cx-i

Insights into the online customer experience from Mike Baxter

touching the intangibles I

Although not all e-commerce sites do it well, many aspects of customer experience are quite straightforward to measure: what leads customer to shop at a particular site (referral statistics), how do customers try to find what they are looking for (clickstream statistics) and what puts customers off making a purchase (attrition statistics)? These can undoubtedly explain some of the differences between a successful and an unsuccessful e-commerce site but by no means all of them. A more comprehensive explanation requires e-commerce managers to consider more intangible apsects of the customer experience such as respect, trust and credibility.

These issues are a lot less intangible than they were a couple of years ago, thanks to the efforts of a small group of researchers and consultants.

The Customer Respect Group is a 'research and consulting firm that focuses on how corporations treat their customers online'. Since 2002 they have been refining their 'Customer Respect Index' to produce a single measure reflecting the degree of respect with which customers hold online sites.
The Persuasive Technology Lab at Stanford University (led by Prof BJ Fogg) has been analysing what makes web sites credible in the eyes of customers, using large scales surveys.
Florian Egger recently completed his PhD at Eindhoven University into the determinants of trust in e-commerce sites. His entire thesis (169 pages, 1MB pdf) is available online.

I am currently producing summaries of their work and an analysis of how their findings can be applied in practical ways to the management of e-commerce sites. Watch this space!

See also transactional trust: getting it all wrong in the online retail section of cx-i (posted 12th April 2005)

posted at 10.42am on saturday 2nd april 2005 by mike baxter
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