Along with their popular line of high-end networking equipment, Cisco Systems offers something else for Cisco.com visitors to buy: a line of Cisco-brand leisure wear and accessories, everything from wind breakers to golf balls. The only problem is, to see the line of logo-emboldened products, you need to first fill out a registration form. Yes. You read that correctly. Just to *see* the available products, you need to create an account by filling out the four-page, 45-question form. (You have to tell Cisco your job role twice, your job title once, and the language you prefer to speak 3 times — all in English.) Then, if you can find your way back to the online marketplace, you can see the selection of laser-light key chains with the Cisco logo. There are many great business advantages to having users create an account and log into the system. You know who is using your system, how often they visit, and what they do on the site. You can store information they might need later, such as their order history and their billing info for future purchases. And, you can offer them content and services reserved for only your best clientele. Yet, in usability test after usability test, we see the registration and sign-in processes to be consistently problematic. It’s the most common thing that scares users away from shopping on e-commerce sites. It generates the most calls to the customer-support call center. Designing an account registration and sign-in process that doesn’t frustrate users turns out to be very difficult to achieve. It looks easy at the outset, but a pile of subtleties can sneak up on your experience, making something that should be simple become stressful for the users. Here are 8 common design mistakes we often see as we watch users try to create accounts and sign into the site: Mistake #1: Having a Sign-in In The First Place It seems the reason Cisco requires you to log in just to see the golf balls for sale is not all products are available for the general public. Some are only for employees (who also get a nice discount). Some are only for certified Cisco engineers. To know what products and prices to display, the site needs to know who you are. Fortunately, most sites don’t take this approach. On most sites, you can do many things without identifying yourself. And, that’s the way customers like it. They hate having to create an account to do Follow

Introduction - Online value proposition Contrast this with the approach many companies have taken which is simply to transfer their existing proposition to the online environment. The worst manifestation of this is the simple ‘brochureware’ sites which offer little more than an introduction to “who we are, what we do and where to find us” or sometimes simply “these are our products – take them or leave them”. This approach fails to take advantage of the unique properties of the online media such as its immediacy, interactivity and depth of content that is only limited by imagination and resource. Once an OVP has been defined, then e-marketers then need to work hard to clearly communicate this proposition online and offline. Furthermore, as for any proposition, they need to evaluate how well it resonates with its audiences and revise it accordingly. So, part of proposition development is identification of powerful messages to convey the proposition. Using both offline and offline communications to build usage of online channels will be ineffectual if the messaging is the all-too-common “Visit our web site @ www.company.com” or “Sign-up for our e-newsletter”! This article starts with current thinking on developing customer value propositions for brands and then describes the characteristics of a strong online value proposition and explores approaches to define and refine the OVP. Note: In WNIM Issue 29, we introduced my top ten corporate issues of e-marketing ( http://www.wnim.com/archive/issue2804/emarketing.htm). In this e-newsletter and subsequent e-newsletters, we will explore some of these issues in more detail. What is a customer value proposition? Development of a clear customer value proposition is now an integral part of customer-centric marketing, customer-relationship management and branding. A conventional view of the value proposition is provided by Knox et al. (2003) in their review of approaches to customer relationship management. They say a value proposition is: “an offer defined in terms of the target customers, the benefits offered to these customers, and the price charged relative to the competition.” Similarly, Rayport and Jaworski (2004) suggest that construction of a value proposition requires consideration of (1) Target segments, (2) Focal customer benefits, (3) Resources to deliver the benefits package in a superior manner to competitors. Follow