Additionally, customer inertia motivated a user to return to a site. For example the hassle of having to register their details with another site would increase the likelihood of the customer returning to a site. We observed a number of customers who had developed mechanisms to prepare themselves for the E- Commerce encounter of the TCE. These involved users finding out about specialist information prior to logging on to the Web, using credit cards obtained only for use on the Web, and so on.
In addition to the usability and service quality issues, most of which are covered in the relationship marketing and usability literature, a number of social, personal and cognitive factors were observed. These involved expectations of E-Commerce based on experience with using the Web, references to analogous experiences, and personal influences that affected the encounter, amongst others. For example, one customer said that he would not be put off completing a transaction with a site, providing that he felt confident with the security of their payment methods.
This was weighed up against the accuracy of the product information provided by the site. Product information could always be found from other sites. On the whole customers were happy to pay a little extra for a service or a product providing that the TCE had been positive.
Another customer had signed up to her second choice in broadband provider because her first choice of provider had not offered customer support during the pre-encounter stage. She was therefore willing to move to a competitor site that was a little more expensive, but which provided a superior customer service.
There was a growing body of evidence to reflect the post-encounter stage of the TCE. We were able to develop a high-level understanding about the TCE and begin building a catalogue of obstacles that could lead to a diminished TCE and thus, a reduced perception of value.
We now plan to investigate each stage of the TCE in detail. In the next phase of our research programme, we intend to go back to the users of the first user observation study reported here and carry out structured interviews.
Our aim is to uncover the concluding experiences of their service encounter — did the products arrive on time? Were there any communication problems with Customer services? Was the billing in order? This data will help to further our understanding of the post-encounter stage of the TCE. Next, we plan to explore the pre-encounter stage. Again, we believe that a naturalis tic study, on the same lines as the one reported in this paper, would provide the depth and richness of data to understand the complexities of this stage of the TCE.
We believe that the proposed research will provide insight into providing value and expected service quality to customers, which is so critical for customer retention. Stuffed with fluff. PDFs tend to lack real substance, compared to regular web pages. Methods of structuring and formatting digital content such as chunking , using bullets, subheadlines, anchor links, and accordions help users efficiently skim and scan sections that may contain the answers they seek amid long-form copy.
This leads to overwhelmingly long and inane PDFs. Cause disorientation. Users often struggle to stay oriented with where they are, and how to get back to where they were before. The best case scenario for opening a new tab or window is that the user notices and closes out of the window, or moves to the other tab to get back. The best case scenario for keeping users in the same tab or window is that they notice the back button remains active, and use it to get back to the previous page.
If you must, do contextual research to understand if your users get stuck in PDFs or separate applications when new tabs or windows open. Unnavigable content masses. Most PDF files have no internal navigation; their mini IA is completely hidden and people have no quick way of 1 understanding the type of content available in the PDF; and 2 getting to the interesting bits without scrolling through everything that comes before them.
Users have to spend much time and effort scanning the table of contents for those keywords that match their task or information need. Even if users find a promising word, it may be misleading. The users are then forced to scroll pages back to the table of contents to try again. Sized for paper, not screens. PDF layouts are often optimized for a printed sheet of paper, which never aligns with the size and scale of the user's browser window.
Not to mention having to pinch, zoom, squint, and scroll around out of context to navigate a PDF on mobile. Users also demonstrate trial-and-error behavior with PDFs in browser windows. Participants in several of our recent usability studies on corporate websites and intranets did not appreciate PDFs and skipped right over them. Get 80 tips for designing search to increase profitability. Good ecommerce customer service leads to more loyal customers. Get 50 tips for designing websites that support customers when they need it.
Users expect ecommerce websites to anticipate and meet their needs throughout the entire online sales process. Get 85 guidelines for improving your ecommerce marketing, merchandising and selling techniques.
Gift-giving features can introduce new customer to your ecommerce site. Get 80 tips for helping shoppers create registries and redeem gift cards online. Trust is hard to build and easy to lose on ecommerce websites. Get 50 guidelines for helping visitors feel confident enough in your organization to take desirable actions. Each of these three reports includes its own methodology section. You must be logged in to post a comment. Remember Me. Not a member yet? Register now. Want to become an instructor?
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