Customer Carewords: Making your website more customer-centric: Gerry McGovern

Advance your career by making your website more customer-centric

You're reading this because you're ambitious for your website and your career. Whether you're managing an intranet, university, government or commercial website, sooner or later it comes down to delivering true value to your customers.

You will not deliver value by focusing on the technology or the content. Instead, focus on the Long Neck (top tasks) of your customers, and measure success based on task completion. That's where the true value of your website lies. Our Customer Carewords solution helps you tap that value.

Pioneer, the BBC, Tetra Pak, IKEA, UNC Kenan Flagler Business School, the American Academy of Ophthalmology, and Rolls-Royce have all benefited from discovering the Long Necks of their customers.

The Long Neck is where the business case of your website lies. It is the small, crucial set of tasks that your customers really come to your website for. It is the essence of your value, the essential core of your offer. We help you better manage your Long Neck.

Long Neck chart for tourism

In a Customer Carewords poll of over 1,000 people in 12 countries, people were asked to choose the tasks they most wanted to complete on a tourism website. 147 possible tasks were offered such as: planning a trip, vacation packages, getting here and around, accommodation, special offers, things to do and see, etc.

The top 7 carewords, representing 5 percent of the total tasks, got 35 percent of votes. In fact, the top 7 carewords, astonishingly, got more votes than the bottom 120 carewords. This tourism Long Neck represents the essence of what a tourism website must do if it is to achieve success. Do you know what's in your Long Neck?

At Gerry McGovern we have developed a unique method to help you identify your Long Neck. It's called Customer Carewords. It's about truly understanding what exactly your impatient customers want when they visit your website.

Key benefits of Customer Carewords

If you know your customers' carewords, you know what motivates them. Here are the benefits to you of using Customer Carewords:

Customer-centric: It allows you to create a website that is truly customer-centric; built around what your customers really need.
Data, not opinions: No more endless debates about what should and shouldn't be on your website. You get hard, defensible, compelling data that shows exactly what your customers want--and don't want.
Simplicity: It's about simplicity and a less is more approach. You can focus on the killer Long Neck tasks of your website, and remove the filler tasks.

The Customer Carewords approach is built on the foundation of knowing the exact words your customers care most about. If you use the words your customers care most about, your website will deliver more value. Best practice web management is about knowing your customers better than they know themselves.

At Gerry McGovern, we've spent over 10 years developing a unique set of tools and techniques to help you identify the most important words of your most important customers. Getting these words exactly right can be the difference between an average-performance website, and a high-performance one.

We help large intranets, university, government and commercial websites deliver more value by a relentless focus on customers. Our clients include Pioneer, UCLA, Directgov, HP, Aer Lingus, and Microsoft.

Contact us now to find out how we can help you deliver more value from your website.
Email Brian Lamb now to explore your needs

Or read on to find out how your website can benefit from the customer carewords approach.

Do you make this mistake on your website?

What's the number one mistake organizations make? (The bigger the organization, the more likely they are to make this mistake.) Thinking that what they care about is what their customers care about. Thinking that the words they like to use are the words their customers like to read.

Traditional methods of understanding the customer fail when it comes to the Web. Such techniques as surveys and focus groups are more likely to get you misleading information, than an accurate assessment of what the customer really needs from your website. "Perhaps the most common complaint about focus groups is that consumers are not honest in front of other people," according to a Business Week article.

"At User Interface Engineering, we hardly ever use focus groups because they just don't work very well at uncovering user needs," states Christine Perfetti. "The biggest problem: what users say in a focus group rarely matches what they do in a real-life setting. Users' opinions about a site or product are very rarely consistent with how they behave when they actually interact with it."

Asking people directly what they think doesn't work because the Web is a self-service environment. When a customer is self-serving, behavior is impulsive and instinctive, rather than careful and considered. Eyes rapidly scan your pages. Nature magazine reported that people get lasting impressions of your website within half a second. As soon as they find a link that contains the words they are looking for, they will click. If they don't see those words, they may well hit the Back button.

There are many years of research that show that the faster people behave, the less they consciously think about what they are doing. Instead, they depend on their unconscious mind to guide them to where they want to go. And the unconscious mind guides them to that destination based on a series of critical words. We call these words "carewords," and we have developed a method of identifying these words-your customers' carewords.

The right words are absolute gold dust when it comes to designing and managing a successful website. They help you build an intuitive navigation. They significantly increase the chances of your website being found through search. They allow you to create content that meets the exact needs of your customers. The right carewords create a compelling call to action. Your customers' carewords are quite simply invaluable to you. We help you discover what they are.

Words are your secret weapon

Words are incredibly powerful. Because there are so many of them around, because we read so many of them everyday, we sometimes forget their power, their influence. If words have an extraordinary power in ordinary life, they have an even more extraordinary power on the Web.

There is nothing with greater potential to maximize the value from your website than the right words. There is nothing with greater potential to destroy value on your website than the wrong words. The right words will drive your customers to action. The wrong words will drive them to distraction.

Consider the following:

Microsoft changed one word in a particular heading and saw a 300 percent increase in the number of people who clicked on the heading.
Based on our advice, a client changed three words on a particular webpage and saw a 30 percent increase in sales inquiries.
Another client repositioned a link on its webpage and saw $70,000 in sales from this link over a two-month period.
A business-to-business client changed the call-to-action language on its products pages. Qualified leads rose from 100 per month to over 200 per month. Nothing else was changed.
One summary from a list of 17 was chosen by 1,000 people out of a sample of 2,000 participants, from 14 different countries. In other words, 50 percent of people selected the same summary from a choice of 17!
Changing the text in a button from "Click to qualify - it's free" to "Am I eligible? Find Out Instantly" resulted a 40 percent increase in people clicking on the button.
In an extensive analysis of tourism-related words carried out in 12 countries over a two-year period, we found an incredible commonality between the top ten words people chose. In fact, the top two words/phrases (Accommodation, Special Offers) were either first or second from Singapore to Sweden, from Seattle to Switzerland.
We tested a series of words with the web staff of a particular organization, asking them to choose based on the relevance to their customers. Then we tested the same set with a sample of customers. There was no correlation. The words that the staff thought were important to the customers were not the words that the customers chose.
"In the United States, over 80 times more people search for "cheap flights" than for "low fares." In the United Kingdom, 6,500 times more people search for "cheap flights" than for "low fares". No, that's not a typo. It is 6,500 times more! "Low fares" is what the airline industry likes to say. "Cheap flights" is customer language. This an extremely common mistake organizations make on the Web: assuming that their words are their customers words. Never, ever assume that.

Everywhere on the Web, words are making a difference. Words are making the sale, delivering the service, building the brand. The trick is to find the right words-your customers' words.

We've spent more than ten years taking a rigorous approach to finding out what content works, and what content doesn't. The result is Customer Carewords, a rapid-fire analytical tool that captures the words that people really care about. These words give you a toolbox from which you can build a website that delivers maximum value both to you and your customer.

How Customer Carewords works

It's a three-step process:

Prepare a list of potential carewords
Get people to choose their favorite carewords
Analyze the results

Step 1: Prepare a list of potential carewords
We have a systematic approach for helping you assemble a comprehensive list of potential carewords. Here are some places you can get these potential carewords from:

Objectives: Analyze the goals and objectives of your website. What words stand out?
Ask the customer: Brainstorm with customers.
Do analysis of search behavior of your customers.
Brainstorm with sales reps, marketing people, industry experts, and other interested parties.
Examine competitor marketing materials and websites for important words

Step 2: Get people to choose their favorite carewords
Now that you have your list of potential carewords, it's time to get people to choose their favorites. Ideally, you should aim to get about 100 people to choose. You need to carefully target your audience. We'll help you do that, as well as setting up the carewords poll.

Step 3: Analyze the results
We have developed special techniques that will allow you to properly analyze the results, so as to quickly identify the most important carewords and careword groupings. We have also built up a database of previous results that allow us to advise you on how your results compare with key trends.

Identifying the most important words of your customers is central to the success of your website. Customer Carewords is a unique approach that helps you identify the words they really care about. Based on over 10 years research and experience, it is thoroughly tested and will deliver you the results you need. It will help you build a highly effective navigation, help you create compelling content and clear calls to action.

Get pricing details
Request a demo
Request a proposal

Solutions Home Customer Carewords Pricing
	Advance your career by making your website more customer-centric You're reading this because you're ambitious for your website and your career. Whether you're managing an intranet, university, government or commercial website, sooner or later it comes down to delivering true value to your customers. You will not deliver value by focusing on the technology or the content. Instead, focus on the Long Neck (top tasks) of your customers, and measure success based on task completion. That's where the true value of your website lies. Our Customer Carewords solution helps you tap that value. Pioneer, the BBC, Tetra Pak, IKEA, UNC Kenan Flagler Business School, the American Academy of Ophthalmology, and Rolls-Royce have all benefited from discovering the Long Necks of their customers. The Long Neck is where the business case of your website lies. It is the small, crucial set of tasks that your customers really come to your website for. It is the essence of your value, the essential core of your offer. We help you better manage your Long Neck. In a Customer Carewords poll of over 1,000 people in 12 countries, people were asked to choose the tasks they most wanted to complete on a tourism website. 147 possible tasks were offered such as: planning a trip, vacation packages, getting here and around, accommodation, special offers, things to do and see, etc. The top 7 carewords, representing 5 percent of the total tasks, got 35 percent of votes. In fact, the top 7 carewords, astonishingly, got more votes than the bottom 120 carewords. This tourism Long Neck represents the essence of what a tourism website must do if it is to achieve success. Do you know what's in your Long Neck? At Gerry McGovern we have developed a unique method to help you identify your Long Neck. It's called Customer Carewords. It's about truly understanding what exactly your impatient customers want when they visit your website. Key benefits of Customer Carewords If you know your customers' carewords, you know what motivates them. Here are the benefits to you of using Customer Carewords: Customer-centric: It allows you to create a website that is truly customer-centric; built around what your customers really need. Data, not opinions: No more endless debates about what should and shouldn't be on your website. You get hard, defensible, compelling data that shows exactly what your customers want--and don't want. Simplicity: It's about simplicity and a less is more approach. You can focus on the killer Long Neck tasks of your website, and remove the filler tasks. The Customer Carewords approach is built on the foundation of knowing the exact words your customers care most about. If you use the words your customers care most about, your website will deliver more value. Best practice web management is about knowing your customers better than they know themselves. At Gerry McGovern, we've spent over 10 years developing a unique set of tools and techniques to help you identify the most important words of your most important customers. Getting these words exactly right can be the difference between an average-performance website, and a high-performance one. We help large intranets, university, government and commercial websites deliver more value by a relentless focus on customers. Our clients include Pioneer, UCLA, Directgov, HP, Aer Lingus, and Microsoft. Contact us now to find out how we can help you deliver more value from your website. Email Brian Lamb now to explore your needs Or read on to find out how your website can benefit from the customer carewords approach. Do you make this mistake on your website? What's the number one mistake organizations make? (The bigger the organization, the more likely they are to make this mistake.) Thinking that what they care about is what their customers care about. Thinking that the words they like to use are the words their customers like to read. Traditional methods of understanding the customer fail when it comes to the Web. Such techniques as surveys and focus groups are more likely to get you misleading information, than an accurate assessment of what the customer really needs from your website. "Perhaps the most common complaint about focus groups is that consumers are not honest in front of other people," according to a Business Week article. "At User Interface Engineering, we hardly ever use focus groups because they just don't work very well at uncovering user needs," states Christine Perfetti. "The biggest problem: what users say in a focus group rarely matches what they do in a real-life setting. Users' opinions about a site or product are very rarely consistent with how they behave when they actually interact with it." Asking people directly what they think doesn't work because the Web is a self-service environment. When a customer is self-serving, behavior is impulsive and instinctive, rather than careful and considered. Eyes rapidly scan your pages. Nature magazine reported that people get lasting impressions of your website within half a second. As soon as they find a link that contains the words they are looking for, they will click. If they don't see those words, they may well hit the Back button. There are many years of research that show that the faster people behave, the less they consciously think about what they are doing. Instead, they depend on their unconscious mind to guide them to where they want to go. And the unconscious mind guides them to that destination based on a series of critical words. We call these words "carewords," and we have developed a method of identifying these words-your customers' carewords. The right words are absolute gold dust when it comes to designing and managing a successful website. They help you build an intuitive navigation. They significantly increase the chances of your website being found through search. They allow you to create content that meets the exact needs of your customers. The right carewords create a compelling call to action. Your customers' carewords are quite simply invaluable to you. We help you discover what they are. Words are your secret weapon Words are incredibly powerful. Because there are so many of them around, because we read so many of them everyday, we sometimes forget their power, their influence. If words have an extraordinary power in ordinary life, they have an even more extraordinary power on the Web. There is nothing with greater potential to maximize the value from your website than the right words. There is nothing with greater potential to destroy value on your website than the wrong words. The right words will drive your customers to action. The wrong words will drive them to distraction. Consider the following: Microsoft changed one word in a particular heading and saw a 300 percent increase in the number of people who clicked on the heading. Based on our advice, a client changed three words on a particular webpage and saw a 30 percent increase in sales inquiries. Another client repositioned a link on its webpage and saw $70,000 in sales from this link over a two-month period. A business-to-business client changed the call-to-action language on its products pages. Qualified leads rose from 100 per month to over 200 per month. Nothing else was changed. One summary from a list of 17 was chosen by 1,000 people out of a sample of 2,000 participants, from 14 different countries. In other words, 50 percent of people selected the same summary from a choice of 17! Changing the text in a button from "Click to qualify - it's free" to "Am I eligible? Find Out Instantly" resulted a 40 percent increase in people clicking on the button. In an extensive analysis of tourism-related words carried out in 12 countries over a two-year period, we found an incredible commonality between the top ten words people chose. In fact, the top two words/phrases (Accommodation, Special Offers) were either first or second from Singapore to Sweden, from Seattle to Switzerland. We tested a series of words with the web staff of a particular organization, asking them to choose based on the relevance to their customers. Then we tested the same set with a sample of customers. There was no correlation. The words that the staff thought were important to the customers were not the words that the customers chose. "In the United States, over 80 times more people search for "cheap flights" than for "low fares." In the United Kingdom, 6,500 times more people search for "cheap flights" than for "low fares". No, that's not a typo. It is 6,500 times more! "Low fares" is what the airline industry likes to say. "Cheap flights" is customer language. This an extremely common mistake organizations make on the Web: assuming that their words are their customers words. Never, ever assume that. Everywhere on the Web, words are making a difference. Words are making the sale, delivering the service, building the brand. The trick is to find the right words-your customers' words. We've spent more than ten years taking a rigorous approach to finding out what content works, and what content doesn't. The result is Customer Carewords, a rapid-fire analytical tool that captures the words that people really care about. These words give you a toolbox from which you can build a website that delivers maximum value both to you and your customer. How Customer Carewords works It's a three-step process: Prepare a list of potential carewords Get people to choose their favorite carewords Analyze the results Step 1: Prepare a list of potential carewords We have a systematic approach for helping you assemble a comprehensive list of potential carewords. Here are some places you can get these potential carewords from: Objectives: Analyze the goals and objectives of your website. What words stand out? Ask the customer: Brainstorm with customers. Do analysis of search behavior of your customers. Brainstorm with sales reps, marketing people, industry experts, and other interested parties. Examine competitor marketing materials and websites for important words Step 2: Get people to choose their favorite carewords Now that you have your list of potential carewords, it's time to get people to choose their favorites. Ideally, you should aim to get about 100 people to choose. You need to carefully target your audience. We'll help you do that, as well as setting up the carewords poll. Step 3: Analyze the results We have developed special techniques that will allow you to properly analyze the results, so as to quickly identify the most important carewords and careword groupings. We have also built up a database of previous results that allow us to advise you on how your results compare with key trends. Identifying the most important words of your customers is central to the success of your website. Customer Carewords is a unique approach that helps you identify the words they really care about. Based on over 10 years research and experience, it is thoroughly tested and will deliver you the results you need. It will help you build a highly effective navigation, help you create compelling content and clear calls to action. Get pricing details Request a demo Request a proposal	Get pricing details Request a demo Request a proposal Read enough? Email us now Read enough? Email us now

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