Using Your Putter To Make the "Green"

The bloodcurdling screams woke Cristina (name changed to protect the sort-of-innocent) up from her deep slumber.

In a recanting of the tale, she says “These weren’t screams of joy (read: ecstasy) or even the ones you’d get when you fall, but REAL screams – the kind from horror movies except only real.” (Hey, English is her second language. Work with me here.)

Still half-asleep, she sat bolt-upright in her bed thinking: What should she do next? Was she still dreaming?

As the “I’m-being-chased-by-an-axe murderer” shrieks continued, she dialed 911 on her cellphone. Cristina, not the most patient girl, says of the experience “Good Lord, those 911 operators are annoying. They never seem to share my sense of urgency. After explaining to them in excruciating detail what was happening, they transferred me to the police.” I didn’t have the heart to tell her that the 911 operators could pinpoint exactly where she lived and probably felt that she had been drinking… heavily. The Stepford Wives who live in her ritzy housing complex have so much Botox in their faces, they are unable to smile. There’s less-than-zero chance of them contorting their mouths into a scream. But I digress…

By the time she had gotten transferred (read: “six days later”), the yelps of agony had stopped. She was told the police were already en route (the stablemen can rally up those ponies “real quick” in Houston), so she sat Indian-style in her bed unable to go back to sleep – waiting.

About five minutes later, the wailing started again.

Cristina did not know what to do but she knew she could not just sit there so she fished underneath her bed for the closest weapon. In the South, everyone and their brother has a gun. Or in Cristina’s case – a piece of sports equipment.

“The golf club is the only thing I own that could be used as a weapon,” she explains. “It’s Jorgito’s (her nephew’s) and I’ve had it since I moved into that first apartment by the park. It is very heavy and I have no idea what type it is. It looks like an oversized one that you get at mini golf, so I guess it’s called a putter. I keep it under my bed which is no longer great because I used to be able to reach for it easily. But my new bed is so high, I practically have to fall off to get it. (Let’s be nice and not comment on the last sentence.) Anyway, the only thing that kept on running through my head was that if something really bad happened and I did nothing, I would never be able to sleep again. ”

So, what did Cristina do?

Southerners tend to do this thing where they’ll say something really awful about someone (i.e., “he’s dumber than a box of rocks”) and then finish it up with “bless his heart” to make it all better. So, in the spirit of the story, blind-as-a-bat (the girl cannot see an inch in front of her face without her contacts or glasses) and in ripped-in-all-the-wrong-places, polka-dotted, silk pajamas, BLESS HER HEART, Cristina and her flimsy putter stepped out of her apartment to rescue the damsel in distress.

As she rounded the corner with her KILLER WEAPON CHOICE (aka THE putter), Cristina heard someone behind her.

She stopped and slowly turned around to face a VERY LARGE, BEEFY, BURLY guy with a VERY SCARY LOOKING gun (“like the ones in Die Hard”). She nicely summed him up by saying “He looked like he meant business EXCEPT he had a better choice of weapon.” (Newsflash Cristina: You can’t hit a tee-ball on its FLIPPING stand, BLESS YOUR HEART, YOUR KIDNEYS AND YOUR LIVER TOO, so I’m not sure how you think you are going to be a death machine with your dime-store putter.)

Stunned, she turned around and faced yet another Hulk-of-a-man (thankfully, this time it was her neighbor) with an even bigger semi-automatic weapon.

“It’s best if you step inside.” He mumble-shouted. Well, that could be an embellishment. His accent was so thick, she couldn’t really understand him. He probably said “Get inside, you putter-bearing idiot, or I will blast you to smithereens!” (Sorry, I’m not up to date on my Will Smith lingo.)

Like a deer stuck in the headlights, Cristina didn’t move. “N-O-W, MISSY.” The neighbor bellowed as he pulled back on the charging handle to chamber a round. Cristina recalls, “That was an unmistakable sound and very scary, so it was basically all I heard.”

Cristina scurried inside. (God only knows why – a putter always wins out over cop-killing weapons. Hasn’t she seen “24”?)

In what-seemed-like-forever-and-was-probably-a-minute, the screams stopped. Ten minutes later, she heard sirens. Then an ambulance.

What’s the point of this silly tale? (Yes, shockingly enough, there is one.)

Cristina is the marketing director of a very successful, very well-run, B2B catalog that sells to two DYING markets. (We’re talking dusting the seats of the Titanic here, folks.) One of them is automotive dealerships if that tells you anything. And their business is thriving. Yes, you read that correctly. THRIVING – in a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad economy!

Why, you may ask? Easy. They use us to help them.

SERIOUSLY, the reason is that Cristina approaches her market just the way she approached what happened at her chi-chi-la-la apartment complex. She is VERY aggressive and she will use whatever tools she has in her arsenal (even if it’s a flipping putter) to win. She doesn’t always have access to the latest and greatest shiny things, but she takes what she does have and uses it to her advantage. She has a great team that’s all on the same page — and they work really hard to get stuff done.

Many marketers are paralyzed with fear these days. Their lack of action creates exactly what they were afraid of. This is not Cristina’s case. She has decreased her offline prospecting efforts and put money into her more profitable online marketing. She has increased her e-mail frequency (Much to the dismay of a couple of her employees who felt she was overmailing, she has actually increased response and profits by e-mailing MORE!) Put simply, she has cut out the fluff and done more stuff.

Below, you’ll find seven ideas for getting more bang for your marketing buck. And, if you don’t have a gun and can’t get a bang, read it as seven ideas for one-putting every green.

P.S. To this day, Cristina does not know what really happened – only that she got a flyer underneath her door saying there was a home invasion and that someone was attacked. The guy was arrested and there was a statement that all tenants were responsible for their own safety (Nothing like sensitive building owners reminding you that they are not liable if you get butchered on their premises).

7 SURE-FIRE TIPS YOU CAN USE TO IMPROVE YOUR BUSINESS WITHOUT BREAKING THE BANK

1. Read and react.
Online companies are more fluid than offline companies – you have a huge opportunity to continuously improve what you are doing. A good example of this is PPC spending. It blows my mind how many people set a monthly budget for PPC and then spend just to that number. Sure, they may allocate more money at Christmas than they do in July but the reality is that when the money is gone for the month they wait till the next month. For the love of all things holy, PPC is a numbers game! You need to make hay while the sun shines! Figure out the cost per sale that you are willing to accept. If your program is profitable, don’t throw away sales just because you’ve used your entire budget in the first week – re-evaluate and readjust accordingly.

2. Start paying attention to your organics.
When paid search came into play, many marketers got lazy and abandoned all their organic efforts. That’s a shame of epic proportions as for many companies, organic results are their best converters – not to mention that you can’t beat the price (FREE!) The best thing about organics is that you don’t need to build Rome in a day – doing small things over a period of time can often make a difference. Look at your page titles; make sure your URL strings are simple and static; ensure your redirects are set-up properly; use meaningful links (for example, click here is NOT good); check your meta descriptions (aka elevator pitches) to make sure they are aggressive enough to get someone to click; and use H1 heading tags for content titles.

3. Determine whether or not you’re e-mailing enough.
I can already tell you, you’re not.

4. Develop a trigger e-mail program.
Trigger e-mails (aka on-demand or good dog e-mails) are e-mails based on an action. They have better deliverability, open rates, clickthrough rates and conversion. The best trigger e-mails are typically abandoned cart (or lead form) e-mails, but there are dozens of others too – thank you’s (signing up for a free catalog or newsletter), confirmations (for orders or quote requests), abandoned search e-mails, EBOPP’s (e-mails based on past purchases) and more. Triggers needn’t be fancy but they should be personalized based on the user and the good, bad or indifferent things he did on your site.

5. Consider live chat.
In the old days (four years ago), I was not a big fan of chat. Very few people knew how to work it and it was expensive. These days it’s dirt cheap (sometimes even free) and there’s a lot of good information out there on how to best set up your program. Consider using chat on your highest exit pages (or the pages that lead up to them) – search and checkout, for example. You should start first with user-directed support (they click to start the conversation with you.) Then, when you master that go on to instigated chat (you start the conversation with them), which usually performs about 4-5 times better, right out of the gate.

6. Use exit pop-ups and other rat traps.
(Yes, traps.) Just this morning, I got yet another e-mail from a client listing the reasons why they are morally opposed to pop-ups. For some reason, these type of e-mails always strike me as amusing. Just because you don’t like them that automatically means your customers won’t, right? Oh wait, the logic is that EVERYONE in the world blocks them, even though most people don’t even know what they are or what they are called. The fact of the matter is that even if 80% of your users blocked them (which they won’t), they’d still work.

Exit pop-ups are effective because the user MUST interact with them – there’s no choice in the matter. They are also one of the strongest action directives you can use on your site. They’re perfect for reminding people of abandoned carts; executing short surveys; promoting e-mail sign-ups; and more. In the end, if the user sees an exit pop-up, that means they are leaving your site without doing what you wanted them to do. Don’t you owe it to them – and yourself – to give them one last pitch of why you want their business before they walk out the door? (Correct answer: YES!).

7. If you’re not using it, consider getting rid of it.
It blows my mind how many companies have these fancy-schmancy packages (statistical packages, for example) that they do not use. If you’re paying a lot of money for something and are not using it, think twice about whether or not you really need it. I have a client who cut over a million dollars from their budget this year just by substituting packages. For example, they were paying about $200,000 per year for a split-test package that they had only used twice in the year (both times unsuccessfully.) They dumped it and implemented Google Optimizer instead. Is Google Optimizer better than the old package? No, but it works… and in this economy that’s what counts.

Are Crazy Women Better In Bed?

9:22 am by Amy 7 Comments

Despite the fact that he’s a lawyer (in Beverly Hills, no less), my friend, Brian, is one of the most incredible men I have ever met in my life.

Brian is rocket-scientist sharp; well-read, well informed and well-versed; heartbreakingly sweet; a loving, single parent to two energetic young boys; easy to talk to and easy to be with in general; and good looking (with biceps the size of Popeye’s — after he’s eaten the spinach.) He’s fun, funny (Brian has a wickedly snarky sense of humor) and he’s got that whole sexy, magical, mystical air about him (he’s Iranian which means he was born profound and Rumi-esque.)

So, what’s Brian’s Achilles Heel?

Crazy women.

Yes, that’s right. Brian is attracted to Nutter Butters of the Nth Degree.

And when I say “crazy”, I don’t mean a little off, I mean in-and-out-of-the-nuthouse-over-the-top-Looney-Tunes.

Brian’s last five girlfriends could all star in the next reality show — America’s Got Nuts (although to be honest, I am thinking Fear Factor would be a more apt title — the fact that these girls walk the streets could terrify even the un-scare-able.)

His taste in women varies — so although they’re all beautiful in their own right, they’re not all faux blondes (like the spicy “girls just wanna have fun” party queen who is hell-bent on finding a Sugar Daddy… or two.. or ten) or heavily inked (like the girl who lived in the back of her car but had the latest-and-greatest BlackBerry — homeless chic, I think they call it) or voluptuous (like the ex-porn star turned almost-B-movie actress.) Brian’s “type” doesn’t really have anything to do with physical characteristics — just the emotional quality that says you need to be several French Fries short of a Happy Meal to get his attention.

Over time, I’ve figured out the reason that Brian ends up with all these wackadoodles is that he, like many men (especially the hot-blooded boys of the Middle Eastern persuasion), is under the false impression that crazy women are better in bed, which they are unequivocally not.

How do I know this for a fact? Truth is that I don’t. I haven’t slept with a crazy woman or any girls at all for that matter (no, not even experimentally in college.) I’m convinced my life would be easier if I was attracted to females but it’s just not in the cards for me this lifetime. (No, not even if I end up in prison, Ms. G.)

However, even though I haven’t personally gathered the evidence per se, I’d still be willing to bet the BIG BUCKS on it. Crazy women aren’t better in bed. What they are better at is selling themselves and their story. And for the love of all things holy, those wackadoodles can come up with not only tearjerkers but impressive achievements. I mean really… No sane woman (that may be a slight oxymoron) is going to dazzle you with tales of her last six years as the lead in Cirque du Soleil’s Zumanity. (Have you seen how those girls twist their bodies? Yowza.) Nor will she suggest she got the scar on her shoulder from a chandelier-swinging episode ten years ago — you know the one that she “is just too embarrased” {insert coy smile here} to talk about.

Bipolar bimbelinas being better in bed is like judging a guy by his shoe size or his ethnicity, both of which may be an indication of something (statistically but not empirically), and not exactly of prowess.

Unfortunately, it’s just one of the many marketing myths folks believe…. but it’s not the worst by any stretch of the imagination.

The worst myth is that conversion is what matters most when it comes to online marketing.

You’ve got to be kidding, right?

If conversion is the only thing that counts, just reduce or block your traffic till you get it to where you want it to be. I mean really, if you have one person coming to your site and said individual buys (or quotes, or whatever it is that you want your final action to be), your conversion will be 100%. That’s impressive, right?

People come up to me all the time and say “I want to be like {name of site.} I saw on {name of latest and greatest report} that they get 19% conversion. We only get 2%. We want to get 19% like them. How do we do it?”

You want to get 19% because some company on a list gets 19%? Are you insane? Are you good in bed? I am doing a study…. Seriously, if said “best” company is getting over three-quarters of their traffic from direct/no referrer sources is that 19% number still good? Those are people that likely know the company — at least enough to type in their name directly into the browser box. Is their situation similar to yours?

Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying that you shouldn’t measure conversion because you should. In fact, we get a lot of clients because we often guarantee we can increase your conversion (and no, we don’t play any sneaky tricks like decreasing the traffic either) but we look at that conversion number with a grain (read: a whole lick) of salt.

So, what should you do? Here are five tips to help you measure what matters —

1. Know who you are. A home delivery food company is going to have a very different ability to convert than say, a B2B company selling cranes. You need food every day but how often do you need a crane? A company that specializes in diabetic medical supplies is going to have a much different ability to convert than someone who sells pregnancy clothing. You need to determine who you are, how much your customers need of your products or service and how often they’ll need it. (Then, if you want to compare, at least benchmark yourself to someone similar to you in your category.)

2. Look at your conversion by source and then set reasonable expectations. You simply must know where your traffic is coming from. Companies who have all direct/no referrer traffic are going to have very different conversion rates than companies who have none. Companies with big brand names (LL Bean or Land’s End, for example) are going to have very different conversion rates than a company like Bliss Living. Bliss Living does a lot of things right on their site but they’re relatively new and they don’t have a bunch of offline advertising (direct mail catalogs, solos, TV and radio spots, advertisements, etc.) to fuel them. Comparing Bliss Living to LL Bean would be like comparing a golf ball to a watermelon.

3. Once you know #2, you should try to prioritize where you’ll get your biggest scores. I’m not a big fan of looking at overall conversion rates because I think they are very misleading but more important, they also don’t tell you what to fix — in other words, where to start dusting the seats of the Titanic. For example, let’s say your overall conversion rate is 4% and you have a catalog business. Is that good or bad? Let’s look at your Ordering From a Catalog? page — how many people are going to that page? How many people are finishing/converting? If you are sending a lot of offline traffic online to place an order, they should be converting a heck of a lot better than someone who doesn’t know you from Adam. How many people would you accept calling your call center to place an order and then hanging up in the middle of the call? Not many, I imagine.

4. Know where people are stopping in your pipeline. This is critical. A lot of times companies do all the right things till the checkout (including the view cart page.) Then all hell breaks loose. You need to develop a funnel. The top (or opening/large part) of the funnel is the traffic coming to your site and the bottom (the teensy part) is the orders or leads you’re getting. These days, a lot of folks have enough traffic coming in at the top but then nothing/very little comes out the bottom. (Picture the bump in the snake who has just eaten a rat.) If you fit into that category, your conversion rate probably sucks. The good news is that scenario is one of the easiest to improve. You’ve got to know what’s broken before you fix it.

5. Ask for the order. I go into this ad nauseam throughout this QLOG so much so that I get frequently accused of beating a dead horse. Honey, till that horse is Alpo or Elmer’s I am going to keep beating it. A long time ago, in a land far, far away, I saw Seth Godin speak. At the time he was at Yoyodyne (a division of Yahoo) and he said something to the effect of — “you are the zookeeper of your website. It’s your job to take care of the gorillas (the users).” To this day, I remember that story because it was just SO clear — you want someone to do something, you need to tell them to do it — gorillas don’t get into their cages on their own. Don’t think that just because you write a bazillion articles on social marketing and are truly a social marketing genius (yes, there really are a couple that fit into that category) that they will know that they can hire you for consulting. Tell them you do it and then ask them for their order. Don’t assume that because “everyone knows you” that they will come to your site and order. This isn’t Field of Dreams. You want the order, you need to ask for it. If you want conversions, you need to fight for them. You can do what you want to get them — whether it be adding a perpetual cart/lead form, adding more buy now/add to cart buttons, strengthening your action bar to tell people what they’re supposed to do, or telling the user that you’re a psychic and you can see in their future that they’ll be giving you two children. I mean orders…

Note from Amy: I get very few comments on this QLOG. (Hear the violins playing in the background.) However, after EVERY post, I get 100+ emails telling me what I said/did right/wrong. I love the e-mails (please keep them coming), however, before you write, please know that I get that mental illness is a serious disease so you don’t need to school me on my insensitivity toward the kids who frequent the Cuckoo’s Nest. I am an equally opportunity offender.

Second, if you are questioning my lack of segue from being a freak in the sheets to conversion — please read between the lines and know that I adore Brian and was trying to avoid saying something pithy like “Brian’s a successful lawyer and a single parent. He has virtually no time to himself. When he goes out, he is typically looking for action. The crazies are the easiest girls to get but just because you act like a tigress in a bar (or play one on TV for that matter) doesn’t mean…” Well, you get the idea.

Third, Brian is not my type. I love him to pieces but the truth is that the guys I like are found here: http://www.fbi.gov/wanted/topten/fugitives/fugitives.htm. So, if you think that there’s a big finder’s fee in hooking me up, start with that list, ok? You’ll make the world a better place on many levels and you’ll even get paid (reward money) for your matchmaking services.

Final Decision: No Potato!

9:11 am by Amy 4 Comments

Somewhere near DCA (aka Washington Reagan Airport) a round room is missing its patient…

I am not sure which psychiatric facility it is but I can tell you, with 100% certainty, the patient is working in the US Airways terminal for TSA.

I hate all the DC airports but I dislike DCA with a passion. For me, everything goes wrong in DCA. Not just a little wrong, but comedy-of-errors, I-want-to-kill-someone wrong. Take the other night for instance.

After landing HOURS late (a frequent occurrence), I had less than thirty minutes to catch the last plane out. I was starving. Not the usual “just a little hungry” female-type starving, but absolutely “I will chew off the person’s arm next to me if I don’t eat” stark-raving ravenous.

Because it was late (almost 9), there was nothing open except a Ranch something-or-other and a Cinnabon. The Ranch whatever-it-is has a picture menu with more than half a dozen chicken choices. Unfortunately, they were “out of chicken.” (How a chicken restaurant can be bereft of all poultry is a story in itself, but I’m leaving that escapade for another day.) After a six-minute heated debate with the illegal-on-many-levels teenager at the counter, I finally negotiated a baked (in name only) potato with broccoli. Knowing that I didn’t have much time to spare, I grabbed a plastic spork and some napkins and dashed to the shuttle bus that would take me from one side of the US Airways terminal to the other – only to find the shuttle was “not working.”

Aaargh…. I had to high-tail it out of the US Airways wing I was in, GO BACK THROUGH AIRPORT SECURITY, and run to my gate. Please tell me which rocket scientist designed that train wreck of a system. I have some frequent fliers who’d like to invite him to dinner at Hannibal Lecter’s house. (If the bus actually worked more than 50% of the time, I wouldn’t complain but I am now convinced that the bus doesn’t operate any longer and nobody has informed the gate agents yet.)

Frustrated as all get out, I ditched my overpriced bottle of what is probably tap water disguised with a chi-chi-la-la label and dashed to the next security area. I took three bins and started undressing. My shoes, My belt. My jacket. My sweater. All of it came off. Then, I placed my laptop in one bin and my purse in the other along with my prized baked potato. I zipped up my computer bag and placed everything on the belt, precariously balancing my boarding pass under my right arm. (I didn’t have time for the 4-minute lecture they give you if you hold it between your teeth as you do the prisoner walk through the metal detectors.)

I rushed through the metal detector (not that it would have mattered if it had gone off, the guy was so busy flirting with the girl pushing the stack of bins that he wouldn’t have noticed if I had a gun.) And then I waited. And waited. And waited.

“Ma’am, I can’t allow you to bring this in with you.” The checker guy said somewhat sheepishly as he rumbled through my belongings.

“What?” I asked trying to hide my annoyance. I fly hundreds of thousands of miles a year. I’ve learned what to bring and what not to bring the hard way. Boys can bring stick deodorant, but heaven forbid, you try to get through with half an ounce of lipstick. Mothers can bring enough milk to feed all the starving children in Ethiopia, but please don’t let a diabetic through with more than one needle.

Interrupting my evil thoughts, Mr. TSA replies: “The baked potato. You either need to eat it outside the security area or you need to toss it.”

You’ve got to be kidding. How in God’s name was I going to turn a baked potato into a weapon? Steve Spangler (@stevespangler), I am not. (If you don’t know him, you’ve got to check him out. I saw him speak at NEMOA and he is/was fantastic. Not only is the guy brilliant, but he gives new meaning to fun.) Steve could come up with an ingenious way to kill someone with the potato. Unfortunately, at the time I could not. (I’ve since come up with several devious murderous methods…)

“Sir,” I said, trying to be as polite as possible. “I don’t understand… What’s wrong with the potato? It’s not a liquid or a gel.”

“You must have butter on it.”

“No, no butter, but even if I did, it certainly wouldn’t be a quarter of a pound.”

“Huh?” He asked, obviously afraid of math equations. Converting a quarter of a pound into ounces would most likely require a computer and ten more of these brain surgeons.

“There’s no butter. There’s no cheese. It’s just a potato and some broccoli.” I said.

“You don’t have any toppings? It’s just a PLAIN potato?” He retorted with a confused look on his face. Einstein he was not.

“Yes, it’s a plain potato.”

“Why would you want to eat a plain potato?”

I looked around….. I was thoroughly convinced that there were cameras around me recording this for Airport’s Funniest Videos or something. At that very moment, I realized I was going to have to dump my potato. Didn’t anyone know that this could result in a lifetime in prison? I mean, last I looked cannibalism is a crime and I REALLY needed that potato in a POW sort of way.

“I didn’t want a potato. I wanted a salad. But they had no salad and they had no chicken. Can you imagine? A chicken place without any chicken? The kid was just so lazy. Kids are just so lazy these days.” I babbled on incessantly. (Yes, I know. But sometimes the crazy female strategy works.)

“Ma’am. My decision is final. No potato.” For some reason, the Judge Wopner wannabe ruling on my potato, sent me over the edge.

“Your decision is final? You are kidding right? Where in your big book of rules does it say that I can’t bring on a flipping partially-baked potato? I appreciate that you’re trying to save the world one 3.4 ounce bottle of shampoo at a time but what exactly do you think I am going to do with this potato? Was there a potato bomber that I didn’t know about?”

My name was being last-called for the second, perhaps third, time. I had to leave for no other reason than if I didn’t I would have to go back to DCA the next day to get a flight out and that was just more than I could handle. I thought about spewing something incredibly melodramatic like “I’m very hypoglycemic (true story) and I hope I die on this plane so you’ll have to live with the guilt” but I knew he couldn’t care less so I looked at him and I said “This is my baked potato, I want this baked potato” and I threw a couple dollar bills into the bin as I walked off. Perhaps I couldn’t have my baked potato but at least I wouldn’t be filling out reams of government paperwork for abandoned property.

Did I really need the potato? Hardly. Mary Kate Olsen (or is it Ashley?) I am not. But I wanted that baked potato and the reason why I couldn’t get it wasn’t logical. (In fact, there was a complete absence of rationale.) The weird thing is that we do the same thing online everyday.

Users comes in looking for a quote. We make them jump through ten hoops only to let them know a salesperson will call — a salesperson who will undoubtedly make them repeat all the information again. We advertise live chat only to say that it’s “temporarily unavailable” (temporarily meaning fifteen hours or the entire weekend). We get them all the way to the cart and then we ask them to go find their catalog codes — not nice but especially cruel if they are coming in from a PPC ad and don’t have a catalog.

The list is endless. Below, I have included eight things that you can do to streamline your site — to make it a faster, easier and overall more successful experience for your users. I recommend you look at them but also go through your own site, step-by-step, from a user’s perspective, to see if there are any abandoned potatoes….

8 TIPS FOR IMPROVING YOUR “LOGIC”

(from the User’s Perspective)

1. Do not ask any irrelevant questions. Relevance (or lack thereof) is determined in the users mind, not yours, which means you need to ask only things that you think will matter to them (read: seriously the things you desperately need and can get away with).

Don’t get me wrong, if you really can’t figure out where they heard about you (meaning you aren’t sensing referring URL’s and only asking those that don’t have one), you can ask them but do it after you get the inquiry or order, either as a follow-up confirmation screen, pop-up or e-mail.

2. Include temperature (aka status) bars. Art directors usually don’t like temperature bars because they think they are “ugly.” Users love temperature bars because they give them a gauge of where they are in the process and set their expectations.

Don’t know what a temperature bar looks like? Check out hellodirect.com. Put something in your cart and then “go to checkout.” (They have a nifty perpetual cart in the upper righthand corner so it’s easy to find.) Along the top you’ll see a bar with a little cart to the left of it that says “view cart, welcome, billing, shipping, payment, review and submit.” Every time the user completes an action, the cart moves along the temperature bar letting users know precisely what their status is – what they’ve done and how much they have left.

Don’t have a cart? Temperature bars work on inquiry and quotation forms as well.

3. Include your phone number at least once in all four quads. Yes, that’s redundant and yes, it’s also necessary. In your cart and lead forms, you should have complete contact information on the righthand side and at the bottom too. Typical companies (B2B and B2C) get about a quarter of their leads and orders over the phone and fax.

Don’t want to give your contact information? Be prepared to lose at least half of those orders. That’s right. About half the people who want to order over the phone want to order over the phone and only over the phone. If you don’t provide the number, chances are good you aren’t going to get the order.

4. Use pictures. Search engine spiders and algorithms see things in copy and text. People see things in visuals. When you are designing a site make sure each of your pages has a visual.

What does that have to do with logic? From a user perspective, pages that don’t have visuals are “broken.” There’s nothing to see, so it’s almost like they don’t exist.

5. No dead-ends. Yes, I know. In this day and age, you’d think one wouldn’t have to talk about speed, but the hard reality is that sites have statistically gotten slower over the past sixteen months.

In places/pages like your cart, search function and lead forms, it pays to be zippy. If you can’t be quicker than a bunny, be sure to use the appropriate wait screens. (The travel companies are best at wait screens – wait screens are the pages that say things like “we’re still searching for the best deal in the universe just for you, please be patient, it will only take another 18 (or whatever) seconds.”)

6. Be cognizant of your clicks. I look at sites each and every day where to quickly (and drastically) improve their conversion they’d only need to do one thing – reduce the number of clicks it takes to make a purchase (or an inquiry).

Do you really need to take them from your entry page to a category page to a micro-category page with a couple choices to the product? Probably not. The faster you can get the user to the place where they want to go, the better your conversion will be. Period.

7. Link-check. This is another one of those things that everyone says they do but, very few people do. You need to make sure that all your links are working.

You also need to ensure that all of your up-sells and cross-sells are in stock and available to be ordered. You can test it on your own site, but I can save you time and tell you that users really don’t like it when your suggested cross-sells are backordered or your up-sell items are no longer available. Don’t believe me? Try it yourself and watch your abandons increase. It really only takes a teensy, tiny thing for users to abandon.

8. Offer availability and shipping status. This is another little thing that goes along way. Are 99% of your items in-stock and shipped that day? That’s great but you still need to tell the user on each individual item – “in stock and ready. Ships same day.”

P.S. There were six passengers on the plane and the flight attendant had a huge bag, overflowing with at least 50 packages of pretzels. I did something I never do: I asked her for an extra one. We’re talking eight mini pretzels for a girl who spends literally millions on tickets each year. She looked right at me and said “if I have enough.” Bet you her husband works at TSA.

"I've Never Had To Tell a Black Man He Is Black."

2:14 pm by Amy Leave a Comment

Gen Jones writes: “I am a huge fan of yours but my boss hates you. We went to your seminar a couple weeks ago. She walked in late and heard you say ‘I’ve never had to tell a black man he was black.’ She felt that was completely racist and walked out the door and said I should never waste our money on listening to you again. She is white and I am black. I only wish she heard what you had to say afterwards because it was so valuable, especially for us. Anyway, can you recap what you said on your blog so I can give it to HER boss? I’d really appreciate it. I don’t know if you remember me but we are the ones who sell plus-sized clothing.”

First, thank you for being a HUGE fan. And yes, I mean that sincerely. I know I am an acquired taste.

Second, yes, I remember you and your boss. As I recall, she stormed out rather dramatically. It’s difficult when people come see me speak and don’t get me from the very beginning because I am very easy to take out of context. But yes, I will restate what I said here because it IS indeed important.

One of the first clients I had on my own was a third-generation, family-owned company that sold all sorts of Jewish stuff — menorahs, dreidels, hamsa plaques and so on. The company had a gorgeous 200+ page catalog and a website that was equally well-designed yet bringing in “nary an order.” The father (who spent far more time on the golf course than working in his business) had seen me speak and invited me to come in and do a full-blown web critique. One of his three sons was in charge of the website (we’ll call him the Golden Boy for reasons soon to be explained) and had spent a small fortune developing it. The other two brothers thought the internet was going to be about as popular as the CB radio and wanted the father to put an end to it. So, although I was there under the premise of giving them ideas to improve the website, two-thirds of the team hated me before I even set foot in the door. (This, by the way, was an indication of my future in consulting.)

To make a long story short, the morning part of the meeting went exceptionally well. There was a lot of evidence that the website would be a raging success so the “Golden Boy” was happy (read: smug), the other two brothers were starting to see the light (although they were not convinced that it was not a freight train coming directly at them, they knew that something bright was coming) and the father was happy to have peace in the kingdom again so he could play golf.

All was well until we started talking about web creative.

One of the thirds, er, brothers, asked me what I thought of the pictures on the site and I responded something along the lines of “I am glad you asked as I was going to get to that after the break. You sell Jewish stuff to Jewish people, why are all your photographs of blonde Aryans anyway?”

COMPLETE AND TOTAL SILENCE. Not even a damn cricket chirp like you hear on TV.

There were fourteen people in that room and all at once, every SINGLE person looked down except the father and Golden Boy. He gave me the most evil “mean as dirt” look I’d ever had in my life.

About three hours (read: twenty seconds) later, the father smiled. “Golden Boy’s wife is our photographer. She is a blonde —-“

Golden Boy interrupted and went on a tirade, most of which had to do with him being the first one to every marry a gentile, that not all Catholics were evil and so on and so forth. The entire conversation was VERY heated and you couldn’t see any of the non-family staff as they were busy hiding under the conference table or rapidly excusing themselves to go to the bathroom.

As much as I wanted to jump into the discussion and give my two cents on Israel, the West Bank, war, and all things political, I also wanted to leave in one piece so I said something along the lines of “look, I didn’t mean to offend anyone, I know more than a few blonde Jews. I just don’t think that your catalog or your website represents a typical Jew.” (Yes, I realize “typical” was the wrong word choice but it was the right sentiment at the time.)

After Golden Boy (you know, the guy who three hours before had thought I walked on water) accused me of being more vile than Hitler, the father calmly smiled and said “I have never had to tell a black man he is black. We all know who we are.”

And you know what? We do.

Gingers know they are red-heads.

People who are over 7′ know they are exceptionally tall and folks under 3′ know they are short. (And yes, I have friends in both categories.)

You never need to tell a morbidly obese person that they are overweight. From personal experience, I can assure you, we all know where we stand on the Scale of Skinny.

*****

When I recanted that story at the conference, Jennifer (the woman who asked the question above) and her boss attended, it was in response to a woman whose site I was critiquing. They sell hair care products for black women. When I asked her who her target market was, she told me “100% black women.” I asked her why over half her models were white. She said because her boss (who was Hispanic) felt that if they didn’t show white models, they’d be perceived as discriminatory. She also said that the women I was saying were “white” were actually “kinda-sorta-a-little-bit-mixed.” Whatever the hell that means. The only thing I know about black hair is from my black friends and NEWSFLASH: it’s not at all like mine, that’s why they have products designed for it, as well as stylists who specialize in it.

Jennifer’s company sells plus-sized clothing to women who can’t find clothes at stores like Lane Bryant, which means that they are OVER a size 26, I believe. Looking at their photos, their models are, on average, a size 10-12. That’s less than half the size. Her boss (whom I have spoken with since and do NOT enjoy one iota) says she feels that they need “more petite” models to give people “hope” for what they aspire to be. Frankly, that’s downright offensive and I am so glad she walked out of my seminar because if she’d stayed, I’d probably have smacked her!

I don’t care who you are selling to — whether it’s the butcher, the baker or the candlestick maker — your website needs pictures of those people. If you want to have a bunch of pin-up girls because you’re one of those “sex sells” people, that’s cool too but please include “real” pictures as well.

1. Unless YOU are YOUR typical customer, the site should NOT be designed for you (or to impress YOUR wife, mother, brother in internet marketing, etc.) It should be designed for YOUR USER. In other words, if you sell to welders, light pink and baby green may not be the best color choices. Is that stereotypical? Hell, yes. Deal. With. It.

2. The more pictures the better. The AAUS (active average user session) tends to be at least 10% higher on sites that have a lot of photos of people — basically because when we see other people’s eyes, we stay longer. The more you stay, the more you pay.

3. In your checkout (or lead forms, if that better applies), use a photo of someone your typical user would give their money to. (No, not the person they’d pay for a lap dance.) A Wilford Brimley/Santa Claus like person.

4. Use a combination of staged and action shots. Action shots especially work for B2B and HEP (hobbyist, enthusiast, passionata) sites.

5. The visuals rules also apply to copy. If your average customer doesn’t sound like something out of Masterpiece Theatre, you shouldn’t write to him using language only found in Othello.

6. Politically correct doesn’t mean EXCLUDING your current customers in favor of INCLUDING those who are not your customers. If you don’t respect the people you sell to, find another job. Period. End of story.

Footnote: A couple days ago, I was at Ben’s Chili Bowl in Washington, D.C. with my friend Lucy (name changed to protect the guilty). She was jonesing for a chili dog and she had heard they made THE best. The menu on the wall said “black owned” and everyone who was working there at the time was black. I said to the guys behind the counter “if I said white-owned, I’d be accused of being a neo-Nazi.” My friend practically ran out the door, she was so mortified. The place was jam-packed and every guest in there was black with the exception of one table of four white construction workers. They were all as equally horrified as Lucy. (Yes, I am loud. EVERYONE heard me.) Funny thing is that ONLY the white people were shocked and appalled. I got more than one comment about my vanilla, er, milkshake during my visit but it was all in fun. I get that race is a serious issue and I am a lot of things but a bigot is not one of them. Many businesses are struggling these days because they spend too much time pontificating their navels and not focusing on what’s really important. If you’re selling sumac to Arab chefs, a photo of Rachel Ray just ain’t gonna cut it. Bottom line: my chance of being a Playboy Centerfold next month? LESS THAN NONE. We all know who we are.

Why Epiphanies Never Occur To Couch Potatoes

12:33 pm by Amy Leave a Comment

I am staying at the Four Seasons in Beverly Hills.

Normally, I like the chain. If nothing else, it’s good for increasing my VERY LOW blood pressure. (Yes, I know it is difficult to believe.)

I will never, and I mean NEVER, understand how the Hampton Inn can give you a free hot breakfast, free cookies at night, free Internet access, free parking and a free pass to the fitness center and these chi-chi-la-la hotels all feel they need to charge you an extra $10-$50 per amenity – on top of their already exorbitant prices. But that’s another rampage, er, post.

Anyway, yesterday I tried running outside. What a train wreck that was! Not only did I get lost – after an almost-ten mile run – but I got “pulled over” by the police for running in a “private neighborhood.”

Getting stopped by the authorities happens to me quite a bit. Someday, I simply must tell you the story about rollerblading in Peterborough, NH, where I almost got a ticket or imprisoned. (I’m honestly not sure which way it would have gone. He had a very big belt buckle.) You would have thought I’d committed a quadruple homicide in the land of Live Free or Die, Just Don’t Skate!

So today, I figured it would be safest to stay inside. Plus, it’s pouring (read: flooding) and sweet girls like me have a tendency to melt. (Yes, I am sure a Wicked Witch of the West analogy would be more appropriate here….)

After doing my weights and my run in the hotel fitness center, I chugged down more than my fair share of the wretched WOD (Water of the Day — cucumber lemon or something equally atrocious) and hopped into the elevator. A woman was already there, standing smack-dab in front of the ONE working panel. (How come the elevators in the Hampton Inn always seem to work?)

“Six, please.”

I said politely.

The woman didn’t move one chinchilla-draped muscle.

“Would you please push six?”

I asked again in the nicest possible way.

The woman still didn’t move. Instead, she looked me up and down with a glare so cold it would freeze even Hillary. If I had known where the stairs were I would have bolted, although if truth be told I would have had to figure out how to open the doors first and I was lacking any thoughts besides murder. Would strangling the Ice Queen with my iPod cord be a public service or would I end up in jail?

“Please, if you can’t push six, would you at least move so I can push it?”

“Ten.”

She barked.

“Excuse me?”

I said.

“You….. You…. You, little girl, you push 10 and you push it RIGHT NOW.”

At first, I thought there might be something wrong with her. I mean really – I hardly qualify as little. But she was waving her bony, rock-candy ensconced hands in my face with such fervor, I knew she was completely capable of pushing the buttons herself.

It’s times like this when I think of my personal Yoda, Mark Amtower (for whom the 7-second delay on TV was invented). Amtower (@amtower on Twitter), as he’s so affectionately called, is the author of a book entitled “Why Epiphanies Never Occur to Couch Potatoes“. (www.epiphanybook.com) He has a “law” that says to never take s*&t from anything that breathes. He has another one that says you should never do anything that you can’t tell your Mom about. So there I was…. stuck in the elevator… with Cruella de Vil, wondering how I could whack this wench without a Soprano and not upset my slightly-to-the-left-of-the-salad-fork mother.

Then I had an epiphany. This is EXACTLY what people do on the Internet. I see it all the time in our usability sessions. They just sit there… waiting for the next action to somehow miraculously happen – for a genie to pop out of their Bud bottle.

They find a product they like and never put it in their cart, choosing instead to abandon.

They “view their cart” and never hit the checkout button.

They get to the checkout and can’t be bothered to type in their e-mail address to move past the first page or Step 1 on the temperature bar.

They take one look at a lead/inquiry form and find it so overwhelming, they give up and leave.

It’s astonishing – mind-boggling, in fact. But it happens.
Fortunately, I have several Asian factories working diligently to develop little personal elves that come with your computer to complete routine tasks – like pushing buttons and filling out names. But for now, please consider some of my sure-fire tips below to get people to click on your site.

P.S. As for the chiquita in the elevator, I’d like to say my maturity kicked in – but alas, I had used up my weekly allowance on Officer Not-Very-Friendly the day before. So instead, I just reached over her and pushed six. Not TEN but SIX.

When we got there, I resisted the temptation to hit every button but 10 as I walked out, leaving the Princess of Darkness in the elevator alone to rot. She may still be there. One can only hope…

Speaking of which, I told Mark Amtower about this story and he said “If a tree falls in the woods and nobody is there, does it make a sound? If the San Andreas fault decides to remove Beverly Hills from the continental US, would anyone besides Joan and Melissa Rivers really notice?”

8 Tips For Making Them Click….

1. Use BIG buttons
The bigger the better. (A good rule of thumb is to ask your designer to triple whatever they think is big.)

2. The more, the merrier
Make sure that you have at least one “click here now” or “buy now” button on every view. Not every page, but every view. No, it doesn’t look pretty but it works like gangbusters.

3. Ask only relevant questions
Remember, relevance is in the user’s mind, not yours, so ask only the questions that you absolutely, positively, 200% need answered to get an order or an inquiry. Save the other stuff for later — after the confirmation or a follow-up e-mail survey, for example. Questions like “Where did you hear about us?” and “What is your catalog code?” (unless they are getting a deal because of it), have been proven over and over to irritate users, making them delay or abandon their orders.

4. Use temperature bars
Granted, they look tacky but they work. Any (and every!) time, you have more than one step (meaning more than one page of stuff to go through), put a temperature bar on the top so that the user has a gauge for what it will take to finish the process.

5. Showcase a PC (perpetual cart) in every view you possibly can
Put PC’s in the upper right-hand corner, the right-hand column and the bottom corner. If you aren’t selling anything and don’t need a perpetual cart, use a perpetual inquiry box for signing up for your free e-mail/newsletter, asking for a quote, registering for a podcast or webinar, and so on. It keeps the user focused on what they’re supposed to do on your site.

6. Be clear
If I click on Catalog Quick Order, do I get a catalog or do I order from my catalog? “Ordering from a catalog? Click here now!” is so much clearer especially when you put a picture of a catalog nearby.

7. Use timed pop-ups or live help
I haven’t always been the biggest fan of live help because most of it is done so poorly, but if you do it well, consider “hovering.” Hovering is the process where you watch how long people are spending on a particular page (it works incredibly well in cart and search functions.) If you sense that they are struggling, you start a dialogue with them in a friendly, non-big-brother way. If you don’t have live chat, use a “Can We Help?” pop-up.

8. Display your phone number at least 100 times per page
Ok, so I pulled the 100 number out of my hat but I figure if I say “100”, you might do it 10 – which is just about the right number. If you offer click-to-call, you still need to include your phone number.

Absolutes: E-Commerce "Must" Measures

10:21 pm by Amy Leave a Comment

Elizabeth Smythe says: “What is an absolute? You said we’re supposed to use them but how can I if I don’t even know what they are or where to find mine?”

Oh Elizabeth, there are so many snarky replies I’d like to give you but alas, this is a serious subject that deserves a serious answer.
Here’s the thing…. Users want Web sites to be like grocery stores: It doesn’t matter which supermarket you go to in the U.S. — whether it’s a Piggly-Wiggly in South Carolina, Safeway in Seattle or Shop ’n Save in Maine — you know the milk will be near the eggs, flour close to the sugar and the bananas in the vicinity of the apples. You don’t expect ice cream in the dog food aisle or pickles sandwiched between puppy chow and cat litter.
A typical grocery store is full of absolutes. Same with a Wal-Mart, a Starbucks, a Jiffy Lube, an L.L. Bean catalog or Amazon.com.
There are things that work and things that don’t. There’s not a cataloger in the world who’ll tell you the cover isn’t a hot spot. Nor is there an intelligent Web marketer who’ll deny there’s a magic formula for the perfect checkout. The Web world is full of absolutes (best practices and must-haves.) You don’t have to like them, but for the sake of your online business, you should know them.
How Do I Learn the Absolutes? First, look closely at your stats. There’s no better way to find out what your users like and don’t like about your site than to look closely at your data.
Second, sites like MarketingSherpa.com, WilsonWeb.com and MarketingProfs.colm, or the blog at FutureNowInc.com, have many case studies and ideas about what’s working online. Look to them regularly to find out what others are testing; apply what’s applicable to your business.
Where do you start? There are so many things to look at that many folks simply get overwhelmed and postpone the analysis until a later date. Try these:
1. Abandoned Web shopping carts or forms. Find the percentage of people who start your online order-taking process and then abandon it. Look closely at the step where they’re leaving.
2. How many people are adopting to a cart (or a form) as a percentage? Very few look at this, yet it’s one of the most helpful pieces of data there is. If not enough people put stuff in their carts, you may have a pipeline problem. These days, most companies get more than enough traffic; they just don’t know how to effectively convert it.
3. Look at your conversions as a whole. It floors me how many people still think they take the number of visitors, subtract the percentage of abandons and then get their conversion rates. The only conversion number that represents is, well, breathing.
Look at each level of conversion: How many people request a catalog? How many people sign up for your e-mail? How many people convert on an order? And so on. Every action on your site should have its own conversion level. “Ordering from a Catalog?” traffic should have a much higher conversion than, say, someone coming from a MySpace blog posting.
4. Days to sale. How many of your users are repeat visitors, and how long does it take for them to come back? Figure out those numbers and your thrust and trigger e-mail programs will go through the roof. How so? It’s been repeatedly proven that there’s a direct correlation between the number of days it takes a user to make a sale and the amount of contacts they received during that period.
5. Bounce rate. How many visitors come to your site and leave immediately? In other words, what percentage of people coming to your site are completely useless to you and/or don’t see what they’re looking for on the initial entry page?
Three of the best absolutes in this business come from knowing how much traffic you’re getting, what percentage of it’s direct/no-referrer traffic (as opposed to coming from affiliates and search engines) and how much of that traffic is sticking.
6. Active average user session. Most statistical packages don’t have this number, so you have to calculate it on your own. Average user session is the average length of time that people stay on your site. An active average user session is the length of time that people stay on your site in an active capacity. You figure it out by taking the average user session and dividing it by the number of drills.
If people spend 10 minutes on your site and look at 120 pages, that means they’re looking at each page for about five seconds, which is a great indication of a severe navigational problem.
Despite what all those touchy-feely types tell you, the internet is not pink. Nor is it gray. It’s pure black and white. And the more black(read: rules and structure) you have in your Web business, the more black you’ll have on your bottom line.

Dead Ends: Web Pages Without Pictures

3:41 am by Amy Leave a Comment

Kerry Wall says: “My colleague just came back from your seminar in AZ and informed us that we Havelock too many split-ends on our site. Huh?”

Kerry, “huh” is right.
Not sure exactly what a split-end is from a web perspective but I do know that I spent some time discussing “dead ends.” Considering your colleague’s, er, fanciful attention span (read: that of a flea) and your site, I think she was probably referring to DEAD ENDS.
Users see things in pictures, not in text. So, when your page doesn’t have any sort of photo, graphic, or visual, it’s a dead-end.
SEO’s (THEY ALL MUST DIE!) often destroy websites, like yours, by adding pages and pages of random, non-sensical text; linking to everything under the sun; taking away all the navigation because they say it’s not useful (to whom? Rat finks.); and committing other such atrocities.
If you have a good SEO (one of the three on the planet), their strategies will work TO BRING IN TRAFFIC.
Unfortunately, the boatloads of traffic don’t necessarily equate to anything but, well, traffic.
If you want sales — you know, MONEY — your site needs to have just the right balance of all the stuff your SEO wants AND more important (yes, I said MORE important), all the stuff that the user wants.
What does that mean exactly?

Users see things as views, not as pages. So, when you’re SELLING* something, EVERY view needs its own picture/graphic AS WELL AS the relevant next action buttons. (Yes, buttons NOT just links.)
After the first page of your site, the user typically looks down the middle of the page to make their decisions. It’s critical to have photos/graphics in this area.
If you have an ecommerce site, multiple visuals really do make quite a bit of difference. Look at an eBags product page for a good example of how to use multiple visuals. (By the way, the whole zoom-in-zoom-out thing does not count as a multiple visual.) If you don’t have an ecommerce site, do you still need pictures? I am afraid so. (Yes, I know. It’s not easy.)

By the way, feed that girl a cookie. She might be a little nicer if she actually ate this novel thing called FOOD every so often.
* Everyone SELLS something online. Even if you are collecting e-mail addresses, getting someone to sign-up for a podcast, or gathering information for a quote/RFP. The reason why it’s all SELLING is because there is a market value to every transaction that occurs online. If you want my e-mail address, you have to give me something of value in return. Even if no money changes hands, it’s still a “sale” from the user’s perspective.

The Hot Dog Epiphany

2:02 pm by Amy 3 Comments

My nephew turns three today. (Happy birthday child-who-cannot-be-named-because-my-brother-is-a-conspiracy-theorist.)

Yesterday was his birthday party.
I took Anonymous and his younger brother (also nameless) out for lunch so that his parents could get ready for the party. (These days, birthday parties require event planners, the purchase of small countries, private planes to jet everyone there and back and so on…)
The littlest one (we’ll call him 2.0) is 11 months. I’ve never seen a faster kid in my entire life. He thinks he is some sort of Ethiopian sprinter and he really is one of those kids that should have a leash. (I refrain from comment.)
2.0 prefers cougars. No, not the animals, older women.
So, as I was busy watching him chase around two adorable eight year olds, his older brother (we’ll call him THE ONE, as he’s jealous enough of his younger brother without me implying that 2.0 is a newer, better version) wandered over to another table. I could see him out of the corner of my eye, watching something very intently.
“Excuse me,” he said. (No, that is not an embellishment; the kid has better manners than half the men I’ve dated.) “WHY ARE YOU EATING YOUR HOT DOGS LIKE THAT?” (By the way he enunciated “LIKE THAT”; I could tell he was irritated for some reason.)
The three kids (all under age 5) looked at THE ONE in amazement.
I rapidly scooped 2.0 up (he, of course, responded with screams that would scare off a serial killer) and went over to the table to get THE ONE. (I don’t have my own kids so all you parents out there who think this is easy, you know what you can do and where you can go.) THE ONE continued explaining to the other children that you did not have to eat a hot dog with a fork because well, you could eat it in its “house” (the bun.) THE ONE is incredibly precocious and very wise for his age – and unfortunately, he also has the Africa temper (read: 0 to 60 rage level in 2.2 seconds) and patience (read: none whatsoever.) So, not only was he annoyed that the kids were not eating the hot dog properly but he was also APALLED that they were not using liquid gold (otherwise known as ketchup).
The family was amused by THE ONE. The kids were laughing and the parents smiling. (If I was THE ONE’s parent, I probably would have been embarrassed but alas, I am the aunt and I love the fact that THE ONE is not shy and speaks his mind.)
THE ONE is much like my brother (it must be genetics) in that when he thinks that someone doesn’t understand him, he speaks louder. As if that helps.
And those kids definitely didn’t understand him as they didn’t speak a lick (as in NOT one word) of English. (The entire family is Japanese. They are here on vacation for two weeks and through lots of hand signals in a subsequent, er, conversation, I learned their interpreter was sick so they had ventured out on their own. That, in itself, will be the subject of a different post. And no, I have no idea how they ended up with hot dogs in the first place.)
Finally, in desperation, my nephew picked up the youngest girl’s hot dog in its “house” and showed her exactly how to eat it by taking a large bite of it. (Insert mock horror here.)
The kids all looked like they had seen a miracle right before their very eyes, took one look at their parents, didn’t wait a nanosecond for their approval, put down their forks and started eating the hot dogs with their hands. You know, the way a hot dog should be eaten.
Hmmmm… SHOULD BE EATEN. SHOULD BE DONE. Kind of loaded statements, don’t you think? Is there really a right way to eat a hot dog? An ice cream cone?
And what, praytell, does this silly hot dog story have to do with web marketing?
Simple.
One of the biggest misconceptions that web marketers make is that they think everyone behaves just like them online.
NEWSFLASH: They don’t. (Technically, we don’t even behave like we say we do when it comes to online stuff.)
Just because you use the back button doesn’t mean that everyone does. What happens when you’re at a place that doesn’t allow caching? Some workplaces or a library, for example. What happens when you learned to use the internet on a browser/service where back buttons didn’t work or were disabled for security reasons?
Last month, I was in London with one of the most successful mail order CEO’s in Europe. The guy is brilliant (in the US and the UK sense of the word.) But I constantly wanted to smack him. Why? Because every time I told him to go to a specific URL, he’d use the search engine to find it. So, instead of going to landsend.com, he’d go to Google, type in landsend.com, see the listing and then click on it. Good Lord. What a waste of flipping time.
Did you know that statistically over half the population does exactly what he does?
My dear friend, Grace Cohen, always says “you don’t know what you don’t know.” Like the kids who didn’t know that eating a hot dog with a fork is downright silly, your users don’t know what to do on your site, unless you make it LOUD and CLEAR.

From a user’s perspective, if you do not see it, it does not exist.

That’s important, so please let me repeat it: “from a user’s perspective, if you do not see it, it does not exist.” If it’s important and you want your users to do or see it, you need to ask or show it. This applies to everything from getting them to sign up for a FREE newsletter to your navigation.
I was going to end this post with something pithy like “get your buns in gear” but honestly, this is far too serious to make “you need to Ketchup” comments.
So, please…. As Tom Ziter says, put your dumb hat on and go to your site and see what you can do to improve it. Here are a couple good places to start:

Use a Recently Viewed box in the righthand column of your site.

If you sell stuff online, list recently viewed items (look at www.sweetenergy.com, for an example.) If you don’t, you can use recently viewed searches, pages, and so on. Recently Viewed is a great way for users to “backtrack” without having to use the text search box. (A huge place of abandonment.)

Put HOME in your top and bottom navigation.

No, EVERYONE does not know that you can click on a logo and get home. Period. End of story. Yes, I know it’s ugly and not cool. Deal with it.

Beef up your meta descriptions (and make them aggressive!)

No, I really don’t care that your SEO told you that they don’t count. Even if they don’t count from an optimization perspective, they do count from a user perspective. The meta description is YOUR elevator pitch and more people read and use it than you might imagine.

Take a close look at your navigation.

Make sure that everything you want to be found for is listed and crystal clear. (Check out my trash-y post here now as well.) If your customer wants an iPod, are they really going to look under MP3 players? Hot diggity dog! That answer is “no!”

You Might Be A Webneck

12:02 pm by Amy Leave a Comment

“HE HATES YOU!”

“Good morning to you.” I replied.
It was 4:08 am PST and I was about as interested in hearing about yet another person who despises me as I was in doing fireball crunches on the Bosu Trainer. (Read: I would rather have had root canal without anesthesia through my belly button.)
“How could you recommend him? This is a huge project. MILLIONS OF DOLLARS. CRITICAL to our success… ” The voice from the other line continued yapping.
I switched to side plank splits while the voice droned on and on about my recommendation; what was I thinking; yadda, yadda, yadda.
“He blogged that you were a bully, Amy. Jennifer said that you recommended him for that conference when they wanted someone to vouch for him other than the Wizard, whose recommendations are suspicious at best I might add, and then he blogs that you are a bully and that people should have walked out of your session.”
“He doesn’t like me or my style.” I said. “But he’s the right consultant for you. The guy is unbelievably smart and he has experience with big retailers like you. I have seen his work. I have reviewed his work for clients. He is 200% the right person for this job.”
The speaker phone reverberated with more muffled comments about why I’d push someone who obviously didn’t enjoy me. I was obviously not adequately preparing for my early onset dementia.
“Look…” I said, as sweetly as a girl with a Hitleresque, bully personality can muster. “I am not inviting him to my wedding – I am suggesting that he…”
And then it finally came. The same words I hear every time I recommend {insert name of marketing consultant here – we’ll call him Ronald for the time being.}
“He doesn’t believe in best practices. He thinks they’re evil.”
Ahhh, the best practices statement. I swear, I should have a prerecorded message I can play every time I hear that. I’ve figured that it’d save me at least two hundred hours a year to not discuss it.
“Are you kidding?” I shot back. “Ronald certainly does believe in best practices. He tells people where the online marketing hotbeds are – do you think everyone in a specific state is a good online customer? I mean really. He has plenty of best practices. He just doesn’t happen to like mine, or me, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t use him. There are a lot of people who hate best practices, some folks hate them because they have semantics issues and others just hate them because, well, they don’t know them.”
I stopped my swingkicks to focus on the discussion. (Not to mention I was extremely out of breath.) “You can learn something from almost everyone in this industry. We all have different experiences and expertise. I really believe in best practices. I think it’s helpful for folks to have a benchmark of what’s out there. I don’t call them perfect practices and I don’t call them made-for-everyone practices, more of solid-place-to-start practices.”
The other end of the phone was silent, allowing me to continue on my soapbox.
“Here’s the thing. I didn’t appreciate Ronald’s blatant disregard of best practices till I spoke with Bill LaPierre of the Millard Group. (For those of you who don’t know Bill LaPierre, he is a genius. Unbelievably good at what he does. Cantakerous as all get out, but VERY bright.) He told me that he has clients that still ask for mail date studies so they can plan their mailings. Can you believe it? Bunch of lazy, crack smoking copycats!
For the love of all things holy, if I tell people in my seminars that it’s best not to e-mail people first thing in the morning because e-mails that are in your inbox first thing in the morning are twelve times more likely to be deleted than those that arrive just before lunchtime, it’s a good tip for most people in the room. However, if you sell to plant managers who work third shift, it’s not. In fact, it would be terrible not to mail them in the early morning because about eighty minutes before you leave work is one of the few “hot times” during the day. (When people want a distraction, their e-mail box is an excellent place to start.) Anyone who listens to people like me preach about best practices needs to take what they know about their business and apply it to what I am saying. If it’s not a good practice for you or your customer, and you apply it anyway, well, you might be a webneck.”
“A webneck? What on earth (sic) is a webneck? Is this a term you’ve coined for someone who doesn’t think you’re a goddess?” Laughter followed on the other line. Some people really crack themselves up, I thought, and it’s usually the least funny ones.
“You’ve never seen Jeff Foxworthy?” I replied somewhat incredulously. “The guy who says that if you think the last words to the Star Spangled Banner are ‘gentleman start your engines’ you might be a redneck?”
More guffaws. Not sure if it was the joke or my faux Southern accent. Bless my Yankee heart, it’s horrific. I just don’t have enough Sweet Tea in my blood, I guess.
“I can’t believe you’ve never heard of him.” I said. He has a whole line of Redneck jokes. You might be a redneck if you… think Taco Bell is a Mexican Phone Company; if your Dad walks you to school because you’re both in the same grade; if your Dad’s cell number has nothing to do with a phone; if you ever stared at a can of orange juice because it said concentrate; if you go to the family reunion to meet women; if you think a quarter-horse is that ride in front of Kmart; and so on. Anyway, a webneck is like a redneck but it’s of the web. Someone who refers to fifth grade as their ‘senior year’ of the web, if you know what I mean.”
“Webneck.” The voice replied. “No wonder Ronald doesn’t like you. Probably scared to death that you’re going to show up at one of your conferences with a sawed off shotgun and start shooting people who don’t follow your orders.”
“Naw, a shotgun is too big. I pack a Smith and Wesson .500 magnum and I may just have to use it if you don’t call Ronald today. I’ve got to run, I’m headed to yoga. Bikram for Bullies, they call it.”

ARE YOU A WEBNECK? YOU JUST MIGHT BE…

If you only e-mail once a week because you “hate e-mail”… and therefore assume your users hate it too, you might be a webneck. If your unsubscribe and/or blocked rate skyrockets, you are mailing too much or you are sending irrelevant things. Let your users decide how much they want to hear from you.
If you are too lazy to develop proper C-Navigation (top, left and bottom navigation and a strong righthand column) and just “let your text search handle it”, you might be a webneck. Text searchers have the second highest propensity to buy among all your visitors. Unfortunately, they also have some of the highest exit rates as even if you have it (which there’s an 80% plus chance that you do) users often have a difficult time figuring how to say/spell exactly what they want. A solid “C” takes a lot of emphasis off the text search.
If you aren’t looking at your top ten exit pages every single week and figuring out how to change/better them, you might be a webneck. Failed or successful text search = not an acceptable exit page. Acceptable exit pages = checkout or lead form confirmations.
If you haven’t recently tested or don’t use entrance and/or exit pop-ups because “everyone in the world has a pop-up blocker”, you might be a webneck. Yes, it is a small world but it only takes a small percentage of success for stuff like that to pay.
If you aren’t using P/S (problem/solution navigation) on your site because it’s, well, just too difficult, you might be a webneck. Problem/solution is drop-down navigation that allows your users to shop based on a dish, not an ingredient. See www.greatgardenplants.com for their shop by zone or www.demco.com for their “I need help with….” P/S.
If you are proud of your 11% abandoned cart rate, you might be a webneck. If your abandoned cart rate is lower than fifty percent, it’s more than likely that you are not getting enough ATC (adoption to cart.) In other words, you probably need to be more aggressive about getting people to put stuff into their baskets; using perpetual carts (carts that stay with you at all times); buy now/add to cart buttons; and so on.
If you really, truly, honestly think that someone who abandons a cart or a lead form (if you are not an ecommerce site) will come back on their own, you might be a webneck. You get what you ask for on the web. If you want them to come back, use a solid trigger e-mail program (five or more e-mails); pops on exit; and perhaps even outbound telemarketing.
If you aren’t asking for e-mail addresses at the top of every page, you might be a webneck. Burying your e-mail capture at the bottom of your pages in the middle column is one of the worst online mistakes you can make and one of the easiest to fix. Speaking of which, the more you ask for it, the more you get it. That applies to almost everything on your website.
If you are not using plugs (non-animated banners) in your righthand column, you might be a webneck. Plugs entice people to drill deeper into your site. They’re like mini-advertisements for the stuff you promote/sell. They are very effective tools to increase page views, drills, user session, sales, conversion, and so on. Sure, they make your boring-and-filled-with-white-space site a bit cluttered but what’s a little ugly for a lot of sales?
If you don’t put your top products or services above the fold, you might be a webneck. Web designers look at things in pages. Users see each screen as its own page. That means every view is a page. Considering you can’t count on everyone to scroll, you need to make sure your message is very apparent in the first view.
If you can defend a less-than-two minute average user session, you might be a webneck. C’mon folks, which sites can you place an order on, besides Amazon with one-click, in under two minutes? I mean really. The more they stay, the more they pay.
If you think your somewhere-around-fifty-percent bounce rate is acceptable, you might be a webneck. Yes, an acceptable bounce rate should be determined based on the referring URL so there is no average “magic number” but we all know that it wouldn’t be acceptable to have half the people who come to your site leave immediately. Most of us wouldn’t accept a quarter either.
If you don’t leave your cookies open indefinitely, you might be a webneck. Yes, indefinitely means forever which is a very long time.
You also might be a webneck, if you’re not using www.eightbyeight.com. Wait, you’re definitely a webneck if you’re not at least doing that.

Diamonds with an “e”

10:00 pm by Amy 1 Comment

A couple months ago, I was sitting in the airport with one of my closest friends waiting to go to Los Angeles. I hate LA with a passion. It’s dirty, it’s ugly and nobody understands my flipping English.

Needless to say, I was grumpy at the concept of spending five days there and “Paul” (named changed to protect the guilty) was doing nothing to improve my mood.

You see, Paul plays poker for a living. He’s made quite the name for himself, playing online, in tournaments and in cash games. And, although I TRIPLE LOVE the guy, all this celebrity has gone to his head. He’s more spoiled than all the evil children in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory combined. He knows it and he gets away with it – “just ‘cuz.”

Bottom line — he hadn’t brought his computer because it was “too much to carry” and “he could always use mine anyway.” Not exactly the best news to tell someone whose life revolves around her Dell Inspiron laptop.

Needless to say, after spending an extra hour in airport security (they only allow so many “bricks” of cash and Paul had “mistakenly” exceeded the limit) and subsequently missing our plane, Paul knew he was in the dog house.

“Baby, I want to buy you something nice.” (Please note: “baby” is used for any female from 9 months to 90 years old. It’s one of those terms like sick, kick it, chill, rage, muah, and suck out that I can’t possibly begin to explain here… or there… or anywhere….)

Secretly, I thought, “if you want to buy something, buy your own damn computer” but instead I pouted…. “I don’t want anything nice.”

“Ok, I will buy you something not nice then.” he retorted with a devilish grin.

Terrified at that particular prospect, I glanced at the search box. Waiting, waiting, waiting, until I finally saw him type in “diamondes”. Yes, with an “e”.

Here’s a guy who makes over $9 million a year in cash… not to mention all the bazillions of dollars worth of swag (free stuff) he gets, and he is spelling diamonds with an “e”? Nice. Very nice.

Now, to put this in perspective, the last time Paul had used my computer, he went to get something to drink. When he came back, the computer screen was black. Knowing that he would be attending his own funeral if he had broken my computer, he asked “Um yeah, what’s wrong with the screen?”

Not looking up, I said “It’s sleeping.”

“WOW!” he exclaimed “I worked it so hard (playing online poker) that it needed to take a nap? I guess I need to give it a rest! Maybe I’ll take a little nappy-nap myself”, as he pounced like Tigger off into the bedroom. (And no, I could not possibly make these stories up.)

Ahhh Paul…. Diamonds with an “e”. Frankly, any diamond is good to me as long as it’s genuine and sized like rock candy, but really, how could he NOT know how to spell it? I mean, not only had he attended college, but he had actually graduated from it and it wasn’t one of those $39.95 online degrees from the Phillippines either.

And then I remembered that this is what happens when boys sit down at the computer and try to use the text search.

From a usability perspective, women and men search very differently. I hate to say it, girls, but women are the world’s worst at searching. Why? For many reasons, but mostly because we use lots of adjectives and qualifiers in our searches. We use them to “help out the computer”, but in the end, they are of no benefit to us or the man behind the machine.

Women search for things like “big old dining room table to seat eight at Thanksgiving” or “gift to give at a baby shower for my niece who is turning 23”. I have 200% confidence that at some point we’ll be able to search like that, but right now, the technology just isn’t sophisticated enough. When a woman searches for “pretty blue dress size 6 to wear to the Kentucky Derby” she’s going to get over 117,000 “successful” finds on Google, most of which have to do with horse junk and very few that have anything to do with apparel.

Men are much different. They think like computers, so of course, they search like computers. Men are much better than woman at knowing the exact right thing to search for. They’ll type in blue dress. However, stereotypically, they’ll also misspell it or it will be riddled with typos or unnecessary punctuation. Men tend to smush words together like “bluedress” or they’ll add random periods as in “blue.dress.” They also tend to stop typing whenever they feel like it — so “supermarket” could become “superma” at any time. (You know when Google says “Did you mean …?” That’s for the boys in the room.)

Eight ways to improve your text search… knowing full-well that you’ll never be able to please everyone.

1. Develop and implement a thesaurus, a dictionary and a list of commonly misspelled words. And, yes, I realize that this is a simple tip but statistically less than a quarter of the companies actually do it.

2. Make sure you have proper C-Navigation. A lot of times people use the text search because they can’t find what they are looking for in the navigation. That’s why it’s important to use things like tabbed top navigation and solid left and bottom nav, too.

3. Offer problem/solution navigation. Problem/solution navigation takes the pressure off the text search because it offers the user an alternative way to search besides an index. For example, Garden’s Alive has two P/S drop-downs in the top navigation. One says “What pests do you want to control today?” and the other one says “What do you want to accomplish today?” Fiorella’s Jack Stack BBQ also has two choices. One is “How many are you feeding?” and the other is “What are you hungry for?” Both companies give you a drop-down list of the most popular choices. VERY effective technique because you don’t have to worry about poor spelling or estrogen!

4. Track the words people are using to search within your site. At the end of every week, dump them into an Excel spreadsheet and make sure all of the important words get fed back into your database or content management system. You should also make sure that all of the words that people are using to find you in search engines are well represented on your site and in your search. (Not doing this is one of the biggest mistakes companies make.)

5. Tell people what they can search for in the search box. For example, if someone can search for item numbers, please make sure to tell them. Offline users tend not to understand this, so they’ll use your descriptions instead of the product numbers. Product numbers get you almost 70% successful searches, while descriptions get you about a quarter of that.

6. If a search fails, offer the user tips on searching, a new search box and a list of five items that they should purchase or view. Text searches account for a huge percentage of abandons and one of the primary reasons is because the no-results-found page is a dead end (meaning the user isn’t able to go any further).

7. Develop an abandoned search program. Send cookied users a personal email that says “We’re sorry you couldn’t find what you were looking for. Here are some other suggestions….” Very few people are doing this and it’s working like gangbusters. Sending failed searches to telemarketing is also working VERY well. It’s a proven fact that people who search have the second highest propensity to buy.

8. If all else fails, get a good search package. Endeca, Mercado, these days there are dozens to choose from.

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