Distinction

Distinction has partnered with fintech startup Obu to build and launch the first-of-its-kind UK angel investment platform that’s been designed to empower women, tackle inequality and close the gender investment gap, for good.

Obu is on a mission to close the investment gap at scale; disrupting the financial services sector by launching an investment platform specifically designed to bring together women founders, women angels and innovative allies – and make investment happen.

This is the story of building and launching their MVP and the beginning of creating an equitable startup ecosystem that’s worth £250bn to the UK economy.

The Mission

When Obu approached Distinction to build a fintech platform, “a bit like Bumble”, to match women founders with women and ally angel investors and create a fairer investment culture, they sat up and listened.

Today in the UK, there’s a staggering inequality between men and women when it comes to raising and making investment. Women founders get just 2% of funding, Black women founders get just 0.02% of funding, and women make up just 14% of angel investors.

Not only is this broken system a huge barrier to equality which Obu is determined to break down, it’s also prohibiting the UK reaching its economic growth and sustainability potential.

And, at a macro level, the Obu angel investment platform will play a part in achieving the UN’s sustainable development goals, as what we’re seeing in the UK is replicated globally. Because when it comes to ensuring economic growth and sustainability, equality is the main driver, and empowering women to build businesses at the same rate as men is worth £250bn to the UK economy.

The Obu angel investment platform is the first of its kind and just the sort of innovative and groundbreaking project Distinction gets excited about – disrupting the status quo and serving an underserved market. This is the kind of digital product that will beat giants and make monsters.

The Goal

It was when entrepreneurs and cofounders, Sarah King and Claire Dunn, sought their first round of funding through the government’s SEIS (Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme) during pandemic lockdowns and the home-schooling/work struggle that they realised just how underserved women are in the UK’s male-dominated investment landscape.

And so the #OverBeingUnderFunded campaign was born which saw Obu (then named We are Radikl) successfully lobby Parliament to extend the SEIS business age limit from two to three years, which came into force in April 2023. These real-life experiences were a watershed moment for Sarah and Claire as they saw a gaping hole in the market which led them to pivot to purpose-led fintech founders.

The team’s hypothesis was that adopting an inclusive design approach would enable them to deliver what this underserved audience needed, driving their participation in financial services. They wanted to create a first-to-market, inclusively designed fintech platform that would empower women to come together, invest and be invested in.

Distinction’s mission? To get the platform to market before any competitors which meant an MVP launch date in Q2 2023, backed up by a product release roadmap adaptable to improvements and iterations learned from users’ data and insights.

Distinction’s Approach

Obu needed a trusted technical partner that could not only bring their concept to life but get their product to market quickly and then support them throughout the first 18-24 months if its lifecycle. This allowed them time to grow their business whilst considering whether to bring a product design and development team inhouse or not.

Just as Distinction had bought into their mission of closing the gender investment gap and making the startup ecosystem fairer for women, Obu bought into Distinction’s beliefs and their agile approach to digital product development.

Discovery

Aligned in their values from the get-go, Distinction and Obu started with a period of discovery in the form of three workshops to make sure requirements gathering, user and technical research and platform architecture were covered.

Distinction kicked off discovery with setting the scene with Obu’s brand vision, mission and value proposition to align the whole project team behind one north star goal. Doing so cements purpose and underpins Distinction’s belief that the project team must go all in to achieve a successful outcome.

Then it was time to look at the business’ process flow maps which were separated into the angel and entrepreneur journeys for registration and login, and the raise lifecycle.

Distinction brought all these into one end-to-end userflow diagram to bring clarity for the whole team and help map the user journey. Now it was clear what was done on and off-platform, where third party integrations were involved and what messaging via which channel the user would experience.

This in turn allowed Distinction to write the epics and user stories to prioritise and estimate what was in scope for the MVP, what could go in the backlog, and validate (or adjust) the technical recommendations given previously.

At the end of discovery, Distinction and Obu agreed the MVP scope and the must-haves for release one.

Agile and Design Thinking Approach

Moving into the build phase, Distinction adopted a phased approach that would deliver maximum value for both angels and entrepreneurs – and Obu itself. Breaking the project down into releases, starting with an MVP, means getting to market quickly with a product that meets users’ needs from the off. It also avoids a big upfront investment in features and functionality that aren’t actually needed, plus getting the product quickly in users’ hands means the product team learns directly from their feedback which influences future phases.

Distinction progressed quickly through each phase, using a customer-centric, agile development process underpinned by design thinking methodology.

Design Requirements

Right from the start, Obu knew that a product aimed at bringing equality to a manmade system needs to be designed inclusively for the women it serves.

In the UK, 86% of angel investors are men. 84% of financial advisers are men. And 94% of financial services CEOs are men. In sectors like financial services where there is a dominant male narrative, other customer groups can get overlooked.
It’s lazy design to assume products will serve women, without a genuine understanding of how their needs are different. Determined to disrupt this single-mindedness and the inequality of financial products, Obu wanted to design their platform with empathy for the women it serves.

As CEO and Cofounder, Sarah King, says,

At Obu, we flip the design question. Instead of asking ‘how might we help you fit an existing product?’, we ask ‘how might we design our product for you?’. Inclusive design means understanding an audience’s life experience, aspirations and needs. We know a woman’s experience of money and wealth is very different to a man’s – and that difference presents an exciting opportunity to serve her better.

In fact, during the first round of UAT, it became clear to Obu that parts of the onboarding experience were clunky for angels – there were too many on and off-platform handovers. Designing with women in mind is core to the angel and founder experience on this platform and not to be compromised, even when it meant pushing back the MVP launch date a little.

The original MVP scope was desktop-friendly only as that was where Obu’s audience would likely be when creating a raise as a founder or applying to be an angel investor. But as the UAT was underway and with Obu talking to more founders and angels in their community, it became apparent that the messaging function was likely to be used on mobile. It was a change that made absolute sense to accommodate so Distinction moved quickly to design a mobile-friendly UX that would be part of the MVP when it launched.

Technical & Data Capture Requirements

For the build, Distinction took a microservices (sometimes known as a composable) approach to the tech stack underpinned by a cloud architecture to support the product roadmap. Each microservice addresses a single concern such as a data search, log in function or content management function. This approach increases flexibility, makes it easier to scale up or down, makes the code base straightforward to understand, allows updates to be released independently and increases the scope for isolated testing and innovation.

A huge driver in effecting change is gathering the data to evidence the need for that change – and to understand the progress being made. Data and insights are one of the key catalysts to innovation, because knowledge brings the power to disrupt the status quo – which is exactly what trailblazing is all about.

As well as being designed to fit the needs of women, the Obu investment platform (and the collective that sits alongside it) is designed to continually collect data and insights to support its evolution and keep improving the landscape for women entrepreneurs.

Obu are signatories of the Investing in Women Code (IIWC) – which stemmed from the first Rose Review of Female Entrepreneurship, published in 2019 by Alison Rose, now CEO of NatWest, who’d been commissioned by the Treasury to look at the barriers to entrepreneurship that women face, and how to overcome them.

In signing the code, Obu is committed to increasing transparency in their own data on the support provided to women entrepreneurs.

The Challenges

The startup journey is a fast-paced and changeable with stretched but passionate founders hellbent on their mission for equality in the investment and entrepreneurial landscape. That passion and entrepreneurial spirit is infectious and one of the reasons why the Distinction team loves working in the startup space.

But every project has its challenges, especially in a regulated environment, and the journey to releasing an FCA-regulated investment platform isn’t a smooth one. Compliance is there to protect customers but it doesn’t always match the speed and agility needed in the startup world. Distinction and Obu learnt quickly that it was a god idea to keep a contingency budget for necessary changes to scope due to FCA regulation that were not negotiable.

Obu was also going through a complete rebrand (including name) and their original prototype was in their old name – We are Radikl – and branding. Although it wasn’t in scope for discovery, Distinction brought their prototype on brand and added new pages to reflect the userflow as it stood now. Obu would be using their prototype as part of their go-to-market strategy by showing it to founders and angels in their distribution network to drum up interest in the product. Distinction is invested in the success of Obu’s mission just as much as they are, and it felt like the right thing to do to go the extra mile.

Third party integrations can cause headaches as you’re at the mercy of vendor product roadmaps and development. When it became clear that the community tool selected was still in beta version and its messaging functionality wouldn’t work for the Obu platform, Distinction quickly put together a proof of concept for an alternative messaging service. A 48-hour turnaround time from identifying the problem to providing an alternative solution to client sign-off and implementation.

The Outcome

The journey to releasing the MVP for a ground-breaking, regulated fintech product was a bumpy one at times. Distinction was learning about the sector and customers Obu serves, and Obu were learning about software testing, epics, user stories, design systems and prototypes, there were difficult conversations to be had. But Distinction and Obu didn’t shy away from them, and together they’ve learned the best way to work together in terms of cadence and method.

The magic truly happens when both parties are aligned behind one purpose, everything is done with positive, respectful intent and true collaboration and transparency prevails.

The MVP launched on 21 June 2023, meeting its Q2 target, and with that the Obu angel investment platform is live! Challenging expectations, blazing a trail and well on the way to creating meaningful change in a gender-imbalanced sector.

The Obu x Distinction team is now working on Release Two of the platform so watch this space!

As part of an expansive business transformation, the Society & College of Radiographers (SCoR) approached Distinction with their vision to improve their members’ experience, starting with both the Society and the College’s digital presence.

SCoR is the trade union/professional body and registered charity respectively for radiographers and all non-medical members of the workforce in diagnostic imaging and radiotherapy in the UK.

It is responsible for their professional, educational, public, and workplace interests. Founded in 1920, SCoR is one of the oldest and most experienced radiography organizations in the world.

The Brief

The first phase of the organization’s digital transformation focused on its web presence which needed to match the high, professional, and modern standards they expect the sector to follow. The current website was dated and very text-heavy, challenging to navigate with the inconsistent layout and a huge number of subpages, and experienced a high bounce rate as users couldn’t find what they were looking for.

Summary

The discovery phase revealed the need for two separate websites – one for the Society and one for the College – where the content was personalized according to the user and members could use one set of login credentials to access everything their membership offered.

The project included migrating their CMS from Drupal to Kentico Xperience, developing integration with their CRM (Stratum by APT), and implementing a single sign-on (SSO) so they could integrate with their other third party platforms, i.e. extranet, events platform, shop, and e-learning.

User-Centric Discovery

Distinction starts every project with a discovery phase to really get to the heart of what users want and need. For SCoR, this involved workshops with internal and external stakeholders to gather qualitative insights. Surveys were followed to gather quantitative data.

Discovery workshops were held with each team that represented the main areas of SCoR: education, practitioner, a membership success team, and sales and marketing.

Understanding their needs and internal processes allowed Distinction to map out the customer journey with a cross-departmental user flow that included every on and offline touchpoint to inform UX design.

Aligning Fragmented Stakeholders

Distinction knew from experience that aligning stakeholders is key to a project’s success, especially a complex digital transformation program for an organization that has c30,000 members, from a large national base, and across multiple medical disciplines.

In addition, the Society and College had separate identities and leadership teams so getting feedback and ensuring there was equal representation within the design and user journey was challenging. But in the end, Distinction and their client had a joined-up leadership team with a clear project outcome that helped towards SCoR’s ultimate goal of total digital transformation.

CMS migration

SCoR’s legacy CMS – Drupal – needed to be migrated to Kentico Xperience (DXP). Not only does Xperience give the SCoR marketing team a superior content editing experience, but it also has an extensive marketing functionality with features such as content personalization, email marketing, and analytics. This meant SCoR’s digital marketing strategy could be implemented and managed from one place by a distributed workforce and content governance was easy to control.

Self-Serve User Experience

The old site had limited self-service for visitors to apply for membership and for members to manage their membership online so making sure the new sites had this functionality was a big part of the vision to transform members’ digital experience.

The new site has a vastly improved interface, information architecture, navigation, and search function, so relevant content is served up consistently with members able to easily find the guidance and support they’re looking for.

Now members no longer have to log into multiple platforms (CRM, CPD, event software, payment gateway, and website) – everything they need for their profession and studies is accessible through a single sign-on.

Multiple Integrations

Giving members a seamless user experience meant a number of third-party integrations needed to be made.

Distinction’s discovery phase identified all the data points and mapped every user journey. It was time to pull everything together to give SCoR’s members the exceptional experience they deserved.

Firstly, they integrated with SCoR’s CRM so that member data could be pushed to the CRM and replicated back into the CMS via a two-way sync so members could update their accounts online and be prompted when their membership was up for renewal. As precision medicine advances, integrating technologies like clinical NGS (Next-Generation Sequencing) can further enhance diagnostics and patient care, making data accessibility even more crucial.

The claims-based authentication tool, Auth0, was integrated to give members an SSO, allowing them to access the website, CPD portal, extranet, and event management system from one set of login credentials.

For the sections of the site that needed a more customized approach than the existing Kentico Azure Search integration would allow, Distinction built a bespoke Azure search integration. And integrating World Pay as a payment gateway was required to take payments for events.

UX & UI Design

During the design research process, creation of the design concepts, and working with the branding to identify a unique visual identifier for SCoR, Distinction’s UX/UI designer was inspired to design a circle graphic.

The idea came from looking at one picture, in particular, that of a MIR machine, in which circles were identified within the machine. After playing around with this idea, a circle graphic was created that is now featured throughout the site.

Circles appear a lot throughout radiography – in the machines and scanners themselves when carrying out certain procedures (focal spots on X-rays and radiography treatment), and the joining up of governance and clinical practice is a circular approach rather than a linear one.

This cemented the circle idea and in turn, created the circle theme that you’ll see throughout the site’s UI in terms of backgrounds and icons.

Outcome

The rebuild of the SCoR sites has given the Society and College the opportunity to showcase their updated branding and modernised the look and feel of a 100-year-old institution.

With the simplified structure, users can find content more easily which has reduced bounce rates on the site.

Comparing the first half of the site launch (June-August 2021) with the second half (August-October 2021), SCoR enjoyed:

• 615.02% increase in new membership registrations
• 482.46% increase in conversion rates
• Almost parallel conversion rates on mobile (1.4%) and desktop (1.61%) devices, meaning the site’s well optimized for both
• 31.17% increase in overall website visitors
• 53.17% increase in mobile visitors
• 74.18% increase in organic search traffic (finding the site more easily)

Phase one of the digital transformation met its goal of improving member experience and Distinction continues to work with SCoR to deliver their change program.

Distinction has supported Pentland Brands’ innovation team with the empowered design thinking process turning their idea into reality. They built a successful digital product and designed an exceptional experience that delights and converts.

Pentland Brands is a global fashion retailer building a family of brands for the world to love, generation after generation.

Counting household names like Speedo, Berghaus, Mitre, and Ellesse in their portfolio, Pentland’s innovation hub is constantly looking at ways to improve the consumer experience for each brand and its unique identities.

The Idea

Pentland’s innovation team was looking at new direct-to-consumer (D2C) propositions for their sportswear brands and the different ways they could service customers looking to kit out their sports teams.

The Pentland team thought that one particular idea had legs, namely a build-your-own sports kit for rugby, football, swimming, and cycling teams.

They’d identified that this needed to be a player-led design proposition – a digital platform where consumers could put together their own team’s sports kit.

They came to Distinction for external expert help in proving their concept so the Distinction design team worked in-house with Pentland’s innovation hub to make their dream a reality.

Proof of Concept

Distinction joined the innovation team to kick off the ideation phase, where the online kit-building idea – ‘Made By You’ – was explored in depth.

There were two questions to answer:

• Would a design-your-own-kit digital product be desirable for the target consumer groups?
• And would it be technically and economically viable?

To build a digital product that consumers actually want you to need a consistently user-centric approach to UX and UI which is where design thinking comes in.

More on that later as proving a digital product concept starts with asking people what they really need and think.

User Research & Insights

Gaining insights, along with deploying quantitative and qualitative research, is essential to building a successful digital product and designing an exceptional experience that delights and converts.

So, together with the Pentland innovation team, Distinction ran a number of discovery workshops with stakeholders and target user groups – the team player and the kit buyer.

Creating personas for these audiences allowed Distinction to compare the feasibility and desirability of a D2C model with a B2B (business to business) model. It also helped test the Made By You proposition in key markets for football, rugby, swimming, and cycling.

Design Thinking

Design thinking is a process of creative problem-solving.

Employing design thinking means you’re combining what humans like and need with what technology can deliver in a way that makes economic sense. All digital products should be built using design thinking as it mitigates the risk of failure.

For Made By You, Distinction used a lot of tools and techniques from the design thinking toolbox:

• Design jams
• Empathy mapping
• Card sorting
• MoSCoW matrices
• Storyboarding
• Customer journey mapping
• Low fidelity wireframing
• Prototyping

The project culminated in a mid-fidelity prototype that helped Distinction and Pentland rapidly validate and refine product concepts and designs with stakeholders and user test groups.

Outcome

Employing design thinking to solve Pentland’s challenge allowed Distinction to look at how best to implement the Made By You proposition which was part of a larger program of innovation.

Their approach influenced and helped define the program’s direction for the current and future phases.

The Building Societies Association (BSA) approached Distinction with three overriding business goals: member engagement, member retention, and cost reduction.

As the voice of all 43 UK building societies and a number of credit unions, BSA provides bespoke information to support their members in running their business to the best of their ability and in line with current regulatory guidelines.

As mutual organizations, building societies are owned by their customers, which means they operate in the interests of their members and their local communities, rather than being driven by the pressure of external stakeholders.

The Brief

With a 200-year-old legacy of looking after savings and providing mortgages, building societies consistently put the needs of their customers first and it’s a mission that BSA helps their members fiercely protect.

Working on behalf of a wide range of audiences including the UK Government, UK and EU parliaments, regulators, the media, and the general public, BSA’s website is their most valuable resource.

They approached Distinction with their business objectives: to improve communication with their members, create an authoritative information source, create an excellent CMS author experience, and promote the sector.

The Strategy

Using their active strategy approach, Distinction quickly identified stakeholder needs and those of the end-users. Using this insight, they created an industry-leading digital presence for BSA to better engage with members, provide additional value, reduce ongoing service costs, and provide a roadmap for continual digital innovation.

The Action

Distinction’s early work with BSA focused on its key business goals.

Member Engagement: Making it easier to register, log in, and use the website was paramount. Giving BSA the ability to communicate more effectively via integrated email marketing and role-based personalization that pulled members to the website on a regular basis.

Member Retention: Adding beneficial and effective resources to the website – that members actually wanted – was vital in adding value to the member experience and key to BSA’s retention rates.

Cost Reduction: Replacing BSA’s previous out-of-date website, which was costly to maintain and difficult to use, meant efficiencies in both time and technology budget.

Outcome

There were many incremental improvements to the website that have led to bigger changes for BSA, the most notable of which were: 9.5% increase in session duration, 47% increase in event registration, 12% increase in page speed, 7.5% increase in registered online users.

Distinction is creating a new, dynamic and immersive website that would delight both children and adults alike took a voyage of discovery on how 3 to 8 year-olds engage with stories, games, even technology itself.

Improving the CX didn’t just delight the site visitors, it also produced brilliant results too, including an increase of over 35,000 average monthly visitors, with over 70% of new visits from over 160 countries.

Happily Lost in the Deep Dark Woods

A global brand like ‘The Gruffalo’ and its series of books has many owners. First and foremost, there’s its visionary creator, author Julia Donaldson. Then there’s the books’ illustrator, Axel Scheffler, who has brought a captivating cast of characters to magical life. Then there’s the books’ publishers – Pan Macmillan – the people who approached Distinction with a simple goal: to provide an engaging global online presence for the Gruffalo ahead of the book’s 15th anniversary.

Addressing the Core Audience

But the truth is, more than anything, that the Gruffalo belongs to its readers, the children whose imaginations continue to be fired and who remain enduringly attracted to the enchanting woodland beast.

So while Pan Macmillan’s challenge was clear – in recognizing the existing website was lagging behind every other aspect of merchandise, from toys to TV to pop-up events –the solution was equally clear to Distinction. This was to turn to the children and learn what they wanted from a new Gruffalo website.

Finding the Right Path

So Distinction put themselves in front of the primary target audience – 3 to 8 year-olds – and sat back and learned, and learned, and learned.

They discovered that given the right stimulus, they could lose themselves in a fantasy world. Interestingly, they found children to be much more capable of playing on digital devices than even their parents knew. Most of all, they learned that even young children could be pretty autonomous, and capable of occupying themselves for ten minutes or more, absorbed in stimulating activity.

Creating an Immersive World

To answer the children’s wishes, Distinction created a beautifully immersive world called ‘The Deep Dark Wood’. Here, children were free to explore, play, and do anything they wanted. Filling the screen, and rich with child-friendly games and activities, here their aim of giving children plenty to do, plenty to read, plenty to learn, plenty to enjoy was brought to vivid life.

Beautifully illustrated by their friends at Aardman Animation, this mobile-first online experience also featured stories and singalongs with author Julia Donaldson.

Answering the Secondary Audience

Of course, whereas children are looking for fun, the adult’s agenda is slightly different. This meant including teaching materials, opportunities to buy Gruffalo books, toys, and merchandise, and clear signals for activities that would be sure to keep kids busy and happy.

Without disrupting the immersive world, the children are busily enjoying, Distinction included a host of downloadable activity sheets, pictures to color, and stories to read. And because they always aimed to promote deeper engagement, they made certain that a two-way path made it easy and fun to enter competitions, win prizes, share photos, and upload content.

Straddling Many Different Fences

Naturally, there were obstacles along the way. With so many different stakeholders having investment in the Gruffalo brand it meant meeting all kinds of different agendas. Not having easy or regular access to the author and illustrator meant the decision line was principally through the publisher.

But, as Distinction has experienced time and again, by earning trust as the impartial and independent project leader, and by evidencing the need to put the audience first, the Distinction team was freed to act quickly and decisively on delivering a website that to this day remains a user-centric joy.

Delighting in Unexpected Ways

It’s a source of great pride to them that they were able to delight the children and the parents and, ultimately, Julia Donaldson, who was thrilled with the results when they first revealed the new website.

In doing so, Distinction revealed a few extra tricks up their sleeves. Another delight was in the Easter eggs they dotted through the site. Keeping quiet about the hidden events they’d secretly built into the site, they revealed themselves as they should…to the unexpected pleasure of unsuspecting witnesses. The ant crawling across the screen mid-meeting is just one example.

Delivering an Engaging World, Across the World

Distinction built the site using HTML5 and JavaScript to ensure it works across all major platforms and devices. The site is also easy to edit and update with new events, activities, and content. And it’s hosted in Microsoft’s Azure cloud to make sure it can cope with spikes in traffic following a series of successful marketing and TV campaigns.

First created in 2008, it’s rewarding to see that despite regular updates, the website today remains the same as the one they first launched. It’s testimony to the quality of their initial hard work and pleasing for Pan Macmillan who have not had to invest majorly in the site since its arrival on the world stage.

Outcome

The results were as gratifying as they were impressive. The site received an increase of over 35,000 average monthly users and 70% of new visits were from over 160 countries. An average page load time of fewer than two seconds was achieved. With 10% of traffic spending over 10 minutes on the site each time visitors visited.

As Distinction had already improved its website, the world’s largest independent wholesale audiobook retailer, Recorded Books, asked them to recruit, onboard, and upskill its own internal team to optimize the new platform.

Having this new dedicated in-house team not only saved money but also gave the retailer constant access to the complete technical resource required to continue selling books across the world.

Upskilling Internal Teams to Create an Autonomous Resource

The adage goes:

Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he will eat for a lifetime.

For Recorded Books, it’s an entirely relevant way to describe Distinction’s role in the creation of its own internal digital team.

As the largest independent wholesale audiobook retailer in the world, Recorded Books sells a vast range of audiobooks, eBooks, eMagazines, movies, learning programs, and more into libraries, military bases, private libraries across the world, as well as to leading B2C retailers such as Audible and audiobooks.com.

Reducing Costs, Increasing Access

Being a retailer, reducing costs wherever possible has a massive impact on Recorded Books’ bottom-line. And being a largely online business means Recorded Books’ technology platforms need to be constantly managed, maintained, and optimized.

The problem was twofold. First, paying digital agencies for ongoing technical support was simply costing too much. The second was the issue of availability. The feeling was that a skilled internal digital team would provide the constant, readily available, and agile technical support the business really needed, minute by minute, hour by hour.

Replacing Themselves with Something Sustainable

It was a little odd to be handed this brief because Distinction was essentially being charged with replacing themselves. But you can never do too much for a good client, so they began by establishing a structure for the new internal team, developing the new processes and training programs that would deliver the knowledge and skills to maintain and improve the Recorded Books platform in the future.

Recruiting, Onboarding and Training

From the outset, it was a challenge working across different time zones from the UK to the US. A few well-timed trips across the Atlantic and lots of carefully planned online workshops enabled them to engage with prospects and new recruits in a natural and easy manner. But this was no quick and easy fix. Recruiting, onboarding and upskilling the internal digital team proved to be a two-year-long process. And during all that time, at the back of their minds was the fact that this was essentially a long goodbye.

Engaging Everyone All the Time

Distinction learned valuable lessons along the way. Recognizing the value of sharing the more exciting tasks required in maintaining the platform – focusing on the intellectual aspects like R&D and strategy, rather than just the donkey work – they engaged people early. By sharing all the tasks across the new internal team, both dull and interesting, Distinction helped improve work satisfaction and reduced staff turnover.

Saying Goodbye Happily

Distinction found that rather than struggling to stay motivated, they found a strange sort of pride instead. Seeing the increasing number of individuals successfully bedding into the new internal team was a source of great satisfaction. A valuable lesson they took from this project is one of trust. It’s never good when one business relies too much on another and they discovered it’s natural to say goodbye sometimes.

Building Trust for the Future

Where most client/agency relationships end in what amounts to a divorce, this particular relationship ended when both parties were still happy and successfully working together. And the outcome of this lesson? Distinction provides consultancy services to Recorded Books. Thanks to the trust they built in their approach to what was essentially replacing themselves with something that would work better for Recorded Books, we’re still in the frame for future big projects. It became very much a case of “Thanks for all your hard work, goodbye, we’ll speak again soon.”

Delivering Lasting Benefits

As well as a positive future with Recorded Books, the people they onboarded, upskilled, and nurtured will inevitably move on someday and, Distinction hope, think favorably of them as a supplier in their new venture. Because more than anything, seeing Recorded Books’ internal digital team thrive was a source of great satisfaction and pride at a job well done. They felt like their team in so many ways, and it was hugely rewarding to see them succeed and continue to succeed to this day.

So while there is no such thing as a client for life anymore, they like to think that by delivering on their promise, and by doing the right thing in giving Recorded Books and its new internal digital team a long and sustainable life, the future looks brighter for everyone involved.

Outcome

The impact of creating a self-sufficient client by helping them recruit, onboard, and train their in-house team was as huge for them as it was for Recorded Books, resulting in a mutually beneficial and long-lasting relationship.

Distinction helped launch a disruptive new loan search service under the tightest of deadlines for moneysupermarket.com.

Never having been done before doesn’t mean it can’t be done. Add technical expertise to a brilliant idea and build a great customer journey, and the launch of a new service making it easy for people to find the right loan becomes a whole lot easier.

Meeting an immovable deadline galvanised the whole team, enabling Distinction to launch a new service to market in record time.

Making searching for a loan so much smarter

Launching a completely new service is always exciting. Building something from scratch is even more so. And knowing the service has major commercial benefits for the business – and a significant point of difference for its customers – elevated the Smart Loans project for moneysupermarket.com (MSM) to new heights.

If that wasn’t enough to focus the mind, meeting the tightest of deadlines ahead of the December launch of the multi-million pound ‘You’re so Money Supermarket’ advertising campaign meant time was a huge and ever-present issue from the get go.

Smartening up loan applications

Recognising the value of stepping away from its own internal teams and, following a recommendation from Experian for Distinction’s technical expertise and understanding, MSM selected them to design and build its new Smart Search service.

Smart Search removed the old problems of credit referencing customers applying for a new loan. Previously, a customer’s credit score would be checked when they applied for a loan, which in return reduced their credit score. If rejected for the loan, this credit score couldn’t be restored, and a downward cycle began for the customer in question.

Softening credit score searches

For MSM, the news was just as bad, as they would only be paid commission on successful loan applications. So unhappy customers plus lack of commission meant everyone loses.

The answer? A soft credit search through real-time data pulled over from Experian, which left no footprint on their credit score, and new listings on MSM which would show only the loans the customer would be accepted for based on their soft credit score search

The problem? It had never been done before.

Ensuring websites could talk

It’s hard to imagine now, but back then the idea of getting one website talking to another was still in its infancy. APIs in 2014 simply weren’t universal, and the technology had to be designed and built from scratch.

This was also the early days of responsive websites, with easy browsing on mobile phones yet to kick in.

Meeting the timeline challenge

There were also tight brand guidelines, data security issues, regulatory concerns and financial compliance challenges. Not least the fact that the compliance department needed two whole weeks for sign-off ahead of launch, further squeezing the already tight deadline.

Then there was the lack of time. Every hour, every day, every week, the ticking time bomb of an immovable and looming delivery date brought constant, fear-invoking pressure. Bring it on Distinction thought.

Creating from scratch

Working on site at Experian’s offices with moneysupermarket.com’s MD, ensuring decisions could be made quickly, Distinction hooked into the Experian platform and various credit bureaus using cloud-based software. Grabbing the technology bull by the horns, they began the process of putting together all the different moving parts to create a seamless customer experience.

It was difficult because Distinction was breaking new ground.

Becoming ‘so Money Supermarket’

Trial and error took time and energy. Frequently frustrated, there were times Distinction didn’t think it could be done. The micro deadlines of weekly progress demos focused minds to such an extent that soon the time pressure began to work in Distinction’s favour. They had to act, not strategise.

Many late nights later – including a time MSM’s managing director popped out to buy meal deals for the whole team, keeping us focused on the job at hand – Distinction would built the algorithms, got the databases speaking to each other in the ways that they needed, and created early UX designs for the site.

Minimising prevarication to achieve results

Suddenly, the journey was complete. Seeing the journey for the first time – and just as a customer would – was wonderful. It was smooth. It was satisfying. But more than anything, it worked.

In that moment, the value of looking beyond its own internal teams for external expertise became abundantly clear to the MSM team. Together, they realised that with the right expertise in place, even seemingly impossible deadlines could be met. And a valuable lesson was learnt by everyone: that time pressure forces action, minimising prevarication and delivering results.

Outcome

Adopting their active strategy approach to create something that had never been done before meant Distinction could build something from scratch and in an incredibly short timeframe. For the first time ever, consumers could search for a loan without it impacting their credit score – standard practice today.

Distinction helped to launch Podium’s innovative new service, changing the face of how people choose the right mortgage by.

Changing the face of how people choose the right mortgage is never going to be easy. The pressures of time and the need for a quick investment return added to the challenge.

Adding deep technological expertise and fresh insight into what information people need and when, Distinction acted fast to create a simple, intuitive platform that launched on time and made mortgage applications as pain-free as possible for everyone.

Improving the mortgage journey for everyone
Its website describes Podium as a ‘specialist technology provider for the mortgage industry’. Accurate certainly, but to Distinction, Podium will always be the people who were hell bent on disrupting the mortgage industry from within.

Not without good reason. Mortgages scream complexity and difficulty. So Podium’s aim was to make choosing the right mortgage simpler for everyone. An audacious but noble goal.

Changing the face of mortgages

A spin-out from moneysupermarket.com (MSM), Podium uses deep data to give customers a better choice of mortgage. It works by serving up the information people actually need – as opposed to what they’re normally just given – to make a better-informed decision. It’s like having a friendly mortgage broker on your shoulder, feeding you all the best deals in a way you can easily understand.

Responding to the time pressure

Being something completely new, the race to be first on the market was real from the get-go. Being funded by MSM, there was also the pressure from investors looking for a quick return.

More than anything, there was the issue of technological expertise…or rather the absence of the specific knowledge within the Podium team. It was clear that digital, data and technological expertise would be needed to bring the vision to life.

Filling the knowledge gap

To answer this shortfall, the Podium team turned to Distinction to provide the missing technical expertise and guidance. They were very happy to be involved. Being a cutting-edge new service, this looked like an exciting and momentous project from day one.

Encountering significant technical obstacles in making connections between different technology platforms, Distinction worked hard to create APIs that would serve up the information needed to improve the customer experience. Sometimes it felt it couldn’t be done. But time pressures and the need to move forward forced Distinction’s hands to act decisively.

Putting the customer first

Despite working with deep and complex data, Distinction’s common goal of simplifying it and making it useful to customers kept them on point and on track.

Working back from what the customer wanted – rather than bombarding them with the traditional unhelpful data – brought unity and direction to the team. The culture of a start-up is intoxicating, and the attitude of ‘can do, will do, do now’ gave the whole team momentum at every stage.

Challenging traditional thinking

Occasionally, this meant pushing back on regulatory restrictions on what information had to be shown, and how this was presented. Distinction’s mantra was ‘is it helpful to the customer, or is it just useless information?’ Their answer was always, always to put the customer’s needs first by providing information that meant something – such as the total cost of a three-year fixed rate mortgage over the full term of the loan.

Engaging the stakeholders

Keeping the various stakeholders involved was critical – it was their investment after all. Which made the success of the first run through, that took place at MSM’s offices, a triumph in proving the validity of Distinction’s approach. It was genuinely thrilling to see all the pieces falling into place, with all the key stakeholders excitedly buying into the whole proposition.

Taking decisive action

In making the knowledge of a dedicated mortgage broker available to everyone – thereby democratising the advantages of access to dedicated financial expertise – Podium succeeded by combining its clear vision with the specific technological expertise it was otherwise lacking.

Using it themselves

By making hard and fast decisions, rather than endlessly planning and strategising, Distinction was able to keep the rollercoaster ride on track. By achieving progress at every stage, the project launched ahead of the competition and continues to make a real difference to people’s lives.

Indeed, so good is the Podium service in finding the right mortgage for your circumstances, members of Distinction’s team even used it themselves. There can be no better testimony.

Outcome

Podium had one single objective – to make mortgage applications as pain-free as possible. For everyone. Distinction’s existing relationship with moneysupermarket.com and adopting their active strategy approach to the project meant the innovative new service launched quickly and ahead of the competition. The simple and intuitive platform continues to make a real different to people’s lives.

With a service as physical as fitness training, the transition to a digital model is always going to be a demanding journey. It’s a challenge Distinction answered by looking to a subscription, inclusive membership model.

In reshaping the whole gym model and launching a dynamic digital platform, Distinction helped the business earn passive income through brand awareness and subscription uptake. And not forgetting their members’ own physical transformation journeys.

Fit for the future – creating passive income from gym membership

How do you move from the restrictions of selling billable hours of your time, to the freedom of earning a passive income that keeps rolling in even while you’re sleeping?

This was a question troubling the M10 personal fitness team. Already a successful business, with thriving physical gyms and flourishing one-to-one training, M10 recognised the need to diversify its revenue away from the limitations of training one person at a time.

Reshaping the gym model

Having previously provided marketing support when launching its second gym, M10 trusted Distinction to explore how the hard boundaries of pure physicality could be removed, and replaced with a new solution: one that didn’t depend on M10 people being in a certain place at a certain time.

Distinction began with a series of deep conversations, asking searching questions like “if you had no gyms at all, how would you make money?” Together, they looked at the heart of what M10 does, and where it needed to be to achieve its ambitions.

Liberating from one-to-one interactions

M10 was already generating lots of original content. This included dietary advice, workout plans, recipes, and training videos, all of which were being distributed via social media and receiving high engagement with extremely positive feedback.

The commercial potential of providing these valuable assets as easily downloadable content within a structured, subscription-based website was clear. By allowing members to track their progress and, depending on their subscription level, download material and have a two-way dialogue with a team of experienced personal trainers, M10 would be liberated from face-to-face interactions. Crucially, they would be in a position where income could be generated around the clock, from any location at any time.

Delivering a personal fitness journey

To bring the subscription-based membership offering to life, Distinction created a sub-brand called M10 Life: clearly related to the core business, but with an element of choice and freedom attached to the main brand.

The main goal of the M10 Life website was to create ‘the home of body transformation’. Key to the site’s success was the design and development of a robust, well-structured and user-friendly system that members would enjoy using and a platform intelligent enough to guide their personal fitness journey.

Transferring knowledge from other sectors

It wasn’t always an easy journey. Throughout, a concern for Distinction’s client was having to take money from a proven and successful business model to invest in a new, untested, and unproven venture. It was clear that, while M10 was founded through entrepreneurial spirit, there were times where the ambition for creating something completely new felt to M10 like an overly risky undertaking.

However, by drawing on the B2B experience – particularly in working with SaaS companies – Distinction could transfer knowledge over to M10 of how an online business operates. In doing so, Distinction helped open up a whole raft of new possibilities for the M10 Life business. Ultimately, the challenge of generating recurring income was overcome with the creation of a paid-subscription model, where members sign up for a one-month trial membership, which then automatically converts to a paid membership.

Trying first, buying next

To make this work, Distinction had to make sure that the complimentary trial membership was rich enough so that the user would see the benefits of full membership, without giving away too much for free and negating the need to upgrade.

While the free trial to fully paid subscription model was a great way to get people on board, another issue was maximising income once members had signed up for full membership. So, as well as aiming to convert users from their free trial to the paid membership, another goal was to up-sell users from one subscription level to another.

Stepping up to a higher level

With three membership levels – basic, elite, and masterclass – the M10 Life site actively promotes the benefits of higher subscription levels during member’s visits to the site. Always the aim is to tempt them into an upgrade.

As the project evolved, Distinction’s client became more hands off, trusting their knowledge and experience of the B2B sector to ensure a successful and sustainable M10 Life offering. This proved valuable as he felt reassured enough to focus on his current business, without the distraction of the M10 Life launch.

Transforming health and fitness

The results are clear evidence of the validity of the approach undertaken. The site has received great coverage from personal fitness magazines and websites. But most importantly, M10 Life’s users have given great feedback, finding the site easy to use and invaluable in supporting their body transformation journey.

Outcome

Helping a service as physical as fitness training transition to a digital model meant the business could grow through passive income. When it launched, M10 Life enjoyed a huge uptake in subscriptions and member satisfaction scores. But the biggest winners were the members who found M10 Life’s service invaluable to their personal health and fitness journey.

In helping the world’s largest certified membership organisation to improve its examination and marking processes, Distinction helped transform the business, make it fit for the digital age and reduced overheads.

Modernising the qualification process

It’s all too easy to think the stress of exams resides solely at the desk of the students, nervously turning over their papers. But for the Institution of Structural Engineers, the stresses of the whole examination process went much deeper.

As the world’s largest certified membership organisation – numbering almost 30,000 – the Institute has for over 100 years offered a range of qualifications, all of which require an exam to be sat in hundreds of locations across the world. The qualifications are a valuable source of income, one which they were looking to maximise, yet one which was costing the Institute far too much to run.

Confronting a lengthy process

The problem was, the Institute was wrestling with a paper marking process which had remained unchanged for decades. They’d always done it that way, but cracks were beginning to show.

An entirely manual and physical event, this process involved collecting completed A3 exam papers by hand, placing them into boxes of 500, shipping to the UK, anonymising, splitting out into tranches of 20 and posting to individual examiners who, making life more difficult, are not always UK-based. Also requiring the marks of a second examiner, the whole process then had to be repeated. So far, so lengthy.

Recognising the need for change

Faced with such a problematic process – papers went missing, handwriting wasn’t always legible and disparate marks required the extra involvement of a third-party adjudicator. The Institute knew it was time for a change.

The financial benefits of doing so were compelling. There was the desire to avoid the spiralling costs of global postage. Then there was the need to shorten the process from its current nine months to fit in more revenue-earning exams (students were having to wait a full 12 months before being able to re-sit). Owning such an outdated process also reflected poorly on the Institute’s brand.

Diagnosing the problems

Conducting a thorough diagnosis of the current situation, including conversations with every level of stakeholder together with a little judicious fact finding, Distinction recognised that a major obstacle was in a stereotypical view of the examiners. These were often in their 60s and 70s, mainly male and recently retired. Consequently, it had always been assumed they would be resistant to change and fearful of something new.

Removing uncertainty

During their workshops, Distinction listened to the views of the examiners, and involved them in all their explorations and possible better ways forward. The agency removed the fear factor and found the prejudice was unfounded. Instead of finding opposition, their transparent and non-judgmental approach helped the examiners became healthily invested in change for the better.

And, on the first run through of Distinction’s prototype, their excitement clearly demonstrated they had more in common with the digitally-savvy exam sitters than previously thought possible.

So what was Distinction suggesting that produced such an about face? Simply that by taking the whole marking process online, by automating each stage, would make the whole journey quicker and pain-free for everyone.

Managing large amounts of data
Distinction realised that to manage the large amount of data quickly and efficiently, the system would need to be developed in four parts:

Candidate distribution and management: enabling exam managers to distribute multiple candidates to examiners and then track an individual candidate’s progress.

PDF script viewer: giving examiners a high-resolution PDF view of a script and a simple system for marking and providing feedback on each question.

Adjudication app: automating the distribution and management of by the exam manager.

Feedback app: automatically loading examiners’ comments and marks, before saving, previewing and sending a feedback email directly.

Each of these elements made life simpler and easier for examiners and enabled them to spend much less time on marking and managing each paper.

Engaging stakeholders early

All combined into one app, the seamless process brought immediate results. With six months cut from the entire process, exams were completed quicker, leading to a threefold increase in fees. Examiners were delighted to move from the cost and hassle of a physical, postage-based system.

In the end, Distinction’s early involvement proved decisive in that they could involve the audience from the very start and keep the various stakeholders engaged at every stage. Being invested in the vision, the journey to lasting change became a truly satisfying and rewarding project for everyone.

Outcome

Transforming its business had a huge impact on the Institution of Structural Engineers. The move to digital saved them £40,000 per year in shipping costs alone. The organisation’s capacity to adjudicate exams increased by 300% and the time taken to mark exams was reduced by 100%.

Distinction helped Hult Ashridge Business School with its digital transformation by resolving fragmented and conflicting website platforms and content.

For this 200-year-old business education, college history weighed heavy. It had resulted in a fragmented website, outdated content, and a frustrating UX – all of which were restricting potential revenue.

By resolving the conflicting platforms and systems while keeping stakeholders – and Google – on board, Distinction transformed the business and delivered significant cost savings.

Educating the educators on smart digital governance

Providing MBAs and both open and closed training programs to the business world, Hult Ashridge Business School operates in a highly competitive executive education environment.

Certainly, the School was a success. The School’s stunning 200-year-old Ashridge House spoke of a rich legacy. At the same time, its future success was being severely compromised by its website, which had evolved in a fractured and fragmented manner.

Reducing the cost – both actual and hidden

Slowly but surely the Hult Ashridge Business School website had steadily ballooned to around 60 websites, serving up a huge volume of content on an unwieldy mass of web pages. Built on too many different systems, the website was a mess of different platforms and pages.

Some WordPress, many unsupported, all rely on one person to manage all the moving parts. It was difficult to navigate, frustrating for users, and an unhappy experience for everyone. In responding to the ever-changing business world, the site had lost its way.

It also cost far too much. Not only in the need to push water uphill on maintaining the site (at a huge commercial cost), but also on the fractured and weak presentation of what the School could do for business (at a huge cost to brand reputation).

Transforming the experience

So how do you set about rationalizing a sprawling website that had escaped its original purpose? In this case, with impartial and independent expertise, and by casting an objective and dispassionate eye on where the website was now, where it needed to be, and how it was going to get there.

And so Distinction began the process of transforming the Hult Ashridge Business School website. Their goal was simple: to share their expertise in how websites work both under the bonnet and in the face of the public to transform the website experience for a digital-savvy audience.

Revealing a complex picture

Distinction started by talking to stakeholders. They listened to users. They researched the business education market. They challenged the brief, which in its early stages suggested copying and pasting content from the old to the new website. They asked why, why, why?

The deeper they went, so the size and complexity increased. The truth slowly dawned on them that they had underestimated the obstacles and, in reality, didn’t know how disorganized things were until they really got into it.

They discovered duplicate pages featuring contradictory content, microsites not on the latest platform version, and off-brand content unfit for purpose. Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) and accessibility issues. Their task was further complicated because Hult Ashridge Business School was already in the middle of a full rebrand.

Offering a singular view

Then the breakthrough. Having conducted eight workshops and extensive research over 10 months, Distinction realized that a major part of the problem was that old favorite: too many chefs. So, while their instincts told them such a vast project needed plenty of people to sort it out, their rational minds told them something quite opposite.

What was actually needed here was the singular vision and clear direction of a small, discreet, and dedicated team.

So they set to work. For two months, it’s all their compact team – frequently two people, occasionally just one – actually did. So immersed were they in the project that at times the lines between agency and client became blurred. Distinction operated as if they were the client.

Simplifying, rationalising, optimising… and protecting

They converted 60 websites into just two. A herculean task that separated the event and venue booking element of the School away from its core education and training purpose. By optimizing the internet archive (IA) of the site, removing some content, and updating the rest, they ensured users would find searching for relevant content a simple and seamless experience.

Due to the sheer volume and scale, it proved to be tiring and difficult work. As well as the immense difficulties of moving content over to the new website – without impacting Google search rankings – meeting the needs of various educational stakeholders required delicacy and diplomacy, especially for those who were understandably protective of their content.

Owning the project

At the same time, Distinction’s deep involvement made this project hugely rewarding and always enjoyable. They felt like they owned it like it was their website like the customers were their customers.

And the end result? A whole new look and feel for the website. Giving the school the knowledge of what true digital governance feels like. Providing the security of content workflows to maintain quality in the future. Reducing the cost of ownership to a minuscule amount to what it once was.

For everyone, the lesson was clear: while complex problems may require complex solutions, often a small and simple team set-up is the best option for delivering the right result.

Outcome

Transforming a business with a 200-year legacy that its stakeholders were quite rightly proud of was no mean feat. But by giving the business school true digital governance and reducing 60 websites to just two with a seamless CX, significant cost savings were enjoyed as a result.

Distinction helped engaging three disparate audiences to improve the website CX and achieve a 68.78% increase in new users for Bluebird Care.

Previously unable to engage three disparate audiences on one website, the home healthcare franchise business was missing out on potential service buyers, employees and franchisees and confusing everyone.

Distinction simplified the experience by gaining a deep understanding of their needs, by creating three distinct customer journeys, and by adopting a user-centric approach which improved the CX and served up a 68% increase in new users.

Taking good care of three distinct audiences
As healthcare at home organisation, Bluebird couldn’t be more people-focused. Its whole world is people: the people who need and arrange care, the people who provide the care, and the people who make the whole care infrastructure happen.

But people bring complexity. Those who need care is a constantly evolving cycle, with care needs that are ever-changing. Carers leave the job and need to be replaced. And being a franchise business, Bluebird continually needs more franchisees to expand its business and keep its revenues healthy.

Improving customer journeys
The issue for Bluebird’s website was in attempting to speak to these three disparate audiences. It wasn’t working. As a result, neither the buyers of care, the care providers nor the care franchisees were getting what they wanted. Recognising it needed to improve its customers’ digital experience, Bluebird charged Distinction with the task of finding a way to speak to its mixed audience in a way that was relevant to everyone.

Learning a few home truths
Being a people-focused organisation made Distinction’s decision to put people at the centre of the new website even easier than ever. Their needs would show the way forward. So Distinction embarked on a series of discovery sessions, and talked in separate workshops to the people who were arranging care for loved ones, to the carers themselves, and to the franchisees. Each provided invaluable insight into their real needs, and what they expected as an ideal from the Bluebird website.

During their workshops, Distinction witnessed the client’s current frustrations, and heard what the client’s unmet desires were. The agency listened and learnt. Thanks to their experience of running workshops, they discovered the picture was, in reality, even more sophisticated than first thought.

Unpicking a fragmented audience
Carers, for example, comprised of several different personas. For example, there’s the fresh talent, straight out of school, keen on a career in care. Next, there’s the experienced carer, simply looking to jump from one job to the next. Then there’s the person who’s experienced care first hand – perhaps providing in ad hoc for a parent – who recognises their ability and potential for a caring career.

For franchisees, the situation is even more complex and challenging. Franchisees come in all shapes and sizes, from those serving many homes to those serving a few, from being well established to being brand new, from having a structured interview process and style to having something different. For Bluebird, marshalling franchisees was like shepherding cats. The result was an inconsistent, off brand muddle.

Putting the website user first
A clear indication that Distinction was on the right track occurred in a Hilton Hotel workshop for franchisees. Whereas once the collected attendees were protesting “we need people to give the agency things that do this, do that, do the other,” suddenly the mood changed. Like a ripple through the room, it dawned on everyone that it was not about them, it was about their customers and the people they relied on to conduct their business efficiently. They put themselves in other people’s shoes and recognised for themselves the value of a customer-centric approach.

Thanks to everyone’s commitment to the project, through the stimulus of healthy debate and the intelligence of the client team, this project grew into a wonderfully edifying experience, one which delivered great outcomes to the three different audiences, all of whom became better off by putting someone else first.

Outcome
The results were spectacular. New users from all channels increased by 68.78 %, from an average of 61,257 in Jan 2019 to a new average of 103,389 in Jan 2020. Search results also improved, with total impressions rising from 2.26m to 4.64m. Once on the site, Distinction saw a 500% plus increase in users navigating from their start page to the service pages.

Distinction improved the CX for an independent wholesale audiobook retailer. It took a truly global approach, engaging stakeholders in the US and Australia. Meeting their real-world needs was central to the website rebuild.

Gaining deep understanding paid dividends. As well as a huge increase in sales, Distinction delivered a 10% increase in page views, 99% increase in session duration and 63% more pages viewed per session.

Putting the Customer First – and Increasing Sales by 433%
Now firmly established as the largest independent wholesale audiobook retailer in the world, this wasn’t always the case for American B2B merchant Recorded Books Inc.

Delivering audiobooks, eBooks, eMagazines, movies, learning programmes and more into libraries, military bases, private libraries and renowned B2C retailers such as Audible and audiobooks.com, Recorded Books grew on the back of evolving technology. This was the time of rapid transformation from the decline of physical books and CDs, to the rise of MP3s and streaming.

Growing the Online Business
Being a progressive business, Recorded Books was looking to grow its online presence, but didn’t know-how. It knew it needed to do something, seeing how it was losing ground to competitors, but wasn’t sure exactly what was needed.

And so, in 2013, Recorded Books turned to Distinction to improve its customers’ digital experience. Knowledge of what its audiences were looking for was critical. So Distinction started by conducting research and discovery over a three month period. It sounds a lot, but this time was needed to interrogate a worldwide customer base.

Digging Deeper to Reveal the Real Need
Distinction ran 25 face-to-face workshops in the US, travelling around to meet different customer types, shadowing them to see first-hand how they interacted with the Recorded Books website. The agency performed the same deep dig in the UK, and ran online workshops with customers in Australia, another major customer base, overcoming time difference challenges with 4.00am meetings.

Slowly, steadily, Distinction learnt what customers wanted from the site. Broadly, this was simplicity, with customers expecting an easy-to-use, slick and robust website.

Embracing the Complexities
A great example of Distinction’s outside-in approach – where the needs of the customer are put ahead of every other consideration – the process revealed the size of the task in hand. Moving Recorded Books from where they were to where they needed to be was clearly a massive task.

Accommodating the complexity of the audiobook retailing world that Recorded Books operates in was the first challenge. Audiobooks can be bought as one-off, as a subscription rental, in bundles, with discounts and loads of other variables. In the US, state-specific tax laws further complicated matters. Distinction knew they had to accommodate all such complexities.

Selecting the Right Technology
Another challenge was tyranny of choice on technology. Selecting the right eCommerce, CRM and EMS MarTech stack means tough decisions had to made in selecting the best from the massive range of options available. Integrating at least five internal systems into one also took time and effort, as did engaging the myriad of third parties involved in its global operations.

And so the project grew. The budget was exceeded, the timeline stretched. But there was good news. Armed with their customer-centred view of what was required, the Recorded Books leadership team embraced Distinction’s hard-won findings (despite their negative opinions of the current website) and revealed its strength in trusting Distinction to deliver.

Improving the Digital Experience
Distinction’s action was to accommodate global differences in pricing, tax rules and royalties by building three websites – for the US, Australasia, and the UK and Europe. Each featured upgraded functionality including:

• Recently viewed titles – so users can quickly navigate back
• Recommendations section – new releases, bestsellers and upcoming releases
• Title detail pages – images, authors, synopses, audio previews
• Creating an account – simple, quick and easy

Delivering a Huge Increase in Sales
By bringing the voice of the customer to the leadership table, Distinction gave Recorded Books a new ground zero, a focal point from which every subsequent choice and decision was made. And for Recorded Books, a new and universal truth has been established: answer what the customer tells you they are looking for, and you can’t go far wrong.

Outcome
The figures speak for themselves. In Australia, the full annual sales target was completed in the first three months of the new website going live. Achieving an astonishing 433% global increase in sales, Recorded Books is now number one in its market, operating from such a position of strength that it was able to acquire its closest competitor, further consolidating its status as the undisputed world leader.