Introduction
The focus is on presenting the business case to the client. This strategy aligns with the design requirements, developed as in the previous phase. The prototype for this phase is a blog post based on the design requirements and information collected from Bedrijfkracht. The target group for this product are — the visitors of Bedrijfkracht’s website, potential clients, current clients, and partners, as well as individuals interested in sustainable energy. In this stage, the product prototype is created, which is a blog post for Bedrijfkracht’s website, and the effectiveness of this communication tool is tested. The research completed in Phase 2 and 3 is used as the basis for the design and evaluation stage.
Professional Product Prototype
The Professional Product Prototype is created based on the design requirements and user stories from previous stages. The prototype can be found in the Appendix – it includes the blog post with the text and visual elements. This prototype does not include the changes made based on the feedback from target and test groups, and it is the initial blog post. The blog post is based on the suggestions from Bedrijfkracht’s employees and uses the company’s work objective as the basis, in accordance with the design requirement 1. The theme of the blog post is the use of green energy for homeowners, the benefits and obstacles that one might face, since Bedrijfkracht’s main offer is energy, as suggested by the employees. Additionally, some information about how the blog readers will benefit from Bedrijfkracht’s products and services. The blog post will fit with the corporate visual identity. It will include visual elements of green and white colors, which are used as the basis at Bedrijfkracht’s website.
The blog post’s topic was chosen to address two key objectives – discuss the company’s values and mission and provide the reader with valuable information about the sustainability, which is one of the core values declared by Bedrijfkracht’s. Hence, the topic of the post is “Bedrijfkracht’s Commitment to Sustainability,” and the content includes some general information about sustainable energy, its history, and Bedrijfkracht’s work for supporting the use of renewable energy sources. The narrow topic of the blog post – energy sustainability, was chosen because of the design requirements and research completed in previous phases, which indicated that competitors chose to focus on specific themes in their blogs, instead of discussing energy and energy efficiency broadly.
The call to action at the end of the blog post encourages the readers to use the “comments” section of the blog and share their experience. This call to action has two main objectives – encourage the two-way communication between Bedrijfkracht and the blog visitors, in accordance with the strategy of managing communication channels identified in the previous stages, where the dialog was found to be a crucial element of communications’ management. The second objective is to increase the interest of blog users because they can start a conversation about a topic they are interested in and discuss their ideas with others. The call to action of the prototype has two options, which will be tested with the target group – option A calls to share a personal experience of using renewable energy, and option B encourage to discuss Bedrijfkracht’s products and services and how they helped become more environmentally conscious.
Evaluation Report
The A/B testing technique is used to evaluate the different reactions of the readers to a call to action, which will be included at the end of the blog and will encourage the users to leave a comment under the post. For the A/D testing, two groups will receive the same blog post from the Appendix. However, group A will receive a post with a call to action A, and group B will receive a call to action B. The responses of the two groups will be compared to determine which call to action is more effective. To test the effectiveness of the prototype, the technique developed by Gothelf and Seinmlden (2016) is used. The following statements will help test the design of the blog and the call to action at the end of it:
The main objective of the evaluation is to learn whether the design requirements from the previous stages are perceived as valuable by the target group and to understand the extent to which these requirements matter to the target group. Questions in the table below will be used to examine the attitudes of the target group towards the content and design of the blog post. In the following stages, the prototype will be tested with the target audience, and changes will be made based on their feedback to create a final product.