Latest User Experience and Usability content from Econsultancy

Useful e-commerce trends: the promo strip

2012-02-09T12:01:00+00:00

The Promo Strip

Here's an example of the most basic version, from Play.com:

That's it. A simple strip of key information that appears under the top navigation of a site, performing a roughly similar function as a direct mail Johnson Box.

Sometimes these promote key selling points of the site or the brand itself, other times they highlight current promotions, though really they're a nice way to display info that you want *every* visitor to the site to see.

The benefits of placing these under the top navigation are:

They appear on every page, so no matter where someone lands on the site they see it.
Even if visitors are on a low screen resolution, they still see it immediately.
The top navigation is where visitors are looking, so - whether they register it consciously or not - almost everyone sees it.

11 More Examples

Below are 11 more examples of the trend. In each screengrab, the promo strip is highlighted in green.

John Lewis

There's a theme among the biggest retailers to use the strip for delivery messaging.

John Lewis promote their 'free delivery' threshold, their 'click to collect' & 'international delivery' info, along with their famous 'Never Knowingly Undersold'.

Evans

Evans follow the trend with Delivery & Returns information, but also include a call to action to sign up to their email list.

Topshop

Again, Topshop opt for the 'Free UK Delivery' & an 'international delivery' promo.

House of Fraser

House of Fraser copycat John Lewis (or maybe it was the other way round) with 'store collection', 'free delivery', and 'international delivery' all promoted prominently here.

Debenhams

And again, Debenhams follows along with Free Delivery, store collection, and international delivery.

Interesting variations on the theme:

Other than the standard 'free delivery over £XX, pick up in store', here are a few variations from retailers who've gone a little further.

Marks & Spencer

M&S step things up nicely from their competitors, showing international and UK delivery info, but also highlighting current promotions in an area every site visitor will see.

M&S almost always has sales on some areas of the site, and this allows the retailer to flag these to everyone who lands on the site.

Boux Avenue:

Another retailer showing their delivery and returns info, but Boux Avenue is worth a mention as - whereas other retailers have lumped the promo strip on top of their existing design - Boux have folded it very neatly in with the overall look/theme of the site.

Naked Wines

Naked's version differs slightly from others. Firstly, it's above the navigation. Secondly, it introduces some urgency and a deadline with their 'Order in the next XX minutes for next day delivery' call to action.

Penhaligon's

Penhaligon's fill this area of dead space in its layout with 'free delivery' info, but also - very usefully for a heavily gifted brand - promotes its free gift wrapping service here.

Pen Heaven

As with Naked Wines, Pen Heaven again focuses on urgency, offering same day engraving for orders before a particular time. It also features customer reviews heavily here; great for a smaller brand that visitors may not have heard of.

Kiddicare

Kiddicare is probably the UK's leading baby product website. it also leads the way here with its promo strip.

First, it beats out all of the standard 'delivery' promos, with next day delivery in '1 hour slots'. Second, it shows off the 365 day return policy. Third, Kiddicare offers a price match promise:

Taking it far further, the retailer has added these strips down either side of the main content:

These strips are hidden if you're on a smaller resolution (eg 1024x768). For anyone on a larger monitor, they reinforce the price match & fast despatch, but also show off their many awards, and promote their 119,000 product reviews.

Summary

As you can see, these have popped up all over the place. They're a very simple addition to highlight features or info you want to show off to all of your visitors.

If you run an e-commerce site, and haven't already tried this, it's worth testing. If you're already running this with the bog standard 'free delivery over £xx', it's worth trialing some other ideas to see the impact they have. There are some nice extensions to this too: personalising them to include discount codes depending on traffic source, etc.

If you're willing to A/B test it, it's probably worth paying more attention to the impact it has on 'new visitors' or first time buyers, rather than your overall conversion rate.

Do leave a comment if you've seen any other interesting examples of this, or had any experience yourself around results.

Walgreens launches new Foursquare and Twitter campaign

2012-02-08T23:50:00+00:00

This type of tweet is perfect if the person who checked in was looking for cold products. It is the flu season after all. For those who get it, and don't need Halls, they may disregard or unfollow. Those who are fervent about true engagement may dislike this approach. The only worry may be for those looking to follow Walgreens as they may be turned off if they stumble upon the Twitter feed.

As you can see from Walgreens Twitter page, it has been overtaken by two versions of an ad for Halls Warm-ups cough drops.

Twitter hides @ replies unless you follow both parties. So if you follow Walgreens, you won't see these replies in your stream unless you have that option set on Tweetdeck or are on Walgreen's page itself. For most, they'd never see the multiple tweets above.

Adam Kmiec, Walgreens director of social media, felt confident that this was a program worth implementing.

Our social media strategy is built around being real time, local, innovating and providing value. Over the past year we’ve continued to pilot several Social-Local initiatives. From cause related programs like our Flu Shot donation initiative that leveraged check-ins on foursquare to seasonal tips to this most recent initiative with Local Response, we’re constantly innovating, testing and learning.

The Local Response program was based on insights that were mined from our social monitoring and analysis platforms and a desire to learn more about the opportunities in the local-social space.

Michael Muse, Co-Founder and VP of Product & Operations for LocalReponse, had reservations at first about this type of approach on Twitter but it sooned changed as his company tested its model.

For local businesses, they have a very different voice then nationals so it works for them and can be quite personal. What's interesting is that over time is that we looked at bigger brands and thought this could work for them if it was done right.

So we customise for clients. The first step is you can't reply to people not talking to you. If the client wants to reach out to people who are shopping for certain things or only on Tuesdays, we cater to that. There is a selection bias and it focuses on people who are interested and engaged.

Every single campaign we've run has less than 2% opt-out rate. Also we provide frequency caps, rate limits, and a 2 level opt out to better serve users who do not wish to receive replies to their check-ins. No one receives more than one tweet per day from companies on the platform, one tweet per week from the same campaign and no more than one tweet a month from an advertiser.

It's all about experimenting. Advisors Muse met with told him this happens in every medium. There are potential pitfalls, you develop best practise and then you have specific guidelines you can follow.

LocalResponse has its own guidelines companies have to meet to use their service. As Muse outlines

If a campaign's goals in targeting do not meet all of our guidelines for context, we offer another product that can go broader: retargeting with banner ads as an alternative to response. This allows for broader targeting, but with banners instead of responses. The majority of our clients use this product, often in conjunction with the response product.

It is refreshing to see Walgreens take a chance on a start up in conjunction with a large social media campaign. Not many large companies do.

With no background on how this campaign is being run, the efforts could be misconstrued or seen as “spammy”. By taking the whole picture into account, this may be another way brands can reach the customers interested in them.

It will be interesting to see the results of this campaign, and if they are as successful as the other campaigns run by LocalResponse so far, it may be one we may be seeing a lot of.

The Four Seasons site is beautiful, but not for disabled users

2012-02-08T14:20:00+00:00

Presumably the target audience ('every user' according to Four Seasons) should include those with disabilities who may have to adjust the presentation (such as increasing the font size) or use assistive technology such as screen readers or switches.

Indeed, as outlined recently in another area of the travel sector, sites that fail to do this can not only lose revenues and suffer PR damage but also be at the wrong end of a legal action.

Although not a comprehensive accessibility check alone, simple audit tools such as WAVE 3.0 and the Accessibility Toolbar can quickly reveal some of the main problems, and we have included some images to show this.

The main accessibility issues uncovered can be summarised as follows:-

Inaccessible functions for keyboard users.
Poor colour contrast.
New windows opening without warning.
Missing/inappropriate alt text.
Inaccessible forms/poor error reporting.

We take a look at a few of these below.

Alternative text on images

Assistive technologies such as screen readers are very clever, but they cannot interpret images on their own.

The most basic accessibility requirement is to provide alternative text (ALT text) on all images and similar content to allow them to be interpreted by the screen reader.

The site makes three main mistakes in this area:

1. Alt text is missing entirely on many images especially on pages describing the hotels.

Many images that should have descriptive alternative text have only a null Alt text which will not describe the image.

For instance, the screen reader user could benefit from knowing that this is a picture of two golfers walking (and there are many other similar examples).

For some images where they have provided a descriptive Alt text, it is inappropriate.

On a page about meetings, an image shows catering for a meeting and has the unhelpful Alt text of “Accommodation image”.

Furthermore this same Alt text was used repeatedly on pages within the site, potentially causing more confusion for screen reader users who may think they are seeing the same image in multiple locations across the site.

On a more serious note, this suggests that the underlying coding is being lazily copied and pasted without due care and attention.

Giving warning of opening new pages

As shown in the image below from an accessibility checking tool, many links opening new windows do not provide any indication of this.

It also shows another missing Alt text:

For visually disabled users with screen readers the unannounced opening up of new browsers or tabs can be very confusing.

They may be unable to see that a new browser has opened, and may wish to return to the previous page. However, the back button will not work since there is no browser history to return to.

Most accessible sites either avoid opening new browser windows unless absolutely necessary, or they indicate appropriately that a new window will open.

Inaccessible navigation from assumed use of mouse interaction

No doubt the designers of the site use a mouse but they should not assume that all users of the site can. Keyboard navigation is difficult or impossible in many places, blocking these users from the main site content.

Currently these issues make the site unusable by both keyboard and users of screen readers or other assistive technologies which mimic keyboards.

This begins on the homepage, where maps indicating world regions are not accessible by keyboard users, but are only if they are clicked on.

When using keyboard navigation many of the link destinations are unclear (for example - http://www.fourseasons.com/# ) making it hard for users to choose which links to follow.

When tabbing through a page, there is no visual change of style to indicate which link has keyboard focus. Therefore such users have poor indication of their location on the page, removing important feedback.

Also there is no “skip to content” link near the start of the page navigation which is very helpful to allow non-mouse users to move immediately to the page content. Instead they need to tab through (or listen to) the standard set of navigation at the top of each page.

Perhaps most importantly for the business and conversions, the booking engine is not accessible to keyboard users.

The booking engine often appears as a pop-up window, and the keyboard tab sequence takes the user back to the underlying page, or worse they trap the user within the booking engine, neither allowing them to complete a booking nor navigate back to the underlying page.

Screen reader users would have no awareness of this making this feature unusable to them.

There are several other accessibility barriers in the site including colour contrast issues and the presentation of error messages and mandatory fields on the booking forms.

Conclusion

Surprisingly for such a large brand aiming to serve the needs of every customer with their new site, Four Seasons does not seem to have considered web accessibility during the design.

The site has issues with all of the four POUR principles of the WCAG 2.0 guidelines (Perceivable, Operable, Understandable and Robust). Indeed, Four Seasons does not even include an accessibility statement on the site to describe measures they have taken to address web accessibility and how to use the relevant accessibility features.

Some of the issues such as missing Alt text are relatively easy to fix post-launch, but many others that are integrated with the navigation and interaction design will be more difficult.

Hopefully, Four Seasons will be prioritising these shortcomings for future revisions to the site and genuinely make its online services accessible to every user.

Special thanks to my colleague Jamie Sands who led the accessibility review of the site.

Experience an augmented Valentine's Day with Starbucks

2012-02-07T17:29:00+00:00

While in the app, you can create a virtual AR valentine which can only be seen if the recipient scans the Valentine's Day Starbucks cup. On top of that you can send an Starbucks Card eGift through the app and schedule it to arrive on Valentine's.

This limited campaign goes beyond Starbuck's own app and integrates other social platforms including Twitter and Instagram. It all revolves around the cup itself so either way, Starbucks could see an increase in purchase during February 6 - 16 when the campaign is being run.

This is Starbucks latest offering as it further expands into mobile. Their first experiment with the Starbucks Cup Magic app came during the 2011 holiday season. In 2011, Starbucks expanded its mobile payment program to more than 9,000 US locations and rolled out the ability to send Starbucks Card eGifts.

It is a small wonder Starbucks are continuing to push into the mobile and interactive space. Last year, there were 26 million mobile transactions with $110.5 million reloaded onto Starbucks Cards directly through the mobile app. There has also been increased adoption in the mobile space by Starbuck’s customers. Mobile transactions have doubled when comparing the first 9 weeks of January when they launched and a 9 week period only 9 months later. The first quarter of 2012 also saw an increase of 11% in the US over Q1 in 2011. This is primarily due to a 9% increase in comparable store sales. Though Starbucks haven't detailed how much of that is due to mobile, it is easy to assume it is a contributing factor.

Of course, this type of campaign only works for those customers who notice they can interact with the cup itself. As this is still new territory for consumers in the US, it will take time for them to expect this interactivity with packaging. In any case, Starbucks is ahead of the game in the mobile retail space and will only gain to benefit when other retailers follow suit.

Blackberry's impressive app stats avoid the bigger picture

2012-02-07T13:50:00+00:00

This has allowed 13% of Blackberry developers to make more than $100,000 from App World.

But in cherry-picking these statistics Saunders is avoiding looking at the big picture.

If Blackberry users continue to download apps at a rate of 6m a day that will generate 2bn downloads this year, but Android users downloaded more than 7bn apps in 2011.

Travel website Kayak has also announced that it is dropping its Blackberry app as the device is “not working out to be a great channel for consumer mobile applications."

Kayak says that its audience of BlackBerry users "has been declining precipitously, and we can't justify the cost any longer".

The statement also says Kayak's entire engineering team has switched away from using Blackberry devices in the past few years, a move mirrored by oilfield giant Halliburton.

It has made the decision to move its 4,500 staff to iPhones as Apple offers the best capabilities and security.

While these two examples in isolation obviously don’t signal the death knell for Blackberry, it does show a dwindling of support for the once dominant phone brand.

In addition, if we look at stats on mobile commerce, Blackberry is way below iPhone and Android in terms of generating sales for retailers.

Apps probably aren’t the best way for RIM to bolster the business in the long term. Blackberry Messenger is the only service that really sets it apart from other phones and last week RIM unveiled an updated SDK for the BBM Social Platform.

With 50m using BBM through various apps this is perhaps an area that RIM should be looking to exploit when it launches Blackberry 10 later this year.

The Digital Ocean: how to market to fishers and swimmers

2012-02-06T13:01:00+00:00

So, fellow marketers, we are all likely beyond the trial and error phase of digital and realize that an intelligent, synchronized and aligned plan is needed to maximize our digital investment.

Start with your prime objective: for example in the B2C world it may be the collection of marketable contacts (via coupon/offer) or for B2B it may be lead generation with a primary call-to-action of a signup for an online trial.

Next, how are you going to connect with the targeted audience? This is where the digital ocean analogy is helpful. The ocean represents all the possible online channels and locations (e.g. search, websites, blogs, social communities, ads, articles, email, text ...) where your audience could be reached.

Now consider whether you are only trying to reach targets who are actively looking for a product/service/offer like yours (fishers), or those who are not actively looking but may respond to a discussion, or an ad, or blog related to their interest (swimmers), or both.

Take a look at the graphic below:

If your audience is fishing, what are some of the digital mechanisms and places they would go to identify, research and evaluate. What is the likely journey they would take to select your product/service/offer?

You need to create the appropriate fishing bait comprising content, search results and outbound campaigns to attain consideration. Your content and tactics will be oriented towards that fishing model as you can see from the (B2B) example.

The tactics used to attract swimmers can be very different, and are more educational rather than promotional in nature. Social media plays a bigger role here, as that is where your target audience 'hangs out' and engages with people/content related to their interest.

Creating or engaging in conversations is an obvious tactic, adding value and opinion without overly promoting. Advertising on social and industry sites is effective, as pinpoint profiling and targeting is usually possible.

Search keywords that you should orient towards can also differ whether your targets are fishing or swimming.

Fishers tend to use more action/competitive oriented search terms aimed at a product or service type (e.g. cheapest airline ticket to London, best performing mutual fund), whereas swimmers are usually more interested in education and discovery related to their topic of interest (e.g. mortgage industry best practices, diabetes discussion groups).

As a next step to work on this concept yourself, try printing and filling in the graphic above which is a worksheet (this one for B2B models) to help you identify locations and search terms based on audience intent.

Once you have these locations and likely search terms identified for SEO planning, determine the 'customer journey' from discovery through education through engagement through selection of your product/service/offer.

In some cases that journey might be short, even immediate (e.g. B2C coupon signup), but for B2Bs that journey may have several steps requiring a combination of fishing and swimming tactics and content made available along that path towards selection.

Bottom line, don't create content or invest in inbound or outbound tactics that are not aligned with both the intention and location of your target audience.

Internet Statistics Compendium

2012-02-03T17:00:00+00:00

Econsultancy’s Internet Statistics Compendium is a collection of the most recent statistics and market data publicly available on online marketing, e-commerce, the internet and related digital media.

The compendium is available as eight main reports, split across different geographical regions:

Updated monthly, each document is a comprehensive compilation of internet, statistics and online market research with data, facts, charts and figures.The reports have been collated from information available to the public, which we have aggregated together in one place to help you quickly find the internet statistics you need, to help make your pitch or internal report up to date.

There are all sorts of internet statistics which you can slot into your next presentation, report or client pitch.

Those looking for B2B-specific data should consult our B2B Internet Statistics Compendium.

Areas covered in the main compendium include:

Three steps to keeping email marketing simple but effective

2012-02-03T15:01:29+00:00

1. "Test! Test! Test!” should be a mantra for all email marketers

Ensuring you hit your audience with relevant, personalised and timely messaging is crucial. Think of it like a driving test. All the theory in the world, the hours spent memorising the Highway Code, won’t help you when you’re out on the road.

The only way to pass that test is to practice.

In order to hone the effectiveness of email, delve into all the precious data you collect on the people you’re trying to reach, to provoke them into action.

Take insights from people’s preferences and purchase history (if available), and experiment with length and tone of subject lines, and different types of content.

Consider HTML, the length of copy, size and colour of images, embedded links and video. Even the choice of vocabulary and use of punctuation are important elements in avoiding the spam trap (don’t over exaggerate by using too many exclamation marks!!!!).

Continuous testing and data analysis will enable you to tweak your strategy for communication and additionally provide greater insight into your consumer segments and how they respond to your communications.

As a result, you can begin to segment your audience in more detail and refine and personalise the types of content you send them. It’s important to use the data to understand the likes and dislikes of individuals to boost brand advocacy.

Compare the results of your email tests

For example, subject line length, type of offer or call to action included, or response to keywords used, with metrics for your website, SEO and PPC, mobile engagement and offline activities, and you will begin to see trends.

Which targets were receptive? Which didn't respond? Is the offer right? An in-depth analysis of campaign responses enables you to improve effectiveness and optimise the return on investment.

This information can then be used to strengthen knowledge of the target audience, influencing future communication strategies and marketing plans.

Testing means making the most of data to devise and send your campaigns, and the virtuous circle will be completed by response data that underpins improved email marketing the next time out.

Amazingly, we’re beginning to see marketing plans change every quarter and in some instances every 30 days! All the more reason to “test, test, test” to see how your audience is engaging with your brand and to ensure you keep ahead of the pack.

2. Time of day

People engage with brands in many different ways, so there isn’t always a “one size fits all” approach to timing. It’s important that you review the data in detail to find the optimum time to target people.

Don’t just look at how many people opened your emails, look at who opened them and when.

As a rule of thumb, many marketers send emails between 7am and 10:30am, targeting subscribers as they wake up in the morning or when they reach the office.

Another popular distribution time is noon, to engage people during lunch breaks, or early evening when users typically jump back online to purchase the goods they have been researching in the office.

To be honest, these times have collectively shown good results for most brands, but to really ensure you reach your targets at the right time, look at your response data and the time stamp on your opens (also compare this to the ‘delivered’ time to analyse the gap between send and open, you may be surprised to see some of your emails being opened 3 to 4 days later).

Finally, you can cross-reference the email address and offer code to understand how effective your email communication was in driving revenue.

An example of good practice was the activity of an online retailer which used an innovative tactic to work out the ideal time to send emails to individual users.

Their theory was that if users were available to sign up to an email list at a certain time, they would be more receptive to receiving an email at the same time on subsequent days.

The company’s campaigns resulted in 20% uplift in click-through, approximately 65% increase in conversion and average revenue per recipient boosted by almost 200%.

On the flip side to ‘push’ email campaigns are customer-initiated interactions. Responding to these with immediate and relevant messages and offers, again implemented through the use of existing data, can greatly enhance the relationship and strengthen loyalty.

3. From and subject lines

These are two very important elements. The first thing a subscriber will do is scan the 'from' address to ensure the email is being delivered by a reputable source (i.e. a brand they recognise) then they perform a final pass on the subject line.

Subjects need to be punchy and enticing, short and simple (try to keep it to less than 50 characters). It is important to ensure that you include some type of personalisation and the organisation’s name.

Try to keep the WIFM (What’s In It For Me?) front of mind, as people generally respond well to “Offer”, “Sale”, “Attention” and “Invitation”.

Not all communications are about sending offers, so if this is the case make sure there is a value exchange and that the intent of the email is clearly stated, e.g. “Company Name Newsletter: December 2012” or “Company Name Newsletter: Important Information”.

Ultimately, a combination of context and content is vital to drive successful email communications.

Recommendations help drive 27.9% holiday sales growth at John Lewis

2012-02-03T10:56:00+00:00

John Lewis head of online delivery and customer experience Sean O’Connor said the tool helped increase sales in the five weeks to December 31 2011 beyond the usual spike expected during the Christmas period, and in comparison to the previous year.

When any shopper comes to our website, we want to provide them with the same personalised customer service we would if they visited us in one of our shops.”

He said that the recommendation and email personalisation platform delivered tangible results by offering customers relevant products.

Product recommendation works particularly well in the fashion category as it recognises shopper behaviour, patterns and recommends items of interest not only by product type, but by brand as well.

The tool is not integrated into social media so recommendations do not take into account what the customer's friends have bought or viewed – something John Lewis should possibly consider enabling as it has almost 317,000 Facebook fans.

However O’Connor said the tool and its recommendations are tuned in to "crowd shopping".

This takes into account not only what the individual customer is doing on the site at that moment in time, but what other shoppers who are similar in product views have done before.

We feel this is the very essence of social shopping: taking into account not just the individual customer's experience but those of the wisdom of the crowds."

At the moment the tool is only accessible via web, but O’Connor said the retailer was looking at introducing it to mobile.

We want our customers to have the same level of service and to provide a personalised shopping experience across all shopping channels.”

John Lewis has been quick to adopt mobile technology, launching a mobile optimised site in 2010 and trialling a virtual QR code store in Brighton in December.

It also introduced free Wi-Fi into its stores, a move which O’Connor says has been a big step forward in helping customers make an informed choice.

They can quickly and easily access our mobile optimised website, or use our iPhone app. Customers are free to access the whole of the web, including competitor sites to test our price commitment, however it primarily enables us to extend our John Lewis online content and services into our physical shops in a way that is convenient for them.”

StumbleUpon brings the iFrame back

2012-02-02T18:55:17+00:00

As detailed by Brent Csutoras on Search Engine Land, the company responsible for bringing them back is popular social discovery service StumbleUpon:

...on all content pages within StumbleUpon, you have a single button saying ‘Stumble This’, which when clicked takes you to an iframed version of the content.

Not only are they now iframing all content from the site, but if your logged into StumbleUpon, they are not even offering a way to remove the iframed toolbar, leaving you in stuck in the iframed version of the site. If you are not logged in, then there is an option to click X in the right side of the toolbar to remove it.

Csutoras observes that there hasn't yet been an uproar about StumbleUpon's change, despite the fact that iFrames have caused so much angst before. In the case of the DiggBar, to placate angry users, Digg founder Kevin Rose was forced to backtrack and admitted, "Framing content with an iFrame is bad for the Internet."

Is the lack of widespread anger here an indication that StumbleUpon's relevance has declined? Perhaps, even though unique visitors are apparently way up year-over-year. But regardless, there are more than a few publishers who still get a meaningful amount of traffic and link love from StumbleUpon. And they can't be too happy about this.

At the end of the day, you have to hand it to the iFrame. While it does have uses, it has arguably been one of the most abused 'features' of HTML. But you can count on companies ignoring internet history and using it in the worst ways imaginable.