Facebook Performs Poorly In Customer Satisfaction
Customer satisfaction is a reflection of what we feel about a good or service, so when this report ranked the most popular social networking site at the buttom it seemed a bit of a surprise. Lets find out more, why is this the case?
According to the Foresee Annual E business Report the respondents gave answers including privacy and security concerns, the technology that controls the news feeds, advertising, the constant and unpredictable interface changes, spam, navigation troubles, annoying applications with constant notifications, and functionality, to name a few. There is
no shortage of complaints about Facebook.
However, according to July 2010 Hitwise data, Facebook is the number one website in the country, with 9% of all website visits (Google has 7.4% and Yahoo! 3.8%) and 55% of all social media visits.Facebook’s market dominance in the U.S. and around the world is indisputable. How can it be so popular if people dislike it so much?
There are a few reasons Facebook can continue to have market success despite abysmally low customer
satisfaction:
* Facebook has its own version of a monopoly. Although there are literally hundreds of social networking
sites available around the world, Facebook has surged from 200 million global users 15
months ago to more than 500 million today, according to the New York Times. There really is no
other choice for people wanting to connect with friends, family, and colleagues regardless of interest,
age, geographic location, gender, etc.
* Research shows that customer satisfaction with social media sites is somewhat age-related. Older people are less satisfied with Facebook than are younger people, who are less impacted by the privacy concerns and changes to the interface. Young people helped to make Facebook successful, and they like it a little better. However, the fastest-growing Facebook segments are all older adults, so higher satisfaction among young people will not carry the company far.
* Customers are willing to suffer through a poor experience in return for the benefits Facebook provides.
This is a rare scenario in the American economy: usually customer satisfaction is intertwined with market success. The few exceptions to this rule (airlines, cable companies, and fast food) are
operating in a sphere where there are no true standouts, so the bar is low. Should MySpace stage a comeback, or should any other competitor to Facebook deliver a truly superior customer experience,
Facebook should have cause for concern. Right now, only Wikipedia and YouTube surpass Facebook in terms of customer satisfaction, and they are not in direct competition. One aspect of Facebook loyalty not often discussed is that it acts as a storehouse for many people’s pictures and videos.
As for businesses, it acts as a platform to connect with a wide audience which is why social media is an importnat marketing tool. Do check out our ‘Amazing Stats On Social Media’ blog. For example There are more than 3.5 bn pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts) shared each week on Facebook.
SysComm is an Internet Marketing, Search Engine Marketing, Social Media and SEO Company. We provide a complete service package including Internet marketing strategies, SEO services and search engine marketing. SysComm is also an SEO consultant. To know more about our services or to claim your free social media marketing analysis.
Want to find out more about Social Media, syscomminternational.com for yourSearch Engine Marketing needs.
Make Your E-commerce Website User-Friendly
When building an online marketing strategy it is not enough to consider improving the visibility of your website through social media marketing or making your website number one in search engine rankings. There is nothing worse than succeeding in getting potential customers to your website and then losing them because of a poor usability design of the website. There are a number of online businesses losing sales on a daily basis and most of them because of ignoring the importance of usability on their site. Using our experience in managing eCommerce websites along with a brief research, we have identified four main areas online businesses should focus on: Shopping Cart Usability, Checkout Process, Website Navigation and Social Media Usability.
Checkout Process
* Don’t ask your shoppers to register for an account before adding items to their cart. If they have to go through the registration process first, they might see the process as too long and complicated and leave the website. * Make the font for the “add to cart buttons” large! It will make it easier for shoppers to notice it. You may as well want to consider different wordings to improve shoppers’ experience. * An ecommerce site needs to give easy access to its shopping cart on all pages of the website. * Show related products (or an option like amazon.com has “Frequently Bought Together” or, “Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought”) to the shopper when they add a product of their choice in the basket.
Checkout Process
* Recognise repeat customers with their e-mail addresses * Include a bar that tells the users at what step in their checkout process they are and how many they have left till the end. They need to know where they are and how long the process will take. * Tell shoppers where they are and where they are going. * Show all costs as early in the process as possible: the price of the item, amount saved, any applicable shipping or taxes. This will eliminate all possible misunderstandings and will increase trust of your brand. * Since shoppers are asked for their debit card information at checkout, security issues must be eliminated! Keep security badges and trust certificates in place so shoppers can see your site is secure. * All order details must be included on the checkout confirmation page. * Don’t overload your checkout page, it might drive people away. Try to break up the ordering process into smaller bits. * Give shoppers the option to confirm their order before buying. * Highlight required fields by putting a symbol “*” means that these field are not optional. This makes it easy for the shopper to skip the optional information. * Design a confirmation page that will include all details necessary to the shopper. * Send them a confirmation e-mail providing all information to the user
Shopping Cart Usability
* Don’t ask your shoppers to register for an account before adding items to their cart. If they have to go through the registration process first, they might see the process as too long and complicated and leave the website. * Make the font for the “add to cart buttons” large! It will make it easier for shoppers to notice it. You may as well want to consider different wordings to improve shoppers’ experience. * An ecommerce site needs to give easy access to its shopping cart on all pages of the website. * Show related products (or an option like amazon.com has “Frequently Bought Together” or, “Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought”) to the shopper when they add a product of their choice in the basket.
Social Media Usability
* Add reviews to your website. People are more likely to buy a product or to trust an ecommerce website if they see reviews as well. * Providing an option to the shoppers to add their own reviews. * Make your content sharable! Add the option to share the content of your website (e.g. products) on various social networks. Since people are increasingly making use of social networking sites, it is recommended for ecommerce sites to add this option as well. One good example of an ecommerce site which uses this very effectively is asos.com. * Add reviews to your website. People are more likely to buy a product or to trust an ecommerce website if they see reviews as well. * Providing an option to the shoppers to add their own reviews.
The checkout process and the usability of an ecommerce website a long with how easy it is for users to handle their shopping cart are very important when it comes to increasing conversations. For all online business users who want to increase the selling potential of their website, the factors mentioned above must be kept in mind at all times.
SysComm is a social media marketing, online reputation management and search engine marketing company. Click here to contact us.
