User Loyalty Articles

After the second version of the site was launched and promoted in forums, 27 people gave feedback. The main problem with the alpha site was that the design was inappropriate for the topic. The feedback from the second version of the site showed that this issue was solved. While in the feedback for the alpha site only five people said they liked the design, the beta site feedback had 12 people with positive comments about the design. Only one person said that he did not like the design.

In the feedback (refer to Appendix F), two issues were named by several people. Five people said that the home page needed a better structure and two people said that the length of the sentences decreased the readability. The problem with the readability was an obvious issue and was fixed immediately by limiting the text length of every sentence. A test , based on Dillon’s et al. (2001) testing methodology for aesthetics and usability, was conducted to determine how fast a home page with more structure could be scanned and what impact this version had on the impression participants got from the design of the site. Four versions of the home page were used to do that. The test was conducted on a computer and the six participants chosen were not regular users of the website and therefore had no routine in navigating the layout.

Every participant was tested separately. In the first step participants had to give a rating on the look of the home page in its original form and in the more structured form. Both versions that were used in this step had news in a different order than in the next step. The design was rated on a 10-point scale with 10 as the best. In the second step, two versions with different news were used. The participants had to find a certain word in the headlines of both versions while the time was clocked by the instructor who made a note of how long it took them to find the word and point to it. The word they had to find was at the same location in both versions. Every second participant received the two versions in reverse order to assure valid findings, because participants might compare the second version to the first when they rated the design or might have already some routine to scan the layout when they had to find the word in the second version of the second step.

The design of the structured version was rated 14.85% – worse than the design of the unstructured version – while it was only scanned 2.03% faster (refer to Appendix L). This result was expected even though the small difference in the time it took a participant to scan both versions were an unexpected finding. The minimal difference in time it took users to scan both versions would not justify a change of the site design and therefore a decrease of the aesthetic fidelity (Norman 2002), which is “the degree to which users feel the target impression intended by designers who developed the web pages” (Park et al. 2004).

Introduction

Since American Airlines started its first database-driven loyalty program in 1981 (Frequent Flyer) and the boom of database marketing in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s (Rosenfield 2002; Ragusa 2001), many things have changed in the marketing world.

Today, customers have a bigger variety of services and products available and international competition has made the battle for customers fiercer, while decreasing the price differences (Kenzelmann 2003, p. 10-13).

These factors result in an empowerment of customers. The Internet, where the competitor is only one click away, especially contributes to the fierce competition (Reichheld 2001, pp. 192). Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos says that people go to a store and buy because they are already there, but on the internet, where no effort is needed to visit the store of a competitor, companies have to focus on providing a good customer experience (Srivastav et al. 2003). The same applies for user experience on websites in general. The importance of the aspect of trust in the experience of a customer (Koufaris et al. 2002; Jarvenpaa et al. 2000) might be less important for a user of a website (Bickmore et al. 2001), but a certain amount of trust is still essential for every website. Trust and expertise build the credibility of a website, which is important for establishing a relationship with users (Fogg 2003, p. 156 ff.) and is of special importance for websites that provide information (Jodoin, pers. com. Feb. 19, 2005).

Studies show that the value, which is provided, is the main reason that drives loyal behaviour (Singh et al. 2000). Tom Heater (pers. com. Feb. 19, 2005), marketing manager of ‘The Loyalty Research Center’, believes also in this context that the ‘the value proposition drives behaviours ultimately’. One way of creating value on line is by personalisation. Websites utilise the advance in technology to track and store user data on a mass basis and tailor the information and content they provide according to the user’s preferences (Schubert et al. 2000).

This research analyses the process of building a website that tries to create a valuable user experience and evaluates the impact of personalisation features on the level of members’ loyalty to the site. The website s about the topic ‘ideas and creativity’ and the focus of the site is on building a community and thereby establishing a loyal user base which later participates in A/B testing of the personalisation features.

This research tries to prove that: “With an understanding of the aspects that are essential for a valuable user experience, it is possible to increase user loyalty to a site utilising dynamic personalisation.”

Key Terms

This research is based on an emotional definition of customer loyalty (Kenzelmann 2003, p. 25). Customer loyalty is defined as a person’s feeling or attitude of attachment to an organisation or brand that is the result of their experience with it (Srivastava 2005). The experience includes all forms of interaction and service.

In this research user loyalty describes customer loyalty on the Internet. User loyalty can be part of customer loyalty if an organisation interacts with customers off line as well, or user loyalty can be equal to customer loyalty if the organisation only interacts with people online (Stratigos, pers. com. Feb. 23, 2005). The same applies for user and customer experience (Instone, pers. com. Feb. 23, 2005).

The ‘user experience’ consists of all interactions and the resulting experiences a user has with an organisation. The first step is to meet the user’s expectations and needs. The second step is to make the product or service enjoyable and exceed user expectations.

While user loyalty consists of emotions, ‘stickiness’ is the average time users spend on a website and the frequency of their visits (Kim 2004).

Personalisation is customising some feature of a website so that the user enjoys a benefit (Personalization Consortium n. d.).

Dynamic personalisation is personalisation that uses data gathered from the user’s browsing behaviour to tailor the information for the user.

These data are stored in a user profile. A user profile includes personal data about a user, their interests and behaviour when browsing a web site (Albanese 2004).