Time for Twitter?

Like many people out there, many thousands of people, I’ve been using Twitter now for a while and it is getting to that point where it is no longer something ‘fun’ to check up on to see what’s going on, but actually quite a burden and time consuming to keep tabs on! There are some great tools out there like TweetDeck and HootSuite (which I use, more on that later) which help to manage Twitter but it has become quite difficult to find the time.

The reason email is so successful is because you can queue the emails to read later as a recipient; I’m finding this difficult with Twitter. To the extent that I’ve stopped following some good Twitterers like Guy Kawasaki due to the mass of updates they make which makes tracking difficult!

I’m still following Mashable but that’s on the borderline too – where is the line drawn between being useful and being a burden?

When I first joined Twitter, it was great to see short excerpts on what other people were linking to like articles and releases. It is a shame that the most simple of things become difficult. Just look at the number of issues Facebook is having right now. I read a report that the sign-up rate is slowing down and the return rate (i.e. logging back on) is dropping, both signs that people are not interested like they used to be.

And this is when the playing field starts levelling and other, possibly better, innovative players enter the market. Just look at MySpace. Still going strong yet with a fraction of the market it used to have.

So am I still going to use Twitter? Damn right. But perhaps not as often as I’d like or as often as I’d used to.

About those Twitter tools….

TweetDeck - I like to use this to keep tabs of Tweets. It sits on your desktop and alerts you when a Tweet arrives. You can also create vertical windows within the application to keep tabs on conversations. In addition you can also log into your Facebook account though I’ve not found that feature too useful.

HootSuite - A fantastic little tool primarily due to 2 things; you can use its URL shorting service, which gives you access to click-stats and you can monitor/Tweet from more than one Twitter account. Great if you have a personal and business one!

There are loads of other tools out there but hey, here’s 2 for starters!

Depesh

Controlling the mass of Tweets in Twitter!

Being new to using Twitter I’ve finally managed (as others have already done) to find a tool to aggregate Twitter feeds – TweetDeck! There are probably loads of similar tools out there but this seems the most popular with fellow Twitters!

Any other good ones out there?

I’m tweeting! Twitter’s growth and possible fall…

Twitter – what is it all about? I’ve been thinking that for the past year. Why waste time sending 140 words or less!

Actually its more of a social notification tool. A great way to receive up to the minute thoughts and opinions on anything out there!

http://search.twitter.com is probably the most useful part of it, since you can search for ‘real-time’ discussions.

If you wanted to search the news as it was written or recorded at a particular point in time, you could search ‘Obama Iraq’ in a search engine to see what was written.

Alternatively you can search Twitter and find out what is being discussed, RIGHT NOW. That’s right now as in your time, as you’re sitting there reading this, not my time, at the time I’m actually writing this. Great thing is the last post I just read is going to be different to the one you will see on the same topic. They are the latest in the long list of discussions (following his speech today on withdrawing from Iraq). A discussion is dynamic.

In summary, Twitter is fantastic for leveraging the here and now, what the online world is thinking or writing about any one thing. Can’t fit it into 140 characters? Not a problem, Twitter compresses long URLs into shorter ones to fit! Google sees the value of this…

For me the next big platform is how Twitter turns this profitable. A subscription service would no doubt alienate most users, advertising may annoy many but who knows? Is Twitter about to take on Google to some level? Google did, after all, make a bid on Twitter which was rejected. A wise decision? Perhaps. One thing is for sure, Google thinks it is important enough to spend time on! Is Google about to launch an app which is the same, but better? Will it try another takeover bid?

For all that’s great about Twitter, I think it needs a big injection of Google (that is, Google’s technology):

We’re sorry, but something went wrong.

We’ve been notified about this issue and we’ll take a look at it shortly.

Sorry? You have probably 10m users and you’re sorry? A simple search repeatedly brought up this error, it is not the first. Twitter just cannot cope with the amount of traffic it generates. This is where Google really could add value. Many don’t think it is right for Google to monopolise, but for me, the simple Web user, I love Google! iGoogle, Google Maps (and mobile), Google Analytics, Trends, Web Optimiser – the list of useful apps Google provides is vast. Yes competition is healthy but if Google continues to provide such fantastic services whilst being arguably number one then I’m all for it!

Depesh

Social Media & Customer Reviews – Subjective reasoning and what to do about it

Tripadvisor & Online Travel Agents (OTAs)

“Hotels.com will be integrating TripAdvisor hotel reviews on all of its 31 web sites across Europe, the Middle East and Africa. The inclusion of the reviews is part of the brand’s mission to help its users choose the best property for their travel needs.”
http://www.hotelmarketing.com/index.php/content/article/hotelscom_includes_tripadvisor_reviews

Whilst Online Travel Agencies (OTAs) are quick on the uptake, their philosophy into Social Media is pivoted around ensuring the customer receives the right accommodation based on their preferences. Travel agents are far more promiscuous in their promotion of individual hotels or holiday providers thus the TripAdvisor model suits OTAs better than it does the independent hotels.

Brands cannot hide from the Social Media space due to the global reach of TripAdvisor; embracing TripAdvisor within a brand’s e-commerce strategy has yet to prove itself across the sector to be beneficial; moreover brands are looking for ways to manage their online social status whilst maintaining their integrity. Ventures include Facebook ‘fan’ pages, YouTube video groups and bespoke social media solutions giving the brands a closed control on their online PR.

Brands

In communication with TripAdvisor, the following brands were cited as examples of successful TripAdvisor integration:
• http://www.kkhotels.com/en/hotels/london/k-k-hotel-george/traveller-reviews/#startposition
• http://www.libraryhotel.com/ (scroll down)
• http://www.novotelstkilda.com.au/explore.html

The latter 2 examples show the more moderate embracing of the Social Review stratosphere.

It seems for many, TA raises more questions due to the very diverse range of views expressed. The key to customer reviews is the personal nature of the reviews and the particular experience of the user.

A “25 to 34” year-old couple visiting Hotel X may describe the hotel as “being surrounded by rotting seaweed” and commenting “wish we had saved the money and gone to Resort X just down the road”  is in stark contrast to the same hotel regarding “some of the negative reviews on here”.  After booking his break and then checking TripAdvisor,  Mr Smith  (a fictional character) states “[I was] somewhat worried about what to expect but gladly, I was not disappointed”. On the “rotting seaweed” he commented “the area is not the best area in the bay but for what I paid for I was very much impressed! Oh – and I’m a usually miserable 38 yr old so take this as praise! ”

Would you visit Hotel X? I’m sure a vote on this would be split at best, most perhaps siding not to stay at Hotel X.

Mr Smith rated Hotel X at 5/5 whereas Mr Jones rated Hotel X at 2/5. Both had contrasting experiences.

Delving deeper, Mr Smith is a middle-class office worker who spent the weekend at Hotel X for the location and enjoyed the accessibility and comparitively cheap price.

Mr Jones however is a Financial Director of a large law firm and expects much more class from a hotel. He thought Hotel X was more a hostel than a hotel and will probably fire his PA for booking Hotel X! Does this now change your perception?

From past experiences and analysis into customer reviews it has become a dangerous haven for many brands. Whether you’re a hotelier, retailer or financial institution these facts are hard to avoid:

• Customers are more inclined to post a review when they’ve had a bad experience
• Customers are likely to post a review if they’ve had an exceptional experience
• Over 80% of online consumers trust, or use online reviews before making a purchase (apologies I do not have the reference at hand for that figure..)

If 2% of your customers have a bad experience, a further 2% have an exceptional experience and the remaining 96% had a good experience, how would this impact your brand? Would 80% of potential customers trust 2% of your actual customers meaning you lose business to a competitor? Food for thought…

To control or not to control…

The fear for brands with ‘uncontrolled’ customer reviews is the openness of interpretation. Without ‘some control’ on how the feedback is portrayed to the end-user, the branded website hosting 3rd party reviews such as TripAdvisor could well become a PR and Guest Liaison nightmare with more time spent negating the negative reviews. What Tripadvisor does extremely well is in leveraging social power to provide consumers with a great insight into destinations amongst other things. The damage this has on brands is that when you’re the owner of Hotel X, TripAdvisor to some extent doesn’t really care (at time of writing!) what the customer wrote as long as it is clean and honest. Now whilst the manager of Hotel X can go online and respond to comments, how many people will already have been put off, and will continue to be put off even if the Hotel X manager states that this is a one off..

Contextual Reviews

Tripadvisor are used as an example due to the fact that they are arguably the number on travel destination review website in the world! However this is by no means a dig at Tripadvisor. In fact Tripadvisor do currently attempt to provide context to reviews; whether this is enough I don’t know.

An alternative approach to a situation like this is to consider a bespoke solution, tailored towards your brand’s product, allowing categorisation of context for the review. How old is the reviewer? What was their expectation? How could their experienced have  been made better?By leading the customer you can ensure they cover as much of the good as the bad and allow the viewer to firstly make up their mind as to “whether this customer is like me”.

This can be placed against your brand’s own criteria for with some openness on who they’re targeted towards using subtle yet distinct copy. If your hotel is a budget hotel with a USP of  “the best budget view of the bay” then make sure customers see this when they see the reviews.

In summary the Internet world is ever-changing and sooner or later more and more brands will realise the potential business they’re losing out on by not embracing it. I can only hope brands start to realise that it is not really as scary as it sounds, with a little insight and know-how!

What do you think?

Driving up the value of your eCommerce website

How do you measure the ‘value’ of an eCommerce website

Our conversion consultant recently conducted a study on the value of our eCommerce website. Considering visitors are up, conversion is down and YOY revenue is also down, this potentially paints a bleak outlook. So what has happened? Due to the newly aligned multi-channel approach adopted, the website is now required to be as much a lead generator as it is a booking channel. The web is not a sales tool, but a tool for the customer to use during the path-to-purchase. An online brochure.

So what does that mean? Focusing on what is best for your customer. This means giving the customer an option to book online or through the call centre. This means giving the customer full access to as much information as they need and to deliver the best brand experience through the website. Offer the customer the opportunity to subscribe to enews, request a brochure and to call. If that’s what they want to do…

So with this in mind, how do you measure the value of your website? I mean, in monetary terms. After all, investing money into your eCommerce website requires a commercial understanding of the ROI. So what is the ROI of a website which is no longer delivering as many sales? Is the website not performing due to sales and conversion tracking down YOY?

Measuring the value of your eCommerce website

Okay so you know the value of your online purchase. For the sake of arguement, your average order value is £100 (that’s GBP!). If you receive on average 50 orders a day, you make £5,000 a day. Great! But you’re down on last year’s average orders a day by 50%. Last year you took 100 orders a day and brought in £10,000 a day. So what’s gone wrong? Well what happened is that you now employ a multi-channel approach and have helped transfer business to your other channels (bricks and mortar shop, call centre…) by changing your online strategy to accommodate the customer’s need.

Whilst orders are down, you notice that the number of sales calls generated from the website are up from 10 a day to 100 a day. You also notice that more people are requesting catalogues. From 20 catalogues a day, you’re now shifting 200. Ok so what? Let’s say your web calls convert at 10% and you generate 10% sales from the brochure.

Therefore you can model the following:

100 calls converting at 40% = 40 bookings a day

200 catalog requests converting at 10% = 20 bookings a day

Those 60 extra bookings at an average value of £100 adds a potential £6,000 totaling revenue generated from the website at £11,000 – that’s £1,000 up on our fictional YOY comparison!
So you see, in order to evaluate the success of your eCommerce website, look further than the direct revenue generated and delve into the indirect revenue for the business

Depesh