Inspired Impressions

One thing that has changed is the new Google Checkout. We’ve been working with GC (Gbuy as it was known in beta) for a while now. I really like the UI for the customer experience. Checkout is easy and pretty much painless.

On our backend, it is pretty straightforward and foolproof. Just a series of XML passing back and forth between us and Google updating the order status and injecting orders into our backend.

It has a lot more legs than MS Passport and I think it will prove to be a value add for Ecommerce in general, and particularly the consumer.

Having said all that, here are my issues:
Once a customer places an order, there is no way to edit the order. If the customer requests expedited shipping after the order was placed, you have to either give it (expedited shipping) away at no additional charge, or cancel the order and reprocess it in your internal order management system.

When an order is placed by the customer, their credit card/debit card is authorized to ensure available funds, and to hold such available funds. If the order is not charged within 3 days, Google will re-authorize the card and then capture the funds, resulting in 2 auths and a capture. This presents problems for debit card owners over weekends and holidays. Google stated that they are working on this to extend the timeframe for re-auth.

Orders tend to get in a state of “reviewing”, meaning the funds have not been authorized and the merchant cannot process the order, quite often. It seems these orders are being subject to a manual review. Based on customer feedback, I think this happens more often when the original auth fails and the customer has to go back and edit the credit card information.

Google has a Payment Guarantee Policy that should cover fraud as Google performs the AVS and CVN matches and doesn’t give the merchant any additional billing information. Some orders have a full match on the AVS and CVN, but Google still denies their eligibility for the Payment Guarantee Policy.

From Google:

“Google relies on a variety of proprietary systems–including internal data sources and advanced risk modeling–to evaluate the risk levels associated with transactions. If the risk level for a particular transaction is too high, Google will not cover the transaction under the Payment Guarantee Policy.”

These orders are still covered under the Chargeback Resolution Policy, but that does not guarantee you will receive your funds back for chargebacks.

The last drawback I’ll talk about, and it is big, is that there is no way to persist your website metrics through checkout. We use Omniture analytics and there is no way to report that a visitor that used Google checkout completed a transaction. There’s not even a way to use Google adwords conversion tracking in Google checkout. This results in a low conversion rate whereby, we have to do manual ‘cipherin’ to figure out the true conversion. I hope Google allows us to place code on the “thank you” page in the near future as this is a real pain in the ass.

Overall though, I think the product is great. Although it may be in beta for the next 3-5 years, they’ve already made some strong improvements to the product. I have high hopes for the future.

Search Engine Watch forums has a great thread about the Top 10 Adcenter Fixes

Some of my favorites fixes extracted from the thread: 

#2 My top issue - Organize the site navigation according to a date or date range. None of the data presented on any page has any meaning if one has no idea of what timeframe it represents. Going to the report function is NOT a solution. We need to navigate from page to page according to a selected date or timeframe.. today, yesterday, last 7 days and so on. Even if the data lags by 24 hours we can work with it. Without this we can't manage campaigns at all.

6 Rejected keywords..there is no rhyme or reason to them. I have a keyword that is accepted and an obvious misspelling of it rejected. Landing page not relevant! The incorrectly spelled word, does not spell another meaningful word. How can this happen? Bankruptcy, Bankrupcy.

11. Better search functionality within Adcenter. If I don't know what campaign and order I'm looking for already, it's *really* hard to find it, because the search function doesn't seem to work properly. I get errors.

12. Add a "find" tool where we can find all ads that have a certain URL parameter, are at or above a certain CPC, etc. - and then give us a way to edit multiple CPCs on multiple orders on a mass basis. Bid management within the interface is an absolute nightmare right now.

14. Fix dynamic keyword insertion to allow for capitalization: {keyword}. {Keyword}, and {KeyWord}; and default copy if the keyword is too long.

I've been using adCenter since around September of last year, and it has come a long way, but it still has a long way to go. I give credit to Microsoft for having a presence on the thread and communicating with the users about their issues.

adCenter has been a very good tool for me in terms of ROI, but the interface is still not user friendly and I'd love to see the click and relative revenue volume pick up.

Jump to read the entire thread. 

I've been beta testing MSN adCenter (PPC Search) for quite a while and have not been impressed with the application so far. They've made tremendous improvements to the UI now that it is out of beta, but it seems that every feature that should be a positive tick for MSN works out to be a negative for the advertiser. It seems they're putting revenue potential ahead of their customer's requirements and expectations.

MSN has a great set of ad targeting options, at least they could be. One example is the demographics targeting or, "Incremental Pricing for targeting" as they call it. This sounds great. I'm in the golf industry so I would like to target the "Males" "35+" demographic.

At issue here is that AdCenter only allows a "positive bid increase" in multiples of 10%. Doesn't sound that bad at first until you think about the 10-100 or so keywords I'm bidding on within the same "order" (an order is the same as an adgroup on Google), all at varying levels of CPC. If I already know the maximum CPC I'm willing to pay for the keyword phrase "Titleist Pro V1", how do I determine what percentage to increase my bids for males only? For the 35-50 demographic? For the 50-65 demographic?

If I assume I can increase my bids 30% for the term "Titleist Pro V1" for those given demographics, how does that affect the keyword phrase "Titleist golf ball" that is also within the same adgroup and subject to the same increase? So if I increase bids by a percentage for a given demographic, then my individual keyword bids should be lowered to maintain my target CPC. What happens when MSN can't determine the demographics of the searcher? I assume I'll get outbid because my base CPC bid is too low.

It would be easy for MSN to offer "negative bid percentages" rather than forcing me to place positive bid percentages for the demographic options. This way, I could maintain my set Max CPC on the keyword level and decrease my bids by 70% for women and 18-25 year olds. No offense to women or young people… you get my drift.

Naturally that would seem to decrease my adspend on adCenter, but it would actually play in the inverse as the more optimal my campaign is running, the more money I'll throw at it. That's why Google commands over 50% of my Search budget and second tier engines get 0%.

One way to get to the true ROAS is to use adCenter's conversion tracking tool in addition to the Omniture Analytics package I currently use. This way, I could manipulate the incremental pricing and keyword CPC until I hit my target ROAS. Again, great in theory, but adCenter does not track conversion on the keyword level, but on the Campaign level. If you're not familiar with adCenter's heirarchy, it's: Campaign>Order>Keyword. So adCenter tracks at the most macro level it possibly can which is of little to no use to the advertiser, but good for MSN's short-term revenue.

MSN conversion tracking also advertises their adCenter services on all checkout confirmation pages, regardless of how the customer was referred.

So I won't be using MSN's new targeting options or their conversion tracking. Google will continue to dominate my adspend and I'll hope that MSN gets it together and builds their applications for their advertisers and consumers and not primarily their pocketbook, because when advertisers and consumers win, their pocketbook will follow.

I love these things. Marketing Sherpa released a study (pdf link) today with a WalMart.com heat map. What's a heat map you say? The detailed technology is beyond me, but users wear special goggles or glasses while viewing a web page and a computer records where their eyes focus and what they click on.

Users on the Internet usually follow the same patterns of either a triangle or "F" pattern. What that means is that most of the content on the right side of the page and content below the fold might as well not even exist. Less is more.

WalMart.com heat map from Marketing Sherpa:

Google Search Page heat map from Did-It.com. Yes, they have a goofy and annoying home page, but that's another topic:

Take a look at the Ecommerce Benchmark Guide 2006 (pdf link) from Marketing Sherpa, it looks like a great deal of valuable information.

Also of particular interest is that "fewer than 50% of merchants we surveyed said they track loyalty, lifetime value, or retention costs." If we all know that it's cheaper to retain a customer than to acquire a customer, then why is the ecom industry so far behind in using the proven segmentation models that catalog marketers have used for decades? More than likely, small to mid sized Ecommerce companies lack the statistical or catalog industry background to implement even the simplest database segmentation methodology. The ecom industry is currently focused on analytics, conversion rates and multivariate testing, and I only hope that evolves into customer segmentation and retention, at least for the companies I work for and not the competition.

Google launched Google Finance. I really like the way the graph operates. Mousing over a point in history highlights the day you are on and dynamically refreshes a snapshot of the days metrics.

If you scroll the graph to the past, the news section also scrolls to show relevant news. clicking on a news story scrolls the graph to the point where the release occurred and highlights the day's trading.

If you mouseover the names of the management, a window blows out to show more details and a photo of that person. To not be so Google oriented, I linked to Costco's (COST) financials rather than Google's.
Google Finance: Costco Wholesale Corp.

Ecommerce sites live and breathe conversion rate (or at least they should), or the rate at which visitors convert to buyers (orders/visits). Once you spend good dollars driving a visitor to your site, your main objective is to guide them to add an item to their cart and then complete checkout. There is no “average site”, but oftentimes the industry states that average conversion rates are around 2% - 4%.

Your navigation, item attributes and checkout path should be clear and free of obstructions to optimize the conversion potential for every visitor to your website.
In this example, the OneCall.com website offers a good product description for a Nikon Coolpix 7600 digital Camera, a good image with multiple shots, detailed specifications, many support options and an overrall conversion friendly design.

Product Page
However, I find it odd that when the visitor mouses over the “add to cart” button that they would popup a small window re-iterating the same price that is on the product page. The user has already made the conscious decision to add it to their cart. One of biggest barriers to conversion has been overcome so why disrupt the visitor’s commitment at this point?

On Mouse-Over View

Perhap’s it’s an A/B test where some visitors see the popup and others don’t. In that case I fully support the decision as you can’t improve if you don’t test. My gut is that the popup will convert at a lower rate than without a popup though.

I recently needed to fax a single page Word document to someone that didn’t have a computer or fax machine. I know, they need to get with the times, but they’re grandparents and they just don’t get that Internet thing. Anyway, I looked at my available options and found that FedEx/Kinkos offers a Word plugin where you can print directly to any FedEx/Kinkos location from your PC. That sounded great. My grandparents could just go to the local FedEx/Kinkos and pick up the document.

First step was to download the application at fedex.kinkos.com. The file was actually 11 megabytes and it required me to reboot my computer after install. Made me wonder what I was actually installing at that point and I didn’t have a good feeling that they could manage my security, especially after reading about Sony’s rootkit debacle.

Once my computer rebooted, I opened my Word document and noticed I had a new FedEx icon in my toolbar. Clicking the icon launched the FedEx application where I was able to select the document to print and which Fedex/Kinkos location I wanted to print to.

This is where it got ugly. FedEx Kinkos has a minimum charge to use the service. The charge was acceptably low for my purpose, but my 1 page document failed to meet the minimum $ requirement. There was no option to send the page and just charge me the minumum. I had to create a new Word document with 3 blank pages to see if it met the requirement. Nope. I tried 5 pages. Nope. I tried 6 pages and the system finally let me continue. Once I got past that it went fairly well; however, I wasn’t entirely confident that the FedEx/Kinkos location would receive the document and know what to do with it.

The first 2 trips to the Fedex/Kinkos resulted in a dumbfounded rep that had no idea what my grandfather was asking for. Once I called the location and gave the order number and explained that they have an online print tool called File, Print, FedEx, Kinkos, they still couldn’t find the document, but said they would call me back. I received a call within about 10 minutes saying they located the files but wondered why 6 out of the 7 pages were blank.

I can imagine the developer’s conversation during the development cycle. “who would print a one page document? We don’t need to write code for that.”

On another note . . . I just tried installing the application on another computer and found the following error message.

An error message like that just means “I didn’t want to use that program anyway.”

Now that I have satellite TV and 3 kids I’ve cancelled Netflix, but I’ve always respected their attention to usability and the way movies are rated and recommended. The NY Times has a great article about the success of their rating system and their recommendation engine, but also Wal-Mart’s dismal failure in providing recommendations. When Wal-Mart.com user’s viewed movies such as a box set about Martin Luther King, Jr. they were recommended “Planet of the Apes” among other embarrasing titles. They had to remove all recommendations and control the PR Spin.

“The most reliable prediction for how much a customer will like a movie is what they thought of other movies,” Mr. Hunt said. The company credits the system’s ability to make automated yet accurate recommendations as a major factor in its growth from 600,000 subscribers in 2002 to nearly 4 million today. NY Times article (free registration required)

Not only are the recommendations useful to the subscribers, but it also helps move back-inventory of older movies, relieving some of the pressure (cost) to keep up with massive quantities of new releases.

At NetFlix, the online DVD rental company, for example, roughly two-thirds of the films rented were recommended to subscribers by the site - movies the customers might never have thought to consider otherwise, the company says. As a result, between 70 and 80 percent of NetFlix rentals come from the company’s back catalog of 38,000 films rather than recent releases.

One last note… Recommendation engines are not useful if they are not kept updated. The recommendation engine at CommunityCoffee.com was built in 2004, but has not been updated since. The engine is run off of a static file because the products rarely change and it was based on about 20 years of purchase history. I know because I architected the site and the engine

I haven’t done any work for Community Coffee since early 2005, but since I’ve been gone, they’ve changed the SKU numbers for many of the products, of which the engine is based. This item, French Vanilla coffee, should recommend another flavored coffee (featured products in the right margin), such as Hazelnut, but it is defaulting to the most popular SKU numbers on the site.

I found a good article from Internet Retailer that states that visitors to websites that performed a site search converted at 7.54% vs. “all visitors” that converted at 2.79%. People who use site search know exactly what they want and you have one shot at displaying relevant results. It’s too easy for a visitor to “move-on” to the next site and try again. That report includes sites with a good search as well as sites with a poor search, so I’m sure the raw data shows widely varying conversions.

A site with a good site search can convert much higher than the 3x vs. a normal visitor as stated in the report.

If your site is small and your search is not very effective, you’re better off just removing the search function all together. Perform an A/B test with and without search and see how your site converts. Find a good free or inexpensive 3rd party site search tool. If you have the budget, try the Google Mini search appliance for about $3,000. I have yet to try it, but it looks very promising. They even have a 30 day return policy if you want to test it and develop an ROI model.

I was asked to put together a simple “top 10″ list for someone who is doing a presentation to small business about their website and small business marketing. I put together this list with the help of various resources that I read including Bryan Eisenberg from FutureNow, Inc.

1. K.I.S.S. – Keep It Simple Stupid. Buttons should look like buttons and links should look like links. Perform the “Mother-In-Law test”. Imagine your Mother-In-Law on the site. Would she know what to do? Would she understand what each link on your page does and have a good idea of where it is going to take her when she clicks on it? Would she understand why this website exists?

2. Offer a solution – Every visitor to your site has a need and has come to you looking for help. Don’t make the visitor dig to find out what you do. Present their problem on the home page and explain in short, concise words how you will solve it.

3. Track everything – You won’t know if you’re successful if you don’t track it. Many website developers offer basic website statistics. If they don’t, Google offers a new analytics package that is fairly advanced and easy to install. Determine what metrics are important to you and create Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and monitor them closely. If you offer content or articles, perhaps one of your KPIs is the average time your visitors spend on your website. If you sell widgets your KPI would be conversion rate; the number of purchases per website visit. Once you know which KPIs to focus on, monitor them religiously and test various methods to improve them. E.g. If you are paying for online marketing, you can determine the Return on Investment by tracking your newsletter signups or net revenue of the items sold.

4. Offer a Scent Trail – Your visitors have come to you for a solution so give them a “scent trail” to follow. You now have a good understanding of the visitor’s problem so guide them through your website by emphasizing specific content or links to where you would like them to go. Too many equally weighted options (links) offered to your visitors will cause confusion. The detail page of a product for sale should display the “Add to Cart” button as the most important link on the page and it should stand out proudly. When viewing the shopping cart, the “checkout” button should be larger and bolder than the “empty cart” button as that is the “scent trail” you would like them to follow.

5. Be consistent with industry leaders – Websites such as Amazon.com, Yahoo, Google and many more follow similar, widely adopted styles and structures. If the websites that you enjoy and visit regularly put the categories along the left-side margin, then you should too. Website visitors understand large fonts and hyperlinks that are underlined in blue. Designers and developers don’t. Who would you rather please?

6. Just because you can doesn’t mean you should – Flaming, spinning logos. Need I say more?

7. Present your UVP and a clear call to action – Your Unique Value Proposition (UVP) should answer the question “Why should I do business with you and not someone else?” Describe how your company will bring value to your visitor. Once that’s understood, offer a clear call to action such as an “add to cart” button, a contact us form, a phone number, or a newsletter signup form.

8. Write copy in the “active voice” and not the “passive voice” – active copy emphasizes the doer of the action and comes across as more persuasive. Active copy would say “The Sonic Drill has everything you need to make perfect holes up to two inches deep and one inch in diameter, quickly and easily.” The same copy written in the passive voice would state: “The Sonic Drill can be used to make holes up to two inches deep and one inch in diameter using the accessory kit that is packaged in the set.” Which copy is more compelling to you?

9. Use text instead of images whenever possible – When a search engine “spiders,” or indexes your site it reads the text on your site to understand what your site is about. If your site is comprised of mostly great-looking images, there is no content for the search engine to read and therefore you will have absolutely no chance of showing up in the search engine results. Whenever possible use text on your site and be sure to interject “keyword rich” words or phrases that users may use when looking for your product or services on a search engine.

10. Make your forms simple – Website users are hesitant to provide personal information on the Internet. If you must ask for their information, ask for the least amount of personal data as possible. Once you establish that you are trustworthy, you will then be able to request additional information. If you have forms on your site, don’t make your visitors follow strict guidelines when inputting the data. Some website forms require a phone number or a credit card to be typed in with dashes or the visitor will encounter an error. Allow your visitors to input their data any way they wish and have your developer write simple code that cleans it up on the backend.

Bonus Tip!!

1. K.I.S.S. – Okay, it’s not really a bonus, just a repeat of the most important guideline to follow. Be sure to Keep It Simple Stupid.