thefunnel

I’m currently evaluating various (inexpensive) tools for enabling an easy way for users to to give website feedback / feedback through the web site.  The ideal is a tab based approach available on each page. Hard to find something that’s just right. Not too heavy, not too light and moderately customizable. So far I’ve looked at getsatisfaction, uservoice and suggestionbox. Getsatisfaction didn’t really fit because it was “too community” oriented and I think our customers would have had a hard time figuring out how to leave anonymous feedback or felt frustrated having to log in twice (separate logins for the site and the satisfaction tool, in the case they didn’t use their face book account the register). Uservoice in play -looks promising.

I came across an interesting article about brand loyalty. Basically, the notion is that in the current “participation economy” traditional marketing attention and interruption marketing paradigm) is obsolete and that “movements” needs to be generated instead of communication. The reason for this is that most products are good enough, for what they are intended to do, and the way you succeed in branding is to “achieve or create a loyalty without reason”. This means finding that emotional connection by attaching a level of mystery to the brand (the more the consumer knows about the specifics of a brand the less interesting it becomes), because people are today looking for things beyond rational value. The article claims that this applies equally to B-2-B products, and that intimacy, a story, a relationship leads to “unreasonable loyalty”. In addition marketing should be aiming to measure the return on involvement, rather than the return on investment. The above is one of the reasons, for example, why traditional approaches to market research, based on information, knowledge and data, often fails to provide an accurate prediction on the success of a new product. Marketers should forget about focus groups, because in a focus group environment, customers hide their real feelings towards a brand, and therefore, aspects of “unreasonable loyalty” are never uncovered.

A company’s website is the intersection where the business needs, the community of visitors and the technology that support this all comes together. In order to create an effective website strategy all these elements have to be clearly understood and agreed upon.

In order of priorities, it could be argued, which one comes first, business needs or visitors? What is clear though is that technology comes last. Every business obviously has its objectives, but without visitors there is no business. Therefore a careful analysis has to take place, where the website is looked at, not in isolation, but as part of the whole customer buying /selling / support cycle, to see where the best fit is, what new functions the website could perform or replace, and also accept that depending on the business, the web might not always be the one all solution. Only then can a comprehensive strategy with its accompanying roadmap be formulated. Many times in organizations the web strategy almost has a life of its own only loosely connected to the business. Goes without saying that this is a waste of resources and doesn’t maximize any business benefits. Once the core of the strategy has been formulated attention can be turn towards to “widget world”, and even then it’s not about widgets, it’s about how to maximize the user /visitor experience. The website has a function to play in the cycle and the questions is  how can this be achieved, in the most cost effective way, with the highest visitor satisfaction, and at the same time assuring that there’s some type of additional benefit to the business, such as converting the visitor to a lead, increase likelihood of visiting again etc. On the web it’s all about the smallest details and the voice of the customer can never be underestimated. Therefore a comprehensive usability analysis needs to be performed prior to implementation. One amazing thing is, that the web being a reasonably new marketing tool, and the best way to introduce all your new products, the expectation from the customer base goes much deeper than this. Many customers expect web support for legacy products that were introduced even years before the web, and will rate their satisfaction of a company based this. The website therefore becomes primarily a sustaining marketing tool, which many web marketers don’t like, but it all makes sense for an established business taking care of their existing customer base first, before trying to acquire new customers.

It’s all basic marketing. Understand the needs of your customers. Analyze how you best can serve these needs, while still making money. If it is the web, that’s ok, if not, that’s also ok. If it turns out that the web is the tool, and you can delight your customers with cool widgets – it’s a bonus.