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Following documents are required reading materialsOne of the best ways to better understand Internet branding strategy is to study how companies are currently implementing the Internet into their overall marketing and branding plans. Thus, we will spend a significant portion of the class discussing the most recent developments in this area. It is crucial that you stay on top of these developments by reading offline and online publications that provide daily coverage of digital branding topics. You will have the opportunity to informally report on and discuss digital branding news that you find of interest. This discussion will consist of the entries that have been posted in the Canvas Community, and responses to those posts.Question: There is a prompt at the end of the RTM module. It specifies what you should post about. In general, I want your educated opinion on an issue relevant to the industry or a digital marketing project that is new, interests you and is relevant to the module we are discussing. Your entry should include a brief summary of the issue/project and your interpretation of it. This is the type of analysis that any new employee might be asked to attempt. Consider this as you research and write your entry.More details. Write professionally. Spell check. Use good sources, and cite them. Use links back to blogs and news sources that you use. Include multimedia where appropriate. Feel free to write in a conversational and informed style. Assume that people want to read your expert opinion. That is the style that most blogs use. reading_materials_websites_.docx reading.pdf Unformatted Attachment Preview 1.https://www.slideshare.net/Altimeter/report-realtime-marketing-the-agility-to-leverage-nowby-rebecca-lieb-jessica-groopman 2.https://www.skyword.com/contentstandard/ 3.https://www.skyword.com/contentstandard/ 4. https://www.targetmarketingmag.com/article/social-worked-southwest-airlines-got-new-heartground/all/ 5. https://adage.com/article/special-report-super-bowl/home-real-time-marketing-drunk/291455 6. https://www.thedrum.com/news/2015/07/04/brands-join-american-independence-daycelebrations-twitter 7. https://marketing.toolbox.com/article/starbucks-blows-great-marketing-opportunity-fromgame-of-thrones-gaffe 8. https://www.kansascity.com/sports/spt-columns-blogs/for-petes-sake/article232245957.html 9. https://mashable.com/2016/04/22/homebase-prince-tweet-fail/#XFuWn5YOCZqY 10. https://mashable.com/2016/04/21/prince-death-brands/#dgAflywNFEqI 11. https://adage.com/article/media/chevy-guy-a-hit/295655 12. https://adage.com/article/cmo-strategy/chevy-wraps-technology-stuff-publicitywindfall/295786 13. https://mashable.com/2016/11/09/airlines-hotel-election-day-deals/#x6mDes9GCSqE 14. http://www.themobileplaybook.com/en-us/ 15. https://www.appannie.com/en/ CREATING A CUSTOMER-FIRST WEB EXPERIENCE By Omar Akhtar, Analyst at Altimeter, a Prophet Company EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Although customers now interact with brands across many channels and devices, the brand website arguably has the biggest impact on the overall customer experience. This is because the website, (with the exception of maybe the mobile app,) is the only digital channel that can perform all three customer-facing functions of sales, service and marketing. It is also the first place a customer might encounter a brand, either through a serendipitous Google search result, or a targeted ad campaign. As a result, any brand that is hoping to compete on the basis of customer-experience can’t afford to have a sub-standard web experience. And a substandard web experience is one that is company-first, instead of customer-first. In this report, we’ve identified the five characteristics of a customer-first web experience. These defining features go beyond the usual elements of being mobile-optimized and visually appealing, which by now, should be table-stakes for modern websites. The characteristics we’ve identified meet the modern expectations of the digital customer experience. They are a product of the right people, processes and technology, and most importantly the right mindset. After all, a customer-first website can only be built by a customer-first company. Reading this report will help you identify where your company can improve in its efforts to design customer-centric web experiences, and the specific elements you need to make it happen. By following the initiatives outlined in the report, your company will not only deliver a great web experience, it will have set itself up for delivering the optimal customer experience across all digital touchpoints. TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction 3 Five Characteristics of A Customer First Website Key Elements for Building a Customer First Web Experience Essential People and Technology Platforms www.altimetergroup.com | @altimetergroup | info@altimetergroup.com 4 11 15 2 INTRODUCTION In the digital age, our expectations of a brand’s website have changed. Once just a static source of company information, the website is now a dynamic tool of customer engagement. Although customers now interact with brands in a multi-channel, multi-device environment, the company website arguably has the biggest impact on the digital customer experience. Here’s why: Search results lead to websites. While mobile apps and social media pages are increasingly popular points of brand-customer interactions, the website is far more likely to be the first point of contact. This is because the vast majority of internet navigation is people searching for answers to questions, or solutions to problems. Since search engines are built to find websites, it makes sense that they would be the first place a person interacts with a brand. By effectively being responsible for the first impression of a brand, websites have an outsized impact on customer experience. Websites can perform all customer-facing tasks. With the exception of the mobile app, the brand website is the only digital channel where every type of customer interaction can take place. Whether it’s learning more about a product/brand, making a purchase, or getting customer support, a customer can do it all without having to leave the company’s website. That’s why sales, service and marketing departments all have a stake in providing the best possible web experience. In fact, it’s difficult to imagine a customer journey that doesn’t in some way involve a visit to the company website, making it a crucial part of the customer experience. Websites are the home of content. A great customer experience is the result of a brand being able to provide the customer with the right content, at the right time, and on the right channel. To do this, companies could give each digital channel its own set of stored content, but it’s far more efficient to have all the content in a central location (i.e. the website) to be distributed on different channels as needed. For example, a brand could separately upload a how-to video for one of its products on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, or it could simply upload it once to its website and distribute the link on different channels. In this way, not only is it easier to publish and distribute content at scale, it provides a central view of how the content is performing. Given how content can be used to optimize customer interactions at every touchpoint, the place where it is stored, i.e. the website becomes the core of the customer experience. www.altimetergroup.com | @altimetergroup | info@altimetergroup.com 3 FIVE CHARACTERISTICS OF A CUSTOMER-FIRST WEBSITE Given the outsize role websites play in shaping the customer experience, brands competing in the digital age can’t afford to build sub-par web experiences. And a sub-par web experience is one that is company-first, instead of customer-first. Most brands don’t set out to build a company-first web experience, yet they end up there by following the old norms of web design and putting business objectives before customer needs. To build a truly customer-first website, companies must transform the way they design web experiences in the following five ways. . FIGURE 1 Key Differences Between a Company First and A Customer-First Web Experience Company-First Web Experience Customer-First Web Experience The content is organized by department or product category The content is organized by questions the visitor is trying to answer or problems they are trying to solve Presentation The content is generic, and not always relevant to the visitor’s specific reason for visiting Relevance The content is personalized for each visitor, or category of visitor by different factors, including location, past behavior, or entry point The brand message and visual representation is consistent across all pages and devices The brand message and visual representation varies across departments, sections and devices Brand Experience Navigation is designed to be intuitive and with minimal movement between pages and sections Navigation is designed to be linear, not omni-directional, with too many clicks to access information Navigation The web-copy is concise, easy to understand, and reflects the language used by the customer, not the company The web-copy is jargon-filled, overly promotional and not reflective of the customer Copy/Language www.altimetergroup.com | @altimetergroup | info@altimetergroup.com 4 PRESENTATION: Focus on Solutions, Not Products The majority of websites today are built to showcase the company and its products/services. This makes sense from a business point of view. You want to be able to convince a site visitor that your company has the product they are looking for, or entice them to buy a product simply by displaying it in the most attractive way. However, this assumes that customers interact with websites the same way they interact with brick-and-mortar stores, which is “see product, buy product.” But in the digital world, customers aren’t always visiting a website to buy a product. They are however, always looking for a solution to a problem. A solution-focused website anticipates the problem each visitor is trying to solve when they come to website and serves them the relevant content. By displaying their products or company information first, companies are making their customers do the extra work of finding the solution, rather than anticipating their unique needs and recommending a solution to them. For example, when the City of Boston redesigned its homepage, it went from a layout that grouped content by departments to one that organized content by themes or problems people were trying to solve. These themes were based on questions people were trying to answer, such as “Visiting Boston,” “Trash and Recycling” and “Getting Around in Boston.” Each theme had its own page which pulled in content from different departments in a way that provided all the information in one place. In this way, the site brought the relevant information to the people, rather than making them work to get it. “There’s a big difference between making something available, and making something accessible,” said City of Boston’s Chief Digital Officer Lauren Lockwood, who led the team that redesigned the site.“Our key was that if someone is searching for a topic, they need to land on one page that has everything they need on it, rather than go searching across the website for different bits of info.” FIGURE 2 The City of Boston’s Redesigned Site Focuses on Themes, not Departments www.altimetergroup.com | @altimetergroup | info@altimetergroup.com 5 RELEVANCE: Content is Personalized, Not Generic Customers now expect to be recognized as individuals when they go to websites they’ve visited before. Personalization plays a big part in the digital customer experience. In fact, 74\% of consumers will get frustrated and leave a website if they feel the content (ads, promotions, articles) are not relevant to their interests. They expect at least some level of personalized content that makes them feel like the company is catering to their specific needs. Examples of effective personalization include changing background images to more closely match the profile of the site visitor, or the website popping up personalized offers or deals depending on the products you are browsing. The simplest form of personalization is content that is specific to a geography, and in its most sophisticated form, site visitors see content based on their individual behaviors, rather than what they look like (demographic information) or where they are located. Burton, a London-based menswear retailer adopted a strategy of showing different products on its homepage based on the local weather being experienced by the site visitor. It dedicated a single tile on the webpage to rotate between three different images, each one related to the local weather the visitor was experiencing. The images were a graphic of showing the temperature and weather conditions, an image of the recommended product, and an image of a model wearing the recommended product. For example, if the visitor’s location was experiencing snow, Burton would show peacoats or Christmas sweaters. If it was rainy, visitors would see jackets and rainboots. As a result, the company saw 11.6\% uplift in conversions across all users. FIGURE 3: Burton Shows Website Visitors Different Product Images Based on Local Weather Although personalization has its advantages, it won’t work without transparency. Consumers will tolerate their data being used to serve them personalized offers as long as the value they get in return far exceeds the value of what they give up. And, the company must explain just exactly what data they are using and how. More than 60\% of consumers want to know why, what, and how websites select content personalized for them. Figure 3 shows the levels of personalization that can be used to provide relevant experiences for web visitors. www.altimetergroup.com | @altimetergroup | info@altimetergroup.com 6 FIGURE 4: Data Requirements for Each Level of Web Personalization BY COUNTRY Personalizing content by country is the most basic form of personalization, and only requires basic web analytics data in order to execute. Simply translating the copy on the site to match the language of the visitor’s country can yield powerful results . BY LOCAL AREA Personalization at this level allows brands to tailor content according to local weather, events and culture. Basic geo-location data can be used to execute at this level BY DEMOGRAPHIC Personalization is now based on what the customer looks like, instead of where they are. This is more granular than location but harder to base on digital data, which is much more focused on behavior rather than appearance BY DIGITAL BEHAVIOR Demographics are good but online behavioral data is even better for personalized content. Brands can serve customers different content based on how they came to the site, and the pages they visited, increasing relevance and engagement BY RECOGNIZED INDIVIDUAL Once brands can unify anonymous behavior data with known individual customer data (e.g. through a login or form fill), content can be individually customized for each individual, providing a curated, unique experience on a one-to-one basis . www.altimetergroup.com | @altimetergroup | info@altimetergroup.com 7 BRAND EXPERIENCE: The Brand is Consistent Across Sections and Devices Customers don’t care which department of a brand they are interacting with. To them, there is only one brand, and they want a consistent experience whenever they engage with it. It’s important to remember that the website is not the standalone property it used to be. It is merely a single touchpoint out of many that brands use to communicate with the customer. Gone are the days when the only way to access a website was to type in a URL or search for it on Google. Now, customers can choose between email, social media, mobile apps and in-store visits when they want to engage a brand. It’s entirely possible that each one of those channels has been developed and maintained by different parts of the organization. That’s why it’s essential that the experience across all these channels remains consistent. This includes tone of voice, branding, use of images and consistent information. A consistent experience isn’t just aesthetically pleasing. It’s essential to consumer trust. A McKinsey survey found that customers trusted banks that were in the top quartile of delivering consistent customer journeys 30\% more than banks in the bottom quartile. That’s why it’s important to look at the web experience not as a singular touchpoint, but part of a continuous, holistic experience. “You expect consistency when you talk to a company,” says Arjan Van Rooijen, Chief Evangelist at customer-experience technology company SDL. “Whether you’re in a native app on your phone, or if you go to a website, or call a call center, it should be completely consistent in terms of any type of content.” Van Rooijen added, “You should also be able to stitch different sessions across different devices, people get annoyed having to redo the same action just because you’re on your iPad and no longer on your PC.” www.altimetergroup.com | @altimetergroup | info@altimetergroup.com 8 NAVIGATION: Minimal, Seamless Navigation Across Sections Most website content is organized by company department. Once again, this assumes that customers navigate websites the way they way would navigate a physical store, by going to different sections to browse, purchase or get service on an item. In reality, customers want to be able to do everything online with as little navigation as possible. If they have to keep clicking on the brand’s logo in the top left corner to get back to the homepage and start their navigation over, it can be a frustrating and disruptive experience. Customer-first websites anticipate these needs and design customer interactions so that everything can be done in one place. For example, Amazon allows you to return an item directly from your order list by clicking on a single visible link. You don’t have to first scroll all the way down to the bottom of the page to look for “returns” or “support” and then follow additional steps such as entering your order number or receipt. The entire process is self contained and intuitive. And it means the customer can spend less time searching for information, and more time focusing on the value of the products and the brand. At data storage company NetApp, improving site navigation meant optimizing movement between the company’s four different customer facing sites, which were Product, Support, Sales and Community, each of which were built and managed by different teams. The desire for this came directly from customer usability tests. “When we asked customers what they wanted in a digital experience, they said they want it to be connected, to be consistent and for the information to all be in one place,” says Zann Aeck, Digital Experience Director at NetApp. “I wanted to pull together folks and say our customers are hurting, and we’re doing a disservice to prospects who are researching us. We need to start anticipating their needs.” As a solution, Aeck worked with the heads of all the different departments to create a universal header and footer that helped visitors move seamlessly between different functions, without relying on bookmarks. This was the simplest way they could bridge silos within the website without having to do a complete site redesign. The team also revamped all the product pages so that they applied to all stages of the customer lifecycle, not just marketing. “Seeing all of us working together for the visitor is just really gratifying,” says Aeck. “It makes you realizes that silos are not real, they’re just habit.” “Seeing all of us working together for the visitor is just really gratifying, it makes you realize that silos are not real, they’re just habit” - Zann Aeck, Digital Experience Director, NetApp www.altimetergroup.com | @altimetergroup | info@altimetergroup.com 9 COPY: Replace Jargon with Common Language Customer-first websites use language that is concise, and reflects the way customers talk in everyday life. But company-first websites use language that reflects how people at the company talk. It’s filled with jargon, obscure references and overly complex terms which might be popular internally, but can leave customers scratching their heads. This happens because subject-matter experts within the company are usually tasked with writing copy relevant to their expertise. This makes sense from a practical standpoint. However, subject-matter experts are also more likely to use complex language, while expecting everyone else to understand what they’re talking about, since they’ve been involved in the subject for so long. At the City of Boston, Lockwood employed a copywriter to simplify all the text on Boston.gov, bringing it down to an 8th or 9th grade reading level. According to Lockwood, even simple changes of phrases made a difference. “Public works wanted to use the word ‘garbage’ but research showed that people who visited the site were more likely to use the word ‘trash’” says Lockwood. Getting subject-matter experts to agree to be edited can be challenging, but as Lockwood puts it, “Data wins a lot of arguments. www.altimetergroup.com | @altimetergroup | i ... Purchase answer to see full attachment