Exporting and international trade redesign

The service

  • Exporting support for Scottish companies

The problems

  • Businesses weren’t aware of the range of exporting services that Scottish Enterprise offers

  • We weren’t getting many exporting-related enquiries

  • We didn’t know if the content on our website helped exporters and potential exporters with what they need

The project:

  • Raise awareness of our exporting expertise and support

  • Create content that is relevant and useful to exporters and potential exporters

  • Get more enquiries for exporting services and events

  • Help users self-serve

  • Get more users taking advantage of market opportunities

What I did

Identified user needs

The Department of International Trade had done a lot of research into the user needs of exporters and had shared their findings with us. There was one problem - there were hundreds of needs. 

I spent some time streamlining the user needs and categorised them by theme:

  • Motivation (Why I want to export) ​

  • Information and resources (I need information and resources to do x) ​

  • Skills (I need to ensure I have the skills to do x) ​

  • Logistics (I need to move stuff and people) ​

  • Compliance (I need to comply with the law) ​

  • Risk management (I want to know what to do if something goes wrong

  • Opportunities (I want to find new opportunities to do x)

Discovery

Impact

We were able to clearly understand the different types of user needs that exporters have.

Mapped needs against existing services

I mapped these needs against the support/services that Scottish Enterprise and our partners offered, alongside the project manager and exporting experts.

Discovery

Impact

We were able to understand where we were meeting the needs and where the gaps were.

Created company archetypes

I created some high-level company archetypes based upon our user research that showed:

  • Their needs

  • The barriers they faced

  • Their goals

Discovery

Impact

This helped us understand the needs and barriers that companies face at different stages.

Did a content review

I worked with a content designer to do a content review and match all content to user needs.

Alpha

Impact

We were able to see where there were needs that we weren’t currently meeting with our content and where existing content needed to be improved.

Ran ideation workshops

I ran ideation workshops with the exporting team using Mentimeter to explore how we could fill gaps in our exporting services, based on what we learned through the gap analysis and user research.

Alpha

Impact

We were able to come with ideas for how to improve our exporting services and prioritse them based on effort and impact.