Imagine you’re designing your new website. You’ve done your due diligence on user research, persona development, user experience design and you have a great finished product. You’ve even done usability testing and found that your target users could complete the basic tasks with minimal issues and you’ve launched the site, eager to start reaping the rewards for all your effort.

But, to your surprise, your analytics are telling you that your site isn’t making some critical conversions. What is the reason for this? What did you miss? Well, the answer may lie in questions that don’t always occur to researchers. Here’s what I mean:

- User research seeks to establish the goals and motivations of users.
- Usability studies test whether users can complete critical tasks or locate information that satisfies their goal.

Typically, neither method is used to unearth how experiences make users feel about your brand, and what effect that feeling has on their actions.

Customers abandon experiences for a variety of reasons. More often than we realize, it’s because we haven’t clearly established the value of continuing. Whether you want them to complete an e-commerce order or sign-up for a webinar or newsletter, they must be convinced the action they are about to take will deliver the level of value they expect – or greater.

Conventional usability wisdom is that factors such as color, size, affordance and placement of calls to action are the key drivers of conversions. But what’s missing from this tactical equation is a truer understanding of what value users expect from your brand. How must individual elements, such as calls to action, be oriented within an experience that delivers more value than the sum of its parts?

So, when and how is it appropriate to “test the experience” in the context of website development? The answer is, throughout the entire process:
• In user research, try to establish what the brand means to them, what value it provides and what kind of experiences would demonstrate that value and build on it for them
• In prototype or usability testing, don’t just test for simple task or goal completion, but try to determine if users are perceiving value, and what would improve their overall experience.
• In ongoing customer surveys, ask how the site experience contributes to their overall brand experience with the company.

–Jen Travis

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I saw a great film on marketing this weekend: Pom Wonderful: the Greatest Story Ever Sold, a documentary by Morgan Spurlock, of Supersize Me fame. By asking corporations to fund his documentary via product placement, he pulls aside the curtain on all kinds of marketing practices, from brand development, advertising, to co-promotion, through to product placement itself. It’s funny, insightful, and he manages the neat trick of honoring his sponsors and making fun of the marketing industry, all at the same time. Go see it!

- Lynn Parker

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Photo of Gary Vaynerchuk via NPR

By doing exactly what they were doing before: giving that personal attention mom-and-pop shops are known for—except online.

When storeowner Gary Vaynerchuk created winelibrary.com and Wine Library TV, and began using Facebook and Twitter, he understood that he would have to do more than just have a social media presence.  He decided to provide real value to customers by building truly meaningful connections which he says, “is hard to do if you’re pushing too hard.” Especially because (as he puts it) his customers’ BS radars are good and getting better.

So how did he find the balance?

Check out his interview with NPR to find out.

-Bianca Abate

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Customers don’t wake up in the morning interested in your company and products, no matter how much you push out messaging to them.  Instead, they wake up in their world, trying to solve their problems and fill their lives with experiences that are relevant to them.

What if instead, you started with a customer focus?  If you turned the telescope around and saw the world from their point of view?  Would your products and services look the same?  Would you reframe your value and messaging?  Would you meet their needs and provide relevant experiences?  That’s what’s needed today, in a world where people can go anywhere on the Internet to find what they are looking for, where consumers no longer respond to advertising or corporate messaging, but instead are looking for experiences that make sense to them.  “Push” marketing no longer works because customers are only interested in things they have “pulled.”

So move from ME ME ME to YOU YOU YOU. Turn the telescope around and get into the customer’s frame of reference.

- Lynn Parker

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That’s right! You can double dip. You can kill two birds with one stone. You can engage your employees to engage your customers in one fell swoop…using social media.

First of all, why? Well, because social media is all about authentic dialogue between people (not amorphous, talking logos). And, your people are your voice. They provide the human shape and character that is relatable, dynamic and engaging for customers. Corporate messaging on Twitter or Facebook is a one way push that rarely gets anyone’s attention. It’s like throwing a tennis ball at a wall to yourself–you get one-dimensional feedback: your own.

Secondly, how? By leveraging the talent, skills and amazingness of your employees. They have a lot to give beyond their basic job description and if you take the time to uncover those gems you will be doing two things: 1) recognizing and appreciating their value (something people need to thrive), and 2) empowering them to BE your brand (something YOUR BRAND needs to thrive). See how that works?

An example: TGI Fridays out of the UK realized their employees are the key to delivering the experience they want their customers to have. So, they highlight their rock star talents with videos on YouTube that do two things: 1) showcase the skills of their employees (which makes them feel important and valued), and 2) demonstrate the type of fun and entertaining experience one can expect when they go there. Bada bing, bada boom–two hits in one.

Take a look.

If you are in HR, corporate communications or a marketing manager who is trying to figure out how to engage employees in delivering on your brand promise, I’ll be talking more about this subject at The Conference Board Social Media Strategies for HR in New York next week. Follow the seminars on Twitter #tcbSM4HR. Oh, and I’ll post the presentation on Slideshare after the seminar too!

–Jen Travis

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There’s been some discussion in the tech press lately about if and to what extent brands should focus on a Facebook presence at the expense of their own in-house websites. Let’s do a basic, back of the napkin comparison of these two options:

It’s certainly true that Facebook offers brands a number of clear benefits:

Contrast this with in-house websites:

As inviting as it is to see Facebook as a one-stop shop for digital brand presence, most of the users you’ll encounter there are involved in activities that have nothing remotely to do with your brand. Statistically speaking, they’re usually there to flame and/or flirt with each other, flip through some photos, update their status or tend to their virtual farms.

Facebook exposes people to brands serendipitously. It’s powerful when someone recommends your brand to their peers. But despite Facebook’s own efforts, this is still relatively rare. Similar to the Web as a whole, it takes work to reach people on Facebook in an appropriate context and state of mind, so they’ll be receptive to what you offer them.

Some brands will benefit much more than others from establishing a beachhead on Facebook. If your brand is inherently dynamic and social in nature, or you don’t have the budget to create or maintain your own in-house web infrastructure, it might make sense to focus most of your efforts on Facebook. But if your customers don’t go to Facebook with a goal your brand can satisfy, (or don’t go there at all) you’re likely to be disappointed in your ROI.

In the past, in this space, we’ve spoken about how to integrate social media services like Facebook into an in-house website to make it the hub of a brand’s digital presence. For most brands, despite all the hype about the power and reach of Facebook’s social graph and ad platform, this is still the smart bet.

Unless, of course, your goal is to be the next Zynga.

-Bram Wessel

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The National Pork Board announced today a new slogan for its product: Pork: Be Inspired. Is this a good move away from The Other White Meat?

The old tagline, in use for 25 years and designed to reduce fears of fat content in pork by comparing it to chicken, is a little long in the tooth. And the sea changes in marketing do require every product to create engagement and emotion for it to be selected by consumers. But is Be Inspired the Say WA of taglines? That is, is it so weird it loses all credibility? Personally, I don’t usually think of meat and inspiration in the same breath, but Lady Gaga does, and she’s rich!

“The overall goal is to move sales of our product,” said Ceci Snyder, the Des Moines, Iowa-based Pork board’s VP of marketing. “To do that, we needed to make a stronger connection, a more emotional connection to our product.”

Emotional about pork? Well, there is a tagline that would have gotten me to engage with the brand–Pork: wake up and smell the bacon.

-Lynn Parker

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Have you seen Miracle Whip’s latest marketing campaign, Are You Miracle Whip? From YouTube to Facebook, Miracle Whip is asking people to post why they love—or hate—the sandwich spread.

While the campaign has gained significant online traction in the last couple of weeks, many are wondering if it’s really a good idea for a company to openly solicit “brand bashing.”

Personally, I think this is a brilliant, brand-defining move on Miracle Whip’s part. Miracle Whip has always been a product that people either love or hate. C’mon, have you ever met anyone who is “on the fence” when it comes to Miracle Whip? This campaign is a fun, light-hearted way for the product to engage its brand community while poking fun at its polarizing roots.

What do you think about the Are You Miracle Whip campaign? Brand-defining or brand-diminishing?

Hiley

P.S. I love the tangy zip of Miracle Whip!

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