eCommerce

Good service, bad service and social media

January 13, 2012 By Dan Thornton

I went for a quick shopping trip at Bluewater yesterday, and it once again highlighted how important it is to align the whole customer experience of your brand, including your products, service levels and marketing. A comparison of three retail and social media experience sum it up nicely:

Store 1: Uniqlo:

I’ve heard various things about Uniqlo and browsed their stores, but this was the first time I’ve intended to make a purchase, having seen numerous mentions of their selvage jeans (Selvage refers to the method of stitching, if you’re not a denim geek). And the level of service was great – first someone was able to help me find the one pile of the right jeans amongst the masses on display, and also explained that they offer a free alteration service when I struggled to find the right leg length.Then the young lady manning the fitting rooms was also friendly and helpful when arranging the alterations and pinning the jeans, and the till staff maintained that. After 40 minutes I came back and my jeans were ready.

Store 2: Ed’s Easy Diner:

I’m a big fan of good burger joints and Americana, so Ed’s should have been perfect. But it was average for various reasons. Partly the quality of food doesn’t quite justify the price (the bacon on my burger was burnt and rock solid, the strawberry milkshake was mainly vanilla, and the chips were undercooked). And partly because the three waiting staff between them were disinterested at best. Having invested in something slightly overpriced and with a hefty amount of competitive restaurants nearby, seeing our food and drinks slammed on the table or being ignored when we tried to pay the bill really didn’t make up for the food. Especially when I’ve experienced alternatives including the constant favourite Byron Burger in London (for example).

Store 3: Soletrader:

The actual service in Soletrader wasn’t bad – reasonably quick, friendly and helpful. The problem is that they were totally hampered by the store infrastructure. I’ve received a voucher for the store, which can’t be redeemed online. I want a specific pair of trainers, which are never in stock in my size. And although I can order them to a physical store, I really wanted to try the two closest sizes to check the right fit. It’s the sort of problem which turns a normally docile and compliant customer into one who will cause any amount of hassle to get rid of his voucher and never go near the store again.

How about the social media marketing:

When I came back online, I decided to tweet about the 3 different levels of service – good, average, and hampered by store policies.

Interestingly, Uniqlo didn’t need to respond or acknowledge my recommendation, but various friends echoed the fact that instore it’s a great experience (Although apparently their email marketing can be pretty overwhelming). That’s fine as I’m quite happy to follow their Twitter account.

Ed’s Easy Diner didn’t respond which is consistently disapointing. I’d hoped to be reassured that my experience may have been a one-off, but can only assume it wasn’t.

But the most interested in the fact that Soletrader did get back to me on Twitter. I got an acknowledgement and an apology for the hassle, although yet again, someone attempting to offer service and customer care couldn’t actually provide a solution, although they did say ‘we’re looking into a way gift vouchers can be used online in the future’.

More effort needed:

Recent stats show that customers expectations of service and feedback via social media outstrip the expectations of companies to monitor and respond. That has to change, and it has to go just beyond monitoring mentions and passing on details.

I wouldn’t necessarily expect Ed’s to respond with any offers or compensation (though I wouldn’t have complained if they did), but at least acknowledging their was a problem with the service offered and finding out more about my experience may have helped them identify a way in which they could improve their business in a location with a high level of competing restaurants and a fairly captive market. It certainly wasn’t busy when we ate, and yet we still ended up on a table with a jukebox out of order.

And Soletrader really need to move more quickly to solve their infrastructure problems, or empower staff to sort a solution out. I hate to quote the Zappos example yet again, but it’s appropriate for a footwear company. If the marketing team on Twitter wanted to turn an annoyed customer into a loyal one, they’d just need to grab a pair of Onitsuka Tigers in blue/red in size 7 and size 8 – send them both to my home address and allow me to send back the pair which didn’t fit. I can give them the voucher code in advance, and they can deal with the hassle of it not being valid for an online order. But having checked the Soletrader site, it appears of 13 different shoes, they have 3 in stock in size 7 across the UK.

The financial risk would be the outlay on posting one reasonable sized box (About £10), and the risk of losing one additional pair of trainers (Retail £70, so under that). I wonder what their current cost is for customer acquisition, and what value they put on their marketing and advertising expenditure, but without being too engrossed in follower numbers, the fact that I personally have twice as many as their official account means that it would probably be a cost efficient exercise overall – and the fact that I also have a number of sneaker addicted friends (including a couple of sneaker collectors) would surely pay off.

Compare that to the knowledge that if I’d just paid for trainers I’d get free postage and returns to store. But by receiving a voucher which ties me into that store I lose all the benefits and service, and instead gain additional hassle.

Two of my favourite things – Jigoshop and Genesis together…

September 26, 2011 By Dan Thornton

I’m a big fan of WordPress eCommerce solution Jigoshop, having worked with the team for a while to get the word out that there’s a free open-source eCommerce plugin which is easy to use, quick to set-up, and isn’t limited to requiring a qualified developer to get it running – even I’ve managed it on a test site in about 10 minutes.

I’m also a big fan of the StudioPress Genesis Framework for WordPress, and their child themes. To the point that I spent a significant amount for the Pro Plus package to have access to all of them. All my new sites run on the various StudioPress child themes, including ResCogs. And in fact, OnlineRaceDriver and FPSPrestige are actually running on the pre-Genesis Metro theme from StudioPress.

So I’m really pleased that Genesis Commerce is now available as a theme to combine the Genesis Framework with Jigoshop eCommerce.

Genesis Commerce combines Jigoshop and Genesis Framework

I’m really proud to be working with Jigoshop because it allows you to own your store, rather than relying solely on someone else setting and running everything, whether it’s Etsy or eBay. I’m never against using those sites to promote or sell, but it’s the different between having a market stall on someone’s pitch, or owning your own store outright. And being able to use Genesis makes an easy set-up even easier, plus adds some additional SEO benefits and other cool features.

The future of print is in the hands of small retailers

June 14, 2011 By Dan Thornton

I was in St Albans yesterday for an interesting meeting with someone I can’t name about a project I can’t mention. But afterwards I had enough time to pop into Chaos City Comics, a small comic shop which has apparently been going for a couple of decades.

It’s a really nice friendly shop, and having overheard the owner go through the world of comics with someone buying on behalf of someone else, we ended up striking up a bit of a chat about the comic shop business, a forthcoming reboot for DC comics, and the future of print in a world of tablet computing and curated discovery.

It made me think a lot about the future of print – apparently the combination of high profile movies and new formats has encouraged new business into the shop for print comics. But will this continue when superhero movies may not be moneyspinners for the studios, and when more and more people might be reading everything on a screen to the exclusion of anything else?

One thing we did talk about which I think might have potential for comics in particular is a curated experience which is already being offered by some specialist record retailers. Rather than visiting a storefront with the rent and expense that incurs, you’re able to visit a small office in which you pour out all your musical preferences and interests, and in return you get an expert providing you with a suitable selection to sample and enjoy before parting with your cash for the ones you want to take away.

So what about the same for comics? As someone who has less time than ever to keep up with the latest news and issues, I’d love to be able to go to a friendly expert on a regular basis who could not only suggest and advise what new titles I should try, but also be able to provide the complete story arcs I should be reading on a regular basis…

A selection of comics — Image by KickTheBeat on Flickr (CC Licence)

Small retailers need to do more…

The other thing that stood out is that I had a great experience in store, but I’m not a St Albans regular, and coming home and finding the Chaos City website has been a little frustrating, as it could definitely be offering more – it’s a basic news service about the store at the moment, without any way for me to part with any money for starters.

And that seems to be the case with so many great little specialist shops – great owners and staff, great knowledge and expertise, and no really good way of being able to access it when you’re not in the shop itself.

And there’s no legitimate excuse for that in an era when print is in decline, and the likely future will be one of niche publishing in specific areas of interest. There are lots of not only effective, but also efficient ways to increase turnover and provide more ways to interested people to spend cash with you, in addition to building customer loyalty and improving customer service. And considering the amount of free and open source options available to create a really good web presence, it doesn’t have to be expensive – especially if you deal in comics and know someone susceptible to payment in back issues as well as cash 😉

Social network commerce and referrals: Rubbish in, rubbish out?

April 11, 2011 By Dan Thornton

Two recent studies into social networking referrals and Facebook ecommerce left me slightly perplexed until the obvious answer smacked me in the face.

The first was a study by ForeSee Results, which showed that 1% of website referrals came direct from a social networking url, and that’s after a survey of 188 websites and over 295,000 responses from individual consumers. The networks included ranged from Facebook and Twitter to the likes of Foursquare, Scribd and Meetup. Without being able to dig into the study, there are some initial questions (Inclusion of Twitter clients, and wouldn’t Foursquare and Meetup be primarily for offline referrals?)

The second was a Forrester report into Facebook Ecommerce, which looked into 24 companies, with 7% citing social networks as one of their most effective sources of customers (90% cited paid search marketing). And a 1% click through rate compared to an 11% rate for email marketing. 24 companies is a pretty small sample group, but hey-ho….

Why am I perplexed?

There are a lot of examples of sites revealing their referral figures from Facebook and Twitter (and the social networks themselves are keen to highlight how much traffic they drive). Those figures are always a lot higher than 1% – and my own sites back that up consistently since they first launched (Obviously I can’t reference client sites or previous employers…). Some other social networks have also made decent contributions to site traffic (e.g. Stumbleupon, Reddit, and several others), and some have never appeared to my knowledge (I’ve yet to see someone appear on this blog via Foursquare for obvious reasons).

So besides the aggregation problem – why is that 1% number so low?

And given 600 million potential consumers on Facebook with an integral sharing and recommendation mechanism, why aren’t more companies able to convert customers? Email marketing will generally perform well as potential customers have actively signed up for information and offers, and 1% is still better than many advertising campaigns can achieve, but surely it must be possible to engage fans and potential customers in a more effective way…

Rubbish in, rubbish out?

I haven’t had access to either survey, but certainly the publicly-available summaries and reports seem to have skipped a vital question – how many of the websites and retails involved are actually doing a decent job of using social networks? Were all the websites involved actively updating, providing decent content, responding, providing good offers? Or were they like the majority of companies on social networks and generally doing an appalling job with a half-arsed attempt at updating once a month with some generic PR piece?

How many companies actually have a good integrated Facebook commerce offering? It seems as if Zynga have done pretty well out of Facebook commerce, and they aren’t alone, so why aren’t retailers capitalising? One obvious reason is that having an integrated Facebook shop is still rare enough to be really newsworthy – and although Facebook credits are available at the supermarket checkout, they’re still gaining acceptance as a retail currency. How many people who want to make a purchase will have a credit card available for an Amazon payment, or possibly a Paypal account, but would be slightly irritated by having to go and convert their cash into Facebook currency first? Or are finding that the brands they want to spend with currently just refer them to their traditional website, giving that extra click of delay and potential for a consumer to get distracted, have doubts, or just give up for some reason?

So what are we meant to believe when it comes to social networks?

The easiest answer is to believe your own experience and stats. Particularly if you’re a small company, you’ll want to focus on 1 or 2 places, and spend a decent amount of time using them before you can build up an accurate picture of whether they’re driving traffic or business.Use your gut feeling for what is likely to be a good outlet – you probably won’t be far wrong, and you can find quite a lot of info online to help back up your initial instincts.

For instance, I’d advise Facebook for general B2C traffic, and would suggest Twitter tends to be lower for most consumer sites, but contributes more in spreading information to other locations. Whilst for B2B, LinkedIn shouldn’t be underestimated, and the likes of Scribd, Slideshare etc all come into action.

The other answer could be to speak to someone with experience of similar campaigns for similar specific businesses – if you’re looking for advice on traffic referrals, look for an agency or consultant who can reference the numbers they’ve achieved, and can talk about how they did it, how they measured it, what worked, and importantly, what didn’t.

For instance, Youtube tends to drive very little traffic, unless you approach it in a very specific way and use specific mechanisms to encourage people to visit your site rather than the next related video of skateboarding kittens.

And always question surveys and reports which claim to provide a broad overview of what happens on the internet – the broader the information, the less use it tends to be. Measurement always trumps research – the important thing is to set up the measurement correctly!

Musical serendipity in a digital world….

April 2, 2011 By Dan Thornton

My former Absolute Radio colleague Adam Bowie recently wrote about serendipity in music and books, and it’s been stuck in my head like a particularly determined earworm for a while. I’ll wait here while you go and read it.

The Record Shop’ courtesy Nicoze on Flickr (CC Licence)[/caption]

Adam’s experience is that record and book shops provide an element of serendipity missing in online retailers, and this is also a familiar comment on news services, and information via social networks which connect you with friends likely to share your world view.

It’s interesting because of a crossover – Adam is fairly adept and accustomed with technology in various forms, and is certainly a user of most new tools for music and audio-visual entertainment. He’s also a very keen photographer, which itself is an interest rooted in technology and gadgets.

At the same time, I’ve had the type of trainspotter passion for music which was celebrated by the likes of Nick Hornby, with records and cds filling rooms, filed in alphabetical and chronological order. Music magazines ranging from the NME to Guitarist filled my teenage bedroom, the ‘Evening Session’ was required listening, and the hint of a good band appearing on a TV music show would require sitting through the other 27 minutes of tedium in barely-contained excitement. And 10+ years after I’d programme the family video recorder to tape ‘Raw Power‘ in the early hours of the morning, I couldn’t stop myself mentioning to my friends that I’d shared a lift with presenter and then Mojo Editor-in-Chief Phil Alexander.

‘Serendipity’ courtesy Tojosan on Flickr (CC Licence)

So how does musical serendipity work without record shops?

So how has digital serendipity led to a time when long train journeys to London just to visit Berwick Street record shops (and possibly get served by Martin Belam years before we ever met), transform me into someone who didn’t buy any records during 18 months actually working round the corner at a radio station and yet has such a surplus of music to hear that it probably isn’t achieveable in my lifetime?

No Media – websites, blogs, radio, TV, books:

Strangely, despite the huge wealth of niche blogs and websites available, I rarely read them. Mainly because there’s already an overwhelming amount of tech and marketing stuff to read, plus a huge surplus of books recommended by bloggers and friends. The exception is when they appear as a result of a search for someone I’ve heard about but haven’t been able to locate. I do occasionally read and re-read books about artists and genres, and search out records mentioned – the majority of which are at the back of the highly recommended Sweet Soul Music by Peter Guralnick.

Instead, the Related Artist rabbit hole:

I’ve often tweted about the fact I’ve fallen foul of the biggest risk when working from home – falling into the Related Artist rabbit hole on Spotify. Although it tends to be flawed when dealing with big mainstream acts, the old rule of six degrees tends to mean you can soon start finding songs and artists you haven’t encountered, or hadn’t yet listed to. The Spotify inventory is still a bit patchy, particularly when you get into more obscure and niche genres, but I’ve had some pleasant discoveries, including some slightly esoteric research into Peruvian punk music, or moving from punk through to psychobilly and punk/country crossovers.

And when Spotify fails, there’s the backup of Last.fm, which I’ve long held to be the musical Wikipedia, more than any type of online radio service. There’s a far wider range of the genres I tend to end up exploring, and enough of a sample of most to let me know whether to search further. Even if autoscrobbling can lead to embarrassment when I end up playing songs for my partner or son and they end up recorded forever on my profile because I never remember to delete them. Plus, despite it’s abject failure as a social network, Myspace is still pretty useful for finding a huge number of bands.

New services:

I occasionally use Blip.fm, which provides extreme randomness in the manner of a crowdsourced electronic John Peel. I’ve occasionally get some mileage from Soundcloud. But it’s actually Mixcloud, which for me might as well be renamed ‘HeavySoulBrutha radio‘.

Digital + People:

Like most people, I’ve got at least a few friends who are heavily into their music (@mattcharge happens to be an excellent DJ for example, and @pjeedai may be the whitest expert on obscure British hiphop before you stray into Tim Westwood territory). Only recently I discovered a very professional and respectable journalist I’ve known for years happens to have an obsession with Scandinavian Death Metal, whilst one chat with a marketing agency descended into an hour of the merits of hair metal.

And all of these people distributed geographically and professionally are able to share their recommendations with me regardless of whether they can be bothered to send me a C90 tape recorded from the radio, or want to risk their prized blue label Stax 45s in the mail.

But the funniest thing has been impromptu sound-offs. Recent Jodanma meetings were disrupted by my suggestion of an official Jodanma entrepreneurial soundtrack (available here on Spotify – add your own suggestions), and two days in client offices have involved ‘name that movie theme’ and ‘cheesiest rock’ competitions. Everyone in each situation was able to pull up their streaming service of choice, their digital music collection, or a quick Youtube video and jump in.

The prospect of DRM was long feared as ending the ability to share music. Despite the fact that some artists chose to allow their music to be distributed via Creative Commons, the other result was an ‘iPod sharing/swapping’ trend in playgrounds around the world.

‘Mother & Daughter Flashmobsters’ courtesy drewleavy on Flickr (CC Licence)

And retailers?:

I’ve occasionally had recommendations from particular record shop experts, or spotted something interesting when browsing, but I’m not sure the actual amount of discoveries has been much different to seeing the various related items on any ecommerce site. Adam’s right that the personal recommendations are based on previous purchases, so aren’t going to recommend something from an unconnected genre, but those tend to come from the sources mentioned above.

Considering I’ve had record shop assistants express disbelief at my seemingly random selection of CDs – “No, none of them are presents, and yes, I can enjoy thrash metal, Irish folk music and obscure 70’s funk”, I’m not sure an algorhythm could ever hope to cope.

Which is probably why the serendipity of music in the digital age has to come from the same place it always has – from other people exposing you to their music and sharing it. Whether it was mixtapes and bootleg cassettes with photocopied inlays being swapped around, or a friend’s dad enforcing a course of Pink Floyd indoctrination every time he gave us a lift to school, that method remains the same, but the potential pool of influencers is much enlarged, just as every aspect of our social circle is enlarged.

Footnote:

None of this means that I don’t still enjoy browsing record stores, although my sole purchases these days tend to be particularly obscure vinyl. By the same token, I still have an addition to visiting the likes of Foyles and far more esoteric bookshops, such as one devoted solely to motoring books. But the serendipity effect of a generic mainstream retailer such as HMV or Waterstones has been completely replaced by digital encounters for me, and judging by sales figures and the precarious state of most of them, the end of the mainstream High Street entertainment shop probably isn’t far away.