Archive for January, 2006

Disrupting the Buy Path

January 30, 2006 at 9:51 pm · Filed under Design and Usability

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.

One Call product page
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?

One Call product page mouseover
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.

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Good news, bad news for traditional email marketing

January 27, 2006 at 5:23 pm · Filed under Internet Marketing

The good news is that 68% of consumers dealt with increased Holiday email by just deleting the email, bad news is that 34% of the consumers said they report it as spam to their ISPs, and that is up from 23.4% the previous year.

So if you are CAN-SPAM compliant, what are you to do? “60% of the consumers surveyed said that knowing and trusting the sender was a key factor in determining if they would open an e-mail. Also, 48% of those surveyed said they opened mail from companies that had previously sent e-mails they found valuable. ” says the study from Return Path.

If you provide valuable, relevant and timely email content, your open rates, click-through rates, customers and ultimately your revenue will all appreciate it. After the the high of the Christmas rush, it’s hard to settle into the post-holiday slow period. Resist the temptation to increase email frequency – ensure your email content is relevant to your consumers. Use this slow time to evaluate, test, measure and improve your site relevancy and conversion rate with A/B testing and usability analysis. Set short term and long term goals not only for your website, but for yourself as well.

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Psychology of “Expensive=good”

January 25, 2006 at 8:30 pm · Filed under Internet Marketing

I just started reading a book called Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion. So far it looks to be a great read. I thought the following story was great. It shows how a creative marketer can influence a consumer with the perception of a great bargain.

Two brothers, Sid and Harry Drubeck, owned a tailor shop back in the 30s.

“Whenever the salesman, Sid, had a new customer trying on suits in front of the shop’s three-sided mirror, he would admit to a hearing problem, and, as they talked, he would repeatedly request that the man speak more loudly to him. Once the customer had found the suit he liked and had asked for the price, Side, would call to his brother, the head tailor, at the back of the room, “Harry, how much for this suit?” Looking up from his work and greatly exaggerating the suit’s true price – Harry would call back, “For that beautiful all-wool suit, forty-two dollars.” Pretending not to have heard and cupping his hand to his ear, Sid would ask again. Once more Harry would reply, “Forty-two dollars.” At this point, Sid would turn to the customer and report, “He says twenty two dollars.” Many a man would hurry to buy the suit and scramble out of the shop with his “Expensive=good” bargain before Poor Sid discovered the mistake.”

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FedEx Follies

January 25, 2006 at 7:09 pm · Filed under Design and Usability

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

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Time to Sell, Sell, Sell YHOO stock

January 24, 2006 at 4:26 pm · Filed under Internet Marketing

How can you hope to compete in a market with this attitude? This from the CFO of Yahoo.

“We don’t think it’s reasonable to assume we’re going to gain a lot of share from Google,” Chief Financial Officer Susan Decker said in an interview. “It’s not our goal to be No. 1 in Internet search. We would be very happy to maintain our market share.” Article at the Seattle PI

I feel for those that work in a company with such an attitude. If you can’t strive to be number 1 in your industry, then just get out.

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Personalized recommendations

January 24, 2006 at 4:16 pm · Filed under Design and Usability, Internet Marketing

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.

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Gmail RSS feeds

January 23, 2006 at 6:06 pm · Filed under Google

Now that Gmail offers “clips”, or RSS feeds, that are driven by the content of the email in your inbox, it’s interesting to see the clips that show up when viewing your spam folder. Here’s a screenshot. Note the feed right below the search box for “French Fry Spam Casserole.”
Gmail Spam folder

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Bellsouth vs. Google. Go Google

January 19, 2006 at 10:43 pm · Filed under Google

My home city of Lafayette has voted to run fiber optic cable to every home in the city to provide high speed bandwidth, telephone and TV. Bellsouth and Cox have been filing lawsuit after lawsuit to delay the project. I’m glad to see that Google is publicly slamming their tactics.

Google’s Barry Schnitt told Paul in an email: “Google is not discussing sharing of the costs of broadband networks with any carrier. We believe consumers are already paying to support broadband access to the Internet through subscription fees and, as a result, consumers should have the freedom to use this connection without limitations.
Read the full article at NetworkPipeline.com

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Wrong way to use Live Chat Part II

January 19, 2006 at 4:48 pm · Filed under Miscellaneous

I sent an email to batteries.com to complain about their service and here’s a portion of the response I received from Chris McKenna, Product/Warehouse Manager, Batteries.com.

I apologize for the experience you just encountered. We’ve been experiencing some technical difficulties with the live chat software. It randomly kicks our reps out of the program, ends chats automatically, etc. The IT department is working to fix the bugs. I certainly appreciate the feedback.

In response to your inquiries, no, there is not a longer lasting rechargeable AA than the Energizer 2500mAh version. This is the highest mAh rating for consumer rechargeable AA in the market. The 2700mAh is soon to come. However, if you were not satisfied with the predecessor, this will probably not alter your opinion. There are a few steps you can take to ensure you get the most runtime out of your batteries.

Again, if you are having tech difficulties with Live Chat, you’re better off disabling it until the issues can be resolved.

Update: I also received a phone call from Dale Petruzzi, President of Batteries.com telling me that they are having problems with Chat and that they are actively working on the issue. Dale seems to have been around the Ecommerce block and had great insights into their strategies for search and blogging. In the end, I was satisfied with the call and their service.

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Wrong way to use Live Chat

January 19, 2006 at 4:44 pm · Filed under Miscellaneous

I was trying to find better batteries for my digital camera so I went to a number of sites and then I saw that Batteries.com had Live Chat and thought….”They should be experts, they’ll be able to help me.” Here’s the chat transcript. This was probably about a 20 minute chat. Ridiculously long.

Your Sales professional today is Jeane
Welcome to batteries.com, Jeane will be right with you.
Jeane – How may I help you today?
Brandon -I’m using Energizer NIMH 2500mAh and they don’t last long in my digital camera.
Brandon -Is there an optimal type of battery for cameras?
Brandon – hello
Jeane – No sir there is not such a battery.
Brandon – I’m looking at it
Brandon – What’s the best battery for a digital camera?
Jeane – Which battery is it?
Brandon – what lasts the longest in AA format
Brandon – Energizer NIMH 2500mAh AA
Brandon – That’s what I have now. I’m looking for a better battery
Jeane – Well I always prefer our brand.
Brandon – that’s because you make more money on your brand. Which last the longest?
Brandon – Is Lenmar your brand?
Jeane – No
Brandon – can you send me a link to your AA rechargeable. the best one you’ve got
Jeane – One moment
Brandon – This is taking too long for a simple question
Brandon – Do you work at an in-house call center or are you working remotely?
Brandon – hello?
Brandon – hello?
Brandon – Are you done?
Brandon – I’m trying to buy batteries from you
Brandon Exits

Message to Batteries.com: If you can’t provide good customer service, then don’t provide it at all.

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Wow, 25GB of online storage free?

January 18, 2006 at 10:51 pm · Filed under Miscellaneous

Been looking for a place to store full resolution digital photos. Found this on the MSN Blog. Think I’ll give it a shot.

Streamload – MediaMax Online Media Center – Store, Organize, Access & Share Your Media Files

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Who’s responsible for naming the planet Uranus?

January 18, 2006 at 6:36 pm · Filed under Miscellaneous

This is great from AskYahoo.

Dear Mike:
In the interest of brevity, we’re limiting ourselves to four Uranus jokes. Otherwise we’d be here all day. And while our afternoon is pretty open, we know you have more important things to do than giggle over the scintillating history of Uranus (that’s one)…more

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Site search users buy at 3 times the rate of browsers, says new study

January 18, 2006 at 6:27 pm · Filed under Design and Usability, Internet Marketing

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.

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Top 10 List for Building and Marketing your Website

January 17, 2006 at 7:02 pm · Filed under Design and Usability, Internet Marketing, SEO

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.

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