Creating the customer
experience: web interfaces and
usability
MARK 430
Week 5
4 steps to successful marketing strategy
Understanding customer needs and online behaviour
(market research, data mining, web analytics) (Weeks 1 - 4)
Formulate a strategy to fill needs (segmentation,
targeting, positioning) (Weeks 4 - 5)
Implement effectively and efficiently (web usability, stickiness,
advertising, search engine optimization, email marketing, pricing,
distribution, product development) (Weeks 5-12)
Build trusting relationships with customers (Week 13)
Customer Experience and the web
interface
 During this class we will:
 Introduce and define the concept of customer experience
 Examine the three stages of the customer-experience
hierarchy
 Understand the seven elements of customer interface — the
“7Cs”
 Explore the significance of the user interface
Some terminology
 Trust cues
 related to privacy and security
 related to the whole look and feel and functionality of the site
 Stickiness
 getting visitors to come back
 getting them to stay longer
 Usability
 user-focused design
Customer experience
 Once a firm has decided on the positioning of its
product offering, it must clearly articulate the
customer experience that it wants to create.
 Customer experience
 “refers to a target customer’s perception and interpretation of
all the stimuli encountered while interacting with a firm”
(Mohammed et al pg. 130)
 In an offline example - the customer experience in a
Starbucks is not limited to the taste of the coffee
 Online, the customer experience includes the entire
range of a visitor’s perception of a website - from
ease of use to the emotional reactions to a site’s
content
 It is the user’s interpretation of his or her complete
encounter with the site
Elements of the customer experience
 Functional perceptions
 Sensory perceptions
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Sight
Sound
Touch
Smell
Taste
 Cognitive and emotional elements
Stages of Customer Experience Over Time
Functional relationship with
product website
Intimate relationship
Evangelist
TIME
Stages of Customer Experience - turn your
customers into evangelists for your product
If a Firm Gets This Right …
Stage One:
Functionality
Stage Two: Intimacy
Stage Three:
Evangelism
Usability and ease of navigation
Speed
Reliability
Security
Media accessibility
Customization (tailoring and
personalization)
Communication
Consistency
Trustworthiness
Exceptional value
Shift from consumption activity to
recreational activity

Taking the message to the
market
Active community membership
The company cares about my
opinions
Defender of the experience

This Is What the Customer
Experiences
Site is easy to use
Quick downloads
Intuitive navigation
Site reliability

Personalization
Increasing trust
Repeated experiences of
exceptional value
A sense of “being in the
know”
Consistent experiences
Significant benefits relative to
other offerings
Desire to take messages to
the market
Community benefits

Stages of Customer Experience for
Mountain Equipment Co-op
Generic Desired Customer
Experience
Site is usable
Easy navigation
Quick download
Speedy site
Reliable
Functionality

Intimacy

Evangelism

High trust
Consistent experience
Quick, effective communication
High personalization
Exceptional value
Consistent with brand message
Takes word to the market
Defends the experience
What MEC.ca Delivers
Content organized around user needs
Easy-to-find gear and activity information
Multiple views of products and services
Website that rates high on efficiency and
fulfillment
No crashes and limited downtime
Authoritative content and information
Easy access to customer service
E-mail newsletter
Product returns to store or by mail
Member listings for GearSwap and outdoor
events
Test your EcoFootprint
Membership advantages
Social and ecological awareness image
In-store and local events
Strong link between online and offline brand

Some things that really damage
Customer Experience on a commerce site
 Badly implemented search
 Not telling people an item is out of stock until
late in the process
 Shipping cost not given until late in the
process
 Asking for personal information too early in
the process
 No contact information
 Can’t print properly
Crafting the customer interface
 We are moving now to focus on customer /
website interface issues - one element of the
customer experience, but a very important
one
The importance of the web
interface
 Internet technology has caused a shift in the
way in which firms interact with their
customers
 Face-to-face encounters common in the retail
environment have been replaced with screento-face interactions.
 Interfaces include desktop PCs,
laptops/notebooks, web kiosks, handhelds
such as PDAs and cellphones
 We will focus mostly on web interfaces
The 7Cs (design elements) of the
Customer Interface
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.

Site’s layout and design: functional look
and feel (the “how” of the site)

Text, pictures, sound and video that
webpages contain (the “what” of the site)

The ways sites build relationships between
users (message boards, reviews)

Site’s ability to self-tailor to different users
or to allow users to personalize the site

The ways sites enable site-to-user
communication or two-way communication

Degree site is linked to other sites

Site’s capabilities to enable commercial
transactions (shopping cards. payment
options, order confirmation etc)
Context
Content
Community
Customization
Communication
Connection
Commerce
Context (look and feel): the “How” of
the site
 2 main dimensions: Function and Aesthetics
 Function - site layout and functionality
 Section breakdown - the way the site is organized into subcategories
 make them clear, and customer focused
 Linking structures - navigation
 where am I?
 how do I get back to where I came from? (breadcrumbs)
 Navigation tools - search functionality and methods, browse
capability, site index/map
 Use terminology the customer can understand
 Make sure your search tool works - configure it
 Aesthetics - visual characteristics such as colours,
graphics, fonts etc
Context - Some examples
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Site’s layout and design: functional look and feel (the
“how” of the site)
Functional design:

Google.com - clean, simple, uncluttered

CEOExpress.com - lots of content, mainly from newsfeeds. Busy interface,
but the site is designed to make information easy to retrieve
Aesthetic design

Apple.com - lots of white space, limited amount of content presented.
Customer is encouraged to browse and explore. Fits with Apple’s reputation
for good industrial design

Tiffany.com - elegant, visually appealing. Uses Flash for navigation so the
experience is slower (like buying a diamond ring offline?)
The look and feel of the site should reflect the sensibilities of the
customers being targeted
Content: the “What” of the site
 Text, pictures, sound and video
 both the type of content, and the media with which it is
delivered
 The offering mix: products, information, services etc
 The appeal mix: promotional and communications
messages
 The media mix: the multimedia elements included on
the site
 Be careful with adding too many multimedia elements that
require plug-ins unless you have good market research that
shows that your users expect it.
 Content type: time sensitive information versus
“evergreen” information
 Freshness keeps bringing customers back
 Archives provide a useful service to users
 Watch out for “What’s New” sections
Community
 Community: the way sites build relationships between
users. Strong community encourages people to
return to the website again and again
 Community can create attractive content (for free!)
 Web communities can make the user feel that they are
valued by the firm
 Community can satisfy needs not otherwise able to be
satisfied individually (eg. finding people)
 Common tools are message boards, customer
reviews, chat with special guests, corporate blogs,
members areas
 Other examples: Lands’ End “Shop with a Friend”,
Customization
 Customization is the site’s ability to self-tailor
to different users
 The way customization can be achieved is divided
roughly into 2 types (although many sites use
both)
 Personalization - preferences actively selected
by the user
 Tailoring by site - automatically generated
customization based on a user’s previous
behaviour, and the actions of other similar
users
Personalization
 Personalization is usually used to refer to
customization of a site by the user him or herself.
 Promotes stickiness and customer loyalty
 Once a user has selected preferences, they must be
saved and can then be accessed by use of
registration/log in.
 Examples of personalization:
 E-mail accounts or storage space
 Content and layout configurations - mytelus.com
 Software agents - can be configured to notify a user when an
item is in stock, or to act as an alert service
 Cookies are often used in tandem with
personalization, but they can identify only the
machine on which the cookie is stored, not the
individual person. Hence the need for log-in.
Tailoring by site
 The second type involves automatically
generated customization based on a user’s
previous behaviour, and the actions of other
similar users
 Interface software dynamically publishes
different versions of the site in order to better
address users’ interests, habits, and needs.
 The technologies to achieve this include cookies,
and recommendation engines that use
collaborative filtering. This is all completely
automated, but can be improved by using active
user input.
Personalization/customization using
a combination of tools
 Amazon.com provides a very good example
of this combination of methods to customize
the user experience using collaborative
filtering and a recommendation engine
 Lands’ End - My Model (allows you to
configure a model to your body type and
appearance and try on clothes) and My
Personal Shopper (uses “Conjoint analysis” presents alternatives for selection)
Communication
 Communication refers to a firm’s dialogue with its
customers
 Dialogue can be one-way (broadcast) or two-way
(interactive)
 Broadcast communication
 Mass mailings (opt in only!)
 E-mail newsletter
 Content update notifications
 Interactive
 e-commerce dialog using email to exchange information re
orders etc
 Customer service - email or live chat
 User input - content, reviews, feedback etc
Connection: how does a firm
connect to other businesses?
 Links to other sites
 Outsourced content - eg. news feeds, stock
quotes, weather etc
 Affiliated sites - complementary
products/services etc
Dimensions of Commerce
 Commerce refers to those aspects of the user
interface that support the various aspects of
trading transactions
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Registration
Shopping cart
Security
Credit card approval
One-Click Shopping (Amazon patented feature)
Orders through affiliate programs
Configuration and comparison mechanisms
Order tracking
Delivery options
Fit and Reinforcement of 7Cs to create
synergy. How well do they work together?
Business Model
and Marketing Strategy
Fit: Does each of the 7Cs individually support the Business Model and Strategy?
Context
Content
Community
Customization
Communication
Reinforcement depends on consistency
between the 7Cs
Based on Mohammed 2003
Connection
Commerce
In the lab next week
 We will be applying the 7Cs of the customer
interface to websites to help us to analyze
what works in a web interface, and what
needs fixing