Gerne nachfolgend Auszüge aus dem Interview mit freundlicher Genehmigung der Post:

Herr Lang, Sie beraten Unternehmen, die in den E-Commerce einsteigen oder den Onlineshop optimieren möchten. Wie muss man sich eine Zusammenarbeit vorstellen?

Je nach Art der Zusammenarbeit begleiten wir den Kunden durch die Realisierungs- und Einführungsphase, laden Dienstleister nach methodischem Raster zur Offertstellung ein, bringen externes Know-how ein, Coachen das interne Projektteam und stehen sowohl als Second Opinion als auch als Konfliktlöser zur Verfügung, wenn es mal mit der vom Auftraggeber ausgewählten Agentur nicht so rund läuft. In der Regel vertreten wir den Auftraggeber auch in der Realisierungsphase in fachlicher und technischer Hinsicht, und in der Testingphase kommt unser Know-how noch einmal zum Tragen, da wir über den nötigen Weitblick verfügen.

Was macht Ihrer Ansicht nach einen guten Shop aus?
Ein guter Shop bietet den Kunden ein nachhaltiges Einkaufserlebnis, sorgt für wiederkehrende Einkäufe, hat eine geringe Abbruchrate im Checkout sowie überdurchschnittliche Warenkorbgrössen und Conversionsraten. Wichtig ist weiter, dass alle vor- und nachgelagerten Prozesse optimal in die Unternehmensorganisation eingebettet sind – sowohl technologisch wie auch organisatorisch.

Was muss ein Shop-Konzept beinhalten?
Die umfassende Betrachtung des Online-Vertriebs. Angefangen bei der technischen Seite, die für Kosteneffizienz und straffe Prozesse sorgt, über den Shop selber, der mit all seinen visuellen und funktionalen Kriterien die Zielgruppe optimal ansprechen muss, bis zur Sichtbarkeit in Suchmaschinen. Die wichtigste Zutat ist natürlich das Produktsortiment, das attraktiv und emotional präsentiert und auf die Zielgruppe abgestimmt werden muss. Das Sahnehäubchen sozusagen ist dann noch die Integrationsfähigkeit des Shops in zahlreiche Meta-Plattformen wie Preisvergleichsdienste, Social Shopping und Social Media Sites oder auch die Extraktion von Sortiments- und Funktionsbereichen mittels so genannter Widgets.

Wie findet man ein geeignetes Shopsystem und worauf muss man bei der Wahl achten?
Die Evaluation eines Shopsystems ist sehr vielschichtig und hängt vom Bedarf des Auftraggebers ab. Ein aussagekräftiges Anforderungsprofil ist das A und O. Denn machbar ist sehr vieles, aber ob es auch sinnvoll ist? Wir helfen unseren Kunden, diese feine Linie zu ziehen. Bei der Wahl gibt es neben der Abdeckung der Bedürfnisse noch weitere Gesichtspunkte zu berücksichtigen wie beispielsweise die eingesetzte Technologie, Schnittstellenproblematiken, Innovationskraft des Herstellers, Abhängigkeit durch den Hersteller, vorhandenes internes Know-how über die Technologie uvm.

Welches sind die schlimmsten Fehler, die Unternehmen machen können, wenn sie einen Onlineshop realisieren?
Sich nur auf das Schaufenster zu konzentrieren und alle vor- und nachgelagerten Prozesse zu vergessen. Auch gibt es viel zu viele Shops, die von Suchmaschinen nicht effektiv indexiert werden können. Wenn die Produkte bei Google nicht im relevanten Kontext erscheinen, sinkt die Chance markant, dass der Shop auch besucht wird, da kann er noch so toll sein.

Wie wichtig ist es, den Shop technologisch auf dem neusten Stand zu halten?
Wir haben sehr kurze Innovationszyklen, daher ist es wichtig, den Shop auf dem neusten Stand zu halten. Idealerweise ist der Shop modular aufgebaut, damit er sich jederzeit erweitern lässt. Nehmen wir folgendes Beispiel: Wer hat vor zwei Jahren an Facebook gedacht? Heute kommen Sie nicht mehr darum herum, Ihren Shop an Social Networks anzubinden. Sei es, um Produkte Freunden zu empfehlen, Spezialangebote nur für Fans zu lancieren oder gar Produktdiskussionen über den Social Graph anzuregen. Auch hilft eine Plattform wie Facebook, Login- und User-Identifikationsprobleme zu lösen, indem man nicht mehr eigene Logins verwendet, sondern dasjenige von Facebook integriert. Wir kommen damit einem Single-Signon einen (kleinen) Schritt näher.

Seit der Erfindung des E-Commerce vor rund 15 Jahren hat sich dieser Kanal enorm entwickelt. Wie sehen Sie die Zukunft?
Ich sehe die Zukunft sehr rosig. Je nach Zählart bestreiten wir heute zwischen 3 und 5 Prozent des Detailhandelsvolumens online. Ein Grossteil der Käuferschaft muss sich erst noch an diesen Verkaufskanal gewöhnen und geht situativ mit ihm um. Die nächste Generation aber wächst heran und kommt ins kaufkräftige Alter – die Generation, für die das Internet eine Selbstverständlichkeit ist. Das wird einen mächtigen Schub geben. Im B2B werden seit Jahren sehr hohe E-Commerce-Umsätze erreicht – im vergangenen Jahr wurden über zwei Drittel aller Bestellungen elektronisch getätigt. Treibende Kraft zur Erzielung von Kosteneffizienz ist hier hauptsächlich die Prozess- und Systemintegration.

Sie sagen, dass E-Business einen Kulturwandel im Unternehmen bewirkt. 
Ja, E-Business generell und E-Commerce speziell bewirken einen Kulturwandel. Das Unternehmen ist nicht mehr Händler und verkauft Waren. Es mutiert zum Dienstleister, und einer seiner Services ist der Verkauf. Es steht in ständiger Interaktion mit dem Käufer und reagiert auf dessen Bedürfnisse. Und nicht zu vergessen: Es gibt keine Büro- und Ladenöffnungszeiten mehr. E-Commerce muss auch im Unternehmen gelebt werden.

Was kaufen Sie persönlich eigentlich online?
Sehr vieles! Von Reisen über Versicherungen und Elektronikartikel bis hin zu Autoreifen. Grundsätzlich alles, was wenig emotionalen Charakter hat und dessen Besorgung grundsätzlich zeitintensiv ist. Ich spare lieber die Zeit für Dinge, die Freude bereiten, auch beim Einkauf. So kaufe ich Möbel oder Kleidung nach wie vor gerne im stationären Handel.

Sometimes games have a lot to teach us about human nature, other times they're just games.

One game that some economists and psychologists claim has much to teach us is called The Ultimatum Game.

The game is very simple. It's played between two people who have to decide how to split an amount of money. Let's say it's $100.

One of the two people is randomly chosen to make an offer to the other about how to split the money between them. If the other person accepts this offer then they split it on that basis. But, if the other person rejects it, neither of them gets anything.

That's it.

The reason some economists and psychologists have got excited about it is because of how people behave when they play this game. What you find is that most people make offers of splitting the cash somewhere between 40% and 50%. Generally speaking if an offer is made below about 30% it will be rejected by the other person more often than not.

The Ultimatum Game has been pointed to as a way of showing that humans are economically irrational. Why do people reject an offer of 25% of the total pot? If the pot is $100 then they are choosing between getting $25 or nothing at all. So why do they choose nothing at all?

The answer seems to be that people generally find offers below 30% to be insulting. It's insulting that the other person should suggest such a derisory sum, even when it's free money. So they prefer to have nothing and punish the other person's greed. And remember the other person is losing $75 in this case whereas I'm only losing $25.

To the economist what players in the simplest version of this game are forgetting is that it's a one-shot deal. It doesn't matter if you aren't fair, because the other person can't get back at you. All you need to do is work out the minimum offer that's likely to be accepted.

So really what the Ultimatum game is showing is that most people act fairly, or at least want others to see them acting in a fair way. In addition, any unfair behaviour is punished by the recipient of the offer.

Only an economist would argue that this is evidence of human irrationality. Acting fairly, or at least appearing to act fairly is a highly rational custom in a society in which we have to work together. Cheats, as they say, do not prosper.

So does The Ultimatum Game really tell us anything about human nature or is just further proof of how difficult it is to model human behaviour?

The optimist might say it tells us that people are mostly just and fair--or at least want to appear that way.

The pessimist, though, might say that people are being selfish because they have to make a judgement, consciously or not, about what offer will be accepted. Remember that it's in the offerer's interests to have his offer accepted or he won't get any money at all.

What it certainly shows is how many psychological complexities can be drawn out of a very simple game like this.

Image credit: thinkpanama

PsyBlog's How to Be Creative

If we can all be creative, why is it so hard to come up with truly original ideas?

It's because creativity is mysterious. Just ask any scientist, artist, writer or other highly creative person to explain how they come up with brilliant ideas and, if they're honest, they don't really know.

But over the decades psychologists have given ordinary participants countless tests, forms and tasks and conducted hundreds of hours of interviews. From these emerge the psychological conditions of creativity.

Not what you should do, but how you should be...

Click here to find out more...

10 Reasons You’ll Love Interface Papers

1. You get 16 sketch papers for designing iPhone, iPad, web apps and icons.
2. You get 8 portrait and 8 landscape paper layouts for all your sketching needs.
3. You get sketch papers designed with a blueprint look and feel.
4. You get graph paper grid lines to help you sketch more quickly and accurately.
5. You get ruled columns so that you can label and annotate your sketches.
6. You’ll be able to better articulate your design vision to your team on the fly.
7. You’ll be able to refine your interface ideas over time without spending any resources on real development.
8. You’ll be able to give others a complete feel of your app’s user experience from beginning to end.
9. You’ll be able to move into the wireframing and mockup stage with a strong understanding of your interface.
10. You’ll be able to exercise your interface design concepts early on the process and get better end results.

Sketching isn’t reserved for artists and architects. It’s for interface designers too. Many designers don’t have a solid template they can use to sketch their interface design concepts. Because of this need, Interface Papers was born. Simply choose between the different portrait and landscape layouts, and print out the PDF template you want to use. Whether you’re designing an iPhone, iPad, web app or icons, Interface Papers has the right sketching template for you.

For a limited time, when you buy Interface Papers, you’ll get Productivity Papers free! Productivity Papers is a system that will not only help you work more productively, but it’ll also help you become an expert at your job. Its methods are backed by research and proven to work over time.

The single user license is for one person. The multiple user license is for up to 5 people. After you buy your license, you will receive an email to download the files. Check your spam and bulk folders if you don’t see it in your inbox.

Screenshots of Interface Papers

Portrait Templates

Landscape Templates

The conference format is unique in that it is structured around peer-to-peer small group huddles, where successful enterprise professionals lead discussion, and where there are plenty of spontaneous business opportunities.

We’ll be there joining in the action and would love to meet up with you! If you know you’ll be there and would like to set a meeting time, please Contact us, or comment below.

Looking forward to seeing you there!

“Die Wettbewerbskommission (Weko) exerziert am Autohersteller BMW ein Exempel. Die Minderung des Preiswettbewerbs, durch die Behinderung von Parallelimporten, wird nicht toleriert. Das ist gut so.”

Bereits im vergangenen Jahr musste die WEKO korrigierend eingreifen gegen Haushaltsgeräte-Hersteller wegen Behinderung des Onlinehandels.

Die Busse wird sicher angefochten und die juristischen Spielereien werden ihren Gang nehmen. Wichtig aber ist, dass der Markt in der Schweiz nicht weiter abgeschottet werden darf, auch nicht von Automobilherstellern.

Dem Konsumentenschutz ist gem. Handelszeitung die Busse noch zu tief, sieht das WEKO-Verdikt aber als wichtigen Leitentscheid:

“Die Weko-Sanktion sei ein wichtiger Leitentscheid im Kampf gegen überteuerte Importprodukte, der auch für andere internationale Anbieter Signalwirkung erzielen könne.

Die SKS fordert die Weko auf, weitere solche Leitentscheide in anderen Branchen (Haushaltsgeräte, Sportartikel, Pflege- und Hygieneprodukte, Zeitschriften und weitere) zu fällen und damit effektiv gegen ungerechtfertigt hohe Preise vorzugehen. Zudem müsse das Kartellgesetz verschärft werden, sodass bereits unzulässige Preisdifferenzen die Weko zur Untersuchung bemächtigten.”

Im Bereich der Autozubehörteile spielt der Markt bereits etwas, nicht zuletzt wegen Playern wie reifendirekt.ch das zur deutschen Delticom gehört. Diese publizierte für das Jahr 2011 einen (vorläufigen) Onlineumsatz von EUR 480 Mio. Auch der Newcomer-Award des 1. Swiss E-Commerce Awards ging dieses Jahr mit Pneujoe.ch an einen Mitbewerber aus dieser Branche.

Nach wie vor ist der Vertrieb von Neuwagen in der Schweiz über verschiedene Handelsstufen ziemlich gut organisiert – aber ich warte schon lange auf ein innovatives Startup, das endlich diese altertümlichen Strukturen grossflächig aufbricht, Gas gibt und den Automobil-Betrieb sprichwörtlich rechts überholt.

Wer geht wohl als erster über die Ziellinie?

I was leafing through the MarketingSherpa 2012 Executive Guide to Marketing Personnel (free excerpt at that link), and lead author Chuck Coker listed a series of initiatives that would help companies develop the capacity of their individuals. The first one was …

“There is a personal development plan for each individual. Courses and training are provided.”

While some high-performing marketing organizations create a personal development plan for each individual, many do not — especially in smaller companies.

So, here’s my advice to you … create your own. Know where you want to go and what goals you want to accomplish, and then find the path that will lead you there. Since your boss isn’t a HR expert like Chuck, he probably doesn’t care about HR terms like life purpose or idea self.

However, I guarantee he cares about results.

So, you can create your own path that focuses on the bottom line, sales, leads or some other KPI. And, one of the best ways to get a path that will lead you there is by creating a new program of optimization and testing in your company. Optimization and testing can help you achieve the results you need to bring notice to management and earn you the promotion you desire. If you haven’t started yet, here is a free resource kit to help get you started.

DOWNLOAD THE KIT>>>

We originally created this kit to prepare attendees for the Quick Win Clinic at the upcoming Optimization Summit 2012 in Denver, but I think it has a few basic resources to help you get your first testing win even if you can’t join us at next month’s Summit:

• A Statistical Significance Calculator
• A Design of Experiments Worksheet
• A list of resources to help you set up the test

Use these documents to record the important aspects of your tests, and then schedule regular meetings with your boss showing him what you’ve learned about the customer that will help the company … along with the numerical results showing what you’ve added to your team’s KPIs.

And if you need some assistance along the way, we have courses and training that can help as well.

Everyone wants a Fairy Godmother HR department that will sprinkle wave a magic wand and help usher their career along. But, if you don’t have that bippity-boppity-boo in your organization, take matters into your own hands and start showing the results of your hard work.

Related Resources

Marketing Career: 4 questions every marketer should answer (and what you need to know to start asking them)

Creating a Culture of Testing: How to defeat the tyranny of best practices

Optimization 101: How to get real results from A/B testing

Marketing Career: 3 steps to optimize your LinkedIn profile

Note: In this article, I will use “reader” when referring to people who would read comics and/or visit web sites, and I will use “user” to refer only to people in the context of visiting web sites.

We already covered grouping, proximity, pacing, and balance. Each of these is powerful enough on its own, but when combined masterfully, they allow you to control a reader’s perceptions. I’m going to show you how to weave these disparate pieces together to build a better experience for your users.

Flow

Taken together, all of the elements of cartooning create something called flow. A master of flow can make readers’ eyes dance across the page, even in unconventional directions.

Left to their own devices, eyes want to travel in a downward slanting direction across pages. This is why ad magazines have “v” shaped layouts. This is really only good for scanning. Both web designers and comickers don’t want readers to scan, we want them to digest, to understand, to listen with their eyes.

While there are very few rules in comics, one is that the Western reader’s eye always starts in the upper left side of the page. If there is no panel there, the eye moves downward and to the right in search of a place to start.

Illustration for Of Github and Pull Requests.

Using the above techniques, you can coerce the reader’s eye to take unconventional paths.

Comicking techniques in action

Now that you know the basics, let’s put these babies to use! We’re going to start by looking at some fairly high-level implementations where we can use visuals to replace words before moving on to show how proximity, temporal spacing, balance and flow can be used directly in a design.

Internationalization

An excerpt from an IKEA instruction manual.

When you rely more on visuals than text, your work can be understood across language barriers. Art is a universal language, and that’s why we see it used so much in international publications or handbooks like IKEA’s above. There’s even a set of international road signs used by countries complying with the Vienna International Convention. This way, when you cross country borders in Europe you know that there’s a railroad crossing ahead or that you need to keep an eye out for pedestrians– even if you don’t speak the language.

Sourced from the Merriam Webster Visual Dictionary (which is a really cool resource)

You’ll notice that these images are starting to form their own language, a visual vocabulary. They’re becoming symbols, with each symbol embodying a single idea. This is how writing began in Egypt and China. Similarly, it’s how our interfaces evolve.

Visual metaphor

A comic panel becomes an image that suggests an action which can be further simplified into an icon. Would the letters t-r-a-s-h resonate as much as this simple image? Sometimes, a “simple image” describes a complex action. For instance, this icon can mean trash, remove, delete, discard. On a list of favorites, it can mean “unfavorite this and remove it from my sight” – a very complicated concept! But we can use visual shorthand to get it across intuitively.

Real-world examples

Shopping cart inventory screen from Fab.com.

In this shopping cart inventory screenshot, we can see not one but two comic techniques at work: panelling and proximity. Notice how each item has its own box or panel separating it from the other. But also notice how the “your order” box is off on its own on the right, in the last section the user will look to when looking at a page in left-to-right eye movements. This makes sense since the designer wants users to first review their purchases then the information in the “your order” box before clicking “check out.” Imagine how much clunkier this would be if the “your order” box was on the left!

Also notice the “x” buttons in each item’s box. Here we see proximity and visual metaphor at work. The “x” here simply implies “remove” without the need to explicitly state it. The proximity of these removal buttons to the items they remove also lets users know what will be removed.

Dribbble.com’s home page features new submissions from users.

Dribbble.com uses proximity, visual metaphor and panelling as well. The white box that encompasses each “shot” contains three to four icons that show how many views, comments, and favorites the image has and if the image has an attachment. Interestingly, the creator’s name doesn’t appear inside this panel. It appears underneath the panel, but users can infer ownership by proximity. What the name is closest to, it must be related to.

Blue Cross Blue Shield’s home page exemplifies “flow.”

Blue Cross Blue Shield does a great job with their entire home page. It starts with a sweeping establishing shot – lots of space gives the user a chance to pause and absorb the site. The caption pulls them in and the “Shop for Health Insurance” box calls them to action. Right below that, three evenly spaced panels set a stable rhythm for their content, stressing that each article is of equal importance.

This page is a good example of flow, so good that I wanted to show you how easily its layout could be repurposed for a comic.

Content vs. Copy

Will Lieberson, editor at comic publisher Fawcett Publications, stopped by a barber shop late one night. While waiting for a shave, he noticed that a kid next to him reading one of his own comics! But then he realized that the boy was only reading the top panels of every page. When he tried to explain to the youth that you should read a comic’s page from top to bottom to get the whole story, the boy quipped, “I know, but this way is faster!” (citation: Steranko History of Comics, Vol 2, Page 15)

Panel of Fangs of the Fiend found at Stupid Comics

When your words and pictures are fighting each other for dominance – when you fill your page with information that doesn’t further the plot – readers start skimming, also known as scanning.

People don’t read, they scan…right?

Thanks in large part to Jacob Nielsen’s work, it’s a common heuristic that people don’t read pages, they scan them. This is, of course, a drastic oversimplification. We’ve trained readers to skim content by inundating them with terrible, fluffy, poorly prepared and badly placed content.

It’s a natural reaction to bad storytelling to just skip to the good parts.

Consider how our grandparents would pick and choose their reading materials. After carefully choosing their reading material, they sat down to digest their choices in full. They didn’t skim The Great Gatsby. They didn’t glance at the Wall Street Journal. They chose what they wanted to read, and they read it. Works were curated by slews of creators, editors, and reviewers to ensure that when audiences came, they were not disappointed. People would become outraged with creators and publishers over bad content!

It’s not that people have no patience. It’s that the bulk of online content providers have repeatedly failed to provide things worth spending time on. Now users have knee-jerk reactions. As soon as they land on a page, they turn their shields on – deflecting the ads, the talking dogs, the long intros, the fluffy copy – and begin searching for the meat, the ker-pow.

Users are like that little boy, reading the top panels of every page then moving on because life’s too short to slog through your crappy content.

Content strategists and user experience designers have tried to address this observed “people don’t read, they scan!” problem in a myriad of ways by optimizing microcopy, keeping things above the fold, A/B testing calls to action, etc. But we need to remember to keep an eye on the whole experience. Comics would not be the cultural cornerstone they are today if comickers had started optimizing the first panel on every page!

People don’t scan, they look

People aren’t reading web pages from top to bottom, but they are looking at the page. Humans are visual animals first. Images are often the first thing we notice on a page while words add an extra layer of abstraction that your brain has to decode.

I often hear presenters extolling the value of good content. But what they’re actually talking about is often just copy. Copy isn’t the only kind of content!

Back in ye olden days of the World Wide Web, text was the path of least resistance and images were seen as non-semantic and often garish substitutions for meaningful copy. But we’re living in the future now. We have all kinds of accessibility options at our disposal, from WAI-ARIA to HTML5 video’s subtitles to our good old friend alt text. We’re better equipped than ever to plan, design, and measure the effectiveness of visual content.

Content strategists and UX practitioners, I implore you to emulate the authors of the golden age of comics and lean on your graphics specialists. If you’re a one man UX army, remember to use Photoshop or a sketchpad from time to time, and try to stretch your visual communication skills with things like weekly challenges.

Conclusion

Many comickers evolve into storyboard artists and move on to work in cinema or animation. I evolved into a front end developer and UI designer. I still use my skills to communicate with words and pictures, just in a different medium. If you’re going to connect with your audience, you’ve got to learn the art of the flow, you’ve got to guide their eyes, and you can’t do that with mere words alone. Content strategists and copywriters often see the Internet as an endless document comprised of page after page of text and navigation. But I echo the words of Scott McCloud when I say: the Internet is an endless canvas.

Resources and thanks

You can get a better feel for graphic storytelling by reading comics like the fine ones below created by expert comickers:

• Andy Runton’s Owly
• Kyle Weem’s CSSquirrel
• Rembrand Le Compte’s Beardfluff
• Starline Hodge’s Candi
• Barry Deutsch&squo;s Hereville
• Brad Colbow’s The Brads
• Anything by Raina Telgemeier
• and of course, my own comics at RacheltheGreat.com

Thanks to Kurt Busiek for helping me find the barbershop story and to Scott McCloud for putting us in touch.

Check out these classic books by Scott McCloud:

• Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art
• Making Comics: Storytelling Secrets of Comics, Manga and Graphic Novels

I love talking about sequential art and comics, so drop me a line! @CrowChick, Dribbble, My web ramblings blog.

Das Leader Panel wurde stark erweitert und zählt in der diesjährigen Ausgabe nun 34 Teilnehmer (2011: 23). Auswahl und Umfang stärkt den repräsentativen Charakter des Reports weiter. Zum anderen decken die Inhalte nun das gesamte Spektrum des E-Commerce ab und es wird (endlich) der Eindruck vermittelt, dass E-Commerce nicht mehr nur für Onlinevertrieb steht, sondern für tiefgreifende strukturelle Veränderungen in weitreichenden Unternehmensprozessen.

Einige ausgewählte Aussagen aus dem aktuellen Report:

Zweite E-Commerce Welle in der Schweiz

War die Jahrtausendwende noch von Pionieren geprägt, von denen zahlreiche im Panel vertreten sind (Blacksocks, LesShop, travel.ch etc.), etablierten sich zum einen in den vergangenen Jahren vermehrt neue und spezialisierte Konzepte. Zum anderen auch die Late Follower aus dem traditionellen Detailhandel, die Versäumnisse nachholen und Marktanteile zurückgewinnen versuchen. Ergänzt wird diese zweite Welle durch Markenhersteller und -anbieter, die vermehrt den direkten Kontakt zu den Endkunden suchen.

Nicht zuletzt der Markteintritt von Zalando hat den hiesigen Modehändlern eindrücklich gezeigt, dass Fashion online definitiv nicht mehr wegzudenken ist. So denn auch die Aussage von Modehändlern im Panel.

Und auch, dass ausländische Anbieter kaum mehr Halt vor der Grenze machen (→ ”Kein Heimatschutz mehr im E-Commerce“). Die Schweiz gilt jedoch als ein Follower-Land mit wenig innovativen Ansätzen. Was hier ausgerollt werde, müsse sich erst in anderen Ländern bewiesen haben.

Einbussen bei Onlineumsätze nicht mehr ausgeschlossen

Trotz traumhaften Wachstumsraten in den vergangenen Jahren hat gerade 2011 gezeigt, dass es auch in die andere Richtung gehen kann. 6 der 34 Panel-Teilnehmer verzeichneten im vergangenen Jahr Umsatzeinbussen. Sie werden im Report nicht namentlich genannt.

Es ist jedoch davon auszugehen, dass es sich dabei mehrheitlich um Teilnehmer aus der Reisebranche wie auch Medienanbieter handelt (im Panel vertreten sind Buch.ch, CeDe, Orell Füssli und Weltbild), da gemäss VSV/GfK dieser Bereich im vergangenen Jahr ein Minus von 8% verzeichnete. Und auch LeShop machte 2011 weniger Umatz.

Umsatzentwicklung 2009-2011

-

Von den 29 Unternehmen die bereits 4 Jahre am Markt sind, entwickelten sich gut 2/3 positiv und wuchsen online jeweils stärker mit Ausnahme des Unternehmens “L”, das in den anderen Kanälen mehr zulegen konnte. 10 von diesen Unternehmen verzeichneten während diesem Zeitraum einen Rückgang des Gesamtumsatzes, wobei 8 davon sich online positiv entwickelten.

Multichannel und Service-Excellence

Multichannel in all seinen Facetten beschäftigt die Onlinehändler weiter. Interessanter Fakt im Report 2012 ist, dass 8 von 17 Pureplayern sich vorstellen können, 2017 auch in anderen Kanälen präsent zu sein, wobei E-Commerce weiterhin dominiert.

Das Panel ist unisono der Meinung, dass der Kunde es heute erwartet, kanalübergreifend zu bestellen und zu retournieren. Gleichzeitig wird verschiedenen Preisen pro Kanal eine Absage erteilt.

Mobile

Bereits im vergangenen Jahr kam dem Thema Mobile eine zentrale Rolle zu. Laut dem Panel ist die mobile Nutzung weiterhin ungebrochen und einzelne Teilnehmer vermelden, dass über 10% der Transaktionen mobil getätigt werden. Während die einen auf native Apps setzen, sehen andere die Zukunft in mobilen Websites.

Die SBB bestätigen im Report zudem erneut, dass bereits mehr als die Hälfte aller elektronischen Tickets über den mobilen Kanal getätigt werden. Im Zug werden also bereits mehr Smartphones gezückt als PDFs aufgefaltet.

Kundendaten wurden zu fest vernachlässigt

Was die traditionellen Versandhändler schon vor Jahrzehnten praktizierten, ging im Goldrausch des E-Commerce oft vergessen. Denn das Wachstum war auch ohne aktive Bewirtschaftung der Kundendaten beneidenswert. So wurden denn neben Versäumnissen in der Informatik bei den Lessons Learned für die vergangenen 5 Jahre am meisten genannt, dass das Asset Kundendaten vernachlässigt wurde.

Der Betrachtung des Customer-Lifetime-Values, auch hinsichtlich der Akquisitionskosten von Neukunden, wird vermehrt Beachtung geschenkt. Hierzu muss wohl oftmals zuerst die Datenbasis geschaffen werden, wenn auch im E-Commerce ein reichlicher Fundus an Daten verfügbar ist.

Disruptive Geschäftsmodelle

Sehr lobenswert die beiden Abschnitte im diesjährigen Report, die sich dem Strukturwandel im Handel wie auch disruptiven Geschäftsmodellen widmen. Denn wie eingangs erwähnt, ist E-Commerce nicht einfach online verkaufen. E-Commerce greift viel tiefer und die konzeptionellen wie auch technischen Möglichkeiten hebeln den Handel aus. Die Studienleitung spricht von Strukturwandel im Handel wie auch von der Entbündelung der Wertschöfpungskette.

Ich würde gar einen Schritt weiter gehen und die provokative These formulieren, dass sich der Handel partiell gar abschafft. Zum einen verschwinden einzelne Handelsstufen, zum anderen macht sich in einzelnen Sortimenten der Handel (wie wir ihn heute kennen) überflüssig.

Dies soll keinesfalls ein Schreckenszenario sein, denn das schafft Effizienz und Chancen für neue Player, die sich in neu strukturierten Wertschöpfungs- und Prozessketten ihre Nischen suchen, wie kürzlich auch in einer Empfehlung für Startups formuliert.

Ausblick 2017

Keiner der Panelteilnehmer, die sich zu dieser Frage äusserten, geht von einem Rückgang der Bedeutung vom E-Commerce aus, 90% von Ihnen erwarten einen weiteren Bedeutungszuwachs unterschiedlichen Ausmasses (n=31):

• 5 erwarten eine Vervielfachung des Onlineumsatzes (> 100%)
• 8 gehen von einer Verdoppelung aus (+ 100%)
• 9 sehen eine Steigerung zwischen 50-100%
• 5 erwarten ein Wachstum von 15-50%
• 2 prognostizieren ein Wachstum bis 15%
• 2 glauben an keine Veränderung

Der E-Commerce Report 2012 kann kostenlos online bezogen werden.

The probabilities of purchases for each groups is really very different. Bunching them together doesn’t make sense.

Crutchfield isn’t the only one with this problem. Each day, many people visit Amazon.com to look at the reviews of a product they have no intention of purchasing from Amazon. Maybe they found it somewhere else at a better price? Maybe they are standing right in front of it in a store and, if the reviews are glowing, want to buy it right now?

Again, this group of users is very different from shoppers coming to the site specifically to make a purchase at that moment. Bunching them together doesn’t make sense.

This is the third big problem with conversion rates: visitors are not a homogeneous lot. In Part 1 of this series, we talked about how you shouldn’t use metrics that are based on ratios and in Part 2, we talked about why not all visitors are people you want as customers. In today’s installment, we’ll talk a bit about how conversion rate fails because it doesn’t separate out the folks who are likely to convert from those who don’t.

I remember first realizing this problem when I got a call from the folks at Domino’s Pizza a few years back. They had just launched their first (and as far I know, anyone’s first) online pizza ordering application. And the application was getting a ton of press and positive attention.

The Domino’s team were really proud of it and were boasting that they had a 15% conversion rate. That’s pretty good, since most decent e-commerce sites convert between 1.5% and 5.0%. So, here Domino’s were doing 3 times the conversion of some of the best sites.

Yet, a 15% conversion rate meant that 85% of the people visiting their online pizza ordering application weren’t ordering pizza. Shouldn’t 100% of the people visiting their site actually make a purchase on their visit? After all, what else is there to do?

It’s possible that some number were just curious about ordering pizza through a web site. And some were looking to explore, in case they wanted to order a pizza in the future. But would that account for an 85% majority?

Unfortunately, it’s really hard to separate out those who are likely to convert from those who are never likely to convert. There’s no simple tools or techniques to divide up the total visitors into the group who we want to pay attention to, taking away the group we’re not interested in right now.

That’s another reason why conversion rate isn’t really useful for making a great online experience. If you optimize for higher conversions, you may be pushing your most likely converters away to – dare I say – trick your unlikely converters into converting.

The big problem with this is that sites like Crutchfield, Amazon, and Domino’s can’t tell what their upper limit should be. Ideally, getting from a 15% to a 50% conversion rate would be awesome, but it is unrealistic considering the number of visitors who will never convert.

This is why we see folks get all excited over tiny improvements in conversion. It is a red flag when that level of precision is necessary to detect meaningful improvement.

What we really want is a metric that focuses on the most valuable visitors – those that are likely to convert and aren’t because the design isn’t working – so we can tell when we’ve improved the design. In a future installment, I’ll talk about where these metrics might come from.

However, in the next installment, we’ll talk about the one scenario when conversion rate might actually be the right metric to use. Stay tuned…

Moving Beyond Conversion Rates:

Part 1: Avoid Ratios for Metrics
Part 2: Not All Visitors Make Great Customers
Part 3: Visitors Are Not All The Same (this)

All of these measures tell us something, but is it something useful? Key performance
indicators (KPIs), on the other hand, are indeed useful. They tell us how our design
affects our business and, more importantly, whether design changes improve or degrade the
results we’re trying to get to.

But KPIs are hard to implement well. In today’s UIEtips, I look at how an unusual measure,
tool time, made its journey into becoming a useful UX KPI. I’m sure you’ll find it helpful
for thinking about your own KPIs.

Read the article: Unleashing the Power of a UX KPI

What have you used for your organization’s UX KPIs? How did you go about deciding that
would be a great choice? We’d love to hear your experiences below.

A few days ago, we asked the MarketingExperiments audience for their best lead generation landing pages. Now it’s up to you. Which of these pages do you think will perform best?

Contender #1: Cvent

The Cvent lead generation landing page was submitted by Sherrie Mersdorf, team lead, marketing operations, Cvent.

“This is our top performer,” Sherrie said. “We are offering a $50 Amazon gift card for seeing a 30-minute demo. People have to talk to the sales team to make sure they’re a qualified lead before they can see the demo and receive the card.”

Click to enlarge

Contender #2: Pro Sound Effects

The Pro Sound Effects lead generation landing page was submitted by Jeremy Siegel, library and licensing specialist, Pro Sound Effects.

Click to enlarge

You tell us which page you think will perform better

Our MECLABS judges – associate director of optimization and strategy Adam Lapp, senior research manager Tony Doty, and research manager Erin Fagin – narrowed down all the entries to these two finalists. Now they’re looking to the pooled wisdom of the experienced marketers who read the MarketingExperiments blog to decide which of these templates to include as a treatment in an upcoming experiment.

“After reviewing all of the entries, we chose our two finalists based on ease of implementation, as well as the three-step process they both highlight. We thought it would be an interesting test using either the long, vertical landing page with the form at the bottom or the two-column landing page with the form on the right,” Tony said.

“We wouldn’t have the large “Download” button on our treatment landing page; instead it will be replaced with the actual form on the page, but the concept of the three-step process will be consistent between the treatments.”

Next, they’ll be testing the template of the landing page you decide against a hypothesis created by the audience at Optimization Summit 2012 in Denver and the control page supplied by the sponsor of this live test, HubSpot All-in-One Marketing Software.

If the template selected in today’s blog post wins that test, the marketer who submitted it will win a free MarketingExperiments Landing Page Optimization Online Course plus a free copy (both PDF and printed copy) of the MarketingSherpa 2011 Landing Page Optimization Benchmark Report.

So choose wisely, marketers. And stay turned to the MarketingExperiments blog to find out if the lead gen landing page you selected wins the live test.

Voting ends Wednesday, May 30. For more information, read full terms and conditions.

Related Resources

Landing Page Optimization: Test ideas for a B2B lead capture page

Lead Generation Tactics: How testing can help you choose the best tactic for your business

Lead Generation: Testing form field length reduces cost-per-lead by $10.66

MarketingSherpa MarketingExperiments Optimization Summit 2012 in Denver, June 11-14

MarketingSherpa's 30-Minute Marketer: How to Use Landing Page Optimization for Better Conversion Rates