By Geoff Wilson, 352 Inc.
Retailers know more than anyone the value of customer insights, shopper experience and analytics. While these insights guide in-store displays and promotions, a recent Gallup survey shows retailers fail to extend customer experience improvements to their digital properties. You may develop new digital creative for the next big sale, but the fundamental user experience remains the same.
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E-Commerce websites can’t afford to offer a stagnant user experience. They must deliver user value at every level – promotions, product detail pages, customer service, checkout and more. Given the scope of retail user experience, it’s nearly impossible to build an e-commerce site that meets all your user expectations at launch.
Iteration — gradually introducing new site features and improvements, rather than completely overhauling your site — is the most effective way to deliver an experience that resonates with customers. Guided by in-depth user feedback, UX iteration requires a commitment to testing and research, but the results speak for themselves.
The Proof Is In The Payoff
In 2014, Wal-Mart spent more than $2.5 billion enhancing its e-Commerce platforms. It focused heavily on its mobile experience, broadened its global platform and improved its personalized search and recommendations. After an initial redesign, Wal-Mart began a gradual approach to improve the site and its customer experience — each iteration adding new features and slowly refining its product pages, check-out process and more. Rather than waiting until a complete site was built, it launched a beautiful site and invested incrementally in improvement.
And that investment paid huge dividends. Wal-Mart had its most successful Cyber Monday in history, with an incredible 70% of its web traffic coming from mobile (other retailers averaged around 40%).
Of course, Wal-Mart hasn’t stayed still since then, and your business can’t afford to sit idle either. It’s easy for retailers to think quarterly or seasonally, but that’s not the only way customers plan their purchases. Their needs can shift rapidly, and you need the flexibility to listen and react to shift demands.
That’s why Amazon is the poster child for research and iteration. It spent more than $9 billion in 2014 to test features, research users and optimize services constantly. Yet even without Amazon’s war chest, retailers can use the same creative, iterative approach to compete — and beat — the e-Commerce giant.
For example, Sports Authority uses a sophisticated schema markup and video strategy on its product pages and categories to consistently outrank Amazon. It’s no fluke. Sports Authority’s investment in technology and content marketing keeps it one step ahead of Amazon, despite a much lower budget.
Iterative web development can deliver similar results, and it’s an ideal model for retailers. Retailers can’t afford to risk huge budget to build huge, untested feature sets. Iteration allows businesses to make small bets, gather useful customer feedback and build new features that will resonate with users.
Your web site can be much more than a platform for your next holiday promotion or semi-annual sale. With an iterative mindset, it can be an evolving platform that grows with your users and promotes growth for your business.
Geoff Wilson is the President and Founder of 352 Inc. and an evangelist for his Barely Manage to Lead philosophy, using agile teams to drive iterative growth. 352 is a digital product development agency specializing in product strategy, user experience design, custom web development and digital marketing. 352 turns ideas into successful digital products for companies like Cox Automotive, Microsoft and YouCaring.
