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Most of us have experienced health clinic websites that allow you to view the photos and bios of physicians – allowing you to select a doctor based on whichever criteria is most important to you (e.g., specialty, years of experience).

What puzzles is me is why all companies who offer professional services don’t do the same thing.

There is tremendous value in allowing customers to evaluate and select the professional that best fits their needs – whether it’s budget, availability, specialty, years of experience, customer reviews or another attribute. The experience feels personalized and helps the user feel empowered.

For many companies, the idea of allowing customers to select who they want to work with at your organization is – understandably – a major operational challenge. At minimum, it’s worth seriously looking into it. If you can, run a small test pilot or offer this feature to just your VIP customers to vet out the viability and ROI.

Two companies that I think do this very well are H&R Block and Ameriprise Financial. On H&R’s website, there is a big “Make an Appointment” button next to each tax professional.

I especially love the Ameriprise example because it capitalizes on the most powerful criteria: my personal network. After you connect your Linkedin to Ameriprise, the website recommends financial advisers based on your shared professional connections. Detailed bio information, including published articles, professional credentials, customer satisfaction scores and the adviser’s photo, quickly build trust.

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I am a huge fan of product finder tools — interactive experiences that ask prospects to assess their current situation or prioritize the features or benefits that are most important to them.

Product finders are a smart way to simplify complex products and services, provide superior customer experience on your website and allow your company to begin relationship marketing using a transparent, user-centric approach.

As you can imagine, planning a Disney vacation is the perfect application for such a tool. Trying to consume everything a family might do at a Disney theme park would be overwhelming and frustrating for most people.

So how did Disney solve this dilemma? I’ll get back to that in just a second.

Relationship Marketing Begins with Helping Customers

Think about the last time you researched a digital camera online. There were hundreds of options, right?

Even after you narrowed your options by price and brand, you were likely presented with way too many choices, with too few discrete differences.

A good digital camera finder tool would ask you how you plan to use your camera, where, how often, and your level of photography expertise, and then recommend 2 or 3 cameras based on those criteria.

Much like a good sales person in a brick-and-mortar store.

Relationship Marketing Tool: Product Finders

Still need a visual? Here are a few examples of product finders from CarMax, Find Wine and Sears:

Disney Vacation Planning Tool: Before

Now I’m going to pick on Disney for a moment, the much-lauded leader in customer experience design.

When I visited their website last fall to begin preliminary research about Disney World, I was disappointed by what I found. Immediate information overload.

29 hotels. No way to compare. No way to filter.

I had to read each and every hotel description and park activity to determine which ones were best for my family. Then I had to try to remember everything I read.

I didn’t visit their website again for 5 months.

Disney Vacation Planning Tool: After

Upon returning the other day, I noticed right away Disney World had relaunched their website.

They still have 29 hotels displayed in a list format, but they wisely introduced the concepts of filtering and comparing. (Though, I think the new format still needs some work. The filter options don’t seem to be aligned with customers’ needs. For example, users can filter by “Moderate Resort Hotels.” What does that mean? How is that different from “Price Range?”)

Since last fall, I’ve been thinking Disney badly needs to launch a comprehensive interactive vacation planning tool and relationship marketing program. Even the best filtering options will only get customers so far.

Last year, I spent hours and hours on their website, but Disney never knew I was there.

It would have been great to design my dream Disney vacation; save it to my Disney account; receive emails about insider tips, recommended itineraries, and packing checklists; connect with a Disney World rep; and then later, receive promotional offers. All perfectly timed based on my trip date and recent site activity.

It’s Disney! I want the — ahem — top-notch treatment!

With the recent site redesign, Disney launched something called “My Disney Experience.” Unfortunately, it’s hidden behind a login and buried in the footer, so only the most determined customers will find and access it.

As a highly motivated customer (and to show it to you here), I spent several minutes completing the account registration process in order to view and create “My Disney Experience.” Again, all but the strongest would have walked away at this point. You see, it took me 7 tries – SEVEN! – before I was able to successfully create an account.

At first glance, the user interface has all the visual indicators of being exactly what I dreamed an interactive Disney vacation planner would be. But it turns out the planning “tool” is really just more information to read — the personalized recommendation engine I imagined doesn’t exist.

In addition, it looks like information is organized by the way Disney thinks about their company (e.g., which park do I want to attend), rather than the way visitors think (e.g., by specific activity such as meet Mickey Mouse).

At minimum, I wish there was a way to save or remove activities from the itinerary.

Building a Product Finder Tool: Where to Begin

My advice to Disney and companies that are thinking about building a product finder tool is to begin with careful user research to ensure the end result meets your customers’ real needs.

If you haven’t already done so, develop a data-based user persona and customer journey map. These resources will make the rest of the process go much more smoothly.

During the user research phase, ask questions such as:

• What process did you use to make your decision?
• Who was involved in your decision process?
• How did you conduct your research? Walk me through it.
• What questions did you have?

During the design and development phase, ensure the product finder is built in a scalable and flexible way. Nothing is worse than building a tool that immediately becomes outdated because the technology or algorithm is too complex to ever be touched again. If the technology is getting in the way and causing the project to stall, it’s time to think outside the box. Can you build a much simpler version to start, or even design a pretty matrix that allows customers to compare features or benefits side by side?

As I mention earlier, I think a product finder tool is a great way to begin relationship marketing. Don’t put up roadblocks by asking prospects to register before they can use the tool. (Users won’t do it.) Collect personal data later when you ask customers to save their work, share the results, sign up for e-training, or compare the results with industry benchmarks.

Finally, match up your customer journey map and product finder insights with your offline sales operations. Knowing what information is most critical to prospects — and when — can help drive more relevant, more effective interactions.

For more food for thought, check out this interesting blog post about Starbucks’ approach to relationship marketing. The article includes specific tactics Starbucks uses to gather meaningful information about customers — by talking with them, not at them.

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Whenever I talked about location-aware technology to clients, Olive Garden was always my go-to website to demo how this feature works. Today, I was disappointed to find that this feature no longer has a prominent call-out on its home page, and is now buried on the “Find a Restaurant” page.

Boo.

Before I go too much further, let’s get a definition on the table. In a word, location-aware technology is not IP address tracking. It’s much more sophisticated and accurate than that. According to TechTarget, location-aware technology is “… determined by one of three methods: by GPS satellite tracking, by cellular tower triangulation, or by the device’s media access control address on a Wi-Fi network.”

It’s immediately obvious why location-aware technology is fundamental to most mobile browsing experiences, but I also like to encourage clients to think about it for their desktop sites, too.

As you can see below, Foodspotting automatically figured out which Minneapolis suburb I live in, and showed me photos of food from nearby restaurants. This is a smart application of the technology. I often conduct my restaurant research on my laptop before I leave the house – not while I’m already driving.

If you’re a multi-location retailer, restaurant or an international company, I think location-aware technology is a must-have for your website. Instead of asking users to select a country or ZIP code first, connect them to the right location off the bat and deliver targeted content and promotions.

Other creative uses:

• Showcasing where your product or service is in use (e.g., customers snap photos of their purchase and upload them to your website, Redbox locations).
• Connecting members of your community (e.g., cancer survivors, tax accountants)
• Promoting your city or special interest (e.g., local events, coffeeshops)

What’s your favorite location-aware website?

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For all their advancement in car safety, technology, design, and ability to make humorous commercials, car manufacturers have completely stalled when it comes to creating user-centered websites.

Buying a Car Online: Not Fun

Buying a brand new car was not as much fun as I thought it would be. In fact, it was decidedly un-fun.

A few years ago, I set out to buy a Toyota Prius: the perfect car for my family’s lifestyle. Roomy interior for our long legs, hatchback for transporting our black Labrador to the park, and best of all, a hybrid for our environment-friendly way of life.

But then those terrible stories started coming out about Toyota’s accelerator problems, and I found myself at square one. Where to begin my search for a new car? I had no idea.

Where’s the GPS on this Website?

I pay little attention to car commercials (unless they’re playing during the Super Bowl and also are funny). Like many other Americans, I also pay little attention to cars in general. I get in, I drive, I put in gas and occasionally go to the service station when the little red light tells me to.

No such assistance exists on car manufacturer websites. I looked at more than a dozen sites, and they are all organized in the same way: by model.

I immediately went to Google in search of car review sites to help me, but alas, they were structured in the same way: everything I have ever wanted to know about one particular car — no matrices, no side-by-side comparisons.

This was going to take me forever.

BMW: 1, 3, 5, X6… what do these number mean?

Ford: Why do the prices go up, but gas mileage and seating capacity does not?

Lexus: All those letters make me feel stupid. AWD, RWD, LS, GS?

Toyota: I have no idea where to begin, so I guess I need to look at them all. And don’t be fooled by that “Build Your Toyota” button. First question I am asked: pick your model.

Cars Are Like Jeans

My chief concern in choosing our next family car was fit.

• Will my long legs fit?
• Will my husband’s even longer legs fit?
• Will my poor children be squished to death in the backseat as a result of all this glorious legroom?
• Will my puppy fit?
• How many suitcases will fit?
• How many grocery bags will fit? (Not that I do any grocery shopping myself, but hey, nice to know.)

I looked, but I didn’t find a single dressing room on any car website.

Trunk capacity is given in cubic feet.

Information about legroom is non-existent.

Guess what? Free time on weekends also is non-existent to be test driving and “trying on” cars in person. Moreover, carting 2 kids and their car seats to multiple dealerships… you see where this sentence is headed.

Start with Customers, not Cars

In the user experience (UX) industry, we follow a simple mantra: user-centered design. We watch how people use things, and then design experiences that match their habits, preferences, and goals.

It should come as no surprise — aligning business goals with user needs does wonderful things for a company’s bottom line.

5 UX Prescriptions for Car Manufacturer Websites

1) Online Test Drive

One-third of American adults are obese today. Save them — and tall consumers like myself and my husband — disappointment by helping them find vehicles they will fit into, in the privacy of their own homes. And really, a virtual test drive that can accommodate people of all sizes and shapes would be ideal and much appreciated.

2) Family First

Put children’s needs and comfort at the forefront. Help parents plan for their growing family by organizing vehicles by family-friendly features, such as backseat safety, LATCH systems, built-in car seats, accommodations for smaller frame drivers, and ever-growing arms and legs in the backseat.

3) It’s a Lifestyle Choice

Organize vehicles by how they will be used: towing boats, daily commuting, hauling 8 to 10 bags of groceries, carpooling to school, or a combination of all of the above.

Find out what size vehicle, engine power, interior capacity, etc. is needed by asking in relevant terms. Price, gas mileage, and looks all come secondary if a vehicle cannot meet a customer’s basic needs.

4) A Few Good Features

Find out which features are most important, and then call special attention to them with simple highlighting, videos, illustrations, and interactive tools.

Car manufacturers list so many interior and exterior features, customers’ eyes likely glaze over. Realistically, most people will only care about a handful of features. Help them prioritize.

5) Connect the Dots

Show everyday objects that users can put into a virtual trunk to see how they fit (e.g., suitcases, grocery bags) with an interactive tool such as drag ‘n’ drop. Showing trunk capacity in terms of the number of cubic feet is meaningless to most people. Instead, give customers context. Trunk size is very important. It’s puzzling why so little attention is given to this part of a car.

Unlock the Possibilities

Asking a few qualifying questions upfront about a customer’s needs can go a long way toward creating a delightful online experience.

This approach also allows customers to feel listened to, valued, in control, and engaged. Further, car companies build trust and create unforced opportunities for in-depth education (AKA upselling and brand building).

Been in the market for a new car recently? How would you like to see car websites reorganized and redesigned?

P.S. In the end, we did end up buying a Prius and happily have had zero issues. For the first time in my life, I have to pull the seat forward in order to reach the gas pedal! And the little ones in the back have ample room as well. I brought a tape measure to my test drive to ensure we would all fit comfortably. Puppy, too.

Zip, zip.

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