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Your Customer Isn't An Idiot

There are only two things of importance. One is the customer, and the other is the product. If you take care of customers, they come back. If you take care of your product, it doesn't come back. It's just that simple. And it's just that difficult.

Guidelines from the trenches: some lessons we learned on our way to launching http://www.hatfactory.com/

1- Show your product.
Many of today's web catalogs don't show their product to consumers. People won't buy what they can't see. Many e-commerce sites currently use small images and poor quality photography. When offered a chance to click on a thumbnail image for a larger view, the resulting picture is often only a slightly larger snapshot of the same thing. Pay for professional photography, show more than one view of a product, and make the presentation hold its own on the page. Describe the product in text, as well, for customers who prefer verbal over visual description.

2- Know Your Purpose
Before the first line of copy is written, or any coding begins, know why you're building a commerce site, how it's going to serve your customers, and how the e-commerce venture fits with the rest of your business. Understand your business and your goals. Otherwise, the web is a great way to waste lots of time and lots of money. Be sure you can answer the question "What business are we in?"

3- Entertain
If your audience enjoys your site, they're more likely to revisit it, and to tell others about you. Make your content interesting, engaging, and entertaining, and people will spend more time with you. Make them laugh. Teach them. Capture their imagination.

4- Give More, Task Less
Give something back to your audience. Consider each page of the site, and make them a gift of an interesting tidbit of knowledge, an engaging graphic, or a revelation about themselves or the world. With each page impression, you have the potential to teach, to illuminate and to inspire. If you take advantage of the opportunities, people will expect more back, and view more of your pages hunting for more value.

5- Don't make your customer feel like an idiot
Bill Cosby had a wonderful shtick on one of the recordings we listened to when we were kids. It was about accidentally hitting the windshield wiper switch in a car, and the wipers would flap back and forth saying "dumb guy, dumb guy, dumb guy," over and over again. All too often, that's what happens to our customers on the web. They follow vaguely labeled links to unwanted content that could have been clearly marked. They're chastised by "error" messages triggered by actions they didn't know were wrong. Design your interfaces to guide people into correct choices, and engineer out the errors before they make them. They know they're not stupid, and they shouldn't be treated to site design that makes them wonder if they are.

6- Let your customers do things their way
It doesn't matter how you think people "should" use your site. They'll want to choose their own path, and they'll get very frustrated with you if you don't let them. If I'm adding a gift card for Cousin Freddie to my completed order and I remember that I should probably buy a present for Aunt Martha, let me. Make your site "stateless," in the sense that I can stop what I'm doing at any time and come back to it later. I should be able to choose when and where I give you basic information, and I should almost always get a second chance.

7- Create Trust
Make your information hygiene and policies explicit. Publish a complete statement detailing the information you collect from customers, what you do with it, and what choices they have concerning their personal information. Don't weasel-word it, don't hedge and don't be vague. Once you've published your information policy, stick to it. If you say you're going to delete their customer record, do it, and don't hold back a copy in case you change your mind. If you say you'll answer your mail, answer it. If you say you'll only send one piece of mail, send only one. Even cynical people take your initial assurances at face value, but they notice real quick when you cheat. Don't do it.

8- Sweat The Details
The t-shirt gets it half right: it's all details. People's understanding of the world is shaped as much by little things as by big things. Usability studies of web sites have shown that people base their judgment of the veracity and accuracy of a site's content on the fit-and-finish of the site. Spelling, punctuation, grammar, page layout, readability, image quality, broken links, all have as much impact on your customer's reaction to your site as the specifics of your product and business. It's not fair, but that's the way peoples' heads work. Spend the time to make your site as perfect as you can. No excuses.

9- Listen to Your Customers.
All too often, sites are created for very small audiences: usually limited to the site design team or the company web business manager! You are not your customer! Talk to your customers, listen to their responses, and base your site and business process design on their needs and feedback. Every interaction you have with a customer, whether by 'phone, email or in person, is an opportunity to discover how well you're serving their needs. Learn to ask the opening questions that will get them talking, and then shut up and listen. Don't defend, don't explain: just listen.

10- Ask For Help
Of all the lessons we've learned, asking for help at the right time is one of the hardest to internalize. We try to do too much, and stretch our meager skills too far. Learn what you're good at, and get help with the rest of the stuff. Even when you're good at something, learn to ask for feedback and criticism from people equally skilled, so you mitigate the risk of getting too close to your problems and losing objectivity.

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