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11.06.07
Customer Experience, Loyalty And Search Engine Marketing
By Kimberly Krause Berg
Gordon Hotchkiss wrote a blog post called, Why Do We Keep Buying from Bad Businesses, in which he describes a situation many of us may be familiar with. Do you shop at stores where the prices are too high or the environment is uncomfortable? Why?
He describes his wife's loyalty to a local family-run business, despite poor customer service and questionable product quality. Walmart is another example of what may be an unpleasant customer experience, but the prices are good, so this is often tolerated. Why do we put up with this?
Gord wonders if it's "Convenience, price and some twisted sense of obligation to the family that runs the offending store."
My family shops like his wife does.
But Does She Talk to Trees?
There are local shops I'll run to for something quick, knowing full well it won't be pleasant. For example, one newspaper/magazine shop in town is so smoke-filled that you have to battle a cloud and hold your breath during the time you're inside, and when you come out of the place, nobody wants to be anywhere near you. But, it saves on gas to go there for a gallon of milk rather than the nicer stores farther away.
Living in a rural area allows me to buy locally grown food items. I do the same thing my mother did when I was growing up, as does most of my community. We have our routes for fresh meat or organic produce. We know which farms sell what in each season.
Christmas trees, both live and cut, are grown here. We choose the best from three places. One is a farm with two huge ponds and sprawling fields, where you can stroll for awhile with your family and hand-saw, and cut your own tree. We go there when we want an experience to remember. (I always thank the tree and talk to it. Everyone laughs at me.) The other two choices we have are local gentlemen who grow their own trees on their properties and you literally walk through their backyards and pick what you want.
All of these local picks that we're loyal to are advertised by word of mouth and wooden homemade signs on the sides of our back roads. The farm gives a discount to school children and the schools send home flyers.
Unless you live here, you wouldn't know these businesses exist. They don't have web sites and don't invest in newspaper ads. If you're from the city, you may not care to shop the way we do. Many people want the big well known brand super stores where they drive there once, and get everything in one shot (including trees). They want that experience and are less concerned with supporting the local community or the quality and freshness of the products.
You Go First
Thinking about Gord's blog post, I came across a statement in a discussion on the what comes first, SEO or Usability debate, in which someone felt SEO comes first because a site must be promoted before it can be "used".
To which I wonder, if a site falls in a search engine, would anyone hear it?
Do you spend a gazillion dollars to market a web site nobody can use?
Do you know it can or can not be used?
I find this interesting about the argument for SEO "first". If you hire a company to market your web site but you've never bothered to test it for overall usability, what are you thinking? If you market your web site and your landing pages are converting everyone beautifully and visitors love your products, what happens when your shopping cart or sales lead form is too hard to understand or has a bug you're unaware of?
Continue reading this article.
About
the Author:
Usability Consultant, Kimberly Krause Berg, is the owner of UsabilityEffect.com, Cre8pc.com, and Cre8asiteForums. Her background in organic search engine optimization, combined with web site usability consulting, offers unique insight into web site development.
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