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From: Shrirang Sahasrabudhe
Date: Mon, Aug 06 2007 3:40AM
Subject: seeking data points reg business benefits of accessibility implementation
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Hi all,
I am in process of preparing a small introductory presentation about web accessibility…
I will be mainly answering questions like what, why and how.
Under "Why" section
To put my point forward I am looking for strong data points regarding
Business benefits of accessibility) customer success stories)
Some case studies like
Company "ABC" did accessibility implementation on their site and then
Revenue increased by X%
Maintenance cost decreased by y%
Somehow whatever information I could get till now is just list of benefits; but not the real life stories. I feel this list of benefits will be of no sense to ppl without illustrations.
Can anyone give any pointers to such a concrete data?
Thanking in anticipation
Shri


***********************************************************
If you try, you risk failure. If you don't, you ensure it....I try.
Shrirang Sahasrabudhe,
Pune, India.
Phone: 0091-020-4227558.

---------------------------------
Building a website is a piece of cake.
Yahoo! Small Business gives you all the tools to get online.

From: Alastair Campbell
Date: Mon, Aug 06 2007 3:50AM
Subject: Re: seeking data points reg business benefits of accessibilityimplementation
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Shrirang Sahasrabudhe wrote:
> To put my point forward I am looking for strong data points regarding
> Business benefits of accessibility) customer success stories)

Try Mike Davies' presentation:
http://www.isolani.co.uk/presentations/wsg/wsg-webaccessibility.pdf

This was for a Legal and General online application, some quotes from the presentation comparing old to new:

- Search engine traffic: 50% increase.
- Site Maintenance: £200k saving per year.
- Completed applications: 90% increase.
- Paid for itself in 5 months.
- Conversion rate: 4% to 9%.

Hth,

-Alastair

--
Alastair Campbell | Director of User Experience

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From: Karl Groves
Date: Mon, Aug 06 2007 6:50AM
Subject: Re: seeking data points reg business benefits ofaccessibilityimplementation
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Personally, I am always skeptical of these sorts of "business case"
arguments. Years ago, I used to list on my website that a redesign I did of
a company extranet had increased traffic by 1400%. The claim is completely
true, but really had more to do with how absolutely horrendous the original
site was than anything else. The original site had nothing on it of value
for the target population and the new one did. Add to that the massive
publicity campaign behind it and it isn't hard to see where a 1400% increase
would come from.

In the presentation you linked to, it seems pretty obvious that the site
that was replaced was indeed an awful specimen: "Ranked 92nd in FTSE 100
website" and "150+ links on every page" (Slide 8). Other slides on the site
demonstrate that the site seemed poorly managed by the company and proper
production methods were not a top priority. Looking at the Web Archive
copies of the old Legal and General site, there are definitely numerous
issues with the interface, navigation, and information architecture. In
other words, the old site was a dud.

That being said, the presentation seems to be an attempt at claiming that
all of those increases in traffic and revenue were made possible merely by
making the site "accessible". You can't take an old, ugly, non-user
friendly, poorly organized, hard-to-navigate website and replace it with a
new, attractive, user-friendly, well organized, easy-to-navigate and
accessible one and claim that all of this ROI is solely the result of the
increased accessibility.

What I want to see is one of these "case studies" which compare two visually
identical web sites where the only differences are in the markup itself.


Karl



>

From: Alastair Campbell
Date: Mon, Aug 06 2007 7:10AM
Subject: Re: seeking data points reg business benefitsofaccessibilityimplementation
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Karl wrote:
> In the presentation you linked to, it seems pretty obvious that the
> site that was replaced was indeed an awful specimen: "Ranked 92nd in
FTSE
> 100 website" and "150+ links on every page" (Slide 8).

Apologies, you haven't received the context from the verbal
presentation. (Which I think was published as a podcast on the UK Web
Standards Group http://muffinresearch.co.uk/wsg/.)

The figures to do with business improvements relate only to that
specific application process, not the site in general. There were no
marketing or other changes that the change could be attributed to,
especially since the difference noted is conversion, not increased
visitors.

Later the main site was updated, but as you say, it is difficult to then
attribute to just the accessibility improvements.

> What I want to see is one of these "case studies" which compare two
> visually identical web sites where the only differences are in the
markup
> itself.

You may be waiting a while, why wouldn't someone improve the usability
and interface at the same time?
It's possible to do, but the business case for doing so is small ;)

Kind regards,

-Alastair

--
Alastair Campbell | Director of User Experience

Nomensa Email Disclaimer:
http://www.nomensa.com/email-disclaimer.html

From: Karl Dawson
Date: Mon, Aug 06 2007 8:20AM
Subject: Re: seeking data points reg business benefitsofaccessibilityimplementation
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On 06/08/07, Alastair Campbell < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > wrote:
>
>
> You may be waiting a while, why wouldn't someone improve the usability
> and interface at the same time?
> It's possible to do, but the business case for doing so is small ;)
>
> Kind regards,
>
> -Alastair
>
> --
> Alastair Campbell | Director of User Experience
>
> Nomensa Email Disclaimer:
> http://www.nomensa.com/email-disclaimer.html


hehe, this was too good not to de-lurk for!

To prove the exception to the rule so far I've updated the templates of one
of our websites to web standards as one project, then the next year I went
through all the forms and made them accessible. They are far from usable
though (just like the IA) and I'm still pushing to be "allowed" to do the
whole job right in one go. I might be wrong but I think the delay is in
redesigning the logo :p


Cheerful regards, Karl
--
http://www.thatstandardsguy.co.uk
http://www.accessites.org

From: Karl Groves
Date: Mon, Aug 06 2007 8:30AM
Subject: Re: seeking data points reg business benefitsofaccessibilityimplementation
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>
> > What I want to see is one of these "case studies" which compare two
> > visually identical web sites where the only differences are in the
> markup
> > itself.
>
> You may be waiting a while, why wouldn't someone improve the
> usability and interface at the same time?
> It's possible to do, but the business case for doing so is small ;)
>

Exactly. So case studies like this are deceptive in their attempt to
attribute such a high ROI on merely making the site accessible when there
are so many other things contributing as well.


Karl

From: Alastair Campbell
Date: Mon, Aug 06 2007 9:00AM
Subject: Re: seeking data points reg business benefitsofaccessibilityimplementation
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Karl wrote:
> So case studies like this are deceptive in their attempt to
> attribute such a high ROI on merely making the site accessible when
> there are so many other things contributing as well.

I guess it will depend on how narrow your definition of accessibility
is. As part of "being made accessible", it was necessary to improve the
code and usability, as well as a few specific things aimed at people
using different access devices (I assume).

For me, accessibility = usability
(http://alastairc.ac/2007/05/responsibilities-in-accessibility/#accessib
ility-is-usabillity ), and in order to make a site accessible to someone
with disabilities, it has to be understandable.
There is a similar discussion on Boxes & Arrows at the moment:
http://www.boxesandarrows.com/view/practical-plans-for
(Disclosure: article by a colleague of mine.)

I think it's entirely appropriate to say that "the improvements were due
to the site going through the process of being made accessible".
How much you want to then divide that down into
usability/IA/accessibility/coding is fairly academic (for example, Mike
put much of what I think of as usability under WCAG's "using clear
language", IA could go under "consistent navigation").

It's very unusual for a company to allow that sort of information out,
so the more we can encouraged that the better.

Still, if Karl (Dawson) can provide some stats on a coding only change,
I would check those out as well...

Kind regards,

-Alastair

--
Alastair Campbell | Director of User Experience

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