Everything changes all the time; it’s just the nature of our modern world.  The real problem is not how fast things change but how out-of-control we usually feel for not knowing where all these changes will eventually lead. We are all afraid of missing the boat for the next big thing.

Social Media, Netbooks, multi-touch devices, mobiles, streams, waves, web2.0, cloud computing, the Wii and motion detection, not to even mention all the new startups with crazy ideas bringing even more new ways to see and use the internet.  As an early adopter of technology of all kinds, I know more than 90% of those new ideas will be dead in less than a year, but any single one that survives will change how we experience the internet in ways that we cannot even try to predict.

Why does that matter?

Because even though we cannot keep up with technological evolution, we can (and MUST) keep up with users’ expectations and that will give us an insight on developing behaviors.

A few weeks ago, a friend of mine (@ginidietrich) wrote a blog post on the “Death of the Corporate Web site” based on another post from Mashable (Is Social Media Making Corporate Websites Irrelevant?) that created a lot of debate. All of this got me thinking that the key point here is not whether Corporate websites are going to die or not, but how they will need to evolve to catch-up with these new developing user behaviors and expectations.

What WILL change?

1. Information Streams – In the next few years, users’ online behavior will quickly shift from “surfing pages in a website” to “surfing streams of interconnected information.”

It might look like it is the same thing, but it changes drastically how users experience the web and navigate through sites. Traditional information architectures, that guide users through your site’s in an orderly fashion (sequential) will not be capable of predicting or controlling the user’s navigation. Users will come from anywhere and land anywhere in your site.  All pages will be landing pages and will have to fully support the user’s objective, lead them to a call-to-action and, probably, be customized to tell a consistent story every time.

A site will become more than just a collection of pages under a URL. It will encompass every digital manifestation of your brand and services wherever they reside in cyberspace (Facebook pages, Twitter feeds, posts, comments, reviews and maybe even emails if Google has its way with the new “Wave”).  With this behavioral shift, Homepages may lose most, if not all, of their importance.

2. Multi-Touch – Touch-screen wireless devices (including netbooks and tablets) will change the way people interface with the computer, which eventually will change the way people interface with websites.

If you have an iPhone or an iPod Touch, I bet that at least once you accidentally tried to repeat the same gestures/finger movements on a regular phone from a friend out of habit.  After playing a Wii game, you certainly have the sensation being a bit “limited” when you have to use a regular joystick.  The reason for that is simple: whenever you find an easier or more natural way of doing something you adapt to it almost immediately and going back to the old ways is like trying to unlearn how to walk… You just can’t.

In the following years, more and more devices will be touch-sensitive and there are already companies trying to adapt the iPhone “experience” for netbooks, tablets, laptops and even desktops.  Soon, the way we interface with a webpage or navigate through a site will be impacted by the use of such devices and systems.   Users will get used to these experiences and will demand sites to act in a similar way.

3. Augmented Reality – Augmented Reality (or Enhanced Reality) will eventually eliminate the need of physical devices or accessories and the internet will be more ethereal than ever (a real web of dispersed information).

This is not science fiction. A couple of years from now we will be taking pictures by looking at things, receive detailed information about objects (and people) directly from the internet while we handle them, all without looking at a computer or cell-phone screen. There are ongoing studies on how to use the internet to “enhance” our perception of the world around us without the need of physical equipment or accessories.  A group at MIT even created an amazing prototype using readily available materials under $350. When the internet is no longer something you see through a display in some device, today’s website will be seen as just a collection of information about an entity without full context to what you are doing at the moment. At this point, the concept of a website in the way we experience today will become a distant memory of how we did things in the past.

Ok, Now What?

If you ask me how this new website structure or concept will look like in the near (or not so near) future, I’m not certain I know the answer. There are only 3 things I can say for sure:

1. Your customer experience (or at least your user experience) will be fast, ephemeral and dispersed.  People will be (they are already) assaulted by information from all directions presented to them in quick bursts and ever smaller chunks. People will suffer more and more from information overload and the capability of capturing and retaining one specific message will decrease (there are even studies showing how the new generation brains are adapting to handle the speed of the digital life). To stand-out from their stream of information, you will need to have a consistent digital strategy, comprehensive understanding of all your customer touchpoints, strong branding and, above all, be able to CONNECT and ENGAGE with your customers on a personal level.  It is the ultimate one-to-one relationship for mass-consumption.
2. What you see today as your website will become just an end, not the means.  People will get there to consume and convert, not to browse, since its navigation will have no boundaries. It will require a more flexible information architecture where every piece of information (or page for lack of a better term now) can stand alone when pushed into an information stream and still lead the user to other in-context information and call-to-action.
3. No matter how traditional your customers are they will be affected by changes around them at some point and won’t be able to tell you before it happens, because they won’t see it coming themselves.  Survey and Market Researches are useless to predict behavioral shifts because these behavior changes occur on an unconscious level and users only start to rationalize how much their needs and expectations changed a long time after it’s happened. This is why innovative companies like Apple avoid asking their users for what they want in a product; instead they observe their behavior to understand what they need without knowing and only ask their opinion after the product is almost ready to market (e.g., the iPhone).  If you don’t adapt to your users’ future needs and behaviors, your digital strategy is doomed.

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So traditional websites (like most corporate sites) WILL die… we just won’t notice!  They will be replaced with something new and better suited for this different perspective and expectation. We will look at them and believe they have adapted and evolved.

Maybe that’s all the same thing anyway…

But the real question here is: will you keep up with times and allow your digital strategy to evolve or will you hang on to what you know today until everything around you has changed? Are you going to keep up with the times or forever chase your own tail while trying to keep up with the Joneses?

It’s totally up to you[r users].

Why put the responsibility on customers to check out recalled products that can hurt or, sometimes, even kill them? 

Yes, companies (or interested parties) try all they can to push the information to all involved so they can take action before something happens, but why not use the power of technology to avoid a potential customer experience nightmare?

Well, some ideas around that are starting to brew among California lawmakers:  program supermarkets computers to trigger an alert when recalled products arrive at the checkout counter.  This would be a perfect way to stop tainted food from ever reaching the consumers’ table.

The idea seems sound and is actually not that difficult to implement.  Most big chains already have systems in place to process marketing and loyalty promotion associated with products at checkout. Adding another trigger is mostly a matter of finding an effective way of distributing updated lists of recalled products.

Besides the obvious reasons to do this (say: saving lives!), it could save the companies a lot of money in handling after-the fact complains and, in the worst cases, negative publicity. 

I can’t wait to see something like this being implemented outside of California and beyond just supermarkets and grocery stores.  With something like that, the next peanut/pistachio salmonella outbreak may look a lot less scary on your grocery shopping experience. 

Wouldn’t you agree?

See original post at Vox Inc - Customerspective Blog
Follow Luis on Twitter at www.twitter.com/luiserpa

Everyone has been talking about how Obama’s campaign used the power of Social Networks and the Internet.  There’s also been a lot of buzz around how the same concepts and innovations could be used to improve the effectiveness of his presidency and turn it into a truly participative democracy.

The expectations around what the Transition Team will do is very high, but bit by bit they’ve been testing new concepts and ideas, showing again that they DO get what Web 2.0 is all aboutand that there’s definitely a plan to use it as a major tool for change.

First they virtually invited citizens to participate in Transition Team’s meetings with the Your Seat at the Table policy and now they are raising the stakes even more with the new Citizen’s Briefing Book initiative.

The Citizen Briefing Book is basically an online forum for citizens to send ideas and, at the same time, discuss and rate these ideas.  The best ideas (based on rates and comments) will rise to the top of the list and will be printed in the Briefing Book that President Barrack Obama gets from his experts and advisors for his analysis. (See also the technology behind it)

Both mentioned initiatives have very simple concepts and are based on examples of Social Media, CrowdSourcing and Social Bookmarking already available online in sites like Amazon, Flickr, MySpace, Facebook, Digg, Stumbleupon and several others. So the ideas may not be totally new, but the scale and possible impact to the whole society is immense.

Just as a social experiment, these efforts will certainly bring new findings on users’ behavior and crowd psychology that will help companies understand and improve their online customer experience and, above all, will represent an invaluable potential for change.

See original post at Vox Inc – Customerspective Blog

If anyone still had any doubts of the impact of games on consumers’ choices, that doubt is quickly fading out.  Microsoft has broadened the marketing experience and branding possibilities inside Xbox games (See the article here). Aside from the standard banners and videos throughout the game, Microsoft is offering geographical targeting and the ability to serve-up ads during a specific time of day, much like traditional media like TV.   Also, gamers can engage with a brand by choosing to dress their avatars in related sunglasses, T-Shirts, jogging pants and running shoes.

Many Ads are clickable, connecting to microsites or offering downloadable content, all taking advantage of the Xbox Live community and all supported by monitoring software to analyze how the gamers use the platform and help build the next generation of advertising services based on user trends and behavior.

So… Are you ready to play?

See original post at Vox Inc – Customerspective Blog

For a while now, everyone has been discussing how Obama’s campaign revolutionized the way politics is done, leveraging all the concepts of Social Networking and the internet.  Since the election, a lot of rumors and speculations have appeared on how Obama’s team would use their innovative approach as a way to improve citizens’ participation in the government, but what they are really planning is anyone’s guess.

Now, we are starting to see a glimpse of what they plan to innovate again:  this weekend, I received an e-mail from Change.Gov informing me of their new policy for transparency, leveraging online tools.  It is called “Your Seat at the Table.” The memo to the transition team was released by John Podesta last Friday afternoon and shows a huge potential to what can become a really open government using web2.0 concepts.

Despite its apparent boldness, the concept presented is pretty simple: the people and groups the transition team is meeting with, the subjects of the meetings and any documents shared in the meetings will now be made available on Change.gov.  Anyone will be able to weigh in with comments, suggestions or their own materials (See video below).

This transition team’s understanding and adaptation of technologies gives us new hope for how much can be accomplished in the next 4 years through empowering citizens.  It proves once and for all that technology, when used correctly and in innovative ways, may change everything…

In the midst of the economic crisis, while most banks are trying to keep attracting customers by offering higher interest savings and money market accounts, one bank (PNC) is thriving by focusing on delivering a unique online customer experience, specifically designed to target the generation Y (people aged 18 to 34, according to PNC demographics).

PNC created a product called Virtual Wallet that boldly discards all usual conventions from the banking industry, such as checking or savings accounts, and offers 3 types of accounts (dubbed “Spend,” “Reserve” and “Growth”) combined in a single solution.  They focused on two simple concepts:

• Twentysomethings consider bank sites clunky, and they typically don’t know how to manage their money (’We need help helping ourselves’)
• The Gen Y really understands how to take advantage of online resources.

The solution takes advantage of concepts borrowed from other online services, games, social networks and even e-Commerce sites with features like Wish-List, Financial Calendar, Money Bar, Danger Days and “Punch the Pig.”   That strategy is luring 130 new customers a day (20,000+ Virtual Wallet customers since July) to an account that otherwise could hardly compete with more aggressive banks in terms of paid returns. 

Defying conventions and betting on exceptional experience can cost a lot initially (PNC expects the project to cost about 15 Million overall), but the ROI is unquestionable: PNC estimates to break even 1 year faster than a similar investment on a new brick-and-mortar branch would have.

From that example (plus everything that we preach here at Vox), I can get 3 great lessons to any company in any industry:

1.  Don’t be afraid to defy conventions!  Know your customers, understand what they what and what they need and create NEW experiences that fit their expectations
2.  Test your concepts with real customers, watch how they react and behave and adjust your solutions accordingly
3. The best strategy in times of crisis is still to offer a truly great customer experience.  Marketing gimmicks and discounts can only go so far as… well, superficial wins…

 So… What strategy will your company follow to get over this crisis?

 See more about it in this article from BusinessWeek or in this blog post from Customer Experience Matters.