About Us

BlueRiverStone is a research company that specialises in the online channel. Its research objective is to help companies align the online channel with broader company internal and external customer strategy. If you want to understand user requirements and how to optimise your online channel you’re speaking to the right people

BlueRiverStone has built its service offering around and is integrated with the technical analysis provided by eValid. Our principle methodology is scenario based assessments, which allow us to make objective comparisons between companies’ online channels.

Many usability consultants use anecdotal methods of gathering user requirements. We believe that while useful such methods are limited and can be quite opinionated and prescriptive. Our method is to first broadly research user requirements in a traditional survey format, then build an ideal website information architecture around these requirements. We then can systematically compare a relatively large number of websites. This provides us with companies relative positioning as well as practice and a database of examples.

A website is made up of three components to its quality of service experience.

1. Layer of Technical quality

2. Website usability

3. Email responsiveness.

All of these layers interact and support each other but need also to be integrated into other channels to create a seamless field of interaction. While companies have well developed traditional channels our research shows that the online channel gets built independently as an after thought tacked on to existing company infrastructure. It is therefore not used optimally and miscommunications arise.

BRS Projects

BRS is currently conducting several research projects both across the corporate website and in particular industry sectors:

·        Top 150 Fortune 500 Evaluation of corporate online channel from the point of view of the investor.

·        e-Recruitment Project: Evaluation of the corporate online channel from the point of view of a job seeker

·        Rank your Online Bank: Survey of online banking clients’ views of their banks. This study is coupled with a survey of  South African Banks’ online strategies

·        Online Travel and Tourism Project: Evaluation of the online offerings of hotels, car hire and airlines.

·        Survey of Investor requirements of corporate websites

·        Evaluation of top e-tailer websites 

We are also conducting a study of the state of corporate governance among South African listed companies, together with the University of the Witwatersrand .

BRS Clients

Afrox;     Absa Bank; Anglogold; Anglo Platinum; African Bank; Bidvest; Goldfields; Harmony Gold; Impala Platinum; Imperial; Iscor; Liberty Life; Naspers (& MIH); Nedbank; Old Mutual; Reunert; Sanlam; Sappi; Standard Bank; Sun International; Protea Hotels; Standard and Charter.

The Team

Ian Kruger: (Managing Director)

Ian has worked as a journalist and relationship manager for ITWeb, special project editor for the Journal for Convergence. He is currently doing research for his MM in IT evaluation methods.

Contact ian@blueriverstone.com 

Dr Andrew Thatcher:

Andrew has a PhD in Psychology. In his PhD work he looked at factors influencing searching behavior and search performance on the WWW. Andrew has several academic journal articles in local and international journals and has presented papers at international conferences around the world. He is a lecturer of industrial psychology at the University of the Witwatersrand , with a particular interest on the impact of technology in the workplace. He teaches in Ergonomics, Research Methodology and Engineering Psychology. His research interests include cognitive and social aspects of human- computer interaction, Mental models, Impact of the Internet on education and on developing countries, WWW usability, WWW search behaviour patterns 

John Montgomery:

John holds two masters in corporate law and English literature. At present he is working on a doctorate through Wits Law School where he also teaches and is involved in anything law and technology related, including administering the website. John is also an associate of the Institute of Chartered Secretaries and Administrators and before moving into the academic field held senior positions as a company secretary. He has diverse interests ranging from corporate law with an emphasis on corporate governance, website design, and narrative jurisprudence. 

Basil Bezuidenhout:

Basil is a qualified statistician. He worked at the Medical Research Council (MRC) as a statistician then the Epidemiology Research Unit of the Medical Bureau for Occupational Diseases (MBOD) as a Senior Statistician. Following this he held the position as Group Epidemiologist at AECI. He then lectured quantitative techniques and research methodology at Educor campuses (Damelin and Midrand Graduate Institute) and was appointed National Academic Head for Statistics at Damelin. He is currently a statistical consultant on various market research projects and statistics facilitator for the Services SETA. 

Klaus

Klaus has a Msc in Ergonomics at Lulea Technical University in Sweden . He has 4 years working experience, designing and analysing user interfaces for major South African banks as well as design of some intranet web sites, and one internet web site. He has 3 scientific publications on software usability, two on ATM's, and one on software liability.