Download Chapter 10 - Dr. Robert Davis (Ph.D) FCIM (UK)

Chapter 12
Developing and Maintaining Effective Websites
Learning Objectives:
By the time students complete this chapter they should be able to:
 Understand the role websites play in customers’ decision-making processes
 Explain each step in the website development process.
 Identify important issues in website design.
 Discuss ways in which overall customer satisfaction with websites can be measured.
 Explain the concepts of usability and customer experience.
 Understand what is involved in the redesign of a major website.
 Identify major cost elements involved in initial development of a site or resign and
relaunch.
Chapter Perspective
Discussion of this chapter needs to focus on the key marketing issue—building websites that
deliver satisfying customer experience and do so in a way that fits both strategy and budget.
“Cool” is just not the issue. Visual attractiveness is a plus, but not a necessity. If technology
gets in the way, it is a negative, not a plus. Flash intros/demos have become the poster
technology for this complaint, but there are others. Jakob Nielsen’s site www.useit.com, which
is designed for usability not attractiveness, has a continuing series of exhortations against design
that does not promote usability. Tim Ash and Amy Africa are well-known usability experts.
Tim’s work focuses on the conversion aspect of website design http://sitetuners.com and Amy’s
more on website usability http://www.eightbyeight.com. Both sites have article and tips that can
make good reading and points for discussion in class.
Students need to recognize websites as an element of Internet marketing strategy—an important
one but not the only one—that must be cost-effective. Most websites should eventually be
expected to produce a reasonable return on investment, although measuring ROI for
informational sites that are part of a sales cultivation process is not easy. This chapter was
intentionally placed further along in the book to emphasize the fact that websites are only one
aspect of Internet marketing—essential, but alone often not very effective. It can be moved to
earlier in the semester if needed to get the students ready for a project, for example. Immediately
after Chapter 4 works fine.
I have structured the slides along the lines of Figure 12.1, The Website Development Process,
but the chapter is structured a bit differently with website usability and the customer experience
handled together after step 7. It is your choice how to teach the material.
Introduction
Slides 2-4
I would start by asking the students why websites are important? The text emphasizes the fact
that business websites need to be usable to the customer an effective part of business strategy,
not simply exercises in “cool.” As sales grow in both online and mobile, websites need to be
designed for maximum usability and for site “stickiness” which means getting customers to
return. Websites should reinforce marketing strategy. I often look at Walmart versus Target,
Nordstrom, and Kmart and ask the students in the websites reinforce the generic corporate
strategies of low-cost, both (Target’s tag is Expect More Pay Less), differentiation or stuck-inthe-middle. You can ask the students about their own favorite websites and why they like them
and return to them.
The Role of Websites
Slides 4-6
At the highest level, a website can be either informational or transactional. With that in mind, a
site can have one or more of several generic objectives:
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To increase sales revenue
To increase the visibility of the enterprise
To advertise products and services
To aid in brand development
To provide customer service
To generate sales leads
To retain customers
To build an online community
To provide cost savings, especially in promotion and customer service
That is a lengthy list, some of which students may not have considered. If you want to spend
some time with this, you could ask them for examples of websites that do each. Our
multichannel environment, the importance of which is emphasized in Slide 6, makes careful
selection of objectives even more essential. If you have time, you can demonstrate some of the
websites in the book that are designed for accessibility by the disabled and even look at your
own University website in this regard. And above all, shopping on the web is not an isolated
experience, with multichannel shoppers typically generating more revenue than single-channel
shoppers. You might ask the students their own experiences with ordering online and picking up
at the store, etc.
The Website Development Process
Slide 7
This graphic in Figure 12.1 summarizes the process. It is not too different from the marketing or
marketing communications planning process and it is worth pointing that out. Planning a
website should be first and foremost a business/marketing planning process. Design has some
special aspects, but good business sense should take precedence over all other considerations.
We examine each step in more or less detail, noting whether each step is primarily a marketing
responsibility or a technical one, and devoting more time to the marketing than to the technical
steps. The slides that are numbered refer specifically to a particular section of the website
development process.
1. Establishing Website Objectives
Slides 8-11
Workable objectives are established on the basis of:
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Enterprise or SBU marketing objectives. Planning objectives form a cascade with the
level above providing the general outlines within which the next level objectives are
established.
The interactive nature of the Internet. Marketers need to be clear about whether their site
will be a content or a transactional site. Likewise, they need to be clear about the degree
to which it will have an ecommerce or a branding orientation. This will lead to the
specification of direct-response, action-oriented objectives or communications ones.
Role of the site in overall marketing strategy. One of the main themes of this book is the
integration of online and offline strategy for multichannel marketers. The website is only
a part of overall strategy, albeit an increasingly important one.
Models of consumer behavior. The AIDA model, attention, interest, desire and action,
can be used to think about how we wish consumers to move through the site, although the
interactive nature of the web and the trend toward collaborative communication with
customers means this model has limited utility to more firms more sophisticated in their
website design.
If your students are doing an Internet marketing plan or other similar project, they will have to
set objectives for their plan or program. Students tend to have a difficult time setting objectives
that are measurable and realistic so you can refer them back to the initial list of objectives as
needed. Slide 10 is how Dr. Zahay explains how to select site objectives. She suggests students
look at what stage in the customer lifecycle we are reaching the customer and plan objectives
accordingly. Students may have other ideas about how to develop objectives after seeing this
slide. It is not in the book but a gift to the instructor to use if desired.
The Lipton Tea site is an excellent example of a branding site done well. The Silicon Solar site
represents straight-forward ecommerce, again done well. It is worth going to the Lipton site to
show the wealth and variety of content about tea and to the Silicon Solar to show an efficient
sales process. The site also provides opportunity for community build around green technology.
If you want a third site, look at Starbucks.com. Although the video promotion on the upper left
corner may take a few seconds to load, the promotion follows the direct marketing rule, “Make it
easy for the customer to take action.” Although customers need to go to the store to take
advantage of the promotion, they are encouraged to tag photos with a twitter hashtag to be
eligible for a special prizes.
Slide 11 asks how website objectives should be developed and the answer is with both business
goals and the target audience in mind, which leads to the next section.
2. Identifying and Describing the Target Market
Slides 12-13
Identifying the target market is another normal part of the marketing planning process. The issue
is to make sure it is carefully done for the special capabilities of the online environment. The
approaches are much the same as offline. In additional to the traditional demographics and
lifestyles data, the text emphasizes the importance of understanding the reasons why people visit
a site (intent is the current jargon) in order to be able to build a site that meets their needs and
suits their usage occasions. To take that a step further, it is helpful to understand in considerable
detail the tasks users want/expect to perform on the site. Scenario development is one way to
specify the pathway to a desired outcome in a detailed, step-by-step manner. It is often described
in articles on persuasion architecture, for example,
http://www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3588626. Persona development, briefly described
toward the end of the chapter with references, is another. The Office Depot example was added
specifically to show a B2B example and because the company describes the target market on the
site. Slide 13 is a summary slide that can be used for class discussion on particular websites.
You can use Interactive Exercise 12.4 here or later on when talking about the re-launch of
Staples.com.
3.
Designing Website Content
Slides 14-15
These slides are an overview of what could be a detailed and lengthy discussion. Most
instructors will probably want to keep it at a rather high level and not go too far into the details.
What content visitors want is more than just a straightforward replication of offline content such
as catalogs and support material. At the very least users have come to expect much more
information about products and services on the web than can usually be made available through
other media. They also access content differently. It has become clear that people usually skim,
printing if they wish to read material in detail. It is interesting to ask students what they read on
the screen and what they print out to read at their leisure. If they are using interactive texts, that
could lead into a very interesting discussion.
Visuals and graphics are no longer a matter for debate among most web designers but a way to
draw the customer to the site and engage them, particularly videos. Simple and usable are key
themes. Sites that seem to be more glitz than substance are likely to be the products of amateurs
or web developers who have been left without marketing guidance in this important activity.
Students who have their own websites may question that statement. Ask them about site
objectives; also try to get them to evaluate their site against design criteria in the next section.
It is important to remind students that all these issues, but especially the content that visitors
want and need, are appropriate subjects for marketing research and concept testing. Specific
approaches are discussed later in the chapter.
The eyetracking research illustrated on Slide 14 (Figure 12.3) is an important source of our
knowledge about how people actually use websites. While the technology is not new, it is
dependable and useful. Some commercial metrics programs now build eyetracking into their
metrics programs and they are highly valuable, especially for content sites.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cwUxYvpmfw is a fascinating video that shows heat
tracking “live.” There are other videos on this subject on YouTube as well.
4. Designing the Navigational Structure
Slides 15-17
The subjects of content and of the site structure and the way a visitor navigates around it are
clearly related. Identification of content comes first, then the designers must find a way to
structure it so that desired information is easy to find and that navigating the site contributes
positively to good customer experience.
A hierarchical structure forms the foundation of navigation planning for the site (Figure 12.4,
Slide 15). There should be a reasonable number of second-level pages—enough to clearly
categorize content but not enough to create confusion in the minds of visitors or visual clutter on
the site. Most sites will have a third level of sub pages and many will have four. However, one
basic rule is that the visitor should never be more than two or three mouse clicks away from the
desired information. The path through the site should be as clear and intuitive as possible,
allowing the visitor to move through it easily without dead ends and retracing of steps. The case
history of the Staples redesign that ends the chapter illustrates how complex and difficult this can
be for a large site.
Another early step in the site design process is to design main pages. Often this is followed by
the design of templates for content pages at the second and further levels of the hierarchy, a
process not illustrated here. The design for a hypothetical home page is a type called a
wireframe (Figure 12.4, Slide 15), implying that it has information the designers will find useful
in developing a satisfactory page. Interactive Exercise 12.1 (Slide 33) lets students try their hand
and build a wireframe.
In this case marketers have specified the goals customers have when visiting the page and the
relative prominence they want various items to have. This is important guidance from marketers
to the technical personnel who are actually doing the site design and programming.
Major issues in designing the site itself and in creating individual pages include:
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Content
Navigation
Color (especially background)
Font
Minimize Scrolling
Artwork
Animation/Graphics/Rich Media
The text uses the Overstock.com, shortcut O.co as an example of site designed for customer
service that allows a large amount of content to be accessed easily. In class, you can choose one
or more sites with which you are familiar and on which you consistently have a satisfactory
experience and go live to those if you wish. You can see if the site uses alt tags for its images, a
breadcrumbs bar, how easy it is to navigate, etc. This is a safe way to go. Or you can let students
choose, which is likely to take you to sites with which you are unfamiliar. Or choose one
“middle of the road” site and then ask students for a site that is age-appropriate for them. They
are likely to come up with a music, entertainment or sports site that is quite different from your
choice and that presents an interesting contrast. It is even better if you end up with two sites that
are entirely different in looks and maybe even structure, but that both work very well for the
motives their target audience has for visiting those particular sites.
NetFlix (https://signup.netflix.com) seems to be trying to be an endless source of class
discussion. You can use the information in the text and Interactive Exercise 12.2 to spark a
discussion about website design not being enough to keep a company ahead of the competition.
5. Website Usability Criteria
Slides 18-19
Forrester (Table 12.1) has developed 25 criteria for site effectiveness that factor into four
dimensions: value, navigation, presentation, and trust. This is an expert judgment method while
the well-know BizRate (owned by Shopzilla) survey (Table 12.2) of customers presents another
alternative. Note that BizRate surveys customers “at the point of purchase” and after sufficient
time has passed for the order to be fulfilled.
At this point you may move up the customer experience slides and discuss them in the context of
usability; I usually discuss customer experience with website usability, as it is in the text. Or you
may go through the website design process in numbered order as I have done here in the
instructor materials.
6. Deploying and Tuning the Website
Slide 20
Deployment, which is basically getting the site onto a server of your own or at a hosting service,
and site tuning are definitely technical tasks. Students should be reminded that marketers should
visit their own website frequently from outside the corporate network to see how it does work for
the ordinary visitor. Marketers are not responsible for executing the technical side of site
development and maintenance, but they should always be protective of their brand and of the
customer experience on their website.
7. Measuring, Evaluating, and Improving Website Effectiveness
Slides 21-22
This is a high level treatment of this important subject, which is the covered in detail in Chapter
14. If you accept the premise that a lot of websites have a long way to go, then the importance of
measurement and continuous improvement is a given. The web master and assistants need to be
continually aware of performance statistics, correcting problems immediately and working with
marketing to improve the overall site experience. Marketing is responsible for the customer
experience and the resulting business effectiveness of the site.
In order to be effective the kinds of commercial metrics discussed in Chapter 11 are essential.
Site testing should also be part of the marketing effort. The basic types of site testing are:
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Concept tests that can be performed using basic marketing research techniques. An
illustration will be part of the usability testing discussion in Chapter 10.
Prototype tests which are tests of sites with limited functionality, usually done in a
laboratory setting.
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Beta tests in this context don’t have exactly the same meaning as a B2B beta test, but the
idea is similar. In this context it means testing a fully-functioning website. This can be
done in a laboratory setting or by giving trusted users/customers access to a site on a
server, before the site has been deployed to the web.
Customer usability testing will be discussed later in the chapter.
It is recommended that sites continue to test after initial deployment, either on a planned
schedule or when metrics suggest there may be usability problems, or a combination of both
approaches.
8. Relaunch when needed: The Relaunch of Staples.com
Slides 23-24
Staples has a successful multi-channel strategy and its website is a centerpiece of that strategy.
Consequently the trade seemed surprised when they embarked on a major relaunch. Staples is
one of the relatively few firms that has its own usability lab and it seems reasonable to assume
that ongoing usability testing suggested that the site could give improved customer experience.
Their brand icon “The Easy Button” was a centerpiece of the redesign. On the site pushing the
Easy Button now leads to the ability to download an “Easy” desktop widget to search the site and
see weekly ads and deals, access Staples rewards and order by item number. It is worth doing
Interactive Exercise 12.4 in which the students can answer questions and find out their office
supplies persona as it will make the persona concept more real to the students and the concept is
becoming used even more frequently in market segmentation for websites.
9. Other Website Design Tips
Slides 25-26
The text lists a number of things to avoid, like flash animation, automatically loading video and
advises investing in a Content Management System (CMS) and using Cascading Style Sheets
(CSS). This slide can spark a lot of discussion and you can bring up examples of sites that don’t
follow these rules (maybe even at your own school). I provided a few samples from the book
chapter to spark discussion on Slide 26.
Providing a Rewarding Customer Experience
Slides 27-29
The overriding goal of the website is to provide a rewarding customer experience for visitors,
whether they are coming for information, to be entertained, or to purchase something. Zeithaml
and Bitner conceptualize the qualities of goods and services as being search, credence and
experience. Customer experience is a broader concept, one that has not been carefully defined.
Rayport and Jaworski suggest that the four dimensions of customer experience are:
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Physical presence and appearance.
Cognition
Emotion or attitude
Connectedness (all elements working together for satisfactory experience)
Berry and his colleagues add a useful managerial perspective when they encourage marketers to
understand the clues customers receive in their encounters with the company. Certainly the
corporate website is a place where clues are present and can be carefully managed to produce the
desired outcome. Disney does a reasonably good job of transferring some of the magic onto
their website. The San Diego Zoo has a wonderful site that lets people from afar share in the
experience and enriches the experience for patrons of the zoo. Both sites are worth visiting live;
again you may have preferred sites of your own. Interactive Exercise 12.3 suggests visiting the
Disney site and looking at the content “of the month” selected by users. It is worth a trip.
Resources for Website Development
Slide 30
There are many sites for web developers (The website http://www.webmonkey.com is good and
not terribly technical) as well as many books on the subject. This site http://www.lynda.com
provides videos on a variety of technical subjects. As mentioned above, students can create their
own page easily in Wordpress. Increasingly, web design on the technical end is becoming a
commodity, with sites like http://www.elance.com putting website owners together with
worldwide developers at a fraction of the former cost of web development.
However, as the slide suggests, some of the best information comes from the basic business
intelligence all marketers should gather for their product category. I would visit some of these
sites to expose the students to what is out there but the best advice of all is the following: Study
the competition and benchmark against some of the best practices sites (the San Diego Zoo is a
favorite of nonprofit marketers, for example). Usability testing and “listening” in general is by
far the most important resource.
How Much Does It Cost?
Slide 31
It is hard to get specific costs for a number of reasons as discussed in the text. The range can be
from several thousands of dollars to multi-millions. Interactive Exercise 12.5 suggests using
designquote.net to work through how much a web redesign will cost sand this is a good chance
to ask the students to think about the most important criteria for choosing a developer. Do
emphasize the magnitude of maintenance costs, not to mention the time spent by IT and
marketing personnel. The high cost of ongoing development and maintenance is an unpleasant
surprise for many marketers.
Summary
Slide 32
Development, maintenance, and/or relaunch of a website is complicated strategic issue in
virtually any enterprise, regardless of size and complexity. It must be a joint effort between
marketing and technical professionals, reminiscent of the requirement that marketing and
creative professionals work smoothly together to create compelling advertising. Research, both
before and during site development; testing of site concepts, content, and design; and tracking of
site effectiveness once it is launched are all essential. Satisfactory customer experience is the
central issue. This can usually be translated as satisfactory completion of the tasks for which
users come to the site although there is also an emotional side to good experience. Complicating
the challenge is the necessity that the customer experience be seamlessly effective in all
channels. It is important to remember that the commercial use of the Internet is still a relatively
new venture and both uses and approaches continue to evolve. Add to that continuing
technological change, and the need for continuous learning and improvement is evident. It might
be a good idea to go back to the website development process and then use this slide to illustrate
many of the factors important in good website design.
Discussion Questions
1. True or False: It is imperative that marketers play the leading role in all stages of the
website development process. Take a position on this statement and be prepared to
defend your answer.
The quick and facetious answer to the question is, “Not unless you want marketers to also
become programmers and systems experts.” The more thoughtful response is that a good
website absolutely must be a cooperative effort between marketing and technical professionals.
Marketing contributes strategy and customer knowledge. IT contributes its ability to build
websites, deploy them to the Internet, and keep them up and functioning at the highest possible
level.
2. What are the steps involved in developing a website? What should the marketer’s role
be in each step?
The list of steps identified by responsibility as they are described in the PowerPoint is:
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Establish site objective—marketing
Identify and describe target market—market
Design site content and navigation structure—marketing with the aid of information
architects
Conduct usability tests—a marketing task in cooperation with the technicians. Usability
testing will be discussed in detail in Chapter 10. Consequently it is simply included as
one of the measurement techniques on Slide 13.
Deploy and tune site—a technical task
Measure and evaluate site effectiveness—marketers are responsible for the business
effectiveness of the site; technicians for its smooth functioning
Refine and improve site effectiveness—both marketers and the technical experts should
be engage in a program of continuous improvement of site effectiveness
It is probably worthwhile to point out to students how many of these steps are the province of
marketing as opposed to how few are primarily technical.
3. The chapter makes frequent references to both testing and conventional marketing
research. What testing and research techniques are appropriate in the website
development process and what is the role of each?
The high-level answer is that any marketing research technique that provides data about
customers has at least some applicability in the web environment. In addition, there are
specialized techniques like usability testing and techniques that are common in IT like
prototyping that have important roles in the development and maintenance of websites.
The specific tools listed in the chapter are:
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Usability tests essentially assess the ability of visitors to perform desired tasks on the site.
The process will be discussed in Chapter 10.
Exploratory research, especially focus groups, is useful at many stages. One key point at
which exploratory research should be used is in the development of concepts that provide
the underlying themes for the site. After the site has been deployed, ongoing exploratory
research should be employed to help gauge the effectiveness of the site. Discussion may
be combined with usability testing in which
Concept testing follows the precepts of concept testing in advertising research.
Prototyping is essentially a software testing and quality assurance technique in which a
partially-functioning site is exposed to users who can critique design and organization
and test the functionality that is present.
Beta testing is a concept from B2B marketing in which lead customers are asked to install
and test a new product. This could be done in a laboratory setting or it could be done by
giving lead users access to a site that is housed on a server but not yet accessible to the
public on the Internet.
Customer feedback and usage statistics become available once the site is up and running.
Usage statistics are a main topic of Chapter 14. Customer feedback is discussed in
Chapter 13.
It is helpful—but difficult—to try to make sure that students understand the difference between
marketing research (which in my experience they tend to equate to survey research) and testing.
They tend to be familiar with marketing research, having taken the course or at least having been
research subjects from time to time. I find that undergraduates tend to have a hard time
understanding that testing is something quite different. Testing clearly involves using assessing
something that already exists—from a concept to copy for an email promotion to usability of a
website. Saying that doesn’t seem to do it—I think because marketing research is so familiar.
Our experience says they have to try to construct a test to understand the difference. They can
design two emails for testing or two different web page layouts. Then they can understand how
adding a marketing research technique, say a short debrief questionnaire, can usefully ad to the
behavioral data that is the output of much web testing.
4. What is the best way to assess customer satisfaction with a website?
One can look at behavioral measures like abandonment of shopping carts or confused or
incomplete paths through the site (to be discussed in Chapter 14). Behavioral measures have the
advantage of being produced as part of the transaction stream. They are not free, but they are
low cost and timely. They are also objective. The issues that continue to trouble many Internet
marketers are the appropriateness of the metrics as well as their accuracy.
Attitudinal measures are essentially direct counterparts of offline measures. It is possible to use
either single measures of satisfaction or multiple measures, as illustrated in the text. Looking at
the overall customer experience, which is discussed in detail in this chapter is another way.
5. Explain the concept of “consumer experience.” What is its relevance to Internet
marketing? Contrast that with the role of the consumer experience in the offline
retailing environment.
The concept of customer experience does not differ from the offline to the online environment,
but the ways of producing (satisfactory) experience do. The concept refers to various aspects of
evaluating products or services that relate to that offering. For example, in the online world the
senses of touch and smell cannot be employed, robbing us of two sets of sensory stimuli that can
have great value in the world of physical retailing. On the other hand, the online world has
interactivity in real time and the possibility of creating virtual experience that captures many of
the stimuli of the offline world. The concept is so important that some good practitioner papers
have recently emerged. You might want to look at:
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The Oracle website http://www.rightnow.com lists not only results achieved by
Overstock.com but also Nike and Sony.
This site discusses the benefits of customer experience
management:http://www.readwriteweb.com/biz/2011/05/top-5-roi-benefits-ofcustomer.php.
It seems that there are at least three major lessons to be learned about customer experience in the
multichannel environment:
1. It is important to provide the customer with seamlessly satisfactory experience in any and
all channels.
2. The methods used to provide (the marketer) and experience (the customer) will differ
from one channel to another.
3. The methods used to create experience should be supportive of one another and of the
brand.
6. How does a marketer know when a site should simply be improved upon and when it
should be completely redesigned and relaunched?
This is an interesting question that has no definitive answer. One issue is technical. You may
run across a site that has been built in a way that is not scalable. There may be no way to make
substantive revisions to the site and the only solution may be to start over from scratch. This
should not be true of sites except for very early ones.
So the real answer may be a marketing one. The best customer experience may be provided
when a system of continuous improvement is in place. One problem is that the customer may
not notice. So tell them! The Wall Street Journal Online does a good job of keeping customers
up to date on site improvements.
On the other hand, continuous improvement does not provide an opportunity for a real event as
does a relaunch like the Staples one. When it is integrated with other marketing developments,
in Staples case the “Easy Button,” it may provide fodder for marketing hoop-la that creates
visibility and strengthens the brand.
It seems to be a strategic marketing issue worthy of serious consideration.
Internet Exercises
1.
Internet Career Builder Exercise.
This is one of the areas where students often can make a contribution in a job or an internship
without a lot of experience. We have had students work at major companies over the summer
just testing out sites. It is definitely worthwhile to have them take a peek at the existing jobs and
internships.
2. Think of some specific ways in which a website can support the marketing strategy of
an existing business. In the retail space, Walmart, Target, Kmart, and Nordstrom each
have specific strategies. Examine the sites and outline the extent to which the website
illustrates that particular strategy. Be prepared to discuss the points of strategy
integration between the offline and online marketing efforts.
In carrying out this exercise students should draw heavily from Chapter 2, value chains, Part 2,
Chapters 5-8 and Chapter 10, acquisition, and Chapters 9 and 11, retention and interaction as
well as Chapter 13, Customer Service. In each of these three major strategic areas there are
important Internet applications that students should recognize and be able to describe. Part of an
interesting discussion might include the extent to which some enterprises seem to be
concentrating on one strategic application versus the extent to which some (most?) are
concentrating on multiple strategic areas as they harness the power of the Internet to make their
businesses more effective. The essential questions of satisfactory customer experience and the
perception of the business effectiveness of the sites should be emphasized.
3. Identify a website that you judge to have major experience components. Spend some
time on the site and be prepared to discuss your experience in class. Pay special
attention to whether or not you feel the experience components contribute in a
meaningful way to achievement of site objectives and whether the experiences provided
are in line with the needs of the target market.
Students are likely to come in with a lot of automobile sites, game sites, and sports sites. That
would be partly due to familiarity and partly because these sites rather consistently have major
experiential elements. On automobile sites you can build your own car and maybe drive it. The
games are themselves experiential. Sports sites tend to be rich in streaming media, which add
another dimension to the web experience. Many also have fantasy pages which are also
inherently experiential.
You might want to anticipate the final chapter in the book and ask if any of the students are
playing games or using other web-based services on mobile devices—cell phones and other. We
are in the early stages of developing satisfying customer experiences on mobile devices and the
discussion could be revealing.
If sports and gaming represent the preponderance of site types mentioned early in the discussion,
it provides the opportunity to ask for other types of sites and to ask why some product categories
have stimulated the most experiential websites. One answer is that these firms have been doing
experience-based marketing programs all along, and it was easy to see the opportunities
presented by the web. Besides not seeing the opportunities as quickly, other product categories
may simply not offer equally rich opportunities for experience-based marketing.
When concluding the discussion, it would probably be useful to remind students that marketing
efforts, both on and off the web, that make successful use of experience components can be
effective (Victoria’s Secret fashion show, for example) on their own and can be strongly
supportive of the brand. Yet, the key issue for all Internet marketers is to ensure that each visitor
to a website has a satisfactory experience in using that site. The rest is nice, but satisfactory user
experience is the core issue.
4. Examine the list of companies rated by Temkin in Table 12.3. How many of them have
you used and what has been your overall impression? Using your own website
evaluation criteria that you develop from the readings, your experience and other
sources, rate one of the sites in terms of usability.
Many of these sites are banking and investment sites and may be difficult for the students to
relate to, but the retail sites should be accessible so you can have them pick another site. There
is no shortage of other websites that they can evaluate or you can have them. The American
Customer Satisfaction Index alluded to in the text has a number of internet categories:
http://www.theacsi.org. Make sure the students use established metrics and don’t just use their
own thoughts on the subject.
5. Choose one of the sites you are tracking and do a careful assessment of the degree to
which it is either easy and pleasant or difficult and frustrating to navigate. Develop a set
of criteria that you consider important in assessing whether a site provides good
navigation or not.
In her book Customer-Effective Web Sites, (Prentice-Hall, 2002) Jodie Dalgleish has a substantial
section on navigation (pp. 239-248). Her eight success factors are as follows:
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Create intuitive navigation systems that mimic customer’s mental processes.
Understand customer tasks and how they expect to complete them.
Offer choices in the way the site can be navigated.
If customer tasks aren’t directly represented in the navigation system, be sure they are
evident in the way content is organized and the functionality of the site.
Keep it simple.
Always provide a meaningful search option.
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Provide navigation aids such as drop-down lists.
Provide recognizable cues that help guide the visitor’s search.
If you want to go live to a site to talk about navigation, Amazon is always safe because they do it
so well. If you’re getting a little tired of Amazon, you might try drugstore.com, which is a
partner of Amazon and uses many of their site design conventions. In this case, the relationship
to a physical drug store is evident as is the care they have used to use consumer shopping
patterns in physical stores to create ecommerce options that seem easy and familiar.
6. Choose a specific culture within the United States, such as Hispanics or AfricanAmericans, and find some sites that are targeted toward those cultures. Some ideas
might include: Allstate’s Spanish language site (www.miallstate.com), the history
channel’s Spanish langue site (www.historyenespanol.com), or blackplanet.com. Do
some research and find some case studies and examples of good web design for sites
targeted for that culture. What are the values of that particular culture? How does
website design differ for that particular culture than for mainstream websites?
Students typically enjoy this assignment and have no trouble coming up with great examples on
their own. It can be a bit difficult to define what is a culture but with a broad enough definition,
focusing on shared behaviors and beliefs, you can also include Gay and Lesbian websites as well
as ethnic and even age groups. Here is an interesting article about marketing to Hispanics, both
online and offline: http://www.thenonprofittimes.com/article/detail/marketing-to-hispanics-ismore-than-language-3909.
7. Choose a specific country other than the United States, such as China, and find some
sites that are targeted toward that country. Some ideas might include: a Chinese chat
site that also offers games and other features (http://qzone.qq.com). Do some research
and find some case studies of web design for that country. What are the shared values
of that particular country? How does website design differ for that particular country
than for websites targeted for the United States?
Students enjoy doing this research and finding out which colors are appropriate for different
countries, etc. and that translation is not all there is to international marketing. This exercise,
like number 7, is usually a popular exercise.
8. Thinking about the “digital divide” from Chapter 13. Are there differences in how the
affluent versus nonaffluent use the web? Find out how those making $500,000 plus use
the web versus those making less than $50,000 per year. What implications does your
research have for marketers seeking to target those segments?
Past studies have shown that those in lower-economic groups are less likely to use the Internet
for playful activities, but low-income consumers have a high growth rate mobile phone use and
rely on the single device for multiple purposes, thus actually eliminating the need to multiple
devices and saving money.
Key Terms
accessibility website design principles that allow physically-challenged people, who may need
special devices like screen readers or voice recognition software, to successfully use the website.
AIDA Attention, Interest, Desire and Action, a traditional advertising model that has been
adapted to the web.
alt tag an HTML tag (formatting instruction) displayed as a call-out bar that describes a graphic
element for the benefit of people who have text-only browsers or require other assistance.
breadcrumb navigational aid showing path user has followed.
CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) a style sheet language to separate the content of the site from the
presentation style elements, such as layouts, colors, and fonts.
customer experience how customers perceive all the interactions they have with a company or
brand.
heat map visual representations of eye activity on a web page.
stickiness getting customers to stay on the site as long as possible, navigate as many paths as
possible, and return again and again.
usability the ability of a site to provide a satisfactory experience.