Articles

The importance of ‘Influence’ for brands online

In the back end of 2007 I attended an interesting event entitled ‘Reputation2.0’. At this event, Jo Rigby, from OMD (that’s Omnicom Media Group not the pop group) presented some very interesting research on ‘Brand Reputation and the role of influence’. Within this article I have reproduced some of the key findings of the report – all the data is from their report.
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The importance of a good API.

In case you don’t know, an API (Application Programming Interface) allows an accepted third party to interact with your web application. It’s a golden gate that allows data in and out of your application and allows it to take action based upon the data received.
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Accessible doesn't mean boring

Nothing beats the creative frisson of excitement as you review concepts, brainstorm and plan strategic derring-do. But you can see people switching off as soon as you mention accessibility. To put it bluntly, for years accessibility been perceived as a necessity brought down from a higher-than-thou authority to ensure you can’t have as much fun as you’d like.
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Smoothing The On-Ramp: The Importance of Open ID

One of the greatest turn-offs for customers arriving at a website for the first time is the sign-up form. Not only are we required to re-submit our personal details for each and every website but we also have to come up with a new password for each one. If you’re like me you probably end up using one of several key passwords that you’ve applied for multiple sites. It’s a pain and it’s the one of the biggest barriers to overcome in the customer conversion funnel.
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Handling Unhappy (and Happy) Online Customers

Recent research from Accenture has identified that 36% of adults in the USA want to contribute to User Generated Content websites (UGC). However, it's difficult for organizations to evaluate and monitor what customers are saying about them online. Working on the basis that things do go wrong and that some customer's won't get the level of service that they expected or promised here's a quick list of things to do to avoid negative comments being posted.
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Good Customer Service Means Letting Customers Speak to You

Earlier this year we bought a PC from online retailer Dabs; unfortunately they delivered the wrong product. As we needed to return it and get the right one quickly we paid a visit to their website to find out how to speak to their customer services team...
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The Importance of Human Readable URLs

A URL should be a key element of a website's user experience. Through better use of it visitors will be able to remember locations, guess locations and refer others to the location more easily.
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Customer Generated Content, Tagging and Next Generation Search

Read more about how Customer Generated Content (AKA User Generated Content 'UGC') is powering a new generation of search, based not on algorithms, but on human tagging.
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Customer Focused Design

Last summer the BBC online ran a detrimental story about the Odeon website; apparently the site so infuriated cinema goer Matthew Somerville that he built his own 'accessible' version that met W3C and DDA guidelines. Although his was an extreme response, the disgruntlement, disenchantment and sheer frustration felt by many customers of supplier websites is very common.
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The importance of brand values

According to a report published by AOL and the Henley Centre in November 04, nearly half of UK online consumers have changed their mind about brands as a result of using the Internet. With products and services being peer reviewed, Googled and indexed by price comparison services does brand online matter and if so what needs to be done to effect its successful communication?
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Pre-Planning A Winning Website

When Websites are badly designed, don't work or don't do the things that you expect, it's natural to feel let-down and it would be reasonable for you to consider taking your business elsewhere.
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Is E-Service Getting Better?

Periodically articles appear in the respected (ahem) journals that I read talking about the appalling customer service they receive from Websites. So the question is, are things getting better and if not why not?
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Developing An E-Service Strategy

Good customer service is no longer regarded as sufficient for customer satisfaction and to increase customer retention and loyalty. You now need to exceed expectations to provide customer delight.
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