using customization to create unique digital...

Using customization to create unique digital experiences: Webcast Guide

With innovations in social, mobile, video, and other digital channels, the evolving landscape is changing the way companies and customers interact with each other. With interactions becoming more personal than ever before, it’s increasingly important for companies to optimize every marketing dollar they spend on creating a personalized, immersive customer experience.

Adobe is changing the world through the digital experience. Its solutions help tailor marketing initiatives to meet the expectations of today’s consumers. This guide shares key insights and practical strategies that you can use to optimize your digital interactions across channels. Forrester Research describes how to embrace customer needs and explains why customization and personalization are so crucial in today’s “age of the customer.” Renault, leading UK automobile manufacturer, explains how to use the dynamic visual merchandising and customization capabilities of Adobe Scene7®, a hosted solution within the Adobe Digital Marketing Suite, to create vivid and engaging customer experiences.

Digital experiences in the age of the customerIn this age of the customer, products must leverage digital technologies, like the web and smartphones, to create an experience that helps educate customers about what they’re going to buy, guides them toward better decisions, enables them to make customized choices, and ultimately, helps them feel better about the purchases that they’re about to make.

In the age of the customer, digital experiences are critical to creating successful products.

Using customization to create unique digital experiences

Presented jointly by:

J. P. GownderForrester Research

Pippa BarronRenault UK Ltd.

Natalie Lacuesta ByrumAdobe

2Using customization to create unique digital experiences: Webcast Guide

Customer obsession has become the new differentiator, not just for digital players but for all companies. Think about this in historical terms. The first half of the 20th century could be characterized as the age of manufacturing, companies like Ford, in many ways the quintessential manufacturing company, perfected its processes, which lead to a dominant place in their industry. In the age of distribution that followed, companies like Walmart became dominant players by getting goods from one place to another and distributing them to customers at the lowest possible price points. That age lasted about 30 years, and now the information age has emerged. Now those who control information flows tend to dominate, such as Amazon, Apple, Cisco, Facebook, and Google.

Customers today have embraced a wealth of digital technologies, and that means that they have power—through social media, smartphones, and interactive applications—that they didn’t previously have. If you want to be a successful company today, you must obsessively seek to understand your customers so that you can meet, and even exceed, their expectations. If you don’t, those customers won’t just go away as they used to do. Rather, they will likely complain about you on Twitter and use other social media channels to create viral effects that can do serious harm to your position in the marketplace.

But digital technologies can play both ways. Smart mobile devices, for example, give people the power to take a photo and add a post to Yelp that can damage a restaurant’s reputation after a bad meal or poor service. But they can just as easily bolster a restaurant’s reputation after a good or great dining experience. Everything from Facebook to YouTube to even certain cloud computing services are empowering customers who are out there, as individuals, ready and willing to express what they’re feeling about the brands with which they interact.

Here are four ways to become a dominant player in your industry:

1. Obsess over customer desires and expectations.

2. Personalize and customize your products.

3. Create vivid digital product experiences.

4. Embrace mobile smartphone technology.

Is there anything else that you would add to this list?


Obsess over customer desiresHow can you tell if a company obsesses over their customers? The first thing you notice is that they are very insightful. “Customer obsessives” learn to understand and then address the attitudes, needs, desires, and behaviors of real-world customers. It used to be that you could have a pretty good understanding of what customers wanted with a little bit of market research. Today, the bar for insight is much higher, and you need to gain actionable insights into what your customers want across a broad spectrum of channels in real time.

Customer obsessives are also smart. They provide information-rich services rather than just static products and dry transactions. We’ve all come a long way since the days of the Sear’s catalogue, although in its own way that was a brilliant device for its time. Still, it certainly didn’t give people the rich interactive experience that digital can provide, or the information at your fingertips that is available today.

Obsessives make the customer experience personal, immersive, and top-notch in usability. Those who obsess about customer desires know how to leverage the best of interactive content: They let users view their products from every possible angle, present video of products in action, and use other methods that deliver a richer and more empowering digital experience.

One of the questions that Forrester has asked in surveys over the years is what is more important when buying a car—how well it works, or how good it looks and makes you feel? This is an interesting question, because obviously how a car works is very important. You want to get where you’re going, and you don’t want to break down along the way. But a huge swath of customers say that they care just as much abut how a car looks and makes them feel. When buying a car, which is a product that can literally kill you if it doesn’t work well, a plurality of consumers care just as much about the look and feel of the car as they do about its performance. To be customer obsessive in the car business means that you have to get into your customer’s skin, understanding style, visual design, and the feelings associated with the product from the customer’s point of view.


Personalize and customize productsAccording to Forrester research, customization and personalization are finally ready for prime time.

Personalization and customization are the next pillars of customer obsession. In the age of the customer, where what the customer wants is king, personalization is a powerful way to give customers a participatory role in the process of creating the products that they will ultimately buy. Today’s consumers don’t just want to buy off the rack.

Here’s a little history to explain why this matters. One hundred years ago, people purchased goods from skilled artisans. They might have had a conversation with a tailor, for example, about a piece of clothing and desired outfit. This created a direct and personal relationship with the vendor of that service or product. A little bit later in time when mass production came on the scene, there was no dialogue between the buyer of the product and those who made it. Instead, factories just turned out row after row of the same product, and it was out there for a mass market of customers or perhaps targeted segments. Efficiencies of scale had been gained, but something important had also been lost.


Today, new technologies allow companies to build products to order, and personalization reintroduces some of that interactivity between the buyer and the seller. If you are going to buy a car, you can now personalize some of the options. You can be part of the design process and then have the car built to your specifications. You are suddenly engaged in a kind of dialogue with that car manufacturer that you couldn’t have had as deeply or as richly even 10 years ago.

This personalization offers psychological benefits that have been well established in the literature. If you buy a car that you have personalized in some way, you feel a greater sense of psychological ownership over that vehicle because you played a role in designing it yourself. You feel like you’ve bought something, but you’ve also done something. You think about your car as an extension of who you are. The bottom line is that personalization is becoming a powerful force, not just in the car industry, but in many other industries as well.

You may be familiar with “customize your shoes with NIKEiD.” It has been around for almost 12 years and is a mature, highly successful part of Nike’s business. Now, an increasing number of other brands are leveraging digital technologies to do much the same thing. MY M&M’s allows consumers to add personal photos, art, and messages to their candy. mymuesli, a company located in Germany, offers a quadrillion muesli combinations—the buyer can add different kinds of berries, spices, and grains to create a muesli that is uniquely suited to his or her pallet. Personalization can be very powerful for all sorts of brands, and if it is done well, it leads to a huge upside in customer satisfaction and engagement.


Create vivid digital product experiencesWhen it comes to creating a vivid digital product experience, you first need to communicate details about the product in an effective way. Forrester has surveyed European consumers shopping online, and the No. 1 most sought after website feature is detailed product descriptions. Giving customers and potential customers the full sense of what the product is about (its dimensions, specs, and customizable options) is something that consumers have grown to expect, not just in Europe but across all geographies.

Next comes great usability. Research has shown that enhanced presentation and improved navigation can lower page abandonment rates by up to 43%. If your site is highly usable, users are going to stay on the site longer, and this creates more of a connection with your brand and the product that you are trying to sell.

Finally, a vivid digital experience has to entail video. Viewership of online video content, what Forrester calls OmniVideo, continues to grow by leaps and bounds. Today in the United States, for example, 60% of online U.S. consumers regularly watch some kind of video online, up from 41% in 2007. When video is used effectively and integrated into other key elements like usability and product descriptions, companies can paint a vivid picture that is more informative and much richer than just throwing a few ideas up about a product. They can create a digital experience that makes viewers comfortable as well as understand and like the product that they are considering as they move closer to their purchase decision.

“OmniVideo represents the future state of television and video, where content can be viewed on any display…and once available for viewing, can be remixed and annotated in ways that are meaningful to individual viewers.” James L. McQuivey, Ph.D., VP and principal analyst, Forrester Research


The bottom line for web design today is that the bar has been raised. Think of yourself as a curator, displaying your products like fine art—notice that the vase on the floor, in the image above, is also cleverly shown in the painting on the wall. Be creative and use today’s powerful technologies to bring your products to life and to the market as if they were pieces of art.

Usability also empowers customers to probe deeply into products they are considering—whether it’s choosing different design details, like color options and piping, or personalizing desired features.

Video is a critical component here as well. First, it should be helping your customers with discovery, wanting to learn something new about the product that they didn’t already know. Next, it should be helping you with consumption. You want to deliver an intuitive experience that is complete and helpful so that by the time viewers are done viewing a video, they have learned what you need them to know. Video should also help you with content. With video, you can make your content compelling, deep, brand-relevant, and differentiated, and you can demonstrate unique properties about the product that viewers are considering. Finally, video should have contextual relevance and be well integrated into other site content.

Forrester estimates that online users will consume about five hours per day of OmniVideo by 2013 (How Video Will Take Over the World, James McQuivey, Ph.D., Forrester Research). This consumption will include video on the web, on the news, on smartphones, on tablets, and so on. Companies that establish leadership in this area today will be positioning themselves well for the marketing and communication challenges of tomorrow.

Embrace mobile smartphonesNo longer a niche technology, smartphone users span the globe, and their numbers continue to grow.

Mobile seems like a familiar story at this point. User acceptance is global, and most companies feel like they have a mobile solution, or they’re moving down that road. But not everyone has developed mobile optimization that includes mobile apps and mobile-optimized websites. Also, the line between the two is increasingly fuzzy. However, research tells us that you need to invest wisely in mobility today, or you will be falling behind tomorrow.

Already mainstream in the United States and Western Europe, survey data tells us that mobile phones are the most common connected devices in European homes. And Forrester research has shown that today’s smartphone owners are not like they were even a couple of years ago. No longer just tech-savvy users, their number now includes just about everybody. So again, you need to embrace mobile, and you need to do it with a simple, elegant, high-usability experience.


What all of this meansDigital experiences are clearly driving value for both customers and companies. In the age of the customer, customers are moving into the driver’s seat, and companies need to obsess over customer desires and expectations in a new way. This means understanding the deepest psychological drivers that motivate people to want and need your products and services. Offer them the ability to personalize your products in some way, creating a digital experience that is vivid, that gives them tools like video and full 3D product views, and lots and lots of detailed information, but in a way that they can use and feel comfortable about. Finally, extend that digital experience to mobile smartphones. If you do all these things, you will be well positioned to thrive in the age of the customer.

Renault

Renault is the leading French car manufacturer with a global presence in 118 countries. Renault UK uses Adobe Scene7 to provide dynamic, immersive, media-rich digital experiences for its customers. It starts with the foundation—understanding what customers want. Renault then uses digital images to enrich the customer experience. It uses Scene7 to offer personalization options, give more detail about cars, offer compelling videos, provide up-to-date brochures and price guides, and continually evolve so that it will meet customer expectations over time.


Building the engineAt Renault UK, building an engine of excellent customer experience consists of seven key components.

Component 1: The foundation—understanding what your customer wants

Customers increasingly expect to conduct all their vehicle research online, including pricing, product, colors, and options, before they even go into a dealership. With the growing adoption of broadband, they expect that their online experiences can inform them, entertain them, and entice them, all in one slick package. To provide these kinds of relevant dynamic experiences for a wide range of customers, Renault has implemented Adobe Scene7 to integrate engaging media across its site. Scene7 displays images, shows video, and provides other content that allows visitors to explore available models and vehicle features for a better digital experience.

Component 2: Use enhanced digital images

Renault initially implemented Scene7 to provide 360-degree views using in-house production rather than an outside design firm. This saved both money and production resources, and now only a small team is required to maintain the enhanced site. A typical 360-degree view of a vehicle consists of 12 images, as well as many static images, including close-ups of detailing and features, and the vehicle posed in various attractive settings. With this kind of advanced digital imaging, the customer can even see inside the car before going to the dealer.

With Scene7, customers can see 360-degree views, detailed close-ups, and even explore inside the car.


Component 3: Offer personalization options

Renault uses the Scene7 color-rendering option. It presents swatches of all available colors and allows customers to zoom in to really get a feel of what their car will look like in the color option that they’ve chosen. This level of personalization lets customers get a good idea of what color car they want before they ever step into a dealership.

Component 4: Provide engaging “hot-spot” content

Because Renault’s customers want to know as much information as possible about a particular vehicle, Renault has used Scene7 to implement engaging hot-spot content (both copy and video) where specific features and functionality are described and demonstrated in detail. The Scene7 rollover zoom capability is also being used in Renault’s new online shop, where branded merchandise, such as t-shirts, model cars, key rings, and clothing, are being sold. Hot-spot content enables Renault to showcase its products and to zoom in to give the customer a great experience about what the product is really like, hopefully paving the way for a direct sale.


Component 5: Offer relevant product videos

Renault uses Scene7 to offer product-specific videos on its website. Four to six videos per car show key features and functionalities in detail. These might include test drives or TV commercials that highlight the performance attributes of different models, as well as some information about the car that might move the viewer closer to a purchase decision. Customers who deploy Scene7 eVideo have experienced up to a 140% increase in sales. Scene7 is clearly helping to increase customer satisfaction as well as sales and time spent on the site.

Component 6: Provide up-to-date brochures and price guides

Renault maintains a vast library of e-brochures and price lists for all its models, and these are updated weekly using Scene7. It also has a wide selection of supporting brochures about paint trim selections, financing options, and features like satellite navigation to provide the most up-to-date content for its customers. The e-catalog function of Scene7 enables click-to-open and page-turning functionality, as well as the ability to print specific pages or the entire brochure.


Component 7: Evolve to meet customer expectations

Going forward, Renault is looking to evolve in ways that meet customer expectations in terms of mobile and desktop functionality. It has a mobile-optimized site that is compatible with all smartphones, and it will soon offer the 360-degree spin and zooming functions as well as video.

These are just a few of the ways that Renault UK is using Adobe Scene7 to create innovative and engaging digital experiences for its customers, putting them in the driver’s seat as they take advantage of the dynamic media capabilities that Scene7 provides.

Key takeaways

Today, online success is about providing a personalized customer experience across all your digital touchpoints. A high-powered digital engine like Adobe Scene7 can help you optimize every digital interaction with rich, dynamic product visualization and the customization your customers want.

From Forrester Research• Intheageofthecustomer,customerobsessionisthenewdifferentiator.

• Tobecomeacustomerobsessive,youneedtoobsessovercustomerdesires,personalizeandcustomizeyourproducts, create informative and rich interactive digital experiences, and fully embrace mobile smartphones.

• Productsneedtoleveragethebestindigitaltechnologies,creatinganexperiencethathelpseducatecustomers about what they’re going to buy, guides them toward better decisions, and helps them feel better about the purchase that they’re about to make.

From Renault UK• Firstcreateyourfoundation,understandingwhatcustomerswantandtheirengagementbehaviors.

• Useenhanceddigitalimagestodeliveryourmessage.

• Offerpersonalizationoptionsthattapintothecustomer’sdesireforself-expressionandvalue.

• Provideengaginghot-spotcontentthatoffersadeeperdiveintofeaturesandfunctionality.

• Incorporateproductvideosthatarerelevantandengaging.

• Keepbrochuresandpriceguidesuptodateandeasilyaccessible.

• Continuallyevolvetomeetcustomerexpectations.

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© 2011 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All rights reserved. Printed in the USA.

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For more information, visit:http://www.scene7.com/

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