Benchmarking Your Success

One of the most common questions clients ask when we present findings is “How do our ratings compare?” Benchmarks are key for providing context for the customer experience metrics we collect and can offer direction for the prioritization of recommendations and opportunities for innovation. However, determining the right benchmark to use to understand your online customer experience metrics is not as straightforward as it may seem. In a series of blogs about benchmarking, we will explore some of the questions surrounding benchmarks: Who should I benchmark myself against? What metrics should I be comparing? How do I ensure an “apples to apples” comparison? What method should I use for doing so? How often should I be looking at benchmarks?

For this first entry, I want to spend some time thinking about who is your true competition online and, therefore, what companies should you look at when you are thinking about benchmarks?

Part 1: Who are my competitors?

A few years ago, I executed a study that included year-over-year data on a number of travel booking web sites. In the second year, the top site from the first year remained top in the rankings of the competitive set, but showed a significant drop in its year-over-year satisfaction ratings. In exploring what caused the drop, we looked for changes to the site that created barriers to booking or degraded the user experience, but we could find nothing. In fact, the site was exactly the same year-over-year with no major changes made – and that, in and of itself, was enough to cause the site’s scores to fall. No action on the part of the site to stay current with what was happening around it on the internet overall caused the drop.

Looking at only the sites considered the direct competitive set wouldn’t give much insight as this site still topped them all, but the site was losing ground against the best experiences on the Web. So how do you determine who you should be benchmarking your site experience against online?

1. Your direct competition is of top importance. Understanding what is happening in your industry and how you rate against those competitors still provides the most useful context for understanding your metrics. For example, determining if features and functionality are becoming standard in your industry, identifying items missing from your site and those areas in which you excel. This can be done most easily through a head-to-head online evaluation.

2. Compare your site’s critical functionality to innovators of that functionality in other industries. Consider the functionality of your Website and look to the innovators in that specific functionality for a benchmark and best practices. For example, if you are incorporating video on your site, it is important to understand how it impacts your position among your direct competitive set. Users are not just looking at the video implementations on your competitors’ sites and forming an opinion based on those implementations, but they are also looking at YouTube.com, iTunes and Hulu.com, just to name a few, that have now become your competitors in this area. The usability and functionality of these sites are what users will be comparing you to, and therefore are what you need to be benchmarking your video implementation against. Just like in the offline world, a travel company may look to Dell as a leader in customer service, you need to determine who users will be comparing the different elements of your site to and look to those sites for benchmarks to measure yourself against and best practices to help improve your implementation. When considering new functionality, be sure you understand the benchmark set by these sites and use those benchmarks as goals for your design – measuring your design against them once it is complete.

3. Study averages across all industries. Because users’ opinions of the experience on your site are driven by all of their Web experiences, looking at customer experience metrics from a wide variety of sites in aggregate can provide important context. In the Benchmarks area of our site, we show benchmarks from hundreds of evaluations across industries and types of sites. This data is also the data we incorporate into our presentations most often because it takes into account the fact that users do not only judge a retail site by the experience they have on Target.com, Amazon.com and BestBuy.com, but also Google.com and Match.com. When it comes to usability and customer experience, users’ interactions on one Website form their expectations for another across industries, content-types and functionalities. Aggregated figures allow you to understand where your site fits among all the experiences a user may have online giving you an accurate idea for where your site is ranking.

By utilizing a combination of these three “competitive” sets for benchmarking depending on the situation and objectives of your research, you will be able to gain a complete picture of the customer experience on your site and continue to meet and exceed customer expectations by ensuring that you have a complete understanding of the playing field that is shaping those expectations.

Stay tuned for Part 2 – what metrics should you be benchmarking?

Preface from Claudette Levine, Managing Partner:

We are thrilled to announce the addition of Cheryl Jordan-Aguilera to our team as Vice President of Business Development (for a brief bio, visit: http://evocinsights.com/aboutus_mngmnt.html). We feel fortunate to continue our growth during questionable economic times and are thankful for the relationships we have with our customers. The customer experience research space is so expansive that we feel we are influencing just the tip of the iceberg. With Cheryl’s expertise and vision, we hope to continue evangelizing the importance of a good customer experience and spreading our passion for research. I asked Cheryl to provide her outlook as a way to introduce herself to our readers.

Cheryl Jordan-Aguilera VP of Business Development

Cheryl says:

I’m so excited to be joining eVOC and working with Liz and Claudette again!  I remember when I was introduced to the idea of helping companies understand how to make Websites more usable and accessible to the average customer back in 2000 at Vividence (acquired by Keynote Systems in 2004).   In those early days it was exciting to be part of a trailblazing effort to build awareness in the market place. Claudette, Liz and I were part of that early effort and it is amazing to be here almost 10 years later with the need for user experience research more than ever!   I am excited to be at eVOC and back in the customer experience research space after spending some time in competitive intelligence at Hitwise and 3 years managing market research projects at MarketTools, Inc for clients like Microsoft and HP.

I think we all agree that the Web has revolutionized the way business is done.  Not only has a shift occurred for consumers but also for the way business is conducted across industries.  For many years, companies thought that Websites only mattered if there was tangible buying and selling, but through research we’ve learned the importance that Websites can play in branding, building community and connecting people.  One must only look at this election cycle to see how the Web has democratized the election process, making the candidates much more accessible to the average citizen.  Both presidential candidates have benefited from the internet for fundraising as well as getting support from the grassroots up through groups on Facebook and other social networking sites.

For many of you reading this blog, you already know the importance of the Web and user experience research.  However, there are still many companies and people unfamiliar with it or not sure about it.  My job at eVOC will be to educate marketers, researchers, product managers, and Web strategists alike.  I will talk with them about the need for user experience research and demonstrate why it is important to truly understand your customers in terms of who they are, what they know,  what they do and what they expect from your Website.

I look forward to meeting all of you, learning about your Web initiatives and how eVOC can continue to help your business and online presence grow with the Web!

When it comes to the Internet, my dear mom is not exactly a whiz. I don’t have enough fingers to count the number of phone calls I’ve received from her with Internet-related questions:

My Mom

• “Phil, I have an article that I want you to read. How can I send it to you?”
• “Phil, you know that little box where I type the Website addresses? It disappeared and I can’t get it back.”
• “Philip, my email isn’t accepting my password. I’ve typed it in at least 5 times and now I’m locked out!” (She always calls me by my full name when she’s frustrated. Turned out she had her CAPS lock on.)

So the other day when she left me a voice mail asking for help, I was ready for just about anything. I got home from work, sat down at my computer, and gave her a call. She was having trouble buying some shoes on a well-known e-commerce site.

Mom: “I went to buy them and I typed in all the shipping information. Then it asked me for my credit card. But I wasn’t sure if I had ordered the right shoes, so I clicked ‘Back’ to make sure. But then it forgot all my information!”
Me: “OK.”
Mom: “So I had to type everything again, except this time I had a typo. I saw the mistake on the last page, and I didn’t see any place where I could fix it. I’d been on the site for an hour and you know how frustrated I get, so I just gave up. Can you help me buy them on another site?”
Me: “Whoa boy.”

My unassuming mother had uncovered fundamental problems with the site’s Checkout process. And while she may sit at the lower end of the Internet savvy spectrum, she represents a significant percentage of the site’s user base. How many other shoppers, like my mom, get frustrated by poor usability and simply leave the site? How many dollars in lost revenue are those usability problems causing?

Amazon.com’s Shopping Cart

After helping my mom buy the shoes (it was thrilling, let me tell you), I decided to look into how other popular e-commerce sites handle Checkout. I was truly surprised by what I found: While there are a handful of sites that do it well (Amazon and Apple to name a few), most Websites possess key usability flaws that serve as barriers to purchase.

Using my own research findings, as well as best practices we have accumulated here at eVOC, I now present a brief guide that summarizes the key attributes of an intuitive Checkout process:

Pre-Checkout

1. Shopping Cart

• This page provides key information upfront. It offers a summary of what users are buying, which includes the name, total price, quantity, and the ability to modify items or remove them from the cart. It allows users to calculate shipping costs and timing based on their location, or provides a link to view estimated shipping info. The page also includes a prominent button or link to return to the store for those users who are not ready to purchase

Checkout

2. Enter Shipping Address

• In this step, users enter their shipping and billing address. Required fields should be clearly marked with asterisks. Guidance should be provided next to any fields which may cause confusion (e.g., Apt #, ‘Must match credit card’, etc.)

3. Select Shipping Method

• The key here is to tell users what each option is, when it will arrive, and how much it will cost

4. Review Order

• This page includes a summary of users’ information, with each step represented visually in its own section (e.g., Product Summary, Total Cost, Shipping / Billing Address, Shipping Method, etc.). A prominent ‘Edit’ link will allow users to modify their details if necessary, before entering their credit card information

5. Enter Payment Information

• The most sensitive area for users in Checkout is the entering of their credit card information. This should happen last, directly underneath the summary of their order so that they can be sure their selections were correctly recorded by the site. Provide clear instructions about the credit card’s security code and let users click ‘Submit’ to officially send in their order

Post-Checkout

6. Confirmation Screen

• This page includes a summary of the order, provides a confirmation number, and informs users that they will receive a confirmation email immediately

While each of these steps does not need to fall on its own page, Checkouts are most effective when they follow the order described above.

Some global tips to consider:

• Include a breadcrumb at the top that helps users identify where they are in the process
• Differentiate the appearance of buttons/links that take users to the next screen
• Allow users to move back and forward in the process without losing the information they have entered
• Use clear messaging that clarifies if users’ cards will be charged before they advance to the next step. If credit card entry is the last step, this is only necessary on the last page

If possible to employ, this additional functionality also helps users:

• Ability to store users’ credit card and address information on the site and make it available for selection or modification on the appropriate screen when users need it
• Contextual tips on the side of each page about shipping, delivery, gift wrapping, etc.

By following these guidelines, any company that does e-commerce can feel more confident that shoppers will see the Checkout process through to the end, and will be satisfied when they leave – even my mom!

eVOC Home Page

These days the chances are very high that users will not first experience your site on your home page. Any page that a search crawler can find is up for grabs. It’s a bit like having a supermarket with no walls. A shopper can walk in at any aisle to pick up the milk or eggs then walk right back out without ever bothering with the rest of your store. So what’s the point of having a front door?

Bleeding edge design gurus and product managers have started making the argument that home pages are now much less relevant in relation to the rest of your site design. Because you can’t control the point of entry, all landing pages need to serve the basic functions of a home page. They contend that the days of the home page being the most valuable real estate in the world are fading fast.

Traditionally a home page has 3 primary functions.

1. Identify to the user who you are
2. Explain what content the site offers
3. Point users in the right direction to get what they want

Can other pages achieve this? Sure. Does that fact make home pages irrelevant? No. A home page does one thing that other pages can’t do: it lets users compare the possibilities on your site in a way that is difficult to replicate on specific content pages. A home page is your user’s way of “zooming out” to get a 30,000 ft view of what’s on your site. Not having this capability means users would be at the mercy of your site’s search engine; if the results don’t deliver, the user is gone because there’s no alternative.

Usability guru Jakob Nielsen has found through his research that people still look for and expect a home page.

“A website is like a house in which every window is also a door: People can follow links from search engines and other websites that reach deep inside your site. However, one of the first things these users do after arriving at a new site is go to the homepage.”

–Alertbox Column

Google’s not perfect. Depending on site structure, users can end up close, but not exactly where they want to be. If you’ve done a good job representing who you are and what the site offers on any given page, users will be encouraged to engage your site. The user’s thought process should go, “Ok, this isn’t exactly right, but this site is promising. I’ll browse a bit. What else is here?”

Most major online brands such as Amazon and eBay still have pages that serve these functions, even if they might not call them home pages anymore. Ultimately, you can’t afford to neglect your home page because most users expect something that lets them step back and get oriented.

Rather than thinking of home pages as being less relevant, we suggest giving the home page and landing pages equal treatment when planning a site. As you go through the process of evaluating your users’ experience on your site, here are few things to keep in mind:

This will help make sure that no matter the entry point, you are delivering a consistent unified experience.