Neurological study: Bad websites causing ‘web-stress’

Bad designed websites and slow loading times are causing ‘web stress’ for internet users. This is the result of a new neurological study by CA in cooperation one of the leading customer experience and consultancy consulting firms Foviance. The study even shows that bad websites have a negative effect on the users health.

During the study, which was conducted at the Glasgow Caledonian University, volunteers (eight women and five men between the age of 25 and 42 years) were wired up to sophisticated neurological and physiological testing equipment (incl. an Electroencephalography cap) which was used to monitor brain wave activity. The volunteers carried out a series of everyday online tasks such as finding and buying a laptop PC and travel insurance. During the test the internet connection was slowed down to increase the stress factor.

With the generated data, CA and Foviance found the two most stressful points of the online sales cycle which caused a high level of ‘web-stress’: search and checkout. Although the volunteers completed the purchase, more than three quarters of customers will abandon the site in reality. And it took the volunteers up to a minute to recover from that ‘web stress’.

This result corresponds with CAs Web Stress Index study. In 2009 CA interviewed 2500 consumers. The key finding was that slow loading websites were a frustrating experience for 92% of the repondents. No wonder that volunteers in the experiment were leaving bad websites, or wanted to call the company’s hotline

“The results of this study sends out a clear message – businesses need to reduce ‘web stress’ and improve the online experience of their customers if they’re going to maximise returns from their web channel” (…) It’s not just about website design or internet connection speeds – the performance of a website is dependent on the performance of the web applications that support it. Businesses need an Application Performance Management (APM)** solution which not only provides real insight into how customers are experiencing their web applications, but will proactively manage the performance and availability of these applications. This translates into better customer service, improved brand loyalty and increased sales.”
Kobi Korsah, Director, EMEA Product Marketing, CA

And Foviance adds…

“Consumers have very high expectations of web applications and web sites – to be always available and instantly responsive. This experiment simulated the experience of underperforming web applications for our volunteers. The results show that when online expectations aren’t met, people quickly become agitated, confused and have to concentrate 50% more than normal. All these problems can be detected and prevented as long as businesses take a proactive approach to measuring the customer’s experience of web applications.”
Catriona Campbell, Director and Founder, Foviance and leading behavioural psychologist

Spot On!
In the summer of 2009, Akamai already revealed that 2 seconds is the new threshold of acceptability for eCommerce websites response times. The study showed that 40% of consumers won’t wait more than 3 seconds for a web page to load before leaving the site. This study by CA and Foviance makes this clear again: Corporations should have a close testing eye on the essential features (loading time for search and checkout) in order not to affect online shopping revenues. Especially if you bear in mind that online retail is predicted to grow to 320 billion EUR in 2011. More information can be found in this video on the CA study.

News Update – Best of the Day

What kind of advertising is better for campaign conversion for companies? Search or advertising? A recent Eyeblaster study states the combination of both.

“72% of the conversions of cross channel search and display campaigns are a direct result of the display channel while only 28% are the result of the search channel”.

And if we think a bit further, then we might ask if engagement creatives will be the most powerful future of advertising conversion? What do you think?

As mentioned in a post some days ago, augmented reality can offer great customer service or even be used as a sales tool in terms of visualizing products that people might want to buy. Lego shows how this could be integrated in the POS sales strategy…

Commercials in the 60ths have been recorded live. Should not commercials in our todays world of real-time be recorded like this? I doubt somebody can talk as professional as this car dealer today. Most of the social web workers are probably better in writing as quick as he speaks…

Augmented Reality – the future of customer service?

The customer service world around us is changing with the social web, new technologies, and especially mobile apps. The question is how much this is effecting our perspective of the real offline world around us. A new technology is evolving that is beginning to connect the offline and the virtual world from a customer perspective as it will offer some new form of customer service. The term is Augmented Reality (AR).

It is a technology that brings your visual experience and information from the web or networks together, and by doing this enriches daily situations with relevant data from the web – and in more and more cases the information provided will come from the user.

The competition for users and companies has already begun. We have augmented reality browsers like Layar, explaining us instantly which famous buildings are surrounding us. Or, another AR browser named Wikitude that starts to become one of the most-wanted AR browser apps (not only for iPhone users) and gets nominated for one award after another. With wikitude.me shops and service providers of all sorts can already use this cool service to make themselves visible in the offline world by geo-tagging their office or location with simple online entries. If somebody is new in a city, this person can find a laundry or the next wine shop much easier in the future – just by using an AR browser app.

There are products like T-shirts projecting interactive games with AR. Digital cosmetic mirrors where women in cosmetic shops can see in real-time what a new eye-liner or make-up is looking good at them without testing it in reality. Adidas will launch a series of shoes, each printed with an AR code on the tongue which give you access to an interactive game that changes on a montly basis. Is this the customer service of the future?

Now, just imagine what this technology could do for customer service in the future. Wouldn’t it be a positive effect when we get immediate feedback on health information about the food and drinks we consume?

The following short film, called Augmented (Hyper)Reality, shows us a world some time ahead, where augmented reality is part of our daily offline life. We see what the actor sees, from his own perspective, and get to know the oppotunities that AR might offer to our daily life. OK, if we agree to getting networked completely…

The interesting acknowledgement for companies will be the advertising part of the film – although in some way it might be shocking…

Spot On!
The complete overkill seems to be the massive sea of logos flooding our sight in the beginning. Although the above examples might seem an exaggerated view of a futuristic branding scenario, it gives some idea on how the world might change customer care in the future. And you never know if this will be really happening, or not. Today, this all might sound strange to us but just think about how common the use of artifical medical help is for us, or how often we use the navigation system in cars today.

And then, think about the options when combining location based advertising with augmented reality. This opens a complete new world of customer care…

Don’t you think?

Is customer-centric business the future?

In the last 12 years, the credo of my business life was “Customer First!”. It surprises and disappoints me when I experience poor customer service. Or when I hear from unhappy friends, colleagues or relatives telling me stories about how companies treat the centre of their business: customers.

Last week, when I was thinking about how to leverage this to a higher level, I came across a modern business strategy vision by Ranjay Gulati, Harvard Business School professor and author of the book “Reorganize for Resilience: Putting Customers at the Center of Your Business“. In the following video Gulati tells us how to deliver what customers really want.

Reorienting vs. Reorganizing
Ranjay Gulati sees the fundamental changes appropriate for some movement in company processes. Customers have more information, more choices on products while companies are facing global competition. So, businesses have to think about their business (not only marketing or sales efforts!) and how it operates.

Redefining vs. Reinventing
The analysis of the customer base might show that the website is designed for male while the majority of the users might be female. So, we need to ask questions like “Who are my customers?”, “How do my customers shop?”, or “What do they really want?”.

Gulati explains with the latest success of Best Buy how women and men shop. At that point, he also hints to the upsale opportunity of recommendations.

Success for businesses, he believes, comes from “Inside-Out-Perspective”. Companies don’t have to produce everything themselves but need to make the client happy like Apple with the iPhone. 90% of the inputs are not made by Apple. The same occurs to the apps in the Apple store where Apple basically just orchestrates the customers wishes.

“Make this identity shift. I am not here to sell what I produce – I am here to solve a set of customer problems (…) and actually acting on that!”

How to get to a customer-centric business…
1. Shifting mindset: the intention to solve customer problems.
2. Sense of curiosity and humility: the wish to understand your customers.
3. Make a creative leap: the will to understand their needs.
4. Align the elements in the organization: the motivation to live the customer-centric business.

Spot On!
Interested to get your view on this modern business strategy. Let us know what you think about customer-centric business. Or do you think the social web will be leading us towards this business process anyway?

Can corporate social media engagement replace customer loyalty cards?

We all have our purse full of plastic cards for customer loyaly programs. These won’t make us rich. They make us save money, or get kickbacks from companies and brands if we want. And the philosophy of these programs is clever. Companies have the feeling of being in touch with their clients on a regular basis, making sure customers stay informed about their product offerings.

The customers bottleneck is, well yes, we have to carry multiple plastic cards in a credit card format with us. So, why not leaving these cards behind after 20 years and just make customers fans on Facebook and/or followers on Twitter of brands?

Imagine you go into a store and you’ll see a “Follow us on Facebook or Twitter or on our iPhone app” sign taped to the cash mashine instead of receiving print and plastic to carry home?! – Why not save the trees and oil resources!?

Companies install reward program cards to make us buy more of their products, or more frequently. And companies get more feedback on our buying habits. So, for companies these cards are an essential part of their customer loyalty strategy.

And customers with a big purse are happy. Others don’t want to have all these cards. Thus, these customers are not lsitening to what’s the latest promotion. Now, who of the male world is happy with all these plastic cards making our trouser pockets look like fat kangaroo pouches?

In most cases, these loyalty cards are addressing and being used by an old-economy’s vanity (IMHO), or women. “Look how much companies are interested in having me as their customer”, I heard a woman say the other day.

A recent study by the CMO Council “The Leaders in Loyalty: Feeling the Love from the Loyalty Club” shows the trouble of loyalty programs. 54% of consumers mention that irrelevant messages, low value rewards, and impersonal engagements may decrease their loyalty for brands and their services, and with that their loyalty programs.

And yes, we can understand this fact when our online and offline mailboxes are full of non-personalized, unexhiting and unintersting promotions from company’s so called loyalty programs. Talking of me, these loyalty programs get one chance and I cut those cards into pieces straight away when the company loyalty program fails.

Now, what does this means for loyalty programs when we match these results with the latest survey by MarketingSherpa. The new web generation and prosumers love following brands as they expect savings, learning about specials and sales as the top motivation to friend and/or follow a brand online. If companies are aware of this fact and learn from it, why not replacing the old loyalty card concept then?

The benefit of the fan and follower systemtic is quite obvious…
- You become a fan and/or follower when a brand becomes of interest for YOU as a customer
- You become a fan and/or follower of your favorite brand when YOU are in a purchase process
- You can check status updates on sales, discounts and promotions when YOU need them (not when the company wants to sell more products)

OK, thinking of business intelligence and data mining sales cycle topics, it might become difficult for companies to track purchase processes as good as now. But, isn’t the customer king with the rise of social media? And companies could save money for print mailings and their plastic card production, right?

Spot On!
Some weeks ago, I have thought about Twitter as a sales tool and with this post, I am trying to take this idea a bit further. It shall illustrate how much a company’s sales and customer service strategy gets influenced by a new social web strategy where the customer holds the power of interest in promotions.

So, let us know what you think about the idea that Facebook fan pages, Twitter company accounts or corporate LinkedIn groups could replace loyalty programs in the future? A dream, a vision or a stupid idea?

News Update – Best of the Day

Australian users show big interest in social web communication with companies via Twitter, YouTube and Facebook. Brett Waters talks about a recent study by RightNow and shows the benefit for customer service (customer care programs), generating interest and engagement and further aspects of recommendatiopn marketing and PR.
Some findings…
- 66% said they’d be happy for an organisation to contact them following a positive comment post
- 63% stated they would like to learn about discounts or special offers through social networking sites
- open discussion drives purchases: 70% were online and 30% were offline

Budgets lower? Jeremiah Owyang is focussing with his advocacy matrix on the goal of spreading marketing messages, and word of mouth, and viral. Good thoughts for your company to get the same output you had with big budget pockets.

Today, let’s have a look into the updated TheStrategyWeb YouTube channel for the latest updates on web-tv focussing strategy, web-strategy, social media, advertising, virals, funny commercials and so on. Very much appreciate any input, looing forward to it!

News Update – Best of the Day

A recent study by ShareThis states that email is still the favorite sharing technique (46%) in the websphere, despite the emerging social media tools and networks. Facebook comes in at second place with 33% and then Twitter with 6% (other social sites get 14,4%). But Twitter wins in other categories: 40% of all clicks-throughs come from shared content on Twitter (e-mail 35% and Facebook 25%).

What can you do when your business is facing a social media nightmare? Network Solutions was in this situation and solved it with a very human customer service approach (at least in my eyes…). The main take-away of the story to fight negative comments on their Twitter timeline can be read here…

* Quick turn around times.
* Be very empathic when needed.
* Give 100 percent accurate information if you don’t know the answer be honest and find out.
* Treat every customer the same.
* Care for your customers like it was one of your family members calling in with an issue.

Nespresso and George Clooney have done one or two great commercials. But the latest and longest version is heaven: God, Nespresso and …beautiful women.

Study: Social Network access at work? Teens expect it!

Your company thinks about limiting or restricting the access of social networks during working time? You better have a second thought about it…

A recent study states that for the net generation social networking has become a crucial part of their business life. It is so central to their lifestyle that it becomes one of the main decision criteria when weighing job offers.

The Junior Achievement/Deloitte Teen Ethics Survey shows that 88% of teenagers use social networks on a daily basis. 58% of the teenagers surveyed said that they would consider the ability to access social networks when considering a job offer.

Business decision makers in companies should be aware of the fact that this might become a central question in recruiting talks. Teenagers will definitely make decision pro or contra a job on considerations about having the ability to access Facebook, Twitter, and the lot when applying for jobs.

Spot On!
Teenagers don’t use social networks to waste time witht heir peers, or even be unproductive. The main reasons for the use becomes clear when taking a close look at the results. 51% of the surveyed teens use social networks to help others. And 29% use the social benefit to create awareness for a cause. So, if you think of improving customer service, you should consider these facts and try to transfer the social abilities of the networks in order to build a stable customer communication world – with the net generation.

2010: Social media budgets increase – but where to find resources?

The good news? Budgets for social media will increase. The bad news? Companies are struggling to find the time and resources to handle their activity, according to the “Social Media and Online PR Report” by Econsultancy and bigmouthmedia.

The research aimed at finding out how companies are using online PR tactics and social media sites (i.e. Facebook and Twitter) for marketing and customer service. The result of the survey shows that the majority of companies (86%) plan to spend more budgets on social media next year 2010 – 13% are not changing their budgets and will keep the same level of spendings.

The biggest challenge for companies is resources: 54% see this as a significant problem. And 90% say it is more time-consuming internally than last year. The named benefit is remarkable: One-fourth of companies found they have achieved “real, tangible value” from social media; 60% say they have bained “some benefit but nothing concrete.”

“The reality is that most businesses understand how to listen, what to measure and where to engage but are struggling to define the value of engagement and reputation in social spaces,” said Michelle Goodall, Econsultancy’s social media and online PR consultant.

One of this companies is definitely Dell. They just announced to have sold PCs, accessories and software for 6,5 million USD via Twitter.

Some Twitter results…
- 78% use Twitter as a social media tactic and 74% of agency respondents
- 65% social network profile creatio n and management
- 62% use the micro-blogging site for publicizing new content
- 54% use the channel for marketing
- 47% for brand monitoring

Spot On!
Only 27% take the advantage of using Twitter as a customer service (and 25% as a customer feedback) tool for reacting to issues and inquiries. And when 31% see “tremendous opportunities” available in using Twitter for customer contact, but only half reporting that their companies are “open-minded but not fully convinced about the value to the business”, it tells the story: We all need to create results and cases in order to provide the positive proof. Especially, when 7% say their organization feels that Twitter is over-hyped and a fad.

Studie: Live Online-Hilfe bei Kundenservice bevorzugt

Wie wichtig Live Online-Kundenservice in unserer modernen Webwelt ist, wird permanent von Social Media Begeisterten in den Vordergrund gestellt. Beispiele von Twitter-Accounts wie Bank of America, Starbucks oder Dell sind der lebende Beweis dafür, daß zeitnaher Kundenservice immer stärker online gewünscht wird.

Die Kunden sind aber auch von anderen Online-Formen des Kundenservice begeistert, wie jetzt eine aktuelle Studie von ATG (Art Technology Group) unterstreicht, die die Wichtigkeit des Live Online-Kundenservice zur Förderung der Kundenbindung in den Mittelpunkt stellt.

Die Studienbefragung beleuchtet die Eindrücke und Vorlieben von 1.000 Internetusern, die sich für Live Online-Hilfe Möglichkeiten aussprechen. Es ging dabei um die Frage, ob die Kunden Click-to-Call und Click-to-Chat nutzen, wenn sie online auf Shoppingtour gehen.

Die interessanteste Erkenntnisse der Studie ist, daß 67% dazu tendieren, idealerweise beide Optionen zu haben: ein Live Text-Chat und ein Live-Voice-Konversation, um Hilfe zu bekommmen, wenn Sie Online einkaufen.

Der Trend, mit jemand online in Echtzeit sprechen zu können, nimmt demnach klar zu. Lange Wartezeiten, bis jemand auf eine Email antwortet, sind demnach eindeutig ‘out’.

Spot On!
Weiterhin ganz oben auf der Wichtigkeitsskala der Angaben auf einer Webseite sind Preise für Produkte und Services sowie einfache Usability beim Browsen und Suchen. Interessant ist noch zu erwähnen, daß der durchschnittliche Online-Einkaufswert bei 73% weiterhin im Bereich zwischen 1-100 US Dollar liegt. Unverständlich sind allerdings die Zahlen in diesem Sheet, da sich hier keine 100% am Ende ergeben…

Nächste Seite »