blogs.conchango.com

The report on the top 50 UK retailers customer services proposition is still in progress.  By progress I mean that all the criteria for evaluating their proposition has been recorded and I now need to review the findings to make some sense of it.   In the meantime as a light aperitif here's a preamble around the all-important Customer ...

Momentum is building for self-service technologies in the real world.  Consumers are adopting these self-service interactions and interacting less with in-store customer services.  Online it's a different story as online shoppers want someone to talk to. In Future Now's 2007 Retail Customer Experience Survey, they recommend ...

From user research and other customer insight I create the primary persona, Siobhan, a fictional portrait of a customer for a high street retailer I am currently working with.  As she slowly comes to life I create a vivid image of this fictional character . It isn't easy sourcing the right photo to reflect the age, gender, and ...

Today is day 1 of the Retail Week Conference 2008.  I arrived in time for the breakfast briefing, sporting a Conchango t-shirt. My trim figure barely made a dent in the XL Conchango t-shirt leaving plenty of room for a couple of colleagues to squeeze in. After a much-needed caffeine injection and over-indulgence in fresh croissants I ...

A web site I once worked on has recently received a trust overhaul and is now lit up like a Christmas tree with all manner of sparkling trust-builders. Whilst the client must be applauded for their endeavour to reassure their customers and engender trust in their online store, simply littering their web site with a generous dollop of ...

I walked in to an electrical store this weekend to purchase a Cambridge Audio Azur Receiver but couldn’t find what I was looking for.  There were no sales staff around whatsoever to ask whether they had the item in stock, although a sign read ‘leave us a message and we will try to get back to you within 48 hours’. Sounds strange! ...

According to a new report by the Get Safe Online Campaign, one in ten online shoppers has been the victim of online fraud, each losing an average of £875.  Read the full report at http://www.getsafeonline.org/   We live in a shredding culture where we are continuously being warned of online fraud and ...

Poor online experiences impact conversion rates.  The conversion rate is a measure of the number of visitors who make a purchase directly as a percentage of total visitors. Clients generally regard this as the most important measurable metric so a common question I get asked is what are my top recommendations for rejuvenating flagging ...

 In a recent Design Review a client remarked that Search functionality should be positioned on the right hand side.  Their reasoning is that this is what other ecommerce sites do.      Search will succeed on either side providing the page is well-designed, so this remark gave me an interesting insight in to the ...

The moment a customer clicks ‘checkout’ the retailers #1 concern should be to get the customer through the checkout process as quickly and efficiently as possible. Successful checkout design maximizes purchase momentum thus reducing customer drop-out. Design flaws create purchase friction which is akin to tying a ball n’ ...