4.00 a.m. Tuesday morning – alarm goes off reminding me GPeC Summit starts in 5 hours. We’re not in the same city – me & the most important #eCommerce event in Romania. So, I need to hit the road while it’s still dark. The train leaves early. I don’t even remember the last time I intentionally woke up this early. Oh, college! But it had nothing to do with eCommerce.
As I was heading to my first eCommerce conference, I also got to experience my first snow this year. Boy, was it beautiful. Big flakes distraction and a wrong bus cost me a 1 hour GPeC lag. I got there just in time for the first panel where they were painting the roof-top view of the Romanian eCommerce market.
Yes, we learn a lot from our first timers, don’t we? *Smile I know I learned a lot from these two days. They weren’t kidding when they said “premium content” or “best keynote speakers”.
So, dear eShop owners, in case you missed the unmissable GPeC Summit, here’s a list of the 10 most valuable A-Ha Moments from the conference.
1. Customers are real & complex people, just like you and me!
I’ve said this before – It’s not about you!
Clients are not just points of data. And we’re not here to sell them anything.
We’re here to offer solutions because we’ve been through the same experience and learned something. We’re here to solve challenges because we stumbled upon obstacles and found a way to overcome them. We’re here to learn and grow together so that we all live better. Or any variations on the matter. Ideally.
One of the ground, common assumptions GPeC Summit built on was that eCommerce is about serving people and understanding what they need. It’s commerce done online.
At the same time, we’re all different because we perceive reality through various maps. If you were a fish, you’d be furious if someone expected you to climb up a tree too, wouldn’t you?
Note-to-Self Question: What are you doing every day to understand your customers?
Golden Tip: Simplify everything you do by pinpointing what’s best for your customers.
2. “Decisions are the root of every conversion!” – @TaliaWolf
Everything we buy comes with an attached emotion simply because we want to feel a certain way. We want to become a certain someone.
At GPeC Summit, Talia Wolf explained with a WestWorld quote (yes, the new HBO TV series): the guests are “not looking for a story that tells them who they are. They already know who they are. They’re here because they want a glimpse of who they could be.”
We choose to download a certain eBook because it will make us smarter in a certain field. We buy a certain shampoo because it makes our hair cleaner or shinier and that helps to maintain or improve our self-image. See where we’re going with this?
Note-to-Self Question: How do we make decisions?
Golden Tip: To your customers – pay attention (by listening and basic care) and then, empower them (by showing what’s in it for them, their outcome).
3. Buyer Persona + Story = Buyer Legend – @BryanEisenberg
Emotions come from stories. Empowering buyers to make decisions, thus, wraps up into highlighting a story in which they’re the heroes.
Deeply understanding your customers becomes easier when attaching a story to it. Buyer Legends do just that. Through a structured process which uses storytelling techniques they align brands with customer experiences.
At GPeC Summit, Bryan Eisenberg, specifically highlighted that a good Persona is based on:
- A Narrative Scenario – the actual story
- Character development – emphasizing on how customers will make decisions
- Defined Know-ables – the details we know for sure about our customers
- Verifiable Maybe-Know-ables – the details we need to verify
Note-to-Self Question: How do you build Customer Empathy?
Golden Tip: Steps to creating a Buyer Legend:
- Select your perspective – the deeper it is, the better results
- Perform a pre-mortem – envision and plan for what might go wrong first
- Outline the story backward
- Draft the Buyer Legend
- Execute – improve, rinse and repeat
4. “You can’t solve a problem you don’t understand!” – @CraigSullivan
As far as I see it, we’re under the impression we get problems. But, as some of the judges at GPeC Summit showed in the #eShop’s mistake panel, we have different understandings on the matter.
The challenge doesn’t only regard the buy (Last Click Attribution), but the entire experience from when they first enter your eShop and until you ask them how their experience went. It’s a process taking place on several devices and contexts.
You understand a problem when you have the solution. And you know you’ve got a key when you can control the outcome. The only moment when you control outcomes is never. In other words, the only thing you can change in a person is their diapers.
The only thing you CAN control, though, is your inputs. That’s when you solve a problem – when you understand what it is you’re doing to trigger a certain decision in others.
You convert when you stop obsessing about converting. When you know what it is you’re doing to trigger emotional decisions in your customers, that’s when you have a hypothesis. Go A/B test that!
Note-to-Self Question: What are your Key Inputs?
Golden Tip: Stop A/B testing clicks and CTAs and start testing a real hypothesis. Use a Contextual Diary Study to understand what they’re going through.
5. Logistics is one of the biggest challenges #eShop owners encounter!
From the testimonies of GPeC Summit shop owners, it seems that Romanians’ biggest challenge is logistics – yet another physical (not online) element. Our main issues have to do with both space and delivery. Depending on which part of the screen you are at.
Since we’re looking to expand internationally, there’s an interesting fact about the broader view to take into consideration. According to Monica Cadogan, CEO Vivre, since we’re geographically at the end of the European Union, the general tendency of Romania is to welcome products instead of seeing them off.
Note-to-Self Question: How quickly can you respond to customers?
Golden Tip: Pick-Up Points. Use Pick-Up Points to ease your delivery process.
6. #BlackFriday is growing as a several days event!
As heard at GPeC Summit, #BlackFriday is going from rational to emotional buying itself.
Yearly, it expands from a one-day event to a one-week (Answer.com) or even longer (Amazon – two months) event. This has to do with price dynamics as much as customer needs.
Note-to-Self Question: What are your products’ life cycles?
Golden Tip: Control your production & distribution chains by combined 1st & 3rd party suppliers.
7. “Machines are already taking over” – Maciek Mikolajczak @RTBHouse
No, I’m not trying to scare you off or threaten your job. But take a look at Siri, Cortana, Tesla or Google’s Neuronal Machine Translation Program.
Machines learn fast. Faster than we can keep up. They process 1 million decisions per 0.2 seconds.
3 phases to learning over the past years:
- AI – AI uses algorithms to make logic based decisions.
- Machine Learning uses big, raw data to make KPI based decisions.
- Deep Learning uses learning itself to make decisions based on long-term KPIs. Machines start from the idea that there’s commercial life after #BlackFriday, as well.
Bottom Lines point us to emotions based conversion and the all time question of how we get machines to pick up on them? There’s still room for testing and learning.
Note-to-Self Question: Who are more effective in converting – humans or machines?
Golden Tip: Use Intelligent Recommendations based on Deep Learning.
8. UX has a lot to do with our Cross Device Mix
It takes us an average of 11 days to buy a product such as electronics. Based on price, trust through content, etc.
There’s an intent vs. conversions debate to tackle here. One that has to do with knowing your customers’ experiences with the devices mix and tracking their overall actions and behaviors rather than just their converting clicks.
Numbers show that:
- 59% of our purchases come from Desktop
- 25% customers buy from Smartphones
- 16% conversions are tablet-based
When looking at these figures, also take into consideration that the Customer Journey can take you through all devices. As mentioned at GPeC Summit, the biggest cross-device problem is that we’re not testing the impact on key devices and browser experience.
Digitally, customers see, think, act and then care. They become aware of their need when they see an add, a product, etc. They develop an interest and start thinking and researching on all available devices. Other people’s feedback and emotions determine a buyer’s behavior and purchase.
Note-to-Self Question: How many of your visitors really want to buy?
Golden Tip: Develop your customer behavioral profiles based on Contextual Diary Studies.
9. The 4 Pillars of Amazon’s Success
Amazon’s vision is to be the world’s most Customer-Centric Company.
To do that, they focus their efforts on knowing all about what their visitors and customers are doing. Opposing WalMart, for instance, measures the number of people that come in and the number of purchases. When we put it this way, it’s easy to spot the difference.
The result? 10 years ago, 10% of the WalMart customers were Amazon customers. Today, 60% of WalMart’s clients are Amazon buyers.
Moreover, they’re expected to exceed WalMart in 2018.
Amazon’s Success is built on 4 Pillars:
- Customer Centricity – Even Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s CEO, takes 2 days a year to answer customer service calls.
- Continuous Optimization – Amazon does approximately 2000 marketing tests a year. They measure Inputs more than they do Outputs and make sure they optimize those. So, what can they control?
- Selection – Amazon categories go 7 times deeper than competitors’
- Price – 5 – 13% lower than their top 5 competitors. They change prices 6 million times a day. They go that far as to customize pricing per person.
- Availability – They do 20 inventory turns per year. The only ones that have a higher inventory turn are Apple – 74 times/year.
- User Experience – They rank 13% higher than competitors in the American Customer Satisfaction Index.
- A culture of Innovation – Amazon invests $15 billion/year in R&D efforts to fuel invention. Google invests $9.8 billion and Apple $6.6 billion.
- Corporate Agility – Amazon is about learning and rapidly translating those lessons into action. They’re able to do real-time changes, according to weather or current events.
Note-to-Self Question: What are you doing to stay ahead of your customers?
Golden Tip: The next interface is voice, not touch. Touch is already here. Use voice!
10. Create Content that helps people buy!
Converting Content is one of my favorite subjects and one of the trending concepts.
At GPeC Summit, @TheGrok zoomed in on this: Amazon converts 74% of their prime customers. What kind of content do they create for that? None. They capitalize on UGC.
Content that helps people buy becomes about Customer Empathy. Video is about both stories and emotions.
Note-to-Self Question: Even more – what words did Wall-E use?
Golden Tip: Generate Customer Empathetic content.
In order to achieve success, centering customers and their dynamic behaviors is an indispensable condition. It drives and shapes all our actions. But actions without the right mindset might be doing more harm than good.
And since it all starts with your perspective, the list above tends to do just that: mix all the trends and main actors of the #eCommerce scene into a solid idea of how to approach and tackle today’s challenges. The list above highlights a customer-centric user experience taking place in an agile, machine ruled environment in which, to remain relevant, we need to permanently adapt and keep up. Now, how’s that for a challenge?
Zooming in, though, relationships are the true catalysts in today’s scenery. The one that we seem to invest most into is building trust and familiarity in our brands. It seems we’re looking for safe contexts in an insecure world.
PS: Special thanks to Alin Dobrin, the artist behind our featured image. Kudos from #TeamAYG for capturing this shot and for visually memorizing GPeC Summit.
