So we’re on to the next phase, which turns out to be old news: marketing is about getting and keeping good customers. And the best measure keys on an understanding of the Lifetime Value of A Customer, or at least the value of winning their favorable brand perceptions and behaviors past the next click.

There is some truth in the idea that there’s no such thing as brand loyalty anymore. But it’s more accurate to say you can’t assume loyalty anymore; you have to work for it continuously. And it’s also clear, as a result, that a small but loyal customer base is more of a valuable asset than ever.

If all you’re measuring is sales and traffic, you are not doing marketing. You are not measuring customer acquisition and retention; you are measuring dollar volume acquisition and retention. A good score there will keep you employed through your quarterly Board meeting. Congratulations.

But think now about the question of what happens when you adjust your view to consider the next purchase, the next year, or a lifetime. What asset are you building? What value are you creating? What relationships are you solidifying? How does that change the way you approach your interaction with customers and potential customers through design, technology, social media, social responsibility, metrics, advertising, customer service, and even how you hire and train staff?

The answer is, it can change everything.

What’s magic is that the further out you think, the greater the chance that the interests of your customers and the interest of your organization, and even greater social interests, intersect and align. The more likely it is that you will be competing for customers, not competing against your own interests.

You could argue that the most important role of marketing in any organization is to get people thinking longer term, about getting and keeping customers and growing a meaningful, profitable company.

So adjust your sightlines forward a notch and we’ll explore further in Part 2.

P.S., A related read on Seth Godin’s blog: http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/11/embracing-lifetime-value.html

“a collection of many individuals united into one body, under a special denomination, having perpetual succession under an artificial form, and vested, by policy of the law, with the capacity of acting, in several respects, as an individual, particularly of taking and granting property, of contracting obligations, and of suing and being sued, of enjoying privileges and immunities in common, and of exercising a variety of political rights, more or less extensive, according to the design of its institution, or the powers conferred upon it, either at the time of its creation, or at any subsequent period of its existence.”

To paraphrase, it’s all about benefit without risk. It’s about creating an invisible force field of sorts. But the Internet appears to be eroding that shield more every day, or at least making it more transparent.

Given the structured, long lead forms of communication popularized during the age of mass media, corporations were able to create the illusion of having one cohesive face and voice – the sort of physical manifestations of the idea that a corporation is a real entity. The name for that face was “brand”, and it came to ignore the fact that a brand actually formed and evolved as much in the heads of its employees and consumers, and the interactions between the two, as in anything hatched by branding and advertising firms.

In their early forms, websites were simply an extension of this – there was no expectation of much interaction, not many people had bandwidth for rich media, there were few mechanisms for interaction with other users on a grand scale. The web was a bunch of URLs where you could look at brochures online, and companies needed only to control the content at those locations.

Cut to today. Let’s watch as corporations try and apply the “we’re an entity with a name and a face” paradigm to social media like Facebook that’s built to enable person to person communication, where an institution is exposed for what it is – not a person. The results are often absurd attempts at personifying entities that aren’t, well, persons.

It also exposes the question of who controls the unified face and voice of any corporate entity in a place like Facebook, let alone throughout the Internet. Who would you expect to? PR departments, product groups, marketing organizations, and the web/IT departments that maintain the corporate site are as fragmented as they’ve ever been. Meantime, employees and users have more mechanisms than ever to aggregate their voices. The upshot is that this faceless organization has almost no central control over even the messages they INTEND to send, let alone all the communication that takes places as a byproduct of their employee’s personal forays into social media, the traditional news media, user and consumer forums and blogs that form an insanely amplified word of mouth network.

In short, the new proliferation of communication mechanisms is proving that a corporation has always been more of an ecosystem than a single lifeform.

What that means is that it’s time for companies to retire their own monolithic image and replace their canned laughter sitcom approach to media with some reality TV. The legal model that the corporation provides may still be useful, but it’s not relevant anymore as a model when brands are made online.

Here are a few guiding principles for companies to stop acting like corporations and create a web presence that mirrors how organizations and customers interact.

1. Systems, Not Sites. Companies don’t manage a website, they have online ecosystems. Whether they like it or not. Having a well designed “website” hub is not dead, but the idea that it isn’t connected in 1,000 ways is silly.
2. Be Real. People have little patience for institutional blather, buzzwords and hyperbole. Tout your strengths, but don’t try and overcome a fault with disingenuous copy because a “real” user comment is a mouseclick away.
3. Be Real-Time. Ecosystems adapt quickly. User forums, Twitter feeds, or even a proprietary CMS staffed by someone empowered to make changes is how sites get managed dynamically, not by IT queues.
4. Fuse Skills. Design, technology, marketing now completely overlap. Everyone communicates. You cannot NOT communicate. It’s an assembly, not an assembly line.
5. Maintain The Ecosystem. Companies plant seeds with communication tools, principals and information and try and apply and measure them wherever they’re appropriate to influence the overall result. But the essential skill of the ecosystem is planting, monitoring and adapting, not trying to landscape the entire planet

Will this new world of digital branding have any impact on the corporation’s status as a legal entity? Perhaps somewhere down the road, their pants pulled squarely down around their ankles, corporations will sheepishly admit under oath they are contrivances. But for now, the tools of online communication are forcing companies to break down the barrier and re-connect in real-time, to real people or risk looking silly, or worse, irrelevant.

According to Symantec, every 3 seconds an identity is stolen. There’s a symmetry with popular stats about Facebook adoption (100 Million users in less than 9 months) that suggest a legitimate (or at least mostly harmless) new FB identity was created about every 3 seconds. That’s a lot of identity creation, modification, and transference. Between the amount of identity generation going on with cybercrime and social media right now, the entire population of the United States is currently “turning over” about once a year. The Wild West sensation online is greater than its ever been. Stake your claim in a place where no one knows your name. Reinvent yourself, make friends, make enemies, disappear, reappear, get a life, or lead a double life.  Cybercrime has surpassed illegal drug trafficking as a criminal moneymaker. Was it 130 Million names and numbers stolen this week? Ho hum. There are 200 Million Facebook users alone. What’s the stat – if Facebook were a country it would be the third largest in the world? And what are the policing forces mustered on behalf of this nation?

There is no way law enforcement can keep up. There is no way the average FB/Twitter user can either. So, who will be the Guardian Angels of social media? Or in this new world, will we be our brother’s keepers out of necessity, community-enforcing the unspoken laws of the frontier?

http://www.finedesigngroup.com/words/hotel2.html

Hotel Website Design

A Roundtable Interview with FINE

For an upcoming issue of HOTELS Magazine

HOTELS: What are the most common design mistakes you see on hotel Web sites?

FINE: Many hotel Web sites still struggle to get past the limitations and demands of technology and functionality to really give visitors a sense of the experience they offer. So in general, the common mistake is a site that does not match the hotel experience, both in quality and style, often because it was developed through template-based designs and technology.

Hotels think in terms of bookings and room nights, and their sites often reflect a commoditized view where a room is simply a function of proximity, availability, and price. But guests think in terms of things like experience and overall value. So you have to know what you are to people and make your site reflect that, because your site is more than a booking engine – your site is your brand.

One of the metaphors we find most useful is to simply imagine your Web site is one of your properties. What greets people when they arrive? Can they see the details of what they’re booking, amenities, and descriptions at their own pace? Or are they confronted with a barrage of special offers, pricing, and booking engines before they even know whether they want to stay? Are you hiring engaging concierges or carnival barkers? It’s a mistake if your Web site doesn’t reflect your answer.

HOTELS: Besides the obvious (booking capability, basic hotel info, etc.), what features are absolute must-haves on a hotel site?

FINE: The answer should depend on the nature of the hotel and brand, including whether it is primarily for business or pleasure, suited for big events, or simply how it’s priced and positioned. But the general answer is you need everything, just not all at once. In all cases, the question is less about which features are ‘must haves’ than it is about the prominence and pacing of these features. Hotel sites are often designed around the limitations of technology platforms, rather than constructed from a user experience perspective, and it shows.

Some must-haves that augment the basic functions include great and ample photos, concierge-like information on the area and the property, online gift certificates, and very thorough facilities and menu information for event planners and brides. But all of these things should unfold as user’s request. Think of a hotel Web site as a successful courtship that starts with a simple pick-up line intended to evolve into a deeper relationship. Hotel Web sites often start by squeezing everything onto their home page, effectively saying “My name is hotel and here’s everything about me, warts and all” – they are over anxious suitors that make you want to make up excuses about washing your hair rather than go on that first date.

HOTELS: How do you know if it’s time to revamp your Web site–are there any telltale signs? And how often should the site be overhauled, generally speaking?

FINE: There are some clear signs. The first is a simple gut check about whether you and your customers have evolved enough to merit a revamp. But if that’s not obvious, you will notice trends in guest interaction that are strong indicators:

1. guests who book online arrive at your hotel confused or misinformed
2. staff lose confidence directing guests on the phone to the Web site
3. more phone calls from people who started on the Web site but decided to call instead
4. a protracted decline in online look to book rates

The hospitality industry moves fast, and the Web moves even faster. So if you’re not taking a look at this critical channel constantly to make small adjustments based on guest behavior, and seriously considering major overhauls every 2-4 years, you are moving far too slow. You need only look at the changes that have occurred in mobile device adoption, and the uptick in broadband access over the last 1-2 years to see the truth of this.

HOTELS: What are some of the most popular trends in new hotel Web sites (both good and bad)?

FINE: The good trends have to do with functions that really help users choose and even augment the experience at a property: incorporating local information feeds on weather, tides or events, easier access to large-sized photos of the property and area, integrated booking engines that have user experience in mind, even simple integration with Google maps.

The bad trends are any use of gratuitous widgetry driven by a desire to demonstrate technology know-how, or stay on par with competitive site doodads. As if hotel site pages aren’t already cluttered enough, many further subject you to animating, flickering, rotating offer banners, play dance music, and will probably emit aromas the moment that technology is available. You also find the random inclusion of video embed windows as an afterthought or RSS feeds and content that don’t seem to flow from the content. And then there is the trend toward obligatory social media – such as blogs or Facebook linkages – that often comes off as simply ham-handed.

No one will book a room because you have the latest widget on your site. Remember what you do and remember what your customers want from you. Then selectively choose the Web trends that support that dialog, and leave the rest to bog down your competitor’s site.

HOTELS: Do design objectives vary by geographic region? Does a good U.S. site look different from a good Asia site, for instance?

FINE: There’s no question that there are some cultural differences in how hotels are presented and how the Web is used in different countries. But it really just suggests you must be even more focused on the essential messages and images of who you are and who your customers are, and not distracted by hotel speak and extraneous functionality.

HOTELS: Do you have an all-time favorite hotel Web site, and why? (And are there any sites you just can’t stand?) [NOTE: FINE Design Group designed and developed Blancaneax and JdV, which may be why we like them, or have persuaded ourselves to… however, we did not design The Standard site]

FINE:

LOVE:
Francis Ford Coppola’s Blancaneaux Resorts http://www.blancaneaux.com/desk/
This is a good example of the level of experiential site required to engage and entice customers to invest significant time and money in a vacation to a remote destination. It shows how different a brand-forward Web site can be from the mold of a typical hotel site. And it took the resort from 60% occupancy to 98% in just a few months.

Joie de Vivre Hotels http://www.jdvhotels.com/
Joie de Vivre is a truly unique brand, and their uniqueness comes across in this site. They are all about the California experience, which is a rich convergence of many personality types and diverse locations. And the site accommodates that individuality with some unique tools, like a matchmaker that aligns you with your best hotel based on personality, tools to help you build a full vacation itinerary, and ample use of imagery that romances instead of simply cataloguing.

Standard Hotels http://www.standardhotels.com/
So simple. So much personality. Great imagery, easy to find information. Total alignment with their brand. We may not be cool enough to stay in these hotels, but no one will mind if we visit their Web site and pretend for a minute.

HATE:
Ian Schrager hotel sites (http://www.gramercyparkhotel.com)
All of a sudden, this has become like a stale reminder of the pretentious dot com era. To see these sites festooned with discount offers is some sort of justice for those of us who were always priced, or hipped, out of them.

Rock Resorts (http://rockresorts.com/)
They have perhaps the finest collection of lodges in the country, but their site says otherwise in no uncertain terms. It’s the type of disappointing disconnect that leaves any good Web design firm dying to show how dramatic a difference could be made simply by reflecting the truth.

Taj hotels (http://www.tajhotels.com)
This site shows promise on the home page. Then you try and find a hotel. Make a reservation. Or do much of anything practical. All of a sudden, a quick trip to Reno seems like way less of a headache than that dream trip to Asia.

7. In a nutshell, what makes a successful hotel Web site?

FINE: A successful hotel Web site empowers users to simply realize their ideal experience of being at the hotel.

HOTELS: Also, kindly take a few minutes to review and briefly grade the following sites (what works/what doesn’t/overall impression):

HOTELS: Starwood.com
FINE: The effect of this site is like sitting in the long meetings in air-conditioned office building where much of it was likely conceived. It’s a bit unfair to judge, because corporate umbrella sites are tough and most users are probably focused on 1-2 of their brands for the most part. But the design is corporate and non-descript and you don’t come away with a sense for Starwood as anything but the loosest aggregation of disconnected brands. The first thing you see makes it seem like Starwood essentially exists to justify a loyalty/bonus program. And the matchmaking to their properties is a classic example of talking to themselves on white boards in their own language of brands and products “of interest” rather than speaking to guests about what they want.

HOTELS: Langhamhotels.com
FINE: This site does a decent job of surfacing the brand and giving you a sense for who they are, with use of imagery and color. But it has technical and structural problems with speed and navigability. It takes you awhile to get oriented because there is not really a difference in the relative weight/hierarchy of elements on the home page. So the overall effect is amateurish, but with good intentions that make you think the properties have promise if you’re a certain kind of visitor.

HOTELS: Feel-aqua.com
FINE: Overall, the site is trying too hard to make you see what a great property this seemingly is, and should just stay out of the way more. Do you make your guests wait in line to walk in your front door? Even with a broadband connection, this loading sequence is too long to wait for a sterile 3D fly-through rendering. This imagery is not compelling enough to justify it, and then is promptly muddied by special offer touts. The music will make you not want to stay long, even if you like the genre. If you make a dreamy promise about soothing tranquility, best not to insert looping music, floating headlines, flashing touts, and rollover navigation sounds and states. Design and layout is okay, but the information architecture is disorienting, sacrificing clear main nav in favor of specials, live assistance, music. Once you navigate somewhere, the depth of the content is baffling and sometimes non-existent.

HOTELS: Bestwesternpremier.com
FINE: This Web site is easy to navigate and understand. But that’s because we’ve all visited it before at bestwestern.com and sites a lot like it. So does it do enough to tackle the difficult challenge of making the Best Western brand seem “premier”? Not by a longshot. It has the clunky feel of a site design constrained by a corporate IT department where latitude to break the templatized mold was limited. A Web site has the power to form or change fundamental perceptions about your brand. Your site IS your brand. But you have to try harder than simply adding the word “premier” and changing your color scheme from blue to something that implies gold or fine Corinthian leather.

Thanks for your help!
FINE: Thank you for asking!

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Identity Theft Gets More Personal

Consumers are increasingly letting the online world into their confidence. The amount of personal information shared in blogs and vlogs, resumes, pictures of friends and family, PayPal™ transactions, Facebook™ bios, even tweets about what you just had for lunch, mark a collective new level of online over-share. The vast majority of this activity is harmless, safe, and downright fun.

But as social networking and modes of communication proliferate, so do opportunities for scammers to glean bank numbers, birthdates, passport information, and even lunch recommendations. Meantime, scammers are getting increasingly subtle and sophisticated in their approaches. Gone are the days of the widespread virus-starter seeking a moment of fame. Phishing and vishing “artists” too, are fading as consumers become increasingly aware of the wide nets they cast. Today’s identity thieves are getting much more personal. Their approaches use more information specific to you, and target you more unobtrusively through new transmission methods.

Many recent online scams have played on the fact that we trust that the person on the other side if the connection is legit. As opposed to regular phishing attempts, where emails attempting to get personal information are typically distributed en masse, “spear phishing” is an attack aimed at specific targets.

“We’ve had a handful of [spear phishing] cases,” said Jay Foley Executive Director of the non-profit Identity Theft Resource Center in San Diego, CA. “One of the most interesting was a high tech company attack.”

In this particular spear phishing attack, said Foley, somewhere between 200 to 2,000 CEOs received an email claiming to be from the United States District Court in San Diego. The email said that the company was being subpoenaed to testify before a grand jury in San Diego in 48 hours and that more information was contained in an attachment.

Understandably, nobody thinks an urgent subpoena is a joke; ditching a grand jury subpoena could get you in serious legal trouble. So some of the CEOs did what was natural: they opened the attachment. But, as Foley explained, “You click on the attachment and it launches a Trojan horse application that sends out all sorts of information.”

Earlier this year, phishers spammed inboxes with messages claiming that there was a problem with the recipients’ iTunes™ account. A link in the email opened a fake iTunes billing update Web page, which asked for a Social Security number, credit card number with security code, and mother’s maiden name. The page was so poorly-designed that seeing it would’ve sent Apple™ CEO Steve “I Hate Buttons” Jobs into convulsions, but imagine an unsuspecting teenager getting the email and freaking out over losing his precious Radiohead tracks.

Similar attacks have been reported by job seekers excited by receiving targeted emails about opportunities for which they are especially well suited. The excitement turns to suspicion when the fictitious employer asks for unusual information, such as their cell phone carrier or social security number.

So who’s making the attacks, and where do they come from?

“We know two things about them,” said Foley. “First, they’re breathing. Second, they know how to use a computer.” Unfortunately, the anonymous nature of the attacks makes it difficult, if not impossible, to find out who is behind them. Remember, the new breed of scammer is not looking to get famous – they’re looking to get rich.

The Associated Press reported recently that 27-year-old Michael Tyrone Thomas was arrested in Texas for allegedly stealing a computer file with the names and Social Security numbers of 1,132 University of California, Irvine students. Thomas was working for an office that handled the health insurance policies for the university’s graduate students. According to police, Thomas then filed fake tax returns for 163 of the students.

Many of the scams originate from outside of the U.S., according to Foley, the majority of them from Nigeria, Romania, Indonesia, and Russia. While it may not be possible to know who carries out all of the attacks, Foley said that the scams themselves tend to have a few common characteristics.

First, there’s a sense of urgency. They say that “your account will be frozen in 24 hours,” or “unless you do this, the FDIC will freeze your bank account because of irregularities. You have until midnight to respond.”

Second, there’s a great motivation to respond, like keeping your bank account open, or being able to access your downloaded music. Or, in the case of subpoenaed CEOs, not going to prison for skipping out on a mandatory court appearance.

Third, and this is probably key in detecting scams, is that they don’t make a lot of sense. If anybody is going to receive a court summons, they’re going to be served in person, not by email. And places like your bank, Ebay™, or PayPal™ already have your credit card number, so they have no need to ask for it again. They also know your name, so no email from a legit online company will begin with “Dear Sir,” “Customer,” or any generic title.

Aside from defending yourself against these new approaches to glean your information, consider the new means of transmission available that may expose you to thieves.

Many cell and smart phones are now connected to the Internet and just as vulnerable as any computer. So, by extension, are their Bluetooth devices. Keeping personally vigilant while using these devices, including making sure security updates are current, is important. This is why Apple recently drew ire for lagging behind in providing security patches for over 13 documented vulnerabilities in the iPhone™, including code execution holes in Safari™, that left users improperly protected from malicious sites and malware.

Wireless transmission offers another increasing threat. If you’re using the free wi-fi service at the nearest greasy spoon, be wary of sending sensitive material. Thieves have been known to park their cars near free hot-spots, gleaning information.

Even RFID (the little chips embedded in modern credit cards) theft is on the rise as it becomes more common for payment cards and passports. Identity thieves can purchase small RFID receivers online, reprogram them using instructions downloaded from YouTube™, and steal information by getting within 10-50 cm of your wallet.

In this new and more social world of online interaction, where your life is online for all to see and new devices help you put yourself out there more conveniently than ever, it can be more difficult to tell the friends from the foes. Thieves are likely to either seem like they know you, or to never have any interaction with you at all, and more rarely fall somewhere in between. The best advice is to remember that, while it’s perfectly safe to share what you had for lunch with the world, there are still a few pieces of personal information best kept personal.