Mapping customer needs to website content and features

I'm working on a couple of projects at the moment which involve planning for launch of a new product. These projects have reminded me about a powerful technique that can help keep communications focused on clearly explaining the features and benefits of the new service. The technique involves mapping the questions that a site visitor finding out about the project will be asking (mental model) against different types of features and content on the site to help answer these questions (content model). It's one of several techniques marketers can used explained in our 7 Step Guide to Improving Website Results. I like the technique because it's a simple, but powerful way of brainstorming or reviewing content effectiveness. Here is a generic service launch example I have created to show how the method can be used: …

How different types of omni-channel services can improve the customer experience

Customer service should be at the top of every marketer's agenda since satisfied customers are the key to brand loyalty and that all important sale. With the many new devices and channels now available, omni-channel helps to firmly place the customer at the centre of all marketing activity by bringing together the right channels to enhance the customer experience. To help marketers get their heads around this latest form of marketing, RedEye has selected 5 examples of brands creating an omni-channel customer experience: Oasis: Online Shopping Instore M&S: Instore Experience Waterstones: Instore eBook Service John Lewis: Click and Collect Service Boots: Instore Digital Kiosk

Oasis: Online Shopping Instore

The introduction of iPads across Oasis’ stores enables the customer to browse online, pay online and place orders online whilst in store. Users have the option to try an item on in store, and then order it online and have…

A custom report for summarising goal performance

The conversion report in Google Analytics is probably the most important report in the entire service. The conversion report shows you the percentage and absolute numbers of visits which converted into a set of defined goals for a website. Goals can be any marketing outcome related to lead generation and sales from enquiries through to video views. Here is example of the goals in a typical conversion overview report:

This particular website converted 3.65% of traffic (conversion rate) into performing some sort of action which I have determined as a goal for the website. A total of 147 goals (absolute number) were completed in this particular month and this is one of many metrics used to measure the performance of the website…

5 tips to help create the perfect web design brief

Writing the perfect brief may not be a wholly realistic goal, but you can go a long way to ensuring the success of your new (or refreshed) website by aiming for just this. The aim is to create a brief that is as comprehensive and informative as possible to elicit accurate estimates / proposals and ultimately a brilliant website. There will probably still be a couple of questions coming back from who ever you've sent the brief to – but the first step in creating a great website (one that meets its objectives) is writing a comprehensive, actionable brief.  This post explains best practices around creating a website design brief to support a new site redesign brief template I have developed for Smart Insights. …

Showing why online retailers must have an effective mobile experience in place

Jill Robb showed in her post on Ecommerce trends for 2013 how online UK retailers are experiencing rapid growth in mobile use of their sites. This new infographic from Kissmetrics shows the growing importance of creating mobile platforms for US online retailers. Source: Kissmetrics Blog - full links to source on this page. Note that the chart showing that mobile due to overtake desktop access by 2013 is based on a 2010 prediction and is worldwide, so skewed by emerging market trends.  …

An example of the learning on Ecommerce available from #EcomChat

Value: [rating=5] Even if you can’t always make the chat, I really recommend the summaries if you work in Ecommerce as a consultant, in an agency or for a retailer. Recommended link: #EcomChat This was the question discussed at the latest #EcomChat, a regular Monday "Tweet-up" = Twitter discussion arranged and hosted by @danbarker and @JamesGurd . It’s a great format for stimulating ideas on different ways to approach Ecommerce, often touching on different areas of Ecommerce Merchandising. You can see the type of learning you get on the summaries by Dan and James on the #EcomChat homepage.

55 Email tips for Ecommerce

As an example of the insight available, I enjoyed scanning these Email marketing tips summarised in a PDF. Here are some examples…

Examples showing how to help conversions after shoppers click Add to cart or Basket

When you run an ecommerce website, marketing doesn’t stop when your customer clicks the “Buy now” button.  According to research by the Baymard Institute, the average online shopping cart abandonment rate is 66.22%. In order to encourage your online customers to input their credit card information, and complete the purchasing track, you need to keep marketing to them throughout the entire process.

Here are 5 tips on how to convert your online customers

1. Use informative product pages The more information you provide on your product pages, the more likely your customers will complete their sales. Check out this product page from ModCloth and the wealth of information it provides to the customer: An engaging product description with a tab containing additional details. Information on product…

What has email got to do with website conversion?

“WTF?” – That’s most people’s first reaction when I try and explain how important email can be for site conversion. But if you think about it logically; email is a great touchpoint for communicating with your existing customers and registrants (those that traditionally have higher conversion rates), so it makes sense that if you can maximise the impact of these visitors you can positively influence online conversion. Ultimately, deployed at the right touchpoints, email enables you to continue user journeys even when the user is not on your site. Below is a simple flow chart showing how email can aid specific user journeys to increase conversion. Whenever people talk about the elements of conversion rate optimisation (CRO) they mention MVT (or testing in general), analytics, usability, user experience (UX), databases, recommendation engines, personalisation etc… What these…

Using eyetracking to assess the 3Ws of your landing pages

Imagine that you are at a reception in a massive hotel ballroom, and Barack Obama is the guest of honor. You desperately want to speak with him about a brilliant idea, but know that you will only have a few seconds to catch his attention before he is whisked away by his security detail. So, what do you do? Flash your accreditations and references? Dress up in a clown costume and perform your rendition of the robot? Launch into a slam-poetry version of your master’s thesis? These tactics to get attention may seem improbable, but they are precisely the kinds of mistakes in building a landing page that we see at Eyequant all the time. Landing pages are designed to give the user a branded and actionable gateway into an online offer. Without stretching our poetic muscles too far, a…

Buyometrics’ success formula for 7% click rates on daily emails

Email campaigns with unique open rates of 30% and unique click rates of 7% beat email marketing benchmarks and represent great performance that any campaign manager would be happy with. Now try doing that for a daily email across your entire customer database... That’s harder, but it’s a reality for the Buyometric Daily Deal campaigns. Buyometric are letting me lift the lid on their success formula. The corner-stone is using highly dynamic and automated deal content targeting driven from a predictive algorithm which factors in several signals about what will most likely appeal to subscribers. It starts with collecting user preference information after signup. Providing preference information is optional after the signup, yet Buyometric get a massive 78% of new signups to complete this optional step. Its all down to the incredibly smooth user experience, I’ve previously posted about how this works…