Making usability testing easy
Helping you make your online products and services easier to use is what Optimal Workshop excels in. The Wellington based company started in 2007 and creates
tools for measuring the usability of websites, and improving information architecture. “We are working hard to make things easier to find online by helping people to improve the way they organise their information” says Andrew Mayfield, CEO of Optimal Workshop.
The ‘optimal family’ consists of three successful companies. “Optimal Workshop builds and supports our suite of online usability software tools. Optimal Usability and Optimal Experience are our user experience design studios in New Zealand and Australia respectively” says Andrew. “We realised that we could make the tools we use to do our daily jobs available to all the other information architects and user experience designers around the world, and so Optimal Workshop began.”
Optimal Workshop provides the tools that help website builders organise their content, identify where and why customers get lost, and gain overall impressions and effectiveness of the website design. Once they had the idea for Optimal Workshop, Andrew and his team wasted no time in getting started and joined CreativeHQ, Wellington’s business incubator.
“Creative HQ was a great environment for a young company. We were able to meet and mingle with so many ambitious people, and you can’t help but take big steps forward. We funded startup costs from the strong consulting business that was already running, and quickly built up a customer base through building tools that people like us actually needed” says Andrew.
“A key decision was separating the new entity from the consulting business and creating a separate company. We found it much easier to work effectively on products and services separately because they have such different drivers and KPIs.”
The services that Optimal Workshop offers are unique in that they’re in business to help their customers get results, not just to sell software. “These days there are other suites of usability tools available online and in fact, it seems the range of options is expanding every month. We have the best analysis tools available and provide the best support in the industry” says Andrew.
Building a suite of user experience tools for user experience professionals doesn’t come without its challenges. “Could you imagine designing a house for an architect? It’s a tough crowd, but we love it!” says Andrew.
As well as being in CreativeHQ, Optimal Workshop has worked closely with Grow Wellington. “Grow Wellington continue to be proactively supportive. They’ve helped us access NZTE Capability Vouchers for specialised training. They’ve also helped us access MSI post grad funding to locate and finance a student intern. Of course it always depends on the position, nature and growth aspirations of the business at the time. I’d absolutely recommend that any business investigate their options for co-habitating with other entrepreneurs in the early days, and take advantage of the networks and connections that organisations like Grow Wellington can open up for you” says Andrew.
Optimal Workshop has an impressive list of international clients across the globe. “We’re still growing month on month and we just keep working hard to keep making our tools even easier to use. Every time we make things easier to use not only do we please our existing customers but we broaden our own target market; and that really is the beauty of User Experience” says Andrew. “Think hard and then go hard. Or, probably better advice is to read up on and try the lean startup approach: fire, aim, fire, aim, fire, aim, ready.”