Maxymiser Rant

The Customer Experience Imperative.

We need to talk.

We need to talk. About your customers. About your competitors. About your performance.

So close down your email.

Minimise your Twitter client.

Flip your Phone face down.

And give us four minutes.

(It’s worth it).

This is really

Important.

This is about the single most importantdeterminent of your success over the next 12 to 24 months.

Not one of the most important.

The single most important

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How do we knowit’s so important?

Here’s a little story…

There’s a rather remarkable company

that conducts all of its business online.

You’ve probably heard of it. Actually, this company does a lot of things well.

But it does one thing better than any other company in the world – online or offline.

Its productsare not unique

In fact, the vast majority of them are

identical to most of its competitors’ products.(Not ‘similar’, identical.)

(BTW: your products probably aren’t unique either.)

Their prices are

excellent, but not

unbeatable.

If you shop around, you’ll probably find a competitor that matches them.

Over 66% of their business is from repeat buyers

(and they still add thousands of new customers each month).

To put that in context, the average ecommerce company earns just 7% of its business from repeat customers.

So we’re talking nearly ten times the loyalty of its average competitor.

Ten times.

What this company does so well is simple and obvious

for all to see.

The companyis Amazon.

And the thing that sets them so far above almost everybody else

is Customer Experience.

Jeff Bezos talks about it in almost every interview.

But even though it’s public knowledge, they’ve still managed to maintain this

advantage for over a decade.

It’s no secret.

Think about that. A company with me-too products and pretty good pricing

is slam-dunking almost every market they enter.

And they’re doing it by focusing on a single factor that everybody knows about.

There are no secrets to the Amazon success.

It’s all about customer experience.

How does this apply to you?

Directly and indisputably. For three reasons:

1) Your products are notas unique as you think.

And even if they were, that advantage is likely to be as perishable as an ice cube on the back

seat of your car on a hot summer day.

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2) Your customers control the buying process entirely.

They educate themselves. They price compare. They shop around. And even if they do visit your

website – they can click away in a microsecond.

3) Their experience with you – in all channels –

determines what they buy. And when. And whether they come back.

And how many friends they tell.It doesn’t just contribute to these decisions,

it determines them.

Customer Experience is everything.

And, these days, online customer experience – – including mobile and tablets, of course – –

is the biggest part of that.(There is a mountain of data supporting this idea but do

you really need the numbers to know in your bones that it’s true? If so, get in touch – we’ve got the proof points.)

See what we mean

about this being

huge?

How does this apply to you?

Directly and indisputably. For three reasons:

Ashley Friedlein of Econsultancy says it with characteristic incisiveness:

“ Competitive advantage and sources of success have moved over the decades from manufacturing and distribution (Ford, Tesco etc), through information advantages (Google, MBNA etc) to where we are now where, arguably, customer experience is the differentiating source of success and dominance (Apple?).”

Okay. Pause for breath.Consolidate learning so far:The three most important things in your business are, in no particular order:

1.Customer Experience2.Customer Experience &3.Customer Experience.

With that in mind, you’d think that every marketer and e-commerce maestro in the world would spend

90 to 98% of his or her time on online customer experience.

And that 89 to 94% of budgets would be spent making the online customer experience as good as it could possibly be.

(But if that were true, we wouldn’t need intemperate tantrums like this one, would we?)

For every dollar spent on conversion, marketers spend $80 on traffic acquisition.-Forrester Research

In reality, there’s a huge, yawning gap between what ought

to be true and what is true.

Marketers spend far more time, energy and budget on generating traffic than they do converting that traffic into lifetime value through a great customer experience.

Customer Experience is everything.

And, these days, online customer experience – – including mobile and tablets, of course – –

is the biggest part of that.(There is a mountain of data supporting this idea but do

you really need the numbers to know in your bones that it’s true? If so, get in touch – we’ve got the proof points.)

Marketers also know that some customers are far more profitable

than others.

But, for most brands, these super-customers get the exact same experience as a first time visitor.

(They might get more accurate offers and product recommendations or some stored preferences but essentially, the customer experience is identical.)

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All this would be kind of understandable (though still surprising) if online customer experience was really, really

difficult to master.But it isn’t.

Okay. Pause for breath.Consolidate learning so far:The three most important things in your business are, in no particular order:

So this baffling failure to attack customer experience challenges head-on amounts to no less than –

and it hurts to say it:

Marketing Malpractice

If any other discipline in the world did so little to improve and measure their

number one priority, they would be exposed, ridiculed, tarred, feathered

and ridden out of town.

Imagine a manufacturing director taking the same approach to her assembly line.

Imagine a finance director sticking his finger in the air before putting any old numbers into his spreadsheet.

This is simple.The elements of a great online customer experience are well known:

People want your site to be fast, intuitive and simple to

navigate.

People want their experience to be personal and relevant

to them.

Of course, there are other tools to help you out there.

Come check us out.Check out the other guys in and around this space.

Then let’s talk about turning your online customer experience into a monster

(a friendly, profitable monster).

People expect their value to you to be reflected in

their experience.

People want their experience to be consistent wherever

they meet you.

But most marketers are failing to rise to these challenges.

They give every visitor the same experience.Ignoring everything they know about the visitor.

They determine this mono-experience based on gut feel.On intuition. On a look at other sites. On a hunch.

So customers drift off to the sites that know how to treat people.And the most profitable customers start behaving like the

least profitable ones...

Marketers also know that some customers are far more profitable

than others.

But, for most brands, these super-customers get the exact same experience as a first time visitor.

(They might get more accurate offers and product recommendations or some stored preferences but essentially, the customer experience is identical.)

There are three ways to correct this state

of affairs.And none of them are hard to do

(if you’ve got the right processes and tools).

1) Personaliz almost every online experience.

By using what you know about each user to serve up the most relevant visitor journey, content, products and offers; and giving

your VIP customers special treatment; and nurturing others so they become VIPs…

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If any other discipline in the world did so little to improve and measure their

number one priority, they would be exposed, ridiculed, tarred, feathered

and ridden out of town.

Imagine a manufacturing director taking the same approach to her assembly line.

Imagine a finance director sticking his finger in the air before putting any old numbers into his spreadsheet.

2) Test and Learn.You cannot possibly know the optimum user experience

if you’re not testing. Not the occasional A/B test. Continuous, never-ending, multivariate testing.

3) Do this across channels.Not just on the web, but in email, and social channels…

and mobile and tablets too.

We could drill down into each of these, but we promised we’d let you

go in a few minutes.

The important thing to go away with four simple and unarguable ideas.

Then you can come around to our resource center and drill down to your heart’s content.

Here are the four ideas:

1) Customer Experience matters.

And, in an era when product differentiation is so short-lived, it matters more than anything else.

If you’re spending a fortune driving traffic to your site and a pittance converting them to revenue, you need to re-think

your priorities.

To ignore all the insights and behavioral clues that your customers give you for free and not translate them into great, relevant online

experiences is to squander one of your most precious assets.

Amazon fuelled a global juggernaut with this simple idea.

2) A great customer experience is a personalized one.

Hello

3) The only way to deliver insanely great customer

experiences is totest, test, test.

Hunches are great. Years and years of accumulated knowledge are super.But only testing delivers the indisputable answers you need.

Testing discovers things that even the smartest, most experienced ecommerce pro could never guess. Little things. Big things.

Things that add up, over time, to serious conversion rate increases.

To win market share over the next 12-24 months, you need to build testing into your brand DNA.

4) You need to apply this same rigor to

all channels.A super-relevant, quick, intuitive website looks like a fluke if your mobile

app is a dog. Or your social media content is clueless.

Great is great. Consistently great is unbeatable.

Where do you go from here?

This isn’t nearly as hard as it sounds. All it takes is the right mindset, a few sensible processes and

a great online customer experience platform.

We’re Maxymiser. We believe we’ve got just such a platform (and some solid advice about

the mindset and processes too).

Of course, there are other tools to help you out there.

Come check us out.Check out the other guys in and around this space.

Then let’s talk about turning your online customer experience into a monster

(a friendly, profitable monster).

Nothing else is more important.

About MaxymiserMaxymiser helps any online business create insanelygreat customer experiences that maximize revenue.

Our cloud-based testing, personalization and cross-channel optimization solutions serve billions of individual experiences across every digital channel to dramatically improve conversion rates and revenue.

We’re pioneers in multivariate testing, segmentation, behavioral targeting and product recommendations for web, mobile, social and email.

And we do it for some of the world’s most iconic brands, how can we help your business?

Lets talk info@maxymiser.com