GEO EXPANSION CONTENT STRATEGY: GO BEYOND DeAnn Wright March 2014
GEO EXPANSION CONTENT STRATEGY: GO BEYOND
DeAnn Wright March 2014
VISION STATEMENT: GO BEYOND
What we want to do, and where we want to be in the future: • Go beyond translation. Build customer experiences that feel
truly local. • Create content that our customers love, and is optimized
and personalized for each locale. • Be scalable/nimble enough to allow us to release to a new
locale every 3 months.
GEO CONTENT STRATEGY 2
content
Process for Adaptation
Frameworks and tools
Build our expertise
Partner with Design/UER
Tone/Voice work
Support from other teams
GBX Content
Base
HOW WE’LL GET THERE
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WHAT IS CONTENT STRATEGY?
CONTENT STRATEGY IS:
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CREATING A CONTENT STRATEGY
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GEO BUSINESS GOALS
• Improve the buyer experience; remove friction. • Focus on new buyer experience, making it
easier and faster to find and purchase the items customers want.
• Build domestic businesses
BUSINESS GOALS
Russia • Localization: Give customers a truly localized
experience • Payments: Enable Qiwi as an alternate
payments partner • Goal: Increase active buyers by 90%
BUSINESS GOALS
LatAm and Brazil • Deliver a localized experience for our Spanish
and Portuguese-speaking customers • Brazil: Launch alternative payment solution in
partnership with PayPal • LatAm goal: Increase active buyers by 44% • Brazil goal: Increase active buyers by 55%
WHAT DO OUR CUSTOMERS WANT?
LATIN AMERICA: CUSTOMER NEEDS AND BUYING TRENDS
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WHO IS OUR TARGET AUDIENCE?
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18 countries with differing levels of English language fluency and online usage.
–Central America: Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala. Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama
–South America: Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay, Venezuela,
–North America: Mexico –Caribbean: Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico
SHOPPER PROFILES
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STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSES: LATAM
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15
Customer Needs Recommendations Returns: Users are hesitant to buy, because they worry they can’t return.
Streamline the process to make it easy and effortless for buyers to return purchases. Ensure that they know eMBG applies to them.
Shipping: Don’t understand shipping costs and how they are determined.
Need more transparency here. Surface more items with free shipping
Auctions . We are still perceived as an auctions house for used stuff.
Ensure the new customers see as a retailer of new and brand-name items. Highlight the availability of “Buy It Now” and “New” items
Reviews: Word of mouth is important when deciding whether to purchase.
Surface reviews from real users to new buyers. Look at video testimonials for this.
LATIN AMERICA
BRAZIL: CUSTOMER NEEDS .
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Customer Needs Recommendations
Language remains a barrier to shopping on eBay
Content needs to inspire buyer confidence, especially at the point-of purchase (VIP and checkout).
Positive word-of-mouth is critical for buyer confidence
Surface reviews from real Brazilian users to new buyers. Look at video testimonials for this.
Don’t understand auctions
Either better explain how auctions work, or encourage them to purchase with BIN
Prefer to shop in their own currency
Ensure that the currency and conversions we show are accurate and consistent.
Prefer free shipping and don’t understand shipping costs
Surface “free shipping” items by default. Show the total of shipping+product to make the cost transparent.
Reluctant to purchase due to fear of being unable to return
Highlight that our return policies and eMBG apply to Brazil.
BRAZIL
RUSSIA: CUSTOMER NEEDS
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RUSSIA
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• Shoppers want the ability to use local payment methods and buy from local sellers
• Mixed translation lowers overall perception of quality and makes them not trust us
• Remaining un-translated content and poorly discovered MT tools create barriers and trust issues
• Product and seller reviews needed to reinforce buyer confidence at critical points
• Shipping costs are still a concern with free shipping a strong reason to buy
• Shoppers want to contact sellers and find it difficult to do so. The usability of M2M communications tools is low.
.
CUSTOMER ADOPTION
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Inspire
Engagement
Trust and confidence
Utility
Free to discover all the amazing things that are found on eBay
Content feels local and is optimized/personalized for each locale
Reassurances and content that feels like we know them
Reduce friction and increase ease-of-use
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PS. CURRENCY IS CRITICAL
We must get this right or we will lose buyers during the purchasing decision.
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COMPETITORS
GEO CONTENT STRATEGY
Local online stores have a strong presence among Brazilian shoppers
23 GEO CONTENT STRATEGY
COMPETITORS: BRAZIL
Local e-commerce sites currently have large percent of market share.
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GEO CONTENT STRATEGY 25
Local online stores have a strong presence among Latin American shoppers
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Russian shoppers trust local sites like Ozon. AliExpress offers cheap prices.
BUILDING OUR STRATEGY: WHAT ARE THE NEXT
STEPS?
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OUR GEO CONTENT STRATEGY IS A BIT LIKE BUILDING A HOUSE
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FIRST STEP: DECIDING WHERE TO BUILD AND GETTING A BUILDING PERMIT
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BUILDING PERMITS: WHERE WE ARE TODAY
Launch of Brazil and LatAm • Updating style guides and glossaries • Reviewing content pre-launch • Updating Help and policy pages • Building landing pages for eMBG and Buyer Education Refinements for Russia • Fixing bugs • Addressing pages that are still in EN • Continuing to update Help/policies • Terminology updates • Support marketing campaigns
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NEXT STEP: CREATE A BLUEPRINT
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DEFINE OUR FOCUS
Once we have our areas of focus clearly identified, we can begin building our GBX content base.
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Identify Take action Pages/flows customers want and use
Focus our time and efforts on adapting these for each locale.
Pages/flows customers don’t need/want (and that are potentially confusing)
Decide either to remove, suppress, or change this content (including OCS content).
All content types for GBX flows, landing pages, emails, Help
Make sure that these are all included in the build of our content base
NEXT STEP: LAY THE FOUNDATION
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BUILD ON OUR BASE
Advantages of having a GBX content base: • Allows us the deep focus needed on these flows to address
our business goal of giving customers a truly localized experience.
• We’ll translate what is needed without wasting time and money translating content that isn’t being used, and costs money to maintain.
• We won’t “miss” any pages or have critical pages show up in EN.
• A GBX base will help us be more efficient and more nimble to launch sites quicker (LTS in 3 months).
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GO BEYOND THE HAPPY PATH
NEXT STEP: FRAMING AND ROOFING
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ADAPTING CONTENT
To give our customers a truly local experience, we need to think beyond translation. • We have an established process for how to adapt Help pages.
• We will work with the Global Content team to build a factualization/adaptation process (that is upstream from localization) to adapt UI content and emails.
• We do not have the resources to adapt all of .com. Having a GBX content base assures that we focus our adaptation efforts to have the most impact.
• We will work on a process for measuring effectiveness, and then on a process for adapting/changing post-launch content.
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WHY SHOULD WE ADAPT CONTENT?
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• Adaptation is critical to give our customers a truly local experience.
• We risk not having the right content if it isn’t factualized before it gets translated.
• If the content/experience doesn’t feel local and resonant with potential customers, they may never purchase on eBay.
I don’t get this! Adios eBay!
NEXT STEP: PLUMBING AND ELECTRICAL
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REFINE PROCESSES WORK WITH OTHER TEAMS
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To become a “well-oiled content machine,” we need:
• Process and support from OCS to ensure a seamless and consistent experience for each locale.
• Defined process for building marketing pages. Set roles and expectations. Secure html resources.
• CMS for content. Currently, changing content remains difficult. We’ll need frameworks/tools for us to be nimble and change content quickly.
• Efficient way to share learnings with the MT team.
• Refine processes for working with other teams such as Legal.
NEXT STEP: CUSTOM CABINETS AND APPLIANCES
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CUSTOMIZED AND TRULY LOCAL
• Create content for local features. CMs will create this content and leverage their local knowledge.
• Work with our design partners to create experiences that feel “completely local.”
• Develop local TOV guidelines; incorporate into our content to make it feel even more local.
• Have fully-empowered content managers that are the experts in content/language/culture, as well as e-commerce landscape and market trends.
• Optimize for mobile.
• Refine our strategy based on what we learn from customer insights and UER.
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DEPENDENCIES AND RISKS
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DEPENDENCIES AND RISKS
• If we don’t remove confusing content for unsupported features, we may increase CS calls and lower NPS.
• If we don’t adapt the content for locales, we may start seeing lower adoption levels and NPS scores.
• If we don’t enable the content managers to own and control their content (with the right tools and processes), we jeopardize the quality of the user experience.
• We will need buy in from various teams to be successful. For example, we may need resources to help us identify what pages/flows we will use for OCS.
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HOW WILL WE MEASURE SUCCESS?
x
WHAT WE NEED TO MEASURE
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CUSTOMER SATISFACTION
CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT
CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE
CONTENT FINDABILITY
Data points Measurement tools Transaction completions Buyer satisfaction New buyer numbers NPS Customer Insights Data from surveys
EWA Product tracker Sitemorse Moz
Define our focus
(Q2 2014)
Identify what pages/flows to include
Decide what not to include
Audit content types
Create our base
(Q3 2014)
Work with product and dev to build
Process for including deltas between base
and launch
Adaptation (Q4 2014)
Work with content team to create flow and document
Define process and roles with L10n
Roll-out new process to teams
Processes and tools (Q2 2014)
Engage with OCS to plan content
Process for marketing html pages
Refinements for working with legal
Investigate CMS with content team (Q3 2014)
Local experience
(Q4 2014)
Create content for
local features
Partner with design to build experiences
Create and implement TOV
Build expertise in CM team
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CONTENT STRATEGY ROADMAP
APPENDIX AND REFERENCE MATERIALS
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WHO WE ARE
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PHAS
E 1
Polina Mironova: Content Manager for Russia Iris Russo: Content Manager for Brazil Dan Ledesma: Content Manager for Latin America DeAnn Wright: Manager, Geo Content Team
Language is the primary barrier to shopping on eBay
Brazilians have a low proficiency in English and are most comfortable in Brazilian Portuguese. • Portuguese must be an option across the
entire experience • Site needs to be easy to use with a simple
purchase process • Brazilian customers need to feel they can
trust the site and sellers. .
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Recommendation: Content needs to inspire buyer confidence, especially at the point-of purchase (VIP and checkout).
WHY IS IT IMPORTANT THAT THE EXPERIENCE FEELS LOCAL?
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EXPERIENCE NEEDS TO FEEL LOCAL
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• We are competing with local sites. If we don’t make our content and experiences more personalized for each locale, we will have a significant disadvantage.
• eBay is branding itself as a global company. We need to maintain that brand and credibility in every country.
• Trust factors. If we provide an inconsistent experience, customers won’t trust us and won’t buy from us.
• We need to show we care about our customers and provide a great quality experience. Content needs to feel local and be optimized and personalized for each locale.
Positive word-of-mouth is extremely important to first-time buyers to build confidence
Buyers need to hear multiple positive recommendations, validated by delivery of items.
“…other people had done it before an they said delivery was okay, everything was recognized, and I bought it. […] I must hear it directly.” – Celio, 43, M. “I was scared of buying [on eBay]. But a friend of mine did buy there, and they tell me – you can buy, its ok.” – Fabio
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Recommendation: Surface positive reviews and comments from real Brazilian users to new buyers.
GEO CONTENT STRATEGY
They are unlikely to participate in auctions because they don’t understand how they work. Language barriers are part of the problem.
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Brazilians are hesitant to participate in auctions
I am not sure how “auctions” work…
Recommendation: Fine tune our content to better explain how auctions work or optimize to push BIN items.
“The fact that they [eBay] don’t have it in Portuguese and the conversion of the amount is not presented. These are things that I didn’t like.” - William
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Brazilians prefer to shop in their own currency
Recommendation: Show prominent prices in Reals converted by default for Brazilian users, with original listing currency.
When they can, Brazilian users will look for free shipping options
Due to exposure to websites like AliExpress and LightInTheBox, users are starting to expect free shipping. “Ali has free shipping, eBay does not. This jump costs $9,50 and the shipping fee is $ 14.50, much more than the product. I'm not going to buy it here (on eBay). This puts buyers off!” - Juliana
On eBay: Most of the participants did not notice “free shipping” filter on the left-nav.
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Recommendation: Surface “free shipping” items prominently, or by default. Deals with free shipping are likely to delight users, too.
Users are frustrated by vague shipping costs.
Brazilian shoppers prefer clear shipping costs. “I don’t like to ask the seller about the cost of shipping. If the shipping price is not written down for Brazil on the page of the product I look for another one. I want to click and buy.” - Natalia
High shipping costs are also a deterrent. “The car (toy) costs $ 7.50 and the shipping costs $ 11.00, it means that ‘the sauce costs more than the pasta.’ I wouldn’t buy anything here (eBay).” - Danilo
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Recommendation: Give Brazilian users a shipping cost that they can combine to the product price, and show a total of shipping+product). This makes the item cost transparent to the user, and makes cost comparisons easier.
Users are reluctant to purchase due to fear of being unable to return
Returns in Brazil are not common, even though they are protected by consumer laws that allow returns. Consumers face barriers when they try to return items in store, but the knowledge that they can gives them a sense of security. Brazilian online shoppers are hesitant to take risks on international purchases because of concerns about return: Users don’t believe they can return items Users do not know how to return items Users believe it requires too much effort Users are unaware of eBay Buyer Protection / Money Back Guarantee “If something arrives and if it is wrong. If it is international, you cannot change.” – William “If it’s difficult to return things in Brazil, imagine abroad.” - Priscila
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Recommendation: Give Brazilian users information on returns and highlight that returns directly apply to Brazilian users, so they recognize the return policies apply to them on eBay.
eBay’s reputation is associated to Mercado Livre
"eBay is the American Mercado Livre.” - Kelly (eBay user)
“It is a website with products, it’s like Mercado Livre.” – William (non-eBay user)
Mercado Livre, however, is not as popular as the other retail websites available in Brazil.
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Implication: The mental model of Brazilians is that eBay is “like Mercado Livre” – meaning that it is a site for auctions and casual sellers. We must change this impression, and highlight the availability of “Buy It Now” and “New” items through marketing and during the eBay experience.
MERCADO LIBRE Mercado Libre is experiencing good growth in Latin America
Chart from 2/28/2014 • MercadoLibre is usually referred to as "the eBay of Latin America." With nearly 18%
ownership, eBay is a major shareholder and both companies have similar business models.
• MercadoLibre operates the largest e-commerce platform in Latin America, and MercadoPago plays a similar role to PayPal as a popular payment system inside the platform.
• The Latin America e-commerce industry still offers plenty of room for growth in the long term. According to MercadoLibre, only 1.5% of retail transactions are done online and just 10% of the population shops online in the region.
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Recommendation: Offer boleto and allow users to easily find and understand information about how to use it with eBay.
COMPETITORS: RUSSIA
Ozon: Largest local online retailer, launched in 1998. Local users trust them – it’s local, so no issues with CBT. They accept cash on delivery – and they are as Russian as it can get. AliExpress: Our main competitor, they offer low prices for Chinese goods of mediocre quality. The website is mostly in Russian, though most pieces were machine translated, and the quality is very poor. AliExpress is growing faster than eBay for new users. Amazon Global: Has added Russia to the countries they ship to. Recently sent a “Hassle-free shipping to Russia” email in EN, as their first marketing communication with Russian users. It looks like there are skipping on localization for now, but targeting English speakers who want fast/free delivery and a good selection.
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