Depending on the product being tested, consider if it is really necessary to conduct your research in the country of origin.

Using remote tools could be just as cost effective, allow for high levels of audience targeting and project control, and can provide a statistically significant sample as well as invaluable qualitative data.

Read more about International customer experience

We’re looking at the global picture in our latest issue – the international customer experience scene.

Paul kicks off proceedings by confirming our intent to expand Foviance into new territory. Find out more about our ambitions for our latest venture – Foviance Asia. You can also read the thoughts of Frank Ma, the man that will be heading-up our exciting new Shanghai office. Staying on the global theme, Amanda Roach provides an insight into the mechanics of international surveys, while Mariana cautions businesses thinking of taking short-cuts on the road to online localisation.

We also regularly update our blog with our consultants’ thoughts and opinions which you may enjoy reading and commenting on.

As always, I’m also very happy to hear from you directly with any feedback.

Marty

In this issue:

Do, or do not. There is no ‘try’

Surveying international opinion

Localisation is required when lost in translation

Introducing the Asian Experience

On the contrary,  it is the belief of both my team and I that we must try, that sees Foviance opening for business in China this quarter, with a new office in Shanghai.

Our plan is a fairly simple one. Foviance is pretty good at international work and as a result we do a lot of it, mostly for western clients that want to test things in Asia. As a result we have gained quite a bit of knowledge and a fair few relationships in the Chinese market. If we could also generate some business in the local market for Chinese companies looking to market to the west, we should have a nice little business plan. Sounds simple doesn’t it? I thought so and yet the planning has taken nearly 18 months and we are only just ready now.

Initially we are focusing our efforts on core user experience services in web and mobile, which is where we believe the largest initial opportunity is. Usability is a growing discipline in China with a large and expanding UPA membership and an ever-increasing acceptance of the benefits. If everything I have read about the Chinese market is true, I believe that we will soon be providing our measurement strategy, customer insight and strategic customer experience capabilities. Initially though, we are staying focused to ensure we keep a handle on the quality of delivery and the market differences.

We know there will be plenty to learn. We have experienced the differences first hand testing various web and mobile services in China for western clients. There are differences in the way people use devices and the web of course but most startling are the cultural variations. It is little wonder that the field of usability is dominated by behavioural psychologists given the need to match interaction design with user behaviour.

International culture differences will add a completely new dimension to the work we conduct developing personas to help organisations design with their audience in mind. Some years ago we carried out work for a gaming company that was looking to launch a Mandarin website. One of the most surprising findings was that there was no translation for ‘lucky dip’. The term simply doesn’t exist and is a perfect illustration of the challenges western organisations face going to China. The reverse is true of course for Chinese businesses wishing to market their services in the west.

In the Star Wars film ‘The Empire Strike Back’, the character Yoda tells Luke Skywalker after he has tried and failed to move an impossibly heavy object (his space ship), “Try not. Do, or do not. There is no try”. I think his point was that if you approach something in a half-hearted way you stand a fairly good chance of failing. At Foviance we trust that our planning and steady execution will enable us to be successful in China but we are not naïve. It will be hard and we will have some success and some failure, but we will do it, because we believe it is important to the future of Foviance.

This article was written as part of our February newsletter

Not only will they extend your reach and influence geographically, but they also expand the size of your potential samples, while reducing costs considerably compared to securing a similar scope of respondents locally. Surveys do have obvious limitations against one-to-one qualitative studies, but with skilled questioning and efficient organisation, excellent results can still be gained for far lower overheads.

Of course there are also numerous challenges involved, not least the logistics of recruiting a panel provider that can operate successfully in the desired region. In most countries this isn’t a problem, but in some it does tend to take a little more time and effort – notably Indonesia, Kenya and strangely enough, Foviance’s latest locality, Singapore. Determining and recruiting the right type of respondent can be tricky. A particular type of user or segment will have differing criteria and often, screening questions must be country-specific. When recruiting segments defined by the client, screening questions should be adapted to suit the differences between countries.

Is it possible to recruit an English-speaking panel? In some countries such as USA and Australia, there shouldn’t be much of a problem, but what about countries like France? It’s certainly possible to define an English speaking panel in a non-English speaking country but this has a cost implication as these people are more difficult to recruit. This cost may be offset if there are a number of free-text entry fields as there is no necessity to have comments translated. In addition, there would be no cost for translation both for the survey script and the verbatim comments. In some regions such as India, many different languages and dialects are spoken and English is often the ‘lingua franca’ that allows all the people to have a voice. Of course, there are disadvantages of using English speakers as they would most likely have a high level of education and a higher social economic status. They may also work for a multi-national country and so be more ‘western’, or they may be urbanites (rural communities in many countries may not take part due to the unavailability of a computer).

When it is deemed necessary to use a local language for the survey, original questions must firstly be translated. This may sound easy but it can often prove problematic due to the quality and nuance of the translation. A translator must be trusted to deliver exactly what you need.

More often than not, an English person who is fluent in another language will not be able to conduct a translation in a meaningful way. They may not be aware of the everyday (as opposed to the academic) translations for certain sentences and terms. It can prove to be very off-putting providing opinions to a non-national who seemingly hasn’t bothered to ask you properly. Also, they may not be aware of the translations for technical terms such as ‘battery-life’, jacks, HDMI and so on. Also, from a more practical point of view, translations of an English sentence which fits very well into the survey design will often be too long when translated into a language such as Russian. A conversation with the translator is then required so that a better sentence can be constructed.

Screening by socioeconomic status might simply not be possible in some countries in which those people in the lower categories do not prove literate either in English or in their own language. It is always necessary to consider from the outset whether it is feasible to fulfil certain screening criteria in particular countries of interest. For instance, in areas of India, smartphone and laptop usage will not be prevalent in those aged 55+ but will be more representative (and consequently, more weighted) for those in a younger age bracket e.g. 25-34.

With experience and endeavour, excellent results can be gleaned from international surveys. I usually split survey results in four ways:  by overall results, by region, by age and by gender. I don’t generally drill down deeper than this, by region then by age for instance, unless something really interesting crops up in the data. To give you an example, in one survey I conducted there were some really strange results within the USA. On further inspection, over 70% of responses had come from those aged 65+, providing a very biased view on mobile phone usage. To restore balance we had to re-recruit those in the younger age ranges and weight the responses appropriately so that all ages were represented equally. It just goes to show the trust you have to place in your panel provider.

Organising, conducting and analysing the results from international surveys can be a time-consuming but very enlightening process. It genuinely brings to the fore the often stark differences in attitude, usually between Western and non-Western countries, towards modern devices like smartphones as well as emerging technologies.

This article was written as part of our February newsletter

However, ‘internationalising’ a site is a far more involved process than merely translating it, and without intelligent international research with native users, it is not possible to truly localise a site.

Even the most well-intentioned business or brand will struggle to succeed in providing a good user experience online if it is not fully localised. Such companies shouldn’t be reticent getting outside help with localisation. Within Foviance we have many years of experience carrying out research internationally via our network of trusted partners.

Much of the international user research we have conducted has proven useful to businesses weighing up the decisions over their international strategy. For example, is it wise to launch a ‘skin’ (white-label) version of their brand? Is there a particular market gap not yet covered by competitors? Should they invest strongly in affiliate marketing and acquisition, or invest strongly in retention (some markets are more brand-promiscuous for particular products than others)? Should they simply hire a local partner to run their site for them? Taking the time to talk with end users in their own environment often reveals cultural idiosyncrasies that ultimately guide preferences, which in turn should drive those strategic decisions. This extra care, as well as making sure a site is fundamentally usable in a particular market, is pivotal to the success of an online brand attempting to compete abroad.

Often, usability issues you might never have thought of will surface through hands-on group sessions. Take for example some recent work we conducted with a client who is trading in several international markets. It provided perfect evidence for the ‘translation is short of localisation’ concept, when in a focus group session involving Spanish users we found a few of them trying to divide 24 by 7. Who would have thought that Spanish people wouldn’t know what was meant by 24/7? It took them a while to understand that customer service would be available to them 24 hours a day, 7 days a week – something that is pretty important.

One of the most interesting talks I attended during EGR Live (a conference and exhibition for the online gaming industry) saw CEOs of two South American online gaming companies explain how important it was to understand Latin American culture if you want to succeed in that market. Putting aside the obvious problems with the fact that it is illegal to gamble in those countries and you need to be prepared to pay a few people to let you make it happen, two secrets to wooing the typical South American punter are to watch the same evening soap as them and to send them rewards on their birthdays! In that part of the world, success is all about personal relationships, and appreciating that there are small local neighbourhoods and common languages, not just one common mother tongue.

There are numerous pitfalls to merely translating a site without carrying out local research in target countries. Such an approach is likely to compromise the customer experience altogether and send hordes of users elsewhere. Even translations within the same broad language can fail when there are fine peculiarities between regional versions and dialects that make all the difference. For example, some typical phrases in European Spanish like ‘Come and play’ simply don’t work in South American Spanish.

Foviance not only has a network of trusted partners upon which we rely upon to carry out research, we also have a great deal of experience in managing these projects. We’ve become highly skilled at consolidating findings and delivering international consistency in the research by wrapping it all up in a packaged solution. Ultimately their trust in our judgement enables our clients to make informed strategic decisions regarding the markets they want to trade in, as opposed to making language-based tactical changes to sites, forever based on intuition and doomed to a lukewarm effect.

This article was written as part of our February newsletter

For example, I have spoken to users at one extreme who vocalise concerns such as malicious keystroke logging programmes and an unwillingness to connect to a WLAN network in public places such as cafes etc, as they do not know if the network has security measures in place.
Whereas, at the other extreme, some have told me that they use the mobile internet without any concerns or reservations – viewing their phone very differently to how they view their PC i.e. as something personal and private and not susceptible to attack.

Lack of knowledge and understanding of security can have massive implications in mobile internet usage. For instance, ecommerce has not emerged as yet as a major player within the mobile internet space. This may be attributed to several factors such as problems viewing products on a small screen etc, but many have voiced concerns regarding payment security. Certainly, the small number of people I have spoken to who have purchased items using the mobile internet would only be willing to do so for small-ticket items.

So, it appears that in order to promote usage of this potential revenue stream, businesses have to promote trust (e.g. by using recognisable security symbols) as well as educating users regarding what they should be aware of and what risks they may be susceptible to. The question is then – what is the best way of doing this?

Tip 1: Use clear, recognisable security symbols e.g. padlocks etc, on secure pages.

Tip 2: Browsers could indicate the security status of pages e.g. by using colours such as green for OK.

Tip 3: Retailers could allow users to save a card onto their account by managing their account from a PC – then they could shop for instance, by one-click ordering using the mobile internet. This would reduce the need to enter any details.

Tip 4: Retailers could use a third-party payment system such as Google Checkout or PayPal, again reducing the need to input details.

Ashley, can I first ask you to tell me a little bit about how things are going with Econsultancy? I know you’ve set up recently in the US, possibly at the worst possible time during the recession?

Yes, it’s an interesting one. New York probably feels it particularly keenly, and it felt a lot bleaker than the UK. It was a pretty miserable economic situation, but the good thing is that it means you can get good people for less money than you normally can, it means that estate agents are very nice to you for a change, and you get decent property for less money. When we set up Econsultancy in the UK, we did it in the dot.com crash period, and everyone said then that we were crazy to be doing what we were doing, but as a result we had a kind of clear run and no competition for about three years, so actually as a time to build a brand, arguably it’s a good time. It’s effectively a start up for us. It wasn’t projected to make any money this year, and I think we’ll achieve that, and it’s going well in terms of raising the traffic, the links, the brand, recruitment, so we’re pretty happy.

And are you finding many differences in the way the US market thinks about digital marketing?

Yes and no. I think the perception is that the US is 18 months ahead of the UK, and in some ways that’s true, certainly the levels of internet penetration and broadband penetration happened in the US at a kind of mass level before they happened in the UK. The whole social media thing, again I think, probably happened there earlier. Equally a lot of all the core technology, the Googles and the Microsofts of this world, are still all based in the States really, so part of the reason for having an office in the States is to try and get that on the ground insight into what’s happening at the cutting edge in terms of innovation. But more broadly than that, I don’t think it’s really that different to the UK market in terms of key developments. One of the things we’re finding an interesting challenge is that our site apparently “feels quite British”, which is interesting, even if you change ‘s’ to ‘z’ and things like that…

Have you got plans to go further afield, Asia perhaps?

Yes, we already have a global traffic base and indeed a global customer base. It is English language because we only have our content in English at the moment, but for example India is our third largest source of traffic, although we don’t have an awful lot of paying customers from India because the price is prohibitively high because it’s priced according to the sterling rate. We’re just about to launch pricing at a country level, so for India, for example, we can experiment with charging less in order to see if we can then get an uptake in the number of paying members. We’ll see.

The Usability and Accessibility Buyer’s Guide – you’ve renamed it this year to the User Experience Buyer’s Guide, I just wondered what was behind that change?

Due to the semantics of our industry we now talk about digital marketing, it always used to be online marketing. In the States I think they seem to call it internet marketing or online marketing, but they don’t call it digital marketing. I think in the case of digital marketing, presumably it’s because it happens not just on line, but also on phones, TVs, everywhere. Probably a more accurate description would be something like ‘interactive marketing’, but the particular reason behind the change from the Usability and Accessibility Buyer’s Guide to User Experience Buyer’s Guide is, I suppose, part of the journey. Maybe four or five years ago, usability in itself was an evolution from academic HCI, human computer interaction. It was slightly dry, and had a ‘researchy’ kind of feel, but actually what we were talking about was involved with interactions ,with customers as very much a business, commercial, experiential thing, and therefore HCI didn’t really do that justice. To the same degree, even usability now feels like it’s obviously a specific discipline and set of skills which is perfectly valid, but risks sounding a little bit too dry to encompass the kind of richness that a word like ‘experience’ encapsulates.

What else are you seeing in your travels to the US or in the UK that excites you at the moment?

Some of the things which are quite interesting at the moment are new business models. Things like Kiva, which is that sort of microfinancing idea, for example. Combining the global social nature of the internet to allow in this case financing to happen in a way that it couldn’t possibly otherwise have done. Also Zopa, person-to-person lending, is an interesting concept. So yes, I’m excited by the interesting and innovative business models which are coming out. Experiential things too. An mobile, and the new iPhone of course, are also obviously pretty impressive. I think it’s a bit like the advent of broadband, that once you have these innovations to hand, there’s no going back.

Thank you Ashley for taking the time to speak to us. The full podcast is now available for download from the Foviance website.

Back to October Newsletter

You can listen to Part 1 of the interview where Ashley Friedlein talks about Twitter in our Expert Interview section.

• Episode title: Ashley Friedlein on Customer Experience
• Episode number: 6
• Series: on Customer Experience
• Duration: 25 minutes

Listen now: Download audio file (ashley_friedlein_on_customer_experience.mp3)

Or, Download the Ashley Friedlein on customer experience podcast (MP3, 11mb)

An abridged version of the conversation between Ashley Friedlein and Paul Blunden can be read in our October Newsletter.

Alternatively you can also read the Podcast transcript.

All of the text in train stations, on advertising and most street signs are in Japanese.

I have experienced similar difficulties when working in Madrid. However, as we share a near identical alphabet, it was easier to give words a phonetic value and compare them to an English equivalent. Not so in Japan, the lack of any visual reference with the alphabet/symbols made me understand what it must be like to be illiterate.

One area however, where I think the people of the world enjoy a shared understanding is in the use of pictures and icons. I find myself pointing to pictures of food in restaurants and then dearly hoping that it tastes as good as it looks. I also experienced no confusion when entering a ladies loo – the icons on the walls were completely clear to me.

Has anyone else found icons really useful when travelling?

Also see Paul Blunden’s post on usable traffic signals

Turner Broadcasting, Cartoon Network’s parent company, chose Foviance following a 3 way pitch. After completing the UK based research, the findings were fed into the Polish and Spain phases.

Linda El-Ali, Digital Media Research Director said: “Foviance brought tremendous insight to this project during the development stage and helped put into place a set of essential usability guidelines. Their approach to the evaluation sessions was well thought out, professional and allowed for our audience to engage and comment on the site while it was being developed.”

Mark Rose, Senior Business Consultant, Foviance, said: “Turner Broadcasting have delivered a solution that not only provides a more engaging experience for children to socially interact on the Cartoon Network site, but ensures their safety by giving parents governance through email notification and acceptance. The international testing carried out by us, enabled the provision of insight from three key European markets, by focusing on the overall user experience of the site.”

About Turner Broadcasting
Turner Broadcasting delivers some of the world’s most successful and well-known news and entertainment brands including CNN, Cartoon Network, Boomerang, Cartoonito, CN Too, TCM (Turner Classic Movies), and Adult Swim. The company now broadcasts 21 entertainment channels in 17 languages across approximately 100 countries in Europe, Africa and the Middle East. Alongside its TV channels Turner Broadcasting is at the forefront of developing its brands via the web, VOD, DVD, gaming, mobile, merchandising, publishing and every other available platform. Turner Broadcasting is a Time Warner Company.

Press Coverage:

Sourcewire.com: Turner Broadcasting appoints Foviance to carry out European usability project
By Foviance, 30 July, 2009

Responsesource.com: Turner Broadcasting appoints Foviance to carry out European usability project
By Foviance, 30 July, 2009