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Think Your Website Is Hard to Navigate? What About Your Store?

I've seen the insides of a few too many stores and airports over the last 3 weeks. Normally, I spend most of my time looking at e-commerce websites; doing competitive audits, looking for emerging best practices, and yes, buying stuff. 

After what I've seen in stores and airports lately, I'm convinced that the "real" world is actually no easier to navigate than the online world. In fact, it's probably worse, but we're all just more forgiving because we live with it every day. 

I wound up on the wrong road to the airport in one city despite Google maps, courtesy of  bad road signs. Once I found the airport (just in time, thank you), my walk to the gate was dangerously close to going in the wrong direction, again, thanks to overlapping signs that contradicted one another.  And why is it that when this happens, I am the one who feels stupid?

This experience prompted me to revisit an article that appeared the WSJ late last year: To Clarify Sloppy Signage, Airports Hire 'Wayfinders'. 

The article left me optimistic that there is indeed someone watching us flounder, and that they do want to help (for a fee, of course).   As it turns out, wayfinders (short for professionals that specialize in environmental design and signage) don't have it any easier than information architects have it on the web. 

In my conversations with great IAs over the years, what irks most of them is that time after time, things that would make the site truly useful to customers wind up getting axed or convoluted by politics and conflicting business goals. The airport folks have it just as bad, as it turns out. Building ordinances, foreign languages, legal concerns, safety and maintenance issues, the list goes on. Everyone wants to be sure the sign works for their department, but few, if any are looking out for the 'whole' customer, who just wants to find their gate quickly, thanks.  The article even cites one pathetic example of signs being so bad that an airport resorted to dedicating an employee to stand and give directions to passengers.

Chances are, the same issue exists in your retail store.  There are signs telling your customer where the women's department is located, signs directing her to the ladies' room, signs telling her that shoes are 20% off and signs telling her not to smoke or bring her dog in the store. And in some cases the 20% off shoes are called 'shoes', in other cases, they are called 'footwear'.  Chances are a number of people in the store can order signs, decide what they say and  put them pretty much where ever they think it makes sense.   

Signs can be conversion drivers or conversion killers,  just like website navigation.  Just like web teams solve these problems, stores can too.  Watch your customers as they come through the door, locate what they're looking for, seek out dressing rooms and get details about their pending purchase.  Where do they breeze through the store? Where do they have to ask for help? Where do they give up and walk out (assuming they can find the door, if it's properly signed "exit")? 

For some good (and amusing) examples of signs gone wrong, visit one of my favorite sources of usability foul ups, This Is Broken.  Based on the example below (one of my favorites), it looks like some signs might be a source of confusion even before you get the customer in the store....so what exactly does this store sell....?

Attention Merchants: Retail Therapy is For Real, So Stock Up On Lipstick

In the beginning, man created the wheel. And shortly thereafter, someone (probably a woman) put a shopping cart on top of it.  (After all, why waste a perfectly good wheel?)  From there, consumer behavior (otherwise know as shopping for fun) was born.

No shock, an article in the WSJ last week, The Neuroscience of Retailing confirms that there really is such a thing as Retail Therapy. No surprise to those who have shopped to feel better for the last 21 centuries, but we now have scientific evidence that shopping is fun.  Or at least it makes our hearts beat faster and our brains release serotonin.  Don't believe it? Just try shopping with a heart monitor and eye camera strapped to your body, like the subject in the article did.   And she was in T.J. Maxx.  Just imagine what happens when she's in a designer boutique. Call the paramedics.

Alas, with high gas prices and the economy in a downturn, many retailers are in a slump. But just think about the customers; they're slumping worse, poor things, depressed that they can't shop as much as they used to.

The answer? It could be as close as the cosmetics counter.  A recent article in the NY Times, Hard Times, But Your Lips Look Great discusses the "Lipstick Index".  Theory behind the Lipstick Index says that in times of economic hardship, we still need to satisfy our shopping habit. We still need to feel good about ourselves, even when world events or economic conditions make it inappropriate.  In other words, lipstick and small indulgences experience an up-tick in sales when the rest of the retail world lags.   

While there is not scientific evidence to support the Lipstick Index like we now have with Retail Therapy, my merchant common sense indicator says there's something here.  A friend of mine who worked for a large lingerie retailer confessed shortly after  September 11  that online  sales in the days immediately  following  the attacks were almost uncannily robust. Same principles apply. Something small, comparatively inexpensive and a bit self- indulgent.

So, as a retailer facing tough times, what's your "lipstick"?  What's that affordable, irresistible item that someone can buy, even if their gas bill has tripled and they didn't get a raise?  We used to point to a $4 Starbucks latte' as the affordable indulgence; but with more than three locations on every street, Starbucks hardly qualifies as an indulgence anymore. That means there's room for someone else to be the retail therapist and help people feel good, even when they can't afford it.  Chances are, if you can make them feel good when they don't spend a lot, they'll come back to you for a bigger dose of serotonin when the economy improves.   

   

Proper Prior Planning for Platform Picking - Part 1

It seems that just about every e-commerce company I speak to lately is either in the process of re-platforming, or gearing up for a platform search.  And it makes sense; after all, now that the channel is well over 10 years old, many e-commerce sites are running on aging technologies.  They've served retailers well, but it's time to reap the benefits of functionality and administrative advances that have evolved over the last 5+ years.

The search for an e-commerce platform solution can be daunting. The landscape is crowded and confusing, and the list of requirements alone can make for an RFP that rivals War and Peace in length. 

Given the importance of the platform decision, it would remiss of me to tell you to just "take these 5 easy steps and success will be yours...."  The truth is, this is a big, important decision and making the decision will take significant research and effort.  There are, however, some steps that you can take early on that will help considerably in preparing the organization and streamlining the process.

1) First, decide who will be involved in the decision process. This will likely (and rightly) be a cross functional effort across merchandising, marketing, IT, customer care, operations and more.  Identify the team members, the decision maker and the approver.  Who will need to weigh in throughout vs. just check in at key decision points?

2) Agree to an organized selection process. If you can afford the luxury of a project manager, by all means assign a good one to map out the milestones and keep the group on track.

3) Agree on the problems you are trying to solve with a new platform.  There is no "perfect" platform solution, but you will be able to get closer to perfect if you clearly define the problems you have with your current platform and prioritize which are the most critical to solve.  You may want to put more control in the hands of business people vs. developers, or you may want to decrease the time it takes to deploy new features. You may need a more robust functionality set, or better content management capabilities.  It's common for companies to believe that a new platform will solve every current ill, and chances are it won't.  Be clear about what you must solve vs. what you'd like to solve.

4) Look at your e-commerce business goals 5+ years out.  You will need your new platform to take your business to the next level, whatever that may be.  It will be important to understand not only your sales and order volume growth, but also important changes to the way you plan to operate and do business.  Do you foresee bringing currently outsourced operations in-house (such as customer care, design, development, etc.)?  Do you plan to launch new lines of business or brands? Are you planning deeper levels of integration with your other channels?

5) Get an overview of the platform landscape.  Before you dive in to specific providers, get an understanding of the models and choices: full service providers, hosted solutions, custom build shops or build yourself on licensed software...and yes, there are providers that blur the lines between the models (just to make it even more confusing).  Learn about the differences in payment models and service offerings. You will want to select a model first, then a provider within that model. The more work you can do to eliminate models that are not appropriate for your business up front, the smoother your search will go.

Note on point #5 above:  Companies who do NOT take this step typically regret it. Getting RFPs from vendors in different sectors of the market with different models will make it impossible to do an apples to apples comparison, and will create internal confusion and delays. Hint: you might want to consider getting a market overview from an objective third party or someone who's been through the process before.

Taking the early stage steps above will make gathering of requirements, writing an RFP, scoring potential vendors and making a decision a more efficient effort.  You'll be clearer on what you need, which means that eliminating inappropriate providers will be easier. 

Stay tuned for a follow-up post, where I'll cover the selection process itself in more detail, and some best practices for choosing the right solution.

Virtual Gets Real: The Avatar Grows Up

It's been a frantic month of travel and client deadlines, so the time since my last post has been unacceptably long by any blog best practice standards.

If there's an upside to that, it's that I've had enough airplane time in the last month  to get through a virtual (no pun intended) rash of new articles that are well worth reading about virtual reality, and how retailers are beginning to see glimmers of success in their practical application of these technologies.

Unlike earlier stories about the failures of expensive virtual world marketing campaigns (see my previous post on this topic), the articles listed here are well worth taking seriously and indicate that we are, indeed, starting to figure this out.

The areas of promise fall into three camps:

First, consumer research.  Driven primarily by CPG companies (Kimberly Clark, P&G, General Mills), virtual store aisles are providing valuable insights into consumer shopping behavior and response to packaging, product placement and promotions. First, read and article from MediaPost Publications (The Power of the Virtual Shopping Trip), about how virtual environments trump in-store testing on a number of levels, including speed and ability to control environmental factors.  Three more articles worth reading are from E-Commerce Times (Around the E-Commerce Corner: More 3-D, Avatars) the Indystar (Market Research, Virtually Speaking) and The Post-Crescent (Virtual Reality Gives Kimberly-Clark a Head's Up). You can also read my previous post on this topic; clearly progress has been made since that writing.

Second, marketing.  While there are still many issues around effective measurement and the cost of execution, there's evidence that retailers are moving beyond the virtual shopping mall storefronts and into tactics that promote virtual brand engagement and community.  You can read more about this and get some good stats at eMarketer (A Second Look at Virtual Worlds) and Business Week (Second Life Marketing: Still Strong).

Third, business productivity. Read a recent WSJ article (Virtual World Gets Another Life) about how IBM and others are creating virtual corporate environments and meeting spaces where training, presentations and discussions can take place.  For some great visual examples of this in action, look at Business Week's CEO Guide To Virtual Worlds.

I for one, was thrilled to see how these technologies are evolving past the video game stage into valuable business application. Now if I could just find an avatar that would write my blog for me when I get too busy....