Getting the basics right

I always have my eye on the French news and I spotted a report from journaldunet.com on what French customers are looking for from a branded site. I don’t think the French are any different from us when it comes to web surfing so we could probably apply it to the UK as well.

The results on the surface are may seem a touch obvious.

78% of people go to a brand’s site for information on the products and services
54% for the online store
44% to find a nearby outlet
38% for help on how to use the product / service
37% for customer benefits
31% for contact with customer services
30% for information on the brand
10% for games / competitions
9% for advertising
7% to interact with other customers
(several responses are possible)

However, I think in reality this is quite interesting. This survey screams to brand owners that the web experience is first and foremost about information and assistance.

Customers want and expect to find clear information about your products and services . We can wax lyrical about social media and it certainly has its role to play for brands but we must first get the basics right.

Information needs to be set out clearly with easy navigation. An easy-to-use accessible site will give the customer the reassurance that you know what you are doing. If your site is putting obstacles in the way, what does that say about the products or services you are selling and their potential to be outstanding?

A simple test would be to put some of your customers, or even a couple of friends in front of your web site and just watch what they do. It is sometimes hard for us marketers to realise which bits the customer will trip up on. Sometimes it is the most obvious. As I have said before, even the really big brands have some big usability issues making it hard to find simple pieces of information. During the volcanic ash episode, my favourite target the air travel sites, notable Jet2 and easyjet’s informations was extremely poor, confusing and contradictory.

For the next step, you could try setting your customers a couple of really easy tasks to find on your web site and see if they manage. Usability testing doesn’t always have to be hi-tech, this method is possible for any small business.

Make sure access to the customer service line is easy to find and welcoming. If this survey is true, a third of all customers are just looking for some kind of assistance. The customer service experience is a moment of truth, when the customer will make up their mind about your brand. A brand advocate can be created from a great experience, since so many are so poor! Take the opportunity to do it well!

Beaches – which one exactly?

It’s snowing yet again outside and it is definitely the time of year to think about booking the big Summer holiday. Don’t be fooled by the recession, a large % of British people count the annual holiday as a necessity and not a luxury.

Although you still can’t beat a brochure and thousands of trees are destroyed per year just for my pile under the coffee table, a large amount of us will turn to the web to research if not to book our annual summer getaway.

I will say it directly now, I have never found a truly good travel web site. Not one. If you have one to bring to my attention – please do. From the large corporates of Thomson and Thomas Cook to the niche operator, they all work off a similar sort of database that can’t see to cope with a “normal” customer request such as “family room, somewhere with sun, no more than 4 hours of flight, all inclusive with a kids club please”.

You have to know the date you are going and which airport you are going from before you can get any choices. Now. I live in Peterborough so I can go from quite a few airports including most of the London ones, East midlands and Birmingham but the travel site will insist you choose first. At best they propose “all London”. And maybe I don’t know the date I want to go, maybe I just want one of the 6 weeks of school holiday and I’ll have the cheapest one please.

Anyway more specifically, for a luxury option, I tried the Beaches site. The family branch of the better known Sandals Resorts, this is “top of the range” stuff. So surely they have a good approach?

First up, they want exact dates and which airport in Jamaica I want to fly to before offering me hotels. Hang on a minute, isn’t it the hotel that dictates the airport? And then, I get the error message, “nothing for that date, give us a ring”.

No alternative, no suggestion, no results at all, never mind relevant ones, just a great contribution to the “how to annoy your customer best” guide which I am seriously considering writing.

So I tried the “hotel only” option and no soon as I get a price, another big usability “no no”, they want my full details and create a log in and password. Excuse me, I was trying to have a browse.


This is one of the biggest reasons for drop off of customers early on in a journey. Ask for their exact details too early on and they give up with the effort and the nosiness. However if you draw the customer into the site, offering them choice, changes of date, a cheaper price, a different airport, a different hotel that is £200 more but with a special facility you might like, you engage the customer and they gain in confidence and interest.

It is proven that customers need to feel in control and love flexibility. Not to be confused with complexity.

Anyway, the Beaches deluxe holiday was just a pipe dream so back to battling with the Going Places web site and the search for a box for four in Benidorm….

15 years of Eurostar

Can it really be 15 years since the French joined the British by train thanks to Eurostar? The butt of many jokes before it was launched and saddled by enormous debt, it could have been a huge disaster. Instead, it is an exciting and efficient method of transport that allows its customers to get into the heart of 4 major city centres in the time it takes you to get into the Heathrow car park.

When it was launched in November 1994, the age of cheap air travel was arriving with Ryanir already carrying 1.6 million passengers a year. London to Paris is a mere 40 minute flight so why take the train?

It’s just a far better customer experience all round.

1) Leave right from the heart of Paris or London. Paris’ leading airport, Roissy is a good 45 minute train journey from the centre of Paris and is vying for the crown of “most depressing airport in the world”

2) Check in only 20 minutes before

3) Keep your bags with you and not have them thrown around by a grumpy air baggage handler

4) No deep vein thrombosis or earache - have a walk down the train to stretch your legs and definitely more leg room than easyjet or ryanair.

To celebrate its 15 years, Eurostar are planning a new press, radio, outdoor and digital campaign by Fallon to encourage viewers to visit their social media site Littlebreakbigdifference.com

It seems like Eurostar are emphasising the ease of travel and promoting shorter trips if not day trips. One execution will read ‘Paris for an anniversary gift; Paris because it's Saturday'.

All good stuff, it is just a shame that their booking system is still so clunky I tried to book a ticket once and gave up. Once you have chosen a couple of tickets, you have to start again if you want an earlier or later train and the site makes it difficult to see the cheapest return options. When I clicked on “Continue booking” as a guest , there was a system error. The time before that the whole booking engine was down.

In conclusion, it really is a great actual customer experience once you are at the station and is so efficient that I even have a friend who lives in Peterborough and commutes to Paris to work. What’s more, the trains even run when the French transport workers are on strike.

However, the online customer experience needs a lot more TLC.

Hope the people from Eurostar sort that out before they spend millions on a swish advertising campaign and then lose a signficant % through poor usability. Can anyone afford that in these hard times?