Customer Focus
Using Video to Build Better Customer Relationships
Advertising Age recently did a CMO roundtable video. It’s a great idea: Get a bunch of top Chief Marketing Officers with a moderator and ask them to discuss their biggest challenges.
I guarantee you a lot of CMO’s (and a whole lot of other people) tuned in to watch this frank round table discussion.
What industry is your website targeting? Are you a sales training company targeting sales managers? Why not get together a group of 3-4 sales managers and ask them to talk about their biggest challenges with employee training?
Are you a website development company targeting small business owners? Why not gather a group of small business owners and record a session where they talk about their experiences — good and bad — with trying to put up a website that increases business?
These would have to be candid, honest discussions about real issues people are facing. There’s no sales pitch for your company allowed in these videos. It’s simply your way to facilitate an honest discussion about the issues and challenges within your industry.
Consider of the power video. When a prospective customers comes to your site to watch this video, they gain knowledge and insight from watching peers discuss issues that are important to them.
THEN you can create copy and links, so that after they watch the video, you can show how your service addresses their issues, solves their problems, and overcomes their challenges.
It’s called building rapport. You’re letting your prospective customers know: “We understand you. We care about the same issues you do. We’re in touch with people like you, and if we’re listening to their concerns, needs, and desires, we’ll listen to yours, too.”
It’s about showing, not telling. Instead of saying, “We’re an industry leader, well versed in the problems that sales managers face every day,” SHOW them. It will be way more effective.
. .
About the Author: Holly Buchanan is co-author of The Soccer Mom Myth — Today’s Female Consumer: Who She Really Is, Why She Really Buys; and co-instructor of FutureNow’s Persuasive Online Copywriting seminar, June 2nd in Manhattan.
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Written by:Holly Buchanan
Net Gain: Latinos Are Going Online More Than Ever
Admen dream about Silvia Medina.
She’s part of a highly coveted demographic group, 18-34 year olds, that companies from Coca-Cola to Apple just can’t get enough of. Though her parents came from the Dominican Republic, she was born and grew up in the United States. She’s a fully bilingual, fully bicultural Latina, just about to finish her MBA. If you want to find her, you’ve got to go online.
Silvia has been on the internet since 1996, and uses it constantly for school, work, and at home. She communicates by e-mail, pays bills online, and prefers to shop at Amazon than go to the mall. Silvia catches up with friends on social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace. She follows the news on AOL Latino and keeps up with chisme on Terra. When she misses an episode of a telenovela, she downloads it on Univision.com.
But her favorite spot in cyberspace is the Miami-based portal Batanga. Last year, the company received a shot with a $30 million dollar investment. It’s paid off, since that’s where Silvia spends about 80% of her online time.
That comes as no surprise to Batanga’s CEO Rafael Urbina: “It makes her feel good that her music is being played there, that her language is spoken there,” he says.
Critical Mass
Silvia is not alone. In fact, she’s part of a growing trend among Latinos of growing internet usage. According to November 2007 figures from comScore’s Media Metrix, 18.1 million or 41% of Hispanics are online. These numbers make marketers salivate, though there may be even more. According to Dr. Felipe Korzenny, Professor and Director of the Center for Hispanic Marketing Communication at Florida State University, who has been researching Latinos online since 2000, usage may be significantly greater. He would raise the ante to 28.8 million, or 65% of the Hispanic population.
Anyway you look at it, the number of Latinos going online has reached critical mass. But to understand these numbers, you need to segment the market. The first to go online were acculturated Latinos with a higher socio-economic level, according to Danny Allen from Admixture, an online ad network with about 75% to 80% of websites in Spanish. This is echoed by David Morse of New American Dimensions, one of the top multicultural market research firms. He explains that online Latinos are better educated and have a higher household income. The longer that they are in the United States and especially when they have school-age children, the more time they spend online. But this isn’t necessarily the case for all Latinos.
“We need to keep in mind,” says Morse, “that there is still a digital divide among the less acculturated immigrants that tend to be poor.”
Many recent immigrants lack the education to realize the importance of the internet. When you go to their houses you are more likely to find a huge stereo system or a big screen TV before a computer. But as penetration in the Hispanic market gets deeper, the lower socio-economic levels and the less acculturated Hispanics will start to get online in larger numbers. This segmentation is demonstrated by a 2007 eMarketer report which reveals 78% of English-dominant adult Hispanics are using the internet, compared to 71% of non-Hispanic whites. At the same time, only 32% of Spanish-dominant adult Hispanics were online.
Allen notes that the broad availability of cheap broadband and cheap computers has helped getting Latinos online. The ability to get online through mobile phones has also has been an influence, since Latinos generally over-index in the use of mobile phone’s advanced features. One theory is that this is because they don’t have a computer at home so they do most of their interacting through cellular phones. With the advent of the iPhone and its ability to cruise the “real internet” it’s becoming less of an issue that websites have to be mobile-friendly.
Viva Batanga
Where are all these Latino internauts going? When analyzing the top 10 sites visited by Latinos in comScore’s Media Metrix, one notices that the most popular are those from Yahoo and Google, followed a bit down the list by Amazon and Ebay. The most popular Latino-themed site, Univision.com, gets a lot of traffic but is barely within the top 30 properties.
Yet there are several very successful sites that have caught the attention of the Latino consumer, garnering loyalty as well as eyeballs. Todobebé.com has been around since 1999, evolving into a full-fledged multimedia company serving Spanish-speaking mothers not just online but via television, radio, print, and event marketing. Terra is the portal of Spanish telephone giant Telefonica. Its CEO, Fernando Rodriguez, shares that one of the most visited areas in Terra is music, and there the most popular are the artists’ own pages, in both Spanish and English. He emphasizes that what is most important is content, not language.
Then there is also Silvia Medina’s favorite, Batanga. She certainly is not alone regarding her preferences. Rick Marroquin, Batanga’s chief marketing officer, joyfully shared that in comScore’s, November 2007 Media Metrix, Batanga was at 3.5 million unique visitors a month inside the U.S., 1.1 million of those identified as Latinos.
Batanga was born in 1999 in Greensboro, North Carolina as a Hispanic online radio station. Around the same time, Venezuelan native Rafael Urbina started a company by the name of Planeta Networks, offering internet video on demand. In 2005, both companies merged, with headquarters in Miami, and Urbina now serves as CEO. In August 2007, Batanga raised $30 million for the expansion of its marketing efforts and online content. The lead investors, Tudor Ventures and H.I.G. Ventures, both manage multi-billion dollar manage large portfolios, and have funded a wide variety of enterprises. What’s the secret of Batanga’s success?
“In the past, the value proposition offered by Hispanic media companies was primarily the language,” says Urbina. “We believe that Batanga is one of the first media companies to break this barrier. From the start, it began with a bilingual interface, giving visitors the option of accessing our content in their language of choice. We focus in offering culturally relevant content for users. That is why music was the logical first step. Independent of your heritage, or where were you born, or your language preference, there will be one Latino music genre that will touch your heart.”
Urbina emphasizes that Batanga is living proof that Hispanics are online. The fact that most of them are late adopters compared to the general market has resulted in them connecting to the web directly through broadband, rather than a dialup connection. This creates an interesting situation given that Latinos basically leapfrogged an entire technology. Currently, less than 50% of the entire Latino market is online and the Batanga team believes this number will continue to grow in a much faster pace than the general market for many years to come.
English or Spanish?
Despite the success of Batanga and its rivals, the debate continues. Yet marketers agree that the important thing is to define who you are trying to reach and then devise strategies that are meaningful and relevant to them.
Matias Perel, the founder of Latin3, a Hispanic interactive agency, catering to Hispanic divisions of global corporations, takes a step further on the segmentation of the Latino online market. According to the 2006 AOL Roper Study, he sees the Hispanic online market divided into three: Mostly Acculturated 15%; Partially Acculturated 66%; and Relatively Unacculturated 19%.
The mostly acculturated Hispanics are achievement oriented. 74% of them prefer to read online content mostly in English, 4% in both languages, and 22% don’t have any preference. Partially acculturated are more into social and fan oriented. 34% of them prefer to read online content mostly in English, 12% in Spanish , 27% in both languages, and 22% don’t have any preference. The relatively unacculturated are mostly oriented to family and home. 9% of them prefer to read online content mostly in English, 31% in Spanish, 41% in both languages, and 19% don’t have any preference.
Curiously, research has shown that English-dominant Hispanics have more blogs than any other group in the U.S. while Spanish-dominant Hispanics have more websites than any other. The latter is due to the cultural tendency of trying to be connected, to try to have relationships and connections. Dr. Korzenny has heard reports that many immigrants build their personal websites to show loved ones back in their home countries how they live.
But by far the greatest controversy is which language to use.
Fernando Espuelas, CEO of Voy, a leading Latino social entertainment network, quoted a recent study by the Pew Hispanic Center showing that 75% of the growth among Hispanic consumers will come from U.S. born persons as opposed to immigrants. The vast majority of the market place is American-born and the future of the growth will come from them. Also, Espuelas says, referencing another Pew study, English language adoption among Latinos is happening at a much faster rate. Therefore, he says, we can see that the U.S. Latino population is becoming predominantly English-dominant. Yet he is aware that Spanish language, culturally, is very important for the Hispanic community.
Some argue that English language sites should develop content in Spanish, since many users prefer reading in that language. But exactly the opposite has been happening with traditionally Spanish language websites. To reach a larger percentage of the Latino market, they have been producing bilingual content. Terra has been producing bilingual content, particularly to cover specific events like soccer’s Gold Cup and World Cup, as well as The Oscars. Terra executives have noticed that more and more bilingual and even English-dominant users are coming to their site looking for relevant content. Their conclusion is that language is secondary to the content’s appeal.
Keeping Pace
Have advertisers kept up with this growth?
Hispanic advertising agencies are starting to develop more and more interactive advertising capabilities and as they do they are looking for quality websites, declares Allen. In the last 18 months he has seen the agencies’ attitudes evolve from believing that Latinos weren’t online and they were going to reach them through print, television, and radio to now starting to realize that indeed they need to reach them on the internet. They are realizing that they are far behind the general market agencies regarding their online capabilities and are working really hard to catch up. Of course, there are some exceptions — several Hispanic shops have been doing interactive for a while.
Espuelas predicts that there will be a very rapid evolution of advertisers; those who never advertised in English to Latinos starting to do so and those who traditionally only used television will now broaden their buys to include digital. He foresees a very significant growth in the overall marketing and communications investment pie, and happening disproportionately in digital media as opposed to traditional media.
Media Economics Group tracks advertising activity targeted to multicultural markets. They have been tracking online Hispanic advertising for more than 5 years. Their president, Carlos Pelay, has seen a notable increase in activity in terms of the number of active brands advertising to Latinos online. The major advertisers are present on the major portals. In terms of campaigns, Univision.com ranks number one, then AOL Latino, MSN Latino, Que Pasa, Batanga,Yahoo Telemundo, and StarMedia. For major campaigns the big advertisers are buying several portals at once.
For example, Batanga currently has over 100 advertisers, and Marroquin believes there are still a lot more advertisers that should be opening their eyes to Latinos online. There is a lot of economic action amongst Latino consumers that is making the cost barrier to enter the web significantly lower than what it was even two or three years ago. The numbers don’t lie. When asked about advertising success stories on Batanga’s site, Marroquin said, “At the risk of sounding very arrogant, there are too many to count. Our advertisers have been doing unbelievably well.”
That’s good news for Silvia Medina, and for all Latinos online.
[Editor’s Note: Each month, Juan Tornoe joins us on GrokDotCom to share his insights on Hispanic marketing trends. This article is the debut cover story for LATINO magazine, now available in limited edition print format. To learn more about how to receive LATINO magazine, contact Juan at Hispanic Trending.]
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Written by:Juan Tornoe
4 Q’s Your Web Analytics Can’t Answer
Our firm is very skeptical of surveys. They can annoy customers. The questions themselves tend to reflect the bias of the person or company asking them. At best, they offer directionally-correct information, which is often taken out of context and used to replace an old assumption with some shiny new (and equally dangerous) one.
The great thing about Web Analytics is that it allows you to see how people are using your site — without surveying them.
Our motto: “Believe what they do, not what they say they do.”
But there are things your Web Analytics can’t tell you, especially if you didn’t use personas to plan the site in the first place. And if you haven’t planned the site with personas, even believing “what they do” can be misleading.
That’s when a survey can help. When handled correctly, surveys can provide a good starting point for gathering qualitative data about the customer experience.
Not just any survey will do. You need the greatest survey questions ever:
- What is the purpose of your visit to our website today?
- Were you able to complete your task today?
- If you were not able to complete your task today, why not?
- If you did complete your task, what did you enjoy most about the site?*
Avinash Kaushik, the man who developed these powerful (and modestly-titled!) survey questions has teamed up with iPerceptions to create 4Q, a free tool that allows you to add this survey to your site.
Seeking Analytics Nirvana
It’s rather strange, isn’t it? Why would one of the World’s foremost experts in parsing quantitative Web Analytics data — the guy who wrote the book on it, actually — insist we get excited about fuzzy, qualitative data?
Let’s see what Avinash has to say about 4Q…
If you have read my book or my blog you are quite aware of the What and the Why issue. All the quantitative data you and I have from our web analytics tools is really good at helping us understanding the What happened.
Visits and Visitors, pages viewed, referrers, keywords, bounces, paths (!), campaigns, and so on and so forth. All critical data that helps you step up your game - improve your campaigns, fix pages, fire someone.
It cannot, no matter how much you torture the data, tell you Why something happened.
[…] We overlay our own opinions and experiences and preferences.
Unfortunately we are not our customers. In fact being as close to our companies as we are, it is quite likely that we are the worst possible people to empathize with our customers.
Sounds crazy, we know, but this whole “visitor empathy” concept might be the best thing that ever happened to your relationship with Web Analytics — let alone your relationship with actual customers.
In this YouTube presentation, Avinash explains how qulitative and quantitative data live in harmony:
*Fourth question added by iPerceptions.
[Disclosure: Future Now’s Bryan Eisenberg is an adviser to iPerceptions.]
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Written by:Robert Gorell
If Victoria’s Secret Wants Me Back…
I used to shop at Victoria’s Secret. They had really great stuff. But lately, when I walk into the store, I feel like I’m at a teenage pajama party, a porn video shoot, or both.
Victoria’s Secret used to be “my” store — a place that catered to sophisticated women. Now it feels like a store catering to teenage girls and creepy guys. Why, I wondered, doesn’t Victoria’s Secret want me as a customer anymore? Could it be because I’m not 25? But isn’t that a good thing? I’m older and I have more money.
Barbara La Placa is the associate publisher of marketing for MORE Magazine, a monthly magazine aimed at women over 40. In this OMMA article, she talks about women over 40 and their buying habits:
La Placa uses the example of lipstick to compare older women with younger consumers. “Open up my medicine cabinet and I’ve got 700 lipsticks. You don’t see that with young girls who get one brand everyone else has. Me, I’m 49, and I’m always looking for the right shade. And I have the money to buy the darn things,” La Placa adds.
Touche. Wake up and meet the boomer market. There are more women over 40 than ever before. They have money and they’re spending it.
According to The Wall Street Journal, even Victoria’s Secret is acknowledging that efforts to target younger customers may have disenfranchised their core market.
In the 1990s, professional women shopped the pastel-painted stores for colorful, European-inspired lingerie, supplementing underwear wardrobes previously filled with black, white and beige styles. Soft music played in the background while saleswomen discreetly offered help.
But over time, Victoria’s Secret adapted to a changing culture. One reason Victoria’s Secret got off track, Ms. Turney said, was the success of its Pink brand, which launched in 2002 and aimed to introduce college students to Victoria’s Secret stores. Pink has grown tremendously; in October, an executive said it would probably reach $900 million in sales for 2007.
But as teens and 20-somethings snapped up Pink underwear and pajamas, too many other product lines at Victoria’s Secret shifted to target that same customer, Ms. Turney said.
It was great that Victoria’s Secret brought in the younger audience, but they forgot about the rest of their customers (like me). I’m sorry, but a pink stuffed dog isn’t going to get me to buy more bras. (Though it might make a nice “friend” for my Boston Terrier with a humping problem.)
Victoria’s Secret is working on changing its image, toning down the “super sexy” hype and going back to its “ultra-feminine” roots. Can they win back customers?
Changing customer views will be a huge challenge. Sheri Coulter, a 42-year-old secretary in Flower Mound, Texas, worked at a Victoria’s Secret store three years ago. “It was like pulling teeth to get the women our age to come in there,” she says. “In our 40s and up, we are sexy — just not the same sexy a college gal is.”
For a time, she says, the store where she worked stopped carrying sizes 38 or larger, embarrassing some older customers who were turned away.
If they want me back, that’s great. But if they are re-re-branding, Victoria’s Secret should take some redesign cues from its own website (which does a much better job than the store, in my opinion).
Here’s what VictoriasSecret.com does well:
- The homepage shows a woman with an actual figure who looks sexy without being trashy.
- Great categorization. I can shop by collection, style of bra, see specials, or get tips on fitting.
- Product pages detail why each garment is or is not right for my body.
- I can increase the text size so I can actually read the product descriptions. (Thank you!)
For now, I’d much rather shop at the online store than the retail store. That’s a problem. If Victoria’s Secret wants me back as a customer, they’ll need to match the experience they’re presenting online with the experience they present in their stores.
[Editor’s Note: Holly Buchanan is co-author of The Soccer Mom Myth — Today’s Female Consumer: Who She Really Is, Why She Really Buys, and co-instructor of our Persuasive Online Copywriting seminar on March 28th in San Francisco.]
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Written by:Holly Buchanan
How Barack’s Strategy Could Help You Win Customers
I’m old enough to have grown up in the 1960’s, which was a “you-had-to-be-there” era of civic thinking and electrifying ideas. Not since that time have I found myself as excited as I am now over the upcoming presidential election.
I’ve been making donations to all of the major campaigns (Democratic and Republican) in order to see how each system works and talks to me, and while none of them do a bad job, there’s a definite divide between how the older and younger candidates communicate. The standout in the group is Barack Obama.
You may feel that Barack is not your candidate, but do take a look at his communication style, which is the definitive example for how to speak to customers (especially the younger generation) if you hope to do business with them.
No chest-thumping allowed. While other candidates focus on what makes them special as a candidate (count how many times a candidate uses the word “I” or “me” on their website), Barack’s campaign theme is “Yes We Can.” His website offers the theme of community, and uses terms like “you,” “we,” and “us” to draw you into the fold.
It’s all about US. When making a donation to the campaign, you are asked to write a short note about your feelings about Barack, the campaign, or anything you wish. Then, when you receive your thank-you note, it includes a message that another donor wrote (along with their first name and city). Suddenly, you are no longer a lone, isolated donor; you feel an immediate sense of community, belonging, and mission.
“Please, call me Barack.” As with any campaign, automatic emails and news items are sent to members and donors. The language used is serious in tone but not condescending. And each email is signed, “Barack.” Not “Barack Obama.” Not “The Barack Obama Campaign.” Just “Barack.” A decision as small as how you sign your name to a piece of marketing (because that’s what this is, after all), can make a world of difference.
After last weekend’s Barack Obama rally in California, an editorial in The New York Times said,
“The Times editorial board has endorsed Mrs. Clinton’s candidacy, and we are enthusiastic about her ability to be a great president. But candidates have to win in order to serve. Attending the rally here, we hoped Mrs. Clinton and her team were also watching and listening, very attentively.”
Not only should Clinton (and McCain and Romney) be paying attention, so should you. This is the communication style of the future.
Are you ready for change?
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Written by:Michele Miller
Top 10 Online Retailers by Conversion Rate: An Analysis
[Erratum: The following report on the top-converting sites for January 2007 has been corrected, as it mistakenly references a previous year’s data. It seems a fellow blogger cited outdated numbers and we overlooked the error during fact check. Bryan stands by his analysis, however, as it was not intended to be time sensitive per se.]
Here it is, the list of January’s top 10 converting retail sites:
1. Proflowers.com - 14.1%
2. Coldwater Creek - 13.3%
3. FTD.com - 13.0%
4. QVC - 12.8%
5. Office Depot - 12.4%
6. eBay - 11.5%
7. Lands’ End - 11.5%
8. Tickets.com - 11.2%
9. 1800flowers.com - 10.0%
10. Amazon - 9.6%
[Source: Nielsen Online / Marketing Charts]
Only four of these companies were on December’s list:
(4) Amazon - 17.60%
(6) Lands End - 17.20%
(7) QVC - 17.10%
(8) Coldwater Creek - 17.10%
A big retail SIGH! If only people’s buying habits stayed consistent all year long, to be like they are in December.
My friend Craig provides an interesting analysis of this month’s numbers. He’s right on the money when he says:
There are many things most sites can do to dramatically improve conversion rates. There are also much smarter ways to measure and consider conversion rates than the overall site average. While that may be an interesting for conference-room conversation, it’s a lot more important to break down conversion rates by method-of-contact (email vs organic vs display vs PPC), based on the place in their buying cycle where visitors engage with you, or based on user intent as evidenced in their actions/expressions.
But then he tries to explain, then excuse, why small retailers supposedly can’t have a 10% conversion rate:
The message it seems is that if you need to deliver an overall conversion rate of 10% or greater, you need 30M registered users who buy from you 3-5 times per year, a 24-hour television channel, a pattern of inflicting back pain on innocent mailmen 3-4 times each year, or to sell products which are purchased as a result of some ages-old game of emotional blackmail.
Craig’s as smart as they come, but while offering an insightful analysis, he doesn’t nail the primary reasons. Then again, he hasn’t been focused exclusively on conversion for almost a decade, so allow me to shed some light: The number one reason the “average” small retailer hasn’t achieved a conversion over 10% is because they haven’t worked hard enough to deserve it.
Have you?
Oops! Have I tossed a turd in the punch bowl? (Don’t be offended, please continue reading.)
Several of the websites on this month’s list have been clients of ours and most of the others have staffs that I’ve known professionally for many years. What most of them have in common is they work harder consistently, year after year, at continuously improving their websites for customers than you (the average) do. Their results demonstrate it.
Let’s examine more carefully at some of the points Craig makes since, in one form or another, they are often repeated excuses that pass for the conventional wisdom about conversion rate optimization.
Catalogs Alone Are Responsible For High Converting Websites
It isn’t just having a catalog that gives you a high converting website. If it did, L.L. Bean that was on the list in December with a healthy 23.60% would show up the rest of the year. Lands End, however, has been on it in December, November, and September. Where are all the other thousands of catalogers? Why aren’t they making the list? A strong catalog brand can be a factor, but it isn’t always the primary driver of website conversion.
Television Home Shoppers Aren’t Auto Converting
I love it when Craig says, “QVC. What’s their conversion rate for TV viewers? Their website is functionally a cart, so it could be argued that they’ve got 86.2% cart abandonment.” Absolutely.
However, why doesn’t HSN (Home Shopping Network) or the other large DRTV advertisers show up consistently on the top converting list? While it’s true that many of these shoppers come pre-sold from watching the show hosts sell them the product, they aren’t arriving to the website in a hypnotic trance with credit cards in hand ready to click on that final order confirmation button.
Just Because People Replenish Staples Frequently, Doesn’t Mean…
Craig refers to OfficeDepot.com as having “many no-point-in-comparing products and I assume lots of business orders from people who have accounts and replenish online frequently.” So do Staples, OfficeMax, Quill, FreshDirect and many others. Why don’t they show up on the list? Again, while this might contribute to conversions it doesn’t guarantee a top converting website.
But You’re No Amazon
Craig’s right. Comparing eBay and Amazon to almost anyone today isn’t fair. Part of what helped these companies to become who they are is their commitment to the customer experience. They each had significant competitors but Amazon and eBay just kept pushing the bar higher. In the offline world, there are very few companies that could touch the retail influence of WalMart. Why doesn’t WalMart.com make the the top converting website list regularly?
Wal-Mart’s absence is simple enough to explain. Until recently, Wal-Mart hasn’t worked as hard online as they should have. Wal-Mart has been successful but, like other online retailers, sales volume online often covers up for all those customers that would have converted but didn’t.
Eliminate The Excuses
Do you have a road map to improve your conversion rate from where you are at today, then one to exceed that tomorrow, and then again after that?
FutureNow can help. I invite you to email or call us: 877-643-7244.
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Written by:Bryan Eisenberg
Don’t Hose the Canadians! (Our Dollars Are Equal Now.)
We Canadians already have a bit of a complex due to the fact that the rest of the world seems to lump us together with the U.S., calling them our big brother. Canadians are sick of being treated like leftovers. So, when certain North American companies leave us (and other international visitors) out of the loop by making it difficult to buy from their websites, they’re losing sales and annoying would-be customers like me.
It’s time for U.S. companies to consistently treat international customers the same way that they treat their compatriots online.
An experience that one of the attendees of our recent Persuasive Online Copywriting seminar shared with us demonstrates the frustrations Canadians face when shopping online: Bill was attempting to purchase a Northwest Airlines flight at NWA.com, so his son could attend a communications workshop in Austin. After going through the process of choosing his flight, seat, and entering his name and credit card information, he realized Northwest’s website had something against foreigners.
In what normally would have been a confirmation email (see thumbnail image), Bill was rejected. He was informed that if he does not have a U.S. billing address, his order wouldn’t be processed. Instead, he would need to go through a long list of bizarre, counterintuitive instructions on how to give them money.
Instead of booking on the homepage…
…he would have to click the “Reservation Center” drop-down menu on the top navigation, then click “Shop for Flights.”
Is there any way he would have figured this out on his own? And if international booking is such an issue, why don’t they just say so right away, or at least offer the same toggle button say that you’re not a U.S. resident on the homepage?
This is just one example of many. I’ve personally encountered countless situations just like this.
Do any of you Canadian or international readers out there prefer not doing business with U.S. companies because of experiences like these?
[Editor’s Note: For the sake of transparency, and because we don’t want to seem too cool for school, let it be known that we at Future Now have been, at times, just as guilty of cultural bias as other U.S. businesses. Although many of our Canadian friends, clients, readers, and (in Melissa’s case) colleagues know we love our neighbo(u)rs to the north, we have occasionally and regrettably missed out on international business. You can read the comments on Melissa’s last post for details. As always, the first step toward recovery is admitting you have a problem. 
]
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Written by:Melissa Burdon
Should You Cancel All Your Advertising?
In February 2003, Amazon.com canceled all their advertising and put that money towards free shipping as a word of mouth strategy. Many thought Jeff Bezos was crazy and that Amazon.com would never turn a profit. In 2007 they were solidly profitable with over $15 billion in revenues. Bezos knew that marketers used to get paid to make promises the business had no intention of keeping.
He understood that, in an increasingly transparent environment, being truly customer focused would matter more than telling customers about how great your service was.
Recently, Joe Nocera of The New York Times told millions of people that Amazon puts customers first in his part article, part testimonial, part morality tale, “Put Buyers First? What A Concept.” You should read it in full but here are a few excerpts:
“They care about having the lowest prices, having vast selection, so they have choice, and getting the products to customers fast,” [Mr. Bezos] said. “And the reason I’m so obsessed with these drivers of the customer experience is that I believe that the success we have had over the past 12 years has been driven exclusively by that customer experience. We are not great advertisers. So we start with customers, figure out what they want, and figure out how to get it to them.”
Anybody who has spent any time around Mr. Bezos knows that this is not just some line he throws out for public consumption. It has been the guiding principle behind Amazon since it began.
[…] Amazon says it has somewhere on the order of 72 million active customers, who, in the last quarter, were spending an average of $184 a year on the site. That’s up from $150 or so the year before. Amazon’s return customer business is off the charts. According to Forrester Research, 52 percent of people who shop online say they do their product research on Amazon. That is an astounding number.
[…] Indeed, in a presentation to analysts in late November, the company’s chief financial officer, Thomas J. Szkutak, showed one slide that read, “Over $600 Million in Forgone Shipping Revenue.” And that was just for one year.
Wall Street, however, has never placed much value in Mr. Bezos’ emphasis on customers. What he has viewed as money well spent — building customer loyalty — many investors saw as giving away money that should have gone to the bottom line.
[…] There is simply no question that Mr. Bezos’s obsession with his customers — and the long term — has paid off, even if he had to take some hits to the stock price along the way. Surely, it was worth it. As for me, the $500 favor the company did for me this Christmas will surely rebound in additional business down the line. Why would I ever shop anywhere else online?
Clearly, it was worthwhile for Amazon to cancel its advertising.
Am I advocating that you cancel your ad budget? Perhaps. How are your products, service and customer experience doing?
Your customers’ delight matters even more tomorrow than it did yesterday, especially online.
When a visitor comes to your website, will they brag to their friends about what they bought and who they bought it from, or will it be somebody else they rave about?
Can you tell me why they shouldn’t brag about you, your products, and your service? After all, it’s the customer experience that matters. So why aren’t they buying?
Do you need help figuring out why they don’t buy from you? We can’t fix your products or services but we can help you improve your online customer experience, increase your conversion rates and help you understand your customers better.
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Written by:Jeffrey Eisenberg
Screencast: Making Online Gift Shopping Easier
Although the idea of shopping for gifts online sounds easy, too many e-commerce sites make it more difficult than it should be. Sure, you could buy a gift card for everyone on your list, but what does a piece of plastic really say about how you feel? What ends up happening when customers give these unoriginal “gifts” is that they end up sending friends and family back to the same websites that didn’t inspire them to buy something cool in the first place — and the whole cycle of “Hmm… what should I buy?” starts over.
In this edition of Screencast, I’ll show you how some e-tailers are helping their online shoppers navigate the gift-giving season, while others are, well, let’s just say they’re hoping to receive (your money). For instance, WalMart.com doesn’t seem to do anything special to help gift shoppers. Meanwhile, Etsy.com — a site where independent clothing designers and artisans from around the world their wares — proves you don’t need a Wal-Mart-sized budget to sort merchandise into gift guides for the customer. BarnesAndNoble.com has a nice gift guide that helps you find gifts to match the person’s style, but good luck finding it; their guide is hidden in drop-down menus and poorly phrased navigation buttons. Amazon.com does it best, and although there’s room for improvement, as you’ll see, they engage gift shoppers front-and-center on the homepage (a smart thing to do in December) and they do a good job of limiting choices. That’s right. When it comes to deciding between gifts, less is definitely more more — just be sure to show them things they’ll like.
Our gift to e-tailers? How about some holiday bonus tips:
- Provide a Gift Buying Guide
- Overcome “analysis paralysis” by limiting choice
- Allow customers to shop THEIR way…
- By relationship
- By “most popular“
- By price
- By characteristic (i.e., type of gift)
- ASK your customers how they would like gifts sorted
(If video doesn’t load, click here.)
There you have it! Sort. Categorize. Limit their choices to stuff that’s relevant, and let that momentum pull them toward the sale. And do yourself a favor: Don’t wait until Cyber Monday ‘08 to help gift shoppers spend their money on you. Engage them directly by using language and navigation that address their needs right away. And if you’re still leaving cash on the table, make a resolution to get help.
[Special thanks to Conversion Analyst Ron Patiro for his help finding these examples.]
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Written by:Anthony Garcia
Online Retailers Fail Customer Experience 101
My Company (Future Now) just released its “2007 Retail Customer Experience Survey,” revealing both good and bad news.
Bad news first. In aggregate, online retailers fall far short of offering good or even adequate customer experiences. A pathetic 4 out of 330 sites would get a passing grade in Customer Experience 101. It’s frightening to consider how much money is being left on the table and how many conversion opportunities are missed.
The good news? Companies show improvement over the last survey, though they’re falling short on many basics. These basics, however, can be relatively easily addressed and fixed. Companies committed to improving their customers’ online experiences can prioritize lower-cost and less-complex changes to improve their customer experience scores.
Improving Customer Experience Basics
While it’s easy to stare at the puddle of spilled milk and fight back the tears, there’s little profit in it. It’s a bit painful to get a less-than-stellar grade, but the smart marketer will look at missed opportunities and be sure not to miss them again. Provide an intense customer focus, and you’ll see more customers vote for you with their wallets.
Here are some actions retailers can take in the four key customer areas:
- In product presentations, provide:
- Better and more enticing product descriptions.
- Better-quality product images.
- Multiple images.
- Customer reviews.
- For fulfillment options, offer:
- Product availability.
- Easily visible return policies, shipping policies, and guarantees.
- Customer-friendly and easy-to-read and -understand return/exchange policies.
- Gift options.
- For checkout options, include:
- Multiple payment options (e.g., by check, PayPal, etc.).
- Estimated delivery times, and show in-stock availability for items.
- In-store pickup where physical stores exist.
- A progress indicator in the checkout process.
- Simpler or fewer steps or both in the checkout process.
- Third-party seals and security assurances.
- For customer service options, implement:
- Faster and more accurate replies to customer e-mail inquiries.
- Chat options.
- A visible phone number for questions and problems.
All these are significant factors that customers have come to expect online. Your customers notice little things that can make a huge difference. Companies that lavish attention on improving customer focus will reap more sales and will experience superior customer-retention rates in the long term.
You can continue reading on my column on ClickZ or read the full study on GrokDotCom.
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Written by:Bryan Eisenberg
