Strategic Design | marketing & branding thoughts by Nick Rice

Diego Rodriguez, from IDEO & metacool fame, has a great article on BusinessWeek about good business equals designing a good customer experience.

Successful business is about more than a great product. That may get a customer in the door initially, but their overall experience w/ your brand and customer service will keep them coming back - or never coming back. It's very hard, almost impossible, to create loyal customers but as markets commoditize, the organziation w/ the most loyal customers wins. The power of blogs is the perfect example. Bloggers that love a product can create a buying frenzy and of course the opposite is true as well. If you are happy enough to talk about it, you're satisfied.

Design is about more than thinking about look & feel or colors & fonts. You have to design the entire experience. You do not have total control over your brand image - your customers define your brand, not you. You can only hope to have everything in place in order to influence your customer's perception of your products, services and offerings so that their perception matches your desired business strategy. Do what it takes to keep them loyal, it will pay off in every way imaginable - the first of which is profit and shareholder value.