I recently saw the movie Vicky Cristina Barcelona. A great film about 2 Americans discovering the artistic and enjoyable Catalan culture. A few days later I decided to buy it on eBay, did some searches, found a copy from a reputable seller, and received it a few days later. All is well.
I hadn't been on eBay in a couple of weeks, but yesterday I logged in to sell some old stuff we've had lying around the house, and had a good laugh at the eBay front page:
Apparently, eBay remembered that I was looking for this movie, but forgot that I bought it. I'm wondering if their billing system forgot to charge the seller fees as well. Unlikely. And even if I hadn't bought the movie, why spend 30% of the eBay home page on one product? It makes me feel like I have an unhealthy obsession about the movie, not just an interest.
The point is that as a retailer, eBay has not provided me with any value, interest, or engagement. Exactly the opposite: I am off put by the incompetence and pushiness. My guess is that eBay has spent untold millions on the recommendation engine, and in at least in this case, not only did not advance the cause, but damaged customer relations.
Not to pick on eBay all day, Amazon and Netflix have similar useless recommendations for me, based on a search or purchase I made years ago or when I rented a movie I did not like. I am sure they are doing their best to cross reference massive databases of products with massive databases of user behavior. But don't rely on technology *at the expense* of your customer. It's the e-commerce equivalent of the offshore customer service center. It works for everyone but the actual users.
When coming up with content for your business website, make sure a bit of the human side comes through. Have some humor, good sense, and jargon free information. The Internet is an unpersonable medium, so copywriters have to give a little extra humanity to make the content resonate with the reader. Clarity trumps all.
A potential client is in all likelihood going to check out your website first. This is a critical time to introduce your human assets in addition to your products and services. Depending on your adaptation of the buying cycle, clients are going to interact with your company at different points and different ways. Humans almost always play a part in that, so break down those barriers early.
Blogs are great of course, for adopting a less formal tone. Facebook and Twitter are also great casual communication tools, giving a multi-dimensional face to your business.
Of course if you are a divorce attorney, jokes are not going to be appropriate on your website. Humanity has to match the mood of your website, and hence demonstrating empathy for clients, from pictures or text, can show that you are real people behind the site, delivering caring attention to a difficult problem.
The goal is to begin building the client relationship *before* they buy, so that bonds are already stronger than a typical "off the web" lead. Friendly tones and humanity in copy will achieve that.
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