Page 20 - GS180302

Views

Vendor, customer parity
The very point of sale
In his book, The Intention Economy: When Customers Take
Charge, journalist, columnist and author Doc Searls
depicts a new economy in which consumers freely
express desires, providing better information and sparing
merchants from guessing about what they might want.
He envisions an interactive marketplace where consumers
and vendors communicate in nuanced, sophisticated ways
as relationships between customers and vendors become
more voluntary and less coercive.

Lead and follow In a May 2012 interview with Fast Company journalist
Drake Baer, Searls said free agent customers do more than
just accumulate points and buy things. "They have signals,
desire lines they have intelligence, they have all kinds of things they
can bring that you're ignoring right now because you're

about them," he stated.
By Dale S. Laszig running closed systems in which you know almost nothing
DSL Direct LLC Searls accurately predicted that migrating from an attention

ave you ever taken a shortcut on your way to intention economy would not be easy or smooth, because
to work? Maybe you were running late and traditional models are heavily entrenched in our lives and
cut across the grass to get to the office. Over workplaces. He saw a need for open ecosystems that help
H time, your footprints, joined by others, create customers control their data. "We need more investors to
well-worn pathways. Architects and software developers look and say, 'What are you guys doing for customers?
call these pathways desire lines. These lines can lead you What are you doing to help customers and sellers come
to your customer's heart ‒ if you only let them. And that's together? What are you doing to help build relationships?'"
exactly what user experience (UX) designer, researcher he said.
and blogger Anton Nikolov would like product designers Solving checkout abandonment
to do.
Collecting email addresses may be a natural part of the
"How many times have you seen users going all around online checkout process, but ecommerce merchants are still
the interface and never click the button that was supposed daunted by incomplete transactions. Independent research
to lead them to the same page?" Nikolov wrote in Design firm Statista found shopping cart abandonment rates
Principle: The Power of Desire Lines; Let your user show you are trending higher worldwide, increasing by 10 percent
the path. "I have, many times during my user testing, due between January and August 2017. "During the observed
to inappropriate placement, layout, copy text or hierarchy. period, it was found that 77.3 percent of online retail orders
The problem with not observing the desire lines is that you were abandoned," researchers wrote.
will end up doing designer-centered design."
In an earlier ecommerce study that measured the period
Noting that most small-business owners didn't go to between 2016 and 2017, Statista found high shipping costs
marketing school, Womply Inc. CEO Cory Capoccia said, to be a leading factor in shopping cart abandonment. They
"Observing is good and leading is better. The best way to reported the primary reasons shoppers gave for leaving the
cater to customers' needs is to stay a step ahead of them by checkout experience before completing purchases. They
anticipating where they want to go." He added they may are listed in order of ranking, as follows:
collect business cards in fishbowls or launch one-size-fits- • Expensive shipping
all email blasts without tailoring their marketing to each
individual customer; however, advanced technology can • Only browsing
help them do a better job of finding customers and building • Only researching
relationships with them.
• No free shipping
For example, Capoccia, stated, "Merchants can use • Unaware of shipping costs
quantitative and qualitative data to better understand • Slow shipping
customers and anticipate their needs. They can automate
that archaic fishbowl concept by building out their CRM to • Long process
find their customers and send them the right messages at • Bad site navigation
the right times."

20