Read more.

Why not take a look at SquareMeal.co.uk and discover how we’ve delivered a great customer experience.

With over 20,000 products and a complex product catalogue, the Harwin global website displays a graceful, intuitive navigation with friendly, helpful assistance, encouraging customers into an efficient conversion funnel.

Working with the digital team at Harwin we’ve just given the website a refresh, our objective being to rework the brand experience to position Harwin more strongly as an innovative, global manufacturer of hi-tech products, and at the same time making some subtle improvements to the user experience.

Our principal focus for the re-design was the home page, as it is this that 90% of visitors see (arguably 100% of all new visitors). We re-worked the IA for this page, stripped back the superfluous content (based on GA data) and  introduced some powerful product imagery of end-use applications for Harwin connectors. In terms of UX improvements, we reduced the number of ‘calls to action’ and the colours deployed, helping to reduce customer confusion over what they should do as a next step. At the same time we placed the product search at the heart of the page, indicating to users that this was where we felt they should begin their journey with Harwin. This focus was supported by extending the length of the page, allowing users to scroll to discover the latest tweets, news and events. This extension also allowed the content to feel less cluttered, supporting the modernisation theme.

Once we had the home page nailed we applied the agreed look and feel across the sub pages of the site, adding elegant modern touches throughout whilst respecting the core objectives of data accuracy, SEO and conversion funnel optimisation. The project is ongoing and we’re working with the team at Harwin to roll out new and improved features over the next few months.

Please do visit Harwin.com and see the re-designed website

Read More.

Opinion amongst our retail leisure contacts is split over the potential benefits the 2012 Olympics may bring them.

On one hand, those in London are eager to generate sales from new customers visiting our capital for the duration of the event, whilst on the other, operators across the country are expressing concern that their core, loyal customers, will stay at home and watch the games on TV, or will depart the capital due to the tourist influx.

Whilst it’s too early to predict what commercial impact the games will have, we know that there ‘will be’ an impact and therefore retail leisure operators should ensure their enquiry funnels are optimised to make the most of the opportunity.

What do I mean by this? Well, consider this. Over the last couple of months we’ve been working closely with the digital team at Novus Leisure, who operate 50 bars, clubs and restaurants across the centre of London, along with Tiger Tiger across the UK. For each of their websites we’ve produced engaging Olympic landing pages (though not titled Olympics due to advertising restrictions).

To celebrate the games, Novus have introduced a number of packages for events, with a range of price points to meet customer needs, from ‘Bronze’ at £10 per person to a ‘Luxury box’ at £120 per person alongside pitching bespoke corporate event planning.

Customers can make specific or general online enquiries or request a call-back,  plus there’s downloadable PDF menus, client testimonials and a gallery of venue images. The social media and marketing in the build up to, and during the games, will be encouraging customers to visit these landing pages as their principal conversion point.

But the landing pages are just the beginning, once the customer submits their enquiry it is expertly managed via the Novus eCRM platform.

Staff can fine tune the packages, menus and event details, build the guest-list, message the customer to clarify details and up-sell, cross-sell and take a deposit, ensuring that the customer is both committed to the reservation and that the sale is maximised. Novus then have access online to a range of reports for accurately measuring conversion, sales and revenue generated.

Alongside the eCRM platform we’ve added funnels to Novus analytics platform to track conversion performance for the landing pages and will make appropriate changes necessary to tune the performance further based on the data generated.

The Novus Olympic strategy demonstrates the beauty of working with a flexible eCRM platform, one that empowers them to ‘turn on a penny’ to grab market opportunities.

The Olympics just happen to be the latest opportunity, but Novus have consistently shown their ability to maximise online enquiries, whether they be for Christmas, Celebrations or any other event where they can maximise their reservations for traditional restaurant tables, guest-lists, booths, events, or packages, and more.

We’re hopeful that we’ll be able to replicate the success of our Christmas UX improvements for Novus, where we generated a 50% increase in enquiries over 2010, and we’ll report back after the Olympics with an update..

In tandem with the launch, we’ve extended the La Tasca eCRM system so that customers can register their card online, or request one to be sent to them via the post. Whilst marketing staff can add the latest rewards and promote them via the website. The eCRM system provides detailed reports on usage along with integration for email marketing. In what we believe to be a first for the sector, we have also integrated the eCRM system with Torex’s till system, this integration enables La Tasca to track customers on their entire journey; from making an enquiry online to seeing what they ate, drank, and spent on their visit. Because the eCRM system has a fully integrated email marketing suite, La Tasca will be using this data to send more personalised, relevant promotions to customers based upon their engagement history.

You can find out more by visiting www.latasca.co.uk/loyalty

For example, think about your user journey with John Lewis online, it’s effectively a one-way journey of finding the product you’d like, reading the reviews, help documentation or other supporting collateral then adding said item to your basket and completing the transaction.

But for many service-based markets the options between ‘buy now’ and ‘buy later’ are confused, as you may have some queries, or be looking to ‘show interest’ before committing to a transaction. For example, if you’re planning a holiday and want to ask the reservation staff to ‘hold’ a particular room in a hotel or, if you’re requesting a sample of a product prior to making a bigger purchase decision, or making a party enquiry at a pub. What separates these funnel conversions from simple, transactional ones is the need to have a dialogue with the customer. What I mean by this, is that, there are several steps that may need to happen offline before the customer converts, and these need to be taken into account when measuring the conversion funnel as they can be the key differentiator for customers between buying or not..

So how can dialogue be a key differentiator? Well, consider this, if you’re thinking about going out for a steak dinner and there are two restaurants next door to each other, they’re both around the same price, both serve great steaks cooked to perfection, and both will ensure you’re served promptly and efficiently, which one will you choose? The answer, is probably the one that you feel more of an emotional engagement with. And this emotional engagement will be derived from your experience with their brand, whether this be via their staff, website or other touch point. And what will make that experience special is the restaurant being able to show that they care about you as an individual. It could be the restaurant manager coming over for a chat, or the nature of the email communications you receive from them, the winning restaurant will be the one that engages more effectively with the individual.

The issue for many service-led businesses, is therefore, not how to maximize transactions but how to ensure that enquiries are captured, tracked and managed to ensure that the maximum conversions are obtained. Yet online many websites still do not consider this process as part of a holistic customer experience and manage enquiries and transactions entirely separately, leading to a confused customer experience, lack of dialogue and a loss of management control over the conversion process. For example, many restaurants use the Livebookings or OpenTable embedded booking widgets to take reservations, but these are pure transactional systems, where the customer can only book or not, and mean that customers who want to enter into a dialogue need to ring or email the restaurant directly, leading to a poorer customer experience when compared to restaurant groups who enable customers to make enquiries and reservations via the same process.

So, if quality, service and value are all equal between competitors, the winner will be the one that leverages the experience most effectively to generate emotional engagement, and online that means allowing customers to enter into a dialogue with you. The trick is to ensure that all your customer dialogues are managed and converted as efficiently as possible, and that you can easily report on the progress of the enquiries through the sales funnel. For many small businesses the tracking and reporting on this data is quite simple as the customer base is quite small, but for bigger businesses, with multiple offerings, locations and customer touch points the data becomes more complex as the relationships become ever more entwined, and for that you’ll need a great eCRM system.

For each venue website we added a landing page with content-led collateral highlighting its suitability and the various add-on options available, customers were then invited to make a party enquiry, where they could identify the date and time, and select their preferred menu (and budget), select their add-ons such as Canapes or Ice Sculpture, before sending it to the central eCRM system. We also included a call-back facility, plus the option for customers to send a ‘simple’ enquiry, where they were looking for more guidance on the options available.

The result of these changes was a 50% increase in the number of online enquiries generated compared to the same period in 2010, at the same time the conversion rate for the Christmas enquiry process increased significantly, indicating that whilst traffic increased, it was the UX improvements that ensured a higher number of customers submitted enquiries.

We’re obviously very pleased with these results, the Christmas period offers a significant turnover boost for retail leisure operators, and maximising returns is all the more important during tough economic times.

Whilst sad that SquareMeal didn’t win a top prize, we’re pretty happy with being short-listed as it meant they felt SquareMeal ‘noteworthy and of a high quality’, only 2 other sites were short listed in the  ‘Food and Beverage’ section.