Listen before you launch

Five reasons effective action on customer feedback will optimize your online experience for lasting results.

As your main touch point with your customers in this digital world, your website is the primary face of your business and critical to your success. Companies are therefore constantly investing resources in developing their online presence to ensure they stay ahead of the game or — at the very least — don’t get left behind. You are probably no different. In such a competitive landscape, the temptation to completely overhaul your website — metaphorically ripping it up and starting again — can be overwhelming in the pursuit of success.

While in some cases this may be a valid approach, it may not always be necessary and can actually prove counterproductive. Instead, making smaller, less noticeable changes on an ongoing basis may be less confusing for your visitors and more productive overall. Either way, this can be a huge decision with a potentially significant impact. Before proceeding down either of these paths, you need to have an accurate and thorough grasp of what your customers really think about your existing website. And then – once you begin to make changes – you need to monitor what your customers think

about them to ensure they are having the desired effect.

OpinionLab enables you to capture this context-specific Voice of Customer information at all points, acting as a vital partner throughout the website redesign or optimization process. Use this actionable insight to understand exactly which parts of your website are working and vice versa, right down to specific pages or functions. Know where and how best to make improvements to improve your customer experience and drive desired behavior.

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It’s horrible to see clients, often really nice and reasonable people, sleepwalking into really high-risk decisions.

—Foolproof1

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Mismatched expectations

You’ve launched your new website redesign and it both looks and performs great so now all need you to do is wait to reap the rewards, right? While that may well be the case, it’s extremely common for companies to overestimate both how bad and/or ineffective their existing website is and the impact a full overhaul may have. Your customers will be highly accustomed to and familiar with your website in its original state so will need to get used to any changes. You should therefore use all the information sources available to you to be sure that any updates will have your desired impact.

“Consumers overvalue the existing benefits of an entrenched product by a factor of three, while developers overvalue the new benefits of their innovation by a factor of three. The result is a mismatch of nine to one, or 9x, between what innovators think consumers desire and what consumers really want. Left unchecked, this mismatch is a recipe for disaster.”

—Harvard Business Review2

Thinking you know better

While understandable due to the intense opinion provoked by a website redesign, overlooking external data in favor of internal personal preferences is a common pitfall. Even the smartest, most trusted people in your organization can’t always successfully predict what features, content or design aspects will work best with users. Furthermore, when organizations choose to alter their sites without proper insight, they can do real damage to their customer’s experience, and ultimately, whatever brand loyalty they’ve previously garnered.

Many still view a website redesign essentially as a tick box exercise, expecting it to be ready within a specific time frame and incorporate a

Three common pitfalls of a complete website redesign

Lack of contextual data

Many website redesigns fail3 simply due to a lack of contextual data in the build phase. Lead by metric-free strategies that do not account for customer goals and needs,4 these redesign efforts often equate to flying blind by making decisions based on internal preferences. And once the site has been re-launched — without the proper data to guide it — days, weeks, or even months might pass before these businesses know how the redesign is affecting revenue, conversions, and other key performance metrics. Instead, you should nurture a customer-centric culture lead by metrics, insights and valuable contextual data to make informed and precise redesign decisions.5

“Making decisions from data, rather than emotion, is paramount during the redesign process. It’s always harder to see your own brand objectively, but the data doesn’t lie.”

—Blue Water6

pre-determined list of features — all within a certain budget. But these tight parameters and measures can infringe upon the creative process and — more importantly – lead a website to become misaligned with user goals. This in turn can ultimately lead to scope creep, unanticipated obstacles and eventually going over-budget.6 Aesthetic and technological concerns raised during the process can be distracting and lead businesses to lose sight of the goals they set out to achieve in the first place.4 As a result, many websites designed by internal committees fail to deliver in terms of sales, leads, or loyalty.7

Complete, website overhauls confuse loyal users... and can result in post-launch dips in conversion and traffic.

—Forrester6

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You haven’t refreshed for a while so that means it must be time.

Do your customers feel the same way or are they actually getting everything they want and need from your site? Have you instead considered smaller changes to the content, structure, or customer journey?

Bounce rates are extremely high. Have you considered a content refresh? Perhaps the copy isn’t grabbing user attention.

Your business has grown. Could you add additional products and services without a complete overhaul?

Customers are providing input. Have you implemented a VoC program to capture their insights and act on what they tell you to improve your CX?

You have new branding and/or color standards.

Would it be possible to update without affecting the site’s functionality or overall user experience?

Your site is behind from a technology point of view.

You probably need a complete redesign. Whether your site’s lacking mobile responsiveness, no longer meets modern security standards or isn’t hitting the mark for SEO, it’s unlikely that you’ll be able to solve these issues without a comprehensive overhaul.

Reasons you might want to redesign your website… and why a redesign may not be best for you

Hoa Loranger, “Radical Redesign or Incremental Change,” Nielsen Norman Group, Feb. 8, 2015. https://www.nngroup.com/articles/radical-incremental-redesign/

Rebekah Grier, “How to Decide If You Need a New Website,” McKinsey Development, Mar. 20, 2015. http://www.mckinseydevelopment.com/blog/topic/branding

Mikal E. Belicove, “How Often Should You Update or Rebuild Your Website?,” Entrepreneur, Nov. 2, 2015. http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/251652

In 17 of 18 industries studied, the biggest predictor of loyalty was how an experience made a customer feel.

—Forrester’s CX Index Q1 20151

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In today’s highly competitive digital marketplace, organizations must become customer-obsessed if they wish to survive.8 Moreover, they must be sure that their brand, message, and customer experience (CX) align with consumer behavior and needs.5

While 94% of CX pros say that their organization expects CX to drive customers’ higher loyalty, 48% of marketers focus on attracting new customers versus retaining existing ones.

—Forrester Research8

You have to collect the dots before you connect them.

—Andrew Reise Consulting1

With this in mind, the end goal for any customer-focused website should be to provide a fluid and intuitive CX throughout the process; however, as we’ve seen, poor understanding of user behavior can quickly lead website redesign or optimization initiatives to be counterproductive.9

Your decision whether to redesign or optimize your website and how best to do so should therefore be driven after significant initial diagnostic and

exploratory techniques. This is the only way you will ultimately deliver a site that your customers engage with.

Optimization vs Redesign

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A strong customer centric website strategy enables you to understand and meet your customers’ needs and expectations, allowing for greater precision in the development and introduction of innovation.1 Here, we explore five key reasons in detail why a customer centric web strategy — with feedback at its heart — enables you to optimize your online experience.

Five reasons to implement a customer centric web strategyTake effective action on customer feedback

for lasting results

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Competitive pressures have intensified so much that the average lifespan of a company in the S&P 500 has dropped from more than 60 years in 1958 to just 18 years today.

If that pace of change continues, 75% of the companies in today’s S&P 500 will be replaced by 2030.

—Forrester Research8

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First step: Create a baseline

Before you get started with any changes to your website, we recommend establishing a pre-redesign CX baseline which will allow you to evaluate where your site currently stands with users before embarking on any changes. Only by doing this will you be able to assess the impact of any changes. By allowing users to share their opinions and join the conversation, you can also create a more engaged and informed customer base that feels involved with the process.5

Users become part of the process

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How do you find out what your customers really think?

You can only build a truly accurate picture of what your customers really think about your website — and whether a wholesale redesign or ongoing optimization is the best approach — by providing them with the opportunity to provide you feedback completely on their terms. OpinionLab’s opt-in non-intrusive customer-initiated engagement platform enables you to aggregate customer feedback across

your website, even down to specific web pages. No pop up surveys, phone calls, or emails. Our solution encourages your customers to offer their opinions, feedback, concerns and praise to provide deeper insights into their behavior and reactions to innovations. Armed with this information, you can understand exactly the action you need to take to drive improved website performance.

Digital Comment Card: the perfect VoC tool

OpinionLab’s Digital Comment Card — essentially the vehicle for collecting feedback in our solution — is the ideal customer-centric solution for today’s mobile, multi-screen, omnichannel environment. Cards can even be customized through our self-service portal for optimal flexibility, allowing you to ask specific and targeted questions about aspects of your website design or functionality as appropriate. Also capture additional context — such as browser or device type — to ensure you see the impact of specific features on your customers’ experience.

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Discover had decided to redesign their website but were extremely conscious not to infuriate loyal users or confuse visitors. The company therefore made the wise decision to communicate their changes with customers before and throughout their continuous redesign process. The company highlighted improvements and additions on their

Discoverwebsite, explaining how these they had been directly influenced by user feedback. By taking the time to explain how these changes better served the needs and goals of their users, Discover was able to establish their new website successfully by involving them in a useful and engaging way.

Allegra Burnette, “Make This Website Redesign Your Last — Strategic Plan: The Digital Customer Experience Improvement Playbook,” Forrester Research, Inc., October 22, 2015

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Identify key issues during discovery period

When you make any changes to your website — be it an extensive re-launch or relatively minor optimization updates — embarking on an initial discovery period enables you to understand how your customers feel about them.

Make immediate improvements to

address initial concerns

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OpinionLab’s solution incorporates numerous features, most notably our Real-Time Alerts functionality, to ensure you are able to find out about, react and correct any issues that are impacting the digital experience of your customers instantaneously and in-the-moment.

Spot the main trends

During the discovery phase, it’s essential that you recognize any CX problems as they occur. Remedying these issues in real-time means that not only will your website improve incrementally as planned, but customers will also feel their voice counts by playing a vital role in the process. Our data visualizations enable you to analyze everything from page details and sentiments to keyword text within the comments themselves in a clear and digestible format.

Get the targeted information you need

OpinionLab’s advanced filtering capabilities enable you to segment and analyze your data by multiple variables, such as location, web domain or type of mobile device, to gain deeper insights. You can even filter data by hierarchy, ensuring that the right information reaches the right people in your organization. Our variety of export functionalities can integrate the data into your existing business processes, or export it along with detailed, custom reports.

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Gain a more detailed understanding

Once you move beyond the initial discovery phase, the exploratory phase will reveal further areas for improvement. During this time, after all immediate issues and glitches have been addressed, customer feedback tends to branch out into secondary concerns. Comments typically relate to the original expectations concerning the website redesign or optimization changes and highlight any overlooked features users would like to be incorporated in the new site.

Tap into deeper insights

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Integrate for even deeper insight

Our VoC technology can be integrated with session replay providers such as IBM Tealeaf or Clicktale to help identify which sessions, among the thousands captured, require your immediate attention or action. We can also integrate with CRM solutions, like Salesforce.com or Microsoft Dynamics, to associate feedback you receive with customer profiles. These seamless integrations enable you to both respond to a customer in the right way, but also track the resolution.

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As a leading worldwide health services organization, Cigna is dedicated to the well-being of others. As an extension of this mission, the organization sought to implement a strong VoC program to provide their customers with a better experience overall, with the immediate goal being to improve online task completion and reduce the frequency of calls to their customer service center. Once armed with the contextual insights necessary to truly understand the goals and

Cignastruggles of their customers’ onsite experience, Cigna was able to close service gaps and not only reach customer-satisfaction goals, but also identify new opportunities for growth. Key stakeholders were also able to take action in real time by structuring their feedback data to determine the full scope of specific issues. Since applying listening technologies to their site and acting on the feedback they receive, Cigna has seen a reduction in customer frustration and a greater CX overall.

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Benefit from real-time benchmarks

to keep ahead of your competition

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Are you moving in the right direction?

As you continue to build, develop and improve your website on an ongoing basis, you should benchmark your customer experience performance against your pre-redesign CX baseline to understand the impact of the changes you make. The feedback data you collect through OpinionLab allows you to easily make these comparisons.

Our solution also enables you to benchmark against digital leaders and industry peers. Pinpoint where improvements are necessary and discover where you’re exceeding customer expectation through our industry benchmarks, which provide a real-time comparison of how your specific web-site pages and functions measure up.

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In the highly competitive market of online travel bookings, Hotels.com knew that there was zero room for error when they set out to redesign their website. VoC data gathered through OpinionLab set them on the right track. We were also able to seamlessly integrate with Tealeaf and help Hotels.com gain deeper insights and understanding of their customer

Hotels.comexperience. In addition, our TeaLeaf session-playback links accompanying each comment card helped the company to quickly determine issues requiring further attention. By taking action on these insights, Hotels.com was able to provide a better booking experience for their users, resulting in increased customer satisfication, retention and conversions.

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Constantly improve your CX

While it may take a few months, you will soon develop processes that ensure you react to and take action on all the feedback you receive habitually. This creates a momentum that leads to constant CX improvement as our solution — through easy-to-understand data visualisations and real-time notification capabilities — enables you to continuously identify and investigate content problems, navigational concerns, design opportunities and any other issues connected with your website.

Sustain your success

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With constant small improvements adding up over time, acting on these findings ensures you fully optimize your website to your customers’ objectives — increasing the likelihood of reducing bounce rates, maximizing traffic and conversions and improving satisfation.

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Whether you decide redesigning or optimizing your website is the best way forward for your business, you will be faced with a challenging and highly visible strategic initiative that requires significant psychological investment and transformation for both your own internal teams and your users. To mitigate risk and maximize your potential for success, you need to closely monitor what your customers think

Conclusion

! OpinionLab is a high-growth SaaS provider of continuous Voice of Customer engagement solutions that drive smarter and faster business decisions and help build customer centered cultures. The world’s largest brands trust OpinionLab to optimize customer experience and drive omnichannel engagement. Find out more at opinionlab.com

Copyright© 2016 OpinionLab Inc. All rights reserved

both before, during and after you make any changes. OpinionLab provides you with the solution to accurately capture your Voice of Customer on an ongoing basis and crucially the data analytic tools to turn this information into actionable insight. By benefitting from our solution, you make informed smart decisions about the future direction of your website that drives traffic and increases conversions.

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1. Deanna Laufer, “Anchor Your CX Strategy in Customer Understanding,” Forrester Research, Inc., Nov. 24, 2015.

2. John T. Gourville, “Eager Sellers and Stony Buyers: Understanding the Psychology of New-Product Adoption,” Harvard Business Review, June 2006. https://hbr.org/2006/06/eager-sellers-and-stony-buyers-understanding-the-psychology-of-new-product-adoption

3. Andy Hoar, “Improve B2B eCommerce Execution by Using ACTIVE Strategies,” Forrester Research, Inc., Jan. 5, 2016.

4. Rebecca Rubin, “Redesigning Your Website in 2015? Start by Asking These 5 Questions,” Entrepreneur, Dec. 18, 2014. http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/240607

5. Hoa Loranger, “Radical Redesign or Incremental Change,” Nielsen Norman Group, Feb. 8, 2015. https://www.nngroup.com/articles/radical-incremental-redesign/

6. Allegra Burnette, “Make This Website Redesign Your Last - Strategic Plan: The Digital Customer Experience Improvement Playbook,” Forrester Research, Inc., October 22, 2015

7. Roger Dooley, “Never Redesign Your Website Again - Really!,” Forbes, Jul. 24, 2014. http://www.forbes.com/sites/rogerdooley/2014/07/24/never-redesign/

8. Joana van den Brink-Quintanilha, “Avoid Dissonance Between Your Brand Promise and CX Delivery,” Forrester Research, Dec. 15, 2015.

9. Alan Smith, “10 UX Tips for Your Next Website Redesign,” Usability Geek, Nov. 30, 2015. http://usabilitygeek.com/10-ux-tips-for-your-next-website-redesign/

Sources