Dynamic4 is proud to be the design and technology partner for EventMojo – the online marketplace and community where you can find and book everything for your event.
EventMojo is a startup a mate and I founded and as the co-founder and CTO my focus is our strategy, design, technology and product. This is an email interview I was approached to do about EventMojo’s website strategy. Some thoughts on the approach we’ve taken and things we’ve learned on the journey.
What strategy did you implement when first building the EventMojo site and why?
We started with research to understand and gain empathy with our target audience. We needed to know where the pain points, gaps and opportunities are so we could design and build a service that would deliver value. We focused on being clear on what our value proposition is. EventMojo is an online marketplace and community where you can find and book everything for your event. We need to deliver value to people who provide event services and we also need to make things easier for people who are planning or attending an event. The research we did was a mix of market research, competitor analysis and customer interviews.
A key step in our approach was to create a service blueprint to understand the full lifecycle a buyer and supplier member has with EventMojo – from when they find out about us, sign up, use our service, have the event and then do the next event with us. This focused us on the context and role the website plays at each step in the journey, and all of the other ways we interact with our members. Taking the time to work through the levels of detail of the customer journey and flows was very important. Starting with the strategic overall experience down to the specific screens we needed to deliver each step in the journey. This involved identifying the key screens, what their purpose and goal is, the call to action to support that goal and the next step in the flow.
Delivering a great experience on mobile devices is also very important to us. We’re a bootstrapped startup with limited resources and so much to do, so the focus at this stage is to make sure anyone with an internet connected device can use EventMojo. We use responsive design to optimise for mobile. At some point in the future we will likely develop native mobile apps to deliver more device specific experiences.
We apply lean startup principles, so the focus was to get a simple website live as soon as possible and then rapidly iterate. We have a strong vision and roadmap but we prioritise new features and refine the experience by continually responding to what we learn from research and testing ideas with our members and our analytics.
What are your ‘best practise’ tips for first-time website builders?
Make sure you have clarity on your business strategy and value proposition, who your customers are and what you want from your website. The most challenging part of building a website is content. Having clear and compelling messages supported by visually engaging images. Be clear on this and your project will be a lot easier.
Don’t try and do it all at once. Start simple and build over time. You can’t possibly know everything at the beginning. You’ll learn as you go and people start using your website. You need to set yourself up to listen to feedback from customers and make adjustments.
What lessons can others learn from your website?
We’re continually learning from our website. Because research, testing and monitoring our analytics are core to the way we work, we try not to be too fixed in our plans to allow us to respond to what we learn and iterate quickly. This can be a challenge because we have our vision and ambitions and we want EventMojo to be the perfect product and experience right now! We’re learning to get more comfortable with the reality there will always be so many more things we want to be doing than we are or can today. It keeps the future very exciting!
There is no single answer or one size fits all solution to websites. A good web designer will work with you to understand your business, your customers and the role of the website.
Is it important to consider mobile optimisation as part of your strategy?
Yes. Mobile internet usage passed PC internet usage over a year ago. Since last November, Google has emphasised the importance of optimising for mobile experiences even more by labelling search results as “mobile-friendly”. The goal being to make it easier for people to find what that they’re looking for when searching on mobile. According to Google, 48% of mobile users start on a search engine when researching products. If your website in mobile search results doesn’t have this label, your customers or potential customers know they’re going to have a poor experience on their mobile and are more likely to visit a site that is “mobile-friendly”. There are still a surprising number of Australian businesses (including very large brands) without an optimised mobile experience. Getting this right is still a good way to differentiate from many of your competitors.
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