Does your brand know how to say ‘Hello’?

Today let’s have a look at the amazing Etsy, and two things they are doing fabulously. Firstly, customising the consumers’ experience through serving a different home page specifically for new visitors, and secondly, how they are communicating that change to their current users.

Etsy have done some exceptional work in creating a highly engaged online community, and once again they are raising the bar. To quote Wikipedia, “Etsy is a social commerce website focused on handmade or vintage items as well as art and craft supplies.” Whilst certainly a commerce site, the focus is definitely on the social, with an emphasis on highlighting the uniquely individual nature of the products, and importantly, their sellers: shopping and selling on Etsy is a very personal experience. Esty does some great work in creating online and offline communities which in turn create amazing engagement with the site. If you haven’t come across Etsy before have a look here for an intro.

Our focus today is on a new initiative they are trialling for their homepage. The insight is that a new visitor to a site has different needs to a regular visitor: more focus on ‘what is it?’, ‘how does it work?’, and ‘give me a connection quickly’ (a reason to dig more deeply, or to come back) before I click onto my next search: sounds pretty basic really. Clearly many brand owners try to cater to this with varying degrees of success by incorporating elements which talk to the new and repeat consumer throughout the site, but how many brands really live this by presenting a customised experience to a new visitor?

Etsy are in the process of trialling a completely different homepage for a new visitor. The details of the change are discussed here. I love the ‘Taste Test’ tool they are featuring on it: reminds me of a more PC version of the “which girl is better looking” game from “The Social Network”. It’s worth a go and interesting how a spin of this revealed a whole new world of objects I wouldn’t even have thought to look for.

Etsy’s approach to executing this change is interesting too: in their announcement they are sharing the change, the reason why, and how they are going to trial it: letting seasoned (and highly engaged !) users be part of the process. It would have been so easy for the Etsy team to have just made the change and got on with it, but they recognise that if they take their community along with them they will ultimately get a better result: building higher engagement with current users and more effective conversion from new visitors.

So how do you customise your consumers’ experiences with your brand? Offline and on, show me who you think is doing a great job of this.

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Help Me!

Help I have a headache, from Help Remedies.

Do pharmaceutical brands need to be so boring? An intriguing brand arrived in my inbox this morning courtesy of Contagious Magazine. Products from the pharmaceutical industry seem unified in their loud, blustery voice as they force their way into being the essential salvo to every little ill. Effective as this approach is (these are BIG brands with BIG spends and profits to match) when everyone is doing the same thing it becomes boring, and when boring translates to low engagement, ultimately a weakness.

So let’s look at someone who is doing it differently: Help Remedies is a US based company which offers a tight range of simple, practical essentials which can fix a headache or protect a cut.

The packaging is fantastic: clean, clear design, with very straight forward naming “Help, I have a headache” is the name of the headache pills, “Help I can’t sleep” for sleeping pills, and “Help I’ve cut myself” for sticking plasters: you get the idea.

They have taken the sleeping aid even further by ‘helpfully’ suggesting different dream ideas, and these are brought to life beautifully in some otherworldy ads which I am sure are generating some great viral. Read Contagious Magazine’s take on the ads here. It would be interesting to know how mainstream the media buy is.

Pricing is super-simple: each product costs the same (although with a differing number of pills per pack) – this is spot-on for a brand promising to help simplify things.

The “bored?” page is worth a look, bringing to life the brand with some clever, very obscure help for a variety of esoteric ailments – actually more than some, I liked that there were a lot of things to play with on this page, these dalliances are not just some add-on from marketing, they are central to bringing the brand to life in a less traditional way. The “I’m Sleepy” is addictive! On the home page try clicking on all the packs to make them all disappear, and then see what happens: it’s touches like these which flag the design and advertising backgrounds of the founders.

This irreverent approach to the category is refreshing, I look forward to seeing what they do next.

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