Metrics don't abandon web sites, PEOPLE abandon web sites

I travel often, visiting analysts, press, customers and prospects, and in doing so am exposed to many of the challenges of our customers first-hand. One visit to a CIO of a large retail chain stands out. He posed what seemed to be a simple question:

"In all of your experiences and with all the information you have collected supporting your value proposition, have you ever seen any data on the acceptable rate of failure for Web-based transactions?"

I pondered momentarily, sifting through all the reports I have seen, read, or even commissioned, when it hit me, and I answered:

"Why should it be any different than the rate of failure for transactions in one of your stores?"

When the Web was "new", it was somehow acceptable for businesses to allow their customers to fail online, when it has never been acceptable for other channels. How do businesses protect against the failure of customers to complete a purchase or transaction when in a store? Through active management - fueled by observation.

They actively manage the business as a result of what they see - if lines at checkout are long, they open more registers, if one teller is tied up in a lengthy process, they call-in more tellers. If lines are short, retailers close registers and have clerks attend to other business activities such as merchandising, restocking, and inventory. This real-time ability to observe - visibility - has been missing online. Because you can't see what your customers are seeing and doing and apply the same active responses to eliminate the hurdles that get in their way of conducting business with you, you are already running at a disadvantage.

To try and fill that gap (really a chasm), Ebusiness teams do what they can, using a bunch of data points in an effort to understand the customer and their own sites behaviors. But data points, whether web analytics, performance and availability metrics or call center logs will never tell the full story, because data is single dimensional, quantitative in nature.

Based upon solely quantitative analysis, the San Diego Chargers won the Super Bowl this year, my beloved Yankees have not lost a game this decade and Al Gore is finishing his second term as President.  Obviously, quantitative analysis does not tell the complete story.

Customers are not data points, they are people. You have to rely on a combination of quantitative and qualitative information to truly understand what your customer sees and does (and what you site does right back to them). Unfortunately, the web itself is pretty one-dimensional, you can't easily see the customer, since they are out there on the other side of the "cloud", in a browser.  That has forced them to be viewed as data, since their interactions are "data-based". I guarantee you that online customers (and I speak as a proud member of that club) do not view themselves as data.

I'd love to hear your thoughts........

Geoff Galat