What I love most about this list is the way it segregates into sub-components or elaborations on Future Now’s  three questions that are the basis of Persuasion Architecture:

1) Who is coming to the site?

2) What is it they are trying to accomplish?

3) What action do we want them to take, and how do we ensure this matches up with what they are trying to accomplish?  In other words, what do they need to know/feel/believe in order to confidently take that action?

Separating out Seth’s List

Here’s how I see Seth’s list falling into those categories:

1) Who is coming to the site?

• Who are we trying to please? If it’s the boss, what does she want? Is impressing a certain kind of person important? Which kind?
• Who are we trying to reach? Is it everyone? Our customers? A certain kind of prospect?
• What are the sites that this group has demonstrated they enjoy interacting with?
• Do people find the site via word of mouth? Are they looking to answer a specific question?
• Will the site need to be universally accessible? Do issues of disability or language or browser come into it?

2) What is it they are trying to accomplish?

• “If it’s the boss [that we are trying to please], what does she want?”
• “Are they looking to answer a specific question?
• Does showing up in the search engines matter? If so, for what terms? At what cost? Will we be willing to compromise any of the things above in order to achieve this goal?

3) What action do we want them to take…what do they need to know/feel/believe in order to confidently take that action?

• What is the goal of the site?
• In other words, when it’s working great, what specific outcomes will occur?
• Are we trying to close sales?
• Are we telling a story?
• Are we earning permission to follow up?
• Are we hoping that people will watch or learn?
• Do we need people to spread the word using various social media tools?
• Are we building a tribe of people who will use the site to connect with each other?
• Is there ongoing news and updates that need to be presented to people?
• Is the site part of a larger suite of places online where people can find out about us, or is this our one sign post?
• Is that information high in bandwidth or just little bits of data?
• Do we want people to call us?
• How many times a month would we like people to come by? For how long?

Operational [and larger] Questions

Yet, while Seth’s persuasive questions are covered within these three categories, there’s a pile of operational questions left over:

• How many people on your team have to be involved? At what level?
• Who needs to update this site? How often?
• How often can we afford to overhaul this site?
• How much money do we have to spend? How much time?

In other words, what will this cost us? A question that opens the door for much larger debate of, do we really need to incur this cost in the first place?  What makes us think we need a redesign?

And that gets us to the question that our own Jeffrey Eisenberg tackled within his free report 7 Big Questions of Highly Effective Online Marketing. For starters he suggests that people interested in redoing their site should ask the big questions first:

• Do we need a redesign, or can we work with what we have?
• Exactly how would a redesigned site better serve our visitors?
• If the best-converting sites are often boring in their design, are we willing to design our site with that in mind?  [in other words, do we have the intellectual integrity to separate out an notional "want" for a prettier/slicker website from a real business need]
• Will we incorporate a scientific testing methodology into our redesign so we can optimize user interactions based on predictions of how our different audience segments will engage with the site? [in other words, are we really serious about redesigning to improve performance?  Serious enough to bake accountability into the very fabric of the redesigned site?]

And if you’re not sure if you need a redesign, perhaps it’s best to take a cold hard look at your current Website in order to:

• Isolate what isn’t working and what is
• Determine whether you need to re-conceive your site because too many elements bog down the original design

On Target as a Precursor and Follow-up to a Website Redo

While Future Now has been involved in hundreds of successful Website redesigns and renovations, Bryan and Jeffrey Eisenberg clearly saw that there were far more sites out there in need of optimization and improvement than full scale redesigns.

And far more Website owners who couldn’t answer the majority of the questions posed in Seth’s post and Jeffrey’s report.

That’s how OnTarget was born.

OnTarget allows Website owners to gain insight into what is and isn’t working with their current site, and provides them with prioritized recommendations to optimize the site, fix the leaks, etc. Think of it as an incremental redesign based on measurable results.

With OnTarget it is only when major persuasive and usability obstacles can’t be surmounted without major retooling, re-skinning, etc. that a site redesign is contemplated.  And in those cases, the business owners are able to answer those critical questions posed by Seth and Jeffrey.

This often means walking away from big redesign projects.  But it always means providing the client with the wisest and best use of his online resources.

[Editors Note:  The author of this article is now blogging at jeffsextonwrites.com]

How are you wasting your visitors time?

• Does it take a while for your pages to load?
• Do your database lookups take so long your visitors can go and get a snack before the results are returned?
• Do you have important content that is hidden away?
• Does it take your visitors too long to find the product they are looking for?
• Do you force visitors to pogo-stick between a category page and product pages because your category page fails to provide enough information to confidently select among the choices.
• Is it difficult to sort among choices by the factors or qualities that your visitor feels important?  Or do you  only allow sorting by price?
• Does your registration or check out process have too many steps and take to long to complete?
• Does it take several steps for your visitor to figure out their total cost including shipping?

Here is another classic way of wasting your visitors time that could easily be avoided.

Do a search on Diapers.com for “exersaucers“. You’ll notice 4 listings. 3 of them are out of stock.  But the initial search listings don’t tell you that.  The visitor has to click through to each product page, only to find out she can’t buy the item – a triple loss, as the site has simultaneously wasted the visitor’s time, frustrated the visitor, and come off as an unreliable/unprofessional business.

Placing your out of stock messaging on the category pages will prevent your visitors from repeatedly finding that the product they clicked on and started to desire is – upon their arrival on the product page – suddenly unavailable for purchase.

So while I’ve given you a valuable list and a good examples to get you started, every site has its own unique challenges, and it’s worth asking your team: how many different ways can you find to shave valuable seconds during your visitors journey to become a lead or sale?  How can you help your vistors beat their own internal clocks in order to win more business?

[Editor's note: the author of this post is now blogging at bryaneisenberg.com]

Last night, I went for a last minute shopping expedition, looking for wax strips that are ready to use. I visited three drugstores and a Walmart just to come out empty handed. Wax strips are not something I would think of purchasing online because at the point that I realize I have the need, I don’t really have time to wait for shipping if you know what I mean!

This time, I had no choice. I went to Google and searched for “ready to use wax strips“. The first result was for a product sold by Veet (a brand I know) so I clicked. I was brought to the Veet web site where they don’t actually sell their products through their web. After a thorough search on their site, I finally found a “Where to buy this product” link. The Veet site referred me to an online store: homesolutionsstore.com if I was interested in buying this product online.

Unfortunately this was not a direct link to a product page on this referred site, so I had to use the site search tool. I typed in “veet ready to use wax strips“.

This is their results page:

They clearly tell me on this page that the item is in stock. The price is very obvious and the call to action “buy now” uses appropriate language, placement and stands out well.

What is missing? A clear link to “Learn More“.

I clicked “Buy Now“.

This is their product page:

They make me go through an extra step by bringing me to a product page instead of the shopping cart.

I see the price clearly listed here on the product page but what about shipping? I don’t want to have to add this item to my cart in order to find out how much this is going to cost me for shipping.

They are doing something very right here worth pointing out–> Without knowing that I could save by buying a case, I would have initially only bought a couple of the smaller boxes. Because they offer me the ability to buy the case, they increased the overall purchase value of my order. I added a full case to my cart in order to save the 10%.

This is their shopping cart page:

The shipping calculator directly on the shopping cart page is valuable to the visitor who wants to find out how much this is going to cost to ship. A downfall is that shipping costs quite a bit and if my average order value had been lower, I would be less likely to spend the amount that they are charging for shipping.

Free shipping would make me a loyal customer because I’m going to have a continuous need for these wax strips and if I can get them at a discounted price online if I buy them in bulk, and I get free shipping on top of this, why would I buy them anywhere else?

What we’ve learned today from my shopping experience:

1. State whether a product is in-stock

2. Clearly establish the price and a clear call to action that stands out very close to the price

3. On a search result page or category page, give the visitor the ability to add an item to their cart or to learn more

4. Give visitors the ability to find out shipping costs on a product page

5. Think of ways you can increase the average order value. If you can offer the visitor a discount to buy more of a product, consider the value of this

6. Consider offering free shipping on orders over a certain dollar amount. This may not only increase your average order value, but increase your overall conversion rate because you’re removing another barrier to placing the order.

They advise people to come back every Tuesday to see what is new. I am not sure why they didn’t include a way to subscribe here.

When you go there, make sure you have your speakers on.

I am curious what our readers think of the experience. Please comment below.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Now, before discussing the ad, please name a brand developed in the last 10 years that was built largely on the strength of its advertising.  Go ahead and think a bit if you have to; I’ll wait.

You might be able to name one, dear reader, but I’m betting you’ll have strained a bit to come up with it, and that you’ll only think of just one (assuming you come up with any).

Now, name 5 brands created in the last 10 years (or that at least come onto the national stage within the last 10 years) and built largely on the basis of great user experience / word of mouth with very little to no traditional advertising.  Here’s my list:

1) Zappos
2) Krispy Kreme
3) StonyField Yogurt
4) Silk (soy milk)
5) Smart Wool

It’s not a definitive list by any means, and I’m sure at least one reader will write me with an example of some kind of ad or PR campaign run by one of those companies, but I trust you get the point: the new Mac commercial isn’t just a satirical poke at Microsoft’s non-response to its problems with Vista; it is indicative of the current marketing climate in general.

Unless you have a message that matters – in other words unless you have a product and customer experience worth talking about – why pay to broadcast it?  A false or inane ad message won’t just be tuned our or ignored: it will actively discredit you in the marketplace and might just prove a handy club for your competitors to beat you with.

We’ll be reviewing over 500 retail websites this year and won’t be reporting the overall results until the beginning of 2009. If you put in your request this week, we’ll provide you with a report that shows you how you measure up in our 4 categories and provide you with some tips to improve your customer experience.

Your site will be evaluated by one of our Conversion Analysts against 69 distinct questions in four critical areas of customer focus:

* Product Presentation
* The Checkout Process
* Delivery Options
* Customer Service

Want Your Report Now?

If you would like a better idea of what you need to do to make your retail website more customer focused then complete your request at Benchmarkmysite.com.

P.S. We are also thinking of adding a B2B benchmark as well. If you think this would be valuable, and would like to be included in it please comment below.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t this sound like the opposite of the effects competition is supposed to create?

Like us, many of you are frequent fliers and are concerned about these trends. So when Jeff Eisenberg pointed out a site that highlights the fees associated with this growing phenomenon of sacrificing service to maintain pricing, I thought I’d share it with you.

For me, this illustrates a couple of things.

1.) We have surpassed the number of elements it takes to trigger over-choice behavior (aka “analysis paralysis”). Before, it was just price, departure/arrival times, and brand that influenced our flight-booking decision. Now, with so many other factors involved — multiple bags, bag surcharges, seating, drinking, and the (in my eyes) completely unforgivable “minimum stays” United just announced — has caused consumers to be put in the position of having to make a very complex decisions, which typically causes people not to choose*. The way I see it, the airline industry is headed right back to the time of the travel agent, paying someone to make sense of the mess.

Unless the travel sites can quickly adapt and easily incorporate these new elements to their functionality.

2.) The airline industry is devoid of real positive differentiation and unwilling to compete beyond price. As Jeffery pointed out in our conversation, airlines will become completely dependent on their ability to market being the “least awful.” One Philadelphia newspapers even launched a spoof of this concept last week with ads for a fake airline called Derrie-Air, which supposedly charges passengers by the pound. (Hat tip to the Influential Marketing Blog for spotting this.)

Normally I would say, “Market-capitalism to the rescue!” and insist that open competition will allow the fittest to prosper. But amid government subsidies and an apparent lack of interest by carriers to compete on something other than price, I’m skeptical this will right itself. So this is my open call to airline owners (yes, even Virgin Airlines) to reposition their fleets by differentiating themselves by meeting or exceeding customers’ wants, not just the bare minimum expectations we’ve grown accustom to by the current state of the airline industry at large.

My question to you, dear reader, is this: What ideas would you bring to bear on this problem? How would you change the company, product, or marketing to better meet the consumer’s needs, as well as the health of the industry?

.

*From Barry Schwartz’s “The Paradox of Choice” presentation at TED.

. .

About the Author: Brian Bond is VP of Marketing and Product at FutureNow, Inc.

Success in testing doesn’t necessarily indicate success in customer insight. For example, you can test landing pages, determine the best landing page, and enjoy an increase in conversion. But do you know why it converts better? Oftentimes marketers gain knowledge of customer behavior, which is inferior to customer insight (defined as learning why customers are behaving the way they are).

While it’s possible to optimize and see increases without customer insight, you’re chasing diminishing returns. Exclusively chasing better numbers gives the marketer a weaker 2-D approach in a rich 3-D world. Gaining customer insight is more efficient and typically more powerful in maintaining an upward trend toward your goals.

Gaining Customer Insight

How do you gain this customer insight? Customer surveys are one means.

Web analytics expert Avinash Kaushik collaborated with iPerceptions to give marketers the 4Q survey platform. 4Q is a free, permission-based on-exit customer survey. It’s delivered post-conversion and asks customers four powerful questions:

• What is the purpose of your visit to our Web site 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?

At the recent eMetrics Summit in San Francisco, iPerceptions shared some early results of using 4Q. For retailers, it learned that 39 percent of visitors went to learn about products, while 27 percent went to buy. Of the 27 percent who went to buy, roughly only two-thirds actually completed that task. Visitors also told why they did not convert: 31 percent wanted better product selection, 24 percent desired better shipping options, 17 percent cited problems with the online shopping cart, and 14 percent said prices were too high.

Analytics will only tell you what people are doing, but knowing why they are doing it is a powerful optimization tool.

In this case, the retailer can make much better optimization decisions. While a retailer may already be working on an initiative to offer more shipping options, it now has data to support accelerating the project. Knowing that 17 percent said they had shopping cart problems, the retailer can dig into the analytics and gain better insight into what is happening.

You can also use this data to create personas to help your marketing initiatives.

Customer Insight and Product Reviews

Another simple means of customer insight are customer product reviews. Here’s how you can optimize using them:

1. Look for products with low look-to-book ratios and reviews with 3 to 4.5 stars out of five stars.
2. Pull the trigger words from each review.
3. Plot them as “logical” or “emotional.”
4. Modify your product descriptions based on the results.

For example, here are two bullet points from the product description for a lady’s watch before optimization:

• Contemporary style adds bold look to any wardrobe.
• Water resistant to 30 meters.

Now, here are two snippets from “emotional” customer reviews for a lady’s watch:

• It’s like wearing two silver chain bracelets with a beautiful watch centerpiece.
• I’m a constant hand-washer, and I don’t have to worry about “time stopping” just because I have to have clean hands.

Now here are the optimized bullets:

• This unusual double chain bracelet band and watch is an instant attention getter.
• No worries while washing hands, because this watch is water resistant to 30 meters.

Which description do you think converts better?

Conclusion

With customer insight you can more easily duplicate your successes, create more effective campaigns, and apply that insight to other site areas. And with our current economic situation, you can better budget and prioritize your optimization efforts.

Now go and learn what your customers are saying about you and your Web site.

*This article is cross-posted on ClickZ.

. .

About the Author: Bryan Eisenberg is co-founder and Chief Persuasion Officer at FutureNow. Join Bryan on June 3rd in Manhattan at the Call to Action seminar, the popular one-day course based on his New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller Call to Action: Secret Formulas for Improving Online Results. Not only will you learn the most effective online persuasion and website optimization techniques, you’ll get a chance to chat with Bryan over hors d’oeurves and cocktails at our “Happy Hour with the Experts” reception.

As first reported by Direct Magazine, the survey found that…

• 19% dislike learning an item was back-ordered or out of stock after said item was placed in a shopping cart
• 14% are frustrated by Web sites that malfunction as payment is being processed
• 8% are confounded by unclear return policies
• 6% don’t like unclear shipping information
• 6% dislike not getting an acknowledgment after an order has been placed

Adding another dimension to these numbers, Jack Loechner at MediaPost explains that:

. . . iCongo, Inc., released the results of a consumer survey conducted by Harris Interactive that reveals [that] 33 percent of online U.S. adults indicated they are more likely to shop online rather than in-person at a store due to the high price of gasoline.

If there were ever a time to optimize your e-commerce website, it’s now.

What else causes friction? Read FutureNow’s 2007 Retail Customer Experience Survey for answers.

. .

Join FutureNow’s Bryan Eisenberg on June 3rd in New York City for the Call to Action seminar. Based on his bestselling book of the same title, Bryan will show you how to improve conversion and brand affinity by reducing friction for the customer.

A few of my colleagues, two of whom had actually used it, recommended Mint.com. I had been to the site a few times in December when I first heard about it. Back then, I wasn’t yet thinking about signing up, but I did recall Mint.com being extremely good-looking and well-written.

Months later — and this is rarely the case for someone with my attention span — I still knew the site’s unique value proposition: Mint is a free, online personal money management tool that can access bank accounts and credit card records without compromising security. (Oh, and it can help you get better rates on a credit card, which I don’t much care about since I’ve sworn not to use them ever since getting in debt when I was in college. But I digress.)

All of that was clear from the homepage.

But what really impressed me when returning to the site was the “features” page. Right away, I saw this:

Mint does NOT store your usernames, passwords or account numbers. Mint partners with Yodlee, the leading provider of online banking services to major banks for more than 10 years, to ensure a secure connection to your personal financial information.

Mint protects your information using bank–level data security and 128 bit-encryption, verified by Verisign and HackerSafe.

Mint is TRUSTe certified to provide industry–leading privacy protection and partners with RSA to provide anti-phishing protection.

Using Mint does NOT require any personally identifying information, leaving you as anonymous as you would like to be.

Instead of diving into what I presumed would be a sales pitch on technical features — boom — they addressed my (significant) privacy concerns. Then they went into the sales pitch. Very smart.

But consider how the same copy reads with some minor text and formatting changes:

Mint does not store your account numbers, usernames or passwords. Mint partners with Yodlee, the leading provider of online banking services to major banks for more than 10 years, to ensure a secure connection to your personal financial information.

Mint protects your information using bank–level data security and 128 bit-encryption, verified by Verisign and HackerSafe.

Mint is TRUSTe certified to provide industry–leading privacy protection and partners with RSA to provide anti-phishing protection.

Using Mint does not require any personally identifying information, so you remain totally and completely anonymous.

Which version do you find more persuasive? I’d be interested to hear your comments.

In the meantime, I’m going to create a Mint.com account. If it works as well as the site looks, and if it can get me to manage my money better, I’ll be thrilled. My only real concern — the only thing I didn’t see addressed on the website — is whether the credit card companies are going to spam me with “Limited Time Introductory Rate!” emails. (Mint is, after all, an affiliate site. They’ve got to make money somehow.)

. .

This Just In: FutureNow’s Persuasive Online Copywriting seminar returns to New York City on June 2nd.

So why not try something new, like placing an ad on Facebook, where captive users are forced to see it right there in their news feeds?

That’s Virgin America’s strategy. But is it anything new?

Despite the hype, social media ads are rarely different than traditional banner or pay-per-click ads. The landscape has changed slightly, but the need for fundamental persuasion and conversion tactics remains. As always, better planning makes all the difference. Let’s take a look…

A Smooth Takeoff

Here’s Virgin’s latest “sponsored news feed item” — i.e., fancy contextual banner ad that targets only certain demographics:

As you can see, the language is simple and engaging. A time limit (March 28) is set, thus creating a sense of urgency without drilling it into the customer’s head.

Nobody likes to be yelled at, especially not on an airplane. So why yell at them to “BUY NOW”? Virgin knows better, and this ad’s subtlety makes it that much more click-worthy.

A Soft Landing (Page)

The landing page continues the scent trail that started with the banner ad. Notice how the exact wording carries over.

See that? Change may be “in the air,” but Virgin was smart to stick with their original verbiage.

What’s even more interesting is that this landing page is actually the VirginAmerica.com homepage. It was the homepage last week, when the March 28 promotion was happening, anyway. This week, there’s a new promotion, and a new homepage message to match.

Consistency across channels is what ensures the success of Virgin’s ad buys. By adjusting the homepage to match their current campaigns, they’re capitalizing on the persuasive momentum of their various banner ad campaigns. (This screen shot proves that Virgin’s Facebook ads are no different than any of their other banners. Would they change the company’s homepage just to match a persuasion scenario that starts at Facebook? Nope.)

Persuade → Qualify → Convert

Virgin America continues the momentum from click-to-click by keeping it simple and keeping visitors engaged on the active window. By showing all March 28-related promotions on a single page, they’re reduce friction in the buying process.

Virgin uses this page to reinforce the visitor’s original interest while introducing a few more offers, thereby qualifying our needs. We click through, and it’s off to the booking engine.

Like most e-commerce shopping carts, it seems flight-booking engines were made to confuse us. Not Virgin’s. Theirs is intuitive and straightforward. As you can see, several steps are combined into one. It’s the website usability equivalent of the magical airplane stall door lock (which doubles as a light switch, and triples as a switch for the fan).

The only downside to having a site that works this well is that now Virgin needs to make sure people enjoy the flight as much as they enjoyed booking it. But if the real experience is anything like the one online, it looks like they’ve got you covered.

CMO’s should take notice.

While there’s no such thing as a perfect website, you should still try to convert like a Virgin.

I don’t know makeup brands or colors, and I don’t care enough to research what makeup would be right for me. Usually, my need for makeup only results in a purchase if a friend recommends something specific, or when I run out of an essential piece, like mascara. Then I’m found sprinting to the local pharmacy to pick one that looks decent.

How do you look for people who aren’t looking for your product? Anticipate their need.

Search engine marketing is a great platform for gaining the attention of those who already have some kind of motivation, need or want for a particular solution. It’s much more difficult to get the attention of people who don’t currently need or want whatever it is you sell.

Historically, the most common forms of online marketing tactics used to gain the attention of potential customers have been pay-per-click advertising, banner ads and email marketing. But today’s customers are ignoring unwanted marketing efforts, so our tactics can easily fall flat. In order to get a higher return on investment, marketers need to find new ways to speak to customers and help them figure out what they want.

How do you speak to potential customers when they aren’t listening? Find out when and where they’re listening and provide an experience that fuels demand for your solution.

Social networking sites are growing by the second and people are looking for more interactivity and experiences online. TAAZ.com captured my attention by first offering me an interactive experience.

First, I uploaded a picture of myself without makeup:

Then I proceeded to add different eye shadows, lip liners, mascaras, etc. Each shade or style that I chose was a real product color and brand. The quality of the widget impressed me, so I spent a good deal of time uploading the image of myself and messing around with different styles and colors.

Apparently, I was going for the Cindy Lauper look!

Not a bad look, I know, but I digress.

Eventually, I played around with some shades I would have never even thought of purchasing and realised that some of them actually didn’t look too bad on me. Not only could I interact with different colors and brands of makeup, I could actually see what they looked like on me without ever trying it on.

There are some things TAAZ still needs to work on. The hair portion of the widget doesn’t look as real as the makeup portion. They don’t yet offer hair dyes relating to the color of hair you choose to place on your image.

I could go on, but suffice it to say, the look I ended up with…

…didn’t exactly measure up to their best makeovers. Still, this is a smart way to attract ad dollars from cosmetics brands like Revlon (pictured) and Sephora (which currently has banners on the site).

There’s also a great opportunity here to push the business model further. For instance, TAAZ could create a Facebook widget so users could share their makeovers amongst friends. They could get one of their advertisers to sponsor a “best makeover” competition. You get the idea.

In case you haven’t heard us talk about “The ROI of Free,” here’s what we mean: If you want to gain the attention of potential customers who aren’t actively searching for the solutions you offer, don’t just tell them about your solution, give them a way to interact without having to commit to anything. Bring the visitor into the experience and let the experience sell itself.

What are some interactive marketing examples you’ve seen have turned you into a sale or lead?

PayPal recently announced a streamlining of its payment flow process that doesn’t require a PayPal account to use. In other words, you can “check out” via PayPal, reap the security benefits of the merchant store not knowing your financial details, and pay for your item without having created any long-term relationship with PayPal (although they wouldn’t mind).

Adding PayPal to an e-commerce site can sometimes result in lower conversions — which makes sense because you’re being taken away from the experience you were just having at the merchant site. On the upside, some mid-sized UK merchants using this new process are reporting an increase in their monthly total payment volume, with gains of over 9% on average.

But I’ve got a different request altogether.

I use PayPal. A lot. Probably at least $500 a month of online purchases of various things that, at the time, I’m convinced I really need. It always amazes me how confusing the PayPal part of the checkout process is. First I’m on the merchant site. Then I’m off it — but not so obviously that I notice right away. It’s just a white, empty-feeling page with the merchant logo and a familiar PayPal button. Then the interface changes again to make it obvious that it’s PayPal.

In order to return to the merchant site, I have to click a small-font text link that competes with PayPal-branded buttons for my attention. At this point, I’m still not sure if the purchase “took” — that confidence doesn’t come until I return to the merchant site.

Won’t some of those e-tailers enjoying that volume increase please, please, PLEASE put just a fraction of that revenue toward hiring a bright developer to create a way to do this undercover? Its seems this could be easily resolved with a bit of (*buzzword alert*) AJAX.

Enter your PayPal user name, maybe some kind of modal lightbox pop-up to asks for my password, it goes back behind the scenes to confirm this with PayPal, then seemlessly closes the pop-up and updates my status on the merchant site to say, “Purchase completed via PayPal. Thanks for your business!”

I like using PayPal. I just don’t want to notice it. Kinda like the electricity in my home; I just want it to be there when I plug in my laptop.

What do you think?

Her firm does content development for websites, so she’d never literally been at a loss for words — not online, anyway — until a new client hired her to write some search engine-friendly copy. For the first time, she questioned whether her client’s site actually needed Web copy to do its job. She was stumped.

The client sells new and used industrial drill rigs, augers, hammer grabs, oscillators — stuff they sell at construction equipment auctions (and, no, you can’t find it on eBay). The current website consists of a few image galleries and, thus far, the conventional wisdom has been that all they need to do is show pictures of massive, earth-moving objects, list some basic technical specs, and that’s all their audience needs to know before buying one of these things at a live auction.

A 100-ton drill rig is a 100-ton drill rig is a 100-ton drill rig, right?

Here’s how our anonymous friend described the situation:

According to the [client], there’s not much to say, and the pictures are apparently more important than words in conveying a description of the item. I suggested adding content — a product description — to each picture, so I could get in keywords and so forth, but there’s so little to say about it, and that’s part of [the] problem.

Their visitors are construction companies who already know what kind of equipment they’re looking for. It’s mostly a matter of price competition and whether they want new or used equipment. So descriptions are hardly necessary, especially with the descriptive pictures telling most of the story.

I’ve worked on a ton of web sites and never encountered this before. Any suggestions on what I can do to help them increase page rank?

Let’s start by unpacking some the dangerous assumptions she’s making:

• There’s not much to say
• Pictures are more important than words
• The problem is that “there’s so little to say”
• Their visitors are all from construction companies
• Their visitors already know what kind of equipment they want
• It’s mostly a matter of price competition
• Visitors already know if they’re looking to buy new or used
• It’s unnecessary to describe such products with text
• Pictures can tell most of the story
• Page rank and content are independent variables

Still, the most dangerous assumption she’s made is that the client’s assumptions are true. Yes, they know their business better than she (or any other consultant) possibly could, but that doesn’t mean they know how to market. Whether they can imagine a scenario where someone might need more than just a picture before purchasing 100 tons of construction equipment is irrelevant.

Besides, has a search engine ever bought an oscillator at auction?

Since this was taken on as an SEO gig, not a strategic planning and copywriting project, it’s based on a false premise (”We’ll pay you to help us rank higher, but you shouldn’t have to do much writing to accomplish that”). Until this client understands the value of Web copy — to both humans and search engines — this blog post will likely rank higher for relevant search terms than their website.

Here’s what Seth Godin says about this common SEO myth in his latest book, Meatball Sundae:

My position is that the clients are the problem, not the consultants. That’s because they want shortcuts, not hard work. The best SEO is great content. Don’t do that and you don’t get much.

Do they really believe “there’s not much to say” about a used hydraulic rotary drill rig that (probably) costs hundreds of thousands of dollars? Where has it been? What type of condition is it in? What sorts of jobs is it best suited for? What distinguishes one design or manufacturer from another? Are the needs of a big-budget construction project manager the same as those of an owner-operator of an excavation company? What should I know about each model before I show up to the live auction to bid? If it breaks, do you sell replacement parts? Is everything being sold “as is”? How long have you been in business? Why should I trust your brand?

These are fair questions, and the current site doesn’t answer one of them. There’s not even an ‘About Us’ page.

Of course the client’s customers “already know what kind of equipment they’re looking for.” Those are the only people who would ever be persuaded by a site with no content!

Could you imagine if a real estate website listed houses that were to go up for auction, but showed nothing except for a few pics of the exterior? This is how Christie’s hypes an upcoming auction. Her client should take a look.

Think that’s a stretch, comparing the way 20th century British art is sold to how one should sell drill rigs online? Volvo Construction Equipment begs to differ.

When Volvo hired Future Now, we started with an uncovery session to get to know their business and its key metrics. Then, based on what we learned, we developed personas to match various customer segments. We then performed a scenario analysis of the site to see how it met the expectations of each persona, and to identify fixes that could be made without a redesign. Once they could see how visitors’ needs were unique, they were able to write copy that sold gigantic new and used construction vehicles, machinery and parts.

There’s still work to be done, but with these adjustments, Volvo CE’s lead generation went up 700%. (Here’s the case study from Web Trends, if you’re interested.)

If her client wants rank well and sell more construction equipment, she needs to know more about their business. The client needs to be more forthcoming and she needs to push back for answers. Of course, it would have been better if they’d discussed these things before she took the job, but if both parties continue to look for quick fixes, the site will continue to be “nothing but pictures of drills, augers, and oscillators.”

. .

[Editor's Note: This has been the first post in our new "Ask Future Now" series. If you have questions about interactive marketing optimization, let us know in the comments or contact us directly and we'll start a dialog via email. We'll answer your question in a new post.

Hat tip to Dave Young for reminding us of the Meatball Sundae excerpt.]

After so many months, it dawned on me: the containers for the green teas are overfilled. When you open the bottle, there’s more product in the container than it should be expected to hold — even to the point that if you opened it up while exerting pressure on the bottle (careful, Readers-who-Test!), you’d spill blue-ish tea on yourself. Sometimes I have to reach down and take a “slurp” off the top so it doesn’t spill — which no doubt causes the rest of the family to consider that “Q’s own personal bottle” of the stuff. An interesting way to establish territorality.

Back to point: I feel happy when I open this product because I feel I’ve gotten more than expected, and certainly more than any competitive product. Obviously that extra slurp’s-worth costs them some finite amount of money, but I’m wondering if the delight I feel at getting more is common enough across their customers that it’s driving more sales than the cost of the slurp. And if I feel good about a product, I buy it regularly, and therefore my slurps and the slurps of my fellow… Slurpers represent significant lifetime value to the company.

Does your company’s product or service delight customers more than they expect?

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. ]

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.

And 2008 also looks to be another sweet year for Apple. Stephen Coleman, CIO at Daedalus Capital, which is invested heavily in Apple, told Bloomberg News, “There’s so much growth to look forward to for the iPhone.” Coleman predicts the stock will reach $600 by the summer of 2009.

How Does Apple Do It?

Simply put, Apple understands people. It knows that people make emotional decisions, then use intellect to justify those decisions. Dancing shadow people with iPods aren’t an intellectual argument for buying an iPod, they’re raw emotional appeal.

At the heart of every successful Apple product, you’ll find a deep understanding of what moves people emotionally at many different levels.

It makes sense. When you want to sell things nobody really needs, you have to know what they want. Apple doesn’t create desire; nobody can do that. What it does better than any modern company is pour fuel on our desire with a frothy mix of surprise and delight to get our attention, then provides a simple, meaty, unique, and consistent experience whenever we engage with it or its products. And, of course, it delivers on its brand promise: “It just works.”

Unexpected Marketing

While Apple uses traditional means and media to promote itself, it also markets itself in unexpected places and ways. Steve Chazin, former marketing exec at Apple, reveals that those little white earbuds are not white by accident. In MarketingApple, Chazin writes, “Those white iPod headphones were not designed by engineers — they are a pure Apple marketing trick designed to make the visible part of their product a status symbol. Wear white headphones and you are a member of the club.”

This goes beyond packaging and slapping a good-looking logo all over a product. This is finding an unexpected place or way to set yourself apart without interfering with the customer experience.

People Attract People

People are at the heart of Apple’s marketing, not technology or features. The iPod commercials are a perfect example. The audience is first attracted to the people, not the device.

The iTunes music store is another example. While the iTunes store itself has some conversion and customer focus barriers, it rarely fails to persuade people to click in a little further, to listen to a few more samples. It’s a reason other online music stores still struggle. Here, Apple takes advantage of reviews and other customer-generated content.

In the iTunes music store, you’re bombarded with input from other people, not music or video marketing. The reviews are front and center when you look at an individual artist or album, but you’re also sucked in by “Listeners Also Bought” and the user iMixes and Top Songs. You can view celebrity playlists, even Apple staff picks. In iTunes, you’re simply and easily persuaded by others, not by marketers or flash or some social networking technology.

Delight the Customer Consistently

Everything from Apple is designed with intent. Even the product packaging makes the product feel that much more valuable. From neatly packed cords to velvet lining, each step of the unpack is delightful.

Compare that experience with one from Dell: a plain brown box, typical Styrofoam, plastic bags in all sorts of colors, and so on. The experience feels messy. How does that affect how you feel about the product inside the packaging?

Apple is consistent along every touch point, from a Steve Jobs presentation to the website to the product itself. The brand feels neatly organized and clean. In technology this is a delight. How many of us have wrestled with devices, have read clunky manuals, or are just sick of beige? The recently redesigned Apple site has the look, feel, and elements people will find in the operating system.

Love Is Blind

For now, Apple’s brand strength is unmatched among its competitors. Because it pays attention to people’s needs, people return that attention with money and emotional (sometimes illogical) devotion. This emotional brand connection helps the company overcome some of its problems. That emotion helps customers forgive Apple when it screws up and buy anyway.

Consider some of Apple’s flubs last year, none of which seemed to hurt sales:

• Only a few months after the iPhone went on sale, the price dropped $200. Early adopters were livid, but the feeling didn’t seem to stick.
• The Leopard operating system went on sale later than promised (almost a year), shipped with several bugs, crashed and killed many Macs. Did you see these stories stick like the initial problems Microsoft had with Vista?
• Apple stirred controversy with its options backdating.
• Universal Music pulled out from iTunes store.
• NBC shows were yanked from iTunes.

In our recent “Retail Customer Experience Study,” Apple’s online store scored a wimpy 39 out of 100. But in the online shopping equation, the tactics we measured only accounted for the objective features online retailers offered. If we were to account for subjective measures like brand strength or loyalty, Apple would have a much higher score.

In other words, people trust Apple, so they buy from the store without questioning its credibility and customer focus when buying online.

Our persuasion analyst Melissa Burdon demonstrates this in recent blog post. She was shopping for an iPod on Apple.com and had a question. Her question wasn’t answered on the site. She was frustrated, but she still bought an iPod. (After her post, though, you could find the answer on the Apple site.)

Apple stock may not grow 600 percent in 2008, but it will continue to climb dramatically. Will the day come when Apple becomes too big and loses its focus on people, rendering it an evil behemoth like Microsoft or Wal-Mart?

It may, but not likely anytime soon.

[Reprinted from my ClickZ column this week.]

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.

Isn’t it bad enough that my people can’t even agree on how to spell the holiday?

One might expect Balducci’s, the fine food emporium, to know better. After all, they wrote the we’re-not-taking-sides-but-you-should “holiday” menu(s)*:

Balducci’s has everything you need to create a magnificent holiday meal, no matter which holiday you celebrate. Whether it’s an informal Chanukah get-together, an elegant Christmas feast, or even a glamorous New Year’s Eve fete, with our Holiday Entertaining Menu and Ordering Guides you’ll find all the ingredients for a memorable meal.

Ah, but that just shows how thoughtful they can be online. What about when NancyKay Shapiro goes into one of their stores to shop for the “holidays”? Apparently, the product doesn’t match the persona.

Okay, so it’s not like they were marketing this for Ramadan. And maybe I did have a prosciutto and mozzarella sandwich for lunch, but that thing was good. (Don’t tell my rabbi.) Besides, a stock room clerk — not a marketing manager — probably made this mistake. Still, it’s important for marketers to be careful with those “holiday” promotions.

Happy Chanukah/Hanukah/Hanukkah**!

(*Which, for some reason, you can only download as a PDF. It looks good, but why not host it on the site? That way, customers could have the option to download, print, or email to a friend.)

(**To anyone for whom that’s relevant.***)

(***Now do you see why George Costanza recommended we all just celebrate “Festivus”?)

[Hat tip to the Good Experience blog.]

REJECTED! Ooof. How do you feel about being rejected?

I had one of those hey-what-am-I-chopped-liver experiences with eHarmony, too. They didn’t exactly send me a Dear John letter or stamp ‘Rejected’ across my torso, but they also didn’t find me any matches, which left me musing how there can be millions of people signed up with this service, and I don’t match up with a single one.

Money I paid. Months I waited. Then those harmonious match-makers told me they were going to suspend my account due to inactivity.

I shot them back a letter. “Give me a match, just one frigging match – even Outer Mongolia is looking good today – and I’ll show you activity!” They kept me on for another month, then dropped me again. I finally bagged eHarmony and wondered whether the planets were inauspiciously aligned for finding love that year. Or whether I was, indeed, chopped liver.

Talk about your failed relationships!

When you consider starting a new relationship, what do you worry about deep down? I’m worrying about…

• whether we’ll be able to understand and respect each other
• whether you are going to be able to acknowledge and accept who I am
• whether you really possess the attributes I’m looking for
• whether I’m going to put all this time into something and wind up with nothing

Most of all, I worry about putting myself on the line and then getting dealt with badly. Rejected. Abandoned. Betrayed. These are the terrible consequences we all fear in any relationship.

This doesn’t apply solely to romance-based relationships; it applies to almost all the relationships in our lives, including customer/business relationships. Businesses usually begin this relationship through their marketing messages.

eHarmony advertising focuses on the relationship you’ll have when you meet Mr or Ms Right. In The Black Table, Joel Keller writes,

But those ads… those freakin’ ads! Commercial after commercial of deliriously blissful men and women embracing, kissing, and smiling longingly at each other. Testimonials up the wazoo that show how wonderful and strong the matches are between people who have signed up. It’s all so lovey-dovey and sweet that my butt clenches involuntarily while listening to them.

But eHarmony seems to gloss over the part detailing how you and they are going to work together to make this happen, over the relationship they will develop with you. And this is the marketing piece that is crucial to their customers’ felt needs. As Joel Keller explains it,

Many people who have used eHarmony, … which matches people using a psychological survey that measures, in their words, “29 dimensions of compatibility,” haven’t been so lucky. Some have been matched up with people that took the survey but never signed up and paid for the service. Others have been deemed to be compatible with people that weren’t looking for a commitment or a person with whom they had little in common. Still others have been connected to people that they wouldn’t even be attracted to in the dark.

This is a failed relationship!

It’s all about the felt need

When it comes to matchmaking, people want to find friendship, maybe love, maybe a permanent relationship, maybe merely the opportunity for casual flings. But before they start to address that felt need, they have to deal with the felt needs of their deepest fears: rejection, abandonment and betrayal. This is hardly confined to potential matches; it applies equally to the matchmakers themselves.

Chemistry.com gets it. They address this need first: We do not believe you are chopped liver. Then, through their online entity, they go about growing their relationship with you.

[Note: Compare Chemistry’s home page with eHarmony’s home page. The primary call to action on both sites is getting the customer to supply information and get started. But which of these home pages offers clear, intuitive ways to learn about the business itself? Big tabs on Chemistry, plus some forums and articles. Tiny links buried in the No Man’s Land of screen real estate on eHarmony. This should be a big relationship red flag!]

At the end of the day, you are in the business of creating relationships. And if you want those relationships to grow beyond the carrot of promise you dangle before the eyes of your audience, then you have to work at it. My mother always told me, “You want to learn who a person really is? Pay a lot less attention to what they say and a lot more attention to what they do.” Warm-fuzzy language may capture attention, but it’s dependable action that cements relationships.

Sadly for eHarmony, there’s a fair chunk of blog-space given over to what they do, and it isn’t positive. Let’s face it. Divorce is almost always an exercise in smearing lots of bad blood all over the shop. You so don’t want to go there with your customers!

Dig deep into the concerns your customers bring to the table when they consider doing business with you. Identify their deepest concerns when they are deciding if you are the business for them.

Will you really understand their needs in the relationship they hope to develop with you?
Are you really going to accept them for who they are and speak to that, not only in your sales process but also their buying process?

Will you deliver on your promise to value them and go the distance on their behalf?

Address these issues in your marketing messages. And remember, your marketing messages are only simpering smiles if you can’t treat your customers honestly in the follow-through!

…seams are important.

Try throwing a baseball or a football without seams.

Wear clothes without seams and you look like you’re on Star Trek.

Seams make it possible to get a grip.

The goal, it seems to me, is not to create things that are seamless. It’s to put the seams in places where they are actually useful.

That’s exactly what Threadless.com does for its customers. If you’ve done business with them before and have selected an item that’s running low in their inventory, and you abandon the checkout process before buying, they’ll send you a follow-up email like this:

Their shirts come with seams, as does their marketing. The copy is spot-on without being pushy. They seem to be doing us a favor. Threadless knows that their customers know that the t-shirt designs they print sell out fast. They don’t shout “buy now!” when we’re just browsing the products. Nope. This message is tailored for people who’ve shown genuine interest. And despite the exclamation points, it reads something like this: “Sorry to bother you, but here’s what you should know about our inventory. If you really do want to buy this item, you should probably do it soon-ish.”

(Hat tip to Rishi at the Better Retail blog for the subtle link to this via comment. Great seam!)

Our 2007 study clearly shows that online retailers are not capitalizing on the customer experience and are overly focused on innovation while ignoring the basics.

U.S. online retail sales will more than double over the next six years, reaching $316 billion by 2010, according to a new report from Forrester Research — they expect e-commerce will grow to account for 12 percent of total retail sales in 2010, up from nearly 7 percent in 2004.

Industry observers report that, since the advent of the Internet, online sales have increased overall by about 25% annually (“Online Sales Lose Steam,” The New York Times – June 17, 2007). But they also note that sales are leveling off as customers return to brick-and-mortar venues for a more satisfying shopping experience.

A similar Forrester study in April 2006 revealed that only 26% of online consumers were simply satisfied with their shopping experience. This suggests a whopping 74% — three-quarters of online shoppers — weren’t even satisfied. And what of the remaining 26%? They weren’t delighted. They were merely “satisfied.” In other words, the shopping experience was, at best, adequate. Are retailers in a race to see who can be the “most adequate”?

The Importance of Customer Experience

With all the investments and improvements within the last five years in redesigns, usability, analytics, multivariate testing, and the increases in broadband speed and availability, one might have expected significant improvements in bottom line. Yet, according to Shop.org, conversion rates are still hovering around 2.5%. Customers aren’t delighted.

Research by companies like Bazaarvoice, however, paints a different picture of the current “leveling off” in the e-business world. Their results indicate the problem doesn’t lie in the allure of the offline shopping experience, but in the failure of online stores to present a customer-focused shopping environment. In our experience, many of these sites also fall short of customer-focused excellence because they fail to effectively integrate with their offline counterparts.

Sam Decker, CMO of Bazaarvoice said, “According to customers, what were once ecommerce nice-to-haves are now table stakes. Easy checkout, product search and the right policies are as important as multi-channel integration and authentic user-generated content, such as ratings and reviews. The way customers research, shop and buy has evolved. Future Now’s study underscores the need for retailers to do the same and reconsider priorities.”

To analyze the extent to which websites focus on the customer experience, Future Now sent mystery shoppers and Conversion Analysts to over 300 retail websites to gather information for our 2007 Retail Customer Experience Study.

What the Customer Focus Study Reviewed

The study consisted of visiting a retailer’s website and answering a series of Yes/No questions about the availability of 69 different factors that reflect a focus on customer experience. These factors were weighted based on our 10 years of optimizing retail website experiences and totaled to arrive at an eventual score for each site. The features we asked our shoppers and analysts to address include:

• Quality and detail of images (e.g., “Could the shopper zoom in?,” “Did the retailer provide product images from multiple angles?”)
• Product copy description answering the shopper’s implicit questions
• Whether the retailer offers customer reviews
• How the retailer met the shopper’s gift buying needs (e.g., “Did the retailer offer gift wrapping, messaging or gift certificates?”)
• Ease and simplicity of checkout (e.g., “How many pages did it take to check out?” “Did the retailer provide a progress indicator?”)
• Retailer’s ability to address the shopper’s concerns (e.g., return policies, guarantees, third-party seals and security assurances)
• Ease and clarity of retailer return policies
• Providing of shipping and tax totals early in the checkout process
• Offering multiple payment options (e.g., pay-by-check, PayPal, etc.)
• Offering estimated delivery times and showing in-stock availability for items
• Offering in-store pick-up where physical stores exist

We specifically asked the mystery shoppers to ignore:

• price points (inclusive of tax, shipping and handling);
• the ease in locating the products;
• the efficacy of the brand in conveying confidence;
• the impact of overall design on credibility and sales;
• the entire customer experience from search to purchase fulfillment.

Rather than evaluating the entire customer experience, this study provides a benchmark for retail sites based on more objective criteria. Therefore, our 2007 Retail Customer Experience Study provides a thumbnail view of how businesses speak to the needs of their customers.

There’s much work still to be done and plenty of opportunity for improvement. The top-rated site in this study scored only 67 out of a possible 100. Even the top-rated company has plenty of room to grow before it has thoroughly delighted its customers and improved its bottom line.

Given the results of our study, Future Now further believes that companies which lavish attention on improving customer focus will reap more sales and experience superior customer-retention rates in the long term .

The Results: 2007 Online Retail Study for Customer Focused Excellence

Congratulations to the top fifteen retailers for their efforts at providing visitors a customer-centric experience.

The Overall Leaders:

1. SmartBargains.com 67
2. BestBuy.com* 66
3. Compactappliance.com 66
4. BlueNile 65
5. EasternMountainSport 64
6. BackCountry.com 63
7. TigerDirect.com 63
8. CDUniverse.com 63
9. Ebags.com 63
10. Staples.com 63
11. AmericanMusical.com 62
12. Landsend.com 62
13. Crutchfield.com 62
14. Walmart.com 62
15. Walgreens.com 62

*Moved from 11th to 2nd since launching customer-generated reviews.

Average score for all retailers = 43 (± 11)

The Leaders by Category:

Apparel / Fashion
1. eBags.com
2. Landsend.com
3. Lids.com, Bluefly.com, LLBean.com

Electronics
1. BestBuy.com
2. TigerDirect.com
3. Crutchfield.com

Food
1. SurLaTable.com
2. Cooking.com
3. Berries.com

Jewelry
1. BlueNile.com
2. Ice.com
3. Diamond.com

Children / Toys
1. OneStepAhead.com
2. KBToys.com
3. BabyAge.com

Housewares / Kitchen
1. CompactAppliance.com
2. BedBathandBeyond.com
3. SurLaTable.com

Office
1. Staples.com
2. OfficeDepot.com
3. OfficeMax.com

Mass Merchants
1. SmartBargains.com
2. Walmart.com
3. Target.com

Selected highlights learned from the study:

* 58% offer gift certificates.
* 24% do not allow customers to enlarge the product image.
* 37% offer multiple image views of products.
* 33% offer customer reviews.
* 38% of sites have difficult to read fonts. (This is especially telling considering that, this year, our average age of reviewer was younger than ever before. Only 14% allow customers to change the default font size while viewing their website.)
* 43% offer free shipping.
* 61% do not offer any information on the product page regarding in-stock availability
* 52% of retailers have physical stores; only 10% of all retailers offer in-store pickup of orders.
* 74% offer estimated delivery times.
* 42% provide shipping cost early in the checkout process. 35% have a checkout process with more than 4 steps.
* (Only) 58% correctly answer an e-mail question within 24 hours.
* 20% offer pay-by-check, 10% offer Google Checkout, 20% accept PayPal and 18% offer Bill Me Later.

This study reflects significant factors that customers have come to expect. Having worked with online retailers for the past decade to observe how customers buy at retail websites, Future Now knows that customers notice the little things. In the long run, customers vote with their dollars for companies that have an intense focus on satisfying their needs.

Curious to know how your e-tail site measures up? Contact us to find out how you rank.

Time and again, I read and heard reviews about the Snowbird resort having some of the most challenging terrain, coated by the area’s best powder. So when I finally got a chance to ski Snowbird’s Cottonwood Canyons trails for myself, I quickly turned into a raving Snowbird fan.

I was set on getting a season’s pass for the this year. And after reading reviews like this one from CitySearch, my excitement about the upcoming ski season reached fever pitch:

Depending on the characteristics of — or our level of attachment to — the must-have thing du jour, we all buy in different buying modes to match our feelings about it. I typically purchase commodities in a more Spontaneous mode, but I take my ski season very seriously, and my search for a good deal on a Snowbird pass turned into a Methodical review of various resources to find the ultimate deal. I took my time and I read everything I could before I pounced.

Although I knew I wanted a season’s pass, I had a hard time justifying the steep price Snowbird was asking ($1,149). If the season let me down with only a few big snow days, I could be kicking myself for risking that much money.

As the summer came to a close, I got a little anxious about my upcoming purchase. Around this time, I heard a radio ad about “Sniagrab,” an annual sale run by the Sports Authority a local sporting goods chain called Canyon Sports. They were offering discount season’s passes to Snowbird. I don’t recall them specifying a sale closing date, but when I called Canyon Sports (shortly after hearing the ad), I was let down when I heard I’d missed the sale by one day. Maybe it’s my fault that I missed their sale, but the ad was vague and I had still acted quickly. It made me feel stupid — as dumb as that sounds.

Chances are you won’t catch me in a Canyon Sports any day soon.*

Unwilling to give up my quest for a deal, I searched for “snowbird seasons pass” at Craigslist. Believe it or not, there was a woman who posted a 10-day pass because she’d recently broken a bone and wouldn’t be skiing this season. She was selling it at a discount because she obviously needed to give the buyer an incentive to purchase from her, rather than go directly to the source. But since I was planning on skiing more than 10 days, I continued my search.

I sent an email to my local friends, asking if any of them had a connection to help me out. To my delight, I received a reply from a snowboarding friend. He encouraged me to join the Velocity Sports club in order to get a discount at Snowbird. Velocity’s an exclusive club, so in order for me to join, my friend had to sponsor me. He was only allowed to sponsor one person annually. There was also a $40 membership fee that I had to pay upfront. I signed up and paid my dues but this still didn’t guarantee me a discounted season’s pass. Before I had a shot at one, they made a limited promotion available to existing members who have been members for over a year. So I waited and waited for a reply.

After two weeks without a reply, I sent them a follow-up email. They told me I would hear back from them in a couple of weeks. When three more weeks passed without a reply, I decided to email again. That same day, I received a phone call from Velocity Sports, telling me that the promotion was now open to me but I had only two days to take action.It’s a good thing I didn’t miss the promotion (like I had with the Canyon Sports promo). It would’ve been nice to have gotten periodic updates from Velocity about the promotion. Then again, maybe I would have never even heard from them had I not been really good at nagging! Regardless, they came through for me in a big way, and I got my season’s pass for $799; a $310 savings (after membership fee) over buying directly from Snowbird.

No matter where they decide to buy a product, 64% of customers regularly do their research online before they go for it. In this case, there were a few multi-channel influencers (i.e., the radio ad, craigslist, Snowbird.com) in my buying decision process, but only the consumer-generated media (i.e, the customer reviews and word-of-mouth) had a positive influence on where I actually bought the thing.

The bottom line: It seems the local skiing/snowboarding community is more involved in finding and offering good deals for Snowbird customers than Snowbird is itself.

What do you think? Am I just griping, or should Snowbird consider being more involved in the community in order to better harness their marketing potential?

[Editor's Note: See comments below. Our sincere apologies go out to everyone at Canyon Sports. Although it seems the Sports Authority chain -- not Canyon Sports -- has the Sniagrab Sale, there's too much confusion about who Melissa called. Did she call Canyon Sports, and they answered her about a different sale that just ended? Who knows? Still, it seems there's a whole lot of ski marketing fog to break through in Utah. Either that, or Melissa needs to stop multi-taking when she drives. ]

I already have a leash, model number BlackBerry 8700g. I enjoy guilty introverted fantasies of a device that will allow me to provide a mild-yet-meaningful electric shock to everybody who calls me; not to torture them, but to have them reconsider whether or not it requires a conversation.

With a voice that no librarian could love, I’m certain that I’ve been that cretin who won’t shut up more often than I’m comfortable admitting. Not wanting to be rude, I’ll apologize if I’ve disturbed you. But my liberty should end at the boundaries of your liberty, otherwise just call it license and add it to those “rights” so bellicosely defended by libertines garbed in libertarian costumes.

My friend recently purchased a cell phone jammer. I don’t know if he ever used it but we laughed deviously at its delicious potential during show and tell. Can you imagine?

Cellphones have changed our lives forever. Remember the Seinfeld episode in the Chinese restaurant where they couldn’t reach each other? That episode is about 15 years old and it feels as fresh as the leftovers in the Honeymooners’ icebox.

We love our cellphones and, as they evolve, we can’t imagine life without them. We hate our cellphones as they become more intrusive in our lives and the lives of others.

Do you ever turn off your cell phone? Do you ever ask other people to? What are/should be/might be the rules?

TheNew York Times also got me thinking about this in an article called “Devices Enforce Silence of Cellphones, Illegally“:

SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 2 — One afternoon in early September, an architect boarded his commuter train and became a cellphone vigilante. He sat down next to a 20-something woman who he said was “blabbing away” into her phone.

“She was using the word ‘like’ all the time. She sounded like a Valley Girl,” said the architect, Andrew, who declined to give his last name because what he did next was illegal.

Andrew reached into his shirt pocket and pushed a button on a black device the size of a cigarette pack. It sent out a powerful radio signal that cut off the chatterer’s cellphone transmission — and any others in a 30-foot radius.

“She kept talking into her phone for about 30 seconds before she realized there was no one listening on the other end,” he said. His reaction when he first discovered he could wield such power? “Oh, holy moly! Deliverance.”

As cellphone use has skyrocketed, making it hard to avoid hearing half a conversation in many public places, a small but growing band of rebels is turning to a blunt countermeasure: the cellphone jammer, a gadget that renders nearby mobile devices impotent.

The technology is not new… [Read the full article - registration required]

What are the implications of the new Google mobile platform?