The vital importance of the first click
If customers get the first click right they have twice as much of a chance of completing their task than if they get it wrong.
Nobody likes taking a wrong turn, particularly when it’s your first turn. If you have travelled 10 kilometers in the wrong direction, then it feels like you are travelling back 20 […]
Pavlov’s dogs are waking up
There is a growing resistance to traditional marketing techniques. Today’s customer is more logical, less emotional.
“International scientists say they have found the first evidence of resistance to the world’s most effective drug for treating malaria,” the BBC stated in 2010.
“The prevalence of antibiotic resistant bacteria is a result of antibiotic use both within human medicine […]
The Customer Spring: Empowered customers rise up
The customer is not captive anymore. The customer is active. They are in control.
“Roughly 40 percent of tablet and smartphone owners in the U.S. used their devices daily while watching TV,” according to Nielsen News. What were they doing? Mainly checking email; but they were also researching products and tracking down discounts.
“Google reported revenues […]
Telling the truth is not a marketing sin
People are no longer so easily fooled by happy marketing and communication spin.
Once upon a time there was a company that was not doing well and was letting people go. Its internal communications department went into overdrive, constantly publishing feel-good stories. Market conditions improved and the company showed signs of recovery. The communicators department […]
From selling products to delivering services
The reason Amazon is so successful is that theirs is a services culture rather than a product culture.
“What we are doing is offering premium products at non-premium prices,” Jeff Bezos told Business Week when launching the Amazon Fire tablet. According to Bezos “We don’t think of the Kindle Fire as a tablet. We think of […]
The future is about service
“There’s no street address here,” the woman said to me. I had just handed in my US Immigration cards at the pre-screening section of Dublin Airport. I grimaced. I knew I had the full address on my computer somewhere, but my computer was so slow to start and it would take about 10 minutes for […]
The Optimism Bias, or don’t believe satisfaction surveys
We need to move to an evidence-based model of understanding people’s needs based on what they actually do, not what they say they do.
The lady had just finished trying to complete 15 tasks on the website. “What did you think of the website,” the organizer asked her.
“It was great,” she replied effusively. “I really liked […]
Help people do things, don’t keep them on webpages.
Your objective should be to reduce the amount of time customers have to spend on your website.
A recent Jakob Nielsen article states that, “Users often leave Web pages in 10–20 seconds, but pages with a clear value proposition can hold people’s attention for much longer.”
“The average page visit lasts a little less than […]
If you want to hide it, emphasize it
On a website, lines are like walls, boxes are like closed buildings and anything constructed to catch the eye is perceived as a marketing trap.
I once dealt with a large product company that had a huge banner advertisement taking up half its homepage. It was getting less than 1 percent of clicks. Another company I […]
Top Tasks Management for UK councils
“The design of the website should be focused on top tasks. No longer should organisations aim for the most comprehensive website possible. Less is better!”
This statement comes from Socitm, the membership association for ICT management with members from 98% of all UK local authorities. This is a big shift in government website thinking. I remember […]
