Gartner Consulting
Customer-Effective Web
Sites
Translating customer needs into
Web site design
Prepared for NCSU E-Commerce
Seminar Series
20 November 2000
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Page 0
Gartner Consulting
Being Customer-Effective
!
Good Web sites
Versus
!
Customer-effective Web sites
IIR Conference Presentation
Evaluating Site Needs Based on Customer Needs
Gartner Consulting—4 November—Page 1
Entire contents © 2000 Gartner Group, Inc. All rights reserved.
Good Web sites
Good Web sites are based on the fundamental tenets of good Web site design, as they have evolved
over the last 2-3 years – tenets that we have learned from a new set of designers and usability experts
who have understood the idiosyncrasies and power of an intimate, immediate and interactive medium.
We have learned about information architecture, navigation, content management, efficient use of
graphics and rich media and we’ve even started creating a common topology and “language” between
Web sites.
But this doesn’t help us if the fundamental purpose behind our site is out of Synch with the everyday
world our customers live in. It doesn’t matter how good our Web site is when a customer expects to
swing into action on their first visit to our homepage, expectations poised in their fingertips, and they
can’t even find mention of some of the things they expected to be able to do better, smarter and faster
on the Web.
Also, good Web sites tend to assume familiarity with the customer. However, that familiarity is unlikely
to really exist at the level assumed - and this leads to customer frustration.
Customer-effective Web sites
To be customer-effective we need to understand the customer’s context – what is the customer trying
to use the Web for as part of their everyday lives and why, and why did they visit your Web site at all?
Customer-effective Web sites respond to the customer’s context – where they've been, where they’re
going and what they’re trying to do and why.
Customer-effective Web sites allow customers to complete online processes, from beginning to end,
seamlessly and in an intuitively-correct manner because they are built around a knowledge of what
the customer process is and, therefore, what the Web site needs to support.
Also, Customer-effective Web sites respond to, and create, familiarity with the e-customer and base
interactivity on a real knowledge of the e-customer.
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Gartner Consulting
Finding out What Customers Want
!
Start with the basics
And
!
Find out the rest – before, during and after committing to
design
IIR Conference Presentation
Evaluating Site Needs Based on Customer Needs
Gartner Consulting—4 November—Page 2
Entire contents © 2000 Gartner Group, Inc. All rights reserved.
Enterprises often employ external researchers to help them find out what
customers want from their Web sites. External researchers and the
enterprise need to recognize “the basics” before finding out the full story
about e-customers’ needs and wants. I have seen many enterprises spend a
lot of money on research only to be told things that have been already been
generally recognized by enterprises and commentators alike. Rather than
find out the top ten things people hate about web sites, find out the context
that customers use your Web site in and how you can better support the
“work” they need to do as customers. Use research to test the boundaries of
what you can do to innovate and create superior online user experiences for
competitive advantage.
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Gartner Consulting
Finding out What Customers Want (Cont’d)
!
The Basics
! “give me something useful”
http://www.bankofamerica.com/financialtools/
!
5 doing areas
! Evaluate competing businesses and products
! Select products and “transact” with e-service providers
! Get help
! Provide feedback
! Stay “tuned in” as e-customers”
http://www.keybank.com/templates/t-ps1.5.jhtml?nodeID=H-1
http://www.chase.com/chase/gx.cgi/FTcs?pagename=Chase/Href&urlname=personal/prodservs/checking
http://www.citibank.com/us/cbna/checking/
!
17 customer directives
http://emove.uhaul.com/
IIR Conference Presentation
Evaluating Site Needs Based on Customer Needs
Gartner Consulting—4 November—Page 3
Entire contents © 2000 Gartner Group, Inc. All rights reserved.
Over three years of testing Web site concepts (at all stages before and during the
development process) I kept hearing a recurring theme from customers – “give me
something useful”. Customers have things they need to do everyday as customers and
when they have access to your enterprise through the Web, they expect to be able to do
those things better, smarter and faster then they ever have before – they expect you to
harness the Web in a way that makes their lives easier and your relationship with them
more rewarding. Web sites are currently not delivering the useful experiences that
customers expect. Some pockets of utility do exist, and we look at Bank of America’s
“Financial Tools” section of their Web site – this is good but it’s unfortunate that it’s buried
in the Web site and would not be easily found by e-customers.
“Customer-Effective Web Sites” also presents five doing areas that, in general, all Web
sites must support. These five doing areas give you an idea of the kinds of activities that ecustomers will be trying to complete on your Web site. You can do an initial sanity check
on a site’s customer-effectiveness by seeing how easy it is just to complete obvious tasks
within these doing areas. We will look at 3 financial services Web sites and see how well,
or not, they recognize and respond to these “doing areas”.
There were other themes that came out of this three year’s of testing and these are
captured in “Customer-Effective Web Sites” as 17 customer directives. The directives are
instructions from customers, given in their words. Many of these directives seem intuitive
or obvious, but I guarantee that every site is breaking at least one of them. One of the most
fundamental directives that is most often violated is:
“Tell me what I get if I this do” – it is imperative that Web sites make the results of
interactions, such as registration, very clear to e-customers. Web sites should never ask
for information without stating what the e-customer will get in return, especially if some ecustomers are excluded or a significant time investment is required. We look at the Uhaul
site that requires users to become an “eMove member” to be able to get a price quote – but
they don’t explain what the user gets, or what happens, as a result of registration.
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Gartner Consulting
Finding out What Customers Want (Cont’d)
Pr
Determine customer
service requirements
c
oje
tp
Refine customer
service
strategy/concept
c
ro
The Web site development
cycle
es
s
!
er
om
st
Cu
1
Exploratory research
Concept testing
(e-service)
tes
Requirement
definition &
specification
tin
g
al
rn
s
te
tin
g
Ongoing
customer
feedback &
usage
statistics
e
Int
Maintain &
improve Web
site/s
Quality testing
2
Quality testing
3
r
Inte
Acceptance testing
& final quality
testing
Quality
testing
l
na
4
te s
Prototyping
tin
Quality testing
g
(paper based
earlier, and/or,
interactive
components or
slices later)
s to
Cu
Launch Web
site/s
Sanity-check
Concept testing initial concepts
(Web site/s)
r
me
tes
Beta testing
tin
g
Confirm fit &
define factors
for usage &
adoption
Pr
c
oje
tp
roc
es
s
Confirm final product meets
customer requirements &
expectations
Source:Customer-Effective Web sites by Jodie Dalgleish
IIR Conference Presentation
Evaluating Site Needs Based on Customer Needs
Gartner Consulting—4 November—Page 4
Entire contents © 2000 Gartner Group, Inc. All rights reserved.
Enterprises need to recognize that there is a Web site development cycle before
they can adopt it. The Web site development cycle is based on the traditional
software development cycle. The cycle juxtaposes the steps of Web site
development process with required external customer testing and internal quality
and acceptance testing. The internal testing, customer testing, and project process
activities build on one another, as we move from one stage in the cycle to the next
and as we move from the inside to the outside of the circle.
Notice that:
•Exploratory research comes before determining site requirements at the highest
level (Web site strategy)
•Concept testing comes before the refinement of e-service and particular Web site
concepts
•Prototyping comes before completion of design of particular Web site concepts
•Beta testing comes before the “release” of new Web sites or Web site components
•Ongoing customer feedback and usage statistics feed ongoing improvements
•More exploratory research helps keep the site on a trajectory of customereffectiveness (and so the cycle begins again).
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Gartner Consulting
Translation Into the User Experience
Business Development
Translation
Process Matching
Strategy
Translation
E-customer
process
Interface process
Supporting
Organizational
processes
Design and Build
Translation
Customer Scenarios
Drive Vision and Are
The Basis of
Strategy Statements
Theming
Contextual Research and Testing Techniques
Customer Advocacy
Source:Customer-Effective Web sites by Jodie Dalgleish
IIR Conference Presentation
Evaluating Site Needs Based on Customer Needs
Gartner Consulting—4 November—Page 5
Entire contents © 2000 Gartner Group, Inc. All rights reserved.
Once you have found out what customers’ want you need to translate their needs and wants
into the online user experience. Customer-effective Web sites often don’t eventuate because
enterprises lose sight of their customers and what they are trying to do for them. To avoid a
disconnect happening between what customers need, and want, and what the enterprise
ultimately develops, customers must be kept top-of-mind throughout the entire process
including strategy, business development and design and build of the Web site.
•Strategy: customer scenarios are very short stories that encapsulate what customers will be
able to do better, smarter and faster as result of visiting your Web site. These scenarios are
based on exploratory research and form the basis of the language adopted by the enterprise
in determining their Web site strategy – the customer is at the center of the enterprises’
endeavors and how they are expressed.
•Business development: enterprises must develop business processes that support Web site
processes. “Process matching” is a discipline whereby enterprises explicitly match ecustomer processes, interface processes and supporting organizational processes.
Organizational processes must be improved or created to support required interface
processes.
•Web site design: designers and developers should design Web sites around e-customer
processes. Theming is the practice whereby e-customer themes are established (each
theme is the customers’ description of what they are trying to do on your Web site) and
designed around.
Supporting all of this are contextual research & testing techniques, that are always informed
by the customer’s context (“Customer-Effective Web Sites” provides instruction on what
techniques to use, and when throughout the Web site development cycle), and customer
advocacy to ensure that someone within the enterprise is responsible for acting on behalf of
the customer throughout the entire process.
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Gartner Consulting
Translation Into the User Experience (Cont’d)
Help
Dialog
!
Content
Utility
Search Feedback
Navigation
Theming
Entire Web
Site
E-customer theme 1
E-customer theme 2
E-customer theme 3
E-customer theme 4
Web Site
Framework
Resulting From
Theming
E-customer theme 5
Source:Customer-Effective Web sites by Jodie Dalgleish
IIR Conference Presentation
Evaluating Site Needs Based on Customer Needs
Gartner Consulting—4 November—Page 6
Entire contents © 2000 Gartner Group, Inc. All rights reserved.
Theming is based on the concept of scenario-based design and is the basis of customereffective Web site design. Web sites are designed around themes related to e-customer
processes e.g. on Amazon a theme might be to “buy a book I know I want”, “browse for a
book I might want” etc. Themes are threads of interactivity that let e-customers complete
online processes, seamlessly, from beginning to end. You could think of themes as
horizontal cylinders traversing a Web site in multiple dimensions.
Think about the 3 financial services Web sites we looked at under “what customers want;
the basics”. Comparing products, using interactive tools, such as calculators, asking
questions and receiving answers and applying for a product are all part of the same process
of evaluating and selecting a product, but the e-customer must go to different parts of the
site to piece together the entire process – why can’t Web sites recognize that this
information and related functionality are all part of a process and create the appropriate
stream of consciousness around it?
Theming will not produce a Web site in its entirety, but it will produce a starting framework.
Web sites do not need to be rigidly designed around themes, rather, the customer-effective
design process encourages designers and developers to explore the relationships between
themes and relate these to navigation structure, functionality, dialog and content
requirements.
The customer-effective design process comprises:
•Establishing e-customer themes: determine what activities the Web site will support.
•Elaborating e-customer themes with scenarios: Create scenarios against each theme and relate
scenario goals to different features and functionality to explore how the Web site will support each
theme.
•Establishing Web site design concepts: substantiate what the Web site will do for e-customers.
•Designing and building around themes: Realize what the Web site will do for customers. Themes, as
threads of interactivity lend themselves to prototyping during development.
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Gartner Consulting
Theming and Information Architecture
!
Web sites need to be architected around customer processes
! e.g. mks.com combine e-customer processes and information
categories
http://www.mks
.com/
http://www.mks.com/
http://www.allstatetermlife
.com/
http://www.allstatetermlife.com/
IIR Conference Presentation
Evaluating Site Needs Based on Customer Needs
Gartner Consulting—4 November—Page 7
Entire contents © 2000 Gartner Group, Inc. All rights reserved.
In some ways information architecture is the enemy of theming because as soon as we put
information in categories or “silos” we start to loose sight of the lateral interactive threads we must
create across Web sites – and these threads support the themes that encapsulate requisite ecustomer activities.
Q. Which Web site schemas support theming?
Firstly let’s consider the dimensions Web sites are normally architected around:
•Audience: content & functionality is presented within discrete areas dedicated to different customers who
must “self-select” themselves. It is harder to highlight customer processes at the home page level, but sites
can be modeled on e-customer themes from the next level down.
•Information category: different types of information and utility are aggregated into categories related to its
nature e.g. “products and services”, “about us”, “contacts”,” help” etc. E-customers may not find out what the
Web site can do for them until they have drilled down further.
•Product or store: some Web sites dedicated to the selection and/or purchase of products tend to organize
around products or stores e.g. Amazon.com. Customer processes can be highlighted within the stores as
part of the store metaphor – but often the store metaphor utilizes a lot of the primary and secondary
navigation and any attempts to add other dimensions results in increased layering of the navigation system (a
problem that Amazon.com has recently tried to address).
•Web site function: some Web sites are structured around the core functions offered but this seldom forms
the basis of the primary navigation system e.g. “tools”, “community” etc. This may or may not support theming
depending on whether the Web site functions are directly related to e-customer processes.
•E-customer tasks or processes: this dimension most intuitively supports theming but few Web sites are
explicitly structured in this way, although this categorization is often combined with other dimensions e.g.
mks.com where they combine the dimensions of information categories (“information” and “products and
services”) and e-customer processes (“things to do”).
A. No one dimension, apart from e-customer tasks and processes, will adequately
support theming. An optimal navigation system is likely to include at least two
dimensions, one of which relates explicitly to e-customer processes.
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Gartner Consulting
Metaphor
!
Create an environment for rapid learning
Employ metaphor mapping
! Support e-customers’ pursuits
! Embrace the virtual world
! Use only if it’s helpful
!
Source Domain
Considerations
Target Domain
Accept or Reject
Metaphor
Improve use of the
Metaphor
Source:Customer-Effective Web sites by Jodie Dalgleish
IIR Conference Presentation
Evaluating Site Needs Based on Customer Needs
Gartner Consulting—4 November—Page 8
Entire contents © 2000 Gartner Group, Inc. All rights reserved.
When we use metaphor we leverage a person’s understanding of one thing, by applying it to another.
Metaphors, can, therefore, be important for learning as well as communication because they provide
cues on what can be done and how. The learning experience will be strengthened through the
consistent use of a single metaphor (and this can apply at a site level or an activity/task level) as well as
meaningful mapping between the “source domain” (the experience we are referencing) and the “target
domain” (the experience we are trying to create). When we map the source and target domain and
consider the differences between the two domains and their implications on customers’ understanding
of the required experience (the target domain), we start to uncover inconsistencies that could confuse
and frustrate customers. Having identified the cause of potential frustrations we can improve the use of
our metaphor to detract from its inherent weaknesses. We might find that our metaphor is not as useful
as we thought and we may decide not not to use it. Mapping also tells us where a metaphor is more
powerful than we first thought – perhaps the target domain improves the normal experience in the
source domain to such an extent that we can meet latent customer needs and enhance a site’s value.
Successful metaphors support e-customers’ pursuits – they are grounded in what e-customers are
trying to achieve and their motivation for doing what they do. People learn through doing and metaphor,
as a learning device, needs to fit the required doing environment that customer-effective Web sites
create.
The metaphors we see used on Web sites are generally based on a physical experience, metaphors
such as; the lobby, desktop, personal organizer, backpack, folder, briefcase, store, shopping cart,
gallery, guide, classroom/personal locker and neighborhood. However, the Web offers characteristics
such as immediacy, intimacy, and interactivity, that are superior to physical characteristics. The Web
opens up a whole new realm of experience and we may be selling it short by subscribing to metaphors
grounded in the physical experience. As we create these new ways of doing things, they in turn become
metaphors for what can be done. Therefore, the real power of metaphor lies in remolding our
experience.
And always remember that a well-thought-through and presented experience doesn’t need to refer to
other known experiences to be understood.
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Gartner Consulting
Functionality
!
!
!
!
Support e-customers’ pursuits
Personalized to e-customers’ contexts
The more functionality the better e.g.
! facilitate realtime information exchange between individuals and
groups
! create dialogue and allow ongoing comparisons
! allow content creation
! tools to shortcut & simplify processes and links to consolidate
fragmented processes
Complexity is OK
http://www.garden.com/design_garden/design_garden.jhtml
?section=tutorial&immediateParent
immediateParent=design_garden
=design_garden
http://www.garden.com/design_garden/design_garden.jhtml?section=tutorial&
!
Show how to use it
http://www.statusfactory
.com/
http://www.statusfactory.com/
IIR Conference Presentation
Evaluating Site Needs Based on Customer Needs
Gartner Consulting—4 November—Page 9
Entire contents © 2000 Gartner Group, Inc. All rights reserved.
Utility is central to customer-effectiveness. Utility is Web site functionality that allows e-customers to
do the things they need to do. We need to harness the interactivity of the Web to provide e-customers
with useful interactive experiences. Utility exists to serve e-customers better and it, therefore, must
support e-customers’ pursuits.
In addition, the more personalized the experience, the more it supports an e-customers’ pursuit.
Personalization should allow e-customers to make Web site functionality more intelligent i.e. cognizant
of their own particular situation, for example their particular personal or business goal, the products
and services they already use, what they like and what they don’t and why. Enterprises should
consider the things e-customers can tell them about themselves to receive more relevant content and
functionality and attempt to capture those things in an e-customers’ profile that can then be linked to a
personalization engine and Web content management solution to deliver personalized user
experiences.
When e-customers go to Web sites, they expect to be able to do useful things that make their lives
easier and their relationship with you more rewarding. The more functionality that creates realtime
results and information based on e-customer inputs, the better. Analysis of Web site usage statistics
generally show that the most interactive parts of a Web site are the most frequently visited, and are
visited earlier during the tenure of an e-customer’s visit. Some examples of useful functionality are as
follows:
•multiple order checkouts; instant messaging & shared browsers; auctions, reverse auctions, automated bid-ask
matching, RFQ, RFP etc
•downloads, chat, bulletin boards, threaded discussions; drawing tools, calculators, decision support tools
•online training; online tutorials and demos; search; personal profiles; e-mail forms; push content (delivered in
various forms e.g. e-mail, newsletter, ticker tape).
While simplicity in presentation and messages is important on Web sites, complexity, in relation to useful
functionality is OK. E-customers will work with complex functionality if it is pertinent to what they are trying to do
and they are confident that it will deliver value on that basis – the Garden.com “design a garden” functionality is
complex but is adequately explained and provides real value to gardeners who can plan and execute the garden
of their dreams via the garden.com Web site . Complexity should not be unnecessarily avoided. However, it is a
good idea to show how more complex functionality is used through a demo, tutorial, site tour and help, for
example. Site tours etc will deliver little value on sites offering little functionality. But sites that rely on important
online processes should offer a site demo to enlist customers – StatusFactory.com provides a demo around its bill
pay process.
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Gartner Consulting
Content
!
Support e-customers’ pursuits
! Let customers make valid comparisons
! Let customers build their knowledge
! Give e-customers control
! Tap into experts – including the customer
! Support “intercreativity”
IIR Conference Presentation
Evaluating Site Needs Based on Customer Needs
Gartner Consulting—4 November—Page 10
Entire contents © 2000 Gartner Group, Inc. All rights reserved.
Web sites exist to create online experiences for e-customers – and those online experiences will be driven
by what customers need, want and can do on Web sites. Content that doesn’t relate to customer’s pursuits is
very likely to be extraneous. Many enterprises’ Web sites are still caught in a “publishing” mode where all the
content normally available on the enterprise is made available – this could just be cluttering up your Web site
and making the pertinent information and functionality harder to find. If you use theming you will craft content
so that it supports e-customer processes. In general dot.coms, whose Web sites are often focused on
delivering utility to e-customers (because incumbent enterprises are not adequately meeting an explicit or
latent customer need for that utility) provide good examples of the kind of single-mindedness that is required.
Under “the basics” (slide 3) we discussed the customer directive “let me make valid comparisons” – this
highlights the importance of establishing standardization in the presentation of content related to like
products and services. Another important customer directive is “let me build my knowledge”. Enterprises
need to consider all of the media customers use to learn about the enterprise and make the choices they
need to – e-customers will become frustrated if you only give them the information you have always given
them and don’t use the interactivity of the Web to help them build their knowledge. Personalization of content
will be important in helping customers build their knowledge. It is also important to give e-customers control
over the content that is personalized. While personalization is often driven by data or the enterprise, it should
also be driven by the e-customer.
Web content management systems are allowing enterprises to engage in decentralized publishing where
content experts can create and review content directly. Templates are used to standardize content creation
and presentation and divide content tasks appropriately between different resources and a workflow provides
the appropriate checks and balances to ensure content quality. Even e-customers, and other external
stakeholders can be content experts. When engaging in theming enterprises should deliberately consider
what content can be created by the enterprise and what needs to be created by external stakeholders, such
as e-customers e.g. Amazon’s e-customer reviews provide a huge amount of content that would be a
significant burden on Amazon and e-customer reviews provide additional value because they come from real
people using the products concerned.
Tim Berner’s Lee introduced the idea of intercreativity in his book “Weaving the Web”. Intercreativity is the
process of making things or solving problems together – or collaboration. We should leverage the immediacy
and interactivity of the Web to create content that would have otherwise never existed and that would not
have the same value without the contribution from distributed individuals with ideas, concepts and concerns
to share.
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Gartner Consulting
Dialogue
!
Lead customers through online processes
!
Always relate an action to a reaction
Avoid minimalist design for its own sake
! Use multiple dimensions
!
IIR Conference Presentation
Evaluating Site Needs Based on Customer Needs
Gartner Consulting—4 November—Page 11
Entire contents © 2000 Gartner Group, Inc. All rights reserved.
Many Web sites fail to guide customers through critical processes. While we
can’t predict every screen customers will progress through we do know
where certain screens combine to form a process that customers will
complete, e.g. an order process, or complete/update my personal profile
process, and we need to engineer content and navigation to guide ecustomers through these processes.
guiding e-customers through online processes involves telling customers
what will happen BEFORE they embark on the process, and then revisiting
where they are in relation to the other steps of the process every step along
the way. One of the 17 customer directives that gets thrown into high relief
when considering dialogue is “tell me what I get if I do this” – in other words
we must make it absolutely clear what reaction is caused in response to
every action before action is taken.
Minimalist design is something we have inherited from GUI (graphical user
interface) design for non-interactive systems. While customers generally
want a site that’s not too cluttered up, they need plenty of cues on what they
can do, where they can go and what reactions they will get in response to
every action. Icons and labels don’t have to stand on their own - the Web
has given us multiple dimensions within which to provide e-customers with
the cues they need e.g. the use of rollover text and audio clips to explain site
elements.
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Gartner Consulting
The Evolution of Customer Effective Web Sites
!
!
!
!
!
Toward multiple dimensions
Toward creativity
Toward customer integration
Toward shared learning
Toward application development
For Competitive Advantage
IIR Conference Presentation
Evaluating Site Needs Based on Customer Needs
Gartner Consulting—4 November—Page 12
Entire contents © 2000 Gartner Group, Inc. All rights reserved.
Toward multiple dimensions
Web sites will become the product of creative individuals who no longer see the
Web page as anything, even slightly akin to a physical page. They will see Web
“pages” as spaces where interactions dynamically create e-service experiences for
e-customers and e-customer themes are naturally embodied in an interactive
medium.
Toward creativity
The Web must develop as a medium where people go to create, as much as to review.
Toward customer integration
Businesses will integrate e-customers into business processes to the point where
customers help create, and are part of, those business processes. We will network
with e-customers to dynamically create the e-services they require.
Toward shared learning
E-customers and businesses will learn from each other to create new ways of
working together.
Toward application development
Web site development will be more about developing Web-based applications
dedicated to enabling e-customer pursuits – the Web site will become a vehicle for
delivering online functionality, or “applications”.
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Gartner Consulting
Contact information:
Jodie Dalgleish, Vice President
Gartner
jodie.dalgleish@ gartner.com
+1-408-468-8374
+1-408-468-8526 (fax)
IIR Conference Presentation
Evaluating Site Needs Based on Customer Needs
Gartner Consulting—4 November—Page 13
Entire contents © 2000 Gartner Group, Inc. All rights reserved.
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