Creating the customer experience: web interfaces and usability

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Creating the customer experience web interfaces
and usability

• MARK 430
• Week 5

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4 steps to successful marketing strategy
Understanding customer needs and online behaviour
(market research, data mining, web analytics)
(Weeks 1 - 4)
Formulate a strategy to fill needs (segmentation,
targeting, positioning) (Weeks 4 - 5)
Implement effectively and efficiently (web
usability, stickiness, advertising, search engine
optimization, email marketing, pricing,
distribution, product development) (Weeks 5-12)
Build trusting relationships with customers (Week
13)
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Customer Experience and the web interface

• During this class we will
• Introduce and define the concept of customer
  experience
• Examine the three stages of the
  customer-experience hierarchy
• Understand the seven elements of customer
  interface the 7Cs
• Explore the significance of the user interface

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Some terminology

• Trust cues
• related to privacy and security
• related to the whole look and feel and
  functionality of the site
• Stickiness
• getting visitors to come back
• getting them to stay longer
• Usability
• user-focused design

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Customer experience

• Once a firm has decided on the positioning of its
  product offering, it must clearly articulate the
  customer experience that it wants to create.
• Customer experience
• refers to a target customers perception and
  interpretation of all the stimuli encountered
  while interacting with a firm (Mohammed et al
  pg. 130)
• In an offline example - the customer experience
  in a Starbucks is not limited to the taste of the
  coffee
• Online, the customer experience includes the
  entire range of a visitors perception of a
  website - from ease of use to the emotional
  reactions to a sites content
• It is the users interpretation of his or her
  complete encounter with the site

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Elements of the customer experience

• Functional perceptions
• Sensory perceptions
• Sight
• Sound
• Touch
• Smell
• Taste
• Cognitive and emotional elements

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Stages of Customer Experience Over Time
Functional relationship with product website
Intimate relationship
Evangelist
TIME
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Stages of Customer Experience - turn your
customers into evangelists for your product
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Stages of Customer Experience for Mountain
Equipment Co-op
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Some things that really damage Customer
Experience on a commerce site

• Badly implemented search
• Not telling people an item is out of stock until
  late in the process
• Shipping cost not given until late in the process
• Asking for personal information too early in the
  process
• No contact information
• Cant print properly

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Crafting the customer interface

• We are moving now to focus on customer / website
  interface issues - one element of the customer
  experience, but a very important one

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The importance of the web interface

• Internet technology has caused a shift in the way
  in which firms interact with their customers
• Face-to-face encounters common in the retail
  environment have been replaced with
  screen-to-face interactions.
• Interfaces include desktop PCs,
  laptops/notebooks, web kiosks, handhelds such as
  PDAs and cellphones
• We will focus mostly on web interfaces

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The 7Cs (design elements) of the Customer
Interface

• Sites layout and design functional look and
  feel (the how of the site)

Context
1.

• Text, pictures, sound and video that webpages
  contain (the what of the site)

Content
2.

• The ways sites build relationships between users
  (message boards, reviews)

Community
3.

• Sites ability to self-tailor to different users
  or to allow users to personalize the site

Customization
4.

• The ways sites enable site-to-user communication
  or two-way communication

Communication
5.

• Degree site is linked to other sites

Connection
6.

• Sites capabilities to enable commercial
  transactions (shopping cards. payment options,
  order confirmation etc)

Commerce
7.
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Context (look and feel) the How of the site

• 2 main dimensions Function and Aesthetics
• Function - site layout and functionality
• Section breakdown - the way the site is organized
  into sub-categories
• make them clear, and customer focused
• Linking structures - navigation
• where am I?
• how do I get back to where I came from?
  (breadcrumbs)
• Navigation tools - search functionality and
  methods, browse capability, site index/map
• Use terminology the customer can understand
• Make sure your search tool works - configure it
• Aesthetics - visual characteristics such as
  colours, graphics, fonts etc

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Context - Some examples

• Sites layout and design functional look and
  feel (the how of the site)
• Functional design
• Google.com - clean, simple, uncluttered
• CEOExpress.com - lots of content, mainly from
  newsfeeds. Busy interface, but the site is
  designed to make information easy to retrieve
• Aesthetic design
• Apple.com - lots of white space, limited amount
  of content presented. Customer is encouraged to
  browse and explore. Fits with Apples reputation
  for good industrial design
• Tiffany.com - elegant, visually appealing. Uses
  Flash for navigation so the experience is slower
  (like buying a diamond ring offline?)
• The look and feel of the site should reflect the
  sensibilities of the customers being targeted

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Content the What of the site

• Text, pictures, sound and video
• both the type of content, and the media with
  which it is delivered
• The offering mix products, information, services
  etc
• The appeal mix promotional and communications
  messages
• The media mix the multimedia elements included
  on the site
• Be careful with adding too many multimedia
  elements that require plug-ins unless you have
  good market research that shows that your users
  expect it.
• Content type time sensitive information versus
  evergreen information
• Freshness keeps bringing customers back
• Archives provide a useful service to users
• Watch out for Whats New sections

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Community

• Community the way sites build relationships
  between users. Strong community encourages people
  to return to the website again and again
• Community can create attractive content (for
  free!)
• Web communities can make the user feel that they
  are valued by the firm
• Community can satisfy needs not otherwise able to
  be satisfied individually (eg. finding people)
• Common tools are message boards, customer
  reviews, chat with special guests, corporate
  blogs, members areas
• Other examples Lands End Shop with a Friend,

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Customization

• Customization is the sites ability to
  self-tailor to different users
• The way customization can be achieved is divided
  roughly into 2 types (although many sites use
  both)
• Personalization - preferences actively selected
  by the user
• Tailoring by site - automatically generated
  customization based on a users previous
  behaviour, and the actions of other similar users

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Personalization

• Personalization is usually used to refer to
  customization of a site by the user him or
  herself.
• Promotes stickiness and customer loyalty
• Once a user has selected preferences, they must
  be saved and can then be accessed by use of
  registration/log in.
• Examples of personalization
• E-mail accounts or storage space
• Content and layout configurations - mytelus.com
• Software agents - can be configured to notify a
  user when an item is in stock, or to act as an
  alert service
• Cookies are often used in tandem with
  personalization, but they can identify only the
  machine on which the cookie is stored, not the
  individual person. Hence the need for log-in.

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Tailoring by site

• The second type involves automatically generated
  customization based on a users previous
  behaviour, and the actions of other similar users
• Interface software dynamically publishes
  different versions of the site in order to
  better address users interests, habits, and
  needs.
• The technologies to achieve this include cookies,
  and recommendation engines that use collaborative
  filtering. This is all completely automated, but
  can be improved by using active user input.

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Personalization/customization using a combination
of tools

• Amazon.com provides a very good example of this
  combination of methods to customize the user
  experience using collaborative filtering and a
  recommendation engine
• Lands End - My Model (allows you to configure a
  model to your body type and appearance and try on
  clothes) and My Personal Shopper (uses Conjoint
  analysis - presents alternatives for selection)

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Communication

• Communication refers to a firms dialogue with
  its customers
• Dialogue can be one-way (broadcast) or two-way
  (interactive)
• Broadcast communication
• Mass mailings (opt in only!)
• E-mail newsletter
• Content update notifications
• Interactive
• e-commerce dialog using email to exchange
  information re orders etc
• Customer service - email or live chat
• User input - content, reviews, feedback etc

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Connection how does a firm connect to other
businesses?

• Links to other sites
• Outsourced content - eg. news feeds, stock
  quotes, weather etc
• Affiliated sites - complementary
  products/services etc

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Dimensions of Commerce

• Commerce refers to those aspects of the user
  interface that support the various aspects of
  trading transactions
• Registration
• Shopping cart
• Security
• Credit card approval
• One-Click Shopping (Amazon patented feature)
• Orders through affiliate programs
• Configuration and comparison mechanisms
• Order tracking
• Delivery options

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Fit and Reinforcement of 7Cs to create synergy.
How well do they work together?
Business Model and Marketing Strategy
Fit Does each of the 7Cs individually support
the Business Model and Strategy?
Context
Content
Community
Customization
Communication
Connection
Commerce
Reinforcement depends on consistency between the
7Cs
Based on Mohammed 2003
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In the lab next week

• We will be applying the 7Cs of the customer
  interface to websites to help us to analyze what
  works in a web interface, and what needs fixing