Get More from Search - Trends in Search & Social Media

A new shopping behavioral trend has emerged in recent months: the info shopper. Fiscal responsibility is top of mind and whether we need or want something, we’re going to pour over the details before we spend our hard-earned cash.

Even offline purchases are scrutinized these days. People are increasingly suspect of TV ads, particularly frustrated with the lack of critical decision-making information available via the traditional format. Consumers are pursuing their curiosities online, learning a lot and gaining confidence throughout the process. 92% of respondents to a recent survey by Penn, Scoen and Berland have more confidence in the information they glean rather than in store clerks or other sources. Cars, homes, computers and medical care are top info-seeking areas, with 4 out of 5 shoppers gathering data online before buying.

As is usually the case, consumer behavior is changing more rapidly than marketers of products. People want full disclosure upfront. Dyson’s model of sharing the secret of their unique products with customers builds trust and increases loyalty.But many companies fail to divulge details that have become necessary for consumers to even consider buying their products.

The trend manifests in everything from big ticket items to daily personal care products. For instance, instead of just buying the same shampoo they’ve always purchased, people want to know whether it will work well with their hair type, color, whether the plastic is recyclable, what the ingredients are and what other shoppers think of the shampoo. Trivial information perhaps to some, but important to others who care more about value then ever before. After all, why waste money on a purchase that isn’t in the good to excellent category when better buying decisions are a few clicks away?

Well-informed decisions are now a right, not a luxury. That’s why aggregator and search sites will become more valuable, as they mash-up content from reviews,  manufacturers and press, giving buyers more of an unbiased story from which they can draw their own conclusions.

The social media hype continues and is enticing companies of every shape and size to dabble in creating new networks. To facilitate the craze, dozens of open source social networking platforms have launched. Jeremiah Owyyang’s blog lists over 60 brandable software platforms that can plug into your existing domain, allowing you to create your very own social network.  But should any company build a social network?

In a Deloitte study of 100 businesses with online communities, Ed Moran found that 35% of these communities have less than 100 members and less than 25% have 1000 members. 6% of the businesses studied spent over $1 million on their social networks. Sadly, all too many fail at their attempts to connect customers to their brand because instead of focusing on the community itself, businesses are focusing on the value that social community could provide for their business.

Despite the failures, there are definitely industries that DO have ready-made communities with well-established brand alliance, and have a greater chance of building successful online communities. These verticals might include: local television networks (daily news watchers), radio (listening audiences), niche local communities (apartment renters, child-safe search) and education (school districts, private schools, universities).

Clark County School District, the 5th largest school district in the nation with nearly 300,000 students, was a few years back, reportedly the largest user of bandwidth in the Las Vegas valley. Schools are instant communities – not just in the “will you be my friend” sense of students, but in the student to teacher, student to parent and teacher to parent and relationships. Because they already have distinguishable groups in these necessary and long-standing relationships, Clark County can foster those relationships through a community network, which they’ve begun to explore with the CCSD website.  Feedback mechanisms aren’t yet extant, but Homework Hotline, a public television program, gives students an outlet during the week to call in and ask teachers their tough homework assignment questions. Their content management system, my.CCSD.net reach the three main constituents in these ways: 1) teachers can create personalized websites to communicate with students and parents; 2) students can access to homework resources and assignments; 3) parents can locate their children’s classroom and assignment information online without involving the child or teachers. A cursory look at some teacher sites didn’t provide a lot in the way of content or personalization, but it is summer after all; the start of the school year should light this online community back up.

Another example where community exists is the multifamily industry. Most multifamily companies have a couple clear-cut missions in life (e.g. collecting rents and driving occupancy rates), and one of those is to establish and promote their brand for longer-term connection with an increasingly transient population.  Before signing a rental contract, an individual needs to identify with what that apartment provides. Thus, the rental market is now driven by amenities. “Lifestyle” is the buzzword for providing more than a roof over people’s heads at the right price and location. Now, apartment companies need to provide online services ranging from rent pay to pet sitting to VIP concierge services and customized local search while hosting real live social activities such as community pool parties, golf instruction classes and more. While it may sound exhausting (and it probably is), apartment companies are finally optimizing their built-in community of residents and finding creative ways to connect the residents together, along with meaningful lifestyle amenities that cement the value of their brand, while gaining loyalty in the minds of renters.

Riverstone Residential, the nation’s third largest apartment management company representing around 340,000 residents, offers a moving program, Riverstone-to-Riverstone. This amenity helps transfer residents to another Riverstone community within a metro or across the country, sans application process and deposit fees. Combined with their Living Made Easy features, including “Your Neighborhood Directory,” a local search engine launched in three metros, where users can find just-down-the-street local businesses via a true search results format (e.g. not just Yellow Page data), residents benefit from buying into the Riverstone community and the value it provides to their daily lives.

Morals of the story:

• If you don’t have a pre-existing community, don’t assume that you can create one (and don’t spend a lot of money trying to create one).
• If you do have a pre-existing community (and they already visit your website regularly), focus on the value that your social network will provide to your users.

If ever there was a time to engage and reach out to your customers, it’s now. There are so many ways of letting your good customer practices shine. Yes, social media and customer-centric practices can be uncomfortable to step into, but the end product can mean loyal customer partners for life.

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Take in this real-life story about a company with heart – and get some inspiration for your own sincerely driven efforts to positively impact the lives of your customers. Zappos’ uncalled for sympathy, as reported by Zaz Lamarr in her personal blog, “Writing, Cooking, Life,” has sparked a lot of publicity online. We doubt that was the end intention of Zappos, but rather that it was a random act of kindness. There were people at the company thinking from the heart rather than the head who went beyond the rules to let a customer know they really care.

I Heart Zappos

I really do.

One bright, extraordinary note in all of the sad stuff of the last few weeks – in May we had ordered several pairs of shoes from Zappos for my mom. She’d lost a lot of weight, and her old shoes were all too big. She had a whole new wardrobe of clothes in pretty colors, that fit, so I wanted her to have some pretty shoes that fit, too, when I took her up to Oregon to stay where her sister is. Out of seven pairs, only two fit. Not bad considering she’d never been this thin, so I was winging it, and the return shipping is free.

The rest were here waiting to be returned. Because of various circumstances – lost label, my mom being hospitalized and me being away, the shoes were never sent back. There’s a time limit on the return of 15 days. Remember this. When you do a return to them, they pay the shipping, but you have to get the shoes to UPS yourself. Remember this, also.

When I came home this last time, I had an email from Zappos asking about the shoes, since they hadn’t received them. I was just back and not ready to deal with that, so I replied that my mom had died but that I’d send the shoes as soon as I could. They emailed back that they had arranged with UPS to pick up the shoes, so I wouldn’t have to take the time to do it myself. I was so touched. That’s going against corporate policy.

Yesterday, when I came home from town, a florist delivery man was just leaving. It was a beautiful arrangement in a basket with white lilies and roses and carnations. Big and lush and fragrant. I opened the card, and it was from Zappos. I burst into tears. I’m a sucker for kindness, and if that isn’t one of the nicest things I’ve ever had happen to me, I don’t know what is. So…

IF YOU BUY SHOES ONLINE, GET THEM FROM ZAPPOS.

With hearts like theirs, you know they’re good to do business with.

You’ve inspired us all, Zappos. We encourage all companies to think outside the sometimes stuffy lines of corporate-to-consumer relations and think like a human, with heart.

Post by David Gosse.