Its all about knowing your end user.
Interactive Strategy (IMM714) and Content Planning (IMMT712) gave a kickstart to the Interactive Media Management program. The first session conducted by Professor Pamela Kostur provided a clear picture that a good customer experience is what organizations should prioritize when designing and developing the content for a website.
An organization can have customer centric content or organization centric content on its webpage. Customer centric content is one which understands its user and the various paths a user could take to navigate through the website. It also understands how its content is being used by the user and the possible difficulties a user could face while working through the site. On the other hand organization centric content does not strategize from the customer experience perspective. Such an organization webpage could have limited operations or could not provide ease of access to the user.
In my opinion, the example of a webpage containing customer centric content is Scotiabank. The experience of using the Scotiabank webpage as well as the application on a tablet or smartphone has been smooth and easy for me. The website provides ease of access to the user no matter on which platform is it being used. Scotiabank is also an example of a well-tested site. The homepage gives all the primary information of ones account. Every page of the website provides concise information to the user and navigation is also easy due to appropriately arranged tabs that provide several options. The webpage as well as the application on a smartphone or tablet have all the same functionalities and a very similar user interface. Take for instance the task of transferring funds between accounts. If I execute this task on a pc, which is through a webpage, still the transaction will immediately reflect if the account is accessed through a phone or tablet. Thus I feel that, scotiabanks webpages and applications consist of customer centric content due to the flexibility of options, the ease of access and also ease of overall use of the webpage.
An example of organization centric content found on the web that I take into consideration would be Fido. I consider fidos content to be organization centric because of the restricted options provided on the webpage. It is a perfect example of content that is based on the organizations perspective of use of the webpage. Navigation is not easy on this page which is a fact that I have come across on several occasions. As compared to Scotiabanks web content, Fidos web content is not flexible enough in terms of the options. For instance, on Scotiabanks webpage there would be different ways to navigate or perform a particular task whereas Fidos site would have only one method of performing a similar task. Even when I took into consideration the cross platform performance of Fido, it lacked in comparison to Scotiabank. The content on the Fido webpage simply does not translate when accessed through its smartphone application. In fact the application is limited to a few platforms and is not available on all mobile devices. It is simply not user friendly when one has to pay their bill using a desktop site on a mobile device.
If the content on Fidos website could be developed by keeping in mind the customers difficulties and paths of navigation then it could increase its usability factor.
On a whole, customer centric content is what the users are looking for and organizations must focus towards understanding and getting to know their users.
In the end, its all about knowing your end user.
