Are You Contributing to The Big Fat Website Disconnect?
I am your customer. I have a Problem. I am looking for the Best Solution to my Problem. You sell the Best Solution, but I don't know that yet.
I go to Google. I type in a phrase describing my Problem, or perhaps a phrase describing my imagined Best Solution. I may remember hearing something specific about the Best Solution - such as a company name, a product name, or even a model number. I know that the more specific I am, the faster I will find my Best Solution, and the faster I can buy the thing, and then go on to do all the other things I have do to today.
The search results appear. I scan the listings quickly. If it looks like my Best Solution is right near the top of the left-hand search results, I don't bother to look at the paid ads on the right. If my Best Solution isn't obviously on top, I scroll down the page a ways. Not too far, but far enough to see if anything obvious jumps out at me.
[Does your website appear in these results? The ones that appear when the customer types HIS FIRST search phrase into Google?]
I still haven't studied the ads on the right side of the page, but as I scroll back up, I glance at them, just in case. Nothing jumps out at me.
I'm not really happy with my search yet. I see that I am getting too many irrelevant results. So I tweak my search phrase slightly. I add one word.
This time, I'm happy with the results. Several sites on the first page look promising, and I start clicking through to them.
The first site I come to is cluttered and confusing. I thought they'd have my Solution, but it's certainly not obvious - and it looks like I'd have to do a lot of digging to find it. I hit the back button.
[Did I just leave your website?]
I click on the next promising-looking result. This site is better - at least the left navigation panel has categories, and one of the categories looks like it might have my Best Solution. The rest of the home page, however, isn't encouraging. The stuff they're emphasizing doesn't matter to me at all.
I click on the category, but the next page is not helpful. There are more categories, and I'm not sure where my Best Solution might be hiding. I'm beginning to think it isn't even there. I'm getting a bit discouraged now.
Because I thought my Best Solution might be here, I type my Solution phrase into the Search box on the website.
Zero results are returned. I click away, back to the Google results.
[Is this your website that I just left?]
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I could go on with the buying process, but you get the picture. Customer goes looking, customer gets frustrated. Customer visits your site (assuming you come up in the early phase of his search), and doesn't find what he's looking for. Customer leaves.
What you have just witnessed is The Big Fat Website Disconnect.
The Disconnect is the gap between what your customer is looking for and what your website is offering up. The gap is created by what you emphasize, how it's organized, and how the content and tools work for the customer.
My interviews of thousands of customers, and the research conducted by "top task" guru Gerry McGovern, have convinced us that this Big Fat Website Disconnect is REAL, you are more than likely participating, and it's costing you sales.
Gerry's research method is to present dozens of tasks to customers in a carefully designed survey, and to ask those customers to pick their top five tasks. Two things always happen. First, all of the customers surveyed - whether there are 400 or 700 - all pick the same top five tasks. Second, the top five tasks they pick are NEVER the same as those the company thinks are important.
I have had the exact same experience, using my qualitative, conversational customer interviewing method. In my case, I'm always looking at the whole picture - including the website. So customers tell me what they think is important in a variety of areas - the website navigation and content, the product (design, functions, documentation, price), the company's service, the decisions managers are making (your customers know a lot more about this than you imagine), the salespeople and how they behaved during the buying process, the competition, and even the company's chances for survival.
Before I make these calls, the top managers in the company always tell me what they think the customer thinks is important. Then I interview customers. Again, the list of what they think is important is NEVER the same as my client's list. So not only is there a Big Fat Disconnect on the web, but also in many other areas of the company.
Fortunately, once I have the customer data, there are always straightforward solutions that will remove the disconnects - wherever they are. This is true for Gerry, also. When you know what customers want to do on your website, and you let that drive your decisions, everything starts to work better. Your website turns into the revenue-generation machine that you always hoped it would be.
We all know why there's a Big Fat Disconnect. The customers' thinking isn't driving the decisions that are being made by all the company's decision-makers. The decisions being made are being made for all the wrong reasons.
In large companies, in particular, the navigation is driven by "the hot product" or "the company's most recent strategic initiative." This is true on customer sites and on portals created for Business Partners.
Imagine the Business Partner, on the phone with a hot customer. The customer has said, "If you can just answer this one question about the ReallyBigExpensiveProgram, I'll give you an order right now." The Business Partner does not know the answer to the question; the ReallyBigExpensiveProgram is one of 300 or so products that he sells.
He knows that the customer has already tried to find the answer on the ReallyBigExpensiveProgram company website, so he doesn't bother going there. He goes to the Business Partner portal and hopefully (and frantically) starts searching for the answer to the question, while he tries to keep the prospect on the phone with boilerplate small talk.
But the navigation is not organized by product. It's organized according to the "packages" that the company selling the ReallyBigExpensiveProgram has created, some of which include the ReallyBigExpensiveProgram. Worse, when he first comes in, he sees that the site is now dominated by the latest Go Green initiative.
Still stalling for time - he resorts to asking the customer questions while furiously typing and mousing - the Partner types ReallyBigExpensiveProgram and a word that relates to the customer's question into the Search box.
He gets 1,299 results, and a quick scan shows him that he's not going to find his answer any time soon.
By now he's run out of small talk, and he and the customer both know that he doesn't have the answer and he hasn't found the answer (customers can always tell when salespeople are trying to find the answer - or doing their email - while they are supposedly talking to the customer).
The Business Partner knows that he is losing a major opportunity, because that customer will call a different Business Partner the minute he hangs up, and if that Business Partner has the answer, that Business Partner will get the sale.
Answers matter. Answers are where sales come from.
Tasks matter. Tasks are how people get to the answers, and answers turn into sales.
The only way to remove The Big Fat Disconnect - on your website, and between the buyer and those who sell for you - is to know what your customer cares about, the questions she has, and what she wants to do on your website. Your customers are the only people who can give you that knowledge.
