These figures tell us a number of things;

• Retailers with strong brands can still gain sales by entering the online market – customers expect them to be there, so even late entrants such as House of Fraser can make progress.
• The greater your brand reach, the greater your chance of making sales in a tough market. People expect to have choice and convenience. Online-only brands will struggle unless they have a true point of difference in a fiercely competitive market.
• Retailers who really understand their customers will succeed in a fierce market.

I have spent many years working in marketing departments of retailers and in stores, and I have never spoken to a retailer who would ever say they don’t know their customers. They must do – customers walk through the doors in their hundreds of thousands each week. They speak to staff at tills, on shop floors, by phone, via e-mail, on doorsteps and in focus groups, every day. Market Insight teams carefully examine basket data from tills, loyalty cards and web analytics. There has never been more data on what people are doing in stores, online or over the phone.

For many years retailers have prided themselves on their ability to second guess what a customer will respond to. How they should lay out a store, what to merchandise by the till, the front door, on the home page or at a category level on a website. They think about which tools will be useful, which image is right and which promotion is best.

Ever better, retailers carry out multi-variate testing to find out what works best, they test press ads, TV ads, e-mail campaigns and direct mail shots. They can prove which version works best, and back the winner.

But do they know why?

In the course of my retailing career, I put together successful promotions, advertisements and product launches. I was even involved in some that were not so good. For all I would be able to tell you why I thought they worked or had failed but I could never actually prove my theory. Did we hit upon a lucky idea, or find the secret formula? If so, could we re-create it for a new product, different category or new season?

The answer to this question lies in talking to customers, observing their behaviour and listening carefully to what they tell us. When done properly, this can give real insight into the most important question: why?

Can I repeat that, yes, like many retail professionals my experience and skill meant I could get it right more times than I got it wrong, but is that enough when we face tougher trading in 2010 than most of us have ever seen at any time in our careers?

Do you know how much it costs to talk to your customers and what the returns could be? Here at Flow, we do and I know you would be surprised.

X-Ray Listening

Judy Rees, co-author of Clean Language showed us how she teaches people to listen better, using techniques developed in Cognitive Linguistics and Psychotherapy.

I won’t attempt to explain Judy’s method in detail here, as I’m not sure I can do it justice (and, ahem, because my notes aren’t that detailed), but in a nutshell it is a way of combining template questions with the respondent’s own words, to produce endlessly adaptable, open questions. So for example, a template question might be “Is there anything else about...”, onto which the questioner adds a key word or phrase used by the respondent themselves.

After a brief introduction Judy took the group through an exercise. We broke up into pairs, identified some relevant topics for investigation, and took turns at asking questions and listening to each other’s answers. First we did this spontaneously, using our own choice of words, but the second time we used Judy’s Clean Language technique to frame our questions.

The results were striking: everyone said that they felt more comfortable and more ‘listened-to’ when answering the ‘clean’ questions, compared to the spontaneous ones. On the other side, the questioners said that the ‘clean language’ made it easier to formulate the questions on the fly, and elicited more detailed, more honest answers.

At Flow, we spend a lot of time talking to people, trying to ask the right questions, and trying to listen. Most of us find that scripts are too rigid, so we use semi-structured discussion guides to keep us on the right topic, but we formulate or questions spontaneously, using a variety of ad-hoc rules and best practices to get the best results. We are always looking for the best ways to make people feel comfortable, while still getting the freshest and most honest nuggets of information from them.

This brief introduction to Clean Language showed that it is a potentially useful technique for improving both the quality of interview data and the efficiency of the interview process, all the while making respondents feel more at ease. A win-win-win scenario, if I’m not mistaken. I look forward to finding out more about this, and trying the techniques out in a real interview. I’ll let you know how it goes.

The next article in the series is here.

It’s similar to the idea in ethnography that the very presence of an observer will lead to modifications and unnatural behaviour.

There is also the idea that people may not have conscious access to the real reason for their behaviour. In trying to explain their actions to the moderator they will introspect and provide an answer that they feel is rational, but is effectively made up.

Malcolm Gladwell sums this up something like this (I’m paraphrasing here): Basically—we feel about a thing, then act.

And then, the moderator asks us why.

Faced with this question, we try to think up a plausible, rational-sounding explanation for our actions. And then—here’s the thing—we alter our future behaviour to match that rationalised thinking.

Wilson and Schooler investigated this phenomenon in depth, concluding: “We come up with a plausible-sounding reason for why we might like or dislike something, and then we adjust our true preference to be in line with that plausible-sounding reason.”

So if we had never been asked why we did something, we might continue doing things differently.

However, without entering into conversation with a participant we can only say what happened; and with no insight as to ‘why’ we can’t make decisions and can’t improve.

The problem then is that we need to know ‘why’ but can’t ask ‘why’.

Here’s a few methods that we use at Flow:

Sometimes more open interviewing will tell you what you need. If you need to know why a participant clicked on that link (or didn’t), questions such as “Tell me about the kinds of things you have looked for in the past on a site like this?” can tell you about the keywords or visual elements that a participant is searching for.

“What are you interested in finding out at the moment on a site like this?” can tell you what it is they haven’t found yet.

Ann Light continues in this vein: “An undesirable, but common, way of interrupting evocation [the flow of recall, in this instance] is to invite the interviewee into a judgemental mode. To avoid this, there is no use of questions starting ‘Why... ?’ Instead, carefully manipulated ‘How... ?’ and ‘What... ?’ questions cover the same ground: ‘How did you know that X?’ ‘What were you thinking at the moment when X?’ This does not interrupt the recounting process. So ‘tell me how it was that you came to be looking for this site that day’ does the work of ‘why were you looking... ?’”

Of course together with the different ways of asking why, the facilitator needs also to combine high degrees of empathy and observation. Interpreting what the participant does and says, and ultimately understanding those things will enable us to make better decisions about what to do next.

References

Wilson and Schooler (1991) Thinking too much: introspection can reduce the quality of preferences and decisions, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 60 (2), pp181-192
Light, A (2006) Adding Method to Meaning: a technique for exploring
peoples’ experience with digital products, Behaviour & Information Technology 25 (2), pp175-187

Flow frequently uses ethnographic research methods to gain a deep understanding of the social and working lives of people who use different products and services in different contexts. The findings provide richer insights into service and product design requirements and opportunities for innovation, particularly when designing for global and multi-cultural audiences.

One of the key questions around ethnographic research is how its findings are transformed into design. One example of such a process was presented at a recent UX Brighton: ‘A Journey from Ethnography to Design’. The event included two speakers: Simon Johnson, User Experience Consultant at Flow and Miles Rochford from Nokia. Simon spoke about the ethnographic research and subsequent design that he completed for the Environment Agency. Miles’ presentation focused on using ethnography to design products for emerging markets.

The Environment Agency commissioned Flow to conduct contextual research and subsequently design an interactive map that will provide users with coastal erosion information – a national project that will affect 2.1 million houses on the coast. The key objectives were to establish what an erosion map should look like, how it should work and what sort of information should accompany the map.

Claire Mitchell, Flow’s Principal Consultant on the project and Simon started the project with a research phase that included ethnographic field observations in two coastal settings: Norfolk and Hastings. Simon spent two weeks documenting the lives of coastal communities, interviewing local people and immersing himself in their lives. Additionally, Simon interviewed eight professionals at Flow’s experience labs in London.

Ethnography enabled Simon to apply his empathy and humanistic values to drive the project. It was clear that his findings provided the Environment Agency with a rich understanding of the concerns, information needs and myths that people who live in rural coastal communities might have. Simon described how his research findings confirmed some of EA's current thinking, provided new insights and defined the subsequent design process and deliverables.

The research that Claire and Simon conducted described how emotive the coastline is, an institution in British history that invokes strong feelings and forms a strong part of a shared heritage. The implications were the need for the Environment Agency to communicate that it cares and to reassure people that action was being taken to protect the coast. It was also clear that people trust locals and distrust central government, erosion maps caused alarm and that a certain amount of local knowledge derived from  ignorance and/or myth. An example of a myth was the commonly repeated argument that the government was making money dredging ‘their’ sand.

The design approach focused on a simple website that addresses the needs of both professionals and locals. Claire and Simon decided that the design should answer core questions and myths, stick to plain English, use local materials and represent risks  without alarming local people.

Is it Ethnography?
After the presentation the audience participated in a lively debate, which had a particular focus on the true meaning of ethnography. For some designers ethnography was a new concept and their reactions during the Q&A sessions and after the presentations indicated that they found both Simon and Miles’ presentations truly thought provoking. Some felt that rapid ethnography with a specific structure and design agenda was different from “ethnography” and needed a new term associated to it.

Theoretical research has two main aims – the validation of existing knowledge and the acquisition of new knowledge. Flow uses research to acquire and validate specific knowledge, the context in which services and products are used.  Flow uses principles and techniques taken from social sciences such as sociology, anthropology and psychology to inform design decisions. Our main aim is to design solutions that work outside of design studios, laboratories and meeting rooms. As a result, we often use appropriate research techniques to focus on specifically targeted contexts and activities. A term that is often used to describe this work is Design Ethnography.

Simon's presentation

_____________
Many thanks to Danny Hope and former Flow Consultant Harry Brignull for organising the event.

--Ofer Deshe

We seldom discuss mediocre experiences with our friends. The ones which do get mentioned are the exceptional - both great and bad.

A bad experience is one where:

• My needs and desires are not provided for.
• The product itself doesn't deliver as promised or is confusing / hard to learn.
• The interaction (at POS and afterwards) is confusing, patronizing, inflexible, or unusable.

A great experience is one where:

• The concept is utterly relevant for me.
• The product itself exceeds expectations and allows me to focus on the task in hand.
• The interaction (at POS and afterwards) is simple, fast, accessible and structured appropriately for me.

Countless online communities & blogs have built up around recommendations and many ecommerce sites have integrated a recommendation network into their shopping experience e.g. Amazon. Many books have been written about the power of recommendation in marketing including The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell and Buzzmarketing by Mark Hughes. Terminologies have developed around the roles individuals play in such recommendation networks (Connectors, mavens & salesmen in the Tipping Point). If you want to know more you can get the books... suffice it to say that recommendations work best the closer the source is to you... or the most highly respected the source.

The power of a recommendation is undeniable - it creates buzz which is the marketing holy grail.

The first step in getting recommendations is to create outstanding experiences. In designing any product or service the 3 key questions are:

1. Is the product/service relevant for the target market? Does it address the real needs and desires and will it fit effectively into the context in which it will be placed?
2. Is the product/service marketed effectively to enable customers to fully understand its potential whilst retaining clarity? Is it intuitive, accessible and enjoyable?
3. Do the sales and post sales processes support customers' behaviour? Will they allow them to engage in the optimal way to ensure a great experience?

As a producer of such experiences the only way to ensure you are getting this right is to involve the end users throughout the design process from concept development through functional specification and visual design to marketing and post sales. See the Flow case studies for numerous examples across different industries and product types.

It's great to hear people being positive about something which went right to such an extent that they make conversation of it. Let's learn from some of the positive experiences out there. Please add a line or two on your great experiences.

Thanks to Pierre Lenfestey for the use of his artwork.

In the early 70s, Prof Geert Hofstede ran surveys with IBM employees worldwide and produced a set of four cultural dimensions which he used to categorise countries in terms of national tendencies. His four dimensions were:

• The Power Distance Index, which looks at how much people accept and expect that power is distributed unequally.
• Individualism, which considers how far people operate as part of extended loyal groups and families.
• Masculinity, which considers how far men's values are from women's in a society.
• The Uncertainty Avoidance Index, which measures a society's tolerance for uncertainty, ambiguity and diversity of approach.

It doesn't take long to notice that Hofstede's ideas have little to do with interaction design as such. They are focussed on management and communications and offer analysis at the level of general tendencies; they are not about use. But Prof Hofstede's name has become synonymous with cultural research in interaction design. He is quoted extensively. He is held up as evidence that tidy answers exist somewhere to untidy problems.

Interaction designers do need guidance on how to handle cultural diversity when designing technology with international reach. But that guidance may not be best in the form of metrics and measures. The OzCHI 2008 conference on Designing for Habitat and Habitus explored cultural aspects of designing. And every single experienced researcher came back to the same point: The best way for designers to understand the cultures they are designing for is to go get first hand experience.

Good listening

The OzChi2008 conference began with a workshop on 'Inclusivity, Interaction Design and Culture' . Participants discussed flexible and fine-grained ways of understanding difference in interests, values and use of technology. This understanding, it was agreed, did not come from metrics focussed on national characteristics.

So what did these researchers advocate instead?
The only common method in use was listening. The main goal of each researcher was to get to a condition of trust and respect where 'good listening' could go on. This might involve some understanding of suitable cultural gestures to adopt or avoid, like avoiding the 'thumbs up' gesture, which is rude in Iran or understanding that a head wiggle means 'yes' India. But it had more to do with interest in learning from others and a desire to get insight into other people's needs, behaviours and motivations.

Lesson 1: Embrace uncertainty. Look for the surprising contrasts. Welcome the destabilisation of an unfamiliar situation as a chance to learn about your own assumptions and cultural standpoints as well as others'. Get out there and challenge what you've read about a place or people.

Different cultures expect different behaviours

Lesson 2: Adapt your approach on the fly. Don't worry too much about method. Wherever you begin, it is likely only to be a starting point with plenty of adaptation to follow. So pick something that makes you happy but don't get too committed to any particular process.

Lesson 3: Listen well. Not only is it the best way to collect data, it also shows respect and builds trust. Check back often to see whether what you are hearing is really what the person you're talking to is trying to say.

Many cultures at once

The keynotes at the conference both had something to add to this. The next critique of Hofstede's legacy came from Paul Dourish, Professor of Informatics at University of California, Irvine. Paul's opening keynote stressed that people are too complex to assign to a single form of classification. Any system that has neat boundaries is also going to be inadequate because cultures do not start and end abruptly. He gave examples of the way that emigration had spread out certain groups, like the well-documented diaspora of the Trinidadian Trinis and the way that they have integrated media into their lives so that they can keep in touch across distances. Instead of seeking to understand 'culture' at large, he advocated taking a view of people as sitting at the intersection of many different cultures, able to draw on those that suit the moment and behaving differently depending on the context in which they find themselves. These different ways of seeing could be regarded as looking through multiple lenses, each giving a unique perspective.

Lesson 4: Recognise the multiple perspectives at work. Explore the lenses that make up the richness of people's experience and give maximum flexibility to designs so that they fit into the many worlds that are relevant to and desired by potential users.

Human access points

Gary Marsden from the University of Cape Town, South Africa, offered an empirical take on designing. He has many years experience working in sub-Saharan Africa on digital technologies for use by remote communities. After years of trial and error he favours adopting robust, agile prototyping techniques to work with people who cannot imagine a product from drawings of an interface. He also advocates using 'Human Access Points' – people who can mediate between the designer and some of the target users.

Lesson 5: Get your assumptions out of the way. Let local conditions set the agenda for how something gets designed and built. (This may involve formally considering cultural differences, but it may be where the listening comes in...)

Lesson 6: Create a usable and robust prototype. This 'technology probe' will teach whether and how an idea can work. Other simpler forms of prototype may teach more about how your target group thinks about prototypes than about your research question.

Lesson 7: Use local talent to help interpret what you are seeing and hearing. Find someone with a foot in both camps to take on the job of mediation. Encourage them to do the design research. Design something that they can use as a step in designing for the wider community. Spend as much time with them as you can. (Gary called these people 'Human Access Points'. In other work I've done, the team called them 'cultural guides'.)

Designing for somewhere else

So if you're designing for a culture you're not familiar with, here's the best advice: read Hofstede's work and put it back on the shelf with everyone else's. Then engage in 'good listening' with the people you're designing for. Use cultural guides and technical probes to help bridge the communications gap. And keep your attitude and methodology flexible – the unexpected is where the most important ideas await. Talk to others who do this work and are interested in cultural perspectives. And, if in doubt, quote us all.

Ann Light was a co-organiser of the Inclusivity, Interaction Design and Culture workshop at OzCHI 2008. When she gets a moment, she consults to Flow on innovative approaches in user experience design.

1. Support multi-variable trade-offs

Some people prioritise the cost of the ticket whilst others prioritise the time of travel. The type of trip will cause a person to prioritise one of those variables over the other, but most booking journeys involve trading off these two factors. Successful travel booking interfaces help people understand how time and cost influence each other.

For a holiday maker, the choice of location, duration and hotel make the activity even more complex. "I can go to Rhodes from Manchester on the 16th for 300 pounds, and stay in the four star excelsior for 7 nights, or Cyprus from Gatwick on the 19th for 312 pounds and stay in the 5 star Grand for 6 nights." These are really complex decisions, made in conjunction with family or friends, so you'll need to pull out all the stops to design an interface that really helps.

2. Present a well-defined proposition

Trying to be all things to all people is very expensive. Players with a tightly-defined target market will always do better at serving their market than generalised players spread thin over lots of markets.

Know your market and offer a proposition that appeals to that market - whether it's group travel, business travel, family holidays, design hotels, skiing etc. Then build a site that profoundly and accurately addresses those people's behaviours and needs.

3. Fight "search fatigue" - catch people early in the decision process

People are overwhelmed with choice in the travel market. On average, people in our research visited 22 sites before deciding to go with a provider which they visited 2.5 times. By making site that supports people early in the decision making process and helps them fast track the exploration and decision process, you create awareness in people's mind and they are more likely to go with you.

4. Surface the right information to help people make a decision

Choosing hotels is hard. People find it difficult and stressful to make decisions when their criteria are flexible and the field is large.

Good pictures, features, location with map, star rating, Trip Advisor rating, price per room/night (not per person), hotel name and short description are what matters most when sifting through lists of hotels. Enabling people to get this information without having to 'pogostick' is vital.

5. Focus on selling the experience not the product

Beyond the basic factors above, there's a whole list of things that users want to know before they make a decision. Focussing on the experience of staying in a hotel, rather than the generic factors, makes it easier for people to make that final choice.

For example, a hotel in Paris is not just a "3 star hotel in the city centre". It's a fantastic base in the vibrant Place de la Sorbonne, it's ideal for food lovers with 6 gourmet bistros, it captures the image of Paris with its view of the Eiffel Tower, it's ideal for families or ideal for romantic getaways. Understanding what a stay there will be like is what will help people to decide and to buy.

6. Be transparent and honest

Trust is a major sticking point for travel sites. In our research, users rarely trusted the price shown and were always prepared for some last minute surcharges.

Travel sites want to show low prices (excluding as many elements as possible), because they believe it help buyers get started. The flip side: a slippery and arduous booking process repels buyers (one where surcharges slowly build up, and cross-sells appear in your basket uninvited).

Would giving the real prices transparently build reputation and trust that exceed the pulling power of a low offer? No one knows for sure. We do know that removing some of the automatic cross-sells does produce a short term loss of revenue. But whether it offers a long term boost in loyalty, no one has yet had the guts to find out.

7. The seducible moment comes after the sale.

When people go into low-cost flight booking mode, they are very task-focussed and don't really care about anything else. We think that's a learned behaviour coming from the situation that a) the good flight deals go fast b) they need to concentrate to make sure they get rid of insurance etc.

Low cost flight booking is like bargain hunting, and trying to up-sell users during the booking process is like taking the bargain away from them. The seducible moment for up-sell is not really during the flight booking process, but after. Most travel sites are stuck in the business model of trying to up-sell during the booking process.

8. Ensure localisation is an actual part of the design phase.

The most planned and least actualised design stage is LOCALISATION. Lack of effective internationalisation and localisation is costing travel sites money.

There's a myth that Europe offers a unified culture with different languages, but it's not true. Language, rating systems, research, booking and payment behaviour vary significantly from country to country.

A simple example: some cultures will tend to assume that a rating of 1 is the best rating, others that a rating of 5 is the best. (The solution is to use a visual rating scale which is less ambiguous).

To maximise adoption, conversion and revenue, travel sites need to research, and test internationally. Using design skills from a range or different countries helps too.

A market opportunity: Design the next generation of travel sites.

People have very quickly learned how to dodge the failings of one website by jumping to another. In our research we have seen that people have no loyalty, there is no trust and that means that online travel companies will always have a major element of uncertainty in their future.

But the development of the web shows that people are open to new ideas and new ways of doing things. So we urge travel companies to innovate based on these design tips. Come up with the iPhone of the online travel industry. The opportunity is there for the taking.

Thanks to Louise, Peter, Karl, Lola, SimonJ, Ofer, Claire and Alejandra for the research and insights.

How do young people find new music? What do they do with it? What technology gets used and why? Rather than statistics or abstract trend statements, the BBC Future Media and Technology department wanted vivid examples and concrete insights about the user base they were designing for. They asked Flow to help them.

Learning about people's lives

We worked with four different target groups, which we named The Gamers, The Streetwise Teens, The Social DJs and the Indie Teens. Each group had three members – all close friends with each other.

We worked through 4 activities with them over the course of a few weeks:

• Group sessions
• Diaries
• Shadowing
• Follow-up interviews

Shadowing means spending time participating in each person’s day-to-day life. Our ethnographers enjoyed a night out in Camden with two 18 year-olds, some live gaming on the Xbox with a 14 year-old boy in his bedroom, gossiping with two 16 year-old girls at their home and a lesson about hip-hop dance from a 17 year-old dancer. The insights from experiences like this go much deeper than surveys and focus groups ever can.

Sharing what we learned

We had workshops with the BBC team all the way through the project. This let the team hear discoveries "as they happened" and be inspired to ask new questions. The research team were about to direct their enquiry towards the areas which our clients thought looked the most fruitful.

The final results were written up in a highly-visual, 80-page book. The goal was for people all over the BBC to engage with the study so we made sure that the results were presented in an interesting and visual way. The report was publicised in Ariel, the BBC’s internal newspaper.

Observations

I asked Jude Rattle, the lead consultant on the project, what she had learned from the study. “All sorts of things that you can’t mention in a blog post,” she told me. “But a few that you can.”

“Sharing music with friends is an important social activity. In the 70s and 80s young people made mix tapes. Now MP3s get swapped from phone to phone whenever people feel like it. But there’s a twist. The DRM mechanisms designed to stop digital piracy also stop people from engaging in that key social behaviour. So a lot of our participants had an added incentive to seek out pirate MP3s on Limewire: the file they got would be readily shareable.”

“People often think that young people are universally brilliant with technology, but they are not. In our study we found that teens will go to great lengths to use technology that does things that are important for them. But there are other things that older users might take for granted, which teens don’t know how to do. For example, some of our participants did not know how to burn a CD, even though they did know how to copy an MP3 onto a mobile phone’s memory card or Bluetooth it to a friend.”

Giving innovators an edge

Imagining the future is hard. Designing future products and services that will be discovered and adopted is harder still. In large organisations, design teams can easily become far removed from the people they are designing for. To stand a chance, they must have rich detail about what their target users actually do, what they like and what they need.

Ethnography helped the BBC to connect with teenagers as they consume music – and gave them practical insights that they can use as a basis for innovation.

I wrote this article about cross-channel ethnography for Internet Retailing Magazine earlier this year. I'll be talking about this topic at the Internet Retailing event in October.

Insight to innovation: The power of cross-channel ethnography

When Bronislaw Malinowski decided to study the habits and culture of the natives of the Trobriand Islands in the South Pacific during his exile in the First World War, little could he have imagined that the techniques he developed to learn about other cultures would be used to revolutionise the marketing and sales of consumer goods and services. However, this is exactly what is happening.

Ethnography, once confined to academic research departments has, over the last 20-30 years, become a widely used and powerful research technique for companies seeking to improve how they market and sell to customers. They have even turned the lens on themselves to improve how they manage their own businesses.

More recently, the desire to provide compelling multi-channel customer experiences that lure customers away from competitors has become the holy grail for many retailers. However, there is a noticeable gap between the precision with which research is used to understand customer behaviour offline and how it is applied in the design of online stores.

This gap is closing, however. As online retailing enters the mainstream, multi-channel retailers are investing more to improve the quality and effectiveness of their online stores. They are also looking for ways to build customer loyalty in a world where technology is making customers more and more promiscuous. Cross-channel ethnography is one of the tools retailers are turning to for insight.

The trouble with websites...

"Well, I can't really tell what the phone looks like from the picture...", said Katie, a participant in a recent usability study for one of the UK's leading mobile operators. "I would go to a shop at this point, before I make a decision".

From a research point of view, this is not surprising behaviour. It has long been understood that customers move fluidly and frequently between online and offline channels a number of times before finally committing to a purchase, especially for high value, feature-rich or lifestyle items. What is surprising, however, is how few retailers actually use customer insights like these to increase sales across both channels. The reality is, more often than not the website and shop are treated as separate businesses, competing for the same customers.

Armed with printouts from multiple providers about the cost of various phones and call plans, Katie later went to that same mobile operator's high street store hoping to buy her new phone. In the store, she was frustrated to learn that the phone she wanted was only available for free (on her chosen plan), if purchased on the website. The shop assistant tried to explain that the website and the store were different businesses and that he was not able to honour what was advertised on the website. As a result, Katie walked down the street to another shop and got a better deal from someone else.

The bottom line is that customers cannot often get a real sense of a product online. In spite of increasingly sophisticated tools for inspecting products (zooming and rotating photos, or seeing the product in different colours, etc.) most people only feel confident about making a purchase once they have had a chance to see and hold the item for real. In addition, in the high street, customers may feel more compelled to purchase because it is less convenient to come back, whereas online they know they can return easily. The problem is that they often don't.

Hindsight vs insight

Unfortunately for this particular mobile operator, these insights came too late. The structure of the business was not likely to change anytime soon. Not recognising the intimate relationship between online and offline shopping behaviour and structuring the business accordingly, meant losing Katie and many other customers like her to competitors.

The irony is, that the use of customer research (in particular ethnography) to understand and influence buying behaviour is probably most thoroughly developed in the bricks-and-mortar retailing industry. However, these same approaches are not often used to design and build online stores, much less getting the two channels to work together.

As online retailing has gained market-share in recent years, customer research has become more commonplace, though often only in the form of focus groups, usability testing or accessibility studies. However, these types of studies rarely identify genuine opportunities for innovation. This is because all of these techniques either focus on optimising the present based on historical best practice or seek out user’s opinions about things which they know and care little about. People are notoriously bad at identifying their own latent unmet needs, particularly where technology is concerned.

The best way to understand customer motivations and draw out insights that can have tangible impact on the bottom line, is to observe customers through the entire purchasing lifecycle; from learning about products, deciding on which ones to buy and ultimately buying and using them. This means using various ethnographic research techniques, from short context studies through to more in-depth longitudinal studies (which occur over a much longer timeframe), to observe customers in the different contexts in which decisions occur, physically, emotionally and socially.

For instance, we know that customers use the internet to shop around and gather information about their available choices before purchasing. In a recent study by Comscore and Google, users visited websites 22 times before making a purchase, with the "winning" site being visited 2.5 times on average. As we saw with Katie in our earlier example, similar patterns of behaviour can be observed across different channels, with customers often finding products online, visiting a store to see the products up close before purchasing, often online. Learning to capitalise on this behaviour can have a huge impact on customer experience and ultimately sales.

It's the little things that count

When a leading educational toy company, decided to overhaul its web presence, they decided to use a customer-centric design approach that combined insights from studies of on and offline customer behaviour. The company knew that they had a winning format with their high street stores. Play areas which allowed kids try out the products (and even let mum do some shopping) were popular with customers, as were the helpful staff and the educational nature of the products. While the online presence provided the facility for customers to purchase all of the same products from the comfort of their own home, it simply wasn't generating the desired sales figures.

In order to understand why the online experience was not living up to the in-store experience, lab-based usability research with the website was combined with short, in-store ethnographic "probes" to observe un-moderated customer shopping behaviour. For the online research, new and existing customers were brought into a lab where they were interviewed and asked to use the website to find products they would be interested in buying. Then, over a three-day period, customers at several stores were observed while they shopped and then interviewed after they had completed their purchases. Staff, too, were observed and interviewed.

The online research indicated that a key barrier to purchase was the customer's lack of confidence in whether they had found the right product. Faced with this uncertainty, the vast majority of customers interviewed indicated that they would go into a high street store to ask for advice. However, the real insight came from observing how customers interacted with the shop assistants once they came into the shop.

"I would like to find something that will help my son develop his creative skills." said Jane, a first-time mother, to one of the shop assistants. "He is two and very active, so I am worried he won't focus on one thing for long. What would you suggest?" The assistant promptly showed Jane a number of different options and, after some discussion and comparison, Jane eventually chose a water-based "magic" drawing mat.

This simple transaction between Jane and the shop assistant revealed something very important about the shopping experience, particularly for this brand of educational toys. Far more than the ability to easily browse or search for products online, what customers needed was assurance that the toy they were buying was going to help their child develop in some important way. It was about being a good parent.

In-store, this problem was solved both by the availability of advice from the shop assistants and through the age and developmental information printed on the packaging. However, this information, which is fundamental to the brand's value proposition, was not being used on the website to help customers find and compare products to buy - yet it was essential if they were to feel confident about their purchase decisions.

The new site was then redesigned with additional age-based navigation, age and development stage search filters, product-level development information and customer reviews. The company also introduced a policy that allowed customers to reserve a product online and then come and pick it up in store, for those who wanted to have a look at it before buying. Simply by changing the website to support customers like Jane, the company was able to increase online sales by 33% in 12 months, with individual customers viewing 21% more toys and spending 19% more per visit.

The future is personal

With online retail sales in the UK growing at a dizzying 40-50% year-on-year (and now accounting for approximately 15% of total retail sales, according to a recent study by CapGemini and the Interactive Media in Retail Group), this is a lesson that many retailers should learn from.

As the internet evolves and becomes more mainstream, it is fundamentally changing how customers interact with businesses both on and offline. At the same time, customers are becoming ever more sophisticated in their buying behaviour and use of technology. As a result, it is important for retailers to continuously engage customers to understand what really matters to them and identify those factors that have a tangible differentiating impact on the customer experience.

In this ever more personalised and competitive environment, cross-channel ethnographic research with customers is an essential tool for any online retailer who wants to continuously leverage the changing behaviour and expectations of their customer base. If the insights gained from this research are then used to enable customers to move seamlessly between online and offline channels to achieve their goals, companies will reap the benefits in sales, customer satisfaction and ultimately, loyalty.

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Ian Worley is Director of User Experience at Flow. We're a leading London-based User-Centred Design consultancy which specializes in using research to empower better and more effective design solutions.

Freemans understood that the right user experience would increase visits, sales and repeat business. But to deliver those benefits with minimal risk you need a user-centred design process. So we started our engagement with Freemans by creating a user-centred design project plan, then got started on the first step - research.

Research

Paul Heath was Flow's lead consultant on the project. I asked him about the research phase. "The research told us what users think and feel, and the kinds of experiences they encounter when they are shopping online and offline. We also undertook a competitive analysis of the fashion sector and an expert evaluation of the Freemans site."

"All of this data let us understand and priotitise the project requirements effectively. But it also let us innovate new ways for customers to interact with the site. During the concept phase, our understanding of our customers' ideal shopping experience let us create a really intuitive new method for browsing."

Collaboration

Getting team members to work face-to-face makes a huge difference to the quality of the outcomes.

Paul Heath, again: "Yes, collaboration is hugely important. In fact a Freemans designer worked at our London office for six weeks. That lowered design barriers and gave them a head-start on implementation. We also ran concept development workshops involving a cross-disciplinary team of business managers, technical staff and designers."

And a final key ingredient for successful design: iteration. No design team can get all the details of a design right first time. So we created a prototype site that was tested with target users and enhanced by further rounds of design refinements.

The new Freemans user experience

The new site offers...

• Strong visual appeal, thanks to our visual design partners, Splendid
• Inspiration, in the form of catwalk videos and additional trend pages
• Cross-links to help customers find related, relevant products more easily. For Freemans, these targeted cross-sells and up-sells increase the value and size of baskets.
• Intuitive navigation, which fits the customers' model of an ideal shopping experience and reduces the number of clicks needed to buy a product.

Working with Flow

Our key client at Freemans was Jo Brook, the Web Channel Manager. She was very satisfied with the results. "In what was an extremely tight lead time, Flow were integral to the project team and continually challenged our thinking about navigation & design. We listened to our customers and as a result have made some fantastic improvements to the site."

Project details

The experience: Freemans website
Lead consultant: Paul Heath
Interaction designer & researcher: Mimi Iakovidis
Account manager: Karen Wall
Visual design: The visual designers was Charmaine Watkiss (from Splendid) and Martin Gledhill (from Freemans). They were assisted by Beau Ginbey.