What factors affect your conversion?

Everyone who runs an eCommerce website is hooked on conversion as the vital key performance indicator to improve. And quite rightly…. It is the one metric that tells you how well your website it turning lookers into bookers (or browsers into buyers if you don’t like things rhyming and prefer alliteration instead.).
So what affects conversion? Well there are a number of factors that have an influence including:

• Usability
  How easy your site is to navigate and transact with
• Security
  How well your site conveys and actually take steps to ensure the safety of customer data
• Content
  How well  the site text and imagery informs &  supports the sales process
• Layout
  It’s not just how much you have on a page, it’s where you put it that counts
• Speed
  How quickly your site appears & displays affects bounce & therefore conversion
• Aesthetics
  How it looks also affects how it converts (try changing the colour of a few buttons if you don’t believe me)

All you have to do it find out what works for your customers.

Facebook revives Social Commerce, but will it work?

The topic of Social Commerce (or SocialCommerce if you like to remove that middle space to look modern) has arisen again recently with two announcements:

Firstly Twitter a few weeks back allowed a 'buy now' button in its promoted tweet messages.
Secondly today Facebook have announced that they will do something similar and allow online shoppers to click a “buy" button. This will allow them to purchase items in adverts or other posts, without leaving the social network platform.

But will these small but important innovations fuel the much discussed 'social commerce' development of social media?

Or will it merely create further annoyance to Twitter and Facebook users, who already have a significant proportion of monetised screen real estate taken up with promotions and ads?

Give the customer what they want

“The customer is always right, even when they are wrong”, was the phrase drilled into me at my very first retail job, a weekend activity that furnished me with enough money to gain some independence during my late teenage years (e.g. to drive a car and to date girls clearly out of my league).

I questioned this mantra at first, asking why someone had the right to reverse common sense just because they wielded money. However, I subsequently came around to this financial perspective, especially when it earned me further work and therefore some incremental income. I had therefore succumbed to one of the pressures of modern life, I had followed the money and given the customer the control.

But now, as I consult on eCommerce projects across the globe, I find a similar situation… that the online customer is right in whatever they do, even if they don’t do what you want them to do. In other words: you can craft what you think is the best online user experience, you can come up with what you believe is the most persuasive design and you can create the most engaging content I the eyes of your stakeholders… however if the relevant customer doesn't have what they want to make their decision (e.g. to take them forward to purchase), then all your hypotheses aren't worth anything.

UX actions to do BEFORE you redesign your website - part 2

Here's the second part of my thoughts on the UX actions to consider before redesigning your website. Part 1 is available here.

4. Benchmark
So who in your competitive market is doing a better job of things than you online and who isn't? What does great look like for your digital customers and why? If you cannot answer these two questions, then you clearly haven't assessed the competition and understood what makes other sites better.
Action:
Review at least a handful of competitors websites to understand how they solve the same problems you have. Assess the features that make them easy to use (you might even want to look further afield at organisations that aren't necessarily in competition with you, but just have similar goals).
Note: For a small cost you can even point your usability tool at these competitive sites and give users the same tasks you give your own site.

5. Map out the customer journeys
Not all goals are the same on each site. Whether your aim is to generate leads or to directly convert users to buy a good or service, the path to acquisition can be difficult and dependant upon a huge number of factors. Action:
Map out the journey through your site for each of your key personas, ideally from initial awareness and acquisition through to them converting and beyond (e.g. into being a brand advocate). These functional flows will explain to you, your stakeholders, your developers and your testers what is happening to your users.
Note: Remember to include the situations when things don't go exactly according to plan.

6. Build your sitemap
It's not all about functionality, you also need to map out your content and the site's information architecture.
Action:
Draw up the hierarchy of your primary content pages and understand how each of your topics is delivered (if necessary for each device).

7. Wireframe the key templates
Producing a schematic or blueprint of every key page will create a visual guide of what your online users will experience. Wireframes will explain: the kinds of information displayed, the functions available, the priority of the information & functions, any display rules and effects of personalisation & other scenarios.
Action:
Create your wireframes based upon your customer journeys and the sitemap. But remember to test your creation before going into design.

  

Digital leadership - be more than an online expert

Being a digital leader means you need to be more than just an absolute expert in one area of online technology or marketing. You may know all about PPC, display & remarketing, SEO, email , display, affiliates and social media, but this isn't enough. To truly be at (and stay at) the forefront of digital, you really need to have the following qualities or experience:

1.  A leader of people
It's not just enough to have line managed the odd eCommerce staff member or digital agency, you need to be a mentor & coach, a motivator and a decision maker who can support and build a high performing team members to do great things.

2. An all-rounder
To understand how to get the best from that team, you ideally need an understanding of all aspects of online business. From being able to produce a focused digital business case to justify further investment, through to engaging with your opposite number in the technology department... you are going to have to have a broad spread of expertise.

3. An innovator
What have you done in your career that wasn't just "me too" but truly ground breaking? Have you been creative in your delivery of a new digital platform or applied a new method or approach to a building a difficult user interface? Have you been the first in your industry to trial a new device or an advanced technology that was subsequently adopted by the rest?

4. A strategic brain
Are you able to consider the bigger picture and link your team's work to the business drivers of the wider company? The creation and ownership of your organisations digital strategy should sit with you, it's yours to manage shape and develop as the company grows in its adoption of new online technologies and practices.

5. A customer advocate
Do you know who your customers are and what their digital needs really are? Do you know why your online presence or your eCRM initiatives work well (and why sometimes they don't strike a core)? It's not just a case of hiring a user experience (UX) person to do your thinking for you... you also need to get under the skin of your users and know what drives both their loyalty & resistance.

6. A scientist
Getting data from your analytics package is a basic necessity for any online practitioner these days, but being able to dive into the dashboards and analyse the insight that the information is giving you needs more than just a little diligence. You should also have experience of carrying out multiple experiments to improve your goals, ideally from a programme of on-going AB and Multi-Variate tests.

7. A communicator
It's fine to have strong views on those topics that you are passionate about, but you also need to be able to get your ideas across in a structured and eloquent manner.... especially to senior stakeholders.

UX actions to do BEFORE you redesign your website - part 1

Before you dive into a full creative redesign of your next website project, here's six user experience tasks I recommend you carry out.

1. Understand who your customers are:
Some of the biggest mistakes I've seen on sites are when they assume who the customer is... without actually find out the trust and validating that assumption. I'm sure we've all seen or heard of the exec who comes along at the beginning of a new digital project and says "I know who our customer is, I don't need to research them" or something similar.
Action:
Dip into your site's analytic package and see if this provides any insight into who your current visitors are (just don't assume this will be the same going forwards or that the same type of visitors all convert in the same way).
Note: If this doesn't tell you much, then carry out whatever research you can (Alexa demographic figures, online survey, site registration details, etc.)

2. Create customer personas
Personas are simply a way of describing the attributes, qualities and required outcomes of your key customer types. I believe that the aim here is not to be too descriptive about who they are (e.g. what income they have or what car they drive) but to describe their online needs (e.g. what they specifically want from your website).
Action:
Jakob Neilson says that you only need to test with 5 users to get the best from your usability tests [link] and I also think the same is true of personas. In other words, I recommend creating more than a couple but don't create too many.

3. Review your current site(s)
"Our site is rubbish, I want something entirely new" said the business stakeholder to me on a recent website redesign project. To which I replied... "that rubbish site is currently making millions of £'s worth of revenue for you each year, it must be doing something right!"
Yes, sure sites can always be improved... but just to slate everything about the current one without actually know what is working well (and conversely what is not) is of vital importance to ensure that you do not throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Action:
Carry out a set of user test on your website to see what users like & don't, plus where they incur obvious struggle in completing their goals.
Note: A few tests using a tool such as whatusersdo.com will highlight key user issues and also provide a permanent record of just how 'rubbish' your site is or isn't. 

The Lack of Digital Skills – not just a Scottish Problem

A workforce skilled in online & digital tools & technologies is key to developing an organisation’s digital agenda. From the more specialist digital-specific & IT / IS / ICT roles, through to the generalists who may need up-skilling and re-training on average every 3 years… the hiring and development of skills necessary to take forward your online roadmap is not something to take lightly. In fact, the lack of digital skills could be one of the greatest factors in why your digital change strategy fails.

I've previously blogged about the lack of digital skills in Scotland and highlighted the lack of technical, marketing and associated skills (design, user experience, content, etc.) ‘North of the border’ where I live. But this skilled and empowered workforce isn't just missing in Scotland, or even across the UK. In a digital skills presentation today from ScotlandIS, the Scottish IT Trade body, I was actually shocked to hear the fact that there is a shortfall of 1 million digital jobs across the EU.

Scotland is therefore only a drop in the ocean compared to this, with only 10,000 people a year needed here to fill the gap.

So what is being done about it?

• Are schools, higher education and further education producing the right courses and talent?
• Are companies investing enough to drag seasoned employees (who may have previously resisted or ignored the use of digital)?
• Are cities and even governments doing enough to encourage digital enterprise in specific areas that need it most?
• Are boards hiring Chief Digital Officers to champion online excellence?

I fear not.

Social Media in action – CalMac Culture

As some readers will know, one of our clients at Ideal Interface is Caledonian MacBrayne, the ferry company known as CalMac. Based on the west coast of Scotland, they are the UK’s biggest ferry operator by size of fleet and cover 60,000 square miles of land and (mainly) water.

One of the initiatives that I’ve been involved with has been CalMac Culture #calmacculture – an online competition to find original singer / songwriters, leading to a slot in several of Scotland’s key festivals (e.g. Tyree Music Festival, etc.)
If you happen to be online tonight, you can see the ‘Battle of the Bands’ being streamed live from King Tut's Wah Wah Hut in Glasgow:

Take a look:
https://www.youtube.com/user/calmacculture

5 reasons your Digital Change initiative will fail

Nearly every business I now speak to is going through some form of digital change. From smaller organisations assessing the capabilities and skills of their online marketing teams & agencies, through to major multi-nationals looking to transform their IT systems, business processes and customer engagement models around electronic services... the mantra is clear “change or be changed in this new digital world” and I bet yours is very similar.

But transforming your company into a digital leader isn't easy and “becoming the next Amazon” is neither realistic nor practical for most organisations.

To give some ideas of the challenges faced, from my experience here are some areas where organisations fail to get a grip on their digital change:

1. Your delivery model is wrong:
Are you still creating lengthy waterfall project plans more suited to industrial age delivery expectations? The age of agile development and iterative delivery has not only been around for decades now, it has evolved into different flavours and techniques. However, just diving into a fully-blown scrum delivery method without fully understanding the implications this will have on the wider business (and setting these up correctly) is also a recipe for failure.

2. You don’t have the right skills in place

Just giving people new digital job titles doesn't cut it. There’s a talent war out in the wider marketplace right now, where businesses are struggling to hire and keep the right people with the necessary online skills to take big steps forward in technology, marketing and other commercial areas.  Assess what makes your company different and how you could attract and retain the right talent to realise your digital ambitions.

3. You don’t have digital business leadership

Ask yourself who in your company is actually responsible for the ownership and stewardship of your digital strategy? Where are the priorities, road-map and alignment of this digital strategy to the rest of the business set? If this role is not represented at your boardroom table, then you’re probably not taking it seriously enough.

4. You haven’t defined your technical vision and solution

It’s one thing to make bold claims about where your company will be in the future, it’s another entirely to assume it will get there without a technical vision of what the end solution looks like. I don’t think I have ever been on a successful change programme that failed to have the solution architecture for the main features or components defined in advance.

5. Your culture doesn't accept failure

Sure, every company likes to say it gets everything “right first time” but in reality this never happens… there is always room for improvement and things always go wrong. Or in other words “fail forward” by: accepting it, getting on with it, learning from it and move forwards quickly. One client I worked for in the past had a company policy of actually rewarding when a member of staff accepted they had made a failure (and quickly wrote up what went wrong and what they would do better next time). 

Has anyone got any others?

Ideal Interface is looking for a part-time administrator

Ideal Interface is a privately owned, strategic digital & eCommerce consultancy based in Bishopton, Renfrewshire. The business consults to a number of household names on all aspects of online sales, marketing and delivery.

Due to continued growth in the business, we now need a part-time administrator to help with key support tasks including:

• Processing of contractor expenses
• Creation of monthly invoices
• Basic client assistance (e.g. website updates)
• Interaction with suppliers

Skills you will need:

• Computer literacy (Windows, Excel, Word, etc.)
• Numeracy
• Good communication skills
• Attention to detail
• Basic internet (browsing, social media usage, etc.)

What we offer:

• A flexible working approach
• A competitive rate
• An opportunity to be part of a growing company 
• An opportunity to learn about Digital Marketing and the future eCommerce environment

Note: Because we are flexible, this role might well suit a parent who wants to return to work part-time.

8-16 hours per week.
Non-smoker and own transport preferred.

The first 90 days of the Chief Digital Officer

The first ninety days in any job are important. But in such a new and exciting industry as online & digital, the first 3 months in the role of Chief Digital Officer are key.

Here are my thoughts on what should be the main areas to focus of the CDO during this period:

1. Understand the overall business strategy
   Any digital strategy created must be completely aligned to what the business is planning (Commercial aims,  new products, marketing, etc.)
2. Learn the culture
   Every organisation has a "way of doing things" and seeing itself. This doesn't have to perpetuate, but it is good to know what sort of people your peers and team around you do and think. Most important is the appetite for change... which can either be a critical success factor or a big nail in the coffin of a lot of the most forward-thinking digital plans.
3. Set a benchmark
   Recognize which of your competitors (if any) are doing innovative things, or just doing the same stuff but better! 
4. Identify your stakeholders and make friends
   From marketing and customer insight through to IT and Operations... if you are going to be an agent for inevitable change, you will need to build allies first.
5. Research your customers
   It's no good setting yourself up to digitize everything if that's not the correct way forward. And it's no good rolling out smartphone apps if all your potential business is using tablets. You don't have to know everything about every one of them, but being able to classify and segment them into target audiences will help you create the most relevant products and experience for them.
6. Build your vision
   Create an idea of what success looks like. What is the end game of all this change and how does it help the user and company? (Tip: Then give this vision to your strongest critic and ask them for feedback - this will iron out a lot of the wrinkles)
7. Create the roadmap
   Draw up and digital roadmap of short and longer-term projects & tactical changes that move the organisation forward towards your vision. 
8. Justify investment
   Where necessary develop businesses cases that explore the investment required to realise the roadmap.
9. Deliver something quickly
   Nobody is realistically going to wait for you to see out your initial 3 months without some business improvement. This shouldn't be too difficult for any CDO new to the role, as there are always quick wins to be had
10. Have fun

Have I missed anything?

How to get your Amazon product images wrong

Whilst researching wearable technology on Amazon, I saw this array of strange images for sale:

Now I'm not that familiar with the latest gadgets, but I'm pretty sure you're not supposed to attach a kitchen tap and sink to your body. 

Advanced robots.txt techniques – Crawl Delay

We have a client we have been carrying out search engine optimisation work for over the last 3 months. However, recently we noticed that they had a bit of an issue with their robots.txt

Now for those who don’t know, a robots.txt file sits in the root directory of your website and it is there to tell search engines which files they should and should NOT index (The only real exception to this rule is that some search engines also allow you to provide the address of your XML Sitemap in this file)

Note: placing a file or directory to exclude in your robots.txt file is no guarantee that these pages will not be indexed by search engines. It is merely a way to indicate that you don’t want the page appearing in Google, Bing/Yahoo, etc. … but it still might.

Anyhow, back to this problematic little robots.txt file – here it is, in all its glory:

User-agent: *
Crawl-Delay: 10
Disallow:

The main issue here is with the command “Crawl-Delay: 10”

Note: This was put in automatically by the client’s eCommerce application and not manually by the client.

It is important to know that the “Crawl-Delay” command is not a representation of crawl rate (e.g. the amount of pages indexed at any one time), but instead it defines the amount of time (from 1 to 30 seconds) that the search engine "bot" will wait between crawling each and every page of your site. Meaning that the higher the figure, the lesser the number of pages on your site that actually get indexed.

The original purpose of this command was to stop search engine spiders from tearing through a large site and having a performance effect (e.g. too many crawls at once could even bring a site to its knees). However, Google publically states that they do not support the crawl delay command, (although Bing does), so the case for actually having this command there in the first place is significantly reduced.

Moreover, this crawl delay command poses an issue for some search engine optimisation services, such as Raven Tools. Which can’t effectively crawl sites when this single line is present.

So my advice…. Unless you have strange and less common search engine spiders frequently visit and they have a noticeable effect on your site’s stability, I would remove this command if at all possible.

Presenting at the ETAG Technology Solutions Conference 2014

Ouch, I've just found a rather cringe-worthy video of me going 'Umm' a lot, especially at the beginning of this presentation I gave in front of 200 people. This was at the ETAG (Edinburgh Tourism Action Group) Technology Solutions for Tourism Conference 2014 a couple of months ago.

My focus here was on the opportunity for International eCommerce, although there was a bunch of stuff I covered generically around online selling of tourism.

The unpaid invoices of Stephen Halpin of Merchant Soul

As regular blog readers will know, I'm owed a significant unpaid sum by Stephen Halpin of Merchant Soul. I therefore thought I would detail the specific unpaid invoices, to let others know of this man's inability resolve his debts:
merchantsoul-invoice-oct012 (£1,920.00)
merchantsoul-invoice-nov-dec-2012 (£7,680.00)
merchantsoul-invoice-jan2013 (£2,400)
merchantsoul-invoice-feb2013 (£3,360)
merchantsoul-invoice-mar2013 (£3,480)
merchantsoul-invoice-apr2013 (£2,400)
merchantsoul-invoice-may2013 (£1,680)
merchantsoul-invoice-june2013 (£1,680)
merchantsoul-invoice-july2013 (£1,680)

 As you can see, I not only gave Mr Halpin significant credit but allowed him to not pay me for a significant amount of time. To date, Merchant Soul has not paid any of the above invoices nor has there been any explanation for this failure to pay.

UK financial comparison homepages - revisited

Over a year ago I posted an article on the homepage file size differences of several financial comparison websites.

I therefore have revisited this topic and thought it would be good to see what's changed... once again using the Firebug and Google page speed plugins for Firefox.

moneysupermarket.com 
Homepage weight: 384.1K
Number of items: 60
Page Speed Score: 80/100 (Desktop)
Page Speed Score: 65/100 (Mobile)
A decrease in page weight but an increase in the number of items means that the page speed is now very slightly less than it was.

comparethemarket.com
Homepage weight: 468.2k
Number of items: 34
Page Speed Score: 82/100 (Desktop)
Page Speed Score: 76/100 (Mobile)
A slight decrease in page weight and a decrease in the number of items has not had the desired effect on page speed.

confused.com
Homepage weight: 419.9k
Number of items: 38
Page Speed Score: 81/100 (Desktop)
Page Speed Score: 66/100 (Mobile)
A small increase in the homepage weight but with a significant reductions in the number of items on the page has not improved the page speed score

gocompare.com
Homepage weight: 1,100k (1.1Mb)
Number of items: 106 
Page Speed Score: 70/100 (Desktop)
Page Speed Score: 59/100 (Mobile)
An increase in the weight of the page by over 200k coupled with an increase in the number of items gives a significant reduction in page speed score (from 87 to 70 - the greatest difference in this test)

The transitional Chief Digital Officer role

We live in a changing world and titles come & go over time. One of the more modern roles to gain more of of the recent spotlight has been that of the Chief Digital Officer or CDO.

In a post a while back, I commented about why the role of CDO is needed, but that some organisations may choose to use a digitally-savvy Non-Exec Director instead.

However, I've give this topic further thought and can see the role of CDO becoming more popular over the next couple of years, but then gradually fading away... as the rest of the board becomes more digitally aware and knowledgeable.

If this scenario is likely to become a reality, it does then beg the question as to who would put themselves forward to become a Chief Digital Officer now?

NHS decommissions website early

So NHS Direct is shutting down it's service on 31st March 2014. So what does it do several days beforehand?

It closes its website...

Winning further international SEO business

February was a busy work month for me and the rest of the team at Ideal Interface.

Not only have we fitted in a presentation at the Edinburgh Tourist Action Group (http://www.etag.org.uk) on the opportunity for International eCommerce, delivering the digital strategy for a financial services company, consulting on one of Scotland's biggest digital platform projects and hosting a table of clients at the Scottish e-Commerce Awards... it's been an eventful month.

However on top of all this we won a new search engine optimisation client http://www.fmwfasteners.com an American-based eCommerce site that sells nuts, bolts, wall mountings, screws and a whole lot more on top. Making this our first USA client, on top of others closer to home in Europe and the UK.

A big thanks must most go to Jon at Cobnut Web Services (http://www.cobnut.net) for the initial referral.

You can read the official press release here on our website:
http://blog.idealinterface.co.uk/2014/03/06/fmw-fasteners-seo/

The signal and the noise of The Oscars

I'm a big fan of predictive data and analytics, with the statistical findings of Nate Silver being a pet subject.  The ability to see through statistics and see the patterns than some data makes is: part skill, part art and part alchemy.

So it was fun to see that Nate has focused his attention on this weekend's Oscars:
http://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2014/03/oscar-winner-predictions-nate-silver

However rather than picking a winner, such as best film or director, the Moneyball statistician has analysed previous films for trends and common themes.

The need for an agile Digital Strategy

Most industries and vertical sectors now face increased pressure from digital technologies to transform the way they run business. This pressure exists all the way across the online spectrum, from customers with new and increasingly diverse channel preferences through to agile market entrants that threaten to disrupt the status quo, the need for change (at speed) is huge.

Organisations therefore need to respond quickly and build the right digital, commercial and information technology road map for future demands...

• To protect key revenue streams
• To remain competitive
• To find new lucrative products and markets

In other works, any Digital Strategy that exists in an organisation needs to be flexible enough to change quickly, whilst still providing consistency in service levels, customer experience and product quality.

The agile digital strategy may therefore not just be an ideal... but possibly the only way to fully relevant and valuable in a world that is changing at an ever-increasing rate.

Multichannel retailing trends in 2014

If you've never heard Ian Jindal from Internet Retailing present, then I suggest you get yourself along to one of the many digital and eCommerce events that he either runs or participates in.

As part of my involvement at the ScotlandIS Scottish eCommerce Forum today, I saw him give the keynote below. What was supposed to be an outline of the trends in multichannel retail for the next year actually became more of a philosophical view of the meeting (AKA a clash) of the human condition with the always-on & connected paradigm of the world wide web.

Just what was needed to kick-start an entire day (and evening) of thought-provoking presentations and discussions on the future of eCommerce north of the border.

 

Ps258 2014 Trends in multichannel retail - keynote for ScotlandIS, February 2014 from Ian Jindal

You can't answer everything with analytics

I'm a big believer in the use of digital analytics to inform business decision making. And this isn't just the correct presentation of data in the right format, but in the delivery of insight from this data.

But statistician John Tukey had a different perspective. He once stated:
“Data may not contain the answer. The coordination of some data and an aching desire for an answer will not ensure that a reasonable answer can be extracted from a given body of data.”

In other words... sometime the data you have collected just isn't enough. Or more pointedly... if you have not originally set-out to collect the data you need to make the right decision, then no amount of analysis effort can generate the answer.

So how do you resolve this? Collect everything you possibly can, in the hope that you will one day find a use from  it?

Finding User Experience Resource in Glasgow

Since moving to Glasgow I have noticed that there’s been a lack of some digital-specific skills. The most obvious so far has been around the subject of analytics & insight. However more recently there has been a new glaring resource gap opened up… User Experience.

I currently have a large client project in the Glasgow area that requires User Experience resource.  So for the last couple of weeks I've been looking for decent local freelancers who can consultant on-site over 2 to 3 months. This is an important piece of work and I really need someone who can take things from Customer Strategy all the way through to wire-framing (ideally with large eCommerce and travel experience).

However, despite one unsuccessful avenue, I've so far drawn a blank. And after speaking with several digital contacts in Glasgow, there seems to be a real unmet demand for decent and available user experience contractors and consultants in the West Coast of Scotland.

Or am I missing something?

Is your Digital Strategy actually Strategic?

Does your Digital Strategy really deliver a vision and road map that takes your organisation forward?
Or does it simply to just wallpaper over the cracks and problems?

This is a question I've been wresting with lately and one that's let me to reconsider the work I do and scope of what Ideal Interface is actually involved in.

Or to put it another way, let me share with you a few key parts of a digital strategy outline and one that companies could use as the basic of their own.

Strive to be 'digital first':
Whether this be in the way you communicate to prospects, the way you design your core services or the way you integrate with business partners, 'digital first' is both a philosophy and a key requirement.

Accept change as a constant:
Understand that there is a continual change in customer & user preferences, channel shift patterns and technology trends. 

Be inclusive and user-centred:
Providing self-service functionality via digital touch-points isn't enough. You need to do this regardless of a user's: ability, connection, device and location.

Be optimised:
Whether this be by providing relevant, timely & targeted information or by maximising revenue using sophisticated conversion optimisation techniques, nothing stands still and everything needs to be tested, modified, measured and tested again (and quickly).

Be great:
I'll leave this one up to you.....

Improving Scottish eCommerce

As some readers of this blog will know, I've recently been asked to present on the opportunity for eCommerce across Scotland.  But what value do these events have in the context of encouraging Scottish companies to engage in eCommerce and to do it better?

Well the feedback I have had via face-to-face, email & social channels so far has been very positive. One example that really got a great response was... during my presentation I had a quick interactive session where I got everyone with a website to stand up. They then gradually sat down as I increased the level of sophistication in the use of eCommerce Analytics.

This not only showed people that they weren't alone in not fully utilising one of the most useful digital tools out there, but also demonstrated the next few steps they could take to online maturity.

However... this is just the start of things. As Scotland's only dedicated eCommerce consultancy (I did ask a year ago where all the Scottish Digital Consultants are, and nobody responded), we see a huge opportunity for companies and organisations to not just do things better (improving what they have) but to do better things (innovate, take opportunities, etc).

It is this mix that I believe should help take Scottish eCommerce forward!

Why do I see 'Not Provided' in my SEO agency report?

Since October 2011 Google has increasingly been hiding the actual terms used in organic searches. This has been done by Google as they “believe that protecting these personalized search results is important”.

http://analytics.blogspot.co.uk/2011/10/making-search-more-secure-accessing.html

However, Google has only hidden these terms for organic searches and is seemingly prepared to overlook this privacy issue for its paid-for marketing service AdWords (or as search engine specialist Danny Sullivan put it more bluntly, Google Has Put A Price on Privacy )

These hidden search terms are now reported in Google Analytics under a generic “Not Provided” category and the comparative size of this catch-all segment has been steadily increasing over time. In fact, aggregated industry figures now put this figure as high as around 80% for some sites, with a major increase seen in the 3rd quarter of 2013.
http://www.notprovidedcount.com/

Whilst there are some work-arounds to try to get some insight from this missing data, site owners have no real option but to ‘like it or lump it”, use the data they still have available for search engine optimisation and hope the figure doesn't get any higher in the future.

Basic eCommerce Terms revisited

When you work in the digital and eCommerce consulting industry, there's the tendency to assume that the person you are speaking to always has enough experience to be able to understand what your saying and act accordingly. However, this is not always the case (e.g. when the person has just been moved or promoted into a new role) and sometimes it takes time to cover the basics with a client, even though you don't always want to make it too obvious.

I therefore thought I would revisit some of the more common eCommerce terms used. Not just in case a current or potential client was reading this blog, but also to help anyone else who may be venturing in the world of online transactions, etc.

Acquisition

The processes and tools used to get new customers to start using / visiting any digital company touch-point (e.g. website, app, social media presence, etc.). Acquisition rates can be increased by using different marketing techniques (e.g. paid advertising or search engine optimisation).

Example KPI = Website visitors

Conversion

The amount of people who complete a required online goal (e.g. a booking or a purchase) divided by the total number that visit. It is sometimes called the 'look to book' ratio and in some markets / companies it is one of the most protected (e.g. Secret) of figures.

Typical average conversion  rates by industry:

http://www.marketingsherpa.com/article/chart/average-website-conversion-rates-industry

Retention

The number of customers who come back to the digital channels and book/purchase again within a given time period (sometimes set as the entire customer lifetime) .
There are no recognised benchmark figures on digital customer retention that I'm aware of and this depends considerably on industry, product, customer type, etc.

AOV:

Average order value is typically the sum of revenue that has been generated divided by the number of orders taken. Again, there are no standard measures for this, as the range of products and prices vary from company to company.

Social Media Training - do you really need it?

It's almost shocking to see the number of "introduction to Social Media" courses still being touted about. A quick search on Google highlights just how seriously the suppliers of Social Media Training are right now:

And a quick look at the term "Social Media Training" in Google Trends shows that the term is predicted to grow in the number of searches over the next year, albeit less so than when it first appeared on Google's radar back at the beginning of 2009.

So given all this supply and searching for the term, just who are the intended recipients?
I'm sure I can't be the only person who must assume that anyone who wants to understand the fundamentals of Facebook, Twitter and YouTube must have got to grips with the basics of each by now?

Are you owed money by Merchant Soul ?

As some readers of this blog and the wider Scottish business network will know, we are still owed a large amount of money by Stephen Halpin of Merchant Soul in Glasgow. This sum of £26,280 has now been completely outstanding for over 6 months, with some of it owed for over a year.

Earlier this year I sent an email to Stephen Halpin that concluded our working relationship and subsequently sent a Lawyer's Letter to Merchant Soul. But both of these communications received no response.We therefore assume that Merchant Soul has no intention whatsoever of paying us for the outstanding debt it owes our company.

It does however raise the question in my mind about whether this has happened before. Could it be the case that Stephen Halpin or his companies owe money to other individuals and organisations around Scotland or further afield?

Never bet against Google in 2014

Over the last dozen years Google has grown to be one of the most dominant online players, perhaps the biggest. Its current market value is about $350bn and all signs are that it can continue ruling the online space, despite several factors, including:

1.  More and more people using mobile devices for their daily searching and browsing activity
2.  Increased competition from Microsoft’s Bing.com search engine (which has blatantly tried to copy Google’s model and put a lot of money behind it’s promotion)
3. A list of discontinued products that have surprised on-lookers and left some users high & dry (e.g. Google Apps: closed in early 2012 and Google Reader: a feed-based news aggregator which was dropped in July 2013)

However despite Google’s mantra of “Don’t be evil”, which tries to set it apart from the more traditional software and IT services companies... it’s sheer size and might means it can’t help but disrupt any market or segment it decides to move into. From mobile phone operating systems & devices, to the Chrome operating system and a web-based email service (that became the top provider about a year ago) Google continues an upward trajectory. The consequence of this is that it is probably the only company able to challenge Apple in some areas of consumer electronics and communications.

What this means is that betting against Google in anything it decides to do is an unwise move. So if it targets any market or products that your company is in over the next year or so… my advice is, get out.

Global map of Social Networks - December 2013

For my last post of 2013 I thought I'd quickly mention this map of Social Networks used across the world for this month, December 2013.

Every 6 months Vincenzo Cosenza collates information from Alexa to understand which Social Media platforms are the the most popular in each country across the globe:

Since his last review 6 months ago, Facebook's growth has been slower. Its population is now up to 1.189 billion monthly active users, made up of: 199 million U.S. and Canada users, 276 million users in Europe, 351 million users in Asia (up by 34 million) and 362 million users from other parts of the world. Showing that it is still the world's leading network and that others such as V Kontakte and Twitter will have a hard job overtaking.

What is interesting for me is that there are a number of social networks that I was not familiar with at all, including Adnoklassniki, QZone, Cloob and Drauglem. Their prominence in this review highlights the need for a global social media marketing approach (e.g. when planning any international eCommerce efforts).

GAP PPC misses important sale figure

Imagine the situation.  You're managing the PPC digital marketing campaign for your global retail client. However they haven't yet told you the specific discount they are applying at the post - Christmas Sale.

So you stick a couple of x's in for the meantime, with the intention of putting the real figure in later.

Oops.

Mercure Hotels Hides the Wifi Link

I spend a fair bit of my time in hotels and therefore have to work using the provided hotel wi-fi services. I'm very grateful for this (usually) free service and it has been a factor in my hotel selection in the past (although most now provide it, including a number of Bed & Breakfast establishments).

However I thought it worth pointing out the poor usability of the Mercure Hotel group's wi-fi link on it's page... can you spot it on the screen grab from my high specification laptop??

Nope, it's not the purple title that says "Free WiFi" or the purple text underneath it that says "Free WiFi - ideal for basic browsing and emailing". But the button beneath it that is lost on my screen... and therefore must be the same for other users.

Developing Scottish eCommerce

I recently answered a few questions for a press article about eCommerce, following my presentation at a the 'Pixels & Pies 2' event in Edinburgh.

One of these was printed yesterday in The Times Business Insight supplement:

http://www.times-scotland.co.uk/

The latter part of what I wrote was quoted:

The Question?

What themes/issues were most able to help attendees get to grips with in the tourism industry briefing?

The Complete Answer.

My presentation covered the opportunity that eCommerce presents for all industries and in particular the tourism and food & drink ones. I gave several examples of new businesses that are using eCommerce in

different ways and across the international stage. The UK is actually one of the most mature markets for the adoption of eCommerce, both from a supplier/retailer perspective and a buyer/consumer one too. 

We therefore have the opportunity to learn from the fantastic success stories that are out there already, build

or evolve current off-line processes, products & services to suit a growing online population and contribute to the growth of the Scottish economy.

Ecommerce maturity is an opportunity

The UK leads the way in eCommerce and we are one of the most mature markets for online retailing.

Therefore, as the whole world shifts more and more towards the use of digital channels for marketing,  engagement and buying, we have an opportunity to lead the way and make the most of this opportunity.

In short, the tools, technologies and communications we use to trade online are not going away any time soon. We therefore need to embrace this chance, utilise the online skills & experience we have, share best practice, build up more talent & skills and then sell to the world.

The seven key areas of an eCommerce evaluation

I get asked to evaluate online retailing proposition a fair bit. So I thought I would share the key areas that I typically look at and report on.

User experience:

Quickly assess a site’s reaction from target site users (ideally using video & audio remote assessment tools such as whatusersdo.com)

Conversion rate optimisation:

Carry out an analysis of the potential use of conversion rate optimisation (CRO) tools & techniques, including possible AB & MVT processes and products

Retailing, merchandising & site operations:

Review of Inventory, pricing & fulfilment processes & systems. Then review the current processes for photograph & video asset production, merchandising, content management and offer promotion, as well as any sale, distressed inventory, affiliates, syndication, etc.)

Analytics:

Review of current Google e current digital analytics set-up, including: campaign tracking, eCommerce (e.g. funnel & conversion) metrics, integration with other services (e.g. digital marketing, product recommendations, etc.)

Site health:

Review the code, page loading time, internal linking, redirects and 404 (not-found) pages (note: this could cross over into search engine optimisation territory, so can in theory be done at the same time)

Volume & Performance (V&P):

Carry out an assessment of any projected volume and/or performance figures and (hopefully) a check of an previous testing done. This then leads into a validation of these figures and the subsequent planning of future V&P testing.

Have I missed anything?

Customer Services on Twitter need what?

In a recent rant on Twitter about my mobile phone broadband, I got a response from EE the mobile phone & data network provider. However the response I got wasn't what I expected and this raised a couple of questions in my mind:

1. Why do I need to contact them directly and provide my full name, in order for a company to investigate what was a technical or process issue?
2. Surely by looking at my Twitter account they can see what my name is (and a quick look at my profile will validate this)?

I'm sure EE has it's own reasons for this Twitter Customer Services policy. But I did find it slightly strange that EE want that level of contact and can't be bothered to look up basic publicly-facing information on people.

Multi-screen shopping - useful infographics

I've used a new Google service to produce an infographic (actually 4 separate ones) that outline how the multi-channel shopping experience has changed.

Content Marketing : owned, paid & earned doesn't work

As the subject of content marketing grows into more of a discipline, I've been looking at ways to categorise the different types of CM activity you can engage in.  I therefore wanted to see if these categories mapped to the three classifications of marketing originally developed by Forrester Research. Those of Paid, Owned and Earned.

Note: For those of you that want a better perspective of this general topic of Paid, Owned and; Earned, I produced a blog post on the merging between these 3 area a few months back.
http://press20.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/paid-owned-and-earned-blurring.html

However, I have to be honest on this occasion and say "no, I don't think that Content Marketing and the Paid, Owned & Earned classification work in this context"

Stand up for Google Analytics

I’ve recently been giving a series of presentations with ScotlandIS to the Tourism and Food & Drink sectors. This has been as part of a wider series to improve the overall level of Internet Retailing skills and experience across Scotland, with my particular topic on the opportunities for eCommerce.
During this 25 minute set I take a break from providing statistics, advice and examples, to do something a little more interactive.
In one slide I build the following set of bullet points:

• Stand up please
• Stay standing if you currently have an eCommerce site
• Stay standing if you are using web analytics
• Stay standing if you use it to get regular KPI’s (visits)
• Stay standing if you have ‘goals’ set up on your site
• Stay standing if you are measuring eCommerce values for these 'goals'

Although quite a few people initially stand, it is surprising to see nearly every person sit down as each point appears. And in all three cases where I've given this presentation so far… only one company or site is left standing.

Although this exercise is there to provide a break from ‘death by PowerPoint’ and to show the simple path to analytics maturity, it has been a bit of a revelation to myself and the other eCommerce consultants in the room to see just how many people are not using even some of the more simple digital analytics functions.

What’s more shocking is my final point.
• All of this is free!

Yes, with Google Analytics, all the points I have highlighted are freely available to any internet retailing site. Or as I more succinctly put it… “GA should be the eCommerce practitioner’s best friend”.

Hopefully I have not only communicated how simple and cost effective this tool it, I have also helped some Food & Drink and Travel & Tourism businesses.

Understanding the eCommerce Opportunity

I've been asked to give presentations to different companies & organisations around Scotland on the 'Opportunities for eCommerce'.

The following is therefore my generic set of slides that I have already started to deliver in various locations. The presentation is meant to cover the key industries of Travel & Tourism and Food & Drink.

 

Understanding the eCommerce Opportunity from Hayden Sutherland

Know the fundamentals of Google Analytics

I've heard a range of excuses for digital types not to get to grips with Google Analytics.  From "I don't have enough time to take the course" through to "oh, it changes so often, I can't keep up" and "it costs money to take the test"... there is always a bunch of reasons not to do something

However until the end of 31st October (tonight) you have the chance to study all about GA and take Google's Digital Analytics Fundamentals exam for free:
https://analyticsacademy.withgoogle.com/preview

I took my test the other night, without reading the course material, and got 80% - a pass!

Understanding the Third Moment of Truth

Last week I posted my thoughts on whether there was an extra  'Moment of Truth' in the online & multi-channel purchasing cycle. One where users get the product home and only then decide to return some or all of them.
This Third Moment of Truth is key to an eCommerce site's revenue and stock management, as returned inventory can significantly affect a product line's profitability and add a lot of effort to the entire back-end process.

In the diagram above I have also tried to tie together this Third Moment of Truth (TMOT) with the other moments and then to align them with my previously-used model of influence & action... AIDA.

Hopefully now, regardless of which model is used, there should now be some alignment of these different pivotal moments.

The Dark Side of Content Marketing

I sometimes blog about the more shady side of Internet Marketing and how you should avoid this sort of stuff (if at all possible).
Buying email lists, Black Hat SEO and other nefarious activities are still used though... primarily for short-term gains and only by some digital folk. Despite all the guidance of search engines, advice from reputable online agencies and contributions from best-practice consultants, there is still a fair bit of shadiness still used (and some clients even encourage it).

Content Marketing on the other hand is the discipline of creating and sharing content for the purpose of communicating, educating and informing prospect, customers and anyone else really. The art of great copy writing, coupled with great UX skills and fantastic creativity is rewarded in engaged eyeballs and influenced sales.

But I have been considering recently whether there a dark side to Content Marketing. Activity that isn't entirely legitimate, but that has yet to be defined as dodgy.... yet

Here's some examples I can quickly think of:

1. Writing blog posts with very similar titles & subjects (purely to try and cover a range of search terms for SEO or internal search)
2. Writing unnaturally (either to force a call-to-action or to appeal to search engines with keyword stuffing, repetition, etc.)
3. Creating meaningless (or even completely off-topic) infographics just to encourage their sharing
4. Creating numerous videos from a single original clip and posting them online under different titles and keywords.

Can you think of anything else?

Oh... We already have a digital strategy

When I talk to organisations about the need for a strategic plan for implementing online tools and services, I get told "Oh... We already have a digital strategy" or something similar.

I hear this phrase quite a lot and it is typically followed by other quotes such as "We created one of those a couple of years back" or "We had one produced in 2011 by a bunch of consultants, but they didn't understand our business".

My take on this is that the process to create a digital strategy should be:

1. The development of a vision
   - Where digital benefits are fully utilised & integrated across the organisation
2. Created
   - By your organisation
   - For your organisation
3. Owned by your organisation
4. Supported by:
   - Clear goals and measurable Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
   - A prioritised portfolio of projects with an achievable delivery road map

But just as importantly for me is that this digital strategy should not be set in stone forever. Yes, it should have board-level approval, but it should not sit in a drawer and gather dust over time, it should be revisited, reviewed and redrafted to accommodate changes in: Technology, People & Processes, your wider Business strategy and any other external factors (e.g. competitors, legislation, etc.).

Is the future of the Chief Digital Officer at risk?

In a recent report by Gartner called "Top Industries Predicts 2014: The Pressure for Fundamental Transformation Continues to Accelerate" [link] it's predicted that nearly two-thirds of government organisations with both a CIO and chief digital officer role will get rid of one or the other. This will eventually happen because of the overlap between the two and further changes across the business.

This announcement may seem a little premature, since the role of Chief Digital Officer is only just taking shape in the minds of some organisations and their boardrooms. To therefore announce it's redundancy before it is fully embraced could be seen as just headline grabbing (or link bait).

However, I agree with this viewpoint. Furthermore I not only believe that the future of the Chief Digital Officer post is at risk, but that it should be seen as an interim position along the path to full digital adoption. In other words... if you're aiming to be a CDO in several years time, you are probably planning for the wrong future.

But let's take a small step back to the present. Where the role of Chief Digital Office is definitely needed by some public and private sector bodies, with others having already hired & found their CDO. This person should neatly sit between the roles of the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) and Chief Information Officer (CIO), to help both on their journey forward to the creation of a vision, where digital benefits are fully utilised & integrated across both teams and further afield.

In some circles the title of CIO amusingly used to stand for "Career Is Over". However it is really the CDO who should not only assume they are out of a job eventually, but should plan for this as part of their wider responsibilities.






 

The Third Moment of Truth

In my earlier post this week, I explained what was meant by the traditional marketing model of the First and Second Moments of Truth (FMOT & SMOT). I then went on to cover the more recent concept of the ZMOT or Zero Moment of Truth and how it aligns to older models of: AIDA (Awareness, Influence, Desire and Action). 

In the offline world, the FMOT is typically when the shopper reaches for the product and buys it. This aligns nicely to the online (or Multi-Channel) world, where the user does virtually the same thing by clicking on the product they want, adding it to their digital basket and proceeds through the checkout process. The SMOT is then relatively the same for both channels, with the shopper either taking the item home to experience themselves, of getting it delivered / collected. 

However, I think we also need to consider that (primarily for the online shopper) we should add an additional stage, the Third Moment of Truth… or the TMOT if I’m allowed to continue the series (and not to be confused with ‘The Ministry of Truth’ or ‘The Magic of Television”).  

Consider the situation that is now quite a common problem for eCommerce retailers…

1.  A shopper visits a website, selects a product to purchase (typically one that they wear or needs to fit them in some way) and adds it to their online basket.
2. Because they are not too sure about the exact sizing of the product, or because they are not sure about their own physical dimensions, they order another one in a different size or two.
3. They may also order different colours of the product or other variant in some way… all in an effort to find a single product that is the ‘right’ version or fit.
   Note: It’s also my assumption here that sites who offer ‘free delivery’ and especially ‘free returns’ will suffer from this effect more.
4. After the user has completed their transaction (FMOT) they then await delivery, or in a ‘Click & Collect’ situation they go and get it themselves.
5. The goods arrive at their home and the shopper unwraps or un-boxes their purchases (SMOT).
6. However, they are now left with more than one product, when all they wanted was one thing. So after viewing or trying on these products, what do they do?
   
   They decide which items they are going to return.

It is this moment, when a choice about what gets sent back is made, that I think needs greater consideration and becomes the TMOT, the Third Moment of Truth.

Trust Me On This …   Doh!

The Moments of Truth

Most savvy marketers should now be familiar with the concept of the first and second ‘moments of truth’. The idea (pioneered by P&G over a decade ago) that there are several key points in the shopper’s journey which should be recognised and supported, is now pretty much part of the vocabulary of modern retail marketing.

The First moment of truth (FMOT):
When a shopper decides to purchase an item (e.g. reaches for the product sitting on a supermarket shelf)

The Second moment of truth (SMOT):
When the shopper gets the product home and starts to use it.

More recently Google identified the Zero Moment of Truth. This was explained as being the online decision-making process that takes the multi-channel shopper from the initial point of stimulus through to the first moment of truth.

The theory is that by being aware of these stages in the buying process means, we can craft message and experiences around these points to encourage and persuade shoppers to buy.  However Google’s Zero Moment of Truth, or ZMOT as it is referred to, needs more than a brief explanation of how it actually works  in practice across the a digital world. Google's model highlights that there is now a new critical moment of decision that happens before consumers get to the supermarket shelf. That regardless of the products sold, customers and shoppers (the two terms here are pretty-much interchangeable) decision on what product to buy is made up. However, it is not necessarily persuaded by just one factor or one message via a single source… but by a complex combination of lots of messages, many of which are via digital marketing channels.
You can find out more about it here: http://www.zeromomentoftruth.com

However these models aren't really that new or revolutionary. Back several years ago I used the acronym AIDA in several posts to refer to a very similar marketing concept. This explained that there are 4 steps along the path to purchase of: awareness, influence, decision and action. This process takes the shopper up to the point when they commit themselves to purchasing… in other words up to the first moment of truth (FMOT).
In my opinion… What Google has done with ZMOT is to give a name to the two steps of influence and decision, shaped for the modern generation of multiple channel users.

Or to break it down in a way that I find easy to understand, I've created the following diagram which shows how I think these different approached come together:

New Google nav hints at Google Plus desparation

I recently blogged about the new navigation that Google was rolling out across it's varied and rich estate of sites. The older black nav bar looks to be consigned to the scrapheap (at least for some areas) and the new navigation sits right-proudly in a right-aligned format on top of some of Google's principle functionality (Search, GMail, Calendar, etc.).

Although this change may have been done to easily give consistent and easy access to further Google areas... I can't help think that the search giant has also tried to put the link to Google Plus, it's own social networking platform, in a more prominent place. Google has therefore moved this link from the far left (where is sits as a link with your name and a plus symbol) to center stage, where it now the first of only three text links.

To be frank, there can't be anywhere more obvious to the user than putting the Google+ hyperlink in its new place and hints at desperation to drive users to a tool that still doesn't seem to have the user adoption that it might have expected or hoped.