5
Jul/08

10 Tenets of the Google User Experience

by Michael Julson under Ecommerce

While surfing the Google corporate pages, I came across this doc that explains the tenets that Google strives for in thier user experience.

Here are the main factors, check out the document for the background behind each.

1. Focus on people – their lives, their work, their dreams.
2. Every millisecond counts.
3. Simplicity is powerful.
4. Engage beginners and attract experts.
5. Dare to innovate.
6. Design for the world.
7. Plan for today’s and tomorrow’s business.
8. Delight the eye without distracting the mind.
9. Be worthy of people’s trust.
10. Add a human touch.

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19
May/08

Experience Strategy Development

by Michael Julson under Ecommerce

If you are working on your experience strategy or a redesign of your site, you should definitely take an hour out of your day to watch this presentation.  It’s given by two guys from Adaptive Path which is a product experience strategy and design firm.  The presentation was delivered to employees of Google, but someone was kind enough to share it on you tube. 

Even though the topic is mainly centered around experience through an application, it also has great information if you are working on customer experience in the store. 

I particularly liked two parts in the later half of the presentation where they talked about the Peak End Rule and The long wow.  Enjoy!

You need to a flashplayer enabled browser to view this YouTube video

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19
May/08

Back to The Basics, Order Management and Updating the Customer

by Michael Julson under Ecommerce, Retail, Social Networking, Web 2.0

When talking to retailers about their online strategy, the topics lately have been about rich Internet application interfaces like AJAX, Flash or Silverlight and social functionality like consumer product reviews.    Despite personally enjoying these topics,  I often try to bring the conversation around to the basics to make sure the retailer has done the basic things like implement accurate real time inventory visibility and accurate tracking through an order management system and set of processes.    Nothing creates a sub par customer experience more than messing up the basic fundamentals of what consumers have come to expect when shopping, tracking, and receiving their order.  The experience I had with Barnes and Noble last week illustrates this pretty well.

My wife was speaking with our daughter’s 4th grade teacher and she told my wife that she wanted to have the class read The Westing Game before school was released for the summer.  Unfortunately, the school library only had a few copies so my wife and I decided to purchase the needed books and donate them to the school.  We spent the following weekend visiting a few book stores and bought all of the copies they had, but we were still short about 10 copies.  (continue reading…)

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11
May/08

Consumer Profiles Use of Social Media

by Michael Julson under Social Networking, Web 2.0

There’s a good article over at Advertising Age describing profiles of consumers who use Social Media.  Here are a couple of the profiles, for the rest, check out the article.

 ”SOCIALLY ISOLATED
These people are generally unhappy with their lives and feel alone. Not surprisingly, they fall at average or below average for e-mailing. But that doesn’t mean they eschew social media. In fact, they’re 12% more likely than the average person to use blogs, message boards or social-networking sites. They also post comments on blogs at least twice a month; personal, music, consumer-product and video-game blogs are most visited. ”

 ”BRAND-LOYAL
This group shies away from buying unknown brands just for a bargain and prefers to buy brand-name goods. They’re very average social-media users, but some subjects of interest drive them to social media more than the average person: They’re 21% more likely to read environmental blogs and 22% more likely to use professional-networking sites to make new contacts. ”

There are 9 profiles in all.

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1
May/08

CompUSA.com bought by Systemax and Best Buy takes over 17 leases

by Michael Julson under Retail

Just when you thought that CompUSA was done, Systemax (Owner of Tigerdirect) bought the rights to the brand CompUSA.com, trademarks, website and 16 stores for $30 million sometime last week.   This comes a month after being sold to the liquidation firm Gordon Brothers Group.   Systemax has announced they will reopen 15 stores, 13 of which are in Florida.

Then, today Best Buy took over 17 leases of CompUSA locations totaling 453,000 square feet for $13.5 million.   The leases range in time lines of 3 to 14 years. 

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1
May/08

Home Depot closing 15 underperforming US Stores

by Michael Julson under Retail

Home Depot announced that they are closing 15 underperforming stores affecting ~1300 store associates.   It appears that the housing market problems have gone on for too long and Home Depot has to make adjustments.  They say that they are still planning on opening 55 new stores in their 2009 fiscal year. 

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3
Apr/08

Microsoft Surface Video Demo At AT&T Retail Store

by Michael Julson under Retail

Embedded here is a video demo of the use of Surface technology in the AT&T retail store.  It shows the user placing a Samsung Blackjack on the table and all of the features displayed in rich media with video and audio coming up about the phone.  The user then places a Curve on the table and it instantly shows a feature comparison between the two phones.  Pretty slick demo.  

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3
Apr/08

Borders Concept Store Video

by Michael Julson under Retail

I found this video on youtube that shows the new concept stores being rolled out by Borders.  It’s a good looking store, but I don’t see anything new. 

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2
Apr/08

Target’s Inner Circle – CNN Money

by Michael Julson under Resources, Retail

In case you missed it, there was a good article by CNN Money that covers Target’s Executive team, why they are different and how they are preparing for the departure of their CEO. http://money.cnn.com/2008/03/18/news/companies/reingold_target.fortune/index.htm

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2
Apr/08

Amazon launches TextBuyIt Service via SMS On A Cell Phone

by Michael Julson under Mobile, Retail

amazontextbuyit.jpg

Standing in a Barnes & Noble, flipping through a book you are considering to purchase, you can now pull out your cell phone, write a txt a message to 262966 (Amazon on a phone pad) that contains the ISDN, UPC code, or name of the book and Amazon will reply back with the price of the book and an offer to buy it.    The book could now be 20-40% cheaper if you are willing to wait a couple days for shipping. 

The next versions are sure to include being able to take a picture of the UPC with your phone camera, send that up and receive your price and availability of the product. 

 This time next year, it will be interesting to know what percentage of retail store sales are pre-scanned at Amazon before purchase. 

 Also consider the possibilities of advertising.  While walking through the airport, an advertisement panel on the wall shows the latest Iacocca leadership book and at the bottom it gives you the Amazon SMS # and a short code for the product.  In two minutes you’ve purchased the book. 

About six months ago we designed a similar addon module for Blue Martini Commerce that would allow this type of sms commerce.  It fell in the priority list as being a little too far out there from a consumer adoption standpoint.  Looks like we will need to reconsider. 

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