 I'm Rob Vane, I'm the creative director at Fullproof. I'm here to talk to you today about how we turn giant leaps into small steps for Suzuki customers. The work that I'm going to show you today was work that we conducted in the UK. And just to give you a bit of context, Fullproof is a UK and Singapore-based experience design consultancy. And almost the year to the day, we were acquired by Zenzar, who are an IT company based in India. So they have offices in Pune and Mumbai. And a couple of the representatives are here. So hello to them. So the two things that I suppose I want to uncover for you today is, firstly, how we turn those big leaps into small steps by really understanding the customer mindset and the role of the website in the buying process. And the second thing I want to do is to just show you how successful that work was as well and how you really, really need to deeply understand customer motivations and how you need to get the customers involved in the design process right from the start. Before I get into the detail, I just want to share with you our design philosophy that we have at Fullproof. And it's this. By understanding people, we craft design which helps them make sense of anything so that they can confidently make good decisions for themselves. Regardless of the project that comes in, this is our guiding light, our North Star, the start for every brief that we undertake in our studio. And the active word here is confidence. I know it's tiny on here, but confidence is a theme that we will continually come back to as a move through this talk. And I've been doing, I've been in this game for about 20 years. And the first decade of my career was really about getting businesses and people online. Increasingly, the second kind of decade of my career has been about understanding the interplay between on and offline and the role that each one of those takes in the customer's mind. I'm going to talk to you about cars today, primarily, but when it comes to making those giant leaps into offline in order to make a purchase, the kind of principles that I'll be talking to you about are equally applicable to other things like home improvements, luxury, kind of high-end items, technology, and so on. So although I'm talking to you about cars, I imagine that you will probably all have situations or briefs or projects where you need people to confidently make that move to a purchasing decision which happens outside of the website. When Suzuki came to us, it was probably about 18 months ago to brief us on the project. Obviously, the objective was to sell more cars. They were investing money in this new website, and it obviously had to pay for itself. But actually, when we started to analyze it, of course, the role of the website and the objective for us as a studio was to drive footfall into dealers. It was really about getting people into those dealerships. And when people got there, actually, the conversion rate for people who walked into dealers was 70%. Over two-thirds of people who walked into a dealership ended up buying a car. So it was absolutely critical that we drove footfall. But as I've mentioned, getting people from here, this website, this is the old website, by the way, not the new one, to hear into the dealer can feel like a chasm. It really does require a big leap of faith. And the reason it requires a big leap of faith is because if you are not confident in what it is you're buying, if you're not confident about going into a salesman's den where you have to haggle, negotiate on price, or be haggled by the dealer, it can be really, really intimidating. So what we needed to do was we needed to improve people's confidence in order to do that. And as many of our clients do, Suzuki, when they briefed us, came armed with lots and lots of data, lots and lots of analytics, lots and lots of numbers. That was great, right? But in fact, when we did closer analysis, we realized that all of the data, all of their understanding about customers was based on their reaction to the product specifically and the marketing and advertising campaigns that they had undertaken. What they did not have an appreciation of was how people used their website to make purchasing decisions. And so that was a really, really big gap that we needed to fill. And the way that we had to fill it was to create a plan that involved customers and crucially dealers, because dealers, remember, are the people who actually sell to those customers in those showrooms and know a hell of a lot about the kind of mindset that customers come in to the dealers with. We had to use those guys during the design process. So the gaps that we needed to fill, understand customer expectations and mindset, understand the interplay between on and offline and the role of Suzuki.co.uk, and then develop some design principles which would inform future design direction. Now, at this point, we could have spent a lot of time talking to a lot of people, doing lots and lots of research, burning the client's budget down. But in fact, what we did was we opted to make something and make something really, really quickly. We had a pretty good idea based on the expertise and knowledge that we have in our business and previous projects that we'd undertaken. We kind of knew where the answer laid. So we made something. And what we did was we made a thing. This is the thing that we made. And we made it to basically throw it away. We used it as stimulus in research sessions. And the way that we ran those research sessions was by putting this, this is a simple click-through prototype that we built in Sketch. And used it as stimulus with focus groups, mini focus groups. So about three or four people in a room with a moderator, they're really good for getting discourse and opinion and conversation out there. But bigger focus groups in our experience tend to get dominated by maybe one or two people. And there are, frankly, more places for people to hide in those sessions. So we use really, really small, tight focus groups to test this stuff. Now, the thing that we learned was that what we created is something kind of really kind of rather over-complicated. It turned out that car buyers have a very, very low expectation of manufacturers' websites. They really don't believe that they are the place that they should go first for the information that they need. They will actually go to independent review sites. They will ask friends and family. They will do everything, really, but not go to the actual manufacturer's site. The manufacturer's site is really there to confirm all of the information that they have gathered during those initial kind of research periods. And I'll come on to that a little bit more in a sec. But yeah, so they had very low expectations. And they also came to these sites with a, they already knew what they wanted. They already knew the model. They already knew even the trim level that they wanted. So the crucially what we needed to do was to get people to those cars as quickly as we possibly could. So all these ideas that we had, these whizzy wizards and step-throughs and filters and everything else, people were like, no, no, no, just show it. Just get me to the car. Just get me to the car. And the other thing was that you've probably seen these kind of complex configurators where you can choose the color and the color and the trim and the type of wheels that you want and everything else. And that's fine if you're buying a Lamborghini or Ferrari and you're dreaming. But these guys are buying a practical everyday car and they really didn't engage with that kind of functionality at all. Work did was very quickly align us around what the role of the website was during the purchase journey. So during the research part of it, help users compare the range and assist with basic fact-finding. Shortlisting, which is really, really important, getting onto the shortlist, getting onto that maybe two or three manufacturer shortlist is very, very important. If you don't get there, you're not going to move forward in the process. Emotionally engage users in a specific model and communicate the main benefits and offer some sort of independent review content or ratings at that time. When they're in the comparison stage, whenever they're comparing not just options within Suzuki's range, but also outside of that manufacturer's range with others, help them compare the things that are really important to them in terms of equipment, highlight value for money, which is a really strong Suzuki promise, and begin to allow them to personalize it and make it theirs. But as we learn, don't overcomplicate that. And then finally, when they're ready to commit, make that handover between the dealer and the site seamless. So once we've delivered that proof of concept, we then moved into prototyping. So remember, we are constantly making things. We are constantly refining and making things. We're not talking about making stuff. We are making stuff. Now here, what we were doing was we were fleshing out our thinking. And we changed the type of research methodology now from many focus groups into one-to-one depth testing in our labs at foolproof. So we could really start to evaluate in detail the ideas that we had. You can see here the type of sketch work that we did, the way that we evolved and iterated the designs. This particular page, I've got to tell you, which is the range page, was really, really tough because it had to do so many things. And we were constantly changing and refining the order of the content that we needed to show, which is why we were cutting bits of the website out and trying different variations of it. And as you can see on the left-hand side, sorry, on the right-hand side, your right-hand side, the way that that started to culminate, not just in terms of layout, but also in terms of look and feel, where we really started to push the brand. Now as a result of that research, we began to compose a more sophisticated understanding of the customer. And I guess we settled on the types of mindsets that people have whenever they're in that purchase flow. So the first is those consumers who go online first. So these guys like to research. They like to know the detail about the thing that they're buying before they go and visit a dealer. So they will use endless review sites. They will look at forums. They will do lots and lots of research. And clearly, the car manufacturer site does have a role to play here when it comes to the amount of detail that they're showing. Because in fairness, the car manufacturer site can and should provide detail that nowhere else does. Albeit, as I said at the start, most of them didn't really do that. The second was dealer first. So these guys went to the dealers. Typically they would visit maybe two or three dealers in a weekend, but some might visit four or five. But their view is that there's no point getting excited about what a car looks like on a website because they need to go and see it in the flesh. They need to go and kick the tires. They need to feel the door handles, hear the door close, sit in the car. But once they've done that, they will then come back to the website to basically check all the facts. And then they will go to the dealer and they will basically entrust the dealer to sell them the car. So they put a lot of faith in the dealer's understanding of the product. And then finally, I guess the agnostic user who, depending on convenience, depending on the amount of time they have, how certain they are of what it is they're wanting to buy, they will either use online or they will use the dealers. And so it really depends on a number of factors. But the point is they seem like very, very simple statements, but in fact they have a massive impact on the type of journey that they're going to take. I'm conscious of time, so I'm going to rattle through this. We moved into design and development cycles with back end, front end, integrators, content guys, all sitting in a room in our offices working on these cycles. And we continually tested and evaluated this right, which is rapid iterative testing and evaluation. We did this throughout those design cycles as well to test what we were doing. And at the moment, we're going through a period of deployment and optimization, now the site's live. So what does this mean? What did this actually mean for the end design and experience? So this is the home page. And what we really tried to do, if you remember the kind of work that we were doing at the prototype stage with lots of slashes and lots of graphics, we really, really simplified that down, really simplified it down to focus on the things that we knew were important to customers, like what does the car look like on the road? How much is it? How can I explore more about that particular model? And as you move down the page, we've got some very simple filtering options there, but nothing like the kind of complexity that we were proposing early on. And then underneath that, we were just merely showing the name of the model, how many doors has it got, the kind of car that it is, and the price as well. So the customers could really, really get into the detail quickly. When they've chosen a model range, then a similar kind of template there where we're using a video. Obviously, this is a static picture, but we'll be using a video. And starting to highlight things we knew were important to customers at that stage, like how fuel efficient is it, what's the CO2 emissions like, how safe is it. And then started to uncover or explain the kinds of features that differentiated these trim levels. So ordinarily, you might be expected to go through lots and lots of tables of things, but we really worked hard to try and simplify that for the customer, because we knew that these were the things that were important to them. We also commissioned a bunch of new photography. Really, the purpose of this, including these detail shots, was about getting somebody to feel like they were up close and personal with that particular vehicle, just helping to get them to feel like they were able to touch and feel that car. And that was also true as we moved down the screen, getting this kind of feeling of sitting in the car, starting to play with some of the different features. And then this is the trim level page. This is really the bit that I suppose espouses this kind of big leap to small steps. So as we move down the page, lots and lots of detail, will it fit in my garage? Here's some stuff about the kind of equipment that is particularly specific to this car. You can then start to gently customize this vehicle so it begins to feel like yours. And you can see down at the bottom, you've got this sticky nav down here, which will update as you change things. So you can change the color of the interior. You can choose the type of chassis, the number of driven wheels, transmission. You can start to accessorize. But again, this is fairly lightweight. This is a very logical step process that we tested and tuned with customers. And then there is the center dealer. This is the moment that feels we found, from the feedback that we had, this is the most logical next step. Hooray, that's what we want. That's what we wanted to do. So we also updated the motorcycle site, the ATV site, and the marine site as well based on the language that we did, design language that we made. And then these are the results. Really pleased with these results because what this does is it demonstrates that we did our job, okay? Now, somebody's just shown me a zero, which means I'm out of time. So what I'm gonna do, take a photograph of this last slide, because these are the principles that you should be applying to the design problems that you have, okay? I'm not gonna read these out because I'm supposed to get off now. So thank you very much for your time. Really appreciate it, I hope you enjoyed it.