By Mark Nicklin

What are the incentives and disincentives of using the web as a business channel to market? And can the disincentives be overcome?

When doing business, customers are looking for a product or service that fulfills their needs, as well as value for money. Doing business online is a great way to drive buying decision-making and complete the sales and fulfillment process. So, what are the incentives for customers doing this and what will drive them away?

Incentives for customers to do business online:

• Availability and reach of information and services on the web – the internet never closes and isn’t subject to geographical boundaries.

• The range of search engines, specific sites that focus on key services (eg. iSelect, TrueLocal, eBay and ourbrisbane) and many well-known brand names allow customers to find the information they are after quickly and easily. Businesses should ensure that they are search engine friendly and have their website link listed on appropriate websites.

• Richness of information. Blackmores is a great example of a site that offers rich content, with specialist areas dedicated to women’s, men’s and children’s health, pregnancy, weight management and much more. Businesses should have as much of their content online as possible to assist the customer with their information needs. This will go some way to building up trust with the customer (subject to the information being objective) and assist with search engine results.

• Customers can do their research and, where relevant, buy and purchase online in their own time and in their own environment. Businesses should embrace this, and ensure there is adequate information on their site to inform the customer without the need for them to seek it out it elsewhere.

• Customers can be anonymous until they want to be identified. They can access information but engage the provider on their terms using online or traditional means (phone or direct). Businesses should provide a range of ways to engage website visitors online and offline by offering online subscriptions and membership options, easy-to-use electronic forms, click to call or click to chat tools, as well as providing a central phone number and your office details.

• Additional value from using the web that is not offered through traditional means, including: online functionality to assist with the buying process (eg. calculators or comparison tools), online discounts, honeymoon offers, bundling of products/services and loyalty programs that can only be accessed through the online channel. Businesses should look at what they can provide to drive customers to do business with them online. But it has to add value to their target customers to have the desired impact.

• Customers require information that is objective and as relevant as possible. TripAdvisor is a good example of a site that does this well, as travelers themselves generate the information. There are blogs and wikis that have threads relating to anything your customer wants to know. Businesses should at the very least use testimonials, references and case studies in support of their offering. Providing an online forum on their site and/or identifying where these forums of online conversation are taking place also needs to be considered. Whether your business is going to act on these conversations or just observe them will require some careful consideration.

Disincentives for customers to do business online:

• If the customer’s experience using the website is poor, they will be dissatisfied. This poor experience is likely to be due to uninspiring design, complex site architecture, a lack of intuitive navigation and/or lack of relevant and easily understood content. Businesses should ensure they invest wisely in building a website that matches their customer’s expectations, and fits with their business needs and position in the market place.

• Insufficient content or information to help a customer make a buying decision. If they can’t get it from your website, they will move on. Businesses need to achieve the right balance of information. They need to look at it from the customer’s eyes not from the business’s perspective. ‘What am I, as a customer, looking for on the website to assist me?’

• Too much selling; not enough value. Even if the sales process can only be fulfilled offline, the website can play a pivotal role in supporting the customer in making the decision. Buying a car is a very good example, where research is often gathered online so that when the customer is ready to go to the seller, all they want to do is kick the tyres and negotiate on the price. If you have genuinely assisted the customer with valuable information online, you are likely to get first chance at the sale. Businesses should ensure their website doesn’t act as just another cog of the sales process, but that it is a genuinely valuable tool that engages the consumer and assists them with their purchasing decision.

• Security is still a key aspect for customers. Customers need to be constantly reassured that their personal and financial information is safe. Business should use the appropriate functionality and tools that are consistent with industry standards and best practice.

• When buying online, there is generally a delay in the customer receiving the product/service and additional costs (eg. postage and handling). Customers want instant buying gratification – to use what they have bought there and then – and to purchase for the best price. Businesses need to provide as much information about their product and service as possible, and offer free or reasonably-priced postage so that the overall price is still less than if they bought it from a physical shop. Careful thought needs to go into the online segment of your business model and how it works with existing offline channels. You don’t want one channel cannibalising the other, or channel wars. But you do want to provide the customer with choices, otherwise they may get all the information from you but still buy elsewhere.

Using online as a channel is not the end-all to solving business problems or creating business opportunities, but it can certainly help. The online marketplace is booming and you’re missing out if your business doesn’t have a strong online presence. Just having a website is not enough these days. If it’s poorly delivered, it can do you more of a disservice than if you had no online presence at all. Just like a physical store or showroom, your space in the online world must be orderly, polished, informative and inviting to your customer to get results.

Interactive, moving signpost. It’s big.

http://www.fubiz.net/2010/02/24/nokia-the-worlds-biggest-signpost/

Blackmores has launched a revolutionary new website that puts health-minded consumers in the driver’s seat.

Working with leading digital services agency, Bullseye, Blackmores has created a destination that is set to become Australia’s biggest online community dedicated to natural health. The new website is personalised to each individual who joins, and is designed to inspire, inform and educate Australians to better health.

Cassandra Brill, Blackmores’ Digital and Interactive Manager said: “We believe something truly revolutionary is happening with the way people are using the internet to learn about health and wellbeing.”

“We want to help people take control of their own health. No longer will we be telling our consumers what we think they’d like to know, we are using technology to allow them to tell us what is most important to them, then supporting that with informed and reliable information they can use themselves and share,” added Brill.

Concerned by trends highlighting Australia’s escalating health challenges such as its ageing population and high levels of obesity, Blackmores looked to its existing 288,000 Australian online members as well as trends from the social media boom to understand what Australians want to know about health and wellbeing.

In response, the traditional ‘one-size-fits-all’ website has been replaced with a site that can be personalised for each member. This is generated from each member’s nominated interests and interactions on the site. Users can also view and share updates on the most popular topics that have been read and discussed by the rest of the community, and access an array of health-related communities where they can chat about the topics that matter most to them.

Jason Davey, Bullseye’s Managing Director of Digital Marketing, said: “Consumers have little patience for irrelevant content, and everyone’s health and fitness outlook and experience is different. Using the intuitive features of leading-edge technology, we have built a website for Blackmores that offers a totally personalised user experience. It’s slick, clever and designed entirely to delight each individual visitor”.

The website aims to ‘get to know’ each member, and then intuitively interacts to guide them to topics of interest, community discussions and product information. Users can then access reliable natural health information and a selection of interactive tools, which include:

Communities
Blackmores has developed ten inspiring and informative health communities. In each one, consumers can find groups where they can research and discuss personal health concerns. These are:
• Women’s Health
• Men’s Health
• Digestion
• Weight Management
• Fitness and Energy
• Stress and Mental Performance
• Pregnancy, Preconception and Breast-Feeding
• Parenting and Children’s Health
• Healthy Ageing
• Cold, Flu, Allergies and Immunity

Virtual Wellness Centre
For free natural health advice, members can ‘ask a naturopath’ with options to chat online, send an email for a detailed, personalised response, or speak directly by phone to one of Blackmores’ Naturopathic Advisory Team members.

Health Topics
Blackmores ‘Health Topics’ cover causes, symptoms and natural therapies for more than one hundred common health conditions.

Learning Centre
Stocked with articles, videos and podcasts, and regularly updated, there is an extensive collection of material covering a range of topics like diet, nutrition, lifestyle and exercise.

Product Assistant
The ‘Product Assistant’ tool helps consumers find the products they are looking for – quickly and easily.

Wellbeing Blog
The ‘Wellbeing Blog’ boasts the latest news and updates from our natural health bloggers.

Shop Online
Exclusive to members only, Blackmores products are now available to purchase directly through the new Blackmores website.

To take a virtual tour and experience the new website, visit www.blackmores.com.au/sitetour.

If you’re heading to ad:tech this year and you’re trying to work out which sessions to go to, our resident crowd favourite, Jason, will be on the ‘Creative – Strategy – Data: What Should Drive Your Digital Marketing Most?’ panel on March 16.

Also…. we’ve been offered a 20% discount on conference passes to extend to our friends. Just type in ATSPC when you’re signing up to redeem the discount.

Hope to see you there!

Sarah

‘Say it with your eyes’ is a microsite www.wearlenses.com.au and online campaign developed for CIBA Vision, a global leader in the research, development and manufacturing of contact lenses and lens care products.

Our approach

Bullseye was asked to work with the tagline ‘Say it with your eyes’, and create a website and viral campaign that was innovative and required a social media application. This site had print media and heavy point of sale materials supporting it.

The site launched in October 2009, and it targets 16 – 19 year old girls who want to, or already do, wear contact lenses. It houses information about contact lenses, as well as an application that connects visitors with Facebook (a popular social networking site for this demographic). This allows the user and their friends to upload and share photos of each other and see what they ‘Say with your eyes’.

There were several key objectives incorporated into the site’s production:

1. Downloadable trial vouchers
2. CIBA Vision branding
3. Viral spread of the Facebook application
4. Information about lenses
5. User redemption of unique codes

Results

Within the first two weeks there were over 1000 hits and Bullseye went on to rank in the 2009 Top 40 BestAds Australian Agency Rankings as a result of the work done on the CIBA Vision project.

Lilydale Free Range Chicken has become one of Australia’s leading brands of free range poultry products. Farming now extends to areas well beyond the Yarra Valley, to include the Barossa Valley in South Australia and the Hunter Valley region in New South Wales.

Objective

Bullseye was engaged by Lilydale to create a new benchmark in chicken websites, portraying Lilydale as superior to its competitors in the digital space and cementing the brand’s positioning as a market leader.

Our approach

Our brief was to design and develop a website that is consistent with the Lilydale brand creating an engaging, informative online experience. The website supports loyal consumers and new consumers in their decision to purchase Lilydale Free Range Chicken.

Bullseye also worked with Lilydale to bring to life natural brand elements through use of known brand cues such as the green colour palette, grass and farm imagery, healthy recipes, health and nutrition and free range farming information.

The aim of the website was to create a resource that could be used by people who were searching for information relating to free range chicken and health and nutrition, whilst also supporting their brand loyalty by providing delicious recipes to partner the Lilydale products. The recipes are presented both in written and video format to further enhance the online experience.

The results

Since launching in December the site has had over 3,200 visitors. The main driver to the website is on pack promotion of the URL and also organic searches. 44% of people come from search, 34% direct and 22% from referring websites. While on the website visitors are engaged viewing on average 4 pages and spending over 3 minutes per session.

The content management system is completely managed by Lilydale and they are now able to create and handle small promotions through the website themselves which has also contributed to website traffic.

Links: www.freerangechicken.com.au

It was a busy morning. The traffic was bad and the parking at UNSW was even worse. The Federal Government’s Realising Our Broadband Future Forum was a highly sought after event, with a lot more people turned away than could attend. The first morning of the two-day event saw the rollout of heavy weight digital evangelists from around the world who spoke eloquently about the digital future. Prime Minister Rudd made it clear that the Government was committed. Of the plenary sessions, I found Mike Quigley’s, CEO of NBN Co, the most beneficial. He gave a good overview of the actual network design. This is the perspiration to support the inspiration.

The Forum was divided between the main plenary session and five specific streams: Smart Infrastructure, Digital Education, e-Community, e-Health and e-Business. Each stream was asked to address their topic in three stages, i.e. What are the Possibilities?, Reality Check and Next Steps. As the presenters were not advised of this approach till very late in the piece, many had already prepared their presentations and things did not flow quite to plan, but nonetheless, a lot of good ideas came out.

I was fortunate enough to be asked to speak in the e-Business stream and I summarised some of Bullseye’s thinking on ‘business@100mbps’. Our white paper had been read by many of the participants and that allowed for some meaty discussions to take place.

The wrap up session was intended to bring the findings of the various streams back to the plenary group. It was difficult to condense all that was canvassed in the time available, but this was more than offset by utilising digital tools to capture and publish the outcomes.

So as I cleared away my parking ticket (had to happen), I reflected on over 20-years in the telecommunications and digital industry and the many false dawns witnessed. This is the real deal and anyone with their head in the sand is heading for a rude awakening.