Customer service is a proactive blend of online and offline actions

You’ve got a lot of ground to cover if you think that customer service is what kicks in if your website visitors are having problems. The days of reactive customer service programs are gone. It’s just not good enough.

Don’t wait for customers to contact you with a problem. Be proactive. Engage them before, during, and after their purchase experience with you. Here’s why proactive customer service must be an integral part of what you’re calling your “user interface.”

What buyers want

Customer service can mean many things, and it’s not always trouble. What’s troubling is that multiple studies show that 25% to 40% of calls to customer service centers are avoidable. These calls happen for reasons ranging from a simple question to confusion about delivery times.

They’re costly to your organization, especially when customers should have been able to find the information whey wanted on your company website.

“How’s it going?”

Here’s something your website’s user interface just isn’t going to be able to accomplish. Customers prefer to be contacted proactively. One survey puts this preference as high as 87%.

Of those who expressed an opinion, 73% said they had a positive experience that led to a better view of the company when they were contacted proactively by customer service. This “how’s it going?” approach can reduce your inbound customer call volume by nearly a third, which can dramatically lower your call center operating costs.

Before they’re even customers

The website is where they’ll buy. Your interface has to create a successful sales funnel. But what can your customer service department combined with the website do for these people while they’re still prospects? Together, they create your complete user interface.

The majority of the barriers to a sale are simply the need for more information. The more proactive you can be about providing answers, the faster you’ll move prospects to the buying stage.

Nothing new

Turning the tables and transforming your customer service philosophy from reactive to proactive isn’t novel. It is something that has become more of an expectation, though.

This is mainly because of the user experience a customer has with your organization online. The buying experience continues to be more customized. Customers value this heightened level of attention, and it’s not difficult to see why an offline proactive customer service approach complements the customized online experience.

What gets in the way?

Proactive customer service becomes an obvious step as organizations develop offline relationships. So, why don’t we see more of it?

Most companies aren’t structured for it. Much more of an organization becomes customer facing when an organization transitions to offer customer service before the sale. It requires collaboration across departments that may not ever have seen themselves as responsible for customer service.

Silos have to be breached. Organizations must offer training and help to create a level of comfort for employees who suddenly find themselves interfacing with prospects and customers in a “how’s it going?” proactive role. Here are ways to get everybody on the same page.

• Mix and match: Match different people to the customer lifecycle for your product or service. Challenge them to work collaboratively and find ways to offer proactive customer service for these points.

• Play Sherlock: Gather the data and seek out the most common reactive customer issues or questions. Look for ways these issues and questions can be defused. Remember that much of your traditional reactive customer service resources are going just to answer post-purchase questions that could have been taken care of before the sale.

• Find and promote early wins: It’s going to take a while for long-held beliefs to be reprogrammed. A transition to proactive customer service needs to demonstrate some quick and obvious benefits to get everyone on board. This is especially going to be true for employees who don’t feel as if their positions are customer-facing. And in today’s customer-centric environment, everyone in an organization represents a company’s product or service.

Both sides benefit

A switch to proactivity is good for both a company and its customers. The internal engagement and collaboration you’ll generate will spark innovation as disparate departments team up to step in front of each stage of the customer lifecycle. Their efforts to anticipate and prevent customer issues are more than an expectation to match up with customized online experiences. They’re also a way for you to reduce the high, measurable costs of thinking that a customer only needs attention if they have a problem.

If you’d like to learn more ways to align all phases of your business with your company’s online experience, contact Creative Technology Partners. For more information about our services, reach out to us today through our online contact form.

Your user experience can’t be the only thing that’s customer-centric

Not so fast, responsive-design wizard! The job’s not done. Your contribution is essential, but in terms of responsiveness, the work has just begun.

The responsiveness that technology has brought to websites and apps has created an upturn in real-world expectations. Customers want businesses, their products, and their attitudes to provide highly-customized real life experiences, too.

The technology is perfect, but the people aren’t

It’s not enough to give your customers a positive online user experience because your content is responsive to their device. All of those perfect pixels come crashing down if your customer service department doesn’t provide the same kind of satisfaction.

Technology has become a crutch. Install a sophisticated phone system. Provide real-time order tracking. Make it possible for Siri to give customers a reminder when it’s time to order again. Automation complements good products and customer service. Yet, some businesses today behave as if technology is the sole solution, rather than an essential component of overall strategy and execution.

Aligning all the levels of responsiveness

It doesn’t take long for a business to get lopsided if they make the user experience their holy grail. In their desire to excel, they lose sight of the fact that in the end, it’s still going to be a human interaction.

People run your business. People buy what your business produces. Technology can’t replace that area of responsiveness. Here are a few ways to capture the essence of responsiveness and instill it in your people so that the products you make and their attitude towards customers rises to the same level as the technology.

Take aim

Does your business know the reason for its existence? Don’t go running for the company mission statement. Stop and ask yourself what you do that inspires or captures imagination.

That’s your purpose. When you distill this into a short phrase that can roll of the tongue, you’ve got the code that instills a sense of pride that’ll propagate through all levels of your organization. Everybody owns it.

What are you worth?

When your purpose is a mantra, your value proposition lines up behind it. When you know your why, the behavior to guide you becomes obvious. People discover they seldom need to be told what to do.

This used to be required only of company leadership. Today, every employee, especially those dedicated to serving the needs of customers, needs to understand what the business stands for and how to communicate value through actions that demonstrate purpose.

Out with the old

Behold, the business model. It outlines how your company intends to make money. Is it rigid?

Nothing today can survive in a static mode. Ask Garmin. The company pioneered the automotive GPS market. Then Apple introduced the iPhone. In less than 3 years, revenue at Garmin dropped by nearly $1 billion. The company lost close to 90% of its market value.

Garmin didn’t change their technology, but they did change their thinking. Today, the company specializes in high-end wearables. It earned them nearly $565 million last year, which is 8 times the revenue of just two years before.

Push innovation to the bottom

Flat design works well in places other than your website. Try doing the same thing to the hierarchy of your business. Innovation requires open collaboration. Some of the most successful companies have made it a mandate to banish bureaucracy, as they know this outmoded command and control system stifles initiative.

The idea that rank and status confers salary is outmoded. People today aren’t ruled by money. They’re also looking for ways to feel that their contributions are meaningful. Fulfillment for them creates value for your business.

What organizational obstacles can you eliminate? Each one pushes you closer to new ways of responsiveness. It happens because more information is shared.

The art – and science – of letting go

Responsive apps and websites have the look and feel of deep flexibility and customization. It’s as if they rebuild themselves for each customer. Can your products and business practices follow suit? And is your overarching strategy and execution – whether it involves the user experience on your eCommerce site or the interactions a customer has with your employees – designed to make your business thrive?

If you’re looking to integrate your business strategy with responsive web applications that fulfill your goals, turn to Creative Technology Partners. We create solutions that integrate with every step of your business and the strategic goals that drive it. For more information about our services, reach out to us today through our online contact form.

Be selective with the data you collect, and move quickly when it tells you a story

It’s said that all of the knowledge ever can be found online. Big deal. All that knowledge is like all the customer data you’ve collected. It’s useless unless you can use it to gain insight, and then turn the insight into action.

You’ve got to know whom you should market to, and you need to make nimble business decisions. Sorting through the mass of information can seem like voodoo to the uninitiated … but no spirits are speaking. It’s customer data. The answer is in the data, but you have to get it to tell you a story.

Walk before you run

Do you have the basics squared away? In the quest for sophistication, it’s easy to forget to ensure that basic data is flowing in and being measured. What can you learn about the number of lead forms submitted your site? Not much. But do you actually know the number in the first place?

Ensure that you have a solid foundation for data collection. It’s not just about accuracy – you must also demonstrate consistency with your collection. Know what you can collect. A specific data stream may not tell you much on its own, but perspective when parsed with other data can tell you an actionable story.

It doesn’t come with an instruction manual

Are you doing it right? Who’s grading the test? The beauty of data – especially customer data – is that you only collect what applies to you. The information you gather and your analysis will depend on your business requirements.

There are best practices for data interpretation, but there’s no definitive way to gain insight. There’s only one thing that matters: assurance that the data communicates a trait about your customers.

It’s data, but it’s about people

Don’t lose sight of the fact that the numbers represent human beings. You collect the data and it provides insight. You then take an action as a result. If it causes the desired result, you have the people to thank, not the information.

Numbers behave predictably. People seldom do.

Decide what you want to produce before you start

The data will tell you a story, and it may be something you weren’t expecting to hear. But you won’t get this insight, and there’ll be nothing to act on, if you decide to collect data just to see what you can do with it.

Actionable insight from data isn’t a fishing expedition. Start with objectives that help you understand what you’re already seeing or that you know exists. Would you like to be able to predict what a customer will buy next? Are you concerned about customer churn?

Economic opportunities often make these decisions for you and then the data can be put to work. The information often validates a general assumption. It’s common, for example, to see the 80/20 rule come into play: 80% of the revenue is coming from 20% of your customers. But when you dig deeper, you might discover that this smaller percentage of active customers purchases only your least expensive products.

What would happen if you could induce just a few of these repeat buyers to purchase more on the next visit? The data may also tell you that a small number of non-frequent visitors make large purchases. Would your efforts be better spent finding ways to engage more of these high-spenders? Look to the data for insight, and then …

Don’t deliberate, act!

Only a subset of the data you collect will tell you a story that produces something you can act on. Move when it does! Resist the urge to collect more data to see if it validates the actionable insight you’ve already decided upon. The better choice is to move on it and have your customers prove or disprove it. If you were right, you’ve already started making more money.

One insight at a time

It turns out that data voodoo isn’t magic. Most of it is common sense and an understanding of basic human behavior. Customer data helps you determine which behavior you can amplify or modify. These research-driven insights in turn build a history of success, and it’s a process that happens over time. Each action based on insight sends a ripple through your organization. More of your organization will adopt the approach as they see the cause and effect.

Be specific with your collection and analysis goals from the outset. Avoid the “Here’s data, now do something with it?” approach – because that’s one voodoo spell that just won’t work.

For more insights on how to leverage your online data, including how to create an effective user experience, contact the online strategy and design experts at Creative Technology Partners.

It has to be more like the physical experience of shopping.

If you were brave enough to shop online 20 years ago, you had a vastly different experience than you would today. The eCommerce shopping cart was an unsophisticated, invisible space where selections hopefully waited for you to purchase them.

It was as much a guessing game as it was a shopping experience. Technology and competition are starting to change that. We’ve come a long way from the days when it was easier to abandon your purchase than make a basic change, but there’s still a ways to go. It’s the online storeowner’s fear of abandonment that’s bringing innovation to the shopping cart. It’s pushing our online experience even closer to that of pushing a real cart down the aisle.

Don’t leave me this way

eMarketer reports that over 74% of the world’s eCommerce shopping carts are abandoned. In Asia and the Pacific, the rate is close to 76%. That’s a clear message. Stuff is not getting bought, and people are not amused by any experience that’s dictated by inflexible technology.

To be fair, not all abandonment is the fault of the eCommerce shopping cart. Sometimes we just change our minds. More often, though, it’s because the shopping cart just can’t keep from surprising us with unexpected information. And that’s not going to happen if we were walking down the aisle of a physical store.

Why didn’t you tell me that?

Marketing software maker VWO recently conducted a survey of 1,000 online shoppers to find out why they abandoned eCommerce shopping carts. The top reason, cited by 25% of respondents, was the discovery of unexpected shipping costs.

Do shoppers expect a shipping cost? They will unless they’ve already been made to understand there’s free shipping. Should the cost come as a surprise to them at checkout? Apparently, online shoppers don’t think so.

It’s why some online stores have begun to calculate the cost of shipping as shoppers add items to their eCommerce cart. They’re listening to customers, who are saying that the inability to see the total billing upfront is a sly tactic. But there’s a downside to this.

I don’t want to register

The VWO survey found that 22% of shoppers abandoned their eCommerce shopping cart because they discovered it would be necessary to create a new user account to complete the purchase.

For those who did go on to register, 32% said that filling out the same information twice was their biggest sore spot. Discovering too many required fields to fill out was the next largest complaint.

Again, technology usually dictates a stringent process. And it’s often required because of a secure connection to the online store’s credit card processor. Unfortunately, the customer doesn’t want to hear about your technology limitations. It’s why the third largest complaint given by shoppers in the VWO survey was the discovery that the browser’s back button wouldn’t return them to the previous page.

None of your business

Today’s shopper knows that part of the online experience is trading some personal information in exchange for the sale. But these are the days of wholesale data breaches, and individuals are becoming wary about giving out personal information.

Nearly 60% of those interviewed for the VWO survey said they’ve abandoned an eCommerce shopping cart because the website asked for personal information they weren’t comfortable sharing. Over a third of the respondents said they would bail if for some reason they were asked for their social security number.

Conflicting behavior, confused objectives

You start to see the conundrum here. Customers shopping online don’t want surprises. The only way to remove most of these surprises is to collect information from them before they start shopping. But folks aren’t all that thrilled about divulging much information at all.

Where do they go if ‘they can’t get no (online shopping satisfaction)’?

About 18% said they’d just buy it from a physical store. Another 14% said they’d shop around online until they found a website with a better deal or experience. And nearly 30% of those in the VWO survey said they completely gave up and didn’t buy anything at all.

Can the physical meet the virtual?

Shopping at a brick and mortar store may not be more convenient than shopping online, but the tradeoff is the rest of the experience. The level of transparency in physical shopping is something that the online experience still can’t match. It’s going to be the benchmark.

For all the frustrations caused by eCommerce shopping carts, online still has the virtual upper hand.

All is not lost

In fact, not much is lost at all. The abandonment rate may hover at 74%, but the VWO report indicates that 72% of abandoned carts are not irrevocably lost. While we’ve already heard that 18% of those who abandoned their online experience went off to a brick-and-mortar store, 13% came back later and made the purchase anyway. And this is where online shopping carts are making the most innovative strides.

They can do something that few, if any, physical stores can do. eCommerce shopping carts give online stores the ability to quickly retarget customers who abandon the purchase. Nearly 60% of those surveyed admitted that a retargeting ad or email was enough to encourage them to go back and buy a product.

Can the virtual experience be more like the physical one?

The data about shopping behavior and the user experience piles up. It has provided online stores valuable insight by showing that the shopping cart isn’t just an invisible record of what shoppers want to buy; turns out, it’s a huge contributor to the decision-making process. Just because an individual puts something in their basket, it doesn’t mean they initially planned to buy it.

10% of those who participated in the survey said they’ve added things to their eCommerce shopping cart by mistake. An additional 15% said they were only using their cart as an online wish list. Here’s the big one: 45% said they often add things to their cart just to see if the price was inclusive of shipping.

Here’s what these numbers are telling us:

• In real life, your shopping basket is always right in front of you. Abandoned online shopping cart percentages will drop when the online experience can match this. Shopping is a visual experience, and just a text list of what’s in your eCommerce shopping cart doesn’t cut the mustard. Cue the images.

• In real life, a sales associate would (hopefully) be assisting you. This is where online shopping carts can pull ahead. They can monitor what customers intend to buy, and make recommendations for further purchases.

Maybe it’s not really even a shopping cart

Online shoppers expect their eCommerce shopping cart to truthfully tell them how much stuff is really going to cost. That’s something a brick-and-mortar experience can’t immediately do (yet).

They also expect it to be a dressing room, a comparison chart, and even a participant in social media. That’s a pretty tall order, but online stores have no choice but to deliver. The good news is that storeowners are beginning to see that customers don’t buy the excuse that a poor shopping experience is the result of software. Now, the challenge is to transform the technology from an obstacle to a solution.

For more information about creating an effective shopping experience, contact the online strategy and design experts at Creative Technology Partners. We design innovative solutions that will maximize your online impact and ROI.

Prevent data overload by letting your goals select what you measure

If you’re a marketer, you know we live in a data-driven world. The Internet and has unlocked a level of statistical analysis that can tell us a considerable amount about the people who come to visit on the web or on our hosted apps. It’s so much data that we can be easily overwhelmed. How much information is too much?

Then there’s the FOMO (fear of missing out) aspect of data collection. You hear that a competitor is gathering and using data that you are not. Will that give them the leg up? Rather than feeling like you’re in control of all this customer engagement data, it’s easy to feel that it has taken control of you. Here’s how to tame the data beast:

Pick your goals

It doesn’t matter what collection software you use. The options on what to gather probably outnumber what you need. The ones you should pick will depend on how you answer this type of question:

What do you want social media to do for your organization?

If you’re not sure, it’s not even time to be collecting data yet. Often, your goals will turn out to be uncomplicated, such as:

• You want to collect email addresses

• You have digital products that you want to give to people who sign up for them

• You want to increase brand awareness

These are key objectives. Measuring them gives you the metrics you need to gauge successful usage of social media and other online efforts. Goals come first. Tracking data comes after.

Understand that having data doesn’t mean having solutions

Before all these ways to measure engagement came along, marketing was considered a success because people told you they thought it was creative. But following creativity is like falling down a rabbit hole. You might end up with success, but you could also just get a whole bunch of useless compliments.

Yes, creativity can sell. You don’t want to measure it. What should be measured through engagement data is likability and trust. Creativity can’t get you to your goals if users believe you have a bad product or service. And mundane marketing messages won’t prevent you from attaining those goals, either.

The data you decide to collect should give you the ability to challenge or validate what customers think of your brand – not your marketing. It’s your audience and their engagement that generates this data. And speaking of challenges, the way to measure this information keeps splitting into subsets. It can be a full time job just keeping up with what’s new.

It may seem like you’re dragging your feet, but consider taking a wait-and-see attitude about new customer engagement data measurement. At least pause to find out whether it develops from a fad into a bona fide trend.

Take a realistic approach

A billion people have Facebook accounts. Individuals from all over the world can visit your company page. It takes just a single click to like your page and become a fan, and that person may never become a customer. Social media is simply a barometer.

At the macro level, a measurement of likes may not provide much insight, but this ties in nicely with your goal setting. Measure what matters, and know why it matters. Otherwise, what difference does it make if you have tens or hundreds of thousands of likes, but there’s no correlation to sales (meaning you’re not making any)?

A realistic approach also means that you’ll set reachable goals that matter. We all want explosive growth. But first, it’s wise to use data to measure the level of increase needed for growth and then extrapolate where you’d like to be.

It’s just data

Collect as much of it as you want. Amassing customer engagement data is not going to produce your own magic oracle. You’ll need more than just information streams.

This might seem like it contradicts the earlier warning of skirting macro measurements. It’s not. Instead, it’s a reminder that data must be augmented with the insights gained by qualitative and contextual research. The information needs a tool for interpretation.

Respectful collection

Finally, your customers know that you’re collecting their data and you might want to share your insights with them. It’s a courteous and subtle way to show that you’re being an appropriate custodian of the information you collect. TMI goes both ways. You don’t want to be overwhelmed, and they don’t want to be left feeling like their online privacy has been abused.

For more information about how to effectively gather and leverage usage data, contact the online strategy and design experts at Creative Technology Partners.

One provides infrastructure, and the other creates experience

They share the first five letters. One’s an adjective. The other is a noun. They sound alike, but they’ve come to mean different things. And if you mistake one for the other, you’ll miss the coming wave of opportunity.

What’s the difference? Mobile is about technology. Mobility is about experience. There’s more to it than a definition. Here’s what you need to know, and why:

The one you want

Mobility trumps mobile. One runs the other. It’s like hardware and software. Mobile is linked to the device you put in your pocket, whereas mobility is what can be accomplished with the device. The context changes with our cultures.

In the United States, it’s how we keep up with our friends and family on Facebook and Instagram. Throughout Africa, SMS technology is how people pay their bills. The majority of individuals have no use for a bank.

Mobile itself is the infrastructure. Mobility is what weaves a context and makes the technology useful.

Mobility takes us where we need to go next

Your mobile device is just a device. Little of it is geared to give you an experience, and experience is what we demand. Mobility gives us access to connectivity. For example, we’re no longer impressed if a brand has finally launched a mobile website so we can use it on our smartphone.

Today we expect the brands that impress us to adopt a “mobile-first” mindset. This pushes them to transition from device to experience. The companies that understand this have repositioned their relationship with customers. They don’t ask themselves, “What content can we serve to a mobile device?” They instead ask, “How can we provide an experience that communicates our brand and value proposition?”

The result is the experience of seeing something you like, purchasing it with the merchant’s app, paying for it with a bank’s network, and scheduling it for delivery. All with a couple of taps on a mobile device. And afterwards, updating your social networks about what you just snagged.

A customer journey

Companies used to think only about what to serve up on a screen based on its size. Our mobile devices allow us to consume content in different places. Our expectation of that content changes depending on where we are, and even what we consume changes with our context.

If you’re still just taking your online content and optimizing it for mobile devices, you’re still looking at things from a device perspective. Mobility requires you to look at what you serve up on the screen from an experience perspective.

Does mobile make sense?

The answer is no, if you’re struggling to come up with content for mobile devices because you believe you have to, rather than because it fits your business model.

If you agree that mobility is about experience, does your company provide a product or service that can take advantage of it? The lack of a confident answer means it’s wise to pause. It’s never a good idea to place tactics before strategy.

Consider the resources you’ll squander as you scramble to create something mobile because everybody else is doing it. Wouldn’t it be a better investment to study whether your customers even want it? And the likelihood is high that they won’t want it unless it grabs technology, integrates previously unrelated actions, and serves up an unexpected experience on a portable device. Your customers don’t want mobile content. They crave the experience of mobility.

Still not clear? Consider the mobility experience Uber has created for people who use devices on the go. You’d be hard pressed to find an example more fitting to define the difference between mobile and mobility.

It’s easy to see that some whole industries still have little need to adopt this mindset. They have no ability, or no reason, to get out and become an experience for their customers using a mobile device.

At least not presently. But technology changes things. Determine whether mobility can bring the experience of your product or service to customers. Now you have a strategy for using technology (mobile) that’s based on the understanding of experience (mobility).

To find out more about how to optimize your online presence, including how to take advantage of the opportunities presented by crafting a valuable, effective user experience, contact the online strategy and design experts at Creative Technology Partners.

It’s the Internet of 1999 all over again

Statistics make it clear. The Internet of Things (IoT) is gathering more data and using more devices, from more users, than at any time in history. And it’s only just begun.

Where is it all going? How will it be stored? Who’s keeping it safe? Some ask these questions out of curiosity. Others ask them because they’ll only stay in business if they have the right answers. The industry creates its own solutions as it invents itself.

By the numbers

Just how much data are we talking about? Here are some recent counts of the devices creating the data tsunami:

• 9 million smart thermostats, smart smoke and CO2 detectors, Wi-Fi cameras, smart locks, smart home systems, and smart switches, dimmers, and outlets to be sold this year

• 14 million smartwatches to be sold this year

• 17 million fitness trackers to be sold this year

• 38 million wearables to be sold this year

Looking ahead to the end of the decade:

• 6 billion mobile users

• 600 million wearable devices in use

• 16 billion Internet of Things-enabled devices (excluding mobile phones)

A practical (sort of) example

It’s difficult to wrap our heads around those kinds of numbers, but extrapolating the amount of data involved can be even more of a challenge. So, here’s a scenario for just one IoT device we all can understand.

It’s estimated that by next year (2017), 80 percent of all new cars will be connected to the Internet. Each will send 25 gigabytes of data to the cloud for every hour it’s operated. The annual total is 130 terabytes of data per car.

Here’s the final part to that equation. IHS Automotive predicts that U.S. auto sales in 2017 will be 18.2 million. This means more than 14.5 million vehicles will each generate 130 terabytes, or almost 1.9 million petabytes of data.

1 petabyte is 1,000 terabytes. A quick check on Amazon lists the price of a 5TB hard drive at about $133. So you would need about 400 of them costing around $53,000 to store the first year’s worth of information.

That’s just the cost of the data storage devices. We’ve barely scratched the surface. You’ll still have to add data transmission, electricity costs, backup, and much more to even begin to estimate a realistic idea of the cost to facilitate data for just one type of the 16 billion IoT devices we’ll have around us by 2020.

Who’s guarding our IoT data?

Before you consider the answer, ask yourself who’s in charge of security on the Internet. Billions of dollars are spent on technology security, and it can’t completely prevent hackers from breaching even the most secure data centers. Data security for IoT devices is primitive compared to what you experience when you use your computer to pay your bills.

Human nature and the necessity to change default passwords are at a conflict. Gartner predicts the average family home could have more than 500 smart devices by 2022. If we can’t be bothered to change the default password on the handful we have now, we’re in for big trouble by the end of the decade.

Of course, there’s no guarantee that your new IoT gadget even has a password or offers data encryption. There’s no standard at the moment. Data security tends to be more of a marketing effort than a prerequisite. And maybe that’s because we haven’t quite fully understood what all this unguarded information could do if used inappropriately, or if it fell into the wrong hands.

Here’s an interesting scenario. You go to apply for life insurance. You’re turned down. The reason? The life insurance company accessed the data from your wearable fitness device, which shows that you are, shall we say, living an unhealthy life.

The push for privacy

Too much data coming from all those IoT devices might make it impossible for companies to make a scenario like the one about the life insurance company above come true. In an altruistic IoT world, all this data makes it a better place to live.

An example of this is Amazon. If you’re a frequent user, you already know that the online retailer tracks not only the products you buy, but also those you look at. As time goes by, Amazon gets better at recommending items based on your searches.

Our IoT devices have the ability, if used appropriately, to take the Amazon approach to the next level. There are big hopes for what can be done with all that data from IoT devices. The possibilities of those intentions remain to be seen.

For more insights on the impact of changing technology and the Internet of Things, contact the experts at Creative Technology Partners. We stay abreast of all developments in the realm of online technology, and we provide software engineering, strategic user experience, and design services.

Digital technology has made prototyping a tool anyone can use

Anybody who has ever taken creative writing class has likely bumped up against the “show, don’t tell” obstacle. What does that mean, anyway? Often, it signifies that the creator just hasn’t thought things out. They can tell you about something, but it’s not enough information for the audience to envision what’s going on.

An obstacle like that is deadly if you’re an inventor. It used to be an expensive obstacle, too, but technology has changed that. With today’s digital tools, anybody with an idea can show, instead of just tell.

Taking a cue from “Mad Men”

Advertising and marketing professionals have always known that the best way to sell a concept is to show it. They used storyboards, sketches, and creative briefs to set the stage. Many trees were killed.

Today, there’s Photoshop, Sketch, Keynote, and a whole slew of digital tools that allow even artistically-challenged people to visualize an idea. The pièce de résistance is the advent of 3-D printers. Now, people can see exactly what’s in your mind. That’s important. Unless others can visualize your idea, they won’t support it.

Staying true to etymology

Digital technology has reached the point where it’s possible to render images so rich in details that they can be mistaken for the real thing. The same goes for creating the functionality and user experience of a website, app, or software program.

Not so fast.

Aren’t you still at the idea stage? You want your prototype to help you validate and convince others to support the idea’s eventual creation. Stick with the original meaning of the word “prototype.”

It’s thought to have found its way into modern language back in the 1600s. The French seem to have used the word first, and it was derived from the Medieval Latin word prototypus, or the Greek word prototypon. Both mean “original or primitive form.”

Take this to heart, and employ the KISS Principle as you look for a way to visualize your idea.

Constraints = Creativity!

Too many missing details will derail your idea when you present a prototype. Conversely, too many details will prevent you from ever getting to the prototype stage.

Creative people share the belief that the best ideas often are born from frustration or lack of resources. Anything is possible during the process of invention and ideation, but you’ll get little accomplished if you don’t limit yourself.

Make a list. Write down 25 to 50 of the features and functions you envision for your idea. Then select the top five. Which things represent the “essence” of the idea you’re trying to sell?

Focus on those five features. Ignore the rest. They’ll distract you.

Take shortcuts, and learn to love “ugly”

It’s not supposed to be perfect. It’s a prototype. You’ll never have all the information. You’ll never have the timing down right. You won’t ever be ready. As Seth Godin says, just “ship it.”

Here’s the thing about ideas: You haven’t cornered the market on them. Someone else could be thinking what you’re thinking, and they’ll be remembered if theirs goes to market first. No one will remember you because yours was better.

That’s the beauty of prototyping. It’s ultimately the way to improvement. Prototype it quick and ugly, and find out fast if the idea fails. Learn from the discovery, iterate, and push out the next version.

Dimensional directions

Digital technology has accelerated the prototyping process. New software products make it easy for just about anybody to visualize an idea. Affordable 3-D printers have turned this into an exponentially quicker process.

Are you prototyping a physical product? Bring it into this dimension with a 3-D printer. Pricing on these devices has dropped to an affordable level, as long as forking out between $1,000 to $2,500 is affordable to you.

No need to despair if that’s an investment outside of your financial realm. Having access to your own 3-D printer means you can customize and remodel to your heart’s content (or until you run out of printer supplies). But there are alternatives for those who don’t have the means to buy one.

Design your idea and upload it to Cubify. This company will produce your 3-D prototype from a variety of materials.

Not every idea needs a physical prototype. Go Lo-Fi and produce an illustration. A quick scan with your favorite search engine will produce a wealth of free or low-cost libraries you can use to produce wireframes or quick illustrations. Again, the idea is create a visualization of the idea.

Choose quick over comprehensive

Colors? Textures? Functionality? These aren’t necessary. Your objective is to create a visual aid to the story of your idea. Prototyping to sell your idea is nothing more than a tool to validate a concept.

Think of your prototype as the key that opens the door to acceptance. It’s not the product. It’s the first step.

And when you need help bringing your Big Idea online, contact the professionals at Creative Technology Partners. We have the expertise to meet all of your web content needs, providing expert software engineering, strategic user experience, and design services.

Mobile shoppers want responsive sites that take advantage of mobile screens

ComScore says we’re past the mobile tipping point. We’re not just using our mobile devices to talk, more of us are using them to shop. But our frustration with eCommerce is that mobile sites are far less satisfying than the full website versions.

Statistics show we’d prefer surfing on the go. Google searches conducted on mobile devices have surpassed desktop use. No one argues this: If you don’t have a mobile-optimized website, you’re missing out on a lot of potential business. And if your mobile site can’t be used to make purchases, you’re missing out on even more sales. Here are five responsive characteristics your site needs to drive eCommerce.

1. Google ranks mobile higher

Does your eCommerce site show up near the top of Google searches? The search giant now includes “mobile friendliness” in its ranking criteria. Be sure to read this article to understand what they are looking for. And if you feel that your eCommerce site is ready, head here and let Google give it a mobile-friendly test.

2. Mobile users spend more shopping online

There’s psychology afoot here. Consumer behavior research confirms that credit card shoppers tend to spend more than those with cash. The explanation is that swiping that card has less of a feeling of parting with your money than handing over bills. Studies also have discovered that people who analyze their purchases spend less.

Both of these factors have a correlation with mobile shopping. Online shoppers use credit cards to make purchases and mobile shoppers often shop while doing other things. Many of these tend to be impulse buys.

Fast Company recently cited a study by Adobe Digital Marketing Insights that showed that mobile shoppers spend 20 percent more than laptop/desktop shoppers. This percentage jumps to 50 percent if a mobile shopper is on a tablet device.

3. They want to engage

It’s been shown that mobile users like to use these devices in tandem with other activities. They’ll often search the web for purchases while watching TV, or if they’re stuck in traffic.

It’s an instant gratification thing. If they see an opportunity, they want to act on it. And if it’s a purchase they want to make, they’ll want an interface that’s been made responsive. That includes the ability to ask for help in making a buying decision.

eCommerce sites with responsive mobile versions don’t have to spend as much effort trying to convince customers to make the buy. There’s a high likelihood they came to the mobile site to make the purchase in the first place.

The mobile version of your eCommerce site must take advantage of screen orientation, functionality, and loading time. The easiest way to accomplish this is by making it responsive.

4. The right moment

Mobile devices are interactive communication devices. You can reach customers with the right offer at the right time, based on their physical location. Offers based on geolocation are highly effective. These, combined with responsive formatting designed for smaller screens, as well as the ability to instantly see customer reviews or check social media for recommendations, make mobile eCommerce a potent selling tool.

5. Bust through cart abandonment

One of the biggest reasons online shoppers decide not to make a purchase is because of shipping costs they didn’t anticipate. They’re ready to buy until the price is no longer right.

If your responsive mobile eCommerce site uses geolocation services, you can short-circuit this customer turn-off. Responsive sites take advantage of location services, and pricing can already include the cost of shipping and handling, rather than having it be an unpleasant addition at the end of the process.

Even if they don’t buy …

Shoppers are looking at your online store with their mobile devices. They expect to have an experience that takes advantage of their smaller screen. You can’t ignore this expectation.

Even if you don’t secure the sale, users leave your site with an impression. Is that impression conducive to a positive, measurable return?

If you’re looking to optimize your site for mobile commerce, contact the professionals at Creative Technology Partners. We have the expertise to meet all of your adaptive content needs and optimize a site that will capture and please your customers – on any screen. ]]> http://ctp.us/2016/06/5-responsive-reasons-your-mobile-site-needs-to-drive-ecommerce/feed/ 0 http://ctp.us/2016/05/the-curious-case-of-the-morphing-logo-why-brands-are-abandoning-intricate-designs-in-the-age-of-responsive-websites/ http://ctp.us/2016/05/the-curious-case-of-the-morphing-logo-why-brands-are-abandoning-intricate-designs-in-the-age-of-responsive-websites/#comments Wed, 18 May 2016 14:16:28 +0000 http://ctp.us/?p=1108

Your brand logo has to be ready to represent itself on a variety of screens, and it might have to shed some of itself to do that.

Life for website designers used to be easier and simpler. The world came to visit branded sites with a computer browser. Just about the biggest concern was designing content for smaller laptop screens.

Then along came smartphones. What works on computer monitors doesn’t work on the smaller real estate of mobile devices. Responsive design takes care of this, but you must be careful with your graphics when they resize. What happens when your logo reduces down to a fraction of the original? Intricate designs don’t always work, and this is why brand logos are changing.

Made for a different age

Brand logos are considered sacred to some folks. Mess with them and risk catching the ire of the company, and even some its customers. Before the Internet, companies only had to be concerned about what their brand logo looked like in print or television advertising. They had control over their logos, many of which used lots of detail in their designs.

But traditional media is no longer the gatekeeper. The Internet has transferred control. Now, each user decides how and where he or she will view your message. And the biggest platform of choice is now a lot smaller.

Mobile is king

You’re way behind if you don’t have a mobile-friendly site. Mobile usage has overtaken desktop, and Google now prioritizes mobile sites in rankings. It’s never been more important for companies to ensure that their logo and branding are consistent across the spectrum of full-sized computers to mobile devices. In fact, it’s crucial.

Subtraction

Alas, an intricate logo suffers within a responsive environment. Major companies discovered this early. Take a look at the detailed logo designs of popular companies such as Coke, Chanel, Walt Disney and others. These logo designs just don’t work when they’re reduced to, say, a width of 30 pixels.

If you’re not sure about what’s meant by a logo created for responsive design, head here with your browser. Then you have a choice:

-Bring up the website on your mobile device, and compare what you see there to what’s on your computer’s browser screen.

-Resize the browser screen on your computer. Keep shrinking the size.

Now you see the value of responsive logo design. It pushes logos to morph. They become simple and flexible, losing details as their sizes reduce but retaining brand identity.

The changing state of logos

After you look at what’s required to be responsive, you might wonder if it will push us all toward flat, simple icons with sans serif fonts (if fonts are used at all).

There’s no denying that responsive web design has a major influence on how brands have modified their logos to live in the new environments of mobile screens. The sacred rule of rigidity has been banished and it’s led to a new kind of design freedom.

Living in a smartphone world

Logos now must respond to living in on smartphones and even wearable tech with screens the size of a postage stamp. (And there are now consumers alive who might have difficulty identifying a postage stamp.)

No organization is immune. It’s not just the companies that were born in the cloud, or those that require technology to exist. Every business has increased online exposure, and needs it to thrive. Your brand identity will be impacted.

A professional design service can implement the principles of responsive design while keeping your logo and overall branding consistent. You’ll simply need to make sure you’re comfortable with how your logo appears when it’s reduced in scale.

The role of your brand in our responsive world

Keep these things in mind when envisioning your logo for the responsive age:

- Your logo is not a brand. It’s your perceived emotional image.
- Your brand is not a logo. A logo is nothing more than a reminding identifier of your brand.
- That identifier is a series of elements that continue to represent the brand whether they are added or subtracted.
- Your logo is a memory hook.

Have you made your logo responsive yet? It’s an exercise in scalability. What can it shed and still be familiar as an unmistakable representation of your identity?

There’s another option

Relax. Understand that you don’t own your brand. It exists in your customers’ minds. They want to take your product or service and fit it into their worldview. What do they want to do with your logo? How can you distill it as a scalable memory hook?

There’s a limit to this flexibility. But maybe the only thing you want to make sure of is that you’re not wasting valuable space on the screen. As long as it represents you in an unmistakable way, it communicates your brand.

If you’re looking to implement responsive design for your website, including a logo and brand identity that will adapt to all online environments, contact the professionals at Creative Technology Partners. We have the expertise to meet all of your content needs, providing expert software engineering, strategic user experience, and design services.