I will also continue to do some contract work for those seeking help with their Internet marketing strategies. I Hope everyone is enjoying the beginning of summer. In Houston, it already feels like August!

Today’s post deals with the role of website quality on establishing initial trust in the mind of the visitor to the website. As previously stated in the two previous blogs on this subject, we are assuming that the visitor has no first hand knowledge or experience with the organization that has the website.  My first post in this series with developing trust dealt with the role of perceived risk in that process and how you can minimize the perception of risk. You can find Part One here. The second post in this series deals with the role of reputation and specific strategies we can employ to build our reputation in the eyes of the potential consumer of our products and services. You can find Part Two here.

It should be no surprise that the quality of a website impacts the trust of the Internet visitor to it. After all, aren’t we affected by what we see when we visit a “bricks and mortar” business outlet?  Our course we are.  If we are going to buy stock, would we have greater trust in a brokerage business located in a nice facility with nice furniture staffed by professional looking employees who are conversant and readily share evidence of their success as opposed to a stock broker located in a run down building in a strip center with garish furniture and employees in torn shorts and T shirts who are illiterate and say “trust me?” (Wow…did I really write a sentence that long? So much for the usability factor for this post)

A website is a place we conduct business. For many organizations, it is the only place they conduct business. It is logical to assume that part of the process of initial trust development is the quality of the place we do business. Research bears that out.

(I would like to digress a moment to say, that all of the information in my blog is either based on objective research, my own experience or the experience of other highly recognized marketing professionals. I have made a purposeful decision to leave out research citations from my posts. If  you would like me to provide that information, I would be happy to do it. )

Lets discuss what the research says about perceived site quality  in establishing initial perceived trust. You notice I use “perceived” a lot because “perception is reality” in the mind of the visitor. It is also important to remember that what you and I perceive may be different from what you target customer perceives. I discussed this in more detail in a previous post on customer insight. My point is that the perception of quality is in the eyes of the visitor and nor in the mind of your website designer. That is why I advocate the involvement of target market consumers in the website development process and testing much of what we do.

What Do You See…a Duck or Bunny?

Perceptions is Reality

Never…Never believe that your customer thinks like you!

The quality of a website is important. Consumers make inferences regarding the business behind the website based on their initial impressions and experiences with it. There is data to support that, as consumers become increasingly more comfortable with the Internet as a medium for commerce, that the importance of website quality is increasing vis-a-vis the other trust engendering factors. Website developers should devote increased attention to just how well they design and build a site based on what we have learned regarding the importance of the perception of quality has on the overall perception of the business and whether to trust it with an online transaction.

Developing a quality website: Remember that initial impressions of website take place at the emotional level as does much of the purchasing decision process. A quality website in the minds of the visitor will be one designed specifically for them at several levels. They include:

• Graphic Design
• Structural Design
• Content Design
• User Experience Design

It is not the intent of this particular blog to provide the detailed discussion of design elements that create the perception of quality, but, instead to address them in general and provide illustrative examples.

Graphic Design: There  are a lot of good resources on creating a quality website from a graphic design perspective. Many of them are based on proven graphic design principles. I would only argue that designers and developers do a couple of more things as part of their efforts: 1. Understand the profile of the target market and their psychographics and design for them. 2. Understand the business purpose of the website and design for it. 3. Understand what the marketing field has learned about color psychology, eye path, graphics, etc and incorporate that information into the design of a quality website.

Structural Design: We regard structural design as the overall organization and accessibility of information on a website. Designing and testing for usability addresses the structural design elements. Examples of good structural design include  intuitive and consistent navigation, copy consistent with audience reading levels, site loading quickly, etc.  Good structural design is an essential element of the perception of a quality website in the minds of visitors.

Content Design: Content is the informational components of our website. It is the Persuasive Components that will, if done right, increase the likelihood that visitors will take the action we would like them to take. Examples of content design elements include the use of branding elements such as a logo and Value Proposition, good persuasive copy with headlines and subheads, bullet points, testimonials, calls to action, etc. In fact, the content and design process should be done after we have the visitor profiles and site objectives…well before the graphic design process addressed above.

User Experience Design: This factor addresses  the personalization of the website experience. It has only been recently that the personalization of Internet marketing efforts has been shown to be an increasingly important factor in getting conversion, i.e. getting people to take our most favored actions.  Examples of ways we personalize the user experience include, use of photographs or video to personalize the business and its representatives; providing a different website experiences by segmenting the visitor based on previous visits, geographic location, site content interactions, etc; and use of synchronous communications media, e.g.,  instant messaging, click to call, etc. The more we tailor the website experience to a particular visitor the higher the quality of website that will be perceived on the part of that visitor.

Amateurish websites do not engender the kind of trust needed for a consumer to take action on it, unless the visitor is extremely motivated. We know that highly motivated people will put up with bad websites and still take action. So, if you have the world’s greatest product or service that fills a huge need and you have no competition, then you can ignore much of what I have written about the importance of creating initial trust for website visitors.

If you are like the rest of us, take the time to address perceived risk, reputation and site quality as you develop your website.

Your comments are appreciated. What other ways can we build trust in visitors with no experience with us?

Today I am going to address the role of Reputation in creating the perception of trust with online visitors that do not have first hand knowledge of your company. I will also suggest some trust inducing strategies relative to this factor that one should employ in any website design.

REPUTATION: Remember we are talking about the perceived organization reputation. A premise for this post is that the visitor does not have prior knowledge of the organization and is drawing his or her perception based on the website. Perceived reputation positively affects trust. Trust is a necessary antecedant to taking action. Therefore, we should incorporate trust-inducing reputation design elements into our website as part of our online marketing efforts.

Reputation is base on second hand knowledge. Our reputation is  based upon what others (third parties) say about us. With the rise of social media sites, reputation issues are very significant. These site allow one to disseminate “word of mouth” comments regarding a vendor to many connections through these sites. As a result, Internet reputation management has become another  marketing strategy many companies now employ. That is the subject for another time.

What are ways we can incorporate what others are saying about us into our website design and content?  Those that come quickly to mind include:

• Testimonials
• Memberships/adherence to Codes of Conduct
  
• Endorsements/Awards/Certifications

Testimonials: While many people utilize testimonials in their websites, they often utilize them in the wrong way. So often, testimonials are confined to a “Testimonials” page on the site. Remember that we are trying to build trust so that visitors will take certain actions on our website. Testimonials need to be part of the persuasive copy that get visitors to convert, i.e. to take the action we want them to take. Testimonials also should be placed next to “Call to Actions” to reassure users that the action that they are about to take will have positive outcomes.  Testimonials need to be:

• From people with whom the targeted market can identify
• Specific to the subject matter at hand.
• Personalized by providing information on the person providing the testimonial

So who should provide testimonials?  If I am a potential customer, previous customers’ experiences would be important to me. So would authorities in the subject matter or discipline.  As a visitor undergoes the subconscious mind game of  creating your reputation in their mind based on the website itself,what would you consider important in that process?

• Hearing from satisfied customers would be important. If they would be willing to be contacted, wouldn’t that engender trust even more? Such testimonials should be very specific. Avoid “hype” testimonials. Use them in context. A testimonial about support after the purchase should be utilized in the copy about your excellent customer service, not while you are describing product or service benefits.
• Hearing from authorities in the field. This could be a review of your product or service by a publication, organization, etc. or simply the opinion of a person who knows what they are talking about (in the visitor’s mind).
• Celebrity endorsements.  I am not a fan, but the marketing world loves such endorsements.

Memberships/Adherence to Codes of Conduct: Your participation in organizations and adherence to conduct or standards says a lot about you and reputation.  Of course, only if I the visitor think so.  I recommend that our clients join the Better Business Bureau and utilize that membership logo as a “trust-inducing reputation element on their websites. Can you think of others that would create a positive association in the minds of visitors? Stating that you subscribe to certain Codes of Conduct relative to the way you conduct business can also build your reputation, e.g.,  HON (health on the Net) Code for Medical and Health websites. You can create your own business Code of Conduct with a prominent link to it utilizing some official looking seal as a means to increase trust. This not only increases your reputation, but also helps minimize risk in the mind of the visitor. If not a Code of Conduct, then at least a Performance Guarantee with no small print!

Endorsements/Awards/Certifications: All of these are third party indicators of your company’s reputation. If you are marketing a product or service, they can be very important in increasing your reputation in the minds of consumers. Use them prominently as part of your website persuasive copy and design.

In  my next post, I will discuss the importance of Site Quality in developing trust.

As always, your comments are appreciated.

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Trust is First Factor in Success Proccess

Because “Trust”  comes into play at the first encounter between an Internet user and your online marketing activities, you will never have an opportunity to satisfy an online visitor without being able to engender enough trust to cause that person to take a risk and take your advice, leave their personal information or purchase something from you. Trust is what mitigates Risk!

A previous blog of mine discussed satisfaction issues. You can find it here

Once the consumer has  had a satisfying transaction with you, then the trust needed for future interactions with your Internet marketing efforts should not be a problem. Notice I said “satisfying transaction. An unsatisfied consumer of your service will lose trust for future encounters.

In this three part post I want to address that first encounter a consumer has with your website. For the purposes of this post, I will assume that the website is not that of a well established brand, but that of  a website other than a household name. What can we do to build “initial” trust during that first encounter that will enable the visitor to take the actions we want. Whether that action is to take our advice, provide personal information, make a phone call, or purchase something, they all involve taking a risk in the minds of the consumer. I am assuming that their is some level of perceived value in the minds of the visitor for what you are offering. The relationship of value to risk is a subject for another day. Today it is all about trust.

How do we create trust on a website for a first time visitor?

Three areas that I want to discuss and which are important in trust building are:

• Perceived Risk
• Reputation
• Site Quality

I don’t represent that these are the only factors involved in getting people to take actions. Perceived value, incentives, time sensitivity, etc. all play a role. Marketing as a field has identified the important ones. While these help, we still need enough trust in their mind to get the online consumer to take actions

We need to create enough trust to convert the visitor, i.e., get them to take the action we favor.

Perceived Risk: We want to minimize the risk in the minds of the consumer to the actions we want them to take. How do we mitigate risk on a website with an unknown company and brand?  A number of methods can be utilized to reduce risk. Remember it is in the minds of the consumer where we must focus our efforts.  Perception is reality. Here are a few tactics you can use on your website.

1. Privacy Statement: Every website should have a privacy statement  that informs visitors about what information will be collected  and what will  be done with it. Over time, as users have become more secure with giving personal information online, there has been a decline in the overall importance of this issue relative to others. That does not mean it is still  not important and that consumers expect it.
2. Privacy Elements Adjacent to Calls to Action: Anytime you ask a visitor to take an action “risk” is created in their minds. If asking for information, you should reassure them that you will protect their privacy. This reassurance should be in direct juxtaposition to the call to action so that it is in front of their eyes as they make that “click” and submit it to  you.
3. Seeking Only the Absolute Essential Information: The more information you seek from a visitor, the greater the risk that is created.  With that in mind, you should only seek the absolute minimum information necessary from the consumer to fulfill your marketing needs. I have often seen sites ask for everything in the way of information from visitors. The result is a quick exit from the site.  Remember it is all about perception. That means that you should make an effort to make what information you do collect look as little as you can. Use a horizontal format for forms, i.e., put field across the form to shorten the length of the form. Use other methods to get the other information. If you have an address, you can get the zip code. If your clients are in once state, don’t include the “state” field. You get the picture. Minimize the number of fields and use design to minimize how it looks. Another strategy is to collect information in two stages, acquiring the email address before sending them to a page with a longer form. That way, if the visitors exits the longer form, you still have their email address to do relationship marketing and establish trust over time.
4. Statements of Others That Took the Requested Action: I will discuss this in more detail in the next post dealing with reputation as a factor in trust. The point here is to utilize testimonials related to reassuring consumers about the specific action they are about to take. If you asking them for their email address to subscribe to a newsletter, include a testimonial relating to the value of the newsletter and appreciating the fact that the action only resulted in valuable information and no spam.  The key here is being specific to the action to be taken.
5. Show the Value First: Before you ask consumers to take action, show them the value associated with it. How many times have I gone to a website, only to be told that I had to give them information BEFORE I could look at a demo, talk to someone, see the product specs, etc. How dumb is that!. You are asking me for my information before you have demonstrated that the information related to the product or service may or may not be of value to me. Talking about creating high risk in a consumer’s mind….these sites exaggerate it rather than minimize it. Don’t Do it unless all you care about are only the most highly motivated visitors who think your product or service  is the only potential answer to their need. Do it only if you have a monopoly on the product or service.
6. Use Third Party Security/Privacy Indicators: If you utilize third party services or applications to protect the information requested as part of the Call to Action, then using the names and logos of these service providers will help reassure the consumer that you are serious about protecting their privacy. A Verisign endorsement is an example of such a third party privacy credibility indicator.

In my following posts, I will discuss how Reputation and Site Quality increase trust and some strategies we can use in designing our website to increase trust levels needed for visitors to take the action we want.

Please add your own thoughts on building trust.

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• Document Existing Knowledge
• Interview Current Customers
• Interview Your Employees
• Intelligence from Existing Websites
• Use Others’ Research
• Conduct Your Own Research
• Utilize Focus Groups
• Test, Test, Test with Targeted Customers

Document existing knowledge: You should have learned a lot over the years about your customers. That information just needs to be documented and classified so it can be more meaningful and useful to you. This is the best place to begin. You might end up by being surprised by how much you know or by how little you know about your customer base. If you aren’t already, you should be capturing geographic, demographic and psychographic information. The latter can be extrapolated from occupation, user experience data, campaign data, etc.

Interview Current Customers: Hopefully you have a number of customers that you know well enough that they will gladly give you some time so that you can ask them some fundamental questions. What problem or need did your product or service address? Why did they choose your company? What benefit was the most persuasive in convincing them to take action. Why did they buy when they did? How could you have made the product or sales process better? You get the point. There is a lot to be learned from you current customers. The more of them you ask, the greater the confidence you can have in the results. Talking to enough customers may enable you to see if there are themes that come through in the interview process.

Interview Your Employees: There is a lot of information about your customers in the minds of the employees who interact with them. Talk to your sales people if you have them. Customer service personnel are critical to this process as well in that they have an important perspective on the issues of customers after they have purchased the product or service. Anyone who interacts routinely with the customer should be considered for interviews. Find out why customers buy and what issues  they have with your product or service.

Intelligence from Existing Websites: Websites provide a good source of intelligence. If you already have a website and have enough traffic, there are tools you can use to gain insight into the people who visit it and those of your competitors. Yes, take the time to learn from your competitors. One caveat though….only target successful competitors for this intelligence. The third party applications, e.g., Quantcast and others like them provide inference data on visitor profiles. The better ones use large panels made up of millions of Internet users who previously provided their profile information to the service and allowed them to passively view their online behavior. This information is supplemented with direct visits to tagged websites and plugged into an algorithm that makes inferences about the profile of people visiting a website, or what websites a certain profile visits. The latter is important to Media Publishers and the creation of effective affiliate advertising campaigns. Most sites have too little traffic to be profiled without adding tags from one of these services to the website.

Visiting successful competitor websites can also provide insight into the customer. What value proposition are they marketing? What emotional gratification mode and purchase preference modes dominate the site? If they are very successful, they probably know the customer and how to position their product in the mind of the customer.

Obviously, your own web analytics application can provide a lot of information about the source of your traffic. If you have website goals, it can also help you identify from where the most qualified traffic is coming. Customer insight can also be gleaned from the search keywords that resulted in visitors to your site. Once there, what were they looking for….what visitors searched for (site search) or what content they interacted with while on the website. All can provide valuable insight about our customers so that you can become your customer.

Use Others’ Research: Don’t reinvent the wheel. If there are resources that already provide insight into your target market, use them. This is known as a Secondary Research Resource. There are many organizations that provide both demographic and psychographic information about a particular target market profile. These reports can be purchased and may cost several thousand dollars. Many times a brief synopsis of the paid report is available and that in itself may be valuable. There are also a myriad of free resources. One that should be always addressed for demographic information is the Census data from the federal government.

Conduct You Own Research: You can create your own survey of current customers. If you have a large enough sample and have surveyed all of them or a random sample of them in an unbiased way, you can gain confidence in the data discovered in the survey. This process is termed “primary research” because you are doing your own research. The difference from interviewing your customers is that you are surveying a much larger sample and are using research protocols that can provide you objective and subjective data with confidence limits attached to it. You can do the same with a random sample of people from your target market.

Conduct Focus Groups: Focus groups are a tried and true way of interacting with probable customers to glean information that will help us define our product, price, marketing message, marketing strategies, etc. Focus Groups are both an interviewing and brainstorming process involving group dynamics that you don’t get in a one to one interview.  Results are better if whoever conducts the session is trained in leading focus groups. This will help assure a better outcome of the experience.

Testing With Targeted Customers as Part of the Development Process: Whether it is a website or some other Internet marketing campaign, soliciting feedback from existing or probable customers as you develop the website or campaign will result in a better website or campaign. It reminds me of that old adage of never having the time to do it right, but always having the time do do it over.  Doing it right requires that you  involve your targeted market profile in the development of a website or campaign by “running it by them” in a structured (testing) way.

If you do the above, you are well on your way of Becoming Your Customer!

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I will have considered this blog to be successful if I can convince someone out there to take more time at the front end of a project to do the homework necessary to better assure a successful outcome of their online marketing efforts. For those of you contracting with other organizations for your Internet marketing efforts, make sure they are providing adequate customer insight as part of their efforts and don’t hesitate to approve the budget to do it.

This goes double for website development. There are lots of website development resources out there who will build you a website and even provide search engine optimization services. They may have you fill out a form that gets at the various functionality, themes, pages, etc. you want as part of the website. That is all fine and good, but they are completely dependent on you to understand the customer and what makes that customer take action. If yours is a sophisticated organization that has the research at your fingertips and if you want to be heavily involved in the development process, then this is not a problem.

However, if your knowledge of your customer is anecdotal at best, then someone should take the time to “become the customer” and make sure that information is incorporated into the design of the website. Notice, I said design. That means that both the graphic image portrayed as well as the copy are all part of the “message” to reach that target market. I would not let anyone design a website that doesn’t first fully understand the customer. Either you educate them or they provide a “research” component to their services so that the information needed is acquired before website development begins. Later in this blog series I will discuss a comprehensive approach to website development that assures that customer needs and wants drives the process. Until then, here are some strategies you should utilize in your approach to online marketing. I’ve listed them in the order of increasing complexity.

• Document what you already know
• Interview current customers
• Interview those in your organization who interact with customers
• Intelligence gained from your existing website
• Acquire information from others’ research
• Survey current customers
• Conduct focus groups
• Incorporate “customer” feedback in the development process

In my next blog, Part 2 of 2, I will discuss each of these approaches in more detail.  Please provide your own insights and comments on this topic.

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I find that one of the most profound questions in Internet marketing or any other kind of marketing is:

So What?

Think about this for a moment. While it sounds so trite, it holds the meaning of life itself.  Certainly on a much less grandiose scale, the fundamental question to any marketing efforts.  Let me give a couple of examples:

• I have a good product…. So What?
• I have been in business a hundred years…..So What?
• We are open until 9:00 p.m……So What?
• I attend church every Sunday…..So What?
• We have offices in 50 cities…..So What?
• I love my wife…..So What?
• Our product processes data at the speed of light…..So What?
• Traffic to our website has increased 80%…..So What?
• Our YouTube video has had 400,000 views…..So What?
• Your website has won creativity awards…..So What?

I hope you get the picture. I will leave it to you to contemplate the non marketing use of the “So What? question. Instead I will address why it is important in marketing and our approach to Internet marketing. It is a question we should be asking as we approach the development of marketing campaigns and strategies. It can help us focus our thoughts and efforts.

This question has two great meanings for me regarding marketing:

1. It helps me translate product or service attributes into meaningful customer benefits and a value proposition
2. It helps me focus on meaningful outcomes when planning Internet marketing campaigns

Let’s begin at the beginning. Remember our marketing efforts are focused on probable customers, i.e., our target market. That target market consists of individual people who are bombarded with marketing messages. How can we make ours stand out and how can we differentiate ourselves from others in the marketplace? The So What? question is one of the most important ways we can do that. Remember, marketing is in the mind of the customers. Customers view marketing messages through the prism of the conscious (rationale) mind and the unconscious (impulsive) mind. They are looking for: “What’s in it for me?”

“What’s in it for me?” translates into “So What?” Potential customers should not have to spend time trying to figure out what’s in it for them. That “So What?” question is part of their thought process. Unfortunately for us, unless it is readily apparent, they will not take the time to do this thought process unless they are very highly motivated. That means that you should do it for them as part of your message development. What’s in it for them is called a “BENEFIT.” Translating attributes or specifications into benefits is a marketing 101. Yet, take a look at websites and other marketing campaigns on the Internet. How many of them are using benefits to market their services or products?  How many of them have honed their benefits to match the needs and desires of their target market? How many have addressed the emotional needs of their market?

How many have a Value Proposition that is prominently displayed in all of their marketing? How many of them have a Value Proposition that is the succinct statement of the greatest and specific benefit? In my experience….NOT MANY!

One way to arrive there is the: “So What?” question. Asking this question about each attribute, specification get us to a benefit. Asking this question about each benefit can help us hone that benefit to the best benefit in the minds of our target market. Keep asking it until there is not another answer. We can easily see how the: “So What?” question can help us create benefits.

The second area where this question is important is in the planning for online marketing campaigns. Asking the: So What? question gets us to focus on meaningful OUTCOMES of our efforts, rather than the marketing strategy itself. Internet marketing lends itself to tracking lots of outcomes, many of which have no real meaning to the organization.

Which is more important?

• getting lots of traffic to a website or getting less, but more qualified, traffic to a website
• getting people to a website or getting them to take a favored action once they get there
• the click through rate or the conversion rate of keywords
• a good website or lots of traffic
• High search engine rankings or more sales

I hope you now understand why: “So What?” is one of my favorite questions in the world of Internet marketing.

What’s your favorite question?

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We have also previously discussed about how important insight about our probable customers is to our Internet marketing efforts. The more  we know about the demographic and psychographic factors of our target markets, the more focused are efforts at reaching them with a message that will resonate with them. Color is part of our overall message.

I do not intend for this blog to be a treatise on the psychology of color.  There are many websites and books that can provide more information on this subject. One I like is:

http://websitetips.com/color/tutorials/#meaning

The colors we use in our online marketing efforts should reflect:

• Our Company, products and services
• Our target customer

Colors Should Reflect Who We Are: The colors we use in our efforts to get our message across to our target market should be reflective of who we are.  For example, if our business is building playgrounds or selling toys, the colors we use are going to reflect “fun and excitement.”  Use of primary, saturated colors, including yellow and green, are appropriate to reflect these emotional associations. If, on the other hand, our business is buying houses from those who are entering the foreclosure process we probably don’t want to reflect “fun and excitement.”  A better emotional connections would be “trust and credibility” and our color scheme should reflect it. Likely blue would be the predominant color, highlighted with blacks, etc.

Colors should reflect our customers: Our online marketing color choices should reflect the customer insight we have gained by researching our target and flanker markets. Depending on who are probable customers are and where they are located, the choice of color can be a fairly complex process. The more focused our marketing efforts at the most probable customer, the easier it is to decide on a color palette for our online marketing efforts.

Colors Elicit Emotional Associations: Our Internet marketing strategy should be to associate our organization’s products our services with positive emotional associations in the mind of our target probable customer. Color selection is part of that strategy. Specific colors have been shown to be associated with specific emotional feelings and can have an impact on the actions they take. Blue, for example, is associated with trust and reliability. Careful though…it is also associated with sadness and coolness. Red is associated with excitement, danger, passion, speed, strength and sex.  Black is associated with sophistication, seductive and mysterious emotional triggers. Any wonder why adult websites utilize red and black as their dominant color scheme? Remember though that the emotional associations of colors are culturally based. Another reason why you must know your customer.

Customers Have Color Preferences: Another factor in the selection of color for e-commerce is the preferences of our target market, i.e., our most probable customers. We can be more effective utilizing colors that reflect what our customers like than using colors that our customers do not like. There are gender, age and cultural differences that must go into the selection process. I believe that many online marketing designers default to “blue” as a dominant color because it is that it is the most favorite color as a whole. I am reminded of a former client that had a product specifically targeted to women in the 21 to 59 age group. They chose orange and brown as the color scheme for their marketing and  product packaging. What they failed to take into consideration is that orange and brown are the least favorite colors of their target market. That fact worked against the remainder of their message.  A little research could of saved them a lot of wasted effort.

What do you think?

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Today I want to talk about customer satisfaction factors and their impact in our approach to e-commerce and online marketing.

Customer Satisfaction is a Moving Target!

Customer satisfaction factors are in the mind of the customer, i.e, their expectations. Customer expectations of what affects their satisfaction evolves over time. I will give an example later in this blog. The factors that influence customer satisfaction can be classified as:

1. Dissatisfaction Factors
2. Satisfaction Factors
3. Neutral Factors
4. Core or Critical Factors

Dissatisfaction Factors influence customers negatively. They are factors that customers have come to expect as part of the product or service. Customers have a perception of a product or  service and if your product or service fails to meet that expectation you will have a customer or a potential customer who will not purchase the product or service or who will not buy from you again. Actually that is the least of your problems. Dissatisfied customers will spread the word much more than satisfied customers. The Internet and social media sites make spreading the word easy with a few keystrokes. The good news is that research indicates that one only has to meet, not exceed, customers’ expectations to eliminate it as a Dissatisfaction Factors.

Satisfaction Factors are perceived as valuable things that motivate a customer. They may actually work at both the rational and impulse (emotional) level to to move a customer to purchase a product or service. Satisfaction Factors differentiate you from the competition. An organization should focus on its core competencies and customer benefits, along with good marketing communications to turn them into Satisfaction Factors. The result is a competitive advantage for your organization.

Neutral Factors have no impact one way or another on customer perception and satisfaction. Expending marketing and sales efforts touting attributes or benefits that are neutral in the customer’s mind is wasted effort.

Core or Critical Factors usually deal with the core or generic aspect of the product or service we are marketing. They can influence customers positively or negatively. They are fundamental issues with the product or service and the perceived need for it.  This is where an unreliable product or poor customers service will overwhelm all of the Satisfaction Factors associated with it. Similarly a product that addresses a critical perceived need will influence a customer positively towards it.

Over time there is an evolution of the satisfaction process. Once a attribute of a product or service penetrates the market, potential customers come to expect that attribute and it becomes a de facto standard. That means that what was once a Satisfaction Factor or product differentiator is now expected (Core Factor) and will someday become a Dissatisfaction Factor as more advanced attributes are part of the market. Customers’ expectations change over time as the market changes. That is why any organization must undertake continuouos efforts to improve their products and service if it is to maintain a competitive edge. Successful companies are continually developing new Satisfaction Factors as part of the process of doing business.

Let’s look at a car accessory as an example of this process. During the last couple of years we have seen car navigation systems as a significant Satisfaction Factor for customers. We are seeing more and more market penetration and the advent of relatively cheap portable navigation units. The result is that navigation systems are no longer the Satisfaction Factor they were three or four years ago. In time, they will become a Dissatisfaction Factor in that customers will expect them and will be unhappy if they are not part of the standard car package.

We have seen the same thing with website design. Take for example including a Privacy Statement. Such a statement at one time was a Satisfaction Factor. Today such statements are an industry standard and not having one is a Dissatisfaction Factor. Customers expect a website to protect their privacy and to so state what information is collected and how it will protect it. The same could be said for usability issues such as intuitive and consistent navigation within the website.

As always, your thoughts are welcom

It is important that we understand our existing and probable customers on two levels: demographically and psychographically. Demographics are the objective, directly observable characteristics that describe people and organizations. They are the tangible facts that describe your prospective customers and help you identify them. In a consumer oriented business we are interested in things like age, employment, location, gender, education, race, occupation, marital status, income, etc. For a business, we are interested in demographics dealing with industry, product line(s), size, type, location(s), geographic coverage, financial status, sales volume, etc.

The other thing we are interested in is how prospective and existing customers think and make decisions. Remember, it is the  Mind” where marketing happens. Website design and Internet marketing strategies must be geared to positioning our product and service in the mind of those who view our efforts. Remember that “minds” are not a blank slate. Prospects will view our message in the context of their experiences, emotional associations, what stimulates emotional pleasure and the way they arrive at a decision. This process occurs at both the conscious and unconscious levels within the mind. This is the key to communicating with your customers and prospective customers. Think of it this way. Our conscious mind is concerned with “reason” and our unconscious mind is concerned with “impulse’ during the buying process. If you are to be effective in your online marketing efforts you must communicate with both. Often a website and other Internet marketing campaigns “reason” with the prospective customer though product or service attributes and benefits at the tangible level. They forget that the reasoning mind is not the decision maker. Research  has shown us that individuals buy based on “emotional gratification” issues and then justify the decision based on “reason.”

Often the emotional connection is made on first impressions that take place early in the purchase decision chain, even before there is any purchase motivation on the part of the prospective customer. Customers have what is termed “selective perception” in that subsequent impressions are viewed through the prism of the first impression. “You never get  a second chance to make a first impression” holds for Internet marketing efforts as well as other interactions.  Perception is reality. What is in the mind of the customer regarding the attributes of your product or service, rather than the innate properties, specifications, etc. is what drives the product acceptance. Remember every tangible need has a more powerful emotional need that underlies it.

Effective online marketing requires that we bring the insights we have gained about our customers and prospective customers in positioning our product or service. Understanding what drives a person to take action, what emotional associations might exist and what would trigger them, what gratification mode is dominant and the more dominant reason he or she may use to justify the purchase should be the way we approach our Internet marketing efforts.

While there is much to discuss regarding the purchase decision chain and how your customer mindset influences it, I will leave that to another time. I next want to discuss the website design factors and the process for designing an effective website in the context of what I have been discussing in this and the previous blog. We must have defined our customers and probable customers in both demographic and psychographic ways in order to effectively design a website or other Internet marketing strategy.

As always, any comments or suggestions to improve Internet marketing efforts are appreciated. There are no absolutes. That is why we “test” our efforts.

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