Category Archives: eCommerce

eCommerce

My Headless Commerce Experience with Adobe.com

I’ve worked in commerce for some two decades, on both the front-end and the back-end and everything in between. Over time, I’ve honed a vision for what commerce should be. I believe many of you share a similar view. Yet we struggle to deliver given the limitations of existing technology patterns and vendor solutions. In the same way I’ve challenged myself throughout my career, I challenge the industry to materialize this vision. Here’s the story of my work on Adobe.com

/var/folders/94/z7nrsy593hn5sqwnwhr3xm094lwyq3/T/com.microsoft.Word/WebArchiveCopyPasteTempFiles/0?e=1557360000&v=beta&t=t7HoHBhcXGerKSCyNwdUFVhtE36_g3g2e2ukjag2lzw

A New Vision for Commerce

As shoppers, most of us are into one product category or another and some of us are into more than our finances support. For me I love gear. I love electronics gear, outdoor gear, sailing gear, hunting gear. Anything that acts as an aid to my hobbies, whether truly required or valuable, I’m all over it. Some of you may be into hand bags or collectibles, shoes or toys. Whatever your shopping vice, we can probably agree that the research and shopping portion of the journey are just as wonderful as the purchase itself.

Which is why I have always been disappointed with online shopping.

If I’m trying to buy a raincoator fancy backpacker style tent online, I want more information on why there is such a broad selection of products. What are the differences? Why is one item better than another? Retailers have been just plain lazy in how they merchandise online. Their typical, lack-luster responses to my questions include “faceted search” and ”sorts” on price or reviews.  Even manufacturers struggle to articulate why they created so many similar products in a category. We all put a lot of love and passion into product development. It’s just seemed crazy to me that we’re still mostly showcasing them as thumbnails in rows and columns online.

While at Adobe we encountered the typical challenge where we created these beautiful marketing pages and then customers had to go to an (ugly) ecommerce site to buy once they hit that point of inflection. Our goal back then was to radically shift our business from the channel to direct sales. It was obvious after looking at the analytics and going through the buy flow, we couldn’t have two sites. We had to transform that beautiful marketing site into the store.

We needed experience-driven commerce.

Who Gets Experience-driven Commerce Right?

The technology pattern that allows marketers to create any compelling experience they want and then make them shoppable has been a CMS, which in turn calls a headless commerce solution via an API. It seems simple enough, yet most of the ecommerce vendors out there are running on really old architecture patterns where the system is designed to deliver a home page, category pages, product detail pages, cart, and checkout…aka, the web shop.

When we attempted to transform Adobe.com with ATG (now Oracle Commerce) and Day Software’s CQ5 (now Adobe Experience Manager), we quickly found out ATG’s API wasn’t complete enough and had too many holes to bother with. Unfortunately, we purchased ATG as we thought we might acquire the company later. They were bought by Oracle and continue to pursue a web shop model, although they have improved their API (ten years later).

During this large program, called Adobe.com Transformation, we also had evaluated Elastic Path.

Everyone was enamored with Elastic Path. The developers loved it and marketing did too, as we knew we’d be able to weave together our dream experience. I actually think our idea of combining “content and commerce” with the CMS and ecommerce stack was largely influenced by Elastic Path’s capabilities and a key architect that joined us from Amazon (he put me on to microservices before the term was coined). We also had a lot of fun settling debates in meetings quoting Linda Bustos from getelastic.com There’s a great case study by Harvard Business Review that outlines this journey we took at Adobe, so I won’t expand on it more.

Once we implemented our vision for Adobe.com, making the site the store, we saw immediate results. Our conversion rates went up and it was not only noticeable in the analytics, but also in the actual sales reports. We were taking the same traffic and making a lot more money… In a few years Adobe.com went from a little over USD $200M annually to nearly $750M. The site now generates over USD$1B (Internet Retailer Top 100).

I began evangelizing the idea of experience-driven commerceand searching for the technology pattern required to pull it off. I switched business units and joined what became the Digital Marketing BU. My charter was product strategy and marketing for the idea, with the added goal of finding a commerce engine to acquire that would allow Adobe to deliver this capability.

While we started out dancing with Hybris (which was later sold to SAP… a story for another time), we eventually evaluated and collaborated with most of the ecommerce platforms on the market. All but one struggled to deliver full capabilities as an API so we could manage the shopping experience in Adobe Experience Managerand take advantage of other products such as Adobe Target, Audience Manager, etc.

Here’s what we found:

ATG’s API was incomplete with version 10 and only as of the latest version (11.3) is there a full REST API. But, it’s effectively on an EOL path with a novel attempt at a re-write, and Oracle’s new vision misses the point about customization. Oracle Commerce Cloud, the cloud version of ATG, limits customizations to webhooks and still focuses on the web shop pattern.

Hybris’ API was designed mostly for a mobile app. You could get product information out of it and engage the cart through checkout, but we had a lot of customers that ran into problem after problem trying to make it work. Simple use cases like being able to request a product from a staging environment were not supported by the API. The API only knew about products in the live production site. Hybris is now owned by an ERP company that created the reason for ecommerce to be a separate solution in the first place.

Magento had an old SOAP interface that had a poorly performing Rest API duct-taped on top. Even with the 2.x changes it’s still better suited for small volumes and simple web shops.

Digital River didn’t have an API yet.

Demandware wasn’t sure what to make of “experience-driven commerce”. They liked their model of forcing customers into web shop templates. Ironic given their target audience was fashion retailers with beautiful products. (I always wondered what Kate Spade really thought of her web store). This SaaS version of Intershop, now called Salesforce Commerce Cloud, was initially appealing to business owners, but they soon run into all sorts of brand problems as they try to choreograph experiences across digital touchpoints.

Intershop posed similar challenges to Demandware and we later learned that it essentially was Demandware (I’m pretty sure Salesforce didn’t know this when they bought it, but hey, they can just keep buying solutions until they get one that works for their customer base.)

IBM WebSphere Commerce came close with a recent REST Level 1 API, but it was similar to Magento in that it was a “RESTified” SOAP interface and required a great deal of expertise to use. So much so that the partner helping to integrate Adobe and IBM gave up on a couple of areas and tried to just make the argument that WCS should drive those pages (and thus the side by side pattern emerged – even though this breaks the first guiding principle of enabling marketing with a single tool for experience).

And then there was Elastic Path. Unapologetically API first. Not a REST-ified SOAP interface like WCS and Magento. Not a partial API that misses checkout like Salesforce. Not a mobile app-only API like Hybris that misses simple use cases like being able to test multiple versions and environments. Elastic Path had engineered the most advanced, and thoughtful API for marketers and commerce professionals to bring to life their ideas of enabling any commerce transaction at that point of inflection where they have excited customers enough to buy—ether by pumping the tongue of a shoe, calling out from the shower or walking into a store with a wearable device.

Elastic Path had already skated to where the puck was going (they’re Canadian, so I figured they were trained on this concept more than others). They had already envisioned these use cases and were excited to show how easily they could enable any client application or shopping experience whether through a CMS or custom app.

And the thing that stuck with me over the years? Elastic Path just worked. It worked for really large transaction companies like Symantec who wanted to embed commerce in their own applications and it worked for smaller companies across any industry. Unfortunately, sometimes you don’t get to buy or implement what the team really wants due to the normal “complexities” of a large company, but I was hooked on the idea of headless commerce.

Results

 

What about the Internet of Things and ordering through Alexa?

The smartphone gave rise to IoT. Just like the dot.com boom inspired one of history’s largest telecommunications build-outs, which later provided the bandwidth for the web to deliver the experiences marketers originally envisioned in the 90’s. Smartphone adoption paved the way for inexpensive compute inside small packages with wireless capability. Thanks to Apple, Google and the Android operating system, the bill of materials (BOM) for a device to have a sophisticated OS, great compute power and wireless connectivity dropped to a level where entrepreneurs’ could invent pool sensors that can tell you when to add chemicals.

Recruited away from Adobe by Intel to define retail solutions that would take advantage of this upcoming re-imagining of everything around us, I took a detour deep into the historic Silicon Valley. During which I learned a hell of a lot more about silicon and the integrated circuit than I would have ever imagined.

It was while working at Intel on IoT products and collaborating with many innovative retailers that I realized we not only needed to have experience-driven commerce in our mobile apps and websites, but that everything around us was going to become electronic commerce.

I worked with retailers trying to actually figure out how to identify a customer in the store and just let them walk out without going through the point-of-sale (self-checkout). We collaborated with toy manufacturers that wanted to have the box or toy itself somehow interact with a digital deviceto buy accessories (same use cases in B2B for replenishing devices in life sciences companies). There were companies with vending machines (Best Buy in airports) and many others creating new, and strange, pizza ordering experiences.

Obviously the convergence of physical and digital experiencesbecomes a reality over time (though costs still must come down). While my assertions had expanded and I had a focus on bringing the digital into the physical realm, one company kept delivering on this commerce vision, Elastic Path.

Today my aim is to help other digital commerce practitioners accomplish similar results and create e-commerce experiences we’ll all love.

eCommerce

Omni-channel Retailing Falls Short in 2014

As we approach the busiest shopping weekend of the year in the US, I see many retailers still falling short of providing a true omni-channel retail experience. Before I share my thoughts on why and how so many retailers are falling short, I want to quickly define my expectations of an omni-channel retailer. First, the word “channel” only applies to the retailer, and as many profess, the customer does not understand this construct. Even those of us in the industry will admit forgetting about the complexities of our own businesses or those that we support in the moment where we are trying to accomplish a task for our own sake. From a customer experience perspective, I see the requirements of omni-channel retailing including the following:

  1. Product Discovery – Whether I am browsing a retailer’s product catalog from the comfort of my couch with a tablet, standing in their store searching on my mobile phone, talking to a store associate, or simply browsing the store, I expect consistency around product information, price and availability. Preferably, I can also see and share my shopping lists and carts across each of these touch points to then purchase in any location. Most retailers have done a great job of having consistent product information across channels for some time as the industry found the value of a single product information management (PIM) system to ensure this some time ago. However, availability of product is still a huge challenge as most retailers have visibility into only 60-70% of their in-store inventory. This means that when a retailer takes a short cut using algorithms to determine when something is shown in stock, to minimize the risk that it is not, they not only miss potential sales, decreasing the value of capital, but could also have a customer satisfaction/loyalty issue if the customer later goes in and sees that an item is in fact in stock.
  2. Loyalty – We all want our 15 min. of fame and to be appreciated for the business we do with retailers. Feeling special is why most people engage with loyalty programs as it provides this sense of appreciation that we are always seeking in our lives. As customers shop more online or across multiple stores, we loose the customer experience of a store associate knowing who we are, what we like and how much we spend. An omni-channel retailer then has to recognize this information gap and find creative ways to expose it to every touch point from how they personalize the customer experience online or more importantly pass this insight to the store itself and the associates supporting customers.
  3. Customer Service (Returns/Exchanges) – The purchase journey, as frictionless as it hopefully is made to be, can still often result in an issue requiring a return for reasons such as: we bought the wrong item, size, changed our mind, or found a defect. An omni-channel retailer knows the customer across any touch point (channel) and can respond and support the customer’s return or exchange across any touch point. Today, nearly all of the retailers mobile apps I have on my phone (which is a lot because of my focus on the industry) do not show my past purchases in the store and often connect me with call centers that can’t react to in-store purchases. Similarly, when I go into these same retailers stores, while they may now accept my return, they are not in a position to recognize my other online purchases (lifetime customer value) and may not even have the product assortment required to support an exchange.
  4. Purchase – I have purposely chosen to make the purchase event #4 as I believe the first three have a bigger impact on “customer lifetime value” and ultimately revenues and profitability, yet I see most retailers have focused on how to enable transactions such as “buy online, pick-up in store” or “buy online, ship from store”. While it is certainly valuable to be able to see something is available in a store nearby, buy it online and then head in to grab it, we all know negative customer experiences have a much greater impact on future sales. Following I’ll share a recent experience to illustrate.

So with all the omni-channel initiatives announced and the ones you are likely executing against this year, why am I writing about seeing such a miss? Ultimately, I think in our focus on the purchase event, we have set ourselves up for some very high transaction costs and negative impacts to customer experience that will result in reduced loyalty and ultimately reduced sales.

To better explain where I see the challenges, let me share a recent, personal shopping experience with a retailer famous for its focus on customer service. While out of town for work, I had some time to kill and wanted to buy a new sport coat and maybe an overcoat. My initial shopping experience was fantastic. While I deviated from my mission and ended up looking at jeans, a store associate approached me in a very disarming way and got past my typical response of “just looking”. As a guy that is not built for the latest designer jeans, I frustratingly shared that most likely there were none for me to purchase and that we should move on to the original task at hand. This gentleman however was not convinced and was determined to prove there was a pair for me. He was an attractive man that looked like he could be a jeans model for any major brand. I laughed to myself and figured it didn’t hurt to entertain the idea on the off chance he found me a pair that fit, and I’m always in “secret shopper” mode for my job, so off we went to the dressing room. I’ll share the full story later on how we went from not only finding a couple pair of nice jeans that fit me, but also conquered the original task of purchasing a new sport coat and overcoat. All in all, the purchase was a big one for this retailer, and I even opened a new store card. The challenge came later when I didn’t receive all of my items that were tailored and shipped to my home.

A couple weeks after the purchase, I awaited delivery of all of my items. Everything needed some tailoring, so interestingly I walked out of the store with nothing but a smile and the anticipation to receive everything at home. I had even chosen to have the receipt emailed to me rather than take home a printed version. Unfortunately, when I received the shipment, I was not at home. I went to the shipping company’s pick-up location and asked for the items for my address as I had forgot the slip at home. I was sent home with a nice big box and excitedly opened it when I got back to share all my new purchases with my wife, who I knew was going to particularly like the overcoat. And here is where the problems began.

There were two items missing from my order. I went to my email to try and understand if they were perhaps shipped separately and just hadn’t arrived. As it turns out, I never got the original receipt, but did have a couple emails with the shipping notification. The two emails looked identical and listed all items from the original email, so I assumed they were identical and maybe just duplicates. When I entered the tracking number on the shipping company’s website it showed that the package had been shipped and that there was only one. What I did not notice until much later was that those emails which contained the entire order contents versus showing that some items were in one shipment and some were in another had different tracking numbers. One package had indeed not yet arrived, but I did not know this yet. As I had been checking all of this from my mobile phone standing in my living room, I also remembered that I had the retailers app and assumed that it would be the fastest way to look up the customer support number to get this all resolved. It was in fact prominently displayed in the app and easy to trigger the call.

When I got a hold of a customer service rep, which was actually quite fast, we had a very difficult time finding my order. Not having a receipt with the order number on it proved to make it quite difficult, all I had was a tracking number that didn’t seem to help them. The service rep searched for my order by phone number and name and even after giving the credit card number (store card), could not find my order. Ultimately we both realized that the customer service rep seem to only have access to online orders (the phone number is likely different for online purchase than in-store and the mobile app is set to the online call center). I then had to be transferred to someone else that could support in-store purchases. They were ultimately not much help and had to call the store direct to talk with someone in shipping to determine if the items were missing or in another package as they also couldn’t tell this in their system. I spent a great deal of time on hold through all of this and ultimately the department manage said she’d figure out what was happening, track down the package herself and call me back when she knew the answer. The order had in fact been split into two deliveries and the other ironically arrived a few minutes after I had left the shipping pick-up location. As it was late on a Friday and the pick-up location was closed on the weekends, I would have to wait until Monday to go pick up the second package.

We all have busy lives, and I couldn’t make it into the pick-up location until Tuesday. Well, for some reason the shipping company marked the second package as having been with them for over 5 business days (counting from the first shipment vs. the second package) and sent it back to the store I originally bought the items from. At this point, I had to start all over with tracking down my jackets. Knowing the mobile app was not helpful, I went online via a desktop browser and tried to log into my account associated to the credit card hoping I could find the order number before I called again. Frustratingly I had to create a separate account on a separate site for the store card than the main account on their site. Forget not doing well at omni-channel, this was a fail for one channel! Either way, nothing online was showing my order so I had to call into customer service. This time I went through the same challenges, but unfortunately had even more trouble as the customer support rep I was working with seemed to have even more trouble navigating the multiple systems that had order and customer information. After over half an hour I hung up and tried calling the store directly (I later noticed in the shipping email that this was my instruction if there was a problem – not exactly an omni-channel experience). When I got connected with the store, even they struggled to find my order. The person I originally talked to took all my information down and committed to tracking down my missing item. Frankly at this point I was considering doing a chargeback on my credit card, but realized it was their store card (will likely impact me from using it in the future). The good news is that the store was able to find my jackets and shipped them back to me, with both sides crossing our fingers that I’d receive them ok. All in all, it was quite a fiasco. If I see you at NRF’s Big Show in New York, you get to see my new overcoat.

Reflecting back on this experience, I see a few key challenge areas that if addressed would have a material impact on customer satisfaction, cost of doing business and most likely future revenue.

  • Order History – While it is unlikely anytime soon retailers will be able to standardize on one purchase system, each system can have their order history exposed as an aggregation service that can be accessed by the customer support applications the call center reps use, store associates log into, and the mobile app. This would make it so that across any touch point, all orders, regardless of channel would be visible.
  • Customer Service Call Centers – Many retailers have their online and physical store businesses divided across different executives that own separate operations by channel. With this comes different call centers that use different tools to get their job done. If you can’t consolidate these operations or tools, then minimally make sure that the tools have access to a customer’s order history across channels and have return/exchange processes outlined such that the handoff is smooth or preferably enables the first responder to resolve the problem.
  • In-store System – Store associates that have to support customers walking in and on the phone, need to have complete visibility into all purchases regardless of channel, and better yet, they should be able to see the customer’s loyalty value so that they maximize the experience for those customers that we all know can be the larger percentage of our revenue.

Each of us carrying the Internet in our pocket has radically changed retail. As more and more of the shopping experience incorporates digital features, from window displays and mobile point of sale to e-ink price tags and near frictionless checkout with mobile payments, we need to excel on the basics before introducing too many new capabilities. As you plan for 2015, I’d set a goal to at least be able to show inventory and order history on any device for both your customers and employees.

 

Originally posted via LinkedIn Pulse

eCommerce

Experience-Driven Commerce Webinar with hybris and Acquity

Leave a comment

Online technology has forever changed the game for commerce.
Customers expect compelling, personalized, and consistent experiences across devices and channels that spark sustained conversations and turn visitors into buyers. This experience-driven commerce is the main driver for conversion and sales.
Adobe Experience Manager integrates with e-commerce platforms, such as hybris, to provide a unified environment for creating and managing product, website, and campaign content — optimizing the entire customer experience from initial touch to checkout.
View my on-demand webinar and white paper to understand:

  • The relationship between experience-driven commerce, conversion, and repeat business
  • Technology best practices, such as personalization, social sharing, and rich content
  • Strategies to build agile, customer-centric experiences across multiple channels and mobile devices

The power of personal experience is critical to a successful brand and commerce strategy. Is your business prepared?

Watch Now

&nbsp

&nbsp

&nbsp

&nbsp

eCommerce

Major eCommerce Trends Affecting Platforms

Leave a comment

General musings on relevant trends affecting today’s eCommerce platform providers:

  • 1-click and the paradigm of the cart – Apple & Amazon have reprogramed our expectations of eCommerce. In the beginning the analog chosen was the shopping cart. This made particular sense for online retailers selling a diverse selection of goods. However, most eCommerce sites today focus on a particular product catalogue and the act of going through a shopping cart checkout experience simply diminishes conversion. For example, if I go to Burton to buy a snowboard, I’m not putting multiple boards in my cart. If I want to buy a digital camera from Cannon’s website, I’m likely only getting one. And even if I go to REI.com to pick up a replacement pair of sunglasses lost over the weekend, my goal is likely “in and out”. Now, this doesn’t mean that the “window shopper” doesn’t exist or that there aren’t many retailers looking to get you to add as many items to your “basket” as possible, but the act of shopping should support the “buy now” phenomenon popularized by Amazon’s 1-Click, Apple’s licensed use of it for iTunes and the Mac App Store, along with eBay’s “Buy it Now”. Many companies selling online are finding that their existing platform is “stuck” in the paradigm of the shopping cart and cannot even support simple concepts like a “single page checkout”. Note: This is the main reason why Adobe.com did not implement ATG.
  • Mobile – Best Buy is struggling because it became the showcase for products to be purchased on Amazon later. Many savvy shoppers across all demographics are using their mobile phones to quickly price check items and do product research and lookup customer reviews. In these moments, some companies are supporting these requirements and others are losing the customer to a Google search that can often end with a 1-Click purchase of the same product in store bought from Amazon, which might even come with same day availability.
  • Product management. / multi-channel – Customers expect that companies with both eCommerce and “brick and mortar” presences to sell the same products and have access to the same inventory. These systems grew up under different corporate owners and thus are different databases all together. Companies now aspire to have one master product catalogue that can have all information (PIM) managed centrally and enable pricing and inventory to be pushed out to physical stores, online site(s), and partner marketplaces (e.g., eBay, Amazon)
  • Order management. / multi-channel – customers assume that if they buy online, they can return in the store. This requires centralized order management and visibility of all orders across the enterprise. Again, two systems today.
  • Relevance & Retargeting – customers expect companies to know their shopping behavior and even their browsing behavior. Amazon has popularized “recommendations” and leads customers to expect more relevant, targeted content. This includes carrying this insight forward to marketing campaigns such as emails, SEM and display ads. Sites that tie these insights together best and incorporate them effectively in their marketing spend, convert higher and sell more online. Today, companies have to use a plethora of disparate solutions to build these campaigns and often miss the pattern that would “push the customer over the edge” to buy.
  • Subscriptions – Beyond music, movies and games, more and more companies are finding ways to offer their products and services under a recurring order model. From shaving blades to organic produce, companies want to be able to bill for products and services on a recurring basis. This is not inherent in most eCommerce solutions and requires companies to support two billing solutions and two order management approaches.
  • Flash Sales – Social, email campaigns, mobile SMS (text messages), native mobile apps, and the website(s) itself are all vehicles used to inspire quick conversion and/or ‘dump inventory’ that needs to be moved. Popularized by Woot & One Kings Lane, future platforms not only need to enable this by channel, but also enable “1-click purchase” and automate based on business rules (e.g., If product X expires on September 16th, 2012, and there is > than 20% of inventory within 30 days of expiration, deploy flash sale to “mobile app”, Facebook page and Amazon.)
  • Social – While “social” receives tremendous amount of mindshare, company after company finds the results to be marginal at best. “It’s like trying to sell to someone talking to their friend at a bar”. While this may change over time, the key tenants above of enabling a product catalogue to be pushed out to different marketplaces and “flash sale sites”, is the same capability that can be leveraged by a Facebook page or whichever “social site” becomes the next standard (e.g., pinterest, Google +, yet to be invented).
eCommerce

The Follow Through in eCommerce

Leave a comment

Most online transactions finish with an automatically generated email summarizing what you just did. This can be as simple as a note letting you know you changed your password, which in turn also would alert someone that didn’t that someone else did, and it can be as complex as summarizing a large product purchase that details when a service may be provisioned and or products shipped (e.g., a cell phone). If you get this right, you have a happy customer that just did business with you in the most profitable way we’ve found to date. If you get it wrong, you erode your margins from customer service requests and most often take a hit to your brand from bad publicity due to your frustrated customer sharing their troubles via Twitter, Facebook, Yelp and the like. Now, your seemingly great direct channel business becomes a nightmare.

How do we minimize the negative publicity, maximize our margins and potentially even create some free marketing from happy evangelizing customers?

Think end-to-end and have cross-department teams define, craft and implement everything together. This includes everyone from the user experience designer to the folks in finance.

Recently I purchased a couple of complex product/service combos online. Having just moved, I ordered cable from Comcast for my new apartment. Additionally, to have a phone that could make calls and see the full web, I switched to an Android phone from Verizon Wireless. In both of these cases I had a pretty good online experience and a fulfillment process that worked out reasonably well. Though, had I been a different kind of customer, I can see where there are some friction points in each company’s end-to-end eCommerce processes that could create trouble for them.

Comcast

Comcast.com starts off seemingly organized. The main navigation provides for quick access to specific content around the primary categories of interest for either a prospective customer or returning customer: Learn, Shop, Programming, Customers, About. Everything else around this navigation is trying to sell you, which is what it should be doing. It’s trying to get me to convert to their service by enticing me with insight into all the great programming they have and incredible deals that are presented in such a way that not only provide the traditional call to action, but also create a sense of urgency. The rub is when I go into the next level of detail.
“Learn” does its job by providing me basic details on what they’re offering, so I’ll skip over it and speak to “Programming” for a moment as that was my next place to investigate as a prospective customer. Having experienced AT&T’s U-Verse for a year, I became accustom to having every television channel known to man. Having also decided that I wanted to spend less on TV in the new apartment, I wanted to dive into the programming packages to see which ones on the cheaper side still included specific channels that both me and my fiancée watched regularly. Armed with knowing what channels I wanted to make sure I had, I clicked “Programming” then “Channel Lineup”. Now, I understand that this might change depending on my region, and that Comcast wants to begin capturing insight about me as a customer, but I do get annoyed having to provide my address so early on. Following this was where I about lost it. The list that is displayed, with a drop down filter menu, was unmanageable and terrible at allowing me to compare different packages to see what channels I would get. I had to open multiple windows and Alt-Tab back and forth to see what was in each and then keep track of the specific channels I was looking for on a notepad. This small trivial issue is where not getting it right opens you up to the publicity/marketing challenges. During this visit a customer may tweet about this sloppy experience or tell their friends on Facebook how difficult it is, at which point someone may respond directing them to explore the competitor. If this happens, then that one day where everyone (employees responsible for the site) was in a meeting and gave no attention to this page or just assigned it out to someone to build without thinking of the user flow, the revenue already began to erode.
Once I decided I was going with Comcast and what package I would order, I switched to the “Shop” menu and dived into the bundles knowing that I wanted Internet as well as TV service. This was a clean experience that gave a good summary of each “package”. The missing elements were being able to compare packages and find other critical details such as whether HD was included or if I would get a DVR. Not finding this information (again a spot for a marketing issue), I decided to start the buying process making the assumption that it would come eventually. At this point, the whole process fell apart. Not only was it unclear whether or not I needed to add these extra items, but I ultimately had to start a chat session to complete the transaction. No, really, my “eCommerce” experience was finished with a person. The real irony was that when I was having trouble getting my questions answered and getting through some network issues, I tried calling in and the call center person I talked to said they couldn’t help me with online orders, and if I ordered from them they wouldn’t be able to offer me the same discounts. Really?! Ok, so now I’m forced into an online purchase process that interacts with a human (higher cost) and I’m only allowed to chat with them?! This was where I almost decided to go with DirecTV (if they had a better Internet offering I would have).
After it was all said and done, I had a technician installation scheduled with a set-top box on order and service provisioning kicked off. Great, now I can setup my online bill pay and be done with it, right? I go to email…nothing. There aren’t any emails summarizing what I did (think $$$ if I call back in for help), and it took me almost an hour to navigate around the site and figure out how to get to my account details, learn what my login was (took me calling customer service) and setup my bill pay. It was a terrible finish. Oh, but they probably covered the costs of this experience by charging me that technician install rate and a start-up fee. And cable companies wonder why we give them a hard time.

Verizon Wireless

Verizon wireless, as with any telephone company selling online, has a complex eCommerce challenge as they not only have to try and explain their overly confusing service plans they invent to try and increase ARPU, but also have to get you to pick a phone and then provision a number of systems in their back-end to allow that phone to have the right phone number, be able to make calls, receive voice mail, SMS, access the internet, etc. It’s not easy. That said, you’d think they’d be the experts on end-to-end process thinking as they have so much to get right. For the most part, they did pretty well. Verizon’s site explains their plans well, allows you to compare service plans and phones and ultimately add things to your cart in such a way that you are really clear on what you’re buying and what you may be missing [they do a great job of showing you all the little add-on features (think up-sell)]. The piece they missed? Well, for one they didn’t summarize my order in the email or give a link back to the store to see the details, but best of all they didn’t think through the shipping delay for my new Android phone and had a pretty empty status of, “Your order has been processed and will be shipped based on inventory availability and shipping method. You will receive shipment notification and tracking details via email.” The other missing piece was lack of instruction on how to create my online account. It was fairly easy to figure it out online, but having that be part of the order summary (or better yet, in the order flow), would have made it easier and Verizon would likely increase the percentage of customers that a.) setup automatic bill-pay and b.) become more of a self-serve customer.
Most eCommerce sites focus on the conversion and order check-out process. Only the best consider the end-to-end customer experience. So, get the process flow diagrams going or pin up the butcher paper and map out your customer processes!