Does Your Online Experiences Meet Your Customer Expectations
- 1. Does your online experience meet your customers’ expectations?
- 2. 2 Background It’s an increasingly competitive digital market these days. Each brand is pushing their digital capability further - and doing so quicker - in order to meet the exponentially increasing expectations of consumers. Each time a global brand innovates digitally, it raises the bar for all brands to compete against. Amazing customer experiences rarely happen by chance. They required a sound strategy that encompasses data, technology, business change and senior executive support – not to mention best-in-class execution. At CACI we help leading brands to design, develop and deliver websites and applications that provide personalised digital experiences across the customer journey. We do this by combining a user-centred design approach with our expertise in analytics, data, technology integration and digital marketing to build solutions with customer experience at the heart. This whitepaper outlines how you can optimise your consumer’s digital experiences and improve the performance of your online architecture. We discuss how you can build a site that meets and exceeds the expectations of today’s customers. About the Author Matt Roberts -Principal Consultant Integrated Marketing – Strategy, Planning & Insight With over 13 years’ online experience built from the ground up, Matt’s core disciplines lie in digital strategy, User Centred Design (UCD) and User Experience (UX) consultancy. Matt has a proven track record of successful delivery across a wide range of super-brands, with names such as Chelsea Football Club, John Lewis, ITV, The Royal Bank of Scotland, RSA, Sony BMG, Universal, Allianz, Aviva and LV= to his name so far. © CACI 2014 www.caci.co.uk
- 3. 58% of companies are only just beginning to develop their customer experience strategy 3 Defining a good customer experience Customer experience is a frequently used term, but do we really understand its implications? Almost 95% of businesses say that providing a good customer experience is their top strategic priority1 , yet our research has shown that 58% of companies are only just beginning to develop their customer experience strategy2. Consider Noriaki Kano’s model3 . It assumes three facets of the customer experience: 1. Basic (what customers expect) 2. Performance (features that help the customer achieve more) 3. Delight (features which are unexpected but enhance satisfaction) Delight attributes Customer satisfaction Performance Basic attributes attributes Degree of achievement As time goes by, more and more of the features that once increased performance or delighted customers become prevalent in the market. This leads to these features degrading further into the Basic category - things that customers come to expect, and no longer regard as a Performance or Delight feature. 1 Forrester Research, February 2014 2 Integrated Customer Experience Report, CACI & Econsultancy, October 2013 3 UX and the Kano model, Christian Holst, February 2012 © CACI 2014 www.caci.co.uk
- 4. 4 It’s also all too easy for brands to compare themselves only to their direct competitors when considering their digital sophistication and capability. After all, if you’re doing the same thing as Competitor A, B and C, then you must be doing something right? However, have you considered that consumers don’t always compare you to your direct competitors? When evaluating the online experience of a bank, they’re as likely to be subconsciously comparing it to the sophisticated experience of the Amazons, the eBays and the Facebooks of the online world, as they are to other banks. Creating improvements in digital customer experience and conversion is no longer a case of radical change, but of incremental change. Incremental change is almost always quicker & easier to implement, resulting in shorter periods of time where no improvement is seen, and providing a return much faster than radical change would. TIME IMPROVEMENT Radical Improvement Incremental Improvement © CACI 2014 www.caci.co.uk
- 5. 5 A better experience can make it easier to purchase, and a stickier experience - this will result in repeat purchases Good customer experience equals increased conversion If something works well every time, provides the required level of support, and is simple and easy to use - it will logically appear as a much more compelling reason to complete the purchase. CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE CAPABILITY + = SUPPORT =CEINNOORSV + SIMPLICITY Of course a good customer experience isn’t the only thing that improves online conversion. Price, product availability and other factors all contribute. However, it is becoming a much more important aspect in the eyes of the consumer. A better experience can not only make it easier to purchase, but also a stickier experience - this will result in repeat purchases. A good experience also instils a sense of trust in the brand4 - if you are providing a digital experience as sophisticated and polished as the global leaders, consumers are more likely to feel trust towards your brand5. The psychology of your customers When looking to improve the customer experience, it’s important to understand a little bit about the psychology that is involved in human interaction. A lot of very clever people have been recognising the nuances of human behaviour with regard to computers and interface design – one such person is Max Wertheimer who founded the gestalt principles6 (gestalt can be translated as “shape” or “form”). There are a wealth of gestalt principles relating specifically to the way in which humans perceive visual stimulation and design - but some of the key principles with particular relevance to the customer experience can be distilled as: • Simplicity – humans process simple experiences more easily, and often instinctively prefer something that is simple. Cramming a large amount of copy and functionality into your experience might seem like a great idea, but case studies have proven that a more simplistic experience often converts better7. 4Institute of Customer Service, 2014 5Brand Transformation Through Customer Experience Management, December 2003 6Gestalt Principles, Wertheimer 7Kissmetrics © CACI 2014 www.caci.co.uk
- 6. 6 Something as simple as changing the colour of the primary CTA from green to red resulted in a 21% increase in conversion • Recognition – if you have experienced something before, it is easy to experience again. Consider ubiquitous web form components such as a check box. You often don’t need to think about how it works, because you’ve undoubtedly used so many before. However when a form presents a fancy design that works like a checkbox but doesn’t particularly look like one, you have to stop and think what to do for a moment. • Proximity & connectivity – the closer the proximity and the more visual the connection between two or more items, the easier it is for people to recognise that connection. Properly delineating the components of a page using panels / grid layouts / visual styles makes content easier to consume. There are plenty of other principles and a variety of resources discussing them, but it’s important to note the effect that a good customer experience can have with regards to allowing the customer to achieve their (and your business’s) goals. Optimising CTA size and design, reducing copy, organising page information and using conversion-centric design better can all have a huge impact on performance. For example, in a recent test for Performable , something as simple as changing the colour of the primary Call To Action button from green to red resulted in a 21% increase in conversion. +21% Conversion 8Hubspot © CACI 2014 www.caci.co.uk
- 7. 7 How do you optimise the customer experience and increase conversion? The first step towards optimising the customer experience and increasing conversion is to understand the nature of the problems. A detailed understanding of the issues leads to a much more efficient resolution process – you know where to focus effort for the maximum return. Several common methods exist when considering digital products (websites, applications and mobile apps): Heuristic / expert evaluation, user research, data and web analytics, to name a few. We’re going to examine the first method: Heuristic / expert evaluation. What is the difference between heuristic and expert evaluation? Heuristic evaluation is a way of benchmarking your organisation against both direct competitors and indirect competitors, helping you understand your consumers’ point of view. It looks to assess one or more entities (websites / apps) against a set of sensible checkpoints – and scores either ‘No / poor compliance’, ‘Partial compliance’ or ‘Good compliance’. The results help to identify the problem areas to focus on. Does your site or app suffer from poor navigation? Is the content poor, or is there a lack of help and support throughout the checkout process? Expert evaluation gives a deeper dive into those problem areas, using digital experts (often drawing on their user research experience) to identify issues and making recommendations to mitigate them. These solutions are often tactical quick wins, realising a quick return through incremental improvement. A combination of the two methodologies will provide the breadth needed to identify areas of focus, and the depth of analysis to draw the best conclusions out. © CACI 2014 www.caci.co.uk
- 8. 8 Gaining an understanding of where your organisation sits in the market from the perspective of the consumer is vital What are the benefits of effective heuristic and expert evaluation? Gaining an understanding of where your organisation sits in the marketplace is key, but perhaps more vital is getting this perspective from the point of view of the consumer. A heuristic / expert evaluation will: • Help you gain a wider understanding of your brand’s position within the digital landscape, and the corresponding gaps between your brand’s digital capability and sophistication versus other direct & indirect competitors • Provide insight into the customer experience & conversion problem areas, helping you focus effort towards resolving them • Result in a prioritised and actionable list of recommendations • Lead to incremental improvements through an optimised customer experience, designed to increase conversion These recommendations can feed directly into an incremental improvement roadmap with delivery in bite-size chunks, as opposed to more radical full redesign. CACI Digital Diagnostics CACI specialises in delivering integrated customer experiences that have digital and data at their heart. We do this by providing a range of services across all channels: • Strategy and technology consulting and programme management • Digital and mobile design & build • Multi-channel campaign services • Location / store optimisation services • Analytics & segmentation services • Technology integration and managed services CACI have been helping clients to understand their relative market position and customer experience / capability gap for 15 years, and have developed CACI Digital Diagnostics as a tool to help visualise this. © CACI 2014 www.caci.co.uk
- 9. 9 CACI has a wealth of digital experts who understand how to bridge the gap between the needs of the business and the needs of the consumer. These experts are able to cover the breadth and depth required to benchmark and assess a brand’s websites, applications and mobile apps, analysing over 230 heuristics across areas such as: • Navigation & information architecture • Information design & user experience • Path-to-purchase & conversion optimisation • Self service capability • Help & support • Targeting & personalisation • Marketing & communication CACI can help you visualise your brand’s position in the market and in the wider landscape, identify gaps in your digital capability and customer experience, and recommend areas to focus on to resolve those gaps. If you would like to discuss how your business could benefit from CACI Digital Diagnostics, why not have a chat with Matt Roberts - mroberts@caci.co.uk © CACI 2014 www.caci.co.uk