Why don´t you keep your helpful customers in the loop?

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I buy almost everything online, and I work with a digital product. From my work ‘m used to finding bugs and reporting them, which often happens when I shop too. I’m one of those customers who will let you know when your sign up form looks weird in Firefox or your input form is not working in chrome. People usually thank me, say they will fix it and offer me compensation for my “effort”. But so far no one have ever contacted me again saying they fixed it.

Why not? I would feel much more valuable and happy to report more if I knew that the report I sent where actually fixed instead of in a pile of to-dos somewhere. I would not care if it took 2 month, I would just love the idea that my contribution got an action. And the companies would easily have got a new tester and ambassador. How simple! Yet most focus more on closing errands than on the feeling of the customer.

At Detectify we have taken one step to solving this. We have decided that everyone who ask for a feature will have their email added to that trello card (we use trello to assign development tasks) and when a feature is set as done and live, I will personally email all who asked for it and tell them it is live, regardless on how long it’s been since the request. The responses are usually overwhelmingly positive for these emails.

Why don’t you keep your customers in the loop?

By Annelie Näs
Photo credit: Thomas Hawk

How to indicate menu functionality with arrows

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Is there a single truth to how we are supposed to create arrows to indicate behaviour? I don’t know yet, but here is an example on how I would use arrows for two types of menus. I’ve been inspired to this from the use on mobile devices but I don’t see why it could not be used on a desktop to.  The filled arrow indicates an accordion menu, where the content is shown when the menu expands. This also make the arrow point down. If I press another arrow  that one expands and the the previously opened closes. If I have a menu that have a “unfilled” arrow pressing this will make me go to another page. Also to clarify the entire “menu line” is touchable/clickable to perform the action.

Accordion menu with no chosen/open alternative

Accordion menu with a chosen/open alternative

Menu where all alternatives take me to a new page

I would love to have you opinion on this. Do you agree? Would you do it in some other way? Am I missing any factors?

The conversion rate does matter

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A few weeks back I attended an event #sswc (Sweden social web camp) at which there was a session called #emeetx (Think Tedx but a Swedish E-commerce event). During this session I realized that the definition of conversion rate is very different in people’s eye. Google defines conversion rate as: “E-commerce conversion rate is the percentage of visits that resulted in e-commerce transactions.” Now both mine and the other attendees interpretation of this works, but they are very different. For many conversion rate optimization was only about A/B testing, multivariate testing and user test and they argued that “you shouldn’t focus on conversion rate, you should focus on offerings”. To me this is very contradictive, as I work from the take that offerings is part of the conversion rate.

Lets say that the conversion rate has three levels:

Usability 

First of all we have the core usability of the site. Do your visitors find what they are looking for? Do they understand how to buy something? Is anything making them hesitate? Will more people click if we change this color or that text? The very core of the website. Here we need to work with different types of tests, A/B, Multivariate and so on to see how we can improve the experience. However this optimization will only take you so long.

Offerings

I see the offers, the product catalogue, the items, the sales, the campaign and so on as part of the conversion rate. Because after all this is what your customers are buying. Obviously this will have a huge impact on the conversion rate. If people don’t like what you are selling they wont event begin working through the checkout funnel. Thus to convert your customers, offerings will always matter.

Message – consistency

When it comes to the message we moving outside the website so some extent, which is definitely not part of Googles conversion rate definition but it still matters to it. Because if we don’t focus on communicating the same thing outside the website as we do on it, we won’t be able to convert them when they come to the site. If a customer is looking for an offer they saw and cannot find it, they will leave. If they read something and they don’t believe the website have what they are looking for because the description is different, they will leave. Thus the marketing and the communication is part of the conversion rate.

Looking at conversion rate like this, is it still not something to work on? No, because the conversion rate is your business. With that said I will also say that I believe that many are under estimating the power of the usability.

 

Building mobile: Choosing Action based or browsing based?

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During the last year I’ve been visiting many many mobile websites to try to see patterns and figure out what works and what does not. Something that is basically based on guesses as I don’t have the stats on any of them.

Action based sites

The mobile versions of airfrance.com and volkswagen.co.uk was probably my two biggest inspiration sources when we built the new Halebop.se. These sites are based on the idea that the users arrive to the site to fulfill a goal, to complete an action. So without creating any fuzz they list the most common action on the start screen and let the user go form there. Volkswagen has also chosen to use the same list on the desktop site while Airfrance have a complete different look on the desktop site.


 

 

 

Browsing based sites

While browsing based sites is supposed to be opposite of an action based site I don’t think they really are. I think browsing based sites, if chosen for the right reason is supposed to fulfill the action of letting the user ‘look around’. This type of layout works great for news sites, videos sites, trend site or any other type of site that people visit to ‘look around’ on.

 

 

 

So when you are going to build a mobile website, or as we did a responsive site. Remember that mobile visitors have even less patience than desktop visitors so do let ALL of them look for the same thing that you’ve hidden inside some menu. So perhaps you should look into choosing one of the two strategies above before you move on to more details.

The customers are in the smartphone – where are you?

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I just walked around the city listening to an old interview with Jobs and Gates. They were talking about everything from how they’ve worked together throughout the years to what they see coming in the next couple of years. A bit of which focused on the ‘post-pc-devices’. This interview took place in 2007 just after the iPhone launched, which means that a few things have happened since it in this area.

This got me once again thinking about how big the gap really is between e-commerce stores and people use of internet today. Many businesses are still doubting whether people are ready to buy things online, or at least they are not prioritizing this area. It is too new and too unexplored. Mean whiles, most of us, have stopped using our laptops after ‘office hours’ depending on what they are. Instead we are, always available via phone, text and email in our mobile phones.

And it is in our mobile phones and tablets we nowadays spend most of our online hours. That is unless we are a vivid gamer or writer, because that is like the only two areas where mobile is not yet caught up. Think about it, how many ‘non-work’ related hours do you spend by your computer, compared to at your phone?

We pay our bills with the scanner in the mobile app, we visit facebook, we read the paper.  Yet the company budgets have in most cases not even discovered mobile yet.

In a report Google just published we find that 90 % of all smartphone users in Sweden have done research before buying product in their mobile and 27 % have purchased a product using their smartphone.

I believe that this numbers are lower than they could be because of the horrible user experience most visitors have from their mobile. Think about it, would you buy a product in you smartphone? Then maybe your customers would too.

Are seasonal ecommerce sites an unexplored opportunity?

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With a quick Google search you can quickly conclude that seasonal commerce is not yet a thing, either it might not work or it is still an unexplored opportunity. I started contemplating the subject after a quick chat with @dan_nilsson on twitter. I questioned the lack of a good ‘outdoor-decoration-ecommerce’ in Sweden. The obvious question was: what do they do in the winter?

In Sweden seasons are mostly connected to the season of the year, winter and summer (and yes, spring and fall). Where I’m from it’s a 60C difference between Jan and July. But there are many other seasons as well:
- Christmas season
- School start season
- Easter season

Depending on which field you’re in you probably have seasons were you sell less or more. In Sweden the alp stations close at summer and the flower markets at winter. No questions asked there. However, when it comes to ecommerce we are so focused on availability that we do not only make it 24/7, we also make it 365 days a year. Is that really necessary?

If we take the 80/20 rule, there are probably many ecommerce stores make 80 % of their profit in 20 % of the time (of a year). Ecommerce businesses usually have smaller margins but tend to have their storage in the suburbs to save money. Meaning that even thought it might be difficult to shut down from a cash-flow perspective, they could do it from a location perspective. So why don’t you close your ecommerce site when your products are not needed?

Obviously the question with the actually website comes up: what should we do with that? Here is an idea: if you direct the traffic to other sources that are open and selling, you could keep the site open for visitors, but closed for purchases. Then you would still rank on Google and built reputation as helpful. But you would not have to waste people time with administration of few and sporadic orders. Here you might argue about the customer experience, but as long as I got help finding what I was looking for, that should be good. Thus, I would remember the website and the reaction.

Depending on how long the ‘peak’ season is it might not be ideal to start a seasonal store only, however, with the right product and seasonal length I think it could be possible and lucrative. But if we would apply the concept on existing stores as a way to boost sales in some areas during some seasons I think the opportunities are gigantic.

Jesper made a good point the other day – categories are something that we build to make sense of our content, while visitors and especially Google look at each page on the website as a start page. This is definitely how I use the web, I rarely go to a site and sort my self to the product via categories, no, I Google.

Applying this onto seasonal stores, we could change our traditional concept of ‘an ecommerce store (website) – with a many products in many categories’ and instead see it as an ecommerce store (business) with many sites, one for each category. This might not be the best solution for all stores because you have to do many check-outs. But for any store where most customers (80%) only buy one product, this might be a better solution. Niched sites will immediate reassure the customer that they are in the right place, because they make It obvious, which would increase the transactions amount, compensating from perhaps reducing cross-sell opportunities.

Then seasonal stores could really become a thing, for example; sell electric heaters and blankets in a store on the winter on one site and electric fans and water bottles on the summer on another site.

What do you think? Could seasonal e-stores be a thing and can it be done for an individual business or does it have to be part of something bigger?

7 findings that should change your E-commerce business

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If you knew these thing about E-commerce what would you change about your business?

  1. It is proven that people would rather buy a product with a negative review than none at all.
  2. The average 24 year old and younger – cannot say what is on the top or on the left side of the screen on a website beucase they have developed a resistance to banner ads.
  3. The Wine library calls everyone whom unsubscribe to their newsletter and of the ones’ they call 40 % resubscribe and their spend increase with 70 %
  4. Zappos refeer to their competitors websites if they do not have something in stock as they believe in the long term relationship with the customer rather than individual sales.
  5. Banner ads have gone from an average of 15-20 % CTR to  0,7 %.
  6. 90 % of the Walmart website is user generated content.
  7. 2 out of 200 in Vaynerchuks audience did NOT skip commercials.

In 9 days it is time for this years Nordic Ecommerce Summit and I’m exited. Therefore I ended up watching a few of the clips from last year. Gary Vaynerchuk I’d seen before but a few others were new. Above are a few comments from the presentations by Zappos, Bazaarvoice and Vaynerchuk and I think they are quite remarkable. We are constanlty reminded by examples like these that Internet is changing/developing. Yet there are so few steps taken to change the current behavior. I can only hope that some of the presentations on this years’ conference are examples of how people have used the information above and done some dramatical changes.

16 optimization opportunities on the Spotify website

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I love looking into how to optimize websites and products to twist and turn to find out what really works or not. Sometimes though I believe that it is difficult to see the optimization opportunities in pages that are already really good. Therefore I wanted to share my analysis of the Spotify webpage which is already a great site, however I believe it can become even better. I do not work for Spotify but I’ve been using there service for many years so I have some ideas on what their business goals are.

1. The landing page

The first time you visit the Spotify website you are meet with this landing page encouraging you to download the application and get started with the product. The call to action is very clear here. I would however test 3 different things on this page.

  • First of all I would try to change the color of the download Spotify button to draw even more attention to it.
  • I would also consider moving the Facebook face pile a little higher up on the page, simply because at least on my screen it is under the fold and the power of community is extreme.
  • I would also add a picture of a mobile version (the app) of the client as I find that many nowadays won’t start using a service if it does not have a mobile version.

Finally I would create an alternative landing page were the only option is to sign up for the 30-day free trial offered on the next page. And the put cohort tracking on people signing up on the two different landing pages to see which are the best customers. If you have slightly less conversions on this page, but more premium users it might be worth it.

2. Installation page

When you have pressed the download Spotify button you arrive to a page explaining the installation process. I would like to see the exit rate on this page because I find it quite blurry.

  • I would try to put the ‘Go Mobile’ suggestion higher up on the page and make that the core message. Simply because you will still have the guide in above the fold and it is really this that you want to have as a call to action.
  • I would also try to highlight that it is a guide by making the numbers more in focus, step 1, 2, 3.. Perhaps also put the titles above the pictures.

3. The 30-day free trial page

From the installation page and I assume a few other pages you find this ‘offering page’ where you can get at 30 day free trial. This page has all the right assets; the call to action button, the offer and the short list of the benefits. It also have easy access to the terms of the offering. I do however, think we increase conversions with a few tweaks.

  • I’m surprised by how the page title is blending in to the background making it difficult to read. So that is the first thing I would start testing.
  • I would also try putting the ‘checklist’ under a more bonus offering name like ‘benefits’ and then but in on two rows between the title and the call to action button in the hero. (Where it currently says ‘millions of tracks on your mobile phone’. Though I would make sure to keep the current background color of the check list.
  • I would also try changing the background color of the hero to see if the impression of it changes.

4. The front page

The ‘normal’ first page, the one you come till when it is not your first time at the site (or what measure they use for the landing page) is  currently used to advertise new functionality, I do however see some alternative use for it.

Where is the call-to-action?
I have been a Spotify user for quite some time now and I’m still surprised that there is not a a ‘download’ button on the front page. I’ve changed/rebooted my computers a few times and every time I have to look for it. I think it would increase both customers satisfaction and conversion rates to have it more visual here. For example, but two call to actions to the right of the hero, one call to action ‘Try Spotify Premium for 30 days” & ‘Upgrade now’ and one which is ‘Download’.

Sell the apps
Currently Spotify is working to have people start using the spotify apps which is the latest feature in the application. To get more engagement I would try to put a more social or engaging ad. Perhaps, choose an app and make it featured or add the face pile to the functionality so show people that their friends are using the application. I think both would be more inviting. Currently you are informed about the functionality, not the benefits.

‘What is Spotify?’ or ‘How does it work?’

As I have no insight in the customer service situation on Spotify there might be a reason for the ‘What is spotify’ page and the content on that page. But in my mind even though it might not be the title of the page it should at least answer the question on ‘how does it work’. Because in my experience that and ‘what is the difference between spotify and x’ which I’m asked most often by non-swedes who just heard about the service.

 

5. The mobile page

While the Spotify service is absolutely magic to use on the phone their website is not as a rewarding experience. Basically what they have is a landing page giving you two options, download the client or go to the normal webpage. The normal page does of course scales to fit the screen but it is not mobile adapted. I believe there are many benefits by making their website mobile friendly, especially for all of those who want to read up about the service after hearing about it from a friend. (Have you ever done this while meeting someone? you hear, you google, you join or forget)

Thus an easy couple of improvements would be:

  • Adding the ‘arguments’ for downloading spotify on the top of the page to make it a landing page for downloads and change the button to ‘download’ instead of ‘get’.
  • Creating an alternative page with a trial sign up suggestion just like for the landing page.
  • Create a mobile adapted version with the ‘why & how’ and link it just like the other pages on the current website.
  • A forth idea could be to have ‘send me info/a reminder to my email’ so I remember to look at it later

Summary

Though I’ve made the suggestions for the Spotify website I believe that there are a few key components that we all should try to test and analyze on our website.

Lets get started with these today:

  1. Placement and color of call to actions buttons
  2. Wording on call to actions and titles
  3. How to use lists to validate decisions

What would you add too this? Or is there some thing you do not believe in? Please share in a comment.

13 tips for an even more awesome SXSWi experience

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While I still have it fresh in memory I thought I would write down some learnings from SXSWi. Bare in mind though that I had read very little about the event itself before I got there and basically all I knew was that it was the heart of interactive everything in the world.

General

  1. Plan time to stand in the badge pickup line
    If the badge pick up is coordinated in the same time as this year I would plan at least 2,5h of standing in line. Meaning that don’t plan a quick pick up right before a session you really want to attend. I was in line for 1:43:46. Also there is a goodie bag to pick up after you picked up a bag, it contains a paper guide of the event with bus lines etc. Awesome if your not from around and have 3g. If so, you probably only need the app.
  2. Don’t expect a lot of shopping opportunities
    Most people, myself included, was surprised by the limited shopping opportunities in the city. As the beginning of this event was very rainy this made it almost impossible to find an umbrella. Though sun-glasses and — was probably the best give away that companies had.

Sessions

  1. Sessions are grouped by categories and each location host a category
    This was something that I was not aware of, but apparently each location host a category of session. So from what I’ve heard the intercontinental hotel hosted marketing sessions. Those who like to follow a category could there for stay in the same location for the whole conference instead of running on and off the shuttles.
  2. Plan what sessions to attend & be on time for those you assume will be popular 
    Before arriving to the event I hadn’t realized just how much there is to do and how many opportunities and categories there are. Thus the planning part I had not planned for. (Irony!) However after standing in line for almost 2 hours I was quite planned out. I recommend that you pick 2-3 sessions at each start hour to know what to do if some of them fills up. I do how ever recommend to not plan all hours because there are things going on 24/7 and even geeks need sleep.
  3. Sessions are labeled with a difficulty level
    Since I only used the app I almost missed out on this completely as it was not included. But all sessions are labels beginner, intermediate or advanced which could be useful to know especially if you are choosing between a few. I believe this was info was in the printed folder.
  4. Topic vs speaker
    I also realized like many times before that it was many times more inspiring to listen to a well known speaker than it was to listen to an interesting topic. Thus if there is a speaker you don’t know before, be sure to read up on the objectives.
  5. Try something new
    One of my favorite sessions during the event was by a NewYorker cartoonist who shared his knowledge about staying creative at all times. Super inspiring but for me off topic. I will do more of that next year.

Equipment

  1. I recommend tablet + extra keyboard or very light laptop
    So I tend to go to the extreme with ‘equipment’ obviously this happened at this event as well. But having done this once I recommend just brining an tablet (read iPad) with what ever extra keyboard you have or a macbook air because it is annoying carrying around a heavy laptop (I have a macbook pro). Most of what you do is typing and tweeting anyway.
  2. SLR / Digital or phone camera?
    I brought by Canon 60d to the Austin but did not take it in to the city until the event was over. It was simply to heavy to be dragging around and there are not enough beauty to take GOOD pictures on anyway. People might scream when I say this but I preferred my iPhone camera for this event. However, I do know that there were a few photo sessions and meet ups so if you think you will use it, bring it. I won’t next year. If you have a bad phone camera though i recommend a smaller camera since there are a lot of moments you want to remember.
  3. Charger & WIFI
    The event locations have all WIFI and tons of places to charge your everything. Sometimes though time is limited so you could make use of a back up charger.

Stay & transport

  1. Stay close to the area
    I recommend paying that extra amount to stay close to the event. Simply because there is so much going on and many times I would have loved to go back for a quick PN or to drop of some stuff in-between night and day actives. I did one or both  most days.
  2. Don’t count on public transport and TAXI can be tricky
    My host was completely chocked when he learned that I took the bus the first day. He had never done that since he moved to austin. And I understand because I think it only happened once that it was on time. Taking a cab/taxi could also be tricky if you live fairly close to the city as he drivers don’t want short trips.

Parties

  1. I prefered the unofficial parties
    Now this statement is a bit biased as I attended mostly unofficial parties, but the official once were a bit more stiff. Hang out with people and see what they are up to, or take a stroll around the city and see where it seems to be happening. I liked most areas except east 6th.
  2. Rsvp? Maybe.
    Many want you to RSVP to the events before. We did this at a few, but at least on the once we went to, we were not required to. Look it up in advanced though if there is something you don’t want to miss.

Feel free to comment with more tips and I will be sure to add them, or if you have your own list I can link to that.

Are online content as valuable as egyptian drawings?

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Imagine that you post 3 tweets/facebook posts at an average of 140 char per week every week in 5 years, then you will have written 100,000 char, and you are on good way to a novel. Myself and many other post far more than that and adding to it we also share links, pictures, locations, interests, video and more. Thus I probably in post a novel worth of information every year. That is a lot of sharing.

On Sunday I listened to Amber Case compare your Facebook timeline with old egyptian drawings to illustrate the different ways of posting information new and then. This comparison got me thinking. Thought we rarely consider the two ‘channels’ similar, they have more in common than we think. I think many of us see Online more like a fast-food restaurant and egyptian drawings like a  restaurant from the Michelin guide. However, what we share are much more alike than that. We share stories about our life and knowledge about things we know/learn. Just like the egyptians used to do.  It is just our perception of the value of the information that differs. Perhaps also the time put into the production. You might also argue that egyptian drawings are art, which I agree with, but that was the channel and the language of that time. Facebook & twitter are the channel and language of our time.

What is scary though is how nonchalant we are to this value. We produce much more content today than every before, but without any certainty on if the content will be exist or be accessibly in a few days from now. Yesterday Gowalla throw in the towel and with that all our check in and pins were gone. (Some of us might have be collecting, and all that is gone) You will be able to go in an extract the data from the platform, but what will you do with it? How will you use it?

The big questions are: What are the information that we put out there worth? And how are you protecting that investment?