October 10 2008

IR2008 session report — Providing a rich customer experience

Stream one at Internet Retailing 2008 was devoted to providing rich customer experiences through rich media solutions and to the technical, marketing and operational issues rich media involves. Stream chairman Jeff Hunt from Adobe Scene7 reports on the top tips and lessons learned during the day

Key messages from the 'Rich customer experience' session at Internet Retailing 2008 included:

• Engaging your customers with a rich user experience is key to a successful web presence.
• In order to understand HOW to engage them, you must first understand WHY they are there.
• Feedback from your users/customers is key. Testing different scenarios and gathering user reviews is the best way to obtain this feedback.
• Don't be afraid to experiment.
• Don't stand still; you must constantly be moving.
• Don't change for change's sake. Have a reason and test it.
• A rich user experience is the expected norm for ecommerce sites today. Crisp imagery, zoom and videos are becoming ubiquitous.
• Make it interesting, useful, easy and fun.
• A rich user experience is a key step toward attaining a personalized one-to-one customer relationship and crucial to establishing a repeat customer.

One very important point that came up from the question and answer session is that retailers must be very careful about putting 'playful' rich media services on the home page. As Michael Robinson from Anthropologie explained, experiences in the US have shown that putting cool video content on the home page can see sales drop by as much as 30% as consumers with a limited time available to spend on a site use up that time playing with the rich media application rather than actually doing some shopping.

Internet Retailing 2008 took place at the Novotel in Hammersmith, west London, on Tuesday 7 October. Delegates will be able to access all the presentations online from 20 October. For those who weren't able to attend on the day, the proceedings are also available to purchase from the show office.

by Sarah Clark (Web Editor)