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Helen Birch is responsible for heading up Foviance’s Google Analytics products and services, and is also in charge of the relationship with Google Analytics, as we are a certified partner with Google.

In the video interview, Helen introduces the key new features of Google Analytics and the services Foviance provide in helping you better understand conversion and user journeys on your website. We are well into the New Year and it’s a great time to carry out an Implementation Healthcheck, Helen describes some of the features and processes that will validate your customer data ensuring it is accurate and correct. Finally, the overview of our bespoke Analytics Training courses explains what benefits and learning’s your business will be able to take away and carry out on a daily basis.

The buzz around Pinterest has been around for a while now but what are the attraction and the purpose of the new social network?

Mashable’s beginner’s guide is a good place to start for an overview; however with most things the best way is to just to try it out. I’ve been a member for less than a week and have played around and wondered about what to add? Suddenly, an hour had past and my ‘boards’ began to fill up; but how and why?

The first emotional hook is the intrigue in applying for an invitation to the ’exclusive’ group; a little buzz being accepted and then the realisation that you have an empty profile -plus a potential audience of over 11 million (The Realtime Report)

Secondly, Pinterest helps by suggesting titles for your boards. I like to call them “mood boards”. It’s nice to have a starting point. Pinterest will even sign you up automatically to ‘follow’ people; a manageable number that you can check out an ‘unfollow’ if they don’t suit you. So, what will your boards be filled with?

Personally, I think about what interests me as time is short and I have so much to ‘pin’. Over time it will develop and grow, so why am I bothering? It’s like a record of my life in a non threatening way. I have confidence in my interests, there’s nothing to hide, and it’s enjoyable to share and see what others are interested in – all in pictures!

A recent gripe is that a number of websites I’ve wanted to pin either don’t have large enough images to show or any images to show at all, which is a shame. It makes the search to pin an interest take much longer. Interestingly, ecommerce sites have seen a huge increase in their revenue. It’s a genius way of promoting products by using the most reliable source – word of mouth!

The user experience of Pinterest is excellent. The ease of use and the fact that it’s hugely engaging makes it something that we will be using more and more in the future. -Organaising events,-sharing interesting landmarks,-various collections and even videos; Pinterests’ options are endless and exciting.

There’s so much more to say, but really interested in your views. Please comment below.

Having read a fair bit about ‘Apple reinventing the textbook’  and having watched the launch, I don’t think anyone can say for certainty which way this will go; beyond those raised by the Econsultancy blog (which missed the bit about Apple’s publishing partners talking about iBooks)  There are a number of points to note:

• Anything that makes textbooks more interesting can only be a good thing. However, is it possible to turn every book into an amazing visual journey. I notice they only showed introductory science book examples. How complex can the topics become before the book reverts to mainly text? What about drier subjects like some branches of mathematics?
• Does this risk trivialising learning? They’ve taken the study questions and made them more interactive. Fine, but this is just like any web based learning environment, so not exactly revolutionary. And not everything can be represented as a multiple-choice question. It would have been great to see more innovative approaches to learning. Without this, there is a risk that the reinforcement of learning is only very shallow.
• Immersion. There are lots of potential distractions on an iPad. Just how effective will it be as a teaching tool.
• Reading experience. iPads are not e-Ink displays, which means that they will be tiring to read over time. People seem to cope with this, but if kids are looking at a screen solidly for 5 days a week, I’m not sure that’s amazing for their eyes.
• Typing. Nobody is going to claim that an iPad makes a great tool for typing for long periods. The problem is, if a school invests in iPads for each student, then they’re not going to provide laptops too. So what are students going to use to do coursework while at school?
• Exclusion. I echo the sentiment about this being too expensive for most schools/students. It would have been nice if the iBooks format was slightly more open, so it could perhaps work via a browser for those schools that couldn’t afford iPads. This is not in Apple’s interests though, hardware sales are where all their profits are (and why they can make the entire iBooks platform free software. You need an iPad to view it and a Mac to create it).
• Reach. As the article states, cost aside, not all schools will want to move onto an entirely Apple ecosystem. I’m not sure this matters to Apple though and I don’t think they’ll be worried if they only carve out a small niche in the education market. For one it’s great publicity for how socially responsible they are, it also helps to cement use of Apple products into the next generation of consumers and it will drive sales from those wealthy schools that can afford it. Now they’ve made the software, there are no major costs to supporting it (even interactive books are likely to be less costly to host and serve than apps, music or video as they will be smaller files prone to lower levels of demand).

So, there are limitations, but it is likely to see success within those schools that can afford to adopt it. Just don’t expect to see it revolutionise education overnight.

Infographic displaying results from the Multichannel Customer Experience Report – Consumer Survey.

Customers’ were asked to rate the most important areas that companies should focus on in order to provide them the best customer experience in the banking, gaming, mobile phone, retail and travel sectors.

Recently, many businesses are starting to wonder “what good looks like” for the multichannel customer experience. Of course the answer is slightly different for every company, depending on the sector, customers and strategy, but I’ve developed these ten indicators of multichannel performance which have proven reliable in most situations:

1. AVAILABILITY – Give customers a choice of channel based on their preferences.
2. AWARENESS – Make customers aware of all channels available, with channels promoted from other channels.
3. PULL - To drive channel shift, the channel shifting ‘to’ needs to have a better customer experience.
4. CONSISTENCY - Provide a consistent experience across channels, whilst utilising the benefits of each channel.
5. UNDERSTANDING - Regardless of channel choice, make sure customers gain the understanding they need to effectively engage with the products.
6. ENGAGEMENT - Pull customers into deeper engagement within their preferred channel.
7. OPTIMISATION - Optimise the customer experience of each channel.
8. INTEGRATION - Each channel is aware of previous customer interactions, regardless of channel.
9. PRODUCTS - Produce quality products which meet customer expectations and requirements.
10. MEASUREMENT - Get the right customer experience measures in place.

We recently released our 2012 Multichannel Report. It shows that companies are making some progress towards customer-centricity since last year, but still have some way to go. The graph on page 23 of the report shows a series of organisational indicators of customer experience maturity and illustrates this point very well.

(Reproduced with permission)

This one chart touches on all of the main themes which form the basis of customer- centricity:

• STRATEGY: Customer-centric organisations are focussed on strategy as determining customer experience outcomes (the first bar).
• PROCESS & GOVERNANCE: Customer-centric organisations design their processes around customer experience outcomes which result from them, and govern their processes on this basis (the last bar). 
• REWARDS: Customer-centric organisations ensure that each individual is motivated to produce good customer experience outcomes (the third bar).
• SYSTEMS: The systems in customer-centric organisations are specified and implemented to produce optimum customer experiences, either directly or indirectly (the last bar).
• MEASURES: Customer-centric organisations measure and analyse the customer experience accurately and track it consistently (the seventh and ninth bars).
• CHANNEL EXPERIENCES: Of course, the result of all of this is that customer-centric organisations produce better customer experiences (the 2nd, 4th, 5th, 6th and 8th bars).

Strong on strategy, weak on operational delivery

The strongest performance is in the adoption of strategies, and it’s clear that customer-centric strategies are really taking hold now, but the operational changes needed to drive results from them are not yet in place. The operational customer experience really sets more CX-mature organisations apart from the rest, and is where many companies are currently stumbling.

How to measure it?

Customer-experience-mature companies recognise that strategy, process, rewards, governance and systems have a major impact on the customer experience, however, very few measure or monitor this impact. Almost all customer experience measures are focussed on measuring the channel customer experiences themselves, but not the operational factors which determine these channel outcomes. It’s hardly surprising then, that companies do not always make the connection between operational causes and customer experience effects.

I predict that the measurement of the impact of strategy, process, rewards, governance and systems on customer experiences will represent the next level in customer experience maturity over the next ten years. These measurements are needed to build the case for the strategic direction required to drive true customer-centricity.

These measures also allow a business case to be built which ties organisational factors to customer experience outcomes, and hence the case can be made, for the organisational changes which are needed for companies to become truly customer-centric. This is when customer-centricity really starts to deliver benefits.

Customer-centricity continues to grow

Over the next ten years, we can expect the economy to be fairly rocky. Increasingly, customer experience will be seen as the main USP and differentiator, especially in the service industries on which so much of the developed world’s economy is based. As channel-level improvements start to reach optimal levels for many companies, we will start to see greater focus on the connections between customer experience outcomes and deeper, organisational and strategic factors.

Earlier this year, Google chairman Eric Schmidt named Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon as the four companies which currently rule consumer technology. It’s not a coincidence that these four companies are among the most customer-centric around. As Amazon CTO Werner Vogels puts it “ We want to be the most customer-centric company on the planet ”. Where these 4 companies lead, the rest of us generally follow, so it’s time to sit up and take note of customer-centricity.

As you will see from the results of our Multichannel Report, it’s not easy, and most companies have some way to go. You can download the Multichannel Report here.

The following 8 minute video with Key Account Director, Sven Krause, explains some of the key benefits of measuring emotional engagement and the research techniques used to capture unconcious reactions of consumers. Ultimately increase customer engagement and experience and lead to increased revenue.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1ZaDZo0z1I&feature=player_embedded

There has been speculation that Amazon is gearing up to launch a mobile handset next year. If true, this represents an interesting evolution in the aims of this e-commerce giant. So, is a mobile phone as good a match for Amazon’s business model as a content consumption tablet like the Kindle Fire.

Why Amazon won’t make a phone.

• Consumption: tablets are a great match for Amazon’s business, as they are geared up for content consumption. Mobile handsets are used to read books and watch videos, but it isn’t as rich an experience.
• It’s still a phone: the “phone” aspects of a handset sit well outside Amazon’s core business. Android provides this functionality as standard, but it still needs to sit within Amazon’s customised Android experience. An Amazon phone would still have to be good at calls, messages, email and critical third party integration like Twitter and Facebook. Reviews of the Kindle Fire suggest that the email client isn’t amazing. Given the goals of the tablet, this is an annoyance, but on a phone it could be a deal breaker.
• They’re there already: Amazon is already well embedded on mobile phones. They have their own appstore and custom apps. Do they really need to take the next step? They can’t use a mobile handset as a technology demonstrator in the same style as Google’s Nexus phones. Amazon have to push volume for this to be a worthwhile endeavour.
• Competition: the tablet space was much easier to enter, as there was no dominant Android tablet at the same price point. A phone at the rumoured price of $180-$200 will be up against every other Android handset. It will have to be very good to compete.

Why Amazon might make a phone.

• Customer experience: owning the whole customer experience could be very valuable. Mobile allows Amazon an even greater opportunity to build relationships with customers. For example, imagine a phone that is dedicated to shopping. Seamless product comparison and price matching (using a well implemented barcode scanner) in retail stores, together with Amazon’s great fulfilment process could be quite disruptive.
• Music: for many people, mobile phones have replaced iPods. A mobile handset would be a great match for Amazon’s music services.
• Platform: Amazon might need to have a mobile platform to avoid getting left behind. If the Facebook phone happens and has mass appeal, there is a risk that Amazon could be cut out, or find themselves having to reach customers through a Facebook experience. It would be much better to be the one in control.
• Appstore: a mobile handset would certainly help Amazon to expand their appstore and sell more apps.
• Data: if allowed to, Amazon could collect even more data about their customer’s shopping habits, down to the location level. Time and location based product recommendations, it’s certainly a possibility. If Amazon knows I’m more likely to purchase in a certain place at a certain time, you can bet they’d like to take advantage of that.

The Kindle Fire was a very logical step for Amazon. A mobile phone is a bit more of a reach. There are certainly ways in which it could support their core business and allow them to embed themselves further into the lives of their customers. However, I would argue that for a phone to be a success it will have to be really well thought through and executed. Given that Amazon tend to evolve products, rather than nail them first time out, this may make a phone success less likely. That said, they certainly have the scale and the vision to make the attempt.