Why Cabela's Has Emerged as the Top Omni-Channel Retailer

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By Adam Blair & Nicole Giannopoulos

Despite years of work by many retailers to become truly effective in omni-channel retailing, the general consensus is that no one has yet done it. In other words, no retailer is as good as Amazon is in digital retailing, as goos as Walmart in brick-and-mortar retailing, and also has fully synchronized IT systems on the back end. Except for one retailer: Cabela's. Several years into a massive omni-channel tranformation, Cabela's continues to rack up big sales gains and simultaneously keep its food pressed on the gas pedal by investing in a broad agenda of omni-channel IT projects.

In baseball, the classic advice to batters is to "hit 'em where they ain't." Cabela's has learned, and re-learned, how to hit 'em (customers) where they are, no matter where that is at any given point. The iconic outdoors and sporting goods retailer has been advancing on multiple fronts to make each of its channels (stores, online, catalogs/call centers, social and mobile) a more useful, more relevant part of its customers' shopping experiences. Perhaps more important, Cabela's has become one of the few companies that is operating as a true omni-channel retailer.

Cabela's recognizes that customers' non-linear purchase patterns means that they are using different touchpoints for different parts of the shopping process – so that what may look like a lost sales opportunity in one channel can actually be the prelude to a sale in another channel.

"Cabela's, the world's foremost outfitter, has identified customers who may look at a product online, even putting it in the shopping cart but then removing it several times before going into a store and making a purchase," notes Jeff Tanner Jr., PhD, associate dean of the Hankamer School of Business at Baylor University and a partner in BPT Partners. "Depending on the product, a shopper may place it in the cart as many as three times on average before purchasing."

A recent presentation to Wall Street analysts by Cabela's executives explained the many initiatives and IT tools Cabela's uses to make omni-channel retailing a reality:

Letting Customers Speak Via Social Media: The retailer implemented a Bazaarvoice program called Ask & Answer; over 27,000 questions have been submitted. While 15,000 have been answered by a Cabela's online outfitter, 12,000 have been answered by other customers – a process that further creates customer engagement.

In addition, Cabela's Facebook page has approximately 1.5 million "friends" and "Likes". Its audience of hunters and fishermen is extremely engaged, posting photos of trophy catches, sharing successes in the field, talking about opportunities, product recommendations and items they love. Cabela's is also more involved with YouTube than most multichannel retailers, providing how-to videos, specifically explaining some of the technology used in Cabela's products.

Multiplying Mobile Apps: Cabela's has three mobile apps. One translates Cabelas.com to the correct specifications for a smartphone; a second is a shopping app. The Recon Hut app includes GPS technology. "This will help you as you go out on a hunt to track where you've been," said Cabela's chief marketing officer Scott Williams. "You could drop pins based on where you sighted a deer, where you tracked it to, etc. We think it's an exciting opportunity that not any multichannel retailer would have, something that has that fun experiential piece along with a shopping app."

Optimizing Store Inventories and Pricing: The retailer reduced its SKU count by nearly 10% in 2011, according to chief merchandising officer Brian Linneman, in part by implementing JDA allocation and demand forecasting applications. "We made significant gains in improving inventory productivity through better preseason planning and end season management. This increase in precision helps us generate visibility into both sales [and] margin opportunities that perhaps today we might not be able to see.

"In addition, we're implementing a price optimization tool that will be deployed in late 2012," Linneman added. "This will give us leading industry tools for a better initial price setting, markdowns and promotional pricing of product. And lastly, we'll roll out a net SKU profitability project midyear that will give us a much better insight towards assortment profitability, leading to the rationalization and improvement of gross margins."

Making Endless Aisle Inventory Available in Smaller Stores: Cabela's is replacing its existing store kiosks with new, more reliable and easier-to-use models. The retailer's recently announced Outpost stores, which will feature smaller footprints and a more limited merchandise selection than Cabela's traditional stores, are expected to have higher levels of kiosk sales across the retailer's entire assortment.

Streamlining Digital Sales: The majority of Cabela's direct (non-store) business is from its Cabelas.com website; it's "well past 50%," according to CMO Williams. The retailer has done "a lot of hard work in what we call site planogramming. That's literally taking the site and breaking it down, category by category, usability, site navigation – literally the tabs and navigation at the top."

Cabela's is also using remarketing tools. If a customer that has visited the site but, for whatever reason, has not purchased something, at a subsequent site Cabela's can offer this customer a relevant banner ad. Cabela's also leverages a strong e-mail database to drive traffic for Cabelas.com as well as multichannel traffic.

Omnichannel excellence: You can find it at Guitar Center

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By Artemis Berry, Senior Director of Content and Community, Shop.org | Published: April 4, 2012

The retail consumer is a working mom on the go – utilizing her mobile phone to find the closest retail store to pick up school supplies for her children. The retail consumer is a self-proclaimed techie – he would never buy a new device without recommendations and reviews from his fellow-gadget lovers and tech bloggers. The retail consumer is a 20-something, always-connected mobile consumer – she spends hours every day on social networking sites including Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest to share stories, likes, reviews and even locations with a network of friends and family.

The retail consumer is smarter than ever, always-connected and expects a localized, personalized omnichannel shopping experience across every social platform, retail site or store that is convenient for them. You know this. We’ve been talking about this for years and there is no fighting it now.

Just a few years ago, the shopping experience didn’t involve the same technologies it does today. We’re going through a revolution of sorts filled with disruptive, marketing-powered technologies allowing us to truly enhance the socialized, localized shopping experience for the always-connected, mobile consumer. But which retailers have made the best efforts to optimize their marketing, merchandising and customer service for this empowered shopper?

At the recent Retail Business and Technology Expo in London, I presented my top ten omnichannel, SoLoMo-embracing retailers. My list included Apple, Gilt Groupe, Tory Burch, American Eagle Outfitters, Express, PacSun, Nordstrom, 1-800-Flowers, and one of my favorites – Guitar Center.
While many of us have heard or read about how innovative some of these retailers are in terms of all things social and mobile, there was one particular example that the High Street retailers in the UK seemed to embrace from my presentation. That retailer was Guitar Center.

Most recently, we were proud to feature Guitar Center executives Steve Zapf and Kirit Sarvaiya, on the Shop.org First Look Track stage at Retail’s BIG Show to share how they harness the power of 220 stores and over 4,000 store associates to win web shoppers in a local market. In their presentation Guitar Center discussed how they differentiate and thrive in the competitive retail environment. Going one step beyond added features including pick up in store and return-to-store for online purchases, Guitar Center used their number one asset: their knowledgeable, local store associate (4,000+ of them) to marry all things digital to the in-store experience.

To compete in this new age of retail, Guitar Center launched store microsites for stores all over the country. These sites featured store information, maps, local event calendars, local store ads and spotlights, and most importantly – a feature to “Find an Associate” within a specific store. Not only did Guitar Center feature all of their associates with individualized profiles, but they went to the next level to categorize them as an expert within product categories. These store associate profiles highlighted musical interests, favorite instruments, gear recommendations and more.

Why did this literally rock? These store associate profiles can be viewed by customers looking to complete product research, ask specific store associates questions, and can help drive traffic to the store AND to the site. Utilizing their number one asset all over the country, Guitar Center has married the in-store experience and e-commerce for the social, on the go consumer. They were my ideal example of omnichannel differentiation at its finest.

Omnichannel? It’s not just another buzzword. It is the word that encapsulates what retailers should aspire to be for their customers. Omnichannel is all about letting customers experience a brand, not a channel within a brand. Omnichannel at its best? You can find it at Guitar Center, where they have given a microphone to the influential voice of their store associates… at local stores all over the country.

Organizational Challenges for UX Professionals

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By Patrick Neeman

Published: April 2, 2012

“A great organizational culture is a necessity if we are to create great products.”

 

Being a UX professional—whether a UX designer, a user researcher, or a UX leader—can sometimes be challenging. We often find ourselves in the midst of organizational challenges—sometimes bringing more to light than we actually solve. Because our work is customer facing, User Experience is an important part of the product development equation. We reflect our organizational cultures because we are so integral to the product development process.

In many organizations, there is a very high turnover rate for Directors of User Experience—just because an organization’s culture is broken. We recognize early on that many product problems are a direct reflection of cultural difficulties, but sometimes there is no way to change them.

A great organizational culture is a necessity if we are to create great products. In this article, I’ll discuss some ways in which organizations fail because of their cultures.

Talking to Customers Isn’t a Part of an Organization’s Culture

“No matter what your process is, your organization’s goal should be to have a clear understanding of your customers.”

 

Instead of finding out what customers really need, a product team goes off in a room where a lot of smart people start developing use cases, wireframes, and visual designs in a conference room. Months go by, the organization releases the final product, and it bombs. No one uses it, a lot of money has gotten wasted, and the product team gets fired.

Whose fault is it? It’s the organization’s fault.

No matter what your process is, your organization’s goal should be to have a clear understanding of your customers. This means customer visits or remote user interviews using Skype video and screen sharing or simple phone calls. If you fit the profile of the target audience, you can design for yourself, but beware of doing this if you don’t belong to the audience for a product.

There is no excuse for this organizational failing; no one should design a product in a vacuum. The assertion that “we shouldn’t show customers the product because competitors might see it” is stupid. If you’re creating a new product for which the barrier of entry is so low that a customer could steal the idea, maybe you shouldn’t be in that market.

Great organizations have a clear vision for customers. Your organization should work hand in hand with customers. This is an issue of organizational culture. It should be ingrained in your culture that talking to users is not only expected, but rewarded.

Manufacturers of physical products do extensive studies of their customers to maximize their profits. Supermarket store design is a great example of this, particularly the design of customer flows. Why don’t technology firms do this?

How to avoid this failing—Go on the road. Visit or talk to at least one customer a week. Users are your best subjects, from whom you can learn the most. Partner with your customers to grow your business.

Leadership Doesn’t Have a Clear Vision

“If a company’s direction is always changing, and they don’t have a clear vision of where they are going, there’s no way that they can build great products.”

 

“This week we’re going to build a product with viral features.”

“This week let’s build a comment system.”

“This week we’ll do ecommerce!”

If a company’s direction is always changing, and they don’t have a clear vision of where they are going, there’s no way that they can build great products. Achieving successful product management and user experience is highly dependent on understanding the context of the user. If that context is always changing, there’s no way to build an effective user experience.

Vision is hard to define, but not as hard as you might think. There’s an anecdote about a couple of MBAs who started a business. They did extensive research and pricing studies and spent lots of money on ever-changing priorities. Eventually, they sold the company to a small business owner who had a simplified vision of how to run the company. Under the new leadership, the company sold its products for twice as much as they cost and provided great customer service. The business became wildly successful.

Creating great products isn’t as hard as you might think: becoming clear about what you’re providing to users is about listening to them. That’s it.

How to avoid this failing—Articulate a vision, and stick to it. You may need to adjust your vision based on market changes, but the clearer your vision, the better you’re able to build products that reflect that vision.

Leadership and the Design Team Don’t Share the Same Vision

“If leadership doesn’t believe their design team can build a product that can grow the business, they need to make changes to the design team.…”

 

I’ve worked in a few organizations where we’d be making great progress on a product and getting really close to launch. Then we’d be asked to do a big demonstration for a Vice President or C-level executive, and our meeting would turn from strategy to “could you make this button green.” Or they might ask us to add a few more features that require a complete redesign, destroying months of work.

I’ve seen email messages from CEOs who were intent on hijacking the design process or going around design leadership to ask their go-to guy to make changes to a product design. This is toxic behavior and reflects poorly on leadership because it demonstrates that they have failed to build a design team that they can work with effectively.

If leadership doesn’t believe their design team can build a product that can grow the business, they need to make changes to the design team, not ask for a button in another color. The best designers work hand in hand with management to understand their vision and translate it into a viable product. If management can’t articulate a vision that is consistent with the needs of the market, this creates great conflict.

In truly great organizations, vision bubbles up from the lowest levels, then management synthesizes and articulates a clear product vision.

How to avoid this failing—Management must let designers do their job and recognize that they aren’t the target audience. Leaders’ responsibility is setting the vision and building their team. If they’ve done this right, they shouldn’t have to hijack the design process.

The Design Team Hasn’t Laid a Sound Foundation by Establishing a Design Process

“A good process ensures consistency across all of your products and drives you toward a consistent product vision for your users.”

 

“Let’s go straight to wireframes.”

Sometimes that might not be such a bad thing. You might need to get a feel for where you need to go by creating a bunch of wireframes. But wireframes are the end-product of a lot of other UX design tasks and are just one part of the design process. They provide documentation for your design projects, allow you to articulate your design ideas visually and functionally, and let you communicate your ideas to multiple audiences, including management and engineering.

I’ve seen design teams fail because there wasn’t a good foundation for the final design vision. Good designers should have at least a rough idea of where they are going, even if their destination could change.

A good process ensures consistency across all of your products and drives you toward a consistent product vision for your users.

How to avoid this failing—Put your design process in place. Establish your product vision and create branding standards, personas, patterns, and other design guidelines.

The Designers on a Team Aren’t on the Same Page

“Creating a collaborative culture is very important when building a design team. When designers work together they can achieve great things.”

 

There’s nothing more toxic than when the designers on a team are working toward different goals. Creating a collaborative culture is very important when building a design team. When designers work together they can achieve great things. When they don’t agree on a design process or share the same design goals, arguments can ensue over the silliest things—like the color of buttons or the usage of hyperlinks. Such a team cannot achieve a consistent product vision.

I’ve worked with visual designers who refused to collaborate or whose idea of design was to throw mockups over a wall. In one particular environment where I worked, the visual designers completely changed the layouts and, thus, the workflows represented in the wireframes, disregarding the deep thought that had gone into the work.

While the personalities of the designers on a team may be very different, they should be able to work together toward one common goal: the success of their company. Here’s an example of teamwork from the world of baseball: During the early 1970’s, the Oakland As were a complete mess off the field because of personality differences. But on the field, they had one goal: winning the World Series. And they did win it three years straight, in 1972, 1973, and 1974.

How to avoid this failing—Design leadership should be able build a team that is on the same page and has shared goals. Sometimes that means firing people. Design is sometimes more subjective than we would like to think. Having an inconsistent design culture can destroy companies.

An Organization Doesn’t Allocate Its Resources Properly

“Many organizations believe that the answer to building great engineering and product teams is to hire more engineers. I’ve found the opposite to be true.”

 

Look at the product teams around you. How many product managers do you work with? How many designers? How many engineers?

Many organizations believe that the answer to building great engineering and product teams is to hire more engineers. I’ve found the opposite to be true. I’ve worked on a lot of smaller teams that were able to build great products by following streamlined processes, maintaining proper staffing levels, and hiring resources with the right skill sets.

I’ll give you an example: the best team I ever worked on had a ratio of three developers, one visual designer, one product manager—that was me—and one quality assurance engineer. We were able to do enough requirements gathering to keep the developers busy, no one worked overtime, and we created a product that is still profitable today as a small business.

If the ratios or skill sets of resources aren’t right, a team cannot work efficiently. When there are too few designers, developers sit around waiting, with nothing to do, and the designers are grossly overworked. When there are too many designers, they produce too much documentation, so the developers don’t know where to start. Finding the right balance is like tuning the engine of a racing car: too much or too little and the engine runs inefficiently. Getting the right mix means winning the race.

How to avoid this failing—Adjust your staffing levels and their skill sets for optimal performance. This doesn’t necessarily mean hiring more people: sometimes too many cooks in the kitchen can spoil the broth. Get the ratios right and your team’s performance will improve.

An Organization Encourages Feature Creep

“Product management should work hand in hand with user experience. They should work together not only to decide what should be in a product, but also what shouldn’t be in a product.”

 

Product management should work hand in hand with user experience. They should work together not only to decide what should be in a product, but also what shouldn’t be in a product. Most product teams don’t have the luxury of doing green-field product development with unlimited budgets. Therefore, feature creep can kill companies.

Constraints are our friends. We shouldn’t have to try to “ice skate in a phone booth,” but great teams realize the limitations and constraints of their environment and work within them. That’s the core of designing for mobile first: understand exactly what a user’s minimum needs are, then build a product to satisfy them. That’s one of the core premises of agile development: iterate to a final product within the constraints of your organization. If you force hard decisions, you’ll end up with a better product.

Poor product teams and UX teams don’t understand restraint, and they suffer because of this. Projects are rushed, wireframes undergo endless revisions, and nothing ever gets done at a level of quality that anyone is happy with. It’s in everyone’s best interest to focus on what you can do rather than some mythical and unachievable goal.

How to avoid this failing—Less is more. Iterate to a final product. Every feature that you include should provide tremendous value and be integral to the user experience. If leadership consistently asks product teams and designers to add features or make fundamental changes to a product within an unrealistic timeline, the organization’s culture needs to change.

There’s No Effort Dedicated to Fit and Finish

“The fit and finish of a product … reflects directly on the team that built a product.”

 

Would you try to sell a car with a half-finished paint job? Only three seats in the cabin? A dashboard that wasn’t cleaned?

That’s the rub: users will continually expect better and better user experiences as the Web matures. This includes the fit and finish of a product, which reflects directly on the team that built a product. Apple goes to great lengths to build products that feel complete. Most companies don’t produce products at that level, and the market reacts appropriately, declaring such products to be commodities.

Lack of attention to the details of a product reflects directly on how organizations perceive the expectations of their customers. An example: For many years, American automakers weren’t dedicated to the goal of refining the fit and finish of their products, and their customers reacted accordingly.

You must take the greatest care from the initial design of the user experience to the final implementation of its details. Customers notice when a product team doesn’t take the time to take it all the way to the finish line.

How to avoid this failing—Emphasize the expectation that your organization should be dedicated to producing products to the highest standards. Making sure a product goes out with every detail complete should always trump deadlines or any political concerns.

Cart remarketing: The secret behind online conversion

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By Fiona Swerdlow, Head of Research, Shop.org | Published: April 3, 2012

 

How would you like to add real dollars to your bottom line? Increase conversion? Boost sales? Bump up that AOV? Of course you would. Now, ask any retailer what their top three barriers to conversion and sales are, and you are sure to hear “shopping cart abandonment” somewhere on that list.

What’s the connection? In two words – cart remarketing. SeeWhy did some research and found that:

• On average, 8% of customers return to a site to buy if the company does no remarketing. With a remarketing program in place, however, that average jumps to 26%.
• Yet – incredibly – just 37% of the retailers do “something” as follow up to a customer visit (though usually something like asking customers to sign up for a newsletter). Only 12% did some cart remarketing of any kind, and even fewer truly personalized that follow up.

All in all, that’s some serious money left on the table.

We gathered several experts – Charles Nicholls of SeeWhy, Charlie Cole of Lucky Brand Jeans, and Nancy Miller of Woodcraft for the latest Shop.org Webinar, “Shopping Cart Abandonment Research and Insights”, broadcast on March 28, 2012. While I couldn’t possibly capture in one blog post all the great information and lessons that the panelists shared, here are a few highlights to whet your appetite and entice you and your team to listen to the playback today.

Cart abandonment may be at an all-time high… At first glance, the industry benchmarks aren’t encouraging: the current average shopping cart abandonment rate is 72%, according to Nicholls. Brace yourself: that number is only likely to increase as consumers continue to change. Among brand new (first time) visitors, their research revealed that a mere quarter of one percent (that’s 0.25%) “…will go through and actually complete their purchase on the spot in that first visit.” Put another way, more than 99% of first time visitors will “fall off your single track.”

…but now is actually “part of the purchase journey.” Before you despair, consider this: Nicholls characterized shopping cart abandonment as both a problem and an opportunity – and, no, that’s not marketing spin. Retailers tend to think of “conversion = good; abandonment = bad”, Nicholls noted, but – as with many issues – it’s not remotely as “black and white” as all that. Why? Consumers are fundamentally changing. Likening the purchase path to a multi-stop vs. single trip rail pass, Nicholls explained that many consumers now stop and start multiple times – and in multiple venues (web, smartphone, tablet, in store) – on their path to buying a given product. In other words, that old single track purchase funnel is obsolete.

Why consumers abandon carts: price *and* unique attributes. Per a Forrester Research study, when a consumer abandons a cart, the leading reasons reflect either a price objection (e.g. shipping costs) or a timing objection (the consumer wants to do more research, they aren’t ready to buy yet, etc.). Between August 2011 and March 2012, SeeWhy analyzed over 600,000 visitors and 250,000 transactions to dig deeper into this issue. The study confirmed that cart abandonment can, in fact, “be part of the purchase cycle” – especially for carts that are quite small or once the value jumps to between $100 and $150. “$100 is a psychological mark where everything changes,” Nicholls noted, so, for example, retailers should consider setting their free shipping promotion at the $99 – vs. $100 – threshold.

Cart remarketing benefits the whole business. A well executed cart abandonment strategy provides additional benefits to the business overall, among those: helping retailers learn more about their business, products and customers along the way. For example, while price can have a significant impact on cart abandonment rates, every item has a unique abandonment rate depending on its (unique) attributes. By examining more closely products that have high abandonment rates, retailers can adjust those product detail pages to perhaps direct customers to stores to see the product in person, and/or put in place shipping options (e.g. free returns shipping) to assuage customer concerns about making the “wrong” purchase.

The first 12 hours after a first visit (and abandonment) are critical for remarketing. SeeWhy found that, among consumers who didn’t buy initially, the average elapsed time between that first visit and actual purchase is 19 hours – but that 72% of those who ultimately bought did so within the first 12 hours after that first visit. “Leads do go cold pretty quickly,” Nicholls underscored. Beware launching a quickly-hatched blanket email remarketing program. There are three secrets of success to cart remarketing: timing, tone, and personalization. The panelists also discussed the role of emotion as well as potential pitfalls in a remarketing strategy: how frequently should you follow up via email? How can you use a return site visit to remarket a cart? When – if ever – should you include an offer as part of a remarketing campaign? What’s the right way to personalize? What are the right goals for each email in a remarketing sequence?

Invest and reap the rewards. To learn more about how to best set up and execute your cart remarketing strategy, you’ll have to listen to the webinar playback. And if you’re still not convinced a cart remarketing strategy is worth your time, consider this:

• Charlie Cole of Lucky Brand Jeans emphasized that remarketing accounts for 3% of their $40MM business – that’s $1.2 million, just for executing their remarketing strategy in a smarter, more timely and personalized manner.
• Nancy Miller of Woodcraft reported that, “The abandoned cart campaign is number 1 in terms of conversion rate, ROI and per visit value. Comparing this campaign to all other direct email campaigns, the conversion rate is 618% higher, and the per visit value is 675% higher.”

With stats like that, what are you waiting for?

4 Tips For Authentic Online Engagement

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March 27, 2012 by Valerie Buckingham 

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Valerie Buckingham is Head of North America Marketing for Nokia. She has held various roles at the company since 2002 before taking over all North American marketing responsibilities in July 2011.

If you want your brand’s social media efforts to come across as authentic, you need to know what you stand for and what’s meaningful to you. In other words, authentic social communication requires you to be honest about what your brand represents, what you have to offer, where your weaknesses are, and what’s really important to your audience.

SEE ALSO: 12 Top Community Managers Share Their Tips for Better Engagement  If you’re not listening and engaging in a candid manner, you run the risk of having a message that doesn’t resonate, or worse, creates a backlash, calling into question not just what you’re trying to say via social media, but across all outbound communication channels. For a brand, that’s bad news. Here are four tips for keeping your social-media outreach authentic.

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1. Focus On The Individual

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Your people are your greatest asset when it comes to social media because they offer a real human perspective rather than a pre-packaged marketing message. The problem is social media can get stripped of its authenticity by strict brand guidelines that mandate an omniscient company voice.

Instead, imbue your social channels with the many unique individuals who work for the company.
Think of your audience in the same way. Don’t assume that they are a homogenous mass. This will help you develop a social communications plan that takes into consideration whether this audience is just getting to know your brand or if they are loyal followers. As individuals, we speak differently to different people. Remember that a brand is no different.

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2. Listen Up!

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It’s impossible to tap into sentiment without a system for listening. As brand communicators, we need to constantly have an ear out for changes in the consumer landscape and be tuned into what’s important to our audience.

For example, a key group influencing the tech industry is millennials, which loosely includes consumers born between 1980 and 2000. You might think you already know it all when it comes to millennials: that they’re all rebels, that their values are vastly different from their parents, and that they’re obsessed with changing the world. In reality, when you listen to young people today through research, you find that they defy those traditional stereotypes. Today’s millennials actually admit they love their parents and list them as friends on Facebook. They have no strong desire to leave home. They’re not even skewed liberal. This new generation is also questioning consumerism more than ever before, and they’ve proven to have very little brand loyalty. Most importantly, they’re currently defining what is real, cool, and interesting. That’s why listening is crucial.

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3. Keep It Real

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Today’s millennials are not just good at figuring out what’s authentic, they can also spot what is inauthentic from a mile away. Having grown up in the Internet age, they expect brands to talk to them with a real voice, and they’re not afraid to engage them in a public forum.

One great example of authenticity in action is a program recently run by airline KLM. KLM kicked off their social media program by asking, “What do we know to be true about how people interact with our brand?” The conclusion: people waste a lot of time in airports.

Starting with that simple truth, KLM set their campaign up for authentic direct-to-consumer engagement. They decided to surprise passengers that mentioned their KLM flight via Twitter or Foursquare. The teams used social media profiles to learn a little more about these travelers, enabling them to respond with appropriate perks such as a travel book for the hopelessly lost or a sports watch for the casual runner. These random acts of kindness took a little more effort than generic communications, but the response was rewarding. Travelers were only too happy to share their KLM experiences online with others. And let’s face it, what’s more authentic than consumers speaking on behalf of your brand? So don’t be afraid to change your message to suit your audience’s real needs and desires. Then reap the rewards.

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4. Follow This Guiding Principle

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Given the speed of social media, your message can go from trusted to falling out of favor in the blink of an eye, and it could all hinge on what you say next. That’s why the number one thing you can do to ensure authenticity and trust when connecting with fans, customers, and partners is to think about what your message means to them.

Book Review: Content Strategy at Work

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Elizabeth S. Bennett   April 3, 2012

Content strategy is having a moment. I know, people have been saying that for the last two years. I’m not talking about the moment where the average person knows what content strategy is, or the moment where most companies have dedicated content strategists on staff, or even that the term content strategy is on the lips of seemingly every marketer in the land.

The moment I’m referring to – the one that Margot Bloomstein hits on time and again in her new book Content Strategy at Work  –  is that even if someone up top in an organization is willing to overlook content as a strategic asset, everyone on a digital project is now on the hook for raising their hand and saying, “Hey! What about the content?”  Be they designer, project manager, information architect, account manager, SEO specialist or CMS developer, the success of so many digital projects hinges on a thoughtful and multifaceted approach to working with content. And each one of the professionals mentioned above will and probably should be collaborating with a content strategist, or at least someone who is wearing that sexy hat.

Bloomstein’s work is filled with well-drawn content-oriented case studies and should be considered required reading for anyone whose work overlaps with content, and any content strategist who is looking for meaty in-the-trenches examples of how content strategy is grappled with and applied to projects big and small. The diverse set of examples, which she pulls from practitioners at several consultancies and digital agencies*, highlights just how deeply content is embedded in digital work today. From communications strategy, to qualitative and quantitative content analysis, to editorial design, content creation, management, governance, SEO and social media strategy and more, content strategy, is shot through digital project work.

In the Moo case study, we learn how a message architecture can help focus content and drive design decisions. In the Johns Hopkins Medicine case, we are pulled into the challenges of scoping for content strategy, a conundrum many of us face. In the Bows N’ Ties case, we witness the tension between content strategy and search engine optimization. The case studies are informative and fun, skillfully demonstrating the intersection and interdependencies of content strategy with other disciplines. Bloomstein peppers the book with solid and often difficult questions that we should all have written on our whiteboards, perhaps the most urgent one being, “What does the content need to accomplish?”

Bloomstein is at her most thought provoking when she shines the light on complex projects that present a host of strategic, editorial, design, organizational and technical challenges.  For example, the case of the television network that wanted to comingle its programming content with encyclopedic information, a goal that required the active use of nearly every wrench and screwdriver in the CS toolkit. It demonstrates the highly strategic and supremely tactical nature of content strategy in a single project, including a healthy portion of organizational challenge, a common byproduct of smart content choices.

In Content Strategy at Work, Bloomstein frames the cases with meaningful context, crisp approaches to problem solving (I will definitely be cribbing from her message architecture client exercise, which she generously shares) and genuine curiosity. In tackling so much, however, she misses out on a couple of hot spots.  I wish, for example, that Bloomstein had done more exploration of how user research can drive and influence content strategy and how companies are measuring the success of content efforts. Both areas are top of mind for many of us in the field and I hope Bloomstein tackles them in her next work.

Those who practice content strategy and as Bloomstein likes to say, FOCS (Friends of Content Strategy), should revel in this moment, linger over the accomplishments and take pride in the acknowledgement of our discipline.

So now what? Our next challenge, should we choose to accept it, says Bloomstein:
“The goal is to engage in a project or process that will result in a better user experience, one that transcends channel, campaign, or budget cycle. The goal is to establish a sustainable publishing model for your clients and their customers. The goal is to facilitate better, more useful communication, and that cannot happen without content strategy.”

Now get to work.

*Full disclosure: While my Razorfish colleagues Rachel Lovinger and Erin Scime and are quoted in this book, I do not have a direct connection with Content Strategy at Work nor did I have any knowledge of its contents prior to publication.

An Intro to Metadata and Taxonomies

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by Christine Benson on March 29th, 2012

As the structured/adaptive content conversation progresses, metadata and taxonomies will also become more and more important. To participate in the conversation, you don’t need to know everything—but you do need to understand the essential foundations so you can ask the right questions.

For the record, I’m no expert. At the end of the post, I’ve listed a series of resources from some super-smart people who are.

The goal of this post is to provide an introduction to the concepts, so you can get a general understanding and feel comfortable digging into more information.

Now, this conversation gets big in a hurry—but don’t be intimidated. These terms have been around much longer than the Web, and can be applied in a wide variety of contexts. In the hopes of making this post a bit more approachable, I’m going to fast-forward through the structured content conversation with the diagram below.



Simple enough, right? I’ll be skipping past why and how to break your content up into components, and instead focus on how metadata and taxonomies get applied to content components.

Metadata first

The information provided in metadata makes the content findable and understandable to either a human or a computer. There are lots of definitions out there, but when it comes to metadata, I look to Rachel Lovinger, the metadata guru. She defines metadata as “information about the content that provides structure, context, and meaning.”

There are three main types of metadata:

• Structural: Defines the metadata elements that need to be collected; labels like title, author, date created, subject, purpose, etc. Defining these structural elements is typically based on a mix of organizational and system needs, along with standard schemas like Dublin Core.
• Administrative: Often created automatically when content is entered into the CMS, these values are used to manage the content. Administrative metadata includes things like date created or author. They can sometimes include sub-elements about rights-management or preservation.
• Descriptive: These values describe aspects specific to each content component, like title, subject, audience, and/or purpose.

Some of each of the three types of metadata is likely to be used on a typical piece of content, but how and when they get defined is very different. The structural metadata gets identified as part of your system requirements. Administrative and descriptive metadata are identified during the creation or curation of specific content. If you think of it like a form, the structural metadata supports which information needs to be collected (fields on the page), and the descriptive and administrative metadata provide the values for those form fields.

Here’s how they work together:

Taxonomy, shmaxonomy

The term taxonomy gets applied across a range of contexts. In the biology world, it means grouping organisms into hierarchical groups (e.g., kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, and species).
The web/digital world typically applies it to any kind of structure that organizes information. Information science people sometimes say “controlled vocabularies” instead of taxonomies.

Regardless of the term, the underlying goals are to create some level of consistency and control over the information used to describe a content component, and clarify relationships between them.
Common types include:

• Term list: A standardized list of terms created to insure consistent tagging and indexing. Think of it as a list of “preferred language.” Term lists typically provide a series of metadata values to pick from for elements like format or content type.
• Hierarchies: Often called a “taxonomy,” a hierarchy defines the structural framework used to classify terms into parent/child or broad-to-narrow relationships. Hierarchies are specifically used to support layered groups of information and not simply for the convenience of creating groupings—although each level of a hierarchy is commonly referred to as a “category.”
• Thesauri: A thesaurus translates conceptual relationships between the content, often made naturally by humans, into something a computer can understand. Thesauri typically address three types of relationships: equivalent (synonyms), hierarchical (broad-to-narrow terms), and/or associative (related terms).

Let’s get together, yeah yeah yeah

At its simplest, a taxonomy organizes information, and metadata describes it. For the taxonomy to be able to organize the information, terms need to be stored as metadata. It all works together to make the content findable, recognizable, and useful.

An example:



Not every site needs every one of these things, but this diagram illustrates how these elements can feed into each other and how they help display content to the user.

What’s next?

Admittedly, I’ve over-simplified these concepts to make them easier to understand. If you’re interested in learning more about metadata, taxonomies, and structured content, there’s no end to the list of resources out there.

Here are a few to get you started:

• Rachel Lovinger’s Metadata Workshop from Content Strategy Applied 2012
• “Taxonomies and controlled vocabularies best practices for metadata” by Heather Hedden, Journal of Digital Asset Management
• The National Information Standards Organization (NISO) provides a wealth of information related to both traditional and new technologies in the publications section of their site
• Rachel Lovinger’s blog, Meaningful Data
• The Rockley Group’s blog
• Joe Gollner’s blog, The Content Philosopher
• Karen McGrane’s blog
• Earley & Associates knowledge center

Survey: 21% of users on Pinterest have purchased an item that they found on the site

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28th March 2012 by Drew Olanoff

There’s no doubt that Pinterest continues to gain traction in for users who enjoy creating collections of things to share with others. We know that businesses are seeing tons of traffic to their sites from Pinterest users as well, showing that the premise of curated collections on a social network could actually generate sales.

Daily deals site Fab.com even noticed that Pinterest has started generating more traffic to it than sites like Twitter.

Other than the much-discussed fact that most Pinterest users happen to be women, we don’t know much more than that about the fanatical “pinners”. With a sizable sample of U.S. consumers, PriceGrabber has released some interesting survey results about people who use the site regularly.

Return users who cook and buy

By far, the most popular interest for the people who took the survey is cooking, followed up by home decorating, crafting, fashion, entertainment, and gardening. A whopping 70% of them said that cooking inspiration and recipes were their number one interest on Pinterest.

How often do they use the site? 37% of people surveyed log in a few times a week, with only 10% saying that they use the site a few times a day. Surprisingly, these folks are all active on the site, having created anywhere from 1-10 “Pinboards” themselves, which shows that people aren’t just consuming on Pinterest, they’re actively creating and re-sharing. Still though, Pinterest hasn’t replaced the usage for Twitter and Facebook, so appears that the site is a complimentary experience for the time being.



The super interesting part about Pinterest to me is that businesses could actually start generating quite a bit of sales from the people who are visiting from the site. By sharing their own products or making sure that they have “Pin” buttons on their site, Pinterest could easily start turning a small online boutique into a hot property in just a few weeks.

The difference between sharing things on Twitter and Pinterest is that people get to see exactly what the item is before they click on it. If businesses make sure that they’re posting great photographs of their items online, the sky is the limit for what Pinterest can do for them.

And Pinterest people aren’t just clicking, they’re buying. Out of the people who were surveyed who had an account on the site, an astonishing 21% of them have actually purchased items that they found on someone’s Pinboard. The most popular products fall in line with the interests I told you about above. That means that people are buying cooking utensils, things to make arts and crafts, and of course clothing.

Spammers are hip to the money they can make from Pinterest to, as illustrated by an interview with one such spammer on The Daily Dot. In the interview, “Steve” says that he’s making over $1,000 a day just from affiliate links he’s adding on Pinterest through bots. When spammers start using a service as heavily as this, and making money, the service is usually primed for stardom.

Pinterest definitely has to clean up the spam and figure out how it can make some money for itself, but in the interim, the users appear to be happy and businesses are finding new customers from a place that didn’t exist until a few months ago. Isn’t the Internet grand?

Setting a context for a content strategy vocabulary

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March 30, 2012 · 

 

The problem with building a glossary is that the definitions need to exist within a context. In my last post, I alluded to the ubiquitous term “template”, which has different meanings within different contexts, and Noz pointed out the word “format”, which has the same problem. The content strategy field is developing its own context, and this framework is offered as a starting point from which we can build a common vocabulary. Consider this a starter kit toward the glossary that Noz and I will post, likely in a neutral spot where we can accommodate multiple contributors.

The framework used here can be depicted as:


 
Content design
The cumulative effect of activities that form strategic approach to content, to achieve a business or social goal. This includes the decisions from both the content architecture and content development sides. (A Wikipedia definition for design is “…a roadmap or a strategic approach for someone to achieve a unique expectation. It defines the specifications, plans, parameters, costs, activities, processes and how and what to do within legal, political, social, environmental, safety and economic constraints in achieving that objective.”

Content architecture
The construction of content to allow content to function within a technological framework. Content architcture is the cumulative effect of activities and decisions in specifying the implementation of content types, content flows, and content models.


 
Content type
A set of building blocks that create semantic context for a specific unit of content, describing a technical structure and associated behaviours of those elements that allows reliable processing by computers.


 
Content flow
The representation of the elements of a content type into the various outputs within a presentation, plus the technical specifications that allow the implementation of business rules. Assumes the technical specifications are described from the perspective of the content type within some sort of content management system.


 
Content model
A representation of the aggregation of all the content types used in a specific project, plus the technical specifications that allow the implementation of business rules. Assumes the technical specifications are described from the perspective of the presentation within some sort of content management system.



 
Content development
The construction of content to allow content to function within an editorial framework. Content development is the cumulative effect of activities and decisions in specifying the implementation of editorial quality, editorial structures, and content genres.

Content genre
A set of building blocks that create social context for a specific unit of content, describing an editorial structure.

Content genres signify predictable reading flow. Examples of content genres are procedures, white papers, case studies, agendas, minutes, business cards. Readers predice that a business card has a name, position, company name, company address, and one or more telephone numbers.

Editorial structure
A socially-enforced structuring of elements with a unit of content.

The structure is social because there are no technology constraints to enforce the structure; there is a social agreement to use elements in a particular way. For example, writers may agree that business card elements should always appear in a particular order: name, position, company name, company address, the direct number for a landline, followed by a mobile telephone number.

Editorial standards
Editorial standards refers to the quality standards of the content.

Editorial standards can include mechanisms such as style guides, branding guidelines, or writing conventions, such as writing for accessibility or search engine optimization. Editorial standards are generally enforced by policy, though can be enforced through technology such as spell-checkers and content quality software.

Use Professional or User-Generated Video? New Survey Says ‘Both.’

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By Christine Dunn | Published: March 30, 2012

The use of videos in content marketing is growing as more companies try to incorporate visual elements in their content marketing campaigns instead of relying solely on text-based initiatives. Oftentimes, businesses weigh the option of user-generated videos over professionally produced ones. A new study by comScore and EXPO found that the best method is to combine both.

The study analyzed an actual video campaign that included a professionally made “how to” video and a user-generated product video that was created and submitted by an actual product user.


“What we found was strong evidence of incremental benefit with exposure to both forms of media,” Frank Findley, Vice President, Research and Development at comScore, said in a statement.

“Professionally produced content and product videos drove strikingly higher lifts when used together than when either was used individually. While marketers may already be familiar with the effectiveness of professional video content alone, these results suggest that even greater returns can be had by combining their use with authentic, user-generated content.”

Professional videos are important tools in helping viewers understand the importance of the key messages presented by a company or brand. Consumers were more apt to understand the described benefits and features of the products in professionally produced content, the comScore/EXPO study found.

User-generated videos, on the other hand, are easier to relate to, perceived as being unbiased, and were considered more believable about verifying specific product claims, such as superiority and convenience. They generate an emotional intensity about a product, and in doing so help drive communication about a company’s key messages.

Filling in the Gaps

“When used together, all of the perceived gaps get filled in and consumers become more confident in their purchase decision, resulting in better sales effectiveness,” said Jessica Thorpe, Vice President of Marketing at EXPO.

The first group of consumers participated in a veiled exercise in order to determine the sales effectiveness of the professionally produced content, the user-generated content, and both together.
The study found that the professional videos generated a 24.7 point lift in Share of Choice for the featured product and a 16 point lift for the brand’s total line. User-generated videos drove an 18.7 point lift in Share of Choice for the featured product compared to a 10 point lift for the brand’s total line. When exposed to both professional content and user-generated product videos, lift in Share of Choice for the featured product jumped to 35.3 points for the featured product and 28 points for the brand’s total line. This demonstrates the powerful combination when used together, the study said.

Lifts in Share of Choice After Veiled Exposure to Video Content March 2012 Total U.S. Source: comScore, Inc.
	Professionally-Produced	User-Generated	PP & UG Together
Featured Product	+24.7	+18.7	+35.3
Brand’s Total Line	+16.0	+10.0	+28.0

A second group of consumers participated in a cued exposure exercise and were surveyed after being directly exposed to the content. On its own, the professional video content resulted in a higher percentage of respondents understanding the importance of the key message presented than user-generated content. The user-generated product videos were more successful at producing emotional intensity.

When exposed to both types of videos, the combined increases were greater than for either of the individual media exposures.

Percent of Audience Exhibiting Specified Responses to Video Content March 2012 Total U.S. Source: comScore, Inc.
	Professionally-Produced	User-Generated	PP & UG Together
Emotional intensity	77%	84%	85%
Key message communication	55%	60%	65%
Easy to relate to	79%	83%	87%
Importance of key message	84%	80%	89%

comScore and EXPO will be conducting a webinar on Tuesday, April 3rd at 2 p.m. EDT to further explain the methodology and results of the study.
Video image via Shutterstock.

How to Use Opinions to Create Powerful Content

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By Carl Friesen | Published: March 30, 2012

They’re a staple of courtroom dramas everywhere — expert witnesses. These are individuals whose professional opinion is so valued that it can help sway, or even decide, the outcome of a court case. Clearly, informed opinion from appropriately qualified people has value in our society.

It’s something that also has value from a content marketing perspective. Opinion-oriented content can be fun to read, as well as informative, so it collects eyeballs. It can be a tremendously valuable source of information for anyone in decision-making mode — such as someone deciding on a new car, trying to find a lawyer specializing in intellectual property, or looking for guidance on how to vote.

It positions the author as a thought leader; someone who is invested enough in the topic to have a viewpoint and take a stand. It’s most useful if it’s a skilled individual who’s the “product” being marketed, making it ideal for marketing professional services.

Even better: Opinion content can be in written form, or in video, a podcast, or any other medium.
Take, for example, a mining engineer client I’ll call Hussein, who believes that mining companies must do more to manage the environmental effects of their mines after they’re closed. Water leaching through the mine waste and through the mine itself can pick up contaminants such as acids and metals, causing huge issues for ecosystems downstream.

Let’s look at ways opinion content can help Hussein show his expertise to members of the mining industry — potential clients for his skills in managing the water impacts of mining.

Stand-alone opinions

In working with Hussein, the first form of content I created was an article for a mining industry trade magazine. I interviewed Hussein about the issues he wanted to speak about, and studied the text of a keynote speech he had recently given at a conference on mine closure to gather enough information to (ghost) write an article for his byline.

This is an example of what I call stand-alone content in that this article wasn’t based on a previous development (as would be the case with “Review” or “Comment” content, described below).
Also, it was stand-alone in that there wasn’t a specific news hook or other event to hang the article on — like a mine whose tailings dam had burst recently, flooding contaminants downstream, for example. So, I had to put in some words up front, explaining why the issue is important to the industry’s financial and legal future.

For stand-alone content, it’s always best if you can find a news hook, so that when you include the right keywords and phrases, your content will get a ride on that event. For example, if your company offers solutions for cruise ship safety issues, now might be a good time to generate some opinion content on that, given recent news stories on cruise ship problems.
How to structure stand-alone content:

• Explain the issue you’re commenting on, and why it’s important to the content user.
• Give your viewpoint.
• Explain the reasons you support that viewpoint, acknowledging and dealing with counter-arguments.
• Along the way, you must state why your opinion matters — offer information on your relevant experience, your qualifications, or what your familiarity with the issues is based on.

Reviews

Content that analyzes or reviews recently-released books, movies, music albums, and the like has a long history. Now, we often see reviews of software, information technology, video games, social networking platforms, and other products that are written by traditional journalists, as well as by bloggers. But anyone can write a review, including subject-matter experts like Hussein.

A review draws strength from a content point of view in that it’s “news” (at least while the subject of the review is new). It can get a search engine boost just from being associated with a hot or trending topic (for example, the new iPad, or the first line of OLED television sets that hit the market).
A review positions the writer as being up to date with developments in her or his field.

In Hussein’s case, I might consider writing a review of a new technology for removing contaminants from water flowing out of a closed mine, or maybe a review of new mine closure legislation, such as that in the state of Western Australia.

Review-oriented content needs to cover these points (not necessarily in this order):

• A description of the product
• Comparison with its predecessor, and competing products
• What’s new about it
• Analysis of the advantages and disadvantages of the product
• Potential applications of the product — as well as where its use should be avoided

Comments

If stand-alone opinion content has its origins in op-ed articles in newspapers, and reviews go back to literary book reviews, comments are rooted in letters to the editors of newspapers and magazines.
A comment is based on content generated by someone else. Like the review, it positions the author as being up to date with current developments — particularly if the comment is posted soon after the original article.

With the tendency for many online news media to have space for comments after each article, there has been a huge outpouring of this kind of content, much of it not worth the pixels and server space. A quick look through some entertainment-oriented sites like “OMG” will find thought-free gems such as “I think J-Lo looks fat in that dress.”

So, where to comment? Choose venues that are:

• Monitored to keep out the spam, name-calling, and personal attacks
• Frequented by the kinds of people you want to reach
• Able to generate content on which you can usefully comment

Of the three types of content, the comment is likely to be the shortest — maybe just a few sentences. So just like composing an effective tweet on Twitter, an effective comment must say a lot, but should do so in as few words as possible. Most importantly, though, is that the comment must include the author’s name (otherwise, what’s the point?) and give her or his credentials. A comment on J-Lo’s fashion choices by someone signing off as “Snooki” would presumably have less weight than that of the editor of “Vogue.” Similarly, mining engineer Hussein might reasonably comment on an article on mine closure in a publication, website, blog, or other medium.

Comments are a quick and easy way to stay top of mind for the people you want to reach. But when contributing this type of content, be sure to protect your brand by posting only thoughtful, informative comments.

What I call “value-added tweeting” falls into the comment category. Rather than just an RT, your tweet should add your comments to the information being passed along — remembering to give credit to the original source of the information you are re-tweeting (using an “@sourcesname” attribution).

Review content needs to include these elements:

• The reviewer’s opinion on the content being reviewed
• Recommendations that the reader might take
• Qualifications of the reviewer (briefly!) indicating why the reviewer’s opinion matters

Opinion content needs to be done with care, in that there is a good chance that someone will disagree with your opinion. Hussein needs to be careful about being too critical of the industry in which he makes his living. He can help protect himself and his reputation by backing up his views with facts, acknowledging opinions different from his own, and creating his comments using a positive tone. This way, he acts as an expert witness of sorts, contributing to the base of knowledge on mine closure. He’s also able to add to the discussion, helping keep the “social” in “social media.”

Easter shoppers will hop to their smartphones, tablets in 2012

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By Fiona Swerdlow, Head of Research, Shop.org | Published: March 29, 2012

As I mentioned recently, Easter announces that the annual spring gift giving season is truly upon us. This year, BIGinsight found in its latest consumer survey for NRF that 82.3% of online consumers plan to celebrate Easter – a number that has continued to inch up since 2007 (79.5%). Consumers intend to shop across channels, with almost 9 out of 10 online Easter shoppers buying food and candy, two-thirds expect to buy gifts, and approximately half will be in the market for greeting cards and clothing, followed by flowers and decorations. The combined net average forecast spend per online consumer celebrating Easter this year is $150.70, a nice start to Quarter 2.

So where should retailers focus their attention to capture the attention of online consumers?

Almost one in five (18.7%) of those consumers celebrating Easter will be going online for some part of their Easter shopping this year, a good leap even from last year (14.8%). In line with online shopping trends, online consumers will be spreading their Easter shopping activities over the web, across smartphones and tablet devices and – the omnichannel shoppers that they are – in traditional brick and mortar stores such as discount stores (63.5%), department stores (42.6%), and specialty stores (25.4%). Cross-channel marketing and promotions (such as promoting in-store specials online and via mobile, matching in-store specials online, offering access to customer ratings and reviews in the store, and so on) will appeal to consumers who move quickly and effortlessly from one customer touchpoint to the next.

Approximately half of online consumers who own a smartphone and/or tablet device will be reaching for those as part of the shopping process. Smartphone owners will use their device to research products and compare prices (28.8%) and look up retailer information such as location, store hours, etc. (22.3%). They will also use their smartphone to redeem coupons (17%) and to purchase products (14.4%). It’s a great opportunity to make sure your mobile-optimized site is working seamlessly; that the retailer info is clear and easily accessible from the first screen the consumer sees; and you are clearly communicating your messages about Easter and spring offerings, both textually and visually.

Similarly, over a third of online consumers who own tablet devices will use those to research products and compare prices (38.4%), find retailer information (28.4%), purchase products (27%) and redeem coupons (18.9%). See how your tablet presence measures up – and where you can fine tune – using the advice of Resource Interactive’s Stephen Burke who gave these primary tablet device design principles: make the tablet shopping experience engaging, share-able, shoppable, and extendable.

Extending the Experience Beyond the Device

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by Tim R. Todish

Over the last few years, the popularity of UX has grown by leaps and bounds. Companies have come to realize the importance of offering engaging experiences to their users, lest they risk losing them to competitors that have invested time and money into improving their product and service experiences.

An interesting side effect of this enhanced focus on UX is that it has helped make users more sophisticated. This, however, can be a double-edged sword; as users become more sophisticated their expectations also increase, and UX professionals must find new ways to meet these elevated expectations. One way to achieve this is to extend the experience beyond the device.

Most of the time when we think about UX, we are thinking within the confines of the digital world. What I'm suggesting, however, is that there are ways to extend the user's experience from the digital world into the real world. This is by no means an earth-shattering revelation; businesses have been working hard at offering exceptional offline experiences for decades. The explosion of the web and, more recently, mobile devices has given businesses an exciting channel to expand the experience.

This holistic approach can create very powerful experiences, which in turn can build tremendous brand loyalty. Imagine the enjoyment you get when using an application or a website that has a carefully crafted, wonderful experience. Now imagine you've just received the product you ordered via that app or site, and the same attention to detail has been paid to the presentation and experience of receiving and unboxing that item. How much more likely would you be to tell your friends about your experience? The next time you need that product or a similar one, where are you going to go?

Extending the experience can pay huge dividends in attracting and retaining customers, and some companies are already embracing this practice and providing inspiration for UX practitioners to use in their work.

In-Store Experience: Apple

It should come as no surprise that when talking about experience Apple jumps to the top of the list. For years, Apple has blazed the trail of UX with its hardware and software. So it made sense that when they opened their physical stores, that their focus on aesthetics and experience would continue. If you’ve ever been in an Apple store, you know what I mean—they're beautiful. It wasn't enough for Apple to simply have beautiful stores, though; they wanted shoppers to have a beautiful experience as well. They've done this in multiple ways, but perhaps the most interesting is their approach to the most dreaded of all shopping tasks: checking out.

When you walk into an Apple store, there’s an army of blue shirts there to assist you—nothing revolutionary here. But these folks are more than just your typical sales staff. They are armed with specially outfitted iPhones that can process transactions on the spot. Your blue shirt helps find the product, checks you out, and you’re out the door without ever waiting in line.

Suppose you just want to purchase some accessories for your iPad. You don't really need to ask any questions, which is good because all the blue shirts are busy anyway. Apple’s got you covered there, too. Fire up the Apple Store app on your iDevice and use the new EasyPay option. Just scan your product, pay with your iTunes account, and leave—again, no waiting!

How does it apply?

Apple gets it. Find the biggest pain points in a process and reduce or remove them. As you are conducting your research, keep an eye out for processes, bottlenecks, etc. that get in the way of users’ goals. After you’ve identified these issues, develop innovative ways to reduce or eliminate them. Try to find ways that you can empower your users to complete tasks that they are currently unable to do on their own. One surefire way to deliver a great experience to your users is to help make them more efficient in their work.

Packaging and Delivery: Warby Parker

Buying eyeglasses can be a daunting task. You have to pick just the right frames to fit your face and match your style. This is nearly impossible to do by just looking at pictures of frames on a website.
Warby Parker realized this was a problem and came up with their Home Try-On Program. With this program, you select five frames from their site and they send them to you free of charge to try on at home. You’ve got five days to try on the different frames and solicit feedback from your family and friends. If they aren’t any help, you can upload pictures of yourself sporting the various frames to the Warby Parker Facebook page and they’ll help you choose the ones that look best. At the end of the five days, you simply ship the frames back using the included, prepaid shipping label. Didn’t find anything you like? Order five more.

This experience is great in that it solves the problem of trying to find the right frames online in a simple and elegant way. It also one-ups the traditional eyeglass store by giving you multiple options to take home and take your time to decide. No more pressure of being in the store, surrounded by hundreds of frames while trying to make an on-the-spot decision.

One of the things Warby Parker prides itself on is offering designer frames at low prices. The bargain prices don't mean they skimp on the experience, however. When your new frames arrive they come in an attractive package with a thank-you card. They also include a quality case and microfiber cleaning cloth at no additional charge. Warby Parker definitely sees the value in going the extra mile to deliver a memorable experience with their products. And their customers seem to have noticed; Warby Parker has experienced tremendous growth in the two years they've been operating, which goes to show that if you take the time to focus on the experience, you will be rewarded for it.

How does it apply?

Warby Parker took a difficult task that seemed almost impossible to do online, and made it not only possible via their website, but also enjoyable. If you’re working on a project that involves a process or task that people find difficult—especially in the real world—try to find ways not just to duplicate it with your app, but to also improve it and take some of the pain out of it. Leverage the benefits that technology can provide to create a better overall experience.

The second thing we can learn from Warby Parker is that the experience shouldn’t end with the sale, and that surprising users by going that extra mile can be extremely powerful. Look for ways to provide value beyond what users expect. Maybe you can offer an in-store discount with the purchase of your app, or follow up with some swag mailed to people who sign up for your service. The opportunities are vast; be creative and be generous. It is likely that your investment will pay off.

Customer Service: Zappos

This final example is anecdotal, but I believe it is indicative of Zappos' approach to customer service as a whole. I was looking for some new shoes, so I thought I'd give Zappos a try. After a few minutes of searching, I couldn't find anything I was looking for. I took my frustrations to the Twitterverse lamenting how I couldn't find a thing on the new Zappos website. Shortly thereafter I received a reply from Zappos asking what I was looking for. We exchanged a few tweets and within an hour or so I was purchasing a new pair of shoes from their site. This was about three years ago and almost every pair of shoes I’ve purchased since has come from Zappos.

Zappos’ shopping experience is nice, but it's nothing special. The thing that brings me back is that initial experience of the one-on-one assistance I received when I was having trouble. It can be hard to get that level of assistance from an employee in a brick-and-mortar store, let alone from someone thousands of miles away via a third-party web service.

Like the companies in the other examples, Zappos gets it. They understand the importance of creating a great experience for their customers and they are benefitting from it.

How does it apply?

This one is straightforward: deliver great customer service. Use all the tools at your disposal to deliver great customer service. Go out of your way to deliver great customer service. Companies live and die by their customers. Deliver great experiences by way of great customer service and you’re well on your way to success.

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There are many avenues for extending the experience beyond the device. From traditional venues like brick-and-mortar stores, to the virtual world of Twitter, there are a multitude of ways to deliver compelling experiences to users. Right now, extending the experience beyond the device is a good way to differentiate from the competition. As users continue to evolve, however, they will come to expect experiences to continue beyond the device. The companies that can realize this and deliver will succeed. Why not be on the cutting edge of that movement?