The pulse of Alexander Interactive

Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and the following Thursday are just days away… Holidays are right around the corner. We’re not looking to change the world here at Ai, but we do want to play our part in making this upcoming year a safe, secure and profitable one. That being said, have a look at an article I recently wrote which was published in the B2C Marketing Insider.

12 Tips on Creating a Safe Online Customer Shopping Experience

“84% of polled Internet shoppers don’t think that online retailers are putting enough effort into protecting customers” (Forrester Research, Inc)

The E-commerce holiday shopping season is upon us and online retailers are busy implementing new shopping features, social campaigns, analyzing their test results, and redesigning their funnels from browsing to checkout.

The experts are out in force: Focus on usability! Optimize your product page! Come up with brilliant holiday promotions! Study the shopping trends! Yeah! Yeah?

No. Don’t waste your precious and ever-dwindling time focusing solely on usability and Ui improvements. Bottom line: If you don’t have your customers‘ trust and confidence, you won’t convert–regardless of all the improvements that your testing results indicated you should make.

This holiday season, make it a priority to ensure that your site is providing your customers with the sense of safety and security they are longing for in their shopping experience. Use our tips below to ensure your customers spend their precious time deciding which product to buy from your site, rather than then if they should even buy from you at all.

Prominent Contact Information

Contact information should be prominent and in a consistent place within your header and footer so that your customer knows where to go when they have questions or encounter issues. Display both phone number and email address so that your customers can contact you in the manner of their choosing.

Privacy Policy

Include links to your privacy policy on all transactional pages. The ubiquitous footer link is a good place to start, but too often overlooked. On transactional pages, make sure you have it prominently called out in the body of the page, above the fold. Spell out pieces of your policy as needed. For example, when asking for an email address, state your email usage policy right next to the field. Best Buy says this perfectly “Best Buy does not sell, rent, or trade your personal information to third parties”. Clear, blunt and to the point. As it should be.

Don’t Hide Costs

Transparency in shipping costs and delivery times is key – especially come holiday season. Be sure to provide all of the actual costs up front, including shipping, handling, and sales tax. These can have an enormous impact on the final price. According to OneUpWeb, 95% of customers want to know the exact cost of the order before proceeding into checkout. There is no better way to put the kibosh on a potential sale than to withhold additional costs until later in funnel.

When the user can expect to receive their package is enormously important as well, especially to shoppers cutting it tight during the holiday season. Show this information as early as possible as well. This is actually a deciding factor when it comes down to those final few days. Shoppers are willing to pay a premium as long as you can provide them with the security that it will arrive on time, as promised.

Return Policy and Shopping Guarantee

Shoppers want to know what their recourse is if their item arrives and is damaged, the wrong item, or just simply not what they wanted. Be sure to clearly spell out your return policy so there won’t be any surprises later. Do you have a shopper satisfaction guarantee? Nice! Again, place this prominently above the fold, and inspire your shoppers with confidence that they can’t make a wrong or irreversible decision.

Anticipate Their Concerns

Be mindful of the various sensitive touch points throughout the purchasing process.  Address concerns before they even arise. If you expect your customers to share private and personal information with you, you need to address the reasons why you need the information at the appropriate times.

• A “We 100% guarantee your safety” link right next to the checkout button, and in checkout header that leads to a DHTML popup with your 100% satisfaction guarantee inspires confidence and keeps the user in the funnel.
• “We will not share your email with anyone.” next to email field lets user know you aren’t going to sell their email address.
• “Shipping details” tied with product, in cart and checkout, makes user aware of costs and availability early and often.
• “You can always change your order later” when tied to a call-to-action removes some of the hesitation associated with doubts on whether to commit at that exact moment.
• Don’t be afraid to invite phone calls. A sale is a sale. Including “Prefer to checkout over the phone? No Problem. Call us at…” at the top of your checkout give shoppers a sense of security even if they don’t plan on calling you.

Apply the Human Touch

Ten other sites may sell the same product, at the same discounted price, and have the same safety features in place. Differentiate yourself by emphasizing a personal touch and telling your shoppers that you completely understand their concerns. Give them that warm and fuzzy feeling that they are in good hands by hitting the emotional aspects of shopping.

Using the right tone and personality makes a difference. It is comforting for a customer to see “Please don’t hesitate to call us with any concerns or questions. Your security is our sole priority.” compared to a simple link to the Help Section. Instill confidence in your customers by speaking to them like human beings, rather than unique visitors, throughout the shopping process.

Your “About Page” and Value Proposition

Part of converting the customer is making them feel confident that they are in good hands. The ‘about page” is an often overlooked part of creating a secure shopping experience.

Are you family owned? Are you quirky? Are you a huge company that started off with two people in a garage? Do you donate a certain portion of profits to charity? Don’t let “About Us” be one paragraph of fluff about commitment to selling great products. Shoppers will see right through this. Be yourself. Shoppers have a greater sense of confidence knowing that they are at a real store run by real people.

Make a Good First Impression

Visual design has a huge impact on new customers feeling safe. Shoppers will form an opinion of your company within five seconds of seeing your home page. Want them to feel safe, and not think you are a fly-by-night outfit? Invest in design. And it doesn’t necessarily need to be award-winning, gorgeous visual experience. The site’s design need to give an instant sense of credibility and trust to visitors. Even though customers may not be entirely conscious of it, good design inspires confidence.

Performance & Stability

A slowly loading page, a site that’s down, or obscure programming error messages can raise instant doubts in the shopper’s mind. It is likely they are in comparison shopping mode, so if they were to leave one site and arrive at a site that loads slowly, or not at all, then the experience comes to a quick end. If they see errors and messages they don’t recognize, they will doubt your professionalism and whether their information is safe on your site. A solid technical implementation is as important as a great design.

Badges, Tigers and Seals Oh My

Seals of approval from TRUSTe or Better Business Bureau Online are widely recognized, but remember that a seal is only a graphic; it can be counterfeited. To be sure, make sure you link to the certifying agency’s site that profiles the merchant information. Also, avoid the Times Square approach putting eight different seals on your site. It diminishes the effectiveness. If you really feel the need to bombard 8 seals on there, all I ask is that you use the animated graphics. At least your savvy visitors can get a laugh.

Sweat the Small Stuff

Be sure your site has been thoroughly reviewed and that there are no misspellings or grammatical mistakes. They may seem tiny, but they will immediately cast your professionalism in doubt.

Security Through Social Validation

Social validation is a proven factor in influencing how people purchase products, and it’s no different when it comes to influencing why they should shop at your site for these products. Customer dialogue, reviews and interactions (regardless of what is being discussed) brings instant credibility to your site. People want to know that other people shop at your store. They want to see activity and not just take your word for it.

Now more than ever, privacy is a huge customer concern. Between Facebook privacy issues, Google ego-searching, and countless ads aggressively targeting hackers and screaming identity theft shoppers are only getting increasingly more sensitive and aware of the how, why, and when their sensitive personal information is used.

As online retailers, it is our responsibility to provide a safe and comfortable shopping environment for the customer, both online or off. The most successful businesses are able to instill confidence in their customers, and adding a relatable human touch. They develop a trusting, ongoing relationship with their customers to ensure repeat purchases and loyalty.Look folks, lets not forget – it’s the holidays! Do your customer and your bottom line a favor by letting them focus on giving rather than worrying. So you better be good for goodness sake.

G’day mate! I am pleased (and a wee bit freaked out) to be flying to Sydney tonight to participate in Online Retailer, Australia’s leading ecommerce conference. With more than 4000 confirmed attendees, Online Retailer looks to be compelling and exciting.

I hope to be part of that excitement, as I am presenting at the conference on the ROI of user experience. It’s a frequent topic at Ai and one I’m looking forward to sharing. I am also doing live site critiques, my stock in trade at the Internet Retailer conferences, and joining in several other discussions and events.

If you’re in Australia, drop me a line, or swing by the conference and see for yourself.

PSFK has published a report (disconcerting, damning or riotous, depending on your station) showing that many top luxury brand websites don’t function on the iPad. (That image above is the Prada home page.) Given that Apple buyers are often luxury product consumers, this is a glaring omission for some of the world’s strongest brands.

The iPad is a reminder that the web is now rapidly moving away from the “build a website, let it run” strategy. A growing diversity of web-enabled devices is going to force companies to build websites that make usability the prime directive. The direct problem is the use of Flash, but the real issue is the lack of universal accessibility.

The growth in broadband mobile networks has led to rapid adoption of web access by consumers. Smartphones are nearing 20% of the American cellular marketplace and are expected to reach 30% soon. Ai clients saw growth in mobile traffic as high as 600% over 2009 alone.

The iPad is the latest and most profound bellwether in this usage shift. Contemplating how to service users with 1.5″ BlackBerry screens was one thing; dealing with iPad users, with their 1024×768 screens and just-like-a-laptop-only-better expectations, is entirely another. And while the iPad may be just a first step in an evolution, a million unit sales in a month suggests someone found the keys to the steamroller.

Computers are not going away; manufacturers shipped 68 million of them in 2008 alone. More important is the fragmentation of the marketplace, which, years after homogenizing almost entirely in Internet Explorer for Windows, is now an open landscape. Four different browsers have substantial (greater than 3%) market share. And dozens of devices are now displaying web pages in displays ranging from 320 to 1920 pixels in width, both with and without Flash.

The requirement for 2010, then, is to adapt to the fragments. Good websites need to actively identify visitors’ platforms and deliver user-centric results–not just the Amazons and Facebooks of the web, but the many small- and medium-size sites that encourage exploration and engagement. As platforms continue to diversify, creating flexible, accessible sites is a must.

In my back-at-home SXSW Interactive rehash, I’m enjoying the slides from Chris Fahey’s talk on sketching and UX innovation. The big takeaway for me isn’t on forging creativity but encouraging pragmatism. Chris preaches a lot of what we practice at Ai: thinking about personas and uses to create clever solutions to design problems. It’s a smart mindset for any web project.

Chris’s slides give a nice insight into just how thorough the design process can be. A well-thought-out initiative considers everything from individual end users to the tone of the site’s calls to action. Most importantly, Chris admonishes UX folks to try. Try things, see what works, and ultimately strike the balance between concept and execution. Indeed.

Ai folks have become quite fond of Bath & Body Works foaming hand soaps. Sadly, the arsenal of soaps we once had–seven different scents lined up at our kitchen sink–has been dwindling. Today a few of us went to the Bath & Body Works store, not even one block down from our office, to pick up some new foamy, sweet-smelling, anti-bacterial soaps. (I even got some for myself because I love it and I have no problem admitting this.)
I left the store with a bag of hand soap and what appeared to be some coupons. One of them was actually a letter, printed on Bath & Body Works corporate stationery. This turned out to be a letter to customers, informing them that the Fifth Avenue location would be closing later this month.
It is a great idea to inform customers of location changes, so they will not be completely shocked one day when they arrive at a locked door of a now-vacant storefront. It is an even better idea to give customers incentive to continue shopping at other locations by providing coupons. Sure enough, the letter in my bag was also a coupon, giving street addresses and phone numbers of other Bath & Body Works locations in the New York City area.
I love the concept behind this: “We have to close our store, and that sucks, but we have other stores and we value your business and would like you to find a new location to shop at. Here is a discount on your next purchase, should you choose to continue shopping with us.” There is even a phone number listed to their Customer Relations Department, should anyone wish to inquire about why the store is closing or any other questions regarding the company in general.
This format of open communication between retailer and customer inspires a sense of loyalty and value that goes both ways: a retailer staying loyal to the customers they value, and customers staying loyal to the retailer which values them.
I will absolutely use this coupon at a different location, not only because I like their hand soaps and can get a discount, but also because they have shown concern for customers like me.

I had dinner Saturday night at the restaurant in my neighborhood where I eat most. From the first time I visited, I decided I wanted to “be a regular,” and early on we went frequently, schmoozed extensively, and tipped well to get the staff to remember us.
Saturday was a good example of the success of our efforts. The restaurant was full, but the owner put us on his waiting list without asking my name–although I gave it to him anyway–then took us as quickly as he could. He sat us in the front section, with his best waiter, who gave us a hearty greeting and cracked jokes the entire time. Each of them came by several times to check on us and chit-chat.
At the end of the meal, I asked our waiter his name, which prompted him to ask us our names. When we left, he thanked us by name. The owner saw us leaving, came over to me, shook my hand, and apologized to me by name for the wait.
The food, as always, was delicious. But our experience there makes us more and more likely to return (although the vermicelli ala vongole doesn’t hurt).
At some restaurants, only the hard-core regulars get this kind of treatment. At our spot, though, this is generally how we’ve always been treated. Our fun waiter is fun with everyone; should you order the cheese platter, the owner sits down at your table and personally explains the selection.
This restaurant has figured it out: customer service is king. The minimal decor and packed-in seating become afterthoughts when good food is served by a welcoming staff. It’s such a simple answer to a basic business question–how to get customers to come back.
Why, then, is it so hard to execute? Last weekend we ate at a highly regarded new restaurant in our neighborhood where the waiter did not speak to us from the moment we ordered until I hunted him down to ask for the check. A few weeks before that, another restaurant’s owner berated me on the phone when I said I was running 10 minutes late for my reservation. At that restaurant, our waitress actually disproved of our wine selection and told us it “wasn’t very good.” (Compare this to Spiga, around the corner from my regular spot, which let me order dinner twice just because I was an idiot.)
Which led to Saturday, when, in considering our dinner options, we barely thought twice before going back to our spot, which had a wait for a table all night. It’s easy to understand why.

The New York Times reports ecommerce is shrinking this month, the first time since the industry began.

This is distressing news as we head into the holiday season. What can the industry do for 2009?

1. Improve incrementally. Test pages and categories at length. Small victories can lead to substantial gains in an economy looking for good news.

2. Improve correspondence. Talk to customers more often. Survey them, get their feedback, respond to their requests and suggestions. Because….

3. UX is king. Any degree of user experience improvement will be welcome at this time, and the easiest place to try harder is in customer service. Flexible, friendly assistance will create good impessions and loyalty, minimizing acquisition costs. And “minimizing costs” is the magic phrase right now.

According to research firm NPD, Apple’s iPhone was the best-selling cell phone in the U.S. in Q3 2008.

Which, frankly, is remarkable: a company that didn’t make mobile phones until 2007, and which introduced its phone at a staggering $599 price point, has in less than 18 months come to dominate the market.

Perhaps Apple isn’t the biggest cell-phone maker overall; that’s left to mobile-phone companies that produce multiple models. But in having the best-selling, and arguably best, product in the industry has completely altered the landscape.

The one-two punch of the iPhone and iPod underscores Apple’s incredible product strategy. The company creates a product, optimizes the user experience, markets it like mad, and basically comes to own the product segment.

A decade on, iPods still represent more than 75% of the portable music device market. The millions of iPhones suggest that Apple is succeeding in its goal of becoming the default option for consumer-grade smartphones. No other product–from video game systems to household electronics to automobiles–has such dominance from a single player with narrowly focused product segments.

This is now a company that plays to win. It’s a far cry from the Macintosh era, when Apple was content to make products that were simply better than the competition. Now they are the best, and the marketplace is responding in kind. No wonder so many companies look to Apple as their aspirational benchmark.

Coca-Cola is test marketing new aluminum bottles. I was handed one on Fifth Avenue today by a promo squad.

To Coke, this must be genius: better branding of their iconic bottle, with lower shipping and breakage costs versus glass, and a handsome visual appeal. The majority of the market is already drinking its soda from aluminum cans, anyway.

But to me, it’s the inverse of the ideal: I’m drinking soda with the usual tin-can aftertaste, in a lesser form factor. The aluminum bottle has neither the lightweight flexibility of plastic nor the squat sturdiness of a can.

Curious: am I in the minority on this? Certainly Coke could have a big success on its hands, since people are used to aluminum and the design is a novelty. But I don’t see the long-term advantage.

OK, so I fully understand the copyright implications behind the bald-faced ripoff that is Scrabulous, and owner Hasbro’s insistence that its violators cease and desist, which led to the Scrabulous Facebook app going offline. What I don’t understand is the way Hasbro is going about its business.

Why, if Scrabulous is so popular, has it been unable to forge an agreement with its creators that leverages the traffic?

Why did a lawsuit get Facebook to shut down the app, while the standalone Scrabulous site continues to chug along unabated?

Why, after many months of legal wrangling, did Hasbro choose yesterday to get tough with Facebook directly?

Why wouldn’t Hasbro get its own Facebook Scrabble app out of beta, and check its scalability, before the Scrabulous C&D overwhelmed the Scrabble beta, knocking half a million Scrabble players offline?

In other words, why is Hasbro alienating its users?

Scrabble has a fanatically devoted consumer base. People play competitively, casually, asynchronously–however they can play, they will. Alex used to play via text renderer before the graphic apps launched; I play EA’s stupid Scrabble iPhone app that doesn’t have a good competitive setting, even though I lose by 150 points every game. A friend of mine taps (tapped) into Scrabulous continually throughout the work day.

Point being, people love their Scrabble. They played Scrabulous simply because it was the best option on the market. With their platform knocked offline without a viable alternative, 500,000 devoted Scrabble fans are flat-out livid, and their devotion is being tested. The same people that love their game have pushed the official Facebook app to a 1.3/5 rating, and the discussion board is full of anger.

Hasbro could have been a hero: test its app’s scalability, make streamlined play, and invite Scrabble fans to play on the authentic platform when it was ready for broad release. Only then should they have shut down Scrabulous, forcing people to make a comfortable transition. Instead, their users have lost faith. It will be interesting to see how long their disillusionment lasts.

Update: Apparently the official Scrabble app was hacked yesterday. Which is appropriate. Also in this article: “Analysts say the blow-back from Scrabulous fans, although painful now, will probably be temporary.” Which is probably true, and somehow disappointing.