case studies — novell

Novell, Inc. (www.novell.com) is a leader in eBusiness solutions and Net services software designed to secure and power the networked world. Novell and its eServices division, Cambridge Technology Partners, help organizations solve complex business challenges, simplify their systems and processes, and capture new opportunities with one Net solutions.

background

As part of its corporate objectives, Novell was looking to improve customer satisfaction and the overall customer experience at Novell.com. It had already made significant improvements to its stat tracking and reporting capabilities, enabling it to perform highly granular analyses of its customer traffic (i.e. indirect feedback). But Novell wanted direct user feedback to complement its traffic data. It believed its customers would provide such feedback if the process was made easy.

In October 2001 and in conjunction with a dramatic redesign of its corporate site, Novell began using the OnlineOpinion system to measure and track user opinions, ideas, and suggestions on its website. Novell felt the timing was perfect since its Web visitors would likely want to respond to the new design.

implementation

Novell implemented a custom version of "O" across all its Web domains (51 in total), asking its visitors for "page, product, program or service" feedback. Whenever a visitor accepts Novell's online invitation, Novell directs that visitor straight to the OnlineOpinion Comment Card.

"OpinionLab's system enabled us to quickly configure the data collection technique to match our research goals," said a Senior Manager of Novell's Web Results team. "For example, we are very interested in obtaining qualitative feedback. With just a few clicks, and a relatively easy installation process, we began collecting enough page-specific ratings and constructive comments to identify and diagnose issues our users were encountering on our website."

results

The results have been significant: over 2,300 ratings and 1,300 comments in November 2001. To appropriately analyze that quantity of data, Novell has turned to OpinionLab's 24/7 Metric and O-Trend report.

"We generate daily O-Metric reports whenever we make significant changes to the website. That way, we can continuously monitor and refine the user experience in real time," said their Senior Manager. "We have instituted many changes to our pages based on direct customer feedback and our stat analysis."

"Additionally, each month OpinionLab emails us an O-Trend report to demonstrate how we're performing from one month to the next. The O-Trend provides us a 'site score' called the Site Opinion Index. We have made drastic improvements in the way our team responds to customers submitting feedback, and we have been very aggressive in implementing improvements quickly. We are very proud of the dramatic effect this has had on improving our scores."

Going forward, Novell is expanding its relationship with OpinionLab and installing the OnlineOpinion user feedback system on its intranet.

	Timeframe	Nov 1, 2001 - Nov 30, 2001
	Total ratings	2,316*
	Average # of ratings per day / per week	77 per day; 540 per week
	# of pages rated	521
	# of CDU ratings	1,951
	# of comments	1,324
	Analysis tools used	24/7 Metric Toolkit and O-Trend report

*Novell’s implementation of the OnlineOpinion system directs visitors straight to the Comment Card, thereby accounting for the high comment-to-rating ratio.