1. Spend time actually reading those reports. Go ahead, get a cup of coffee or tea and settle in to read (not skim) your reports. And don’t just read the ones from August 08 – Dec 08. Go back and get the same period from 2007 for a benchmark. Look carefully for trends in all sectors of the site – not just abandoned carts or promotion results (you know those already). Look for total visitors, new visitors, popular content, origination of visitors – everything.
2. Compare those reports to more reports. Yes, those that the Customer Service Center sends. Those reports. And also take a look at customer-submitted comments. And your usability studies. Campaign success metrics. Cross-reference with your site stats and look for correlations, trends, spikes and drop-offs. Chances are, there are places where you can thin out efforts and also find opportunities that have been previously missed or ignored.
3. Oops – do you have recent usability studies? If you don’t, conduct some usability testing already. Even some basic guerilla testing of features, content, navigation, or A/B testing of promotions or brand experience can be revelatory. You have to know what the customer thinks of your online experience, not just what you think your customers want. (If you don’t believe your customer experience moves the dial, talk to any old expert, like Forrester.)
4. Realign your resources. Prune deadwood, refine your workflow, shore up any experience gaps with vendor partners. You need the right talent on the right projects in order to get momentum and results. Drive this accordingly. And gun for the best design you can get within your budget.
5. Match up your newly found insight to 09 goals and develop your campaigns and content. Then subtract two goals and at least five tactics – you won’t have the budget or the resources to accomplish all of them. (No apologies, no regrets. There’s no time for either.)
6. Prioritize your content, features and promotions by seasonality and by risk/return. Put in the calls to marketing, merchandising and IT now so you can give them a heads up or nudge them along on that request that has been lingering.
7. Get the training you probably should have gotten last year. Does your content team know how to use your campaign manager? Do they understand how to implement marketing scenarios? Can you really use that special reporting tool? Go ahead: bite the bullet. Make sure you have everyone trained to use every tool and feature at your disposal to make the eCommerce experience the one you originally envisioned (and paid for).
8. Make nice with all the stakeholders. We are all in this economy together. And the only way out of challenging times is to get through them. Find a laurel, bury that hatchet, release a dove. Now is not the time to allow silos and politics to impede speed to market or innovative thinking.
9. Be prepared to change everything in midstream. This year could get better (hopefully); it could get tougher. Don’t be so married to your objectives that you can’t adapt and adopt a new philosophy. After all, you should have the stats and the team to back it up and make it happen.
