Looplite

How do we know what we want?

Wed, 14 May 2008 09:56:00 +0100

The Customer Odyssey: Semantic and Episodic Memory

Sun, 16 Mar 2008 10:46:00 +0000

The online decision making process is a strange beast.

Sometimes I’m pretty spontaneous and buy stuff straight away after a single website visit (a single customer journey). Sometimes I prevaricate, make selections online, change my mind and leave, come back, add to basket, get distracted, check out another website, check my bank account, leave the website, a week later return and then finally buy something completely different from the high street store of the original company I was visiting the website of (a customer odyssey*).

Microsoft’s new Engagement Mapping is meant to capture this kind of ‘odyssey’ behaviour so that the ad-man can attribute value to the different sources that have influenced the final conversion. But what really influences a customer in the longer, more drawn out purchasing process?

Just because someone has seen something doesn’t mean that it has been an influence. And even if it was an influence which bit did the influencing? Or, more importantly when considering the customer odyssey, which influential bits are remembered? There is no point influencing someone if they neither act on immediately nor remember for later that influence. (Indeed this could be the definition of uninfluential.)

The science of psychology understands two different types of memory.

Episodic Memory. The memory for ephemeral details, the individual features or the unique particulars of an experience.
Semantic Memory. The memory of meaning. Memory that preserves only the gist, the general significance of remembered experiences.

Which of these is most important when it comes to remembering the important stuff during a customer odyssey? They are probably both important in different way which leaves me with the big questions.

What can we do to help our customers with their semantic and episodic memories? How can we ensure that our potential customers take away the gist of our value proposition alongside enough specifics and details that they remember the virtues of our product or service?

* I was introduced to the term ‘Customer Odyssey’ by Matthew Tod

Richard Sedley

Technorati tags: engagement, psychology, memory, semantics, Sedley

Photo

Tue, 01 Jan 2008 14:27:48 +0000

Is your website from Venus or Mars?

Tue, 01 Jan 2008 08:43:00 +0000

The old maxim that ‘men are from Mars and women from Venus’ has been explored in relation to the build of websites before i.e. How Men and Women View Images Differently but it occurred to me the other week to conduct my own highly scientific experiment to see if I could gain an insight into the difference between the sexes that I might find useful when building and refining a website.

The experiment

I was driving my family to visit a relative we only see occasionally. As I drove my wife Josie would be providing the much-needed directions, and I had printed out two different types of directions.

a series of maps printed from the web showing both the whole journey in a single high-level map and a number of more detailed maps showing the route.
a set of specific instructions describing the names of the roads, the distances required and the turnings need i.e. ‘after a 100 metres turn third left at the mini-roundabout.

Which would you have chosen to use?

I’d have chosen the first type of directions. The series of maps allowing me to understand which direction I needed to travel in and giving me a spatial grasp of the relationship between where I was coming from and where I was going to.

Josie chose the second type of directions, the series of instructions.*

Scientific rigor?

Now to ensure the scientific rigor and validity of this experiment I’ve since asked a number of my close friends, both male and female which, if only allowed to chose one type of directions, they would be most likely to select. With just one exception all the men plumbed for the maps and all the women the directions.

Perhaps these results are not that surprising as it has long been known that there are subtle differences between way the sexes process language, information, emotion and cognition etc. But it got me wondering when websites are being designed how often are these differences taken into account?

One for the blokes?

Should we provide graphical maps on websites for those who prefer to understand the world spatially? There is often great emphasis placed on the simplicity and ease of navigation but do we provide a sufficient overview of the entire site to allow that navigation to be contextualised?

One of the gals?

And for those that prefer to follow a series of directions, how often do you see a set of instructions available for download on how to buy something on a website?

If they were available on a website would you use a graphical map or a set of instructions?

* Just for the record we arrived at our destination in super fast time and with not a single mistake

Richard Sedley

Technorati tags: design, Sedley

The beauty of connectedness

Sun, 07 Oct 2007 20:02:36 +0100

A number of different circumstances have recently come together to make me realise the beauty in feeling connected.

I’ve re-established connections with a lot of old friends in the last few years through various social networking sites but I’m talking about a different type of connectedness. There is something very satisfying about having everything together and working well.

I’ve just updated my broadband connection to allow me to now have a wireless connection on all three floors of my house. The provider’s support service in India were wonderful and patiently helped me connect all four different computers in the house; two Macs and two different flavours of Windows.

On each machine I was then able to link my feed readers to share the same feeds through NewsGator and FeedDemon. Each machine was linked up to my cinema screen monitors perfectly. My email system has at last been able to send and my smartphone now syncs with everything but the bath….

….somehow I now feel more complete. All I have really done is remove the barriers to me seamlessly doing what I want to do online; wherever I want to do it, whenever I want to do it. Who’d have thought that the power of ‘connectedness’ would be so beautiful?

Physicality and the poetry of online

Sun, 07 Oct 2007 17:24:42 +0100

Don Norman has recently been emphasising the importance of the physical and its return to prominence, through devices like the Wii. Physicality of a different but obviously connected sort has been playing on my mind for quite a time. How do we capture taste, touch and texture in the digital environment?

Clearly these things are physically impossible on a simple web page or an RSS feed. But that never stopped novelists or musician striving in other mediums that seemingly didn’t lend themselves to the physical. In many ways the more abstract one is forced to be in creating these things, because of a lack of practical concreteness, the more effective and emotionally resonant something can become.

Poetry is perhaps the best example of a seemingly simple medium that can carry the heaviest weight of texture and tone.

    They unswaddled the wet fern of her hair
     And made an exhibition of its coil,
     Let the air at her leathery beauty.
     Pash of tallow, perishable treasure:
     Her broken nose is dark as a turf clod,
     Her eyeholes blank as pools in the old workings.
         (Excerpt from Strange Fruit by Seamus Heaney)

As the web changes and becomes a more fluid experience - moving from the old pageview-to-pageview approach, to a richer more dynamic set of interactions - surely there is the opportunity for the evocation of physical experiences. Perhaps we might even find a little poetry and emotional connectedness in even the harshest, commercially driven websites.

Now that would be a ‘user experience’.

A time for disengagement?

Sat, 01 Sep 2007 06:46:38 +0100

There are times in the hectic world of digital media when I crave disengagement and I strive for something more poetic. My career and day-to-day work can seem like a frantic scramble to realise the potential of my activities before I need to move on to the next thing. As a result I often find little space to pause for contemplation and reverie.

As a student studying Fine Art the activity of painting was a mechanism to allow my imagination time to wander. Today I achieve this through the paintings of Andrzej Jackowski. Jackowski has a new exhibition opening at the Purdy Hicks Gallery on the 12 September 2007.

Andrzej’s paintings don’t reveal themselves easily; they take concentration, time and above all ‘headspace’. These are some of his most powerful and intimate works for quite while and harsh, backlit computer screens are not really the best medium through which to engage with them so I recommend seeing them ‘in the flesh’ if you can.

Sisters with Albums, oil on canvas, 70 x 60 cm

Sanatorium II, oil on canvas, 44 x 52 cm

City and Rat, oil on canvas, 40 x 50 cm

You can view more of Andrzej Jackowski’s work at www.jackowski.co.uk

Richard Sedley

Technorati tags: Andrzej Jackowski, Sedley, Purdy Hicks, Reverie

Death of a comrade

Thu, 30 Aug 2007 23:17:39 +0100

This morning Dave Hallsworth died aged 78. My thoughts are with his wife Elsie and their family.

It is eighteen years since I first met Dave. Easily the oldest member of the political group I travelled with, his enthusiasm and passion belied a man half his age. I’m sure there were many words used to describe him during his lifetime by friend and foe. Here are a few that I will use to remember him now he’s gone; irascible, warm-hearted, thick-skinned, and unswervingly loyal.

[Update: Mick Hume’s obituary can be found on the Spiked website]

Photo

Fri, 10 Aug 2007 23:23:27 +0100

Tony Wilson RIP

Fri, 10 Aug 2007 23:15:41 +0100

Tony Wilson died today. I met the guy a couple of times, on the second occasion he was chairing a panel I was speaking on, at an arts event in Manchester. I can’t recall exactly what the theme was but I do remember thinking he was a complete tosser.

He was arrogant, didn’t let anyone else get their opinons across and made me look stupid by cutting me off and not allowing me to explain my arguements properly. All of which he did with great skill and panache, and the audience loved him.

So it seems strange that I should want to write a blog post about him. However he played an important part in my teenage years on two fronts by co-founding Factory Records.

Firstly the music of Factory provided the soundtrack to my teenage angst. Secondly the aesthetics of the label inspired me towards my eventual career path. Wilson probably only had a limited input into the music compared to someone like producer Martin Hannett, while it was Peter Saville that was responsible for the album covers and posters.

Yet I can’t help but feel the thing that attracted me most to both the music and the aesthetic was the mystique that surrounded the label, a mystique that Wilson was largely responsible for. Each album, single, poster or band had a value but gained its unique status by being part of the Factory collective and by having its own FACT number.

Anthony Wilson taught me the importance of creating an aura around a project and made me recognise the value of building a body of work that can be greater than the sum of its parts. Anthony Wilson (1950-2007), rest in peace.

Richard Sedley

Technorati tags: Anthony Wilson, Factory

The value of the last mile, “what does it take to make you tell a great customer experience story?”

Fri, 20 Jul 2007 10:30:00 +0100

Vilfredo Pareto’s principle, otherwise known as the 80/20 rule*, is one of those ideas that just keeps popping back into my head. For me the rule has become a bit of a metaphor for stating that things just aren’t as easy as you thought. i.e.

“you can concentrate on the easy big things but that real power and the real difference is made by the small”.

Let me explain. I’m currently having a loft extension built and it really looks great… at least 80% of it does. But it seems impossible to get the builders back in to complete that last 20. Looking at it through the builder’s eyes I guess this makes sense, after all they’ve had 80% of the money, why bother with that last 20%, particularly when it’s the difficult stuff. But for me of course the most important part IS the finishing, those fussy details that make the difference between having a garden shed on my roof and a new high-tec study.

What my builders don’t understand is that it’s the last 20% where the real value exists. Not just for me but also for them. Within that 20% exists the difference between feeling ripped off and feeling so proud of something that you’ll go out of your way to promote another person’s business.

I could be such a good advocate for my builders’ business. Word of mouth marketing is so strong and so cheap why would they want to squander it?

Did you know that:

companies that focus on loyalty have 15% lower operating costs than comparable companies that don’t?
or that their growth rates tend to be 220% above average? (from The loyalty Effect by Fred Reichheld).
or that satisfied customers tend to tell an average of 5 to 8 people about their experience with a company or product,
while a dissatisfied one tells 10 to 16 people? (source: TARP).

Still my builders have just turned up this morning and they’re nice guys. Maybe I’ll get my study soon. After all I’m sure I read somewhere that people who’ve had a bad experience rescued by a company make stronger advocates than those who get the perfect experience from the start!

* The rule was conceived as an observation on wealth and population distribution in Italy at the turn of the 18th century – 80% of the money in the hands of 20% of the population.

[UPDATE: The loft study is now complete and the views are just wonderful]

Richard Sedley

Technorati tags: Customer Experience, Sedley, Satisfaction

Mini-poll: Will Facebook rule the world?

Fri, 22 Jun 2007 14:38:43 +0100

My Facebook Dilema

Fri, 22 Jun 2007 03:17:24 +0100

Mmmm. Facebook.

By the time you read this you’ve probably already read the articles talking about the phenomenal rise of the ‘Social Utility’ that is Facebook. In fact I’ve been slightly surprised by the slow up-take of writing about it. Perhaps all the mainstream journos are too busy updating their profiles and poking their pals. [Update: Interesting blog post on the fadish nature of social networks - Are network effects getting weaker?]

Facebook is a great online service, compelling in its ability to leverage connections with people to both boost egos and provide self definition in the virtual space. But despite this I’m struggling to work out exactly how to use it. I mean I know how to ‘use it’ – it’s simplicity is one of the things that helps make it so persuasive. But what am I going to use it for?

Professional vs. Personal

BIMA Chair, and Segala CEO, Paul Walsh was telling me yesterday that he has Twittered to all his colleagues that he will no longer be using Linkedin and that Facebook is now where he is at*. So Paul obviously sees this as a channel for communication and networking in the business environment. But I’m not sure that the sort of personal information that Facebook encourages one to submit is how I want clients, and colleagues to see me. [Update: Paul’s written a post on his blog explaining his motivations behind shifting to Facebook called Please no more linked in invites]

While the lines between private and public, professional and personal have been becoming more and more blurred over the last few years, I’ve made a conscious attempt to manage a coherent identity and profile online. How others, in a professional capacity see me is important to me. How I act in my private life is something I’d like to manage differently.

All of this made sense and was relatively easy when Linkedin was about professional networking, my blog was my communication channel and my personal activities, likes and dislikes were shared with a small band of friends and colleagues, usually those with ‘Big Hearts and Short Memories’. Obviously I could just keep this going but somehow Facebook has unsettled me, thrown a spanner in the works.

Making friends

Facebook’s persuasive interface means that ‘making friends’ is central to it’s existance, and after I’ve already ‘faced’ with most of my family and close personal friends what next? If I’m honest I probably only make one or two new close friends each year, if that. So where does that leave me with Facebook?

I’m left with all the ‘strangers’ I can meet online and the professional contacts I meet while networking through work. Should I add them to my friends list? Should I share the information, pictures and peccadillos that are normally reserved for mates? I’m not sure if I like the idea of losing the divide between my two worlds.

Mmmm. Facebook.

* Interestingly it took no time at all for the troops at Linkedin to contact Paul directly and ask what suggestions he had for service improvement.

Technorati tags: facebook, linkedin, Social Network, sedley

10 Tips for Online Persuasion

Wed, 09 May 2007 22:25:01 +0100

10 Tips for Online Persuasion: I’ve started to make a collection of persuasion ‘nuggets’ that can help towards those difficult website conversions. I thought I’d share a few on my blog.

"If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid"

Tue, 08 May 2007 19:56:16 +0100

“If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid”

- Epictetus

Alarm Clocking from Captology.tv

Sun, 15 Apr 2007 17:04:27 +0100

Alarm Clocking from Captology.tv

Do you set your Alarm Clock for Online Engagement?

Sun, 15 Apr 2007 17:02:22 +0100

How do you start to develop a relationship with a customer who ordinarily might only visit you and your website infrequently? An essential part of customer engagement is regular interaction. But let’s face it not every website demands regular attention, so what can we do? Well how about Alarm Clocking?

Alarm Clocking is a term I hadn’t come across before its mention on Captology.tv [View the Alarm Clocking video and find out why it is called Alarm Clocking]. However as a practice I remember first encountering Alarm Clocking on the web around 1995/6 on the Agfa website (if I’m remembering incorrectly please let me know).

Each week the Agfa site would offer us a free designer typeface if we could answer three simple questions, whose answers could be found elsewhere on their site. The principle being that if we didn’t visit the site that week we missed out on our free font. Agfa were smart as well, because they always showed us last week’s font just to make sure we regretted it if we hadn’t visited.

The Amazon Gold Box (see top right of an Amazon.com page) works in a similar way, providing you with new personalised offers for one day only. (Although personally I preferred a previous incarnation of the Gold Box that each day offered me a dozen special offers, one at a time. If I decided to click to view the next item the previous offer was lost to me adding extra incentive.)

Each of the above is a great way to encourage visitors outside times of user need. Who knows, perhaps it is even a way of taking advantage of WILFing?

This Alarm Clocking video highlights other more recent examples.

Alarm Clocking is just another excellent example of how Persuasive Design can make an impact on customer engagement.

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Technorati tags: Alarm clocking, WILF, Customer Engagement, Persuasion

Do you WILF?

Sat, 14 Apr 2007 10:21:53 +0100

I certainly know that I do. WILF is an acronym for ‘What was I looking for?’ (It’s probably a bit more media friendly than ASS - Aimless Surfing Syndrome).

The term WILF was coined by moneysupermarket.com following a survey undertaken of the online habits of 2,412 adults in the UK. The abundant choice online, and the accompanying distraction that choice offers, results in us bouncing around between sites, partially reading something before we move on to the next ‘shiny trinket’.

Most of the commentary on this phenomenon has concentrated on it from the end-user side i.e. isn’t it a tragedy that we are all wasting so much time. However from the business point of view it is potentially just as damaging.

Leaving aside the fact that your employees are wasting time if they’re WILFing at work, what does WILFing mean for your website? It means your visitor traffic could be great (at least your first time visitor traffic will be). But behind the scenes these visitors potentially offer you very little. In fact if the WILFer is using Google to access your site you’re potentially even paying for the privilege of them bouncing in and out of your website.

WILFing is just another example of the importance of Online Customer Engagement. The need to establish, sustain and spread deeper relationships that deliver value over time remains paramount to any successful organisation.

[Next post on how to start an online customer relationship through ‘Alarm Clocking’]

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Technorati tags: WILF, Customer Engagement

Podcast: Persuasive Solutions for Demanding Times

Sat, 14 Apr 2007 10:20:50 +0100

Persuasion is one of the most important constituents of any online engagement strategy.

This is a link to an audio recording of a presentation I did at an exclusive breakfast briefing last month.

You’ll also find a copy of the visual part of the presentation available here.

Technorati tags: Persuasion, Customer Engagement

Avoiding Trade-offs in a Persuasion Window

Mon, 09 Apr 2007 21:13:32 +0100

Recently I’ve been following a debate kicked off by Don Norman on the value (or lack of value) in simple design [Simplicity is Highly Overrated]. Today a post called Simplicity: The Ultimate Sophistication by Joshua Porter at User interface Engineering (UIE) caught my attention.

Talking trade-offs

Porter talks about trade-offs. Situations where customers are presented with two similar items but where one is more feature laiden than the other, and as a result costs more. For example two cars, one with an MP3 player the other without. The potential customer is faced with a choice, a dilemma. Are the extra features worth the money? A trade-off can be made – pay less money, get less features. Both cars can get me from A to B, but how much more enjoyable would it be if I could plug in my iPod and listen to my latest sounds?

Quoting from The Paradox of Choice, Porter notes that “researchers concluded that being forced to confront trade-offs in making decisions makes people unhappy and indecisive…”. He adds ’..simplicity goes beyond the interface of the product to the decision process surrounding it. We want simple decisions as much as simple products’.

Timing is everything

If we understand Persuasion Windows as being the right place and time to persuade, where the customer is most receptive, then we should avoid trade-offs at these times. The Stanford Captology Lab has already identified six key situations when you are most likely to be persuade, one of these is when you are in a good mood. Exactly the opposite of the emotions created when faced with a trade-off.

For more on Persuasion Windows

[I’ll be exploring Persuasion Windows more in the months to come as I develop the concept. If you’re interested listen to my presentation Persuasive Solutions for Demanding Times available for download from my Loopstatic blog. The next cScape newsletter will also be dedicated to the practice of Online Persuasion so sign up if your interested]

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Technorati tags: Persuasion, Customer Engagement, Persuasion Windows, Trade-offs, cScape, Loopstatic