Exclaimed one of the usability professionals during one of the live critiques of a retailer’s site. The retailer sunk into their chair and didn’t respond. Yet over three days of the Web Design and Usability conference in Orlando, many retailers volunteered to have their sites reviewed live on stage by design and usability specialists, in front of hundreds of their peers.

Delivered with a genuine desire to help, the advice was invaluable throughout the sessions as it continued: “We have a usability problem”, “you may want to think of doing something better here.”, “That seems a little bit confusing”, “I’m not sure what you are trying to achieve with this.” That was interesting…how do we find that again?” “What were you trying to achieve with that?”

The Conference covered Usability and Design in a very effective manner. In addition to real time reviews, the theory and practice of succeeding in design and usability were dealt with via contemporary case studies, research, and best practice presentations.

Participants learned how to choose a designer, how to run and manage the process, challenges to over come, tools to use and best practice outcomes. Through the sessions specific focus topics were covered with some detail such as search and navigation, checkout, SEO, mobile, product pages, social community, new technologies and of course maximising conversions.

Highlights for me included the free private 30-minute sessions with usability and design experts, where I have to say Lasoo.com.au passed with flying colours for all four sessions. The importance of research was highlighted, mixing both quantitative and qualitative research along with your site analytics - “make decisions from facts and not opinions”.

Overwhelmingly everything was focussed on understanding that you have real people with real needs looking at your sites and in other locations talking about you or your competitors. Understanding, listening, and ensuing you interface with them in the most intuitive, relevant and easy way is the secret of success.

Paul Marshall

In retail, content is a collective noun for many things. Today these many things have many names - such as images, assets, product information, SKUs, barcodes, EANs, merchandising, pricing, sales collateral, training, inventory, catalogues, user guides, warranty details etc. Yet as you become multi-channel it all becomes important content; and it is all very important to your multi-channel success.

Why is content important? There are many reasons, but I’ll highlight the top three – each one strong enough to take content seriously.

1. If you don’t have the information people are looking for, they will go elsewhere to get it. This is the case in physical stores but is even more so for your online presence. The 50% of people who research online prior to buying go to sites with the content that will satisfy their needs – whether that be images, video, product specifications, ratings and reviews, price, warranty information, user guides etc. These sites will influence why they buy and from where. Great content will help ensure you are one of the influencing sites.

2. Good, relevant and unique content will help with your Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). For the search engines to consider your web pages relevant to a search, the content on that page must be relevant. The more content, the more specific, the more unique – the better the result.

3. Your web presence is as important as your physical presence and an extension of your brand. If any of the following are important to your brand or to your stores - service, advice, range, convenience, expertise, stock, quality etc - then it should be online.

Develop and manage your content as an important asset for the business.

It is important to develop your content for success in the multi-channel world. Some tips:

1. Start now. The earlier you start the greater the lead on your competitors and the greater the impact on your SEO.

2. Externalise all your content. This means making it suitable for all audiences – particularly external customers. Avoid short codes, internal language and jargon, and poor copy.

3. Describe your content well. Understand how search computers will read and understand your content, and ensure that you cater for this audience. For example. consider the way you name content (images, video etc) and the words used (consider keyword density).

4. Structure your content. Develop your taxonomy and content database to best represent your content assets. Structure the content consistently and try to separate data into unique fields wherever possible to enable good publishing, search and comparison for the user.

5. Create unique content. Author, produce, design and create content which is unique to your site. It will be favoured by the customer and the search engines.

Content is king. It will be the important differentiator moving forward. Start to tackle the challenge now and the benefits will come.

Paul Marshall

Lasoo

If you have added, or are about to add, online shopping to your business, your multichannel journey has only just begun. You need to now move to cross-channel retailing. What is the difference?

Multi-channel is simply that; running more than one channel to sell, market, service or deliver. Cross-channel however is “the coordinated use of multiple channels to gain market share, grow revenue and profits, create a differentiated experience and increase customer loyalty.” It is where the real business benefits are delivered.

The evolution from Multichannel to cross-channel can be broken into three phases:

Phase one – Multi-channel development.

This is really about having a portfolio of channels in which to sell, service, market or distribute. For example you may have an eCommerce website, or you may have a call centre to take orders over the phone. In this phase however there is no synchronisation between the channels. The channels operate in silos, the business is product focussed and channel focussed and the marketing is campaign focussed.

Phase two – Multichannel coordination – cross-channel retailing

Here the links start being made. Marketing campaigns are beginning to be synchronised across channels. Testing and measuring multi-touch media and communication strategies are a regular occurrence and you start to build up a picture of your customer across channels. You may be coordinating across channels in areas of delivery and customer service. For example buying online, picking up in store. Channels evolve to start collaborating at a technology level and a job/responsibility level.

Phase three – Cross-channel optimisation

This is where you will truly have one business, one view of your customer, one overarching strategy; played out through a well synchronised set of strategies and tactics using the many channels (and their unique advantages) available to you. This phase is all about customer focus; a single, holistic and heuristic customer view, regardless of the communication channel. You will be creating unique customer experiences through the cross-channel value proposition and providing unique benefits through the use of integrated channels.

While this is definitely a journey and will take time and resources, you should be planning for it today. In your technology, your internal communications, your staff roles, responsibilities and performance measures. It will pay big dividends and there is a bigger prize for those that get to the end faster. Where are you today?

Paul Marshall - CEO

Lasoo.com.au

I believe there are three ‘A’s of digital retail marketing; Accessibility, Availability, and Applicability. These key principles are a prescription to follow for success at using digital media to reach and influence your customers.

This entry starts with Accessibility. This refers to the ease with which consumers can discover, access and interact with your brand, your consumer information, your product offers and your marketing messages. It may seem self evident, but your information needs to appear in the locations where the customer attention is.

The challenge with digital media is that the definition of ‘place’ is now vast. Traditional media is still limited in its number of ‘places’ to put your messages; be that TV stations, radio stations, magazines, or newspapers. That scarcity means high prices –despite the fact that consumer attention is shifting, and much more fragmented. The letterbox still maintains a good amount of attention, even among ‘netizens’ who still check their mail, and continues to be a powerful and effective place for retailers to put their marketing messages; hence it continues to be a dominant marketing channel for retailers.

In all of the traditional channels above, accessing the information is straight forward, ubiquitous and easy. Passive consumption tends to have that advantage.

Digital media on the other hand is different, and comes with its own challenges and complexities. People could be in one of any number of ‘places’ when they are making purchasing decisions, and be somewhere else seconds later. Quickly jumping from place to place is the underlying heart of the Internet. Adapting to active consumption, and acknowledging the power shift to the consumer, is paramount if you are to succeed online. How do you catch the attention of the freedom loving information junkie? The challenge becomes more complex when we look at the many different devices now used to access digital media.

Accessible marketing therefore refers to your marketing messages being:

1. Where the consumer is

2. Able to be ‘consumed’ through multiple devices and media types

3. Able to be to be shared, forwarded, printed, saved etc

1. Be where the consumer is.

Fundamentally this means you must be in more places than your own web site. Regardless of the strength your brand and marketing, only a minority of people who are making buying decisions on the products you sell, will come straight to your website. These people are already loyal to your brand. You need to have a strategy to reach new people, either through some sort of paid online marketing, or as a vector of those people already at your website.

So where are they? They are of course in many places. Search engines are the first place to start – as the majority of Australians start their research journey here. Then there are vertical search engines (such as Lasoo.com.au), comparison sites, shopping sites, blogs, social media, industry portals etc. All of which form a very important part of accessible marketing.

To be across the spectrum there is a balance of paid and unpaid media. For example search engines can give you consumers through advertising (paid search marketing) and through being found naturally or organically in the search results. Appearing organically remains a big challenge for Australian retailers, a topic to be covered in  a future blog.

Being in many of the other places requires you to advertise, targeting your marketing messages selectively based on performance. Again this is also a challenge for many retailers who do not have their marketing messages in a suitable digital format for online distribution. Finding the right format is more than the end result that ends up on a consumers screen far away, it is tightly baked into the process of how that information gets to its destination.

2. Be accessible through different devices/media

In addition to your marketing messages being available to you as defined data, suitable for distribution; your distribution vehicles should be optimised for the various browsers, device types and applications which people will choose to access your information through.

Starting with the basics, web sites need to be optimised for a range of browsers now and not just IE. Mobile devices, particularly smartphones are increasingly being used to access the internet via WAP, web-browsers or purpose built applications which optimise the experience. People will also want to access what you have to tell them through other means such as RSS readers, desktop applications or widgets, and applications in their favourite online social networks. It is important to plan campaigns to be truly multichannel and be able to be found through all of the above, and to be prepared for what is coming around the corner.

3. Be easily shared and talked about

You need different web pages (or landing pages) for each of your marketing messages, each product offer, every product you sell. Why? Because this is what people link to, what Google indexes, what people share, print, email onto a friend etc. If you take out paid search advertising you need relevant pages to land people on. Behind this is the need to have structured or defined data. For it is only with defined data that you have the flexibility to build pages for multiple devices and can be effectively, shared, printed etc.

For example, a common mistake retailers make with their catalogues, is not having landing pages for each of the products they are advertising. This means there is of very little benefit to the retailer in attracting new customers to their site. It reduces “shareability”, “discoverability”, and “mashability”.

Making your marketing accessible is clearly important, and your own web site is the essential starting point. The next step is making that website, its content and pages, easily and well indexed by search engines, and easily shared and consumed by customers. Finally, comes pushing out your information to the many sites, tools, applications and devices that people are interrogating to find out what to buy and from where. Surely you would rather be in the search results when the alternative is to be invisible?

Stay tuned for part two, when I explore the second “A” of digital retail marketing, Availability.

Paul Marshall

CEO, Salmat DigitalForce

There are three important digital marketing principles, which will become more important over time. They are Marketing Accessibility, Availability and Applicability. In my regular piece in Inside Retailing, I will be exploring each in some detail over the coming month. However, briefly, they are as follows.

Accessibility. This refers to having your product and marketing information easily available; at the place (and time, which falls into Availability) where someone is looking. Accessibility well beyond your own website’s search and navigation. More important is the need to be discovered and available where people are looking, including search engines, industry portals, social sites, RSS readers, desktop tools, mobile phones etc.

Availability. People are not making buying decisions only when you have your marketing campaign running or your stores open. Digital media changes the paradigm of retail marking in that people are now seeking information and purchasing from anywhere in the world, at any time of the day or night. How do you respond to that? How can you ensure the availability of your information when people are looking for it?

Applicability. Digital media is by its very nature interactive, selective and user-controlled. It is a media-optimised and individual experience and therefore difficult to use as a marketer. Replicating mass media marketing (untargeted display advertising) does not work. Relevance is the key to marketing in the digital media; ensuring your brand and your messages are applicable to each recipient is essential for both the health of your brand and the success of your campaigns. Applicability all starts with understanding each customer. If your advertising is relevant, it is indistinguishable from information.

Each of these will be explored in further detail in Inside Retailing and also in this blog over April/May.