Twiddy & Company, an online vacation rental provider for the Outer Banks of North Carolina, has been in business for more than 30 years. It would have been easy for Twiddy to lean on its long history rather than looking for new ways to engage directly with customers, but the forward-thinking company wondered whether it could improve customer experience by soliciting direct feedback.

Twiddy integrated Kampyle with Google Analytics and quickly saw a correlation between specific customer input and high bounce rates on certain pages of its site. Within just the first few days of its Kampyle implementation, Twiddy made changes in its Web site’s color, layout and functionality.

The ability to see not only what customers do, but also to learn why they do it has inherently changed this e-tailer’s business, increasing rental sales and repeat customer visits. Feedback analytics, now part of Twiddy’s strategic marketing plans for the future, help this Kampyle customer learn what its users are thinking and put that information to work.

Read Twiddy & Co.’s great case study, and watch their video testimonial on Kampyle:

Feedback analytics are valuable for companies of all sizes – the largest, multi-national brand needs to listen to its customers as much as the one-person business operating out of a small storefront.  The method of collecting, analyzing and acting on customer input is the same for any Kampyle user, big or small.  Beyond the egalitarian nature of feedback analytics, though, small businesses might find themselves coveting the marketing resources of their larger peers.

That’s why we admire the premise of John Jantsch’s blog, Duct Tape Marketing.  When we saw that he recently highlighted Kampyle as one of his favorite new discoveries of the week, we were pleased, because Jantsch’s views on the potential of small businesses complement our own.  It doesn’t take a lot of money or an enormous staff to make better marketing decisions.  It takes knowledge.  It takes an understanding of customer behavior and motivation.

Jantsch is a marketing and digital technology coach, and he shares strategies, ideas and resources via his blog – a worthwhile read for small business owners.  Also, check out his book when you can as it is full of helpful details and resources.

It doesn’t take magic for a company to transform an unhappy customer into a satisfied, loyal cheerleader for its brand. It takes an effort to listen and a dedication to turning customer feedback into action.

InkJetSuperstore.com, a reseller of printer consumable products, saw that formula for transformation come to life when it implemented Kampyle. Since adding feedback analytics to its Web site, InkJetSuperstore.com has experienced an 8 percent increase in conversion rates and a 5 percent reduction in phone calls to customer service. When the company receives negative feedback from a prospect regarding a product, service or Web site function, Kampyle alerts customer service agents who send back a personal response, often along with a discount or refund, turning potential critics of the company into strong supporters.

Among the more than 300 feedback items InkJetSuperstore.com receives each week are details that also help the company to anticipate future needs, sales opportunities and site upgrades. In a crowded marketplace, feedback analytics are giving InkJetSuperstore.com a competitive advantage.

Read more about InkJetSuperstore.com and Kampyle in our resource center.

A recent article at MediaPost highlights The 2009 Cone Consumer New Media Study, which found that more customers are using new media – Twitter, Facebook, blogs, YouTube and other social networks – to let corporations know when they are unhappy. Sixty-one percent of the new media users surveyed in September 2009 said they expect companies to solve problems and provide product or service information via these networks. They want to be heard and they want to know you are listening.

Consumer attitudes toward online interaction with companies are improving, according to the Cone study. But while the increase in interaction via social media offers benefits to both customers and businesses, it also raises a question: Are companies who wait to hear about problems via public social networks as savvy as their customers? Why aren’t these businesses leveraging the one-on-one relationships they could build on their own Web sites via feedback analytics?

Our users – tens of thousands of companies as varied as EyeBuyDirect.com, a prescription eyeglasses retailer and Twiddy, a vacation home rental agency – are using Kampyle Feedback Analytics to proactively ask customers for their input on products, services and Web site functionality. These businesses use direct customer input to make crucial decisions in purchasing, marketing and IT. And their customers notice.

Listen and engage with your customers in as many ways as you can, use both social media and feedback analytics to strengthen all of your online communication channels.

As a good example and a great success story, here is a video about how Twiddy managed to achieve these goals using Kampyle:

An informed e-tailer leverages his greatest asset – customer feedback – to turn casual visitors into loyal, returning purchasers. EyeBuyDirect.com, the leading online eyeglasses shop, is using Kampyle to do just that.

After moving from a basic quantitative analytics solution to Kampyle’s Feedback Analytics, EyeBuyDirect.com saw an immediate benefit. With a clear understanding of why its customers make certain choices online, EyeBuyDirect.com now has a conversion rate of at least 30 percent and a reliable method for optimizing inventory based on clearly communicated customer wishes.

EyeBuyDirect.com uses Kampyle to answer business questions critical to its success:

• Where should we place ads?
• Which frames should we stock in greater quantities?
• Which products should we stop selling?
• Are customers more likely to buy if they use our virtual dressing room?
• Does our Web site make it easier or more difficult for customers to complete purchases?

Kampyle Feedback Analytics deliver detailed answers to these queries, as well as to the all-important question of why customers make the choices they do. It is that level of personal input that helps EyeBuyDirect.com and thousands of other Kampyle users move their customers from “window shoppers” to satisfied buyers.

Read more about Kampyle and EyeBuyDirect.com in our resource center.

Here at Kampyle, one of our biggest priorities is helping our online retail customers get ready for the holiday season using our Kampyle for Websites solution, which provides Feedback Analytics based on customer opinions. Industry analysts are projecting a sales increase of eight percent from 2008, resulting in a total $44 billion holiday season. This is great news for e-tailers’ bottom lines, if they can convert visitors to customers.

We asked a few of our online retail customers using Kampyle to give us some of their immediate recommendations for increasing engagement with customers during the holiday season. In addition to using Kampyle, here’s what they had to offer:

1. Offer free or reduced shipping – Our customers tell us that this is the number one way to a shopper’s heart (and wallet) during the busy holiday season.

2. Use consumer reviews to woo customers – Shoppers seek a dialogue surrounding products, craving validation from other customers before adding to their shopping cart.

3. Increase use of social media – Facebook and Twitter are two examples of how our customers are engaging with shoppers to promote their online businesses, as well as highlight sales and discounts for shoppers.

With clear demands from prospective consumers and a large increase in Web sales anticipated, this holiday season offers a tremendous chance to expand and develop long-term customers, retaining them well beyond the holidays.

As e-tailers ramp up their efforts to attract and retain customers, they cannot afford to neglect their customers feedback. One way to easily capture customer input is through our Feedback Analytics. Our platform integrates consumer wants and helps retailers take advantage of increased customers, yielding real, measurable change in the usability of e-commerce sites, as well as stronger customer satisfaction and loyalty that leads to sales growth. With a consumer hunger to connect to businesses and a strong desire to provide feedback, Kampyle feedback forms offer shoppers another avenue to satiate their needs. With the rapid approach of Black Friday and Cyber Monday, as well as the rest of the holiday shopping season, our Feedback Analytics allows Web site owners the ability to track the success of their holiday sales preparation, and to continue to improve as the year closes and into 2010.

The post’s premise was that every website consists, at its core, of different processes. These processes are groups of pages that were designed to achieve a common goal (e.g. information, conversion, search results, advertising, payment and many more). It is for that reason, that “Process Level Feedback” is the best approach to understand how your website is performing and what you can do to get better results from it.

As promised, we wanted to follow up with a post on the importance of using multiple feedback forms (one per process); giving some examples of how each feedback form should be customized to fit process it is in. This basic best-practice advice is without a doubt the best way to implement Kampyle on your website, and is sure to make a real difference for your site.

Timing and placement are crucial when trying to supply and find information – this especially true for website feedback. It doesn’t really make sense to ask someone who is looking for a product in your product search pages, how he feels about your shopping cart pages, or your home page. Why would your customer want to submit feedback on a process he is not currently in, and possibly hasn’t even visited yet?

In other words: a feedback form should match the process it is in, and be as relevant as possible to the place and time in the users’ experience.

One of Kampyle’s most powerful features is the ability to use a different, customized feedback form for each process on your site. This ability allows you, the website owners, to get the kind of feedback that you are interested in, when and where you want it.

As mentioned in our previous post, typical eCommerce websites will usually have 3 main processes:

- General Pages (homepage, About Us section, Services pages etc…)

- Product Search / Product Catalog (search pages, search results, product categories etc..)

- Check Out (shopping carts etc…)

The goals of each process are different, which means that the topics you will want to ask your users about are different. Why would the feedback forms be the same?

In this example, the way to maximize benefit from Kampyle would be to create 3 feedback forms, each addressing 1 process, and displayed in all the process’s pages.

The General Pages form will need to address issues about the visitors’ initial impression of the site, missing information etc., and will be able to give you insights on how to improve the general experience on your site and reduce bounce rates. The feedback form in the General Pages might therefore require categories of a general nature (Site Content, , Suggestion etc…) with sub-categories such as “missing information”, “Unclear content”, “Not what I’m looking for”, “suggestions” etc…

The Product Search / Product Catalog form will help you to understand how and why you are losing customers: is it something about your products, your product catalog (product’s information), or is it something about your users that you didn’t realize just from raw analytics data? Examples of categories that can bring the average ecommerce website good results are “Products” (Brands, Product Availability, issues characterizing your products) “Search Issues” (couldn’t find a product, bad search results, advanced search options, missing categories etc…), “Prices” (too high? Not available? Not clear?).

The Check Out form will help you win back customers who were on the verge of making a purchase but decided otherwise. You will be able to learn, for instance, why they decided to abort the purchase in the last minute and discover how to prevent this in the future. That is why you might want to use categories such as “Payment” (accepted payment methods, couldn’t complete payment?), Registration (couldn’t register, don’t want to register?), “Prices” (too high? Not available? Not clear?), “Shipping” (shipping destinations? shipping procedures?), “Security” (security concerns? Privacy concerns?).

Not every website has the same processes of course, and not all websites are ecommerce websites. All of the above are merely a suggestion – each site has its own special needs, specialties and processes. That is the reason that to get the best and most valuable feedback, you need to use different, customized feedback forms suited to your own line of business, activities and interests. Your feedback forms determine the feedback that you will get!

We will follow up on this post with recommendations and best practice business flows for how to read and manage process level feedback in the Kampyle’s Advanced Reporting interface.

We have just published a great new case study with SurfStitch.com – one of our customers in Australia.

SurfStitch is Australia’s #1 online surf store and aims to be the first name in action sports fashion and accessories, by providing the best brands, biggest range and second to none customer service.

SurfStitch joined Kampyle because they wanted to listen to their customers and … “give them what they really wanted and not what we think they like.”

They chose Kampyle because its Process-level approach seemed to best suit their objective of using customer feedback to improve every aspect of the website and its services.

Kampyle has allowed SurfStitch to make substantial improvements in various aspects: from usability, through Catalogue content, buying and customer service. Lex Pedersen, managing director: “our ability to understand our users has been greatly improved…It’s like having a 5 minute meeting with 100 customers every morning!”

SurfStitch enjoy a return rate 75% lower than their competitors. They attribute this advantage to providing great customer service and listening intently to user opinions and suggestions – with Kampyle being a major part of this effort.

Kampyle is proud to a part of SurfStitch’s success – keep up the great work guys!

Click here to read the full case study.

“If you can’t describe what you are doing as a process, you don’t know what you’re doing.”

W. Edwards Deming

What is a process? A process is a part of the website that was created with a specific target in mind. It usually includes many pages working together for a common goal.

Every site has processes: registration, searching items, purchasing, shipping and more.

Every site has goals: selling goods, registering users, generate leads, share information, etc.

Your website’s success will always be measured by the extent to which your processes achieve their required goals. That’s why Process Level Feedback is the right approach, if you want to understand how your website is performing and what you can do to get better results.

Typical ecommerce websites will usually have 3 main processes:

Public pages

This section will usually include the open, informational areas of the site. These pages serve the purpose of quickly and efficiently advertise what you sell while inspiring trust and interest, and providing important information clients look for. The homepage, the About Us section or Services pages are example of Public pages.

Product Search / Product Catalog

Product search pages are all the pages involved in helping your clients find the product they are looking for.

Shopping Cart / Check Out

The Check Out process includes all the pages that serve the purpose of allowing clients to make a purchase (shopping cart, etc…).

Take shopping carts for example: everyone wants to reduce shopping cart abandonment. Getting feedback on a specific page in the shopping cart or check out process is agreat way to learn how to  improve that page. But what if the page is only part of the problem? What if your customers feel that the entire process is too long, too slow, or unclear? You need a holistic view of shopping cart feedback; a view that goes beyond the individual page.

Kampyle is the only service that provides Process Level Feedback, conveniently piecing it together for you to give the widest possible picture, i.e. a holistic view of your entire website.

Kampyle’s solution is simple – create multiple feedback forms and customize them with categories and sub categories that fit the process they are in. Your users will find the most relevant topics to provide their feedback in the quickest way possible, while you will get the information on what really matters to you and your site. You can then choose to filter the whole management application to show you data coming from each feedback form separately.

We will follow up on this post with more on the importance of using multiple feedback forms (one per process), giving some examples of how each feedback form should be customized to fit process it is in, followed by a post on getting Process Level Feedback from the Advanced Reporting interface.

See you then!

Kampyle’s User Integration feature integrates with your system to automatically recognize your logged-in users, and allow you to receive contact details for every feedback submitted, without asking for it again. You already have the contact information of your logged in users. Why ask them for it again when they provide feedback? User Integration makes life easier for users and website owners alike.

Here is how it works:

A simple implementation procedure allows Kampyle to automatically recognize your website’s logged-in users. When they submit feedback (while logged-in), Kampyle will attach their contact details to their feedback, without them having to enter them again in the feedback form. For the users, it’s just like submitting any other feedback, only faster. For you, the website owner, it significantly increases your ability to get back to your users, increase customer satisfaction, loyalty and ultimately improve your website.

This feature was created especially for websites member’s areas or other types of login systems and it can make a real difference for your website.

User Integration is available for Bronze users and higher. Click here to Upgrade!

You can read more about Kampyle’s User Integration feature and its implementation on our forum post on the subject.