Web 2.0

Me-too brochureware banking

Take a look at this template.  Header and navigation at the top, large hero to the left, with three product panels beneath.   Log-in to account is on the right with information on security and help beneath.  If you want to be an information architect for a bank, it would appear this is all you need.  This is your cookie cutter to success.

Webpage tempalate

Don’t believe me?  Start with Lloyds TSB.

Lloyds TSB homepage with overlay

Yep, that seems to fit.  how about Halifax.  Almost the same grid being used there.

Halifax with template overlay

Can’t be coincidence can it?  Let’s look at HSBC… There’s the hero again. And the three content boxes. And internet banking on the right.

HSBC homepage with overlay

This is getting a bit repetitive.  What about Santander?

Santander homepage with overlay

There’s a pattern going on here. Looks like they are all at it! Does any other industry segment from such ‘me-too’ism? If it was the right model to be using it wouldn’t be so bad, but their consistency is around consistency of what they do. No-one is really thinking about the customer and what they want. Barclays gets close, but there’s little in the way of understanding customer needs and goals. Little to support customer journeys. It’s all about the Bank, with Products and Services. And Access your accounts on-line! (And ‘We’re so complicated we need help on our home page’). And if everyone else does it obviously we are doing The Right Thing. Does this matter? Isn’t there a better way to design a bank’s brochureware pages?  I’m looking for examples.  I fear I’ll be looking for a while.

Bank home pages all the same

Follow fast

I’ll pick on a random industry. Let’s say you are an airline. Part of your digital strategy includes a refresh to your website (maybe you were inspired by this presentation I did a while ago on digital for airlines!). You’ve built a business case and secured funding for the project.  First things first, you get a design agency in and set them to work.

Some sort of competitor analysis is performed that proabably includes features and functions that “we like”, (for example ‘the tactile sliders in kayak.com. We like!  And an iPhone-like coverflow, got to have one of those…)

The information architect takes these ideas away and starts building wireframes and the creative team produce designs that bring these wires to life.  The team come up with lots of new, innovative ideas.  This is after all a ‘refresh’, and ‘innovation’ was probably one of the words in the brief.  The creative is fresh and ‘of the moment’, the IA has developed some new interaction models that are unique and compelling.  The business is sold on a new, innovative way of interacting with their customers, something that no one else does and will blow all their competitors away.

I’ve been bouncing ideas around with Luke Barrett (and because he doesn’t blog, I’ll write them down for him) around this approach; specifically the value of innovation against ‘follow fast’.

Luke reminded me of a project we worked on together many years ago. Before we started designing webpages we did usability testing. We did usability testing of the competitors, and of sites that were getting a lot of press as ‘innovative’.  This was at a time that boo.com had just started and the client were talking about how cool an avatar would be on their site, just like boo. We put people in front of boo.com and watched them suffer. Clearly the avatar was an idea good on paper, terrible on execution.  So we killed it.  Not on our site.

We observed what worked and what didn’t on a multitude of sites with real users. Then, like magpies, we took what was good and worked. Nothing particularly innovative, (let other people do that), we took the best of what existed and delivered on that.

So back to our airline. How about a different approach where they start by usability testing their competitors. Ask participants to book tickets on competitor websites. Understand what interaction elements work, what don’t.

Those kayak sliders, cool for geeks (maybe), but how about the target audience that flies and buys online with you?  It may not be cutting edge design, but Does a drop down work better?

The coverflow may be cool on your iPhone, but how successful is it for people seeking a holiday?  A static list has worked for websites till now (and it wasn’t so long ago that horizontal scrolling was the Great Taboo), just because Apple do something that looks cool for a particular purpose on their products, doesn’t mean you have to follow by scrapping your navigation.

There are no prizies for (design) innovation (other than for some award that the design agency may covet). The only metric that counts is conversion rates and the ability of the website to deliver the business case. Leave others to do the crazy innovation stuff, let others go through the dip when they launch new features, make sure you have got the platform and expertise right and be ready to follow fast.

Are you prepared for the dip?

So you are refreshing or rebuilding your website.  You are introducing new functionality and features, and sweeping away the old. You’ve done usability testing of your new concepts and the results are positive.  Success awaits.   You go live.   And it doesn’t quite go as you expected.  You expect that the numbers and feedback will go on an upward trajectory from day one, but they don’t.  What you should have expected is the dip.

Illustration of the dip

In October 2009 Facebook redesigned the news feed.  Users were up in arms, groups were formed and noisy negative feedback was abound.  A couple of years back the BBC redesigned their newspage, “60% of commenters hated the BBC News redesign“.  Resistance to change is almost always inevitable,  especially if you have a vocal and loyal following, you can expect much dissent to be heard.  What is interesting is what happens next.  Hold your nerve and you will get over this initial dip.  We’ve seen a number of projects recently where this phenomenon occurred; numbers drop and negative feedback is loudly heard.  But this dip is ephemeral and to be expected.  The challenge is in planning for this and setting expectations accordingly.  Telling your CEO that the new design has resulted in a drop in conversion rate is going to be a painful conversation unless you have set her expectations that this is par for the course.

Going live in a beta can help avert the full impact of the dip.  You can iron out issues and prepare your most loyal people for the change, inviting them to feedback prior to the go-live.  Care must be taken with such an approach in the sample selection o participate in the beta.  If you invite people to ‘try out our new beta’, with the ability to switch back to the existing site, you are likely to get invalid results.  The ‘old’ version is always available and baling out is easy.  Maybe they take a look and drop out, returning to the old because they can.  Suddenly you find the conversion rates of your beta falling well below those of your main site.  Alternatively use A/B testing and filter a small sample to experience the new site.  That way you will get ‘real’ and representative data to make informed decisions against.  Finally, don’t assume that code-complete and go-live are the end of the project.  Once you are over the dip there will be changes that you can make to enhance the experience and drive greater numbers and better feedback.

Who do you beleive?

Only Five Percent Of Readers Would Pay For Online News. (Sep 20, 2009)

16 November two new reports come out simultaneously.

Research from Boston Consulting Group suggests that as many as 48% of British and American consumers would be willing to pay a few pounds a month for online news.

According to a new Forrester survey, almost 80% of Internet users in the US and Canada would not be willing to pay for access to newspaper and magazine websites (via readwriteweb).

So 5%, 20% or 52% of people will pay for online newspaper content.  Or maybe 12%. And Murdoch is going to “rewrite the economics of newspapers” based upon that kind of customer insight?  It is going to be interesting to watch.

The application is irrelvent

We get confused when building applications; the technology should be incidental to delivering the experience, it should be the means rather than the end. Sadly both IT and marketeers usually don’t see it this way.

I was recently working with a telco who were running a campaign for a single application that sits on a Symbian phone and gives the user access to all their mobile services (rather than having to access them individually via the mobile web). This is not unusual, organisations marketing the technology rather than the benefit or the experience. The technology should be incidental to what you are selling.

It is hard to put it better than what Duncan Cragg writes

“What most people want on their mobiles is not the applications, but the stuff they animate.

People only accept the concept of applications (whether a native app or a Web app) because that’s all they’ve been offered, and it’s largely good enough. But no-one actually wants to download and launch and register and log in to a local find-your-friends application – they just want to find their friends in the area – now! And they shouldn’t then have to flip between the find-your-friends map owned by that application and the restaurant review map owned by another.

They don’t want Facebook videos and YouTube videos and phone videos. They just want to share videos. They shouldn’t have to think about whether to send a picture by MMS or to use an upload app, after remembering the login. They don’t want multiple ways of sending messages: IM, SMS, Twitter, Facebook, etc. They shouldn’t have to think about how to tell their friends about some news item – whether to post a TinyURL link on Twitter or copy the text manually into Facebook.

They only want one shared calendar, not the phone calendar and a Google calendar and events on Upcoming.org, that need two more logins. They shouldn’t have to think about how to synchronise music or contacts lists on the phone, the iPod, the PC, some memory card and online. “

He goes on to introduce the ‘U-Web’ Mobile 2.0 platform. This is exciting stuff and well worth a read. The challenge is not just about the IT industry getting excited about U-Web, the drive needs to also come from marketeers focussing upon “what” experience they want the customer to enjoy rather than “how” it will be delivered. They shouldn’t be distracted by the application that the experience will be delivered through, they should focus on delighting the customer and driving value to the organisation.

Web 2.0 is far from dead

Web 2.0 is anything but dead. The term is no longer necessary as its concepts become ubiquitous.

So Web 2.0 is in terminal decline according to this TechCrunch article. The basis of this statement is anecdotal and from Google Trends which show a declining use of the term ‘Web 2.0’ in google searches. This tells us nothing, indeed I’d almost suggest that it is an indication of the health of Web 2.0. As it becomes ubiquitous people no-longer need to use the term. Do a similar trend search for ‘eCommerce’ and you will see a similar decline in that term and no-one is suggesting that business on the internet is in decline.

Web 2.0 was always a catch-all term for a number of concepts. If you look at ‘social media‘ in Google Insights you will see that term on an upward trajectory (interestingly the area that is driving the greatest worldwide search traffic for that term is Singapore – anything to do with the Power of Influence?) Web2.0 as a term may be in decline, but everything it stands for – community, rich interactivity, new business models – I don’t see these things dying.

Are you listening to your customers?

Dear CxO,

Looking for free market research and customer intelligence? Look no further than Twitter.

You may not care about social networking, you may think that Web 2.0 is not relevant to your business. But that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t care what your customers are saying. You may choose to ignore it, but people are out there talking about you; praising you, foul-mouthing you. Go to Twitter Search, type in your company name and see what your customers really think of you.

Twitter will be bigger than porn

I started using the internet in 1991, I returned home from my first term at university buzzing about this thing that allowed me to talk to people the other side of the world in open conversations and to send ‘electronic’ mail to folk who were also connected. And it was all free. My friends back home weren’t convinced or impressed, “Yeah but someone’s got to pay for it… I don’t see the point of it… whatever”. So I buzzed on Usenet news and ELM and Gopher in my university bubble and the nascent growth of the internet largely passed these guys by. Until 1998 when I returned home from Ghana and a particular friend had got a computer, and the internet, and he was hooked. The internet had finally reached him. And for him the internet was porn.

If the internet was briefly kidnapped by ‘eCommerce’, it is finally reclaiming it’s roots as tool for connecting people. This is the social age and this is where I return to the above mentioned friend. Email and mySpace and Facebook have largely passed him by. He recently connected with me, but not by any of the more established social networking tools, but by Twitter. And I think that is significant. People who have “not seen the point” will start to get it, the traditional media right now is full of Twitter. Facebook have realised this and have opened up their status as a challenge. Maybe not bigger than porn, but this year will certainly be the year of Twitter.

Persecute or communicate

Yesterday I twitteredIndustrial Age, Atomic Age, Jet Age, Space Age, Information Age… What’s next?” Andre Martin replied “social age?”  If the world around us is moving to the social age, far too many corporations are stuck in the industrial age, the stone age even.

With growing economic uncertainty, inter-office rumors, gossiping and eavesdropping in the workplace are inevitable.  More than 20 per cent of respondents to an HR survey said their employees had been disciplined for such behaviour.  And so the solution is to invest in technology to prevent it.  But you are never going to be able to stop it, indeed taking such measures is more likely to give oxygen to fear, mistrust and dissent.  The investment would be better spent opening up channels of communication, getting the gossip out in the open and developing a culture of trust and understanding.  How?  Introducing a corporate FaceBook to replace the moribund intranet would be a start.

What is the story?

One of the problems with IT development is that it is tactical and piecemeal in its approach. Functionality is added in response to competitor or broader market activity. Expect to see an increasing number of brands doing something ‘social’ (and tactical) on the web, but don’t expect these new initiatives to be (strategic) seamlessly integrated into the existing digital channel offering.

This piecemeal approach extends to larger initiatives as well. In refreshing the website or developing new digital channels such as mobile and TV, IT will typically build out features and functionality prioritised upon their perceived individual business value regardless of what the sum value of the proposed release is. (Focusing all your effort of building functionality that delivers to your bottom line will seldom be as successful as you predict if it is not supported by features that meet the customers needs).

So when it comes to thinking about new features and functionality, where’s the best place to start? I’d suggest collaboratively, thinking around the customer. Collaboration is important to ensure that everyone starts with the same vision. It needs to be shared it with the broader audience, the product teams, IT; anyone whose day to life life will be touched by the project when it starts. I’d argue that you cannot start this soon enough. You don’t need to spend time doing analysis, interviewing all stakeholders individually, coming up with a document that is circulated and reviewed and re-written (with all the delays and waste that such a process incurs). Start the process getting all those stakeholders off-site for an afternoon and get the thoughts out on the table.

Commence with a presentation that introduces thinking in terms of customers and customer journeys. The below SlideShare presentation does this for the airline industry, addressing a new customer experience across channels. I acknowledge that it is pretty simple and doesn’t touch on half the ideas that airline executives may have. That is the point, it is just enough to get people thinking about different customer types and their touchpoints without getting bogged down in detail. This is what we want the participants of the off-site to share.

[slideshare id=912224&doc=airline-deck1-1231817842408345-3&w=425]

Once we’ve been through the presentation we break out into small groups a, each taking an individual customer (or persona) and build up a story; a day in the life of… (It is important not to forget the internal users of the system). These breakouts last 15-20 minutes with ten minutes for the team to play back their findings. As they build out a richer picture of the customer interactions they are asked to sketch out what the user interfaces may look like. The process is rapid, intense and iterative, but always focussing upon the customer journey; how will the customer realise their goals. When the teams tell their stories an analyst captures the essence of the requirements on index cards. The final exercise is to lay all these cards on the table and ask the team to group them into similar areas then prioritise them according to their perceived importance. In an afternoon you will have achieved four things. Firstly, you will have captured a vision for the new product in less than a day, with all stakeholders understanding not only the vision itself, but also the process that developed it and the concerns and issues that different parts of the business have with it. Secondly you will have an initial prioritised roadmap for its development. This will change, but it is a good strawman to circulate. Thirdly you will have introduced all the stakeholders together – projects succeed or fail based upon the strength of relationships and getting people engaged from the start will go a long way to creating shared ownership. And finally you will have generated energy, engagement and traction; to do the business case and to get the project started, recognising that just one part of the business having a vision is not going to bring it to the life that they dream.

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