How does the Internet influence purchases consumer behaviour on the French market?

Exposure to Internet media is still lower than that of traditional media even if it is more transformative...

Although the French If they do not necessarily buy over the Internet, they are nevertheless more receptive to information they find online, more than any other medium.
A study by Nurun-Ifop analyses the role of the Web in the buying process. The reported exposure to the Internet through a purchase varies greatly depending on the product category and investments on the various media but more than other media, the Internet appears as the media of information and comparison.

Internet information really considered before purchase decision making!
All sectors messages merged that people remember having seen, read or heard on the Internet are taken into account for at least one purchase on two. People report having been exposed to content on the Internet before making a purchase are more likely to take it into account than those who reported having been exposed to content on other media.

The study showed that on 100 people exposed to a message on the Internet prior to booking hotel accommodation before buying a hotel stay, 91 people said they considered the message in their purchase decision.

For example, Internet is as powerful as television when the matters is for buying a car for both new vehicles and used cars. Thus, out of 100 people who said they benchmark on a media before purchase, 53 take it into account decisively what they have read on internet before buying when they are only 25 in the case of television.
Other example: 40% of French have accessed online quotes prior to booking train tickets or plane.

Internet as most informative and confident media:
Asked about the influence of media on each of their purchases, French Internet users believe the Internet is the medium that is most informative, compare to television and newspapers that are in second and third place.
Internet was also perceived to be the most trusted source of information, with 30% of Internet users surveyed saying it was a medium of confidence, coming ahead of TV.
Even more, Internet media is finally giving the most to the user who wants to buy. So says one quarter of Internet users surveyed.

To decode the influence of each medium and more precisely here Internet, Nurun FIFG created an IDA index or "Influencing the Decision to Buy". This composite index is based on the three constitutive dimensions of influence: the ability of media to inform, to create envy and generate confidence. According to the IDA index Internet ranks at the top for 14 product categories out of a total of 19 studied, like including travel (purchasing tickets, renting hotel rooms, rental car).

Television and promotional point of sale are still the media of choice for consumer products. Exposure to Internet media is lower than that of traditional media even if it is more transformative.
However Internet is still a media underutilized by advertisers while its influence is greater than other media....


Methodology: Study conducted by the institute Ifop for Nurun, with a sample of 1 012 people representative of the online population aged 15 and over residing in France.
The interviews were conducted online during the month of July 2009.
On the Web: http://www.nurun.com/
On the Web: http://www.ifop.com/

How Digital Customer Experience can help a business fight the recession?

In these times of economic uncertainty no brand can afford anymore to miss or lose a customer. 

Rather than building a strategy only on specific beliefs about the future deeply unpredictable, businesses have to deal now with a complex interplay between business forecasts and reality of consumer needs.

What is sure is that key decision makers can no longer formulate a strong differentiate strategy without embracing customer experience; even if they can't always link it directly to the business results.

A recent analysis "The Economic Necessity of Customer Service" run by FORRESTER in January 2009 confirms that good customer experience delivered by 112 firms correlates highly to loyalty- especially when it comes to consumer's plans for making additional purchases.

Of course, in the current climate, it requires a new way of thinking such as considering the crisis not only as a danger and the time for lower costs, but also as a fantastic window for new opportunities to make the difference.

In many concerns, I believe that Internet is the perfect platform in this environment because it's the most targeted medium and it's measurable in its efficiency.

But how to resolve the paradox between business goals and consumer needs?

Rather than stopping the investments, smart marketers will probably use the economic crisis to focus on their brand promise, their core activity and prioritize the services provided to their customers.

In a digital perspective, what should we focus on? 

In my opinion, it consists of delivering the best customer experience by upgrading the brand's digital communication in many ways that the site becomes the self-service channel of choice for as many users as possible.

Firstly it's all about content. The brand must provide accurate and relevant information to offer the user the Best Journey through efficient functionalities.

Internet allows to reach these objectives because it begins the conversation and builds the relationship with the customers; Moreover its the best platform to answer to the interrogations, the fears and doubts of the consumers.

So the brand can create a new climate of confidence especially because it has the credibility to provide relevant answers and fill the core needs.

More than that, Internet changes the nature of the business itself and can generate new growth's factors.

When the program "Danone et Vous" is the first nutritional website in France, the brand is not anymore a simple yogurt factory. And when Pampers.com is the first website visited in the USA by the young mothers it shows how impactful the customer experience can be on the business and on the brand perception.

But brand experience is also about sensitivity and desirability...

It's the customer experience that forms the customer's impression of the company's offering and the "Brand footprint" is more than only accurate content...

Pleasure and good feeling are main factors to differentiate the company from its competitors and determines wether the customer will ever come back.

It means great design that affords appropriation,  co-creation and engagement of the consumers.

In this context, designers and marketers must work together as the design will influence the strategy on several aspects: credibility of the offer's display, quality of the layout and interactivity to match the end user's needs, efficiency of all the purchasing process.

In conclusion, I really think that the challenge is all about customer experience which impacts every single aspect of the marketing. The recruitment and the loyalty of the consumers are more and more based on the WOM (Word of Mouth) related to the individual experience.

This is especially reinforced with the increasing impact of the social media where the most reliable media are still the friend's blogs, e-mails and IM.

Even in SEO/SEM perspective the battle is not anymore about ranking on the results but even more about relevancy and accuracy.

Several search engine marketers in Europe and Adam Lasnik himself, "the Coogle's Search Evangelist" , believe that customer experience is the most important factor to take in account in a SEO strategy.

It's going to change how your page should look like in the search result and what users will find when they get to your site.

All is about experience for sure.... but what is difficult now is to provide this without forgetting that the best end user's experience is the one which is INVISIBLE...

National cause in UK: when TV, radio and internet work together... A clever campaign with a very educational and creative website

I would like to share with you my thoughts on the Ad campaign against the cannabis which is run in the UK.

Since last Monday, the British government has launched a two million pound ad campaign to warn young people of the risks of taking cannabis.

The adverts will be run across different channels : TV, radio and internet....

And the mix media on the website dedicated to the cause is particularly well thought and executed.

Everyone knows that it's very difficult to reach a young target audience and especially to talk about drugs...

So how can someone engage the conversation with this target without being old fashioned, judge mental or "falsely youth" in term of tone, language and visual environment?

In my opinion, this campaign is very clever and well executed.

The creative concept is based on a simple message that cannabis is not a safe drug... and demonstrates that it is linked also to mental health problems such as paranoia and schizophrenia.

There's no judgement... simply the demonstration that someone can  feel really wrong after taking drugs and after the first positive effects.

After watching the TV spot the viewer is invited to learn more by contacting a web service  "Talk to Frank" which is the icon name to go to the dedicated website.

When you log in on the site itself  you've access at different sections.

The first one which is informative explains very clearly and deeply all the drugs, their appearance, the cost, their effects and the chemicals reactions, the law...

But the main success results in the way they engage conversation with the young people... First of all you can reach the information desk by using all the channels and share with your peers via e-mail, instant messenger, text on phone, call 24 hours/365 days...

And you have the possibility to talk to Frank directly by an instant messenger....

So have a look, it's a great demonstration of a well thought online experience:

www.talktofrank.com

You can see the spot on Youtube if you click on the title of this post

44 % of the French end users can leave a website in less than 1 minute... one of the key learnings of an online survey run by Benchmark Group Nov.08

A bad website scares away its visitors...

The French online end users have given their verdict in a survey driven online by Benchmark Group  in November 2008,  on a segment of 824 readers of the "Journal du net" and "L' internaute" Magazine".

96 % of the respondents pretend to use internet every day.

Of course, the results concern the French market but I believe that there's always something to learn about the other experiences... Below you'll find a few key learnings that are for some already known by the industry but it might be very useful to remind them in order to create or improve some Australian websites.

Firstly the survey reveals that the French websites have still some improvements to make as 1/3 of the end users consider 20% of the websites are badly created... 

What we understand at the first stage is that the online consumers make a very quick judgement on the websites they visit:

 "The sanction is often very hard and they can leave them almost immediately in most of the cases" explains Laure Sauvage who has conducted the survey.

For 44% of the consumers it takes less than 1 minute to leave a website which doesn't suit them. 

More globally a site has less than 5 minutes to convince its visitors to stay.

The survey highlights more especially two key factors to retain the visitors: 

ERGONOMICS and DESIGN

In most of the cases, the main problem is connected to the information's search process itself.

75 % of the respondents say that they don't know where and how to find the information they're looking for... that means than these websites don't answer to the consumer's core search which is the reason why they connect in at the first place.

Behind the two secondary topics that are listed are a bad presentation of the contents (for 2/3 users) and navigation issues (for 58%). 

SIMPLE PRESENTATION & SOBRIETY

The end users want first of all a sober and clear presentation.

81% of the respondents complain about too many animations during the time they access and read a page.

71% leave the home page  because they can't find easily the offer of the site

50% leave because the overall presentation doesn't give them confidence

36 % leave because the size of the text is too small

31 % leave because of too many colors

26 % leave because of bad pictures

In the end, some of these problems are unacceptable for an online experience.

Many of them result on delivering a bad journey to the end user by providing wrong landing pages or an inefficient site search process.

"46% of the end users said they didn't go back to a website when they haven't find what they are looking for at the first connexion"

Driving site usability and accessibility of information seems to be definitively the first key to settle a legitimacy and a validity for the customer, in order to make him a happy and regular user of a website.

At least, the end users consider that the purpose of a newsletter is to make easier the access to the content of the website which means that they don't like to do several clicks to find the relevant information.

Of course the branding and all the components of the mix marketing are keys to spread online the awareness and the recognition by the end customers.

Nevertheless, after all these warnings I keep in mind that the main value to create satisfaction and loyalty to a website is definitively the quality and the access of the content itself. 

AD Industry: a new B2B social network for our industry had been launched... it seems to be very promising in Europe and in France

Its name : Agency Scoop

Lots of people think of social media as a B2C endeavor, but all the marketing and digital industry already know that it has grown significantly as a B2B tool.

The most impressive example of its trend is certainly the popular professional social network Linkedin which is known all over the world, with an audience that has more than doubled in the past year.

To understand why it's valuable for an industry, we had to take in account one simple insight:

B2B communities are defined by an unique criteria: the"communities of practice", which is based on the primary value of professional interests, versus the B2C communities of interest that belongs to the consumer market.

Agency Scoop seems to answer this promise and the digital and marketing industry in France is particularly keen to be part on the new community.

Moreover this professional social network presents itself as "The professional network for the Ad Industry" and offers to the target audiences several levels of service:

- Find jobs and stay in contact with recruiters,

- Make connections with current and formers colleagues,

- Connect with agencies and schools,

- Control your professional identity online. 

Most of my contacts in France and in Europe have already created account and provided information regarding their services and their positioning.

Main worldwide networks can be approached enabling their targets to develop or deepen their relationship with their local agencies.

So, I really invite the owners and managers of the Aussie Agencies to have a look and subscribe... it's free and promising, especially to show your current portfolio to a maximum of professionals, which can be useful in these tough times.

http://www.agencyscoop.com/

You can definitely build a brand online...

While many agencies are retrenching, others continue to expand their knowledge and growth.

Top London digital shop DARE is attracted by the U.S. market and will open its office in NYC.

In an interview about this event, retransmitted in ADWEEK,  James Cooper, one of the shop's founding partners, said "The days of people saying you can't build a brand online are over. You can definitely build a brand online."

ADWEEK - USA, Feb 2009

What is certain is that the current crisis offers opportunities for the digital industry.

In these tough times, the digital tools offer a range of solutions that can match the new challenges which companies have to face (Price, Interactivity, Reactivity, Measurement).

From a marketing point of view, with all the digital offer (website itself, communities, media sharing sites, micro blogging, bookmarking...) you can build a strategy that allows a firm to combine branding, marketing, communication and sales;

For several years, Procter & Gamble has been "co-creating" all its marketing with the help of its customers; the program "Envie de Plus" (off-line and online), which runs currently in the French market and seems to be a perfect success, is a great example of this new trend.

Does this mean that allocating 100% of the marketing budget to the digital would ensure that the company will reach its goal?

I don't necessarily have the answer, but it would be definitely linked to what the firm wants to measure.

What is certain is that "The brand launched exclusively online" will become its measure; so the marketing team and the agency have to match perfectly the measurement tool to the objective, regarding the outputs, outtakes and the outcomes.