to, but not being able to improve a company website.

Business case template

To make this process easier, we've put together a business case outline for you below. Feel free to copy and paste it into your own document, then tweak to suit the goals of your organisation.

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Common justifications for a more user-friendly website 

Common feedback is that it’s difficult to find information on our website. Work can be done on our website to make it easier to use for our customers. Just some benefits of usability improvements include: 

1. Cost saving. It’s cheaper and quicker to test and fix a website’s navigation and pages - before time and effort and invested in actually building them or having developers work on them.
2. Less frustration for our potential customers. It should be low effort for your customers to make contact with us, or buy from us.
3. Higher ROI. Evidence based decisions are more likely to result in better revenue. This in-turn means a better return on investment.
4. A better mobile website. A website refresh is a good opportunity to review and improve the experience for our visitors who visit your website using their mobile devices.
5. Branding and credibility. A user-friendly website is a successful website. The perception of our business will be affected by your website – for better or worse.
6. Internal buy-in. It will be easier for our team to promote our business if they are proud to point people to a website they like.

Who could improve the website? 

1. Usability. Polished Pixels are experts in designing user-friendly interfaces and making it easier to find information on websites.
2. Enterprise CMS set up. Polished Pixels are experts in building website using Squiz Matrix CMS.

Business case email template

Copy from here...

Re: Web transformation project

Dear 

As discussed, our website needs to be overhauled to better reflect our offering, while providing a user-friendly experience to our target audiences.

My goal is to engage a vendor that will create a performing website that provides a seamless web experience to our website visitors, including mobile users. Improving the customer experience will build brand value while ensuring return traffic. We also need to ensure the site can be easily updated on an ongoing basis after it has been launched.

I have reviewed several Sydney based web agencies that have successfully worked with large organisations. Polished Pixels is a leading website agency providing expert website services. They specialise in building user-friendly websites for corporate clients, as well as government agencies and universities. Services include web design, enterprise class CMS implementation, website content strategy, usability and customer centric testing and design.

Polished Pixels has worked with many high profile organisations, including IOOF, MGSM, and MAFC. The IOOF website is an impressive example of their work.

Please let me know if you have any questions.

Learn more about user-friendly websites

See how you can make your site more user-friendly and view case studies from previous projects.

If you are interested in building a business case, try our 'Build a business case' tool.