The eyes of the aisles are on you

A few weeks back I was at a retail,technology show checking out the latest in shopper/store technology. On Monday this week I was at my usual training session where I keep up with the latest in what's happening in the business world. It's always great and led by my friend, the Futurist, Craig Rispin. www.futuretrendsgroup.com

He introduced us to the latest innovations in shopper monitoring technology. Some of which I had seen at the show. Systems that watch what your eyes are doing and what you look like and change the ads in response. On Tuesday I visited a vendor of a technology that looks at how people - customers and staff - operate in a retail and banking space. This is fascinating and can provide some excellent insights.

In our business as customer experience consultants we see these as valuable tools. They help us see what type of people the business is attracting and also what takes their attention. They told me about a store that wanted to know about the behaviour of people who chose a particular brand of sweets. They learnt that people who bought the particular sweets also bought two other items over 48% of the time. But they had to go across the store to get the extra items. So the store ran a test to see if they placed all the items close together would more people buy all the items more often. They did!


This is hardly new. There used to be a biscuit aisle in the supermarket. It was the place you went to get all the types of biscuits that they stocked. using the same principle as above you will now find the cracker biscuits at the cheese section and chocolate biscuits placed strategically near the coffee. Using this new technology as you approach the coffee the system will scan you, make decisions about our age and sex and then alter the ads on the digital display accordingly based on some pre-determined persona's.


Here is an article from the Sydney Morning Herald which looks at this new area.

http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/look-customers-in-the-eyes-to-lock-them-in-the-aisles-20110625-1gkwo.html


There is a trap here! Its all to easy to be seduced by the technology that tells you how people behaved. What it won't tell you is how people are feeling.


In simple terms it will tell you the metrics of the customers and react accordingly, it won't tell you the mood of the customers.

Consider this. A large US retailer (industry withheld to be polite) set up the fastest checkouts in their industry. They thought that this would give them an advantage. This new technology may also have made them extra sales. They surveyed their customers to find that their satisfaction scores had not gone up despite a substantial investment is systems and speed at the checkout. Their competitor also did surveys and exit interviews of their customers and found the major drivers of satisfaction and heightened experience.


The second store chain sold more product. Why? The customer feedback from both stores showed the major drivers of a Magnetic experience were - being able to find a sales person withing 90 seconds, someone who knew what they were taking about or who found someone who did, and someone who knew where things were in the store. The first store did not have all these attributes so their CSI score was way down. People could get out fast but they were not very happy when they got to the super speed checkout.


As a result of the research the first store put on many extra staff and did much more product training.


Whey the long story. Mood is just as important as metrics. Store one with only metrics may have missed what the questioning of the customer mood turned up.


A great example of this is the brand new Bunnings store in Chatswood, NSW. When it opened it was just full of staff. All armed with little maps that they gave customers so they could find their way round the unfamiliar store. As a frequent offender at hardware stores I met a fellow I knew from the Artarmon store. I asked if he had been transferred. No he said. He had been put on secondment while the customers became familiar with the new store and the layout. He was then told he would go back from whence he came. Over time he explained the staff number could be reduced to a normal level as regulars would need less help. at the new store no one was a regular!


Great customer experience thinking. Manage the mood by getting the experience drivers right!

Call me on 0414 55 33 33 if you want to look at the latest metrics and mood solutions for your business.

Googles Wonder Wheel can boost your business - literally

Peter Thorpe is an internet expert.

Here is a very interesting and potentially profitable piece he wrote on making sure that your website is the best it can be - when it comes to being found.

GOOGLE'S WONDERFUL WONDER WHEEL

Have you ever used Google's Wonder Wheel? Chances are you've never even heard of it - let alone used it. It's a well kept secret!
Well, i f this is the case, you are missing out on a fantastic free tool that can not only help you improve your search results - it can actually help you get more traffic to your website!
I'll tell you how in a minute but first - let me tell you where to find it and how it works.
Where to find it
Actually it's right there under your nose, whenever you do a search on Google. Been there since May 2009! Down in the left hand column, after you do a search for anything on Google, you will see simple little text link Wonder Wheel. (see diagram below) Note: You may need to click on the heading More Search Tools.

How it works
Do a search on Google for a popular search term and after you get the results, click on the Wonder Wheel link. This creates a sun shaped graphic, featuring keywords, all related to your original  search. Your original search term is in the centre of the sun and the ‘beams’ show other popular related keywords to this search. To the right of the graphic you will see the normal results listed. (see diagram below)

Pretty clever huh? But hang on - you ain't seen nothing yet!
Click on any of the related search terms (on the beams) and this will create another 'sun' and drill down into these keywords for more related keywords and so on. (see diagram below)

How can this help you?
The Wonder Wheel might look like a pretty cool toy to play with but it's actually a powerful tool to help you find relevant and related keywords for your website.
How?
The most important thing on your website (to Google) is the text on the pages. Having the right keywords in the text of your pages, headlines, links, articles, etc., is vital to getting a good position in Google’s search results. Sounds obvious enough however, it's often very difficult to sort out which keywords are the most important and relevant to your potential audience. And once you work out what these keywords and phrases are, its even more difficult to get these in some sort of order of importance.
This is where the Wonder Wheel can help. It basically does this for you. And because it's a Google tool, it “thinks” like Google, so it's fairly easy to work out how people generally search for related words and topics.
It's also a fantastic tool to help you find Keywords and niche markets for your Google Adwords campaign.
This is not a replacement in any way for keyword research and there are several other tools you can use for this. However, it can be very useful to find new areas of interest to write about on your website, in articles, blogs, Adwords campaigns, etc.
So if you haven't used it before - give the Wonder Wheel a try. You’ll soon get the idea of how it works. It's just another great free tool form the wonderful folks at Google!
And by the way, if you need assistance to make your website work better or you need help with your search engine marketing or a Google Adwords campaign – give us a call. We’d be happy to help.