Developing the capability to create and maintain an effective online presence through a
web site is a key part of Internet marketing. ‘Effective’ means that the web site and
related communications must deliver relevance to its audience, whether this be through
news content for a portal, product and service information for a business-to-business site
or relevant products and offers for an e-commerce site. At the same time, ‘effective’
means the web site must deliver results for the company.
However, delivering relevant content for the audience is only part of the story.
Interacting with web content is not a static experience, it is an interactive experience. So
Internet marketers also have to work hard to develop consumer trust and deliver a great
experience for their audience. In their book Managing the Customer Experience, Shaun
Smith and Joe Wheeler (2002) suggest that companies should ask afresh ‘what experi-
ence must we provide to meet the needs and expectations of customers’. They note that
some companies use online channels to replicate existing services, whereas others have
extended the experience online. In Chapter 5, in the section on the contribution of
branding as part of the Product element of the mix, we explained how it is important to
provide a promise of what the online representation of the brand will deliver to cus-
tomers. The concept of online brand promise is closely related to that of delivering
online customer experience. In this chapter, we will explore different practical actions
that companies can take to create and maintain satisfactory online experiences. An indi-
cation of the effort required to produce a customer-centric online presence is given by
Alison Lancaster, head of marketing and catalogues at John Lewis Direct, who says:A good site should always begin with the user. Understand who the customer is, how they
use the channel to shop, and understand how the marketplace works in that category. This
includes understanding who your competitors are and how they operate online. You need
continuous research, feedback and usability testing to continue to monitor and evolve the
customer experience online. Customers want convenience and ease of ordering. They
want a site that is quick to download, well-structured and easy to navigate.You can see that creating effective online experiences is a challenge since there are many
practical issues to consider which we present in Figure 7.1. This is based on a diagram by de
Chernatony (2001) who suggested that delivering the online experience promised by a
brand requires delivering rational values, emotional values and promised experience (based
on rational and emotional values). The diagram also highlights the importance of deliver-
ing service quality online, as has been indicated by Trocchia and Janda (2003).
The factors that influence the online customer experience can be presented in a pyra-
mid form of success factors as is shown in Figure 7.1 (the different success factors reflect
current best-practice and differ from those of de Chernatony). The diagram incorporates
many of the factors that are relevant for a transactional e-retail site, but you can see that
many of the rational and emotional values are important to any web site. Some of the
terms such as ‘usability’ and ‘accessibility’ (which are delivered through an effective web
site design) you may not be familiar with, but these will all be explained later in this
chapter.
In the figure these factors are all associated with using the web site, but the online
customer experience extends beyond this, and Internet marketing should also consider
these issues:CHAPTER 7· DELIVERING THE ONLINE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCEIntroduction
Online customer
experience
The combination of
rational and emotional
factors of using a
company’s online
services that influences
customers’ perceptions
of a brand online.INMA_C07.QXD 17/5/06 4:23 pm Page 302