Disruption Tour --- Run To Survive

Publisher 2.0 If Your Users Fail, Your Website Fails, Regardless Of Intent Or Design Posted: 05 Jun 2008 09:24 PM CDT On the web, in the age of Google, design has no margin of error, and there are no stupid users, only inadequate designs. Those were the main points of my critique of newspaper websites generally, and WashingtonPost.com in particular, which to be fair, apply to all online publishers, and really any website. I’m writing another post on this same topic because the issue is so fundamental to the future of media, news, publishing, and journalism, that it really can’t be over-emphasized or over-clarified. In print, a design flaw is unlikely to cause a reader to abandon a newspaper or magazine entirely — they are a largely captive audience. But it will cause them to abandon a website. Google understands this better than any web company, which is why they are the most successful. Google is obsessed with making sure its users never fail, no matter how “stupid” they are. Google makes users feel smart. That’s why they keep coming back. Invariably, when I write about a negative experience with a website, e.g. Twitter or WashingtonPost.com, someone puts forth what I call the “stupid user” argument — essentially, I failed because I’m a stupid user. And if I were a better user, I would have been more successful with the site. For example, I discovered that WashingtonPost.com has a local version of its homepage, which it displays to logged in users. Creating different versions of a site for different users is web-savvy. If I had been logged in, I would have found the content I was looking for on the homepage. That’s all good, and much to their credit. Unfortunately, I never log in to WashingtonPost.com, although I read it frequently. Therefore, the “stupid user” argument goes, the failure to find the content I wanted was my fault. Here’s the problem — my failure to find the information I wanted is not MY problem, because I went to Google and found it. I succeeded. The failure is the site’s problem, because I abandoned it and went instead to a site that would help me succeed without having to be smarter. WashingtonPost.com and, to be fair, most other sites that require registration assume that users will register to help the site achieve its goals, whether customizing content or targeting advertising. But users don’t care about the site’s goals. They care about THEIR OWN goals. Nowhere on WashingtonPost.com’s homepage do I see clear a message that registering or logging in will help me achieve MY goals. There’s a link to the Washington version of the homepage in the upper right corner, which has the best of intentions, but because I didn’t find it, it might as well not exist. This is why Google rules the web. In Google’s world, the user is always right. Google knows that if users fail at their task, they will abandon Google in a heartbeat. Google’s dominance is EARNED, with every search, every click. I saw Google’s Marissa Mayer give a talk at Web 2.0 a few years back about Google page load times — the talk had a narrowly focused, OCD quality to it. It was weird on the face of it. But this is how Google wins. By obsessing over user experience above all else. This is also why Google punishes advertisers who try to trick users or provide a poor user experience. Because it reflects poorly on Google. And users don’t come back. A commenter argued that I should have asked the Washington Post for a comment before publishing a critiquing of their site. My response was that in an analysis of a user experience with a web site, the publisher’s intent DOESN’T MATTER. Web users are utterly unforgiving. If it doesn’t work the way I want, I’m gone in a click. There is no other side to the story. That’s brutal and, as the commenter asserted, rude and irresponsible. It just doesn’t seem fair. But it’s also the reality of the web. Google understands this. If publishers want to compete, they need to accept this reality, swallow their pride, and realize that the user experience is EVERYTHING. Design on the web is not about ideals — all that matters is whether the user succeeds. Before the web, having great content was enough. The irony of my critique of WashingtonPost.com is that it wasn’t a critique of content. They had GREAT content, when I actually found it — there weren’t really any editorial shortcomings. The critique had much more to do with software design than with editorial quality or judgment. News organizations need to add software user interface design to their core competencies. Lesson for publishers: The web is more about applications than publications. This is why it’s so damaging for news organizations to apply the standards of print publishing for design, content, and experience — they simply don’t apply on the web. The reality is that designers didn’t necessarily know if they were successful in print, because people kept subscribing to the newspaper anyway. But on the web, success or failure is evident with every click. Perhaps the biggest problem is that user interface and user experience design are HARD. Even the best designer can’t always anticipate what users will do — or fail to do. Sites need to create a continuous feedback loop with users and improve their design and user experience over time. WashingtonPost.com’s homepage has a far better design than many other newspaper websites, but its relative merits didn’t matter for my specific use case. And to be clear, helping users succeed isn’t about pandering. My goal in going to WashingtonPost.com, as it frequently is, could be to find out what’s going on in the world. How I determine whether I’ve succeeded can be much more a function of the quality of editing and content. But when I want specific information, my criteria are far more narrow, and much more unforgiving. According to usability guru Jakob Nielsen, web users are actually getting MORE hyper-focused and. unforgiving To remain relevant as a destination, news sites need to help me achieve ALL my objectives ALL of the time. Just like Google.

Web users 'getting more selfish'

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7417496.stm

Nielsen: "Search engines rule the web" Web users are getting more ruthless and selfish when they go online, reveals research. The annual report into web habits by usability guru Jakob Nielsen shows people are becoming much less patient when they go online. Instead of dawdling on websites many users want simply to reach a site quickly, complete a task and leave. Most ignore efforts to make them linger and are suspicious of promotions designed to hold their attention. Search rules Instead, many are "hot potato" driven and just want to get a specific task completed. Success rates measuring whether people achieve what they set out to do online are now about 75%, said Dr Nielsen. In 1999 this figure stood at 60%. There were two reasons for this, he said. "The designs have become better but also users have become accustomed to that interactive environment," Dr Nielsen told BBC News. Now, when people go online they know what they want and how to do it, he said. Beating Google requires someone to do search better This makes them very resistant to highlighted promotions or other editorial choices that try to distract them. "Web users have always been ruthless and now are even more so," said Dr Nielsen. "People want sites to get to the point, they have very little patience," he said. "I do not think sites appreciate that yet," he added. "They still feel that their site is interesting and special and people will be happy about what they are throwing at them." Web users were also getting very frustrated with all the extras, such as widgets and applications, being added to sites to make them more friendly. Such extras are only serving to make pages take longer to load, said Dr Nielsen. There has also been a big change in the way that people get to the places where they can complete pressing tasks, he said. In 2004, about 40% of people visited a homepage and then drilled down to where they wanted to go and 60% use a deep link that took them directly to a page or destination inside a site. In 2008, said Dr Nielsen, only 25% of people travel via a homepage. The rest search and get straight there. "Basically search engines rule the web," he said. But, he added, this did not mean that the search engines were doing a perfect job. "When you watch people search we often find that people fail and do not get the results they were looking for," he said. "In the long run anyone who wants to beat Google just has to make a better search," said Dr Nielsen.

Does the Web Inspire Consumers to Buy?

emarketer.com

MAY 20, 2008

Or does it suggest what they could buy?

Although adult consumers in the US use the Internet to research and discover new products, it is usually not the key factor in final purchasing decisions, according to the Pew Internet & American Life Project's newly released "The Internet and Consumer Choice" study.

Pew surveyed consumers about how they discovered various products. Of respondents who bought music in the prior year, 83% found out about music from the radio, TV or in a movie. Nearly two-thirds followed the advice of friends, family members or co-workers. More than one-half said they went to band Web sites or streamed song samples.

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However, when it came to actually choosing what to buy, only 12% of music purchasers surveyed said that online information had a major impact on their decision.

"The Internet is a tactical tool for shoppers who use it in product research, and usually not a game-changer in people's purchasing decisions," said John B. Horrigan, associate director at Pew, in a statement. "Its impacts show up in efficiencies in the search process. Even for a digital product such as music, people more often than not buy in stores, not online."

Pew also surveyed US adult Internet users about how online information affected decision making for mobile phone and real estate purchases.

The Internet had a greater impact on those decisions, at rates of 27% and 23%, respectively. About three-quarters of respondents who purchased mobile phones or real estate in the past year said the Internet had at most a minor impact on their purchasing decisions.

Just because online information does not affect most consumers' buying decisions does not mean they are not interested in that information.

More than nine out of 10 online shoppers surveyed who eventually purchased in brick-and-mortar stores used the Internet to research their purchases, according to STORES Magazine's "Favorite 50" study, sponsored by Microsoft and conducted in October 2007 by BIGresearch.

Top E-Commerce Complaint: Web Images That Don't Look Like The Product

E-Commerce customers have several complaints about online buying, but the top concerns are Web images that don't match the real thing and sites that make it difficult to easily ask any questions, according to a late March Opinion Research Web survey of 1,092 consumers. The complain about "receiving an item that doesn't look anything like it did on the Internet" was the top concern at 24 percent, but "not being able to speak to anyone to answer questions" was also right up there, the choice of 23 percent of participants. Rounding out the complaints was "learning that items are back-ordered or out of stock after they are in the cart" (19 percent), "Web sites that malfunction as the payment is being processed" (14 percent), "an unclear return policy" (8 percent), "unclear shipping information" (6 percent) and "not getting an acknowledgment after the order has been placed" (6 percent). Read more.

An industry wake-up call

imediaconnection.com

By Terri Seligman

 

for more of the article...

With legislators once again raising consumers' fears about their online privacy, the industry needs to prepare for possible fall out.

For several years, websites, ad servers and marketing companies have been tracking the online activity of millions of internet users. These companies compile and analyze this information, and then use it to help advertisers deliver ads to those most likely to be interested in their product or service. Most consumers may not have been aware that their online activities were being monitored and analyzed -- until now.

Consumer and privacy groups are challenging online targeted advertising, usually claiming that websites and advertisers should not be able to track online activity without providing notice to consumers and getting consumers' consent. Privacy advocates are also worried about the possibility that companies will combine anonymous online data with personally identifiable data, which seems increasingly likely as more marketing and database companies merge. 

Can m-Commerce Kill the Retail Industry?

http://disruptivewireless.blogspot.com/2008/04/is-m-commerce-about-to-kill-retail.html

Dean Bubley

Interesting post here, about the possibility for shoppers to arbitrage pricing while in-store, by texting a numerical product code to Amazon (AMZN) and seeing if they can get a discount.

Funnily enough, I actually registered a bunch of URLs in 2001 such as mobilecomparisons.com, in the expectation that this type of technology would emerge. I got bored waiting in about 2005, and let them lapse.

I can see some big advantages in this particular case - notably that it's Amazon, with whom many people already have an account via the PC (I can't imagine wanting to set up a new account on the phone), and who are also the masters of the logistical side. It's also good that it bypasses the operator (who would otherwise want to add their own margin to the price, probably negating the benefit). And it's certainly good that it charges to your credit card rather than your mobile bill.

On the other hand, even without any knowledge of the retail industry, I can think of numerous ways that this can be circumvented from the retailer's point of view:

• Work out an explicit value for "instant gratification" and make sure the Amazon discount doesn't cover it.
• Negotiate with your suppliers for slightly customised versions of products that aren't available through other channels, and which therefore have a unique UPC code or barcode that Amazon doesn't have access to.
• Put a sticker over the UPC code with a proprietary product tag only recognisable by the checkout system.
• Offer different "Get it now!" and "Free delivery tomorrow" prices for goods.
• Offering complex product bundles described on shelves & assessed at checkout ("Price of camera + memory card = $200", or even just "Buy one get one free").

I also think that some of the notions about always-on ubiquitous mobile broadband are over-optimistic, even though the US is now a bit of a special case because of 700MHz' reach. Verizon's (VZ) C-Block is 2 x 11MHz - and I'll leave it to a more techy-minded reader to work out the likely "Mb/s per square mile" based on density of cell sites, sectors/cell, frequency use & a bunch of other technical innovations like beamforming. But I'm pretty sure it's going to struggle to get to (let's say) an aggregate 1GB/s per square mile, which will then have to service all simultaneous users. Femtocells could help, but probably not in a retail environment.

Sure, the mobile web user experience will get a lot better with improved devices/browsers, and 3G/4G/WiMAX/white-space/band-sharing technologies. I can see evolutions of this technology with barcode (or even just product) photos being interpreted.

However, I can't see m-commerce killing retail, even though it may shake it up a bit, in the same fashion that PC-based Amazon already has.

e-Commerce Set to Soar in 2008

Seekingalpha.com

We spend a lot of time at ChannelAdvisor following the various datapoints and thoughts around e-commerce. Yesterday Forrester research (Sucharita Mulpuru is the analyst) came out with a joint report/survey with the great folks at Shop.org (I/we are an active member FYI).

The headlines of the report are good news for internet retailers:

• Forrester sees e-commerce growing at 17% y/y in the U.S. (This is good because comscore is starting to talk about 14% and maybe lower). I'm an optimist and think that in early 2009 the pundits will update the data to be more like 20%.
• This puts e-commerce at $208 billion for 2008, up from $174 billion in 2007.
• E-commerce represents 7% of retail.
• Search engine marketing (what I call paid-search) drove 35% of sales and is still the top channel for retailers.
• 65% of retailers are experimenting with social networks.
• Forrester is predicting that growth will be driven by the computer, CE, auto and apparel categories.
• Retailers spend $.50/click on average for paid-search and see $8.47 in incremental revenue. (That's a weird metric)

I downloaded the report and what's neat is that shop.org/Forrester are finally seeing and reporting on the multi e-commerce channel trends we've been talking about for years. For example, they have this figure from the survey section that covers the top channels for retailers (note these would be larger retailers, primarily with brick-and-mortar operations as well I would assume):

click to enlarge

Another interesting datapoint from the survey is that they asked retailers for a variety of e-commerce channels what the cost per order for the channel is and the average selling price. I've found that most retailers like to look at channel costs either as an ROAS (return on ad spend) or an 'Effective Take Rate' [ETR], which is more of a cost of sales kind of model which helps for margin-planning/forecasting. So I took the Forrester data and splatted it into a spreadsheet to calculate the ETR. I also added eBay (EBAY) and Amazon (AMZN) as marketplaces with their ETRs, and ordered the channels from lowest ETR to highest. This is the result: (Amazon/eBay are highlighted to indicate I added them)

Since this blog is targeted to primarily smaller retailers that are on-eBay/Amazon and going multi-channel, this is an interesting set of data. The good news is if you are on eBay/Amazon, you are already in two of the most efficient channels out there. If you add affiliate (I haven't seen many SMBs successful with this), SEO and email, you have most of the lower-cost channels around.

The only datapoint on here that looks unusual to me is the CSE data. Usually we would see this more in line with paid-search, so I'm going to go look at our data and see if there's anything noteworthy there. Not to toot our own horn here, but my guess is the retailers surveyed aren't watching their CSE programs very closely or using ShoppingAdvisor to optimize their CSE channel.

If you'd like to learn more, there are several news items out covering the report:

American Airlines Wi-Fi Provider Gets the Go-Ahead for In-Flight Internet

Add some punch to that plane ride The FAA has granted Aircell, the in-flight internet access provider for American Airlines and Virgin America, the permits necessary to launch online wi-fi service in the sky. According to Ars Technica, Aircell may deploy its technology on any aircraft deemed fit to use it, including American Airlines' Boeing 767-200 transcontinental fleet and certain crafts operated by Virgin America. American Airlines has not commented on how much the service will cost, and no launch date has been set. The topic of bringing wi-fi to the in-flight experience has permeated airlines since last year.

A New Tool From Google Alarms Sites

Click here for more of the NYTimes article...

By BOB TEDESCH

 Retailers and publishers have fought hard to work their way up in the ranking of Google’s search results and refine the search features of their own Web sites to help users once they arrive. Now, Google is taking a greater role in helping users search within particular sites. And some of the same retailers and publishers are not happy about it.

 

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Andrew Shurtleff for The New York Times

A second box, originated by Google, pops up when a search is conducted for some companies’ Internet sites.

Enlarge This Image

Andrew Shurtleff for The New York Times

Alan Rimm-Kaufman, an Internet consultant, said Google might be asked at times to turn off a new feature.

This month, the company introduced a search-within-search feature that lets users stay on Google to find pages on popular sites like those of The Washington Post, Wikipedia, The New York Times, Wal-Mart and others. The search box appears when someone enters the name of certain Web addresses or company names — say, “Best Buy” — rather than entering a request like “cellphones.”

The results of the search are almost all individual company pages. Google tops those results with a link to the home page of the Web site in question, adds another search box, and offers users the chance to let Google search for certain things within that site.

The problem, for some in the industry, is that when someone enters a term into that secondary search box, Google will display ads for competing sites, thereby profiting from ads it sells against the brand. The feature also keeps users searching on Google pages and not pages of the destination Web site.

Analysts generally praise the

Spotlight Feature: Practicing Safe E-Commerce

Despite the overwhelming success of e-commerce, there are still
consumers out there too terrified to click their cart through a virtual
check-out. Are they just a silly-nilly group, nutty as a bunch of
conspiracy theorists? Or are the rest of us just too naïve to get it?
Neither, it turns out.
http://www.ecommercetimes.com/story/61755.html