eCHANNEL: How to Create the Ultimate User Experience

Posted: 12/2002

Optimizing Online Sales Strategies Part 3

How to Create the Ultimate User Experience

By Dr. Bonny Brown and Dr. Anthony Bastardi

TELECOM COMPANIES FACE A CLASSIC issue in deciding whether to concentrate on capturing market share or catering to the most profitable segments. A well-designed Web site is an inexpensive way to pursue both goals at once and cut operating costs through increased self-servicing of accounts. If these benefits have not been fully realized, it is often due to poor Web design, as we discussed last month in part two of this three-part series.

Although goals for the site may be defined, there are often no formal metrics to ensure the site has hit the mark and to reveal how the site needs to be improved. Web sites are more than advertisements or brochures, and are not purely functional software; they provide a unique blend of marketing and customer interaction that can produce strong impact on the site visitor. People can be turned off from a brand very quickly. Web sites need to be the ultimate user experience -- the very best presentation of the entire brand experience.

The only way to truly understand how to best build these sites -- and how effective they are once built -- is to conduct research. The first step toward this end is to understand what customers actually experience on the Web, and which elements most impact overall satisfaction.

Web customer experience cannot be accurately predicted from self-report surveys, where participants must speculate about their behavior, or from log file analyses, where the motivations for behavior cannot be deciphered. Customer experience should be measured using a multimethod approach that simultaneously captures attitudes, behavior and perceptions, and integrates them into one interpretable picture.

To formulate an effective Web strategy, telecommunications companies need to capture a multidimensional view of users' experience on the Web -- from initial expectations, to interaction with sites, to satisfaction with outcomes.

Dimensions of Online Customer Experience
Source: Vividence Corp.

Develop a Web Strategy Checklist

In order to formulate a winning Web strategy to attract and retain customers, telecommunications companies need to understand users in three major areas: Current use of the Web for researching competitors, specific needs of different target segments and how users react to Web sites that the company has already developed or sponsored.

Understand current Web behavior for researching telecommunications services. How do key target market segments currently research telecommunications offerings on the Web?

Telecommunications companies must understand how target users currently find information on services and devices -- where they go, what information they find and what they like. For example, do users go to search engines to begin their searches? What links does do the search engines produce? What links do users follow and how satisfied are they with the information they find? If they start with a general information portal, which one, and what information do they eventually find through these portals? What information are they missing? When are they likely to visit a provider site directly? These questions need to be answered to understand what Web sites to build, sponsor or partner with in order to best communicate specific benefits and promotions to target audiences.

The overall performance metric to monitor is the percentage of customers that are able to learn about the benefits of deals provided by specific providers and, subsequently, the impact of this knowledge on their likelihood to switch to or retain that provider.

Determine how to build the site. Before building or redesigning a site, user feedback should be obtained on the specific information users want and like, and how this information can best be presented to achieve the goals that have been established for the site.

Try different approaches. Assess different presentation styles and features before investing to build similar Web properties, by sending users to competitor telecommunications sites or other related sites. This helps uncover insights into likes and dislikes for particular features and organizational methods. Test site or feature prototypes, which can help decide between competing approaches in design or messaging before building out the full site.

Assess overall site effectiveness and ease of use. Once a Web site has been deployed, the site should be assessed at regular intervals, with actual customers, to ensure it continues to meet users' needs and expectations. Customer-focused metrics, such as user success rate on key tasks, satisfaction ratings and likelihood to switch or purchase telecommunications services should be developed and tracked over time.

Be sure to measure a variety of elements of a telecommunications Web property, including:

• Effectiveness of the home page

• Intuitiveness of searching and browsing

• Communication of value proposition

• Availability of promotional information and specific information needed to make a purchasing decision

• Reaction to specific bundles and promotions

• Online purchasing/ordering

• Online self-service customer support and installation

• Account management, such as checking minutes, bill paying

• Small business offerings

• Overall site satisfaction

Ultimately, the site can be evaluated to determine whether or not the experience with the Web site achieves stated goals, such as increasing likelihood to purchase products and services.

Dr. Bonny Brown is director of research for Vividence Corp., a provider of customer experience management solutions. She is an experimental social psychologist with more than 10 years of experience in both qualitative and quantitative research in psychology and human-computer interaction. Dr. Anthony Bastardi is senior research scientist for Vividence, overseeing quantitative analytics. He is an experimental psychologist with more than 10 years of experience conducting theoretical and applied research in cognitive and social psychology, specializing in statistics.