#3  Communication

Relationships require continuous contact in order to grow. Staying connected is critical. Without regular intervals of communication, we lose our significance to others which can lead them to forget about us and move on to the next existing concern. This can also be better managed in the online world as we let our customers determine how, when and how often they would like to be communicated to. The more personally relevant the contact, the more valuable and effective and pertinent it will be. Whether in person, on the phone or online, each meeting is an opportunity to increase our visibility and strengthen the relationship while making the recipient feel considered without feeling overwhelmed.

Of course there are numerous tools and techniques to building upon these founding principles to creating a personalized a web experience. Each company will utilize and find themselves gravitating toward different facets of the user-experience depending on the focus of their business model, but an effective next step would be to brainstorm a list of ideas on how to build trust, understanding and communication for your own professional goals.

Strong, enduring relationships require a certain amount of care and attention to build, nurture and maintain. Any amount of effort put into these areas will be recognized and appreciated in many spoken and un-spoken ways from your clients. As we give them both opportunities and reasons to continue doing business with us, the more readily we will become a trusted, more personal part of their investment and those in whom they invest.

#2 Knowing and Understanding

Know your audience… your partner… your customer. Personalization can be defined as the design, management and delivery of content based on known, observed and predicted information. The more you know the more you can personalize and customize. Use this information to make every aspect of their online experience specific to them, from simply using their name to allowing them to create wish lists and delivering suggestions based on their past choices and selections. The more a user feels connected to their own personalized experience, the more readily they will depend on the service as one that both understands and meets their needs.

Tomorrow: Key #3 Communication

While conducting a recent motivation mapping session, the conversation turned to businesses built on traditional, personal relationships. A once face-to-face customer interaction is increasingly becoming screen-to-screen, which sparked the essential question from a client: “How do you personalize a web site or web experience?” As pervasive as the web experience has become, this is a question that continues to be relevant and vital to many organizations still adapting their business model to the virtual world. How can this transition successfully occur as more traditional personal business models become more web-based without losing a personal human element of connectivity? The keys to developing a successful personalized web experience can be found in the essential ingredients to any strong relationship.

#1 Trust

Trust is the lifeblood for any enduring relationship and customers (visitors) need to trust in the company they are doing business with. Trust is gained through accuracy and speed of delivery as well as providing consistently accurate, authentic and customized information. Another key to building trust is an integrity of business practices and customer interaction that must be maintained throughout the experience from first encounter of a home page through returns processing. If any action compromises trust, it must be admitted, apologized for and, most importantly, made amends for. When we acknowledge our shortcomings and offer ourselves for correction, it communicates to others that we value them, we are real (places our humanity on display), and are eager for an opportunity to restore integrity. Personal and professional relationships often grow stronger when we take full ownership of our mistakes and offer solutions.

Tommorrow: Key #2 Knowing and Understanding