Consumer

CA Calls for European Businesses to Wake Up to ‘Web Stress’ or Risk Losing Customers and Sales

• World’s first* neurological experiment into poor online customer experience proves existence of ‘web stress’
• Brain wave analysis indicates that consumers need to concentrate 50% more than normal when using a badly performing website
• Two most stressful points of the online sales cycle are search and checkout

* Based on extensive desk research in February 2010. Read more…

To explore ‘web stress’, CA partnered with Foviance to see if application performance had an impact on buying habits and consumer behaviour online.

Using an EEG (Electroencephalography) cap and sophisticated neurological and physiological testing equipment, volunteers were wired up during the study and had their brain wave activity monitored. Everyday tasks online such as finding and buying items were tested by the volunteers.

The results revealed that search and checkout were the two most stressful points of everyday processes carried out online, resulting in the volunteers exhibiting a heightened level of ‘web stress’. This type of stress results in more than three quarters of customers abandoning websites before they have completed the task that drove them to the site in the first place. To download the whitepaper a valid e-mail address is required, however Foviance will not contact you unless you specifically request it.

At an event for Social Media Week London last week, a question was raised over whether responding to people on Twitter and similar social media sites would encourage more customers to air their complaints in public. In my opinion, the answer is that it probably does, particularly if people see others being responded to effectively. However, this should not be a reason to ignore disgruntled customers. People will still have their grievance, whether or not they choose to voice it. Read more…

By Marty Carroll

Economics has not fared well in the current financial crisis. Economists placed too much of an emphasis on people’s likelihood to act rationally when making decisions. People do not always act in their own self interest and this is largely a consequence of biases that affect our ability to make decisions.

Economists and psychologists have been exploring our perceptual biases since the 70′s, but these biases have come to assume a new prominence in the most recent crisis because of the writings of behavioural economists such as Richard Thaler, Dan Ariely and Robert Shiller. Read more…

By Marty Carroll

Customer experience is not a fad. Yes the terminology is bandied about much more than before but before customer experience we had customer satisfaction and customer engagement. Using the words ‘customer experience’ implies that an organisation is looking at how consumers experience the brand in a more strategic way. Indeed we’ve been gratified to see a large number of organisations really grasp the concept and value of customer experience. Some initiatives have delivered excellent returns on investment and have proven very effective, but we now believe such initiatives are no longer enough in themselves, and here’s why.Modern customers and consumers have an unprecedented ability to communicate with each other. As a result of the comments, interactions and opinions of customers published across every digital channel, there now exists a vast knowledge pool of insights into every business, and almost complete transparency in every marketplace.

Read more…

Since the advent of the internet, the ways in which people choose to communicate have changed dramatically. With the evolution of social media, these changes have accelerated even faster. Read more…

The rise of the power of user generated content is leading organisations to offer new ways of enticing participation, and an innovative example I will be following is that of Simon Seeks. Read more…

By David Bomphrey

Recently many people had a day or two off due to the snow. Lots of people took the chance to let their hair down, have fun and play with their families. For some brands this is exactly what they want people to do all the time. Extreme Group, who operate businesses centred around “adrenaline living”, extreme sports to you and me, were hard at work branding the snow to show how their lifestyle is a comfortable fit with city living. They called it “snow tagging”, graffiting the snow. Read more…