Wells Fargo's Home Page Uses EDM

(Posted by Guest Blogger, and Amateur Webmaster, Ian Turvill.)

James recently posted on the value of applying predictive analytics and the broader Enterprise Decision Management concept to the design of corporate home pages.  As prescient as ever, James entry was almost immediately followed by information arriving from Forrester Research of a new report on Wells Fargo's new website design:

"Wells Fargo's Internet Services Group (ISG) recently led the charge in redesigning the company's home page (WellsFargo.com). The team used Web site metrics, customer survey data, and internal search information to develop a home page steeped in analytics, not opinions," begins the report's Executive Summary.

If you subscribe to Forrester's research (which I find to be very informative), do download this report.  In fact, it's relatively inexpensive, so it might even be worthwhile buying even if you are not a subscriber.

The full report has a lot of detail, but I was particularly taken by four particular ways that Wells Fargo used analytics to improve the user experience.  These include:

• A deep dive in site search data:  So, using insights from what past visitors had searched for to show how the past design may have failed to deliver what they wanted.
• Customer pathing analysis:  Understanding the natural flow that users took through the site and links that existed between items.
• Voice of the customer mining: Drawing from insights from user surveys to drive design
• and (of greatest interest to me) A/B testing:  Which sounds a lot like champion/challenger testing and adaptive control, which James written about extensively

So, yet again, James hits the nail on the head!