Presented by HiSoftware’s CTO, Thomas Logan, this webinar will focus on some of the mishaps that can damage the customer experience and in turn impact negatively on the bottom line.
HiSoftware: How to achieve a great web experience for your customer & impact the bottom-line
1. How to Achieve a Great Web Experience for your Customers and Impact the Bottom Line George Knox | Managing Director, International Thomas Logan | Chief Technology Officer 23 June 2011
2. Today’s Agenda The Online Customer Experience Evolution The Challenges of Content Compliance Poor Customer Experience Scenarios Providing a Great User Experience with Automation Q&A 1
4. A Great Web Experience Matters Consumers want and expect a great online experience 55% became a customer of a company because of their reputation for great customer service 40% began purchasing from a competitive brand simply because of their reputation for great customer service Your web presence = your brand 3 Source: RightNow Technologies; Customer Experience Report NA; 2010
10. 10% would pay 25% or more Source: RightNow Technologies; Customer Experience Report NA; 2010
11. When it comes to online revenue, every millisecond counts Akamai studyfound that 57 percent of site visitors will bounce after waiting 3 seconds or less for a page to load Microsoft slowed down its Bing site by two seconds, which led to a 4.3 percent loss in revenue per visitor. Aberdeen Group surveyed 160 companies and discovered that, on average, slowing down a site by just one second results in a 7 percent reduction in conversions. For asite that earns $100,000 a day, that means $2.5 million of lost revenue per year Shopzilla accelerated its average page load time from 6 seconds to 1.2 seconds. Without making any other outward changes to the site, Shopzilla experienced a 12 percent increase in revenue and a 25 percent increase in page views.
12. Who’s Contributing to Your Content? Multiple content contributors Content changes all day, every day Documents uploaded / edited Email communications sent Social collaboration through blogs / wikis External and Internal website content is added / edited
13. Issues that Affect the User Experience… Technical issues Site down Broken links Slow loading pages Content errors Typos Inappropriate language Missing graphics Hacked content Brand integrity Brand consistency Trademark usage Keywords for Search engine optimisation (SEO)
16. Site Down A company's website is one of it’s most important assets – site down time can mean revenue lost Compliance Sheriff can send automatic notifications alerting you to issues
22. Missing Graphics Missing Graphics can impact your user experience Compliance Sheriff can scan and identify any missing images
23. Broken Links Broken links on your website can drive potential customers away Compliance Sheriff can run scans and report on broken link so developers can address them quickly
34. Inappropriate Language Team discussion forums offer the opportunity for heated debates. Compliance Sheriff can ensure inappropriate language does not get posted.
36. Brand Consistency It’s important to maintain brand standards, for example a unique spelling of a product name Compliance Sheriff can identify any brand inconsistencies
37. Brand Consistency Verify all product names on site are spelled consistently Verify all company employees listed on site are current Ensure the correct email addresses, phone number, and street address are publicly available on your site
39. Trademark Usage Keeping product copyrights up to date is critical to protecting a company’s brand assets Verify proper Copyright Statement Verify correct logos are used and sized correctly Ensure correct CSS style values are used to advertise your brand
40. Web Beacons Small string of software code that represents a graphic image request on a Web page or email Advertising, tracking users Some may be used to collect PII
42. Test How Your Page Renders in Various Browsers Including Mobile 36
43. Mobile Accessibility Verify number of links on the page Verify that various CSS properties are available Ensure that users with disabilities can use assistive technologies, such as VoiceOver ,to access your Web content 37
44. SEO Keywords SEO is an important part of most companies’ marketing strategies Compliance Sheriff can validate SEO presence and content on site page
46. Automate Continuously monitor site(s) for quality problems Send alerts to Web team Notify users of problem Enable system to grow and improve over time Create reports of quality issues to measure progress
51. More Information Resources http://www.hisoftware.com/why-hisoftware/thought-leadership.aspx Live Webinars and On-Demand Webcasts: http://www.hisoftware.com/company/webinars-seminars.aspx UK Blog Site www.hisoftware.co.uk
52. Thank You! George Knox g.knox@hisoftware.com Thomas Logant.logan@hisoftware.com Twitter: HiSoftware_EU LinkedIn: HiSoftware
Editor's Notes
Thanks for joining us today…..we sincerely appreciate your time and look forward to exploring today’s topic with each of you. My name is George Knox….(explain your title and role). A few housekeeping items before we start:This afternoon’s session is being recorded and will be available later this week for on-demand playback from our web site. We will notify all registrants via email when the recording is available, and at the same time, will also be providing a copy of the slides from today’s presentation.Your participant audio lines have been muted to maintain the highest possible sound quality during the presentation.At the end of our prepared remarks, we will open the floor for questions and answers. We ask that you submit your questions via the LiveMeeting Q & A tool found on the top toolbar. We will take as many live questions as time permits, but we will capture all questions posed and if we cannot get to your question within the time allotted, we will follow-up with you individually.If you are interested in the content of a slide you are viewing, you may select Content Share Upload file to save individual pages of content to your desktop as a PDF file.
George Knox introduces agenda, then Thomas Logan... My name is Thomas Logan….(explain your title and role).
But this is really a reflection of where we have come in terms of our thinking about web site experience, and how that thinking has evolved. Early days, all we thought about was, “how do I get people to my site and generate quality traffic?”. From that we saw the first wave of SEO, SEM and PPC practices emerge, and these continue to be defined today. As the web became more ubiquitous, concerns of usability and design came to the forefront. “Now that my audience has found me, how do I ensure that they’re finding the right content, in the shortest amount of time, and behaving in a way that supports my business objectives?” This is where navigation, color and font standards, and how we present specific calls to action comes in.As those disciplines matured, we moved into a new area of measurement and analytics. “Now that my audience is here, and I have engaged them with content, how do I know that all this investment is really contributing to my marketing and revenue goals.” Now we are all about page views, conversions, and mapping the click streams of visitors coming to our site.All of these waves have brought us to where we are now…to the idea of how we address and enable a more holistic online customer experience, that’s not just about clicks, but about the web as an accelerator of business processes, the flagship of our brand, and the first line of support and service for both customers and prospects.This is why a repeatable, measurable and effective solution for Site Quality is so critical, and why manual processes alone are no longer enough.
When consumers interact with your brand online, they both want and expect a positive experience. Some data released last year from RightNow and Harris Interactive indicated that 55% became a customer of a company because of their reputation for great customer service, and 40% began purchasing from a competitive brand simply because of their reputation for great customer service And this has never been more important because in today’s economy, as more and more of our lives move online, your web presence is your brandThe Customer Experience is affected by site quality. The definition of site quality is multi-faceted, but at its core:A site that users can trust and repeat coming back toEverything just works in a way that meets a user’s expectations for speed, reliability and access
Coming out of a recession, consumers are being more thoughtful about how they are spending their money; however, a great experience not only influences where they chose to buy… but also how much they chose to spend! 85% of consumers said they would be willing to pay more over the standard price in order to ensure a superior customer experience.76% would pay 5% or more 55% would pay 10% or more 27% would pay 15% or more 18% would pay 20% or more 10% would pay 25% or more
A recent study found that 57 percent of site visitors will bounce after waiting 3 seconds or less for a page to load. The visitors who remain on slow websites tend to do less during their stay: they view fewer pages, they download less, they spend less. In one well-known test, Microsoft slowed down its Bing site by two seconds, which led to a 4.3 percent loss in revenue per visitor. The results of this slowdown were so immediate and dramatic that Microsoft cut this test short.Aberdeen Group surveyed 160 companies and discovered that, on average, slowing down a site by just one second results in a 7 percent reduction in conversions. To express this in dollar terms, for a site that earns $100,000 a day, a one-second slowdown results in $2.5 million of lost revenue per year.Taking a more positive approach, last year Shopzillafamously sped up site, accelerating its average page load time from 6 seconds to 1.2 seconds. Without making any other outward changes to the site, Shopzilla experienced a 12 percent increase in revenue and a 25 percent increase in page views. Similarly, Amazon performed its own page speed optimization and announced that, for every 100 milliseconds of improvement, revenues increased by 1 percent.
Up until a few years ago, only a limited group of people contributed content to websites. Content was controlled by the web team. Now, with content management systems in place, everyone is a publisher. At the center of the graphic on the right, the policies for your content are defined by your internal guidelines (inappropriate language; confidential information), government regulations (ex. HIPAA) and industry standards (ex. The GBLA (Gramm Leach Billey Act) standard for the financial services industry). Around that, there are the venues for the content: websites, intranets, blogs, wiki’s, etc. There is much more to be concerned about than your public website. Finally, you have the different groups within the company that publish content: marketing, HR, finance, etc. Compliance is much more complicated now than when you launched your first web site. Content is changing every day so you must have a monitoring system in place to scan your site for problems. Compliance is not feasible with manual systems. Web content consists of much more than the text and graphics that appear on the page. There are documents attached to pages: PDF files, spreadsheets, etc.
Compliance is a complex problem that is best addressed through automation. It is not enough to manually check one’s site for problems and fix them as they are discovered. At HiSoftware, we believe that automation makes compliance repeatable, practical, and measurable:Repeatable – scans of the website are done on a periodic basis using documented criteria. Compliance is done throughout the content life cycle: in site development, site testing, and site deployment. It is not enough to check a site once for compliance when it is deployed as site content changes and compliance issues can arise. Practical – it takes about 20 minutes to manually check a page for compliance in accessibility, privacy, and site quality. It is much more practical to have an automated system and just deal with the compliance issues that are detected. Measurable – there is a saying in lean principles (“six sigma”, “black belt”), “that which gets measured gets improved”, which applies to compliance. Automating compliance creates data which can be analyzed to determine the organization’s performance on compliance over time. Senior management is particularly interested in this information.
Also called a Web bug or a pixel tag or a clear GIFGenerally, a Web beacon consists of a small string of software code that represents a graphic image request on a Web page or email. There may or may not be a visible graphic image associated with the Web beacon and often the image is designed to blend into the background of a Web page or email. Web beacons can be used for many purposes - including site traffic reporting, unique visitor counts, advertising auditing and reporting, and personalization. A significant majority of Web beacons collect only anonymous data. However, some may be used to collect PII, particularly in the case of email that contains a Web beacon. In such cases, the data collected through the Web beacon may be linked to the recipient's email address or other information identifying the recipient.
GeorgeKnox speaks
George Knox now facilitates the Questions part of the webinar.
Thanks to everyone for attending today and we hope this was a useful lesson in how automated tools for site quality can positively impact both your customer’s Web experience, but also your company’s bottom-line. [SHARE LIVE WEB CONTACT FORM NOW]I’m sure some of you may have more specific questions for our solutions team about your own site concerns, or how our solutions may apply, so I’m going to launch a quick form now—this is live and you are welcome to enter in your information, including any specific notes or questions. Once submitted, a rep will contact you as directed, or within 24 hours.[Thomas—you will need to leave this up for a few moments. Once you close the app window, it will disappear for all viewers.]