I was interested to hear that the Huffington Post – the technorati top rated US Blog is using real-time testing of popularity to work out which headlines to use some of their more important pages. The website randomly shows one of two headlines. The version with the most clicks becomes the final version. For a website with this much traffic they find that five minutes is enough time to find a significant difference.  But the point is that if they do enough experiments Huffington post will become the world experts in what makes an effective headline!

Companies such as Amazon, Google and Intuit have used such A/B real time testing to user behaviour on versions of their websites for some time. They have found that small differences can lead to big changes in the way people behave.

Such testing led Google to refine exactly how much white space to put around its logo and to change from putting a pale blue background behind its ads to putting a pale yellow background (actually this fits in with reading research – pale yellow provides the best contrast for people to read). They also found that increasing the number of searches listed to 30 resulted in longer search times which meant people didn’t hang around waiting for the results. Amazon found that making a coupon code to prominent on a website lead to much lower uptake rates. People were were thinking “better go and find a coupon” instead of actually proceeding with a sale. Ron Kohavi of Microsoft Research has used multiple level test designs and studied interaction effects to good effect.

Jakob Nielsen , Usability Guru points out that whilst more qualitative usability tests are better for finding the really big problems with your website – A/B testing does have its place.

• It is great for measuring actual behaviour in context (a point I made about the value of social media feedback in general yesterday).
• It can measure very small differences (because you can test on a large number of users again as I mentioned yesterday).
• It can resolve trade-offs between conflicting guidelines
• It is very cheap!

Jakob argues that this doesn’t necessarily lead to understanding of why? However I would suggest that if you do lots of  studies then over time any analysis leads to deeper understanding.

I guess what interests me about this is that it really is very hard to guess what a good online design or campaign is going to be. In some ways this is why social media is a bit scary. Time and time again doing user testing I would be surprised by the results I got from the data. Our intuition is poor.

Why could such quantitative testing be important for people thinking about social media? Well we can quickly test our hunches by setting up a hypothesis and collecting data. By doing this we can learn about what really works for your particular context. I have read more and more posts entreating marketers to be more experimental. If you were to experiment in a measurable way then you can start to build up your understanding of what works too!

 SociaLNK is keen to support you as you start to experiment with social media. Contact us.

In eight years Zappos grew their business from $1.6M to over $ 1 billion. They did this by making customer services their number 1 goal. Their motto is “Powered by Service” and they aim to provide the top online service there is. CEO Tony Hsieh attributes their substantial growth to word of mouth and repeat customers.

A quick look at their website reveals that they are certainly different to any online retailer I have used here in the UK. They have free shipping both ways and 365 days to return items. Their phone number available 24/7 is listed up front on every page and they even have a line in Spanish. This is a very different experience to many online retailers who tend to hide their phone number deep in their websites.

Despite this 95% of their orders are online. However they have found that nearly all their customers contact them at least once by phone. Customers experience fast, accurate fulfilment and state that they have “above and beyond” customer service.

Zappos also invest heavily in their staff. Staff have five weeks of training when they start at the company. Customer service is seen as everybody’s business. There are no call times for reps and no sales based performance. They believe that building a positive culture amongst employees is the best way to do business. That culture is slightly zany but that personality fits with their customers and the fashion business.

To promote the business benefits of their culture Zappos have run a series of insights workshops where business people can come and view the culture for themselves. I watched a few of the feedback videos from participants and it was clear that there were some very impressed business owners. What an excellent way to build word of mouth and buzz around a brand!

Zappos make full use of social media, twitter and blogs. But somehow it is the culture and the personality that make this work so incredibly well for them. This is an example where the word of mouth strategy is very well baked in to the brand.

Amazon have recently acquired Zappos so it will be interesting to see if there is any shift of culture or whether the customer service ethic can transfer across to Amazon. Amazon have just launched a new online shop in the uk called “Javari” which does have the free shipping and up front phone line. The website is still in beta so clearly this will be one to watch!

Razorfish argue that connected consumers are now the mainstream

So what is the best way to anticipate how people are going to change in the way they use technology? Razorfish think they may have found a way to do this. Rather than surveying the entire population they have taken a sample of highly connected users. They argue that by studying these early adopters of social media we can get a deeper understanding of where we are going and what works in this new more highly interactive, real time, connected world. Their main conclusion is that nowadays “the experience is the message”.

97% of these consumers had searched for a brand on line, 70% had read a corporate blog, 67% had watched a commerical on YouTube, 65% had played a branded browser based game and 73% had posted a product review on a website like Amazon.
40% had actually friended a brand on Facebook and 26% followed a brand on twitter. These customers were definitely being pulled.

However interestingly 44% of those who friend a brand on twitter said it was to get exclusive deals. Similar statistics were shown for Facebook. Dell of course have already shown that this works in cash returns. I can imagine many brands will look at this with interest. Pizza Hut and Papa Johns have had similar experiences when offering free stuff via an iphone app and facebook respectively.

The report also gave some insight into how change is taking place in how information is dispersed. They found that these consumers are increasingly getting their news from social networking sites from Facebook and Twitter. I guess the great thing about news from these sources is that it is very much customized to your interests. I have certainly learnt about several fairly big stories via facebook especially breaking news.

Razorfish conclude that in terms of brands we are more actively engaged with brands than ever before and the companies that are getting it right are the ones that are focusing on the “experience” that customers are having with their brand. 97% of these consumers reported that digital experience has influenced whether or not they went on to make a purchase.

So can these results generalize to the general population? Well Razorfish suggest that what is incredible about digital technology is that people are picking it up very quickly. The speed and scale with which digital fluency grows is very transforming. They believe these connected consumers do represent the mainstream. Personally I find this a pretty big jump to make. There is no way that the majority are behaving the same way as these more highly connected users. However this does not mean that in a year or two this will not change. They are certainly right that the technology is getting entrenched in society quickly and the next generation of young adults will be even more involved with it.

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