• Tweet

A brief and lighthearted post today based on something I saw (and screen-captured) that made me laugh out loud. Like an old boss of mine, I’m a screenshot addict.

But before the screenshot, a little background: Every so often, I go through the emails I get on a regular basis and unsubscribe from a bunch of companies who’ve emailed me too often, offer services no longer relevant to me, or haven’t provided enough value in their communications.

This usually involves clicking on a link in the email and visiting a landing page (Yes, unsubscribe pages are landing pages) to complete my task. If all goes well, there is no ill will towards the marketers who I’m going to hear from less, no loss of brand affinity, etc. If it goes less than ideal, then who knows what kind of trouble there will be in this highly networked world

So, I click the link to unsubscribe, hit the landing page and…

Exhibit A - Click to Enlarge

Yes, folks, that’s a “subscribe” call to action on an ‘unsubscribe’ landing page! I’m a user experience geek, so these things tickle me

Now, I’m not here to pick on marketers who have to run big eCommerce sites. I know their jobs are extremely difficult, and I’m sure this was a case of “dumb” technology instead of human negligence. Nor am I picking on the technique of using an overlay/lightbox interrupt to optimize your site–we often use them in the conversion rate optimization experiments we handle here at WiderFunnel.

But here’s the lesson/warning/call to action: If you have any “interrupt” calls to action on your site (survey, live chat, contest, email capture, etc.), go and spend a few minutes investigating the logic whereby they interrupt. Is it site-wide? Is it session based? Cookie based? Does everyone see it?  Do your best customers (who don’t need it) see it? Does it interrupt on pages where it doesn’t make sense?

A few minutes of thought and discussion may prevent your site from ending up on my “wall of shame.” Better yet, you’ll avoid damaging relationships with your customers and prospects.

Yesterday, Walmart launched Walmart Marketplace, which will, apparently, give you “more of what you’re looking for – for less”. It’s an exciting development that some think positions the company to compete with Amazon. Unfortunately, no one knows what a “Marketplace” is, or how it’s different from a “Store”.

What is it?

The press release makes it pretty clear that “Walmart Marketplace enables a select group of retailers to offer additional products at Walmart.com.” Specifically, Walmart is now allowing CSN Stores, eBags and Pro Team to sell their products through the Walmart website. However, that message is not at all clear on the Walmart website.

Take a look at the Walmart home page (by clicking on the thumbnail above) and see if you can find an answer to the question, “What is the Walmart Marketplace?”

Do you know what you know?

The Walmart marketers have stumbled upon one of the most common Clarity challenges. That is, as a marketer, to imagine not knowing what you already know.

One of your primary tasks as a website marketer is to answer your visitors’ questions, when the question occurs to them, in a way that maximizes Clarity and minimizes Distraction.

Try this exercise on your website today:
1. Visit your home page or landing page and imagine yourself in the shoes of one of your customer personas
2. Find answers to the questions: “What do you do?”, “Why should I buy from you?”, “What makes you better than my other options?”

What did you find? Are you answering these common questions effectively?

The automated phone system is an easy target and one that many (arguably most) companies do a poor job of. It may be the most blatant customer experiences flaw your company is inflicting, but probably not the only one.

As I’ve written about before, identifying opportunities to improve your customer experience doesn’t have to be difficult or expensive. The easiest way is to try being your own customer.

Want to identify high ROI improvements quickly?

Start with these idea-generation steps:
1. Try completing a conversion action on your own site
If you’re a retailer, try buying a product; if you’re a software vendor, try finding, downloading and installing your trial version; if have a b2c lead generation funnel, try finding and signing up for your offer.

2. Find the answer to a common question
What are the common question you hear about your products? Try finding an answer to them from your website home page.

3. Call your own customer service line
How many buttons do you have to push to get a live person?

4. Try emailing a question
How many clicks does it take to find an email address? How long does it take before you get a response (note: make sure you use an unidentifiable email address to get the real answer)?

5. Search the web for reviews about your products
Your customers are looking for clues using social tools before they buy. What are people saying on Amazon, epinions, Twitter and niche forums?

6. Try the above with your fastest-growing competitor
Note that I didn’t say ‘largest’ competitor. The fast movers are the ones that are probably most tuned-in to customer needs. Learn anything you can from them. But, remember that your competitors are not the benchmark to compare yourself with. Your benchmark is your customer expectations, which is higher than you may think.

If you haven’t bought a product or called a sales person in your company in the past three months, do it. Today.

Seth Godin uses the example of Interactive Voice Response (IVR) frustration (which is often immediately followed by ‘Interactive Voice Rage’) that’s so common, but your website is just as likely a culprit.

Another terrible user experience example is UK online retailer, NEXT Clothing.

Make a regular habit of going through your online sales funnel and you’ll discover many easy, high ROI fixes.

The problem is that Usability “experts” will often recommend a plethora of time-consuming and expensive projects that will beguile the marketer into believing that they’re increasing their site’s effectiveness. The sheer magnitude of activity involved can divert attention from the important areas that the marketer should be focusing to increase the site’s persuasiveness.

Imagine you’re designing a new car. Usability research will help you figure out what words to label your air conditioning and stereo buttons with. Great. But, more importantly, does anyone want to drive the car? If it’s a family sedan, does it make families want to enjoy a road trip or does its design send the wrong message? Is your car too expensive (or less than your customers want to pay)? Do your customers even buy cars?

Usability professionals are technologists that use their library of “best practices” to create a “standards-based” site that’s exactly as expected. But when you want your site to inspire more of your visitors to move through your sales funnel, you need direct marketing experts with that unique mix of art and science that can persuade them to act.

We take a different approach to Usability by letting your site visitors choose which version they like better with statistically valid accuracy. We call it Quantitative Usability Testing. The difference is that through realtime A/B Split Testing and Multivariate Testing on your live site, we can quickly learn what really works to persuade more prospects to Act – not just guess by what a non-representative small sample tells you they like.