Latest Trends Customer Experience Online

1Customer Experience: What’s Best, What’s Next

A Point of View on Building Rich Online Experiences

by Doug MackVice President & General Manager of

Consumer & Hosted Solutions at Adobe

Customer Experience:What’s Best, What’s Next


ContentsCustomer Experience Background and Drivers 3Principles Driving Rich Experience Best Practices 3Principle No. 1: “Content is (still) king” 3Principle No. 2: Movement has meaning 5Principle No. 3: Search gets sexier (Browse gets better too…) 7Principle No. 4: Navigation when you need it 12Principle No. 5: Make it personal and empowering 14Principle No. 6: Shopping is becoming social. Hasn’t it always been? 16Principle No. 7: Mobility and multi-channel momentum 17What’s next? 17


Customer Experience Background and Drivers

Since last addressing online customer experience in eCommerce 3.0, How eCommerce Becomes a Uniquely Great Experience, many of the key principles for creating rich, unique experiences remain unchanged; however, many have now expanded and been further developed to reflect the changes in customer expectations, advances in technology (applications, bandwidth, etc.) and growing best practices. Interestingly, the web shopping experience continues to mirror or evolve towards the in-store shopping experience, and to surpass the direct mail order experience by providing more relevant information textually and visually with increasing consumer involvement and interactivity. Nonetheless, throughout this evolution, what remains constant is the critical importance of creating great, highly differentiated, customer experiences, which are imperative for today’s eCommerce managers as their businesses have been validated as one of the fastest growing retail channels.

Additionally, with the economic downturn and eCommerce growth rates slowing to single digits worldwide, customer experience is even more important. According to The State Of Retailing Online 2008: Profitability, Economy, And Multichannel Report, a Shop.org study conducted by Forrester Research, October 2008, 72% of retailers surveyed agreed or strongly agreed that “The online retail channel is better suited to withstand an economic slowdown than the offline retail channel.” Another recent study validated in the retail industry a 66% correlation between customer experience and repeat purchase. Thus asserting success will come to those focused on customer retention strategies that ultimately build strong brands, shopper loyalty and repeat purchase.

Principles Driving Rich Experience Best Practices

Over the last three years, there have been some dramatic and not so dramatic changes to the key principles for creating great customer experience. The following trends and best practices have been observed as the next wave of innovations.

Principle No. 1: “Content is (still) king”

A picture is worth a thousand words, and bigger is better. These sayings clearly hold true for visual merchandising in eCommerce as seen by the dramatic increase in use of imagery to merchandise a product including additional views to showcase different angles, in context and even user-provided imagery. Not only is there more product imagery, (with some retailers increasing the number of images per item to as many as 17 not including color options), these images are now larger, embedded in the product, category and browse pages, and they are all higher quality and zoomable to show customers intricate details. What was once critical “white space real estate” only used for product copy and critical ordering information is now life size or larger-than-actual imagery with product information “overlaid” on the image. Clearly, the impact of better quality and increased quantity of imagery has high effectiveness. Recently reported in the The State Of Retailing Online 2008: Merchandising And Web Optimization Report, a Shop.org study conducted by Forrester Research, August 2008, “of those using alternative images, 49% rated them very effective, while 80% of retailers planned to make them an investment priority for the next 12 months.”

House of Fraser, Britain’s leading department store retailer of many of the world’s most famous brands, is a great example of making its merchandise the focus of its product page.


Product imagery is embedded into product page and critical copy and ordering information are layered over the item. They copy area includes scrolling and tabs for more detailed information.

“In context” photo shows how this Dyson vacuum fits neatly into a small storage cabinet unlike other upright vacuums.


Principle No. 2: Movement has meaning

By adding video, or animation, combined with voice, merchants can tell their shoppers a better product story than just through the use of dynamic imagery or static copy. Videos can demonstrate products in use, show and tell subtleties such as fit and feel, and turn the shopping experience into “active selling mode”. Qualitative user testing has revealed that the shoppers’ eyes are always drawn to the largest visuals, but when competing with animations or self-running videos - the moving visuals were viewed first. Users love to watch videos. If offered a choice to click on a video versus any other rich media type, videos are clicked on most often.

Just as transitions in movies connect one scene to another, cinematic transitions and interaction feedback in applications help keep the shoppers oriented so they always know where they have come from and where they can go. They should not be used to just inhibit exploration of a site, but to guide users along. Even videos have proven to significantly increase conversion; and despite a potential up to 2X increase in conversion rates, only a minority of eCommerce managers currently use animations or video on their sites – surveys estimate that approximately 21% to 30% of all websites use video.

Shop Direct, the UK’s leading online and home shopping retailer selling a huge range of fashion, footwear, home and leisure products, recently produced and added over 1500 videos onto their nine eCommerce sites driving double digit conversion increases. Their implementation was well integrated and complementary to product imagery. Particularly helpful is the ability to view the video in two different sizes, one embedded in product page and the other via a full-screen view as shown below.


Complementary dynamic imagery provides more detailed views.

Movement also brings more meaning to both David’s Bridal and jcp.com. These sites have pushed the animations and videos to their category pages, providing an experience that truly comes to life. Models walk into the web pages, they move at the same time, and in some instances provide the ability to purchase directly from where the video or animation is offered.


David’s Bridal does an excellent job integrating animations throughout the shopping experience from browse to product detail pages. On its category pages, any animation can be clicked on and viewed directly in the page, and several can be viewed at the same time. On its product detail pages, these animations are cleanly integrated with other dynamic imagery for more detailed, user-controlled viewing.

Principle No. 3: Search gets sexier (Browse gets better too…)

The focus of offering rich experiences should move beyond the product detail pages and home pages, to include the browse, category and search results pages. In an effort to provide shoppers with more information quickly and easily to shorten sales cycles and eliminate clicks to purchase, richer visual information should be made available and consistently accessible throughout the website providing a totally immersive experience.


SunglassHut.com is a rich Internet experience from end-to-end. Particularly unique on the site, is a shopper’s ability to view different size visual thumbnail images based on the number of items he chooses to browse. While the ability to change the number of items being browsed at one time is a common option offered on most eCommerce sites, the Sunglass Hut site automatically increases the size of the visual thumbnails as the number of items viewed decreases; thus providing shoppers better visual feedback despite showing fewer items at the same time. Also, shoppers can easily drag and drop any of the thumbnails into a favorites folder or into a comparison chart as well as view alternative images right on the category pages. Whether it is a category page or the search results page, all the rich capabilities are available — a best practice that most sites have yet to implement. Finally, another best practice demonstrated on the product detail pages is including alternative image views in every color option and offering every image in a full-page zoomable view.


Anthropologie’s Quick Shop makes browsing better with modal layers built in the category pages that display full product detail information including zoom, product description, pricing and add to cart. In addition, browsing shows all color options prior to clicking on the Quick Shop or product detail pages.


Anthropologie also showed innovation by testing a desktop application, or widget, that connects to the web for real-time updates. As a desktop application, web development or browser bandwidth limitations no longer restrict the shopping experience. Built using Adobe® AIR®, this application visually searches items by color using a color picker. Shoppers can drag their own photos from their desktops into the application and color match items already owned or from other websites. Searching performance is superior and innovative.


Another example of visual browsing improvements is the ability to show the size of the thumbnails in relative size and proportion to each other. For example, floral arrangements come in different sizes both width and heights. Displaying thumbnails in relative sizes enables shoppers to gain a better perspective of an item prior to ordering, which helps eliminate customer dissatisfaction upon delivery, lowers returns and increases repeat purchases.

Principle No. 4: Navigation when you need it

Navigation when you need it combines the principle of “Content is king” with the concept of letting this content drive the interface. Since content is what browsers care about most, and the “interface” or “chrome” is a barrier between users and what they want, allowing them to work on, play with, watch, listen to, or otherwise focus on the content, and not to see buttons and navigation enhance their experiences and drive loyalty. Keeping the content center-stage, allows users to interact directly and minimize anything that takes away from its primacy – mirroring the interactive, tangible experience of shopping in retail stores.

Too many sites create clutter for shoppers with user interface (UI) elements and choices. Instead of following the typical path where the UI and controls are designed and built first in an application, let the content BE the interface, and all interactions should fall naturally around it, enabling direct manipulation or in-line navigation. A focused UI, especially when an item requires a make complex decision making process or offers many customizable options, can help increase revenues by up to 40%, while shortening the sales cycle by 75%.

One of the first successful implementations of navigation when you need it includes NikeiD. On NikeiD, users are allowed to custom design their own shoes by starting from “scratch” or with a suggested design. Users can then click anywhere on the merchandise to be given that specific navigation to make custom choices. There is a simple guide that indicates to users how much more they have to complete prior to completing their custom ordered items. Importantly, the merchandise is kept central to the “stage”, and users are even provided with many alternative views of their custom items, all with full-screen viewing.


Principle No. 5: Make it personal and empowering

User-provided content allows for great digital experiences that adapt to the personality and profile of the user. The more relevant the content displayed, the more engaged the user is.

In a newly published January 2009 Forrester Research report, Web Content Management Investment Continues Despite The Challenging Economic Climate, almost two-thirds of respondents, expressed interest in personalization. Sixty-four percent of respondents answered that their organizations use or plan to use personalization — tailoring content to specific users or groups — to support their customer experience plans. Explicit personalization — which is tied to authenticated users and which many consider easier to deploy — garnered the interest of 77% of respondents. Also, 50% expressed interest in microsites tied to search pages, 43% in implicit personalization tied to site user behavior, and 43% in user recommendations.


Great examples of personalization include photo services where shoppers can upload their personal photos and design their own greeting cards, calendars, photo books and more. Sites are also beginning to offer sophisticated personalization that can contour accurately to reflect personalized names and messages on to any item, such as Williams-Sonoma’s personalized gifts which allow users to preview their own monogrammed or engraved etchings.

By simply emailing out personalized items with the recipient’s name inscribed on one of its holiday ornaments, Lenox saw an increase in click through and overall revenues.


Principle No. 6: Shopping is becoming social. Hasn’t it always been?

Not only empowering shoppers but also providing tools that empower their community (groups, friends and peers) is truly a significant online shopping shift. User reviews are just the start of how social shopping can drive the ideal eCommerce experience. Community collaboration – sharing and rating of user created merchandise and suggestions to full collaborative shopping – will take what was once an individual, personal and private experience on the web to a completely shared experience similar to the public in-store shopping experience. Already a few great examples of sites allowing the community to create or contribute the content exist.

Freemans Grattan Holdings’ Oli.co.uk allows users to be their own merchants and create their own outfits and sets, then share them with their friends. Anywhere on the site, shoppers can add items to their Look Books, drag and drop them to create outfits, then share them with friends.


NikeiD allows shoe designers to share their custom designed items with anyone shopping on the site. All visitors can browse the newest designs posted daily by others, as well as narrow their assortment by gender, type, product name, sport, technology and color.

Principle No. 7: Mobility and multi-channel momentum

Although still in an earlier stage in North America, it is important to address how mobile devices will drive multi-channel impact. There are currently 3 billion mobile devices in the world today and the number is projected to increase to 5 billion by 2012. In contrast, there are only 236 million computers in the US (896 million worldwide); however, these numbers are only projected to increase to 290 million in US and 1.350 billion worldwide by 2010. Source: eTForecasts 2007.

This will drive a key retailing change in the next few years as seen by some interesting examples that are emerging. Already mobile devices are being used not only for direct orders but as a direct marketing tool to drive in-store or to the web for online purchases. Examples include click- to-order and direct connection to your address book for gift deliveries, texting for in-store pick-ups and specials, pushing newest arrivals that are regionally linked to local store phone numbers for inventory availability, mobile search or UPC scanning capabilities tied to GPS navigation, & web search to find closest available items in store or best prices on the web.

What’s next?The industry is still scraping the surface of how the web can evolve to further drive retail business. In the near term, the web will become more accessible and “device agnostic” with increased availability via set-top boxes on shoppers plasma screens and mobile phones as well continued access on the desktop. Shoppers will continue to push the industry to evolve and develop consistent, pervasive, social and immersive experiences.

AcknowledgementsWe hope that these trends are useful to your business. We welcome direct comments, questions and feedback. Please send your comments to our blog at blogs.adobe.com/scene7 or [email protected].

© 2009 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All rights reserved. Adobe, the Adobe logo, Flash, Flex, Adobe Premiere, and Scene7 are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Adobe Systems Incorporated in the United States and/or other countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

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