I’ve talked in the past about a need to return to the cornershop ethos of customer care online. To many online shops are clinical and give the impression they don’t care at all for your custom. Just by showing you care a little you can improve your business and users experience – bottom line you can improve your sales. I was pleased to see the way moo dealt with my free flickr taster order. Their customer care really illustrates how without much effort or a great expense you can make your customer feel special. Ordering online can be a clinical experience and this is one of the reasons traditional less webby customers often opt out.
So, what did moo do that was so great for me. Number one was the free offer which as usual was great and is still running to all flickr pro users. This is a good tool to get customers involved – it’s an age old method but it does work. This wasn’t really the best bit though as the way they dealt with the order from the clean interface, nice ordering forms through to the personalised emails from little moo that was sending the printing order to big moo (yes the cute mooness was good and I did have a great image of little moo the print robot). The entire experience was great and the cards I received were good too down to the delivery times and the packaging.
When you are talking customer experience there is a fair bit the designer can do. The best starting point is to shut off the part of your brain that knows what the site does. Making sure at every stage of the site customers know what is going on is essential. Taking a more personal approach to email messages, error messages and help documents is another key area you can enhance. Look at all elements from the interface to the wording on emails. Shopping sites can be fun and engage the user – the more they do the more they shop so it really makes sense.
I have also seen this week another great example in Fugitive Toys (I’ve already mentioned they’ve now got me addicted to vinyl toys). They are using a blog and community behind the shop along with a great interface to enhance the user experience. Adding little things like blogs and communities builds loyalty. When done well using a great interface you have a success from a business and user perspective. Engaging is what it’s all about and if you do that and keep the user informed at all levels your shop will get off to a great start.
