Digital Strategy For Dummies

Ever get that sinking feeling you're not hitting the spot with your digital strategy?

Have you looked through slide after slide of PowerPoint presentations only to think "Mmmmmm...... It all makes sense from a multi-channel engagement perspective... But I'm sure there's something I've missed".

Or do you lie awake half the night worrying that the ROI model for your client's latest online business case doesn't quite line up with their commercial plans or board expectations?

Perhaps it's because there's no single framework for a comprehensive digital strategy. And there's no 'one size fits all' model when looking to transform processes and engagement via a new Digital self-service platform.

In short....Wouldn't it be good if there really was a "Digital Strategy for Dummies" guide?

Why does Google Analytics show cities not postcodes?

As you may have seen in Google Analytics, it is possible to identify your digital visitors down to the city level. This is cleverly done by Google taking multiple data sources and then "guessing" where visitors are coming from.

Firstly there is something called reverse IP address lookup. This is when your Internet Service Provider gives information away about where you are connecting from. Then there's other big hints online users give away about their location, such as using a Chrome Browser on a mobile device or use Google Maps to look at their local vicinity. Each gives Google major indications as to where users actually are.

But this "guessing" does not go down to postcode level in Google Analytics.

My view is that some postcode area (e.g. PA = Paisley) are so broad they cover hundreds & hundreds of square miles and even postcode districts cover large amounts of land & people (e.g. PA1).

However postcodes themselves change over time can be so detailed as to cover as little as one house.... which would identify a person or household, which is against Google's data policy.

The Wider CIO Role In A Digital Age

The role of the CIO has evolved over the last decade or so. In my opinion this is primarily as the technology services, digital products and online marketing industries have changed considerably over that period.

Cloud, Apps, SaaS, micro services, and a bunch of other technologies & paradigms now means that:

• Hosting a online service with 99.9% availability is just a £10/month subscription rather than a £100,000 per year investment
• Developers no longer go to offices and work where work is, but instead sit in their bedrooms and offer themselves to the most innovative opportunities
• Your customer (or customer's customer) is now online at any time... and more than ever before likely to be viewing your services via a smartphone
• The new Chief Digital Officer role came & went, with a lot of their work being picked-up by the CIO (and some by the CMO)
• Vendor lock-in is less of a concern than a vendor that doesn't have an API

All this also means the CIO role in the digital age has become more strategic than ever to the CEO. 

This is because, as software replaces more and more things, every business is becoming a technology business.

Personas vs Customer Segmentation

I my opinion the process of developing customer segmentation is different from creating personas.

Segments are different customer types based upon similar attributes such as demographics (and usually just cuts of your existing customer data). They are typically used to focus marketing spend.

Personas should also go into defining the customer's attitude, propensity to buy, purchase history, device usage, etc. They are there to shape the user experience by giving you (crude) stereotypes to build product/functionality and create content for.

When Does The Nastiness Stop?

The World is a paradox.

As a parent we each teach our children to be considerate, share their possessions and respect others. "Everyone is equal", "play nicely with others" and other such phrases are stated to the younger generation in a concerted effort to encourage them to grow up with care and love for their fellow man.

But as adults we live in a dog-eat-dog world where some people in the playground of life refuse to play nicely with others.

Therefore as we grow up, we gradually come to realise that not all things are equal and that love & respect are a rare commodity. And that people don't always get the comeuppance they deserve.

Isn't it a shame?

Digital Roles Overlap

I think it is becoming harder and harder to understand all the roles a modern and competent digital organisation needs. In my opinion this is because each specific skill-set now overlaps others.

This makes is difficult to classify some roles and the people that could fill them. 

Hopefully this diagram goes some way to explain things.

Can Google Continue To Increase Revenues?

You've no doubt heard the phrase "nothing lasts forever", well that line works just as well in business as elsewhere. Yet in recent years Google seems to have bucked the boom & bust trend on other online companies and continues to record record revenues.

As this graph from Statista.com shows, Google posted $74.54 Billion in revenue in 2015.
Google's revenue is mainly made up by advertising, of which Google AdWords is a major factor, which in 2015 accounted for $67.39Billion or over 90%. Currently Google is the Internet company with the highest market capitalization, $373Billion - 5 times its revenue.

But the question for me is.... is this rate of growth sustainable?
Or more realistically I think we need to ask at what point Google's revenue slows down as it finds the optimum way to extract money from advertising customers.

Traditional news wants new media to fund them

A think tank has called for online giants Google and Facebook to pay for the news they take from media outlets and then use on their own websites.

http://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2016/may/26/make-google-and-facebook-pay-levy-to-support-journalism-academic

No, it is actually a real article!

Does Digital Help Create Social Isolation?

Social Isolation is where a person (or people) have a complete or near-complete lack of contact with the society in which they live.

• News websites mean you don't need to walk out and buy a newspaper or go to the library
• eCommerce websites and apps mean you don't have to go to the shops
• Online games mean your kids don't want to walk out to the local park and kick a ball about
• Virtual Reality cuts you off from everything so that you don't even have to engage with a real person (or possibly a human looking avatar)

However, in creating online / digital systems and products that allow an individual to communicate with a computer user interface, but not a real human... are we actually adding to this isolation?

The benefits & pitfalls of Scottish companies selling online

As a specialist digital consultant, I speak with a lot of Scottish businesses of all sizes about the opportunities that eCommerce can bring. Most agree that using the Internet to open up new markets and sell a greater amount of products is of commercial interest to them – who wouldn't want more customers and more revenue?

However a lot of businesses have still to venture into eCommerce and time after time the same key reasons for not doing so keep cropping up:

• Concerns about the cost of setting up and running an online business
• Concerns that “you need to be technical” 
• Concerns about online payments and security
• Concerns about distance selling and the appropriate regulations
• Concerns about delivery, returns, etc.
• Concerns about getting & keeping customers

However, help is on-hand from Scottish Enterprise for those organisations who want to learn more about how to go about setting up an online store and grow their business via electronic means. Courses, workshops and dedicated digital and eCommerce expertise via specialist consultants are all available.

Plus it is important to remember is not just about selling to the home Scottish market, eCommerce opportunities also lie abroad. In fact, back in 2013 a report on Scotland’s Digital Future stated that more than 90% of eCommerce in Scotland was already being conducted with other UK or overseas customers. It is therefore unsurprising that in the last few years a Scottish Enterprise workshop on the topic of International eCommerce has been run in many locations across the country. I sometimes help take this popular workshop and it covers topics such as: researching new markets, translating content, global payment methods and international digital marketing techniques.

So what are you waiting for?

What’s in store for digital retailing and Scottish companies?

There’s been a consistent growth in UK one retailing for over a decade now. In fact, the number of UK citizens ordering goods electronically has increased significantly from an already impressive 44% in 2005 to a huge 79% in 2014. This means that nearly everyone with an Internet connection in the UK has now bought something online and actually makes us the biggest adopters of eCommerce in the EU.

This increase also shows no signs of stopping any time soon. All predictions are that more & more products of increasing complexity will be purchased via a browser or app in the future. You only have look back at the types of products bought online just a few years ago… cheap, simple, off-the-shelf, branded and easily packaged- such as books and CD’s (which is how Amazon started off). But now practically everything gets bought online including: complex, expensive, bespoke and considered products – from cruise packages thought to tailored fashion clothing and hand-made furniture if you so wish.

So in my view, the eCommerce future for Scottish companies is very bright and Scottish companies should be no different to any other in the UK when it comes to online selling. There’s still huge opportunities to sell products (and even services) to customers in the UK, Europe, North America and even further afield. Whether you come from the suburbs of London or the shores of Loch Ness, it is possible to sell to the global village of 3.2 Billion online users (which is about 40% of the world’s population).

Unsure what will sell? Well tastes and trends change across the globe, so you shouldn’t necessarily restrict the products that you offer online. There’s also no physical limits on space, so why not put everything online and see what gets bought?

Wearables in the workplace

Do you wear a fitness band or have a health tracker app running on your smartphone?

If you do, then you probably use it to track your personal activity such as: steps walked, energy spent, stairs climbed or average heart rate.

But could your employer benefit from your use of wearable technology and is this in your best interests?

Perhaps not, and here's why:

1. Activity monitor company Fitbit is targeting companies with its products http://www.cio.com/article/2969973/fitbit-caters-to-corporations-and-not-just-with-discounted-fitness-trackers.html
2. Court cases are now using fitness tracker data to back-up or discredit testimonies which rely on human movement 

Yup! And if this trend continues....

How to get 6800% ROI from a single eCommerce marketing campaign

Back in 2014, my consultancy (Ideal Interface) had an eCommerce client who was having a couple
of major issues:

1. The Return On Investment (ROI) from their Affiliate Marketing efforts using voucher codes was highly variable, having a significant effect on sales margins
2. Conversions rates were falling at key points in the checkout process, as customers were entering invalid voucher codes collected from across the web

The challenge was to take ownership back of the voucher code arena and develop a
marketing programme which would meet the following objectives:

• Test and develop a Voucher Code campaign that users would go to directly and increase the ROI from Voucher Code usage
• Reduce the impact on shopping checkout abandon rates where customers entered a Voucher Code
• Encourage these voucher code users to join the e-mail marketing programme, to subsequently entice voucher code users to become regular customers
• Devise and test a specific e-mail marketing programme for this list of customers that would increase the likelihood of purchasing again

So what happened?

• It was established that users searching on Google for voucher codes were the best group of potential customers to target.
• The first step was to test and develop a Google AdWords campaign based around keyword searches by potential customer using a range of brand name and voucher code related terms such as “<brand> code” and “<brand>; discount code”.
• Then several adverts and discount offers were tested and optimised within the Google advert copy. This was done to see which would provide the best rate of return and to evaluate the propensity to sign up to an email marketing programme.
• The impact on the shopping checkout rate was also monitored.
• An e-mail marketing programme was subsequently devised for this specific list of customers and tests conducted to see which headings, offers and promotions encouraged them to buy again.

The results?

• The Google AdWords Voucher Code campaign produced a staggering return on investment of over 6800%.
• The drop-out rate at the shopping checkout stage for those attempting to use voucher codes halved.
• Over 30% of customers recruited from the Google AdWords Voucher Code campaign went on to join the e-mail marketing programme.
• Over 55% of customers joining the e-mail marketing programme purchased again within 2 months.

A Digital Product or Proposition

Are you struggling with the difference between a Digital Product or a Digital Proposition? I was for a while, but think I've now found the best way of explaining each:

Product
A product is an item, idea or service for sale that satisfies a need (or want)

Proposition:
A proposition (or value proposition) is an explanation of why your customer should purchase your product. It should answer the question “what’s in it for me?”.
It should therefore ideally:

• Be relevant - answer the question "why me?"
• Communicate key benefits -  - answer the question "what will it help solve?"
• Provide differentiation -  answer the question "why not buy something else?"
• And.... It is NOT a slogan or a positioning statement

How satisfied are you with your eCommerce experience?

Will One Line Of Code Help Your SEO?

There's been quite a lot of discussion online (and a little offline) about a recent blog article called: How I Sped Up My Site 68.35% With One Line of Code

I think the biggest buzz about this article has been in the SEO community, who suddenly got all excited about a magical way to speed up web pages. Mentioned by Moz (the organic optimisation industry's catnip) you could be fooled into thinking that one person had suddenly found a way to massively boost a site to the top of the results pages.
Note: For those who don't know, the speed a page downloads is cited as one of the numerous factors taken into consideration when search engines such as Google rank (judge) your site... having a much faster page load speed with just one little line of code would be fabulous.
But alas, that's not the case.

You see, I think this article is misleading as it explains how to use an HTML tag called "rel-prerender".

For those who don't know, the rel-prerender tag is used on a website to place into computer memory the next page the site developer expects the users to click on. For example, Google sometimes use it in their search engine results pages (SERPs) to make the experience of clicking on the first result much quicker.

To explain how this works on your own website, let's imagine you are on page 1 and want to automatically call-up page 2 behind the scenes (so that it appears very quickly). You therefore insert the "rel-prerender" tag in page 1 to call up page 2 before it is clicked on.

Where might you use this?
Well you might us it on a login-page (page 1) where the logged-in page (page 2) is usually the next step. You can even use it in an eCommerce site to pre-render the shopping cart I guess.... BTW: DO NOT DO THIS!

But as you would expect, there's a catch. Pre-rendering page 2 is the act of requesting a view of it in advance. So people arriving on page 1 can trigger a page 2 view without ever seeing it and in many cases they won't. This means that in some analytic packages this is recorded as a page impression (not in GA, it's clever like that) and ads on that page may be triggered even when nobody's there to see them. Plus it also adds load onto your servers whenever a page is requested, so don't tell your tech support person you're adding further load onto the system that may never be used.

So does it have an effect on SEO? Well I may be wrong.... but I really can't see how it helps organic site optimisation as you are not speeding up the render of the page you want to appear in the SERPs (Page 1). What you are actually doing is speeding up the potential delivery of the next page (page 2) you expect the user to see.  And that's not SEO, that's a caching strategy.

Forget Agile Development - You Need Agile Marketing

The term agile development is now pretty much established as the way to get web functionality built and launch. Focused on delivery of a minimum viable product it aims to build 'something but not everything' in a given time frame. It is so successful now, that marketing and commercial types have come to expect that their technical team or web agency can create nearly all of what they want in record time.

So now its time for a new term. So forget Agile Development for now, your business needs to adopt the practice of Agile Marketing!

The Digital Dinosaurs Will Die Out

At a recent presentation I talked about how it was still sometimes hard to get senior stakeholder buy-in on digital projects. You'd have thought by now that most senior managers or executive teams would have read the odd press article on digital transformation or listened just enough to an industry consultant on where the future of communications, technology and innovation are taking us.

But no, there are still the digital luddites who want to dig their heads into the analogue sand and fail to grasp that there's a revolution happening in most organisations.

Luckily, like the dinosaurs, these digital deniers will become fewer and fewer until they not just become the minority... but they become virtually extinct. Hopefully!

Disrupt Or Get Disrupted

There's a couple of phases that have been going around in my head for the last week or so.



These are:
- If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem
- Change is the only constant



Both reflect my feelings about the current progress of digital transformation across a range of industries. From taxi services through to financial institutions, new models of working based upon technology and data, have now disrupted existing companies and sometimes entire markets.

So if change is happening all the time....



Who is leading your disruption?
You probably have at least one person in your organisation who is the advocate of digital change. They may be a lonely voice shouting about the need to 'embrace change', 'test and learn', ' fail forward' or 'adapt agile'. Or they may be a senior manager with the drive, staff and responsibility to push digital to the top of the agenda. either way, these people need the support of the exec team and remit (including budget) to trial new things that could mean the difference between your organisation being a Blockbuster or the next Netflix.



When will the change happen?
Most of us are among the disrupted rather than the disruptors - Only 7% of companies surveyed by Gartner in 2014 felt they were truly digital and of the remainder, only 83% felt they would be digital by 2017.

An inability or resistance to transform and adapt in an ever-changing world is a big failure these days. Nothing stays the same for very long in business and This Shit is Gonna Get Faster.



Don't be complacent
Larry Page and Sergey Brin once said "Google is not a conventional company. We do not intend to become one." Does your organisation run on apathy and complacency? If so... change get it or stand a significant chance of disruption!

Will better distribution help eCommerce in Scotland?

If you live in Scotland, and in particular the West Coast of Scotland from the Clyde Estuary up to the Hebrides, you will no-doubt have seen the Oban Express van as it whizzed past.*


However last week logistics group John Menzies acquired Oban Express with the wonderful claim that it could “transform e-commerce in remote parts of Scotland”.
http://www.scotsman.com/news/transport/menzies-expands-parcel-delivery-with-oban-takeover-1-3960262


The aim is that this take-over should give this large facilities and distribution company a greater geographical reach, by including the 45-strong vehicle fleet that typically runs between Glasgow and the West. This acquisition, driven by online retailing, also follows the purchase in June of this year of AJG Parcels of Inverness.The integration of both companies into the group should apparently "help keep down the cost of deliveries on behalf of national carriers to more isolated areas".


However, in my opinion, there can only be a truly better ecommerce delivery approach in Scotland if:

1. Companies such as Menzies invest in these recent purchases and grow the capacity of their operations in remote areas.
2. Travel networks (e.g. roads) are improved
   E.g. it doesn't matter how far or fast the van goes, if it is stuck behind a slow driver on the single-carriage all the way up to Fort William or waiting for a land-slide to be cleared on the Inveraray road.
3. Big and small ecommerce companies alike stop charging unfair amounts for deliveries to the Scottish Highlands and Islands.
   E.g. I live 12 miles from Glasgow and was recently charged a premium by one company for shipping a small parcel (a mobile phone)!
4. This is accompanied by the roll-out of decent broadband internet, which is still incredibly patchy across a lot of the land north of the English border.

* Dear Top Gear, here's an idea. Stop featuring bloody Italian supercars or unobtainable Aston Martins on your programme and do a piece on the amazing handling & performance characteristics of the Ford Transit and Iveco vans driven by the courier services to the North of Glasgow!

Think Like A Start-Up

In my recent session at the Marketing Society I talked about the need to think like a start-up.

I'd therefore like to clarify further what I mean by this:

1. Support a test & learn culture
I was once told "The biggest issue with failing in not failing.... it is failing to pick yourself up again afterwards", but this is only part of the approach you need. You must also foster a culture that supports failure when it inevitably does happen, by encouraging innovation and testing to find out what works (and learning from those things that don't).

2. Be prepared to pivot
Accepting you are wrong is a humiliating experience and it is also a viable business strategy if your proposition or market isn't working. Lots of start-ups have changed their business model or product to suit a better customer need.

3. Learn from everyone you can
Big businesses tend to know a lot about their current situation (e.g. their products and typical customer attitudes & other insight). However start-ups learn quickly... they have to. But in my opinion it is their approach to fast learning that interests me.
They ask everyone, from people who have used their website or app just once... through to mentors and others who have done similar things many times before.
They ask about their product or service: what people liked, what they didn't like and more importantly how it could be improved.

Does your company do these things?

Change is the only constant @haydens30 #digitalday2015 think nimbly, think like a start up pic.twitter.com/f3JEhm9zDG

— Tiffany St James (@tiffanystjames) October 1, 2015

Do Hearts Not Stars Indicate Twitter's Plans

So today Twitter has traded the star “favorite” icon / button for a heart-shaped "like" one. This change takes it further away from it's origins as a stream of personal updates to being more of a sociable social network.

The heart, the almost global symbol of affection, moves Twitter closer in interactions terms to Facebook (which has had the 'Like' button for ages), Instagram and even Periscope (the app-based personal video streaming service owned by Twitter which uses hearts as an instant method of feedback).

But does this move also signal something else?

It has been well publicised within the tech & online community that Twitter hasn't been without more than its fair share of issues. Culminating this June with the departure of Dick Costolo as CEO and the instatement to the role of co-founder & Chairman Jack Dorsey. 

Could this move be an attempt to be more like bigger competitor Facebook (which since April 2013 also owns Instagram)? This may make Twitter more popular or useful in the Social Media community... which may in-turn make them more attractive to a buyer. 

But which large tech player would consider buying Twitter at this stage? Something to look-up on Google I suppose :-)

Digital Transformation Consultancy is Big Business

It seems that every consultancy is suddenly talking about digital business transformation or disruption. And just like the digital disruptors, who have been encroaching on the territory of traditional organisations with new and exciting business models that threaten to eat their lunch... the more traditional management consultants and strategy firms have all been getting in on the digital transformation consultancy game.

 From all the marketing information I've received over the last few months, it would see that you're not a modern consultancy unless you produce a white paper on the subject of Digital Transformation and the 'uberization' of business.

This Shit Is Gonna Get Faster

The pace of digital and technological change has accelerated over the last couple of decades.  Since I started work in the late 1980's everything has changed:

• There's no such thing as a job for life
• Wearing a suit to work does not make you the most important person in the room (or indicate you're the highest paid)
• More and more things (products) now exist as software: music players, cameras, audio/visual editing tools, etc.

To give you some idea of the speed of innovation, TechCrunch launched its Disrupt conference in 2011 where just 45 start-ups demonstrated their products & services. This year at the same conference.... there are 5,000 of them.

However it is my belief that this speed of change, although on an upward trajectory, is going to get faster.

How fast? I've no idea. But if I'm right, the tools for delivering better and more customer-focused products will only get more efficient and the competition to create new and improved services will only get stronger.

Things are going to get crazy and brilliant at the same time... and I'm looking forward to it. So maybe sometime soon that suit of mine will one day stay in the wardrobe and only get used for family events.

Showrooming or Web-rooming?

Physical retailers have been suffering at the hands of eCommere for years. The ability to browser and buy from the comfort of your own sofa (or bed) has been a growing and compelling proposition, especially compared to the madness of Christmas or sale times.

And now, thanks to in-store Internet connectivity and smartphones online shopping continues to grow at the expense of in-store retail. Consumers are increasingly using their mobile devices (mobile phones, phablets and even tablets) in stores to: get product information, check competitive prices and obtain feedback from reviews & social media contacts. They are therefore using the in-store experience to 'showroom' by looking at, touching and even experiencing a range of products only to then convert online.

However this is only part of the story, as the reverse experience is also true. In a recent PWC survey, 70% of the respondents stated that they started the purchase process online, but converted in-store.

This process, now know as “web-rooming" is a growing trend that has benefited from the factors such as:

• a focus by retailers on an improved in-store experience 
• better staff training, to help customers purchase rather than put them off 
• better and immediate stock availability 

The graph below, taken from the report, outlines the specific reasons why the respondents prefer to buy products in-store instead of online:

Digital Product Design Has Arrived

The creation of a major product tended to be an opportunity practiced only by a limited number of major organisations. The process of: research & development, manufacturing and distribution was the domain of the large company who had time, budgets and resources available. 

These days getting digital products to market is simpler and speedier by comparison. You don't need huge departments taking ages to create something that either succeeds in a known category or fails & folds without trace... online products can be created, launched and refined much much easier. Product owners can now understand their use and customers quickly... then iterate, improve, evolve and pivot to create something better.

It used to be that a physical product portfolio was pretty much set in stone from day one. Deviating from it was difficult and ground breaking. Now digital products cut across categories and almost defy definition as they merge features and functions from multiple industries all at once.

Everything is now becoming software. Ideas are formed, mashed up and reformed in a single development cycle.. rather than being fixed from one product generation to the next.

• The pace has changed.
• The environment has changed.
• The approach has changed.

And the digital product manager is now able to create wonderfully useful and beautiful products that solve problems and look good too.

It is undoubtedly the age of the digital product and therefore the digital product owner or  designer is in the driving seat for the new economy.

The Future of Digital - thoughts Part 3

Further thoughts on the future of Digital, inspired by the Marketing Society's Digital Day 2015.

Q: What steps do you need to take to sustainably capitalise on the potential of digital within your business?

Collect and use data intelligently:
Whatever you do… ensure that you both collect data correctly and then use it in the best way possible to learn more and maximise value. E.g. Amazon, Google and Uber (as well as Scottish Unicorns: FanDuel & Skyscanner) have all built businesses based on interpreting and using data.

Think like a start-up:
With a small and dedicated team with the right combination of skills, experience and effort you can accelerate your digital output. Even the bigger digital-only businesses now buy smaller start-ups because they have the desire combination of product, skills and  intellectual property or just an idea.

Retain the best staff:
Keep the good ones and encourage the average ones to find out what they are good at. The biggest problems are those who have a misplaced sense of entitlement or use their efforts against others rather than as part of a team.

This is the third post on the Future of Digital, the first can be found here , the second can be found here.

The Future of Digital - thoughts Part 2

Further thoughts on the future of Digital, inspired by the Marketing Society's Digital Day 2015.

Q: How have digital channels evolved and what will be the next big digital trend to capitalise on?

The speed of digital change is getting quicker, learn to deal with it. Focus less on the next technology, device or trend and far more on making sure your organisation can complete (this means being innovative, agile and ready to learn from its mistakes). Apple's slogan at its recent product launch was "the only thing that's changed is everything" and this is right.  5 years ago the iPad launched, now I am seeing tablet numbers decline across a lot of client websites compared to mobile traffic.
More shocking is the fact that 52% of all the companies from the Fortune500 in 2000 now don't exist!


Q: Which new technologies are passing fads and which are game changers for their business?
Over time every technology will eventually become obsolete. NFC, wearables, home thermostats (The Internet of Things) connected to your app, etc. will all one day be the equivalent of the fax machine or the telex. This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t investigate some and adopt different ones that either take your on your journey of digital maturity or that meet the needs of your customers.


This is the second post on the Future of Digital, the first can be found here.

The Future of Digital - thoughts Part 1

Following on from some questions I was asked at the Marketing Society's Digital Day 2015, I have decided to write-up my thoughts on the future of digital.

This basically takes the questions I was asked on the day and answers those here.

Q: What are you expecting audience engagement to look like over the next 5 years?

An increasingly demanding and savvy customer:
We have to meet the needs of a customer who more & more have either grown up with digital technologies or adopted them & lives online.  Regardless of channel, location and device the customer now expects a response in the next 3 seconds or they get frustrated, in 5 seconds.... forget it.

Forget about generic messages, they won’t cut it anymore
Sending & providing the same information to everyone is going to have less & less effect, relevancy is key. This obviously creates an issue for those who do not have technology & marketing systems integrated.

Have an acute focus on the customer

Understand each touch-point with your prospective or returning customer and then do everything within your power to minimise their frustrations and maximise their delight. Your website, mobile app, kiosk and should be optimised continually to make them better… if you don’t, your competitors will!

DigitalDay2015 - some thoughts

Yesterday I had the pleasure of attending the Marketing Society's Digital Day 2015.

Held at the The Drygate Brewery in Glasgow, it was attended by over 100 digital marketing people from agencies and brands in Scotland.

I attended all day and was lucky enough to be asked onto a 'Think Tank' Panel session along with:

• Stephen O’Donnell, Director at STV Creative
• Loral Quinn, Head of Digital Strategy and Insight at Aberdeen Asset Management
• Calum Shepherd, Head of Digital Strategy at The Scottish Government 

During the Q&A session we got to chat through some perspectives on the future of digital based upon our own experiences.

Overall it was a good day as a whole and a great 30 minutes on the sofa with some very knowledgeable and friendly peers in the online industry.

Is there space in the boardroom for the CDO?

There's loads of discussion online and in companies generally about the role of the CDO - the Chief Digital Officer.

The traditional 'C Suite' must be getting pretty anxious these days, with a new CxO role being suggested as one of their members everywhere they turn.

The list of new senior roles appearing more recently includes:

• CMO : Chief Marketing Officer
• CIO: Chief Information Officer
• CXO: Chief Experience Officer
• CSO: Chief Strategy Officer

One does wonder if there will be enough seats around the boardroom table to accommodate all these new executives (or more cynically, if there will be anyone left to do the work).

Russell Reynolds, an Executive Search firm describes the Chief Digital Officer role as having the following capabilities:

• Able to plan and execute long-term strategy around driving customer awareness, engagement, experience and monetization. 
• Familiarisation with web, mobile and social media and possibly local as well. 
• Experience in developing new channels and business models, as well as innovative products and services. 
• Tech savvy, with the ability to manage developers and ask the right questions

However, what I would add to this list is the ability to operate and communicate as the Exec level. There's no point an appointed CDO having all the technical skills and knowledge if they do not have gravitas or the ability to put forward their points eloquently to their senior level peers.

The boardroom seating plan may be getting squeezed, but as businesses evolve and develop... can any major organisation afford not to have digital representation at the top level?

Everything Has Changed

It's not often that I find an image that sums a lot of things all at once, but this final frame from the recent Apple iPhone 6s launch sums up:

• My position on why every company needs to up their game digitally
• Why organisations should focus on the customer & experience, not the device
• That change in inevitable and moving at a faster & faster pace

Photographing The Castle

Last weekend I got my new drone up and took some photos & video of Inverary Castle. This was done whilst Best of the West Festival went on in the background and with the permission of The Duchess of Argyll.

This wonderful picture of Inveraray Castle was captured on Sunday whilst @BOWFest went on in the background. pic.twitter.com/kO3MBJ4e9i

— CalMac Ferries (@CalMacFerries) September 16, 2015

Hunting Scottish Unicorns

A couple of days ago I posted an article up to Linkedin about The Search For the Next Scottish Unicorn. This mentioned the two Scottish Billion Dollar tech start-ups (Skyscanner and FanDuel) and asked the question about which would be the next. Both, according to sources online, are now worth over £600,000 and so qualify (at the current exchange rates) as tech unicorns.

It will be interesting to see which Scottish tech start-up is the next to reach the 10 figure sum and how that fact will be measured & proved - quite possibly by the investment amount and the percentage taken.

So which ones will be next? Here's some suggestions on who this could be:

Mallzee
Described at the 'Tinder for Fashion' Mallzee is the shopping app that lets you browse and shop over 100 stores from the comfort of your own device.
Having recently raised $4 million (£2.5 million) from a handful of investors including the Royal Mail, the start-up is poised for big mCommerce growth.
Worth:
The exact percentage taken for the £2.5m injection is not clear. However, give that CEO and founder Cally Russell turned down £75,000 for 15% equity from Peter Jones on Dragons Den (therefore potentially valuing the company at £500,000) so one has to assume that a similar or better deal has now been agreed.

Clear Returns
Clear Returns is a Scottish firm that produces clever software which helps retailers by identifying which goods are sent back by customers and more importantly why.
Worth:
Founder Vicky Brock raised £110,000 from Angels Den and Angel Academe a couple of years . It's exact valuation is unknown, but it has a decent client list including Scottish-based high street retailer M&Co.

Have I missed anyone?

Scottish eCommerce Charges Are Unfair

If you are a Scottish resident in one of the Highlands and Islands regions, then you'll be only too aware that a lot of eCommerce sites charge you more for your delivery.

Well this fact hasn't gone unnoticed by Citizens Advice Scotland, who a published a report this week on this subject. They found that although fewer online retailers now charge additional fees for delivery to the Highlands and Islands... those that still do are unfortunately charging more than they did in 2012. On average Islanders are now paying 15.8% more and Highlanders have to pay an additional 17.5% for their goods to be shipped to them.

Citizens Advice Scotland identified that only 3.8% of the surveyed retailers now exclude some part of the Highlands and 10.9% exclude some of the Scottish Islands from their delivery offering.

Whilst it is understandable that there's more effort involved in getting a parcel to the remote regions of the UK, has it really become harder in the last 3 years? Or are these retailers (or their fulfillment parrners) using unfair ecommerce delivery pricing to increase their profits?

UK is now mobile first

Smartphones have now taken over as the preferred device for going online in the UK.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-33777168

Yes, for the first time the phone has become the device of choice, overtaking the laptop as the primary means of connecting to. Meaning that the UK has joined a select list of countries that are mobile first.

Once regarded as the 'second screen', mobile is now the main screen for a lot of users. They don't use a desktop or laptop as their principle device and sometimes use their smartphone... they consume content and use online functionality on their phone by default. Your customer now expects to connect to whatever they want, wherever and whenever they want.

And yet still so many companies are catching up. They have either got no mobile compatible presence or have a very poor one. And some have just mobile optimised their campaign landing pages, but not the rest of the customer experience (perhaps hoping that the user will be so surprised that the landing page worked correctly on their phone, they would forgive the company for a poor subsequent experience).

Is this as a result of a lack of foresight, poor investment, slow development or just plain ignorance? 

eCommerce Must Put Mobile First

In my mind there's no doubt that the main device to design a company experience for (both now and in the near future) is the smartphone.... especially as far is eCommerce is concerned. This is what Forrester calls "The Mobile Mind Shift" - the customer need to browse, buy and engage with a retailer vie their device of choice. And these days this is typically their mobile phone.

Consumers are increasingly demanding online experiences that work on any device at any time.  But with smartphone decision making and purchasing on the increase... the mobile web must now be the primary concern of any retailer. 

It's my observations that:

• Regardless of where the customer is (at home, at work, on the go, in a store, etc.) they use their smartphone to shop. Sure, they may still use a tablet or desktop & laptop PC, but the mobile is what they have immediately to-hand... literally.
• The customer is often either cautious about downloading retailer apps or doesn't update them often when they have them. This is different for essential apps they my use day-to-day (e.g. Social Media platforms) which preoccupy their mobile time.

So where does this leave a retailer that doesn't deliver a site that works correctly on the small screen?

Lagging behind.

Smileys, Emoticons and Emojis

Using just words to convey your thoughts or ideas can be difficult. It's even more tricky when you only have a small number of characters, such as when you send a text message or when you tweet & post to your favourite social network. How are those reading to know when you're being serious and when you have your tongue firmly in your cheek? 
Because you intersperse additional icons and images into your words. A smiley, an unhappy face symbol or something more complex. 

Back in 1963 Harvey Ball invented the smiley in an attempt to improve employee morale at The State Mutual Life Assurance Company in Massachusetts. Harvey was only paid $45 for the 10 minutes of work it took to create the design, but neither him nor his employer copyrighted the design. The idea blossomed and the little yellow smiling face he created have been used for many things including the symbol for the acid house dance music craze of the late 1980's (apparently by adopting the smiley face badge image from the 1986 graphic novel 'The Watchmen'). 

emoticons are a digital way to create Ball's smiley online my using plain text (they don't need a specific font or even a high resolution screen). 
Their use first occurred in September 1982 when Scott Fahlman a computer scientist using the Carnegie Mellon University message board first proposed that the two symbols :-) and :-( could be used online to distinguish jokes from serious comments.
The emoticon theme has been extended over time into creating other well-known symbols, such as one winking, one poking out its tongue and one being sick.

Despite looking similar, emojis are different from emoticons in key ways: 

- they are not created by using plain text to represent a face or other icon
- they are created when technology companies agree on a reference for an image
- they can be implemented slightly differently by each technology platform or smart phone operating system builder

Emojis haven't been around as long as emoticons. They were created in the late 1990's by the Japanese communications firm NTT DoCoMo. However according to a study from The University of Bangor, the Emoji is now the fastest growing language in the UK and evolving faster than ancient forms of communication, such as hieroglyphics.

News Corp Blames Digital Again

News Corp's CEO Robert Thomson has been out attacking Google, Facebook and Linkedin once more, this time accusing them of "Kleptocracy, Piracy and Zealotry".

Yes, the organisation that: breaks into voicemail, publishes fiction as truth and plays politics with its publications...has claimed that online social networks are spammers that help themselves to content without paying for it.

He also publicly stated that “The words Intellectual Property don’t appear in the Google alphabet."- but far be it for me to tell a journalist that you can make any words from the alphabet.

Thomson went on to further attack the new media sector by saying "None of them actually create content, and they certainly have little intention of paying for it, but they do redistribute the content created by others – they would argue that such redistribution is a natural extension of their role as social networks. I would argue that much of the redistribution is an unnatural act”

All this smacks of hypocrisy... especially given News Corp in 2005 bought MySpace, then a leading social network that in June 2006 surpassed Google as the most visited website in the USA... before watching over its decline and its sale in 2011 for less than 8% of its purchase price.

Also... given that News Corp has only recently decided to change the direction of its WSJ and Dow Jones publishing sector to focus on digital media efforts and that its own Social News Agency Storyful is responsible for finding and redistributes news stories (and apparently hiding Rebekah Brooks in their offices)... methinks they need to keep their insults to themselves.

Full story here:
http://mumbrella.com.au/news-corp-ceo-lashes-google-for-piracy-zealotry-and-kleptocracy-at-lowy-institute-event-312252 

Finding Google Tag Manager a little hard?

I've worked with Google Tag Management System (also called GTM or Google's TMS) on several different client implementations and still admit to being a little confused by some of the more complex functionality. It seems that despite setting up a Google Tag Manager Fundamentals online training course and certification, it is still pretty hard to do anything beyond the basics.

Furthermore, with the recent introduction of GTM Version 2, things have been moved & renamed in the user interface.

Luckily Google seems to have appreciated this too and have got the people behind the product to star in a couple of short videos about it.





Hopefully these short resources will help.

Can a car have too much technology?

I'm a gadget fan and love my in-car audio or 'infotainment' systems, especially when they have a decent user interface.

However, the new Audi TT comes with some of the most impressive and also unnecessary computer technology I've seen... including a virtual cockpit that changes between views of dials to a full screen Google maps overlay.

It does therefore beg the question of whether a motorcar can actually have too much technology.

That’s Not My Digital Strategy

Those readers who have read with their children may well be familiar with the “That’s not my…” series of books. 

For those who have not had this privilege, the repeated concept of every book is a series of pages that all say what something is not, in an effort to explain what something actually is.

e.g. “That’s not my Dog…(to a sheep)... it is too fluffy” or “That’s not my car…(to a space ship) it is too shiny”.

Given I have spent a fair amount of time on this blog, consulting and in other ways attempting to explain what Digital Strategy is and how to correctly implement it… I thought I’d adopt a different (and slightly more childish) approach and explain what Digital Strategy is not.

A New Website:

That’s not my Digital Strategy, because it is just the implementation of a customer-facing front end to your organisation.

A Business Transformation:
That’s not my Digital Strategy, because a business transformation programme has responsibilities beyond the implementation of the projects or work streams that deliver a digital strategy.

A Digital Platform:
That’s not my Digital Strategy, because although a Digital Platform can have the capability to provide online functionality across your organisation… it is not the thought & business case preparation beforehand nor the subsequent use and commercial measurement of that activity.

A Digital Marketing Strategy:
That’s not my Digital Strategy, because it is just focused around the acquisition and retention of online customers, not the whole concept around the delivery of useful features such as self-serve functionality.

Who Digitally Mentors Your Board?

I see a growing trend in many organisations (both large & small), where an increasing number of staff are becoming digitally savvy and utilising their online knowledge in their daily roles. But who is providing the necessary board-level guidance to a company? Who is equipping your senior team with the skills and advice necessary to drive forward the digital change?

It's not just a case of showing your CEO how to Tweet (her teenage daughter has probably already shown her how to do that) . It's a case of making sure the board and other executives have the capabilities & understanding to be able to seize the power that digital change can deliver.

In my experience & opinion there are four different approaches to providing these skills and experience directly into your C-Suite (A Chief Digital Officer, A Digital Non-Exec, A Change Director or External Consultancy). However each situation is different and in reality your solution to this may be a combination of two or all of them.

Whatever route is chosen, this injection of senior level capability typically has to help the company leaders through a fast-paced delivery of new products, services, processes and technologies.

Apple Pay looks to boost UK Digital Payments

Back in October 2014 Apple launched Apple Pay in the US as part of its iOS 8.1 update. The Cupertino giant then saw 1 million American activations in the first 3 days.

However over here in the UK we have been awaiting news of a similar launch. Many blogs have been written about getting Apple Pay in the UK and false hints & rumours that Belgium may be the first European country to get the new digital payment service haven't helped. But on 8th June at Apple's WWDC 2015 the silence was broken and the announcement was made that Apple Pay is to launch in the UK, making us just the second country to adopt the service... ahead of Canada and other candidates.

More surprising was the news that we'll get Apple Pay in a matter of weeks, as plans for a July 2015 launch are now underway. Meaning that key UK retailers such as Marks and Spencers and Waitrose will offer you contactless / NFC payments via your iPhone this Summer. Furthermore, TFL will also offer Apple Pay across its network.

However, if you can tap in & out on buses and tube trains around London from next month using both your iPhone and your NFC-enabled credit card... does this spell the beginning of the end for the Oyster Card system?

A New Role to Lead Digital Business Transformation

Corporate change isn't a new thing. Businesses have always had to assess, re-think and re-invent themselves as the world changes around them.

In the past this was a lot easier though. Organisation had years (or sometimes decades) to change their ways. But more recently the cycles of technical innovation have increased, which means the speed of digital change is much quicker. In fact, those in market sectors which were first to be affected by online (e.g. Retail and Travel) had longer to transform their businesses than those being disrupted now - such as Financial Services and some parts of the Transport industry.

So how are some businesses dealing with Digital Transformation & change and how are they setting themselves up to understand and embrace the effects?

1. Create a Chief Digital Office role
Whilst just creating and hiring another senior role in the business might not be everyone's cup of tea, a fair number of organisations have hired (or promoted from within) a CDO to lead up their digital change.

2. Use a Digital-based Non-Exec Director
Although similar to taking on a CDO, a digital-centric NED provides their experience and skills to guide a company board. This role is usually filled by a new Non-Exec Director who has previously had a senior role in digital transforming another business. 

3. Creating a Director of Change

Whilst not exactly a direct comparison to either a Chief Digital Officer or a Digital-based Non-Exec Director role, some company's decide to wrap up their adoption of online tools and processes in a more general senior change position

4. Alternatively they could hire an agency / consultancy.... and most large & well-respected management consultancies are unsurprisingly only too keen to state how they've always been involved in digital transformation and have all the answers....

Do not curate, create

Four years ago I wrote a blog post that Content Curation Sucks. Since then I've seen more and more people try to establish themselves as specialists in their field by collating and distributing the same stuff online over and over again. It's boring, repetitive and not at all interesting to most users to see the same stuff published vie social media ranging from Instagram to blogs... but still the legions of 'me to' curators of constant content churn out the same crap.

Why? It baffles me.... really.

Recycling is not the same as original production of thoughts and concepts. It also doesn't make you an expert, just because you repeat and re-tweet the thoughts of others day-in & day-out as if they are your own.

So stop it!

Instead of considering how you are going to republish someone else's work, think about but how you are going to interpret it and develop it with your own ideas and approaches.

Digital Leadershift - get ready for a BIG BANG

Transforming your organisation from an analogue dinosaur to a Digital First one is hard, very hard. You not only need the right team of people, the right technology and the will to change internal processes, you need this change understood & supported at the senior level too.

But this isn't about getting the CEO to blog or the Managing Director to Tweet (they should know how to do that already), it is about having the right drive from on-high to correctly sponsor and if necessary push through the required changes that a digital transformation needs.

In short, it needs a shift in the mindset of the leaders to a digital way of working... or a digital leadershift.

However different market sectors and industries are affected by the disruptive effects of digital in different ways. And to illustrate this best, a recent report from Deloitte Digital depicted a 'Disruption Map' that shows the extent to which 17 industries are affected across two dimensions: Degree of Impact (The 'Bang') and the timing (The 'Fuse').

As we know... some industries are already in the middle of their shift. Sectors such as retail (High Street eCommerce has been a beacon of online innovation for the last few years) and Leisure (The consumer travel sector has both blossomed and suffered as online acquisition, customer self-service and aggregation has affected airline travel, etc. - and just look what the likes of AirBnB and to a certain extend Google are doing to the hotel market).

So it is probably no surprise that the leaders in those industries that have already been affected are nearly all digitally savvy. But what about other sectors where the fuse is much longer?

Well in a lot of cases key individuals from shorter fuse industries have moved across to help other verticals understand and manage their way through this disruption. For example, senior staff from tech start-ups are now finding roles in Financial Services and Professional Services.

But other senior managers in those where the disruption hasn't really hit yet are less aware and prepared for the changes that are bound to come. Some may know the Big Bang is coming, but for others it could be a big shock.

Sports thinking is Digital Strategy

Think about all those qualities that make a great football, rugby or other team and you will reoccuringly come up with the same things....
Speed
Agility
Skill
Teamwork
Coaching
Communication

Aren't these the same things you want in your digital strategy and transformation plan?

Should we really bother with personas?

I've been a huge advocate of UCD (User Centred Design) for around a decade now. I've implemented large multi-device websites and specified & delivered major digital platforms based on this approach. However quite recently I've been thinking that just basing the user interface and functionality of digital services around a few key personas might not be the entire story.

My reasoning here is that although a selection of personas may map to the profiles of key website visitor stereotypes, when you start to look at them in more detail you find that your users are all different. So whilst at the very highest level your personas are very different, at the lower level (e.g. the completion of a certain task) a subset of these have alternative needs. And to confuse matters, these alternative needs are shared with users in other personas.

Let's just consider 4 different personas of a typical online service and overlay a few different user profiles over them. As you can see, the personas can cover the main functionality a service provides, but each user has a place in one or more of them. And in the case of some really important users (such as those who need accessibility compliance) they could be present in all 4 personas.

Or put another way... there is no point creating specific personas for each user type. You'd end up doubling your persona numbers just accounting for accessible users if that was the case.

No, that doesn't make sense.... and in this way the developing of personas really doesn't map to something you actually need on your digital project. An understanding of what functionality you need to prioritise over other functionality.

Sony's eCommerce Site Needs Work

I've just used Sony's eCommerce Site to try and make a purchase using my mobile phone.

This surely can't be an unusual practice, but the experience was less than optimal from start to finish. With two key issues...

1. The site is not mobile compatible.
It actually looks like the interface was designed for a large monitor. Last I checked, the major Japanese technology manufacturer still made mobile phones.

2. The transaction didn't work
Despite progressing all the way through the process, I get an unhelpful error message at the end.

Come on Sony, you can do better than this.

Content first - Design second

The user experience of websites (desktop,  tablet,  mobile,  whatever) has had a bit of a shake up recently and I think we need to reassess how we approach the development of online content.

Back in the old days of web design and development things were a lot easier. You created a single set of user personas & wire-frames, created a set of designs for the optimum desktop resolution and then coded it up for a handful of recently released browsers.

But that's all changed now and website owners now have to consider a multitude of devices and specifications to gain the most compatibility. In fact, 'mobile first' is now the new mantra for a lot of agencies and in-house teams, who recommend that you get the experience for smallest screen worked out first and move on from there.

But I think they also have missed a trick....It is not just the user experience of your site you have to make sure is usable for all devices, it is the content too. Yes, I am referring to the humble old words and pictures that a lot of digital projects leave to the very last minute, before cramming into a few templates that 'sort of work'.

If we just took more care over the actual content of our sites and planned the user experience around it, rather than considering what we are actually saying and showing to users only towards the end of the process, I think things might be somewhat different. And I'm not just talking about the typical content sites (news, publishers, etc.) here but also brands, eCommerce vendors and other companies with online functionality.

So before you start to plan how your new site will be designed, consider that:
- content has a key role to play in Search Engine Optimisation
- users with low bandwidth (e.g. with a mobile device) will usually have text downloaded first
- having readable text is a major accessibility feature
- introduction, help and error messages can significantly affect your conversion rate

In other words: Content first - Design second 

Do you optimise for organic conversions?

I read recently that on average 70% of website traffic comes from the results that are obtained from online search engines.  This aligns with with my own experience and means that site owners really need to make sure they are making the most of their organic website traffic.

Conversions are the common industry term for a task that ends in success, a goal. And it is about time you ensure your search engine optimisation efforts are focused around conversions generated by the organic results you get from Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc.

But if your site exists to generate online leads or actual sales for your company, then you shouldn't just be optimising your site for visits, you should be optimising your site for conversions.

But how do you do this?
1. What if you don't know what search terms are actually landing and converting?

2. What if you have no control over which pages are actually displayed in the SERPs (search engine results pages)?
3. What if your SEO efforts are more 'suck it and see' than structured?

Is A High Bounce Rate Always Bad?

If you have any form of contact with website reports, you will no doubt be familiar with the phrase ‘bounce rate’.  Google defines Bounce Rate as “the percentage of single-page sessions”, in other words the ratio of site visitors who came to your site and didn't go anywhere else. 

It is one of the most popular online web metrics quoted and is typically cited by website managers as good or bad depending upon the figure…. With “High” usually meaning “bad”.

But is that really the case?

Those with some understanding of bounce figures usually claim that a high rate is a sign of poor design or bad usability. That users have not found what they wanted and then gone elsewhere.

This may indeed be true, however the opposite may also be the case. You see a user may have arrived at exactly the right page they wanted (either via marketing activity or good deep-linking search engine optimisation) and got everything they wanted (such as the right information or a view of a video).

Note: If you only have a single page site, such as a microsite or a holding page for a larger forthcoming site, then you can obviously expect a very high bounce rate.

Counting the cost of Public Sector Channel Shift

A lot of Public Sector organisations are now getting serious (or at least semi-serious) about Channel Shift. Most have by now realised that the potential savings are real and significant.
So coupled with a central Government agenda of cost-cutting, whatever the Administration in place, the digitisation of public services looks set to continue. In fact a recent survey by Goss Interactive highlighted that on average public sector organisations plan to save £1.75m each through Channel Shift in 2015.

But how much does it actually save your organisation to shift customers to online channels?

Back in 2009 Socitm (The Society of IT Managers) worked out the cost to serve for each of the channels being provided by a UK public Sector organisation (in this case a Council). The benchmarking work they carried out showed that the costs per visitor were:

• £7.40 for face-to-face
• £2.90 for the telephone
• £0.32 for web enquiries

However, the direct costs of channel shift can also be supplemented by additional benefits such as:

• Increase customer service and satisfaction
• Building engagement and loyalty
• Meeting customer expectations
• Freeing staff to be re-deployed on more "low tech / high touch" activities

It is still worth pointing out that providing digital content and self-service functionality only helps a percentage of the population you are trying to help. For example there are 10.8 million people in the U.K. who do not use the Internet and therefore any 'digital first' self-service options for businesses and citizens should not be 'digital only'. 

Serious About Channel Shift?

The whole topic of Channel Shift is something that is being discussed in most businesses. Yet very few organisations I speak with actually have a documented strategy of how this shift will be realised.

Firstly, what do I mean by the term?
In my opinion... Channel Shift is the managed process of migrating customers to self-service channels (typically digital ones) to reduce cost and increase availability of service.

Reduced cost:
Back a few decades, it was humans that were cheap and computers that were expensive. Now, computers (or more specifically: computing power) is cheap compared to the cost of a person. Using self-service functionality via websites and mobile applications has a much lower cost-to-serve than a trained person, even a lower paid one in an off-shore outsourced contact center.

Increased availability:
The web never sleeps and your customers expect that they can now access your site at a time that suits them, not your company. Whereas a decade or so ago you may have had a telephone line staffed to deal with purchases, amends and refunds... not most of this functionality has now moved to a 24/7 online presence. In fact, as far as seasonal eCommerce goes, some of the most high volume times are public holidays (e.g. Black Friday and Christmas & Boxing Day) - days when most staff are either on holiday or otherwise unavailable.

So if your organisation is serious about Channel Shift, what should it do?

The first thing, as I mentioned in my opening paragraph is to have a written strategy. This needs to clearly document:

1. Who are your user & customers?
   Think you know who your customers are? Think you know what motivates them to engage with your organisation and purchase from it? Think all your customers are the same and have the same needs? Think again! 
2. What are the user tasks your want to move to lower cost channels?
   It may be easy to say "all of them", but in reality this may be either too much to do at once, or there may be business rules & restrictions that stop you from doing this. It may therefore by better to prioritise and understand the dependencies between these tasks first.
3. What channels do your customers use?
   This may not be as simple as you think. Different customers may use a specific mix of channels to: build awareness, inform & educate themselves, transact and then carry out subsequent self-service tasks. 
4. What are your actual current cost-to-serve figures?
   For example, what does it actually cost to serve your customers via each of your channels

This is the easy part... once you have this, the hard part is then working out what you want these customers to do in the future and what channels you actually can manage them to.

The O2 shop is busy - come back soon

What message do you give your online eCommerce customers when your site gets too busy?

Here's an example from mobile phone provider O2.

Oh, it should be noted that this wasn't midday during a sale / promotion or part-way through a new product launch, but around 11pm at night on a normal trading day...