Digital marketing plays an important role for businesses trying to attract new customers. For micro-businesses (0-9 workers) or self- run businesses it can be difficult to find the time to market yourself online. Non tech-savvy individuals can be unaware of where to start or how to set up a website. It can be time consuming, costly and difficult to understand the digital requirements. In this paper, we describe an online system - the dashboard, to help micro-businesses learn about building an online presence, using a range of available digital services, and providing analytical data on services that they are using. We discuss how analytic tools can help inform business owners of how useful online marketing tools are for their business and which services attract the most customers and revenue

Chamberlain, Alan

Crabtree, Andy

Davies, Mark

Glover, Kevin

Greenhalgh, Chris

Rodden, Tom

Valchovska, Stela

Name not available

The Dashboard: an online system to help build an online presence and measure analytics for micro-businesses

Nottingham eTheses

Davies, Mark and Greenhalgh, Chris and Glover, Kevin and Chamberlain, Alan and Crabtree, Andy and Valchovska, Stela and Rodden, Tom (2013) The Dashboard: an online system to help build an online presence and measure analytics for micro-businesses. In: DE 2013: Open Digital, 4-6 Nov 2013, Salford, UK. (Unpublished) Access from the University of Nottingham repository: http://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/2186/1/DE2013_DEMO_-_the_dashboard.pdfCopyright and reuse: The Nottingham ePrints service makes this work by researchers of the University of Nottingham available open access under the following conditions.This article is made available under the University of Nottingham End User licence and may be reused according to the conditions of the licence.  For more details see: http://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/end_user_agreement.pdfA note on versions: The version presented here may differ from the published version or from the version of record. If you wish to cite this item you are advised to consult the publisher’s version. Please see the repository url above for details on accessing the published version and note that access may require a subscription.For more information, please contact eprints@nottingham.ac.ukDEMO Ð The Dashboard: an online system to help build an online presence and measure analytics for micro-businesses  Mark Davies, Chris Greenhalgh, Kevin Glover, Alan Chamberlain, Andy Crabtree, Stela Valchovska, Tom Rodden University of Nottingham Computer Science Jubilee Campus +44 (0) 115 951 4251 (firstname.surname}@nottingham.ac.uk  ABSTRACT Digital marketing plays an important role for businesses trying to attract new customers. For micro-businesses (0-9 workers) or self-run businesses it can be difficult to find the time to market yourself online. Non tech-savvy individuals can be unaware of where to start or how to set up a website. It can be time consuming, costly and difficult to understand the digital requirements. In this paper, we describe an online system - the dashboard, to help micro-businesses learn about building an online presence, using a range of available digital services, and providing analytical data on services that they are using.  We discuss how analytic tools can help inform business owners of how useful online marketing tools are for their business and which services attract the most customers and revenue.  Categories and Subject Descriptors H.5.m. Information interfaces and presentation (e.g., HCI) General Terms Design, Economics, Human Factors interfaces and presentation (e.g., HCI) Keywords System Design, Participatory Design, Analytics, Analysis, Ethnography, Research Ôin the wildÕ, Business Systems  1. INTRODUCTION In Wales, micro-businesses (defined as employing less than 9) play a vital part for the welsh economy. They are accountable for 94.5% of all businesses in Wales and are responsible for over 300,000 jobs in the private sector [1]. However since 2007, growth with micro-businesses in Wales has been falling in relation to the rest of the UK [1].  Google has also identified a lack of online presence for businesses in Wales, with 40% of businesses having no website [2]. WhatÕs more is that since 2007, growth with micro-businesses in Wales has been falling in relation to the rest of the UK [1]. The setting of our work is based in rural West Wales, in the county of Ceredigion. We are working with communities, social enterprises and local businesses to support business activities and needs. 2. INITIAL ETHNOGRAPHIC FIELDWORK AND ENGAGEMENT Our initial fieldwork in rural west Wales, Cardigan was with a social enterprise called 4CG. The enterprise encompasses a handful of businesses from an eco-shop, to a crche, to a local produce market. We also worked with other businesses in the Cardigan community such as a restaurant, which sourced its food locally; within a 25-mile radius. We had a researcher embedded in the community over a period of two to three months, to develop an understanding of the business activities and to collect qualitative feedback on the businesses and their needs. From this previous work [3][4] we found that many micro-businesses didnÕt have time to look into building an online presence and that most business was done in person, on the ground level. They expressed an interest and saw the perceived benefit of promoting themselves online but lacked the time, money and technical ability to do so. There were a small number of individuals that had a form of online presence for their business, such as a website, Facebook page or Twitter account. These were technically competent individuals that used technology daily and were keen to work with us on developing tools that would target their business challenges. Key challenges identified in previous work have been Ð increase footfall and increase marketing, whilst customers are largely interested in discovery.  3. The Dashboard One design concept that we have been developing to support self-marketing of micro-businesses has been the dashboard; an online system for building, managing and using analytics to show the user itÕs impact. From working with local businesses in the rural welsh community, we found that many micro-businesses didnÕt have websites or know a lot about creating and updating a business presence online, but would be interested in learning, if it was easy to do and didnÕt require a lot of time.  For the first phase of the dashboard, we wanted to start by introducing to the user a range of digital services that are out there for promoting a business (e.g. Facebook Pages, Trip Advisor, Yell).  Together with this, we provide tutorials and guides to learn how to set up accounts and make full use of these services through the dashboard. Once an account has been created to a service, it can then be linked to the userÕs dashboard. Light icons represent the ÔlinkedÕ accounts, whilst greyed-out icons represent ÔunlinkedÕ accounts. UserÕs can customize their dashboard to suit their preferences. They can add and delete services as they wish.   Figure 1. A userÕs dashboard with links to service accounts. 3.1 Features of the dashboard  The dashboard has been developed using a stripped down version of Wordpress, which allows us to build simplified interfaces that are very powerful to use. It also allows us to develop our own plug-ins to serve the further needs of a micro-business. Some of the features that the dashboard offers are described below. 3.1.1 Discover and use experimental research services and tailored plug-ins Previous research toolkits [5], which we have developed internally and can be useful for rural activities and businesses, have been added as a service to the dashboard. We have also developed a plug in for business authenticity, where businesses can be a part of a group or community. This is represented as badges. 3.1.2 Help and Tutorials For each online service and built in tool we provide tutorials. This helps users to not only discover services and tools that can help their business but to also understand how they help them and how to get started with them. 3.1.3 Analytics Ð showing impact and value to online services People that run a business and are online are interested in knowing what customers look at and how customers came to find them - particularly for smaller businesses with less money.  They want to know things like; ÒIs it worth paying £500 a year to advertise on YELL?Ó ÒHow many people have found me on this service?Ó  How much does it benefit my business?Ó Ð for this we use open APIs that offer service usage data and analytics so that businesses can see the impact for each service they market themselves on. WhatÕs interesting is the way people use and understand analytics, and how this can inform future business strategies and design (what we can provide to support this). 4. FUTURE DEVELOPMENTS The dashboard is expandable and works as a platform to link digital services that people use or may wish to use. It is currently focused on the business back-end activities. The next phase will be to explore the design of a public-facing interface, which could be a mashup of the userÕs data from each of the services and tools that are linked to the dashboard. This could look like a webpage with updates, map navigation, videos, images, reviews and everything else, which can be directed a customers. This could potentially be used as a means of a website for businesses, that do not have the time or money to invest in a business website. The dashboard could also be used as a back-end to the administration and updating of this public-facing interface. As well as this, location-based, context-awareness mobile apps could also be explored for the customer/client side. These apps could ÔpullÕ on the geotagged data that the dashboard is pointing to.  5. PROJECT RELATED OUTPUTS As is usual, this demo is based on research that has evolved over the duration of the work. For a fuller understanding of the research and associated outputs, one might also want to read our work on innovation [6], working with communities and data [7] and our latest CSCW paper [8]. 6. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This work is part of the Scaling the Rural Enterprise project, supported by the Research Councils UK (RCUK) Ð grant number EP/J000604/1 and EP/J000604/2. 7. REFERENCES [1] Micro-Business Task and Finish Group Report, January 2012- Accessed May 2012 http://www.rlpsww.org.uk/English/publications/Documents/Welsh_Government_Reports/120118microbusinessen.pdf [2] BBC (2012) ÒGoogle tells Welsh firms they are losing business without web presencesÓ Ð Accessed May 2012 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-16751282 [3] Chamberlain, A., Crabtree, A. and Davies, M. (2013) 'Community Engagement for Research: contextual design in rural CSCW system development' .The 6th International Conference on Communities and Technology 2013, C&T 2013, Munich, Germany, ACM Press [4] Chamberlain, A., Crabtree, A., Davies, A., Greenhalgh, C., Rodden, T.,  Valchovska, S and Glover, K. (2012) ÒFresh and local: the rural produce market as a site for co-design, ubiquitous technological intervention and digital-economic development.Ó MUM 2012, Ulm, Germany, ACM.  [5] Chamberlain, A., Crabtree, A., Davies, M. et al (2013) ÒDeveloping Placebooks: participation, community, interaction, design, and ubiquitous data aggregation Ôin the wildÓ, Proceedings of the Human Computer Interaction International - HCII 2013, (LNCS) Springer [6] Crabtree, A., Chamberlain, A., Davies, M. et al (2013) ÒDoing Innovation in the WildÓ, CHItaly 2013, Trento, Italy. ACM Press. [7] Chamberlain, A., Malizia, A & Dix, A. (2013) ÒEngaging in Island Life: big data, micro data, domestic analytics and smart islandsÓ, HiCUE 2013: Workshop on Human Interfaces for Civic and Urban Engagement, Ubicomp 2013, Zurich. ACM Press. [8] Crabtree, A & Chamberlain, A. (2014)  "Making it Pay a Bit BetterÓ- Design Challenges for Micro Rural Enterprise, the 17th ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (CSCW 2014) February 15-19 in Baltimore, Maryland, USA. ACM Press 

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