M’s Journey: “Disliked” Love

I always was a “best” customer for several brands because I will only be loyal to one brand of one category. For coffee category, I am Starbucks’ loyal customer. While for chocolate category, I am M&M’s loyal customer. What made me become M&M’s loyal customer is its personalized products. Last Valentine’s Day, I bought a box of personalized M&M chocolate that included my boy friend’s photo and some words I said to him as a valentine for him. We both liked it very much so that I began to rediscover this brand. And then I loved this brand. That is why I chose M&M to share my opinions about its website’s UX.

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M&M’s website has a good content I think. You can find many valuable and attractive content on its website.

The first section I want to recommend is product section. Most people love chocolate, while they have to worry about chocolate’s high calories. You will see that M&M offer you different products that from low calories (150) to high calories (250) after you browse its product section. 

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The second section I want to share is character section that contains all Mr. and Ms. M’s introduction like age, weight, best feature and shortcoming. Before I found this section, I just regarded these characters as cute toys. However, they are all “real guys” because each of them has its own characteristics just like human beings. Among all the characters, I like Mr. Yellow most because of his plump, nice and smile.

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Last but not the least, the third section I want to recommend is shop section that I loved so much. You can design your personalized M&M chocolate in this section. You can choose not only your favorite colors but also your own photos and words on the website. Addition to product itself, you can also choose different box or gift set like candy dispenser, glass bottle, lace favor bag, heart tote and card holder kits. All of these functions are very easy to use, you can design your gift very fast and happy. I think the special M&M gift box will be a best gift.

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However, M&M’s website also had some weaknesses. Its main weakness I think is the website design that all images on the website are too big to see the whole image while all images on the smartphone are too small to clearly see the content on the image. As the picture 2-4 shown, I can only see half of picture on the website so that I have to turn down the page to see the whole picture. On the contract, I have to zoom in the picture on smartphone to see the text on the pictures. In addition, the design of shop section is different from the other sections. I think a good brand website should keep the consistency of each section. The bad design gives me a bad user experience actually. Finally, I want to suggest M&M to create an app for its personalized product. It is because many people’s photos are stored in their smartphone so that an app will be convenient for them.

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Although M&M has weakness in web design, I still love this brand very much. I have to say Content Is the King!

Link: http://www.mms.com/

Who Will Be The Winner In Halloween Wars?

With Halloween approaching, more and more brands are actively promoting their own Halloween activities. No matter which activities the brands chose, the winner must be the brand that capitalized on social media. As the leader in chocolate industry, LindtChocolate promoted many activities on social media. However, I believe it can do a better job in social media after I searched the news about social media by Google.

The first news that caught my attention is <Brands Are Spreading Themselves Too Thin OnSocial Media — 10 Reasons To Go Platform-Native>. It said that too many brands and businesses try a scattershot approach at social media so that they cannot achieve ideal results。I agree with this opinion. You can find every brand’ homepage on Facebook, Twitter or other social media platforms, but few of them will give you a deep impression. I think the problem is the brands put energy into every platform so that none did very well. For LindtChocolate，it paid attention on every social media platform. And every platform just had the same content. However, each platform actually has its own culture and idiosyncrasy so that LindtChocolate should make more sense to double-down on a single platform rather than every platform.

The second news that caught my attention is <Facebook is now letting teens sharewith anyone>. This news said that users aged from 13 to 17(teens) would now be able to switch their settings to share posts with anyone on the Internet, rather than just their “friends” or “friends of friends”. It means that the change will allow teenagers to activate a “follow” feature that lets their public posts pop up in people’s news feeds. And it is also a signal that the brands should pay more attention on teenagers on Facebook especially chocolate industry.

At the end, I want to ask you three questions:

Which platform is the most popular social media platform? The answer is Facebook!

Who are the main users in Facebook? The answer is the teens!

Who are the main consumers for LindtChocolate in Halloween? The answer is also the teens!

So I think it is an opportunity for LindtChocolate to focus on Facebook to create a best platform for teenagers instead of the better one. Being the best in Facebook will bring more benefits than being a better in every social media platform in Halloween wars.

News Link:

http://www.businessinsider.com/platform-native-social-media-marketing-2013-10

http://www.katu.com/news/tech/Facebook-to-let-teens-share-with-bigger-audience-228268321.html

Who Am I?

I am Susie, of course! But what about my character, advantage or disadvantage? I think not only you but also I cannot answer these questions accurately. So I have to thank this test for giving me an opportunity to introspect myself. For the testing results, I agree with most of them. Some different culture between America and China may cause the little disagree. But I think the most important thing is the inspiration from the testing result rather than the result itself. So I drew a mind map by XMind to see how the world sees me.

(Mind Map)

I am an ORCHESTRATOR from the test. And my primary, secondary and dormant triggers are PASSION, ALARM and MYSTIQUE.

For the primary trigger- Passion, it is expressive, intuitive, social, impulsive and enthusiastic. Passion is the word that people evaluated me most and is also what I want to show people most. I have many friends and I would like to take care about them, to share happiness with them and to spend more time with them. I’m interested in creative or interesting ideas and I always want to try new things. I can make a decision very fast (may be just 5 seconds) without any superfluous thoughts. But some decisions may be made by impulsion so that I would regret them later. TT

For the secondary trigger- Alarm, it is rational, careful, routine-oriented, reliable and perfectionistic. Alarm is what I want to be and I have been trying to be. And I think most of alarm are real me now. I like making plans and checklist for everything; for instance, I have a big calendar (as below) that I will write all schedules on it. And I am a little obsessive-compulsive disorder that I think it’s a little similar with perfectionistic. In addition, the most I agree with in Alarm is reliable. I believe that honesty is the most important basis for interpersonal relationships so I will never lie to anyone. Don’t impose what you don’t want on others. So what I cannot bear most is to be betrayal or cheated.

You see, Passion and Alarm are totally different directions. Rational is the opposite of intuitive, and careful is the opposite of impulsive. But I always think this is not contradictory and they can coexist very well. I would like to spend time with friends but I also would like to leave me alone. I will make a decision by impulsion sometimes but I will also make decisions after carefully analyzing and balancing sometimes. I don’t know if this is a good status, so I had not thought to change. I hope the contradictory will make me grow faster.

For the dormant trigger- Mystique, I totally agree with this. I hate to hide my emotions or opinions. And I persuade others by being straightforward and open. I would like to enjoy sharing ideas freely, rather than to mask myself.

Finally, there are 3-step action plans. They are:

①Communicate with CLARITY; 

②Avoid the CHECKLIST; 

③Be aware of your ability to INSPIRE. 

I think the biggest challenge is the second step. I have been accustomed to rely on checklist. I don’t know if I can adapt to the days without a checklist. But I’ll try it.

It’s me, a “larger me”. I hope I can be a “greater me”.

Test Link: https://portal.howtofascinate.com/vip-test