Amy Africa's QLOG

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Trigger E-Mails

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Jessica Kelley says: “I finally figured out thrust e-mails and now you are talking about triggers. H-E-L-L-O Amy Africa. You are not nice.”

Jessica.  Jessica.  Jessica.  Haven’t you ever watched Jeopardy?  That was not properly phrased as a question.  (And if the question was about me being “not nice”, well, we have even bigger issues.)

Perhaps what you meant to ask was “what are trigger e-mails?” because EVERYONE is talking about them.  (Ok, that’s a lie, very few people are talking about them and even fewer people are doing them which is a complete shame because they are unequivocally one of the easiest things you can do to improve your site TODAY, without spending a lot of money.  But I digress…)

Trigger e-mails, also called “good dog e-mails” are sent to individuals, based on actions.  (On the flip side, thrust e-mails are deployed to everyone and their brother based on YOUR whim/fancy/schedule.)

The action could be good (thanking them for an order); bad (an abandoned cart or search form) or indifferent (confirming a vote in a poll.)  But it’s always a happening, event or instance.

Triggers are successful because they typically have higher response rates, better deliverability and improved lifetime profit.
If you’re interested in triggers, keep coming back to this section for more info.  Triggers are one of my all-time favorite things to do online and we’re going to spend a ton of time on them.

8 Sure-Fire Tips To Increase Conversion Without Breaking the Bank

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Facebook? Twitter? FriendFeed? Utterz? Social networking is all the rage. Everyone seems to want to know more about Web 2.0. That’s especially unfortunate for traditional catalogers and direct marketers whose sites are still at Web .05

Here are the reasons:

  • These days, most businesses get more than enough Web traffic.
  • They just don’t know how to convert it effectively.
  • And to mask their inability to actually enable people to easily add stuff to their carts and check out seamlessly, these companies send more and more traffic to flawed sites. Short term, it can be a great idea. Long term, it’s destined to fail.

So what can you do to convert traffic without breaking the bank? Here are eight of the best tactics:

1. Employ a perpetual cart.

A perpetual cart stays with customers throughout the buying process. It consists of a cart icon, the number of items they have in their carts as well as the dollar amounts. If you have a good perpetual cart, you’ll have a tagline that says “100% secure shopping guaranteed.” If you have a great perpetual cart, you’ll have links to view cart, save cart, print cart and e-mail cart. If you have a fantastic perpetual cart, a big, red “CHECKOUT NOW” button will pop up when there are items in it.

Perpetual carts typically work best in the upper right-hand corner of a Web site. However, the truth is the more perpetual carts, the better. The highest-converting sites use a second cart in the right-hand column — near the hot spot, which is where users scroll down — and one in the bottom navigation. Some sites are even featuring a perpetual cart in a fourth spot: the middle of the left-hand navigation.

2. Use several add-to-cart/buy-now buttons on each product page.

Many sites have one buy-now/add-to-cart button per page. Often, it’s not on the first view; you need to scroll down to see it. Users see each screen view as its own page, so usually the more buy-now buttons, the better. In fact, some of the best sites have eight to twelve buy-now buttons per page.

Do you have a complicated product with color, size and delivery choices? If so, still use as many buy-now buttons as you can — when customers click the button, jump right to a central place where they can make their selections.

3. Use multiple visuals.

Search engines read text, but users see visuals. So the more pictures the better. Be careful, though: More pictures doesn’t just mean one of those fancy-schmancy viewers to see things in a perfect 360 degrees. It means using silo shots, lifestyle pictures, spilled tiers and more.

4. Empower user reviews.

Web 2.0 gets credited with user reviews, but they’ve been around since the beginning. The good news is they’re easier than ever to implement. If you want to show reviews but can’t do them right away, use testimonials and/or pictures of your customers throughout the site.

5. Look closely at referring URLs.

Referring URLs show what sites users visited before they got to your site — this can often have the biggest impact on conversion. If, for example, you know someone is coming from an affiliate program, not a catalog, bury (or hide altogether) all your Ordering From a Catalog? (aka Quick Order) information.

It’s valuable space you can use for something that better serves the user.

This works in reverse, too. If a customer is coming in directly with no referrer, or on a specific catalog URL, make sure something says, “Ordering from a Catalog” in the top navigation, left-hand navigation and bottom navigation.

Have a large plug (namely, a nonanimated banner) in the right-hand column, complete with a picture of your current catalog to go along with it.

6. Personalize your site.

This is yet another thing credited to Web 2.0 that’s been around since before Al Gore invented the Internet. Personalizing users’ experiences based on who they are or what they do works almost every time.

The biggest fallacy of implementing a dynamically personalized site is that you have to do everything all at once. You don’t. If you can’t offer a sidebar with what you think users should buy based on their past or intended behaviors, it’s OK. Try something simple, like welcoming customers back in the middle column. It’s OK to start small; just keep adding as you see it working.

7. Offer a recently viewed items box in the site’s right-hand column.

This sounds-too-simple-to-work idea is one of the best things you can do on a shoestring budget. It gives users an easy, at-a-glance way to figure out what they’ve seen in case they want to go back to it. That’s especially good for the more than 92 percent of adult users who aren’t great at searching.

8. Employ the perfect checkout.

Don’t reinvent the wheel. Dozens of companies have spent millions of dollars figuring out what works and what doesn’t when it comes to carts. Steal from them liberally.

Puttin’ Spanx on a Sidewinder!

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Beach

“That’s a Birkin Bag! Ohmigod, you have a Birkin bag!” She shrieked…Her nails-on-a-chalkboard voice interrupting my ever-so-peaceful slumber. “An Hermes Birkin Bag. You have an Hermes Birkin Bag… at the beach no less! How on earth did you get it?”

I pretended to be dead.

In a high-pitched shrill that only a dolphin could understand, she droned on and on about movie stars and waiting lists and other things I had absolutely no interest whatsoever in.

I was doing my best to ignore her. Focusing on my deep yoga breathing (in from the core, out through the nose) while simultaneously writing a note to Bose in my head. (Dear Bose, I would like a refund for my noise-canceling headphones immediately. They obviously are defective or you are guilty of VERY false advertising.)

She continued assessing my belongings in a most officious manner. “Prada sunglasses… A Chanel bathing suit… A Louis Vuitton beach towel…. That cover-up? What is it? Looks like Dolce…” I thought for a second I should tell her it was Cavalli but I didn’t have the heart. Obviously she was taking her prospective job interview at Sotheby’s very seriously.

Despite my repeated (and most earnest) pleas to the mythological Gods of the Ocean, this woman wasn’t going to leave till I acknowledged her. Little did she know, I had no plans to do so. I tried to focus on the waves (read: summon things that could come out of the ocean to bite her.)

“All those nice, expensive things and your website sucks.”

I burst out laughing. That did it. She won.

I sat up and stared at her intently trying to place her. I had no earthly idea who she was.

“How exactly do you know what my website looks like?” I asked.

“My husband. You helped him build his business. OUR business. He goes on and on about you like you are some sort of saint so I finally looked you up last night. Your eightbyeight.com site? It’s very ugly.”

I smiled, imagining what she would have thought of it before we redesigned it a couple months ago. She probably would have had a heart attack. I instantly regretted moving to the new site.

She prattled on in her perky bimbelina sort of fashion. “You obviously have some taste, even though it’s disrespectful to bring that kind of bag to the beach. And I should be thanking you, I guess…. Maybe… But last night when my husband went out to his game…”

Ahhh… Finally… The lightbulb went off in my head… Yes, her husband. Founder of one of the most successful e-commerce companies in the last decade and one of my poker buddies. (I use the word “buddies” for everyone who gives me money!)

“If I didn’t know any better, I’d think he had a thing for you but he only likes skinny, voluptuous blondes, three things you’re not.” She covered her mouth as if she was horrified by her oh-so-intentional comment.

It took everything I had to resist the temptation… If her husband preferred Barbie Dolls, he may have spent less time eyeing the Asian cocktail waitress and not have lost his shirt at the card table the night before. But I didn’t say anything. (In consulting, this is what we call client confidentiality.)

On and on she went like the Energizer bunny. “So it really must be that your stuff works. I mean our sites are much prettier than yours, but they’re not at all as nice as they’d be if YOU weren’t involved.” She sniped in a rather accusing tone.

Good Lord. Did this woman have an on/off switch behind her neck that I could grab hold of?

While I plotted plotting her imminent demise (burying her alive in the sand would be a public service, right?), she plopped down on my towel as if we were best buddies. (Note to self: Adjust our contract to say that client relations don’t extend to their spouses. Oh, and double our rates to a very specific client for his oh-so-bothersome wife.)

“So, tell me, why does your site look like the way it does? Don’t you care at all about your brand?”

And there it was. The infamous branding question. The one that we get asked day in and day out.

The query I had traveled thousands of miles to avoid even for just a couple days…

You know, the one that sends me over the edge every single time.

It would have been easier to explain to her the meaning of life. In fact, it would have been simpler to teach this Beachtime Betty about quantum physics.

“I don’t believe in online branding.” I said making sure to slowly enunciate every word just so she wouldn’t miss one.

She started to say something but I interrupted. Nirvana awaited. If I was ever going to get back to tranquility, I was going to have to make this fast. “Offline branding takes time, money or both. Online, most companies have neither. On the off-chance they do have the money, they aren’t necessarily going to have the time but even if they did that’s not what customers care about. They care about finding what they want and buying or obtaining it quickly with as little outside intervention as possible.”

I paused for a moment and then continued. “Sites like Amazon, eBags, and eBay are not necessarily pretty but they work because they meet the user’s base requirements. Most sites today ignore the users and design for the CEO (read: OR his annoying wife) completely ignoring what the users want and need. If you are a good site, you need to design it for the user which means you need a good entry page, solid navigation that works independently of your text search function, a perfect cart and checkout and…”

“But our site….” She interjected.

I cut her off at the pass. “In the big scheme of things, your site isn’t all that pretty either. You are lucky in that you have a gorgeous, multi-dimensional product. Your business is successful because you have an easy-to-use checkout, fantastic delivery and a great e-mail follow-up program that really works. Not to mention that you were also in your market first.” I said in the most condescending tone I could muster hoping that the whole authority position would work.

“If we had less of those boring words….”

In the South, they have a saying “it’s harder than putting pantyhose on a snake.” I always wondered who came up with that – sitting on a porch rocker, kicking back a couple Buds, thinking about wrestling Hanes Her Way on some legless viper.

This conversation defined puttin’ Spanx on a Sidewinder and unfortunately, it was far less stimulating.

“Those ‘boring words’ are what gets you most of your traffic. Search engines can’t read pictures. They can only read text. You use those words to get them to crawl your site to give you organic rankings. You know, the free ones, that get you business so you can stay at chi-chi-la-la places like these.” I retorted.

She kicked up some sand with her hoochie-mama-red toes. “Well, I guess it’s not my site that I am worried about anyway, it’s yours. I mean, you are our consultant after all and we are a company that needs to be cautious about the company we keep.”

I would have laughed in her face except she was so darn serious.

“I agree.” I said. “The eightbyeight.com site is not at all what I wanted.”

She looked like she had won the sweepstakes. (Correction: she won the lottery when she got married. She looked like she had won the Miss Universe Pageant or something of equal importance.)

“I wanted Flash, all sorts of animation and long-form video. But we read our stats and that’s not our customer base. People come to our site for information and we deliver it the best way we know how. It’s not perfect but it has a lot of tips and techniques you can use to build your business which is our brand. Folks don’t come to my conferences because I wear Armani and they certainly don’t see me over and over because I am the most polished speaker (I’m not) with the fanciest PowerPoint presentations. (You’re lucky to get slides.) They come because we have really good information that’s practically guaranteed to improve your business and most of it won’t even cost you a lot of money.”

She remained completely unconvinced.

I desperately wanted my towel back so I thought for a moment and then said, “One of my favorite clients bought me this Birkin Bag after he quadrupled his sales while cutting his online marketing and advertising costs in half in a down market. Do you own one?”

“No, but I wish I did.” She pouted. “Maybe you could talk to my husband while you are here about those nasty abandoner-people we have. He says you know how to make them convert.”

And it was then, and only then, that she truly understood. I guess if you have the right message (which includes the right offer and the right product), it really doesn’t matter what your site looks like.

5 Things Customers Really Do Care About (and not one of them has to do with pretty designs)

1. A solid entry page.
This is a huge determinate of your online success and really sets the tone for your overall site conversion. The rule of thumb for entry pages is to change them based on your user traffic – look at how many days it takes for your user to repeat (in other words, visit your site again) and change your entry page in half that time.

For example, if your typical user repeats in six days, change the page in three. The changes don’t need to be major, they just need to be in the top of the middle and right-hand columns and enough to make the user take notice.

2. Navigation that works.
Navigation is a self-fulfilling prophecy. You get what I give you. If I don’t give it to you, you don’t get it. If you don’t see it, it doesn’t exist.

Users never talk about searching for something, they talk about finding what they want. Three-tiered navigation tends to work best. The top navigation serves as the action bar, the left-hand serves as the index and the bottom is a repeat of the top (primarily for your more sophisticated users.) There’s no such thing as right-hand navigation. Instead the right-hand serves as the “save column” – it’s the last stop a user will look before they leave your site so you need to do everything in your power using plugs (non-animated banners) and “stickies” (recently viewed items, for instance) to get them back into your site.

3. The perfect checkout.
There are many mysteries in life, how to create the ideal checkout is not one of them. There is a magic formula that everyone should follow. It’s a five-step checkout that includes Welcome (an absolute must have), Bill-To, Ship-To, Payment and Delivery Options and the Confirmation. (Your View Cart page is separate from checkout.) After you master it (meaning you know exactly where and when your users abandon), you can move to a single-step checkout but you shouldn’t do it before then.

4. A trigger e-mail program.
All e-mails are not created equally. Trigger e-mails, aka Good Dog e-mails, go out to users after they perform specific actions. They’re typically known for thank you’s and confirmations but there’s a whole level of triggers beyond that for things like abandoned carts, failed searches, site exits, EBOPP’s (e-mails based on past purchases), EBOSI’s (e-mails based on selected interests) and many others. Triggers typically have much better deliverability and drastically-increased conversion than thrusts e-mails.

5. Easy ways to find you.
Technically this shouldn’t have been last, it should have been first because if your users can’t find you all of the above is moot. It goes without saying that you need to be well-ranked in search engines, directories, and alternates (things like price comparison engines). For those of you who are only doing PPC and not worrying at all about the others, you should take a cold, hard look at your traffic driving strategies. Organic rankings are incredibly important and should not be treated like a red-headed stepchild. Same with data feeds.

6. BONUS: Evidence.
Users go online for three reasons: speed (we think it’s faster); self service (we think we can track our packages at fedex.com better than someone who has worked at FedEx for 20 years), and to collect evidence (we want to know that there are other people just like us or who we aspire to be). As internet shopping becomes more and more sophisticated, evidence becomes increasingly important. From a user’s perspective, evidence is user reviews, bestseller’s lists and bursts, polls and surveys, testimonials, lifestyle pictures of people, ask the experts and so on. (Evidence should not be confused with Social Media. Social Media has some evidence-type things but they are different in that “evidence” takes place on your site and your site alone.

Entering the Death Spiral

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I am looking for a house in the Seattle area…

Actually, that’s a lie.
“Looking” would imply that I’m actively doing something and the truth is that I am hoping that the perfect house will just fall from the sky. (No Wicked Witch analogies please. I said Washington, not Kansas.)
A couple weeks ago, I was coming back from a meeting in Bellevue, right outside Seattle. The traffic was horrendous, as it usually is in that area, and the wireless signals were wacky. In an attempt to prevent myself from going into violent convulsions (a symptom of early onset cell and BlackBerry detox), I was arguing with my always-one-step-past-Road-Rage driver, Charles, about the shortest route back to my hotel.
To say I am directionally challenged would be the understatement of the century. I get lost in a paper bag and when I drive myself, the GPS Chiquita constantly barks at me to make “a legal U-Turn when available.” Needless to say, the thought of me giving driving advice to anyone is beyond laughable.
Charles, in his best efforts to distract me, was pointing out various landmarks in the area (In other words, he was reading the signs out loud, s-l-o-w-l-y, as if I needed help with the big words – hospital, Safeway, Wal-Mart, and so on.)
Out of the blue, something caught my eye. Since I could have walked faster than we were driving, I rolled down the window and took a closer look.
Beyond the obviously-newly-planted trees, there was a gorgeous housing complex right on the lake.
I am not much of an apartment-condo-townhouse type person, as I don’t particularly like neighbors or being, well, neighborly. (I am sure that comes as a surprise…) However, these townhomes were picture-perfect right down to their impeccable landscapes and breathtaking lakefront views.
“Pull in there, please.” I said as I pounced out the door, darted like Frogger across the traffic and through the freshly-painted walkways to the property manager’s door.
I burst into the room having mentally already-purchased and moved into one of these fine luxury homes. There was nobody at the reception desk, but I could hear someone speaking in the office behind it so I barged right in and demanded a tour. (Ok, so that is a slight exaggeration, but I am sure that’s the way “Richard”, the manager, would have told the story.)
“Richard” (not Dick, Rick or Rich) reminded me of the hotelier from Pretty Woman. Except he wasn’t very nice. Officious and professional? Yes. Pleasant? Not exactly.
He humored me with a tour of the grounds and the “last four bedrooms available.” I distinctly remember being amused at that piece of information. I mean really, the place was dead and there were only a handful of cars dotting the lot. They surely had more than ONE available.
Richard had obviously been an FBI interrogator in a past life. He went on and on with his questions about my marital status; payment/financing; exactly who’d be living there; and oddly enough, queries about my family, especially my grandfather. He had a seemingly bizarre fascination with my only living grandparent.
As we walked around, I fell in the love with the place. The lake. The trees. The quaint cobblestone walkways dotted liberally with hand-crafted teak benches. The never-touched fitness center. The on-site luxury spa.
As I was decorating my new place in my mind, Snooty-Snooty Richard stopped in his tracks and oh-so-rudely interrupted my thoughts.
“What are your intentions?” he demanded.
“Intentions?” I asked quizzically, convinced that he had tapped into my brain while I was planning my faux murals and knowing for 200% sure that he’d like the walls to remain snowy white.
“Ma’am, this is not a place to find yourself a Sugar Daddy so if that is your dream…”
Before I had time to choke on my own spit (or smack Sir Rude-a-Lot in the face), he continued sternly…
“This is a respectable community and we do not cater to those of your ilk.”
Good Lord.
I honestly had no idea. (And, I mean NO idea whatsoever.)
I had overlooked every clue – from the ten handicapped spaces per parking area (instead of the usual one or two) to the UNBELIEVABLY huge sign on the gates…
You know, the one that said something to the effect of “SENIOR LIVING COMMUNITY.”
I was so caught up in what I was doing and how beautiful my surroundings were that I completely missed all the warning signs that told me that I was in the wrong place – doing the wrong thing at the wrong time with the wrong person. (Yes, I know: STORY OF MY LIFE.)
Richard took one look at me and chuckled.
My shock was genuine and obviously all over my face.
“You didn’t know?” He softened.
I mumbled something about Charles being right. I did need help with big words like hardware store and supermarket, as I obviously couldn’t read them on my own.
I was earnestly trying to buy a house in a community I would not technically be qualified to live in for over twenty years.
And, the truth is that I should have known better.
I see it at least once a week (although lately it’s been happening a lot more frequently.)
Companies come to us for help with stories of sales being down twenty or thirty percent – sometimes even more. They tell us things like “we redesigned our site about nine months ago and it’s been downhill ever since then.”
Downhill meaning triple black diamond – not a bunny slope.
Most of the time, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out when their conversion started to tank. They just didn’t happen to notice it.
If folks were looking at their analytics on a regular basis, instead of trying to persuade their kindergarten class of 1968 to become “friends”, most of them would have known they were entering the Death Spiral.
Yes…. The DEATH SPIRAL. The never-ending plunge to darkness.
They get so caught up in working IN their business that they forget to work ON their business. They stop looking at the forest and only see the individual trees. They miss the signs – the ones that are staring them RIGHT IN THE FACE – the indicators that alert them to what’s right and what’s wrong with their business – and more important, how to fix it.
One of the very best things about the Internet – and web marketing in general – is that you always know where you stand, you just need to look.
Don’t know where to start? I’ve given you a list of my favorite (and most meaningful) stats below. Remember, when it comes to web analytics, or say choosing the perfect place to live, you don’t need to look at everything, only the things that make the difference.
Take it from a girl who knows.

6 Stats You Simply Must Look At:

1. Bounce Rate, Entrance and Exit Pages.
How many people as a percentage are coming into your site and then leaving immediately or within the first 10 seconds? What pages are they coming in on and what pages are they leaving from? This is, by far, some of the most boring data you can look at, but it’s also perhaps the most helpful.
It’s important to note that your bounce rate number should be in line with how much direct/no referrer traffic you are getting. A lot of folks tell me, “Oh, my consultant said it’s ok that we have a forty percent bounce rate because that’s the average.” First of all, acceptable bounce rates are less than 5%. Second, if you are sending a lot of direct/no referrer traffic to your site, it’s typically qualified traffic. Therefore, to have almost half of it EOE (exit on entrance) is beyond unacceptable. That’s why you need to figure out what your bounce rate is and then dig into why they might be leaving that particular page so quickly.
2. New Traffic and Repeat Visitors (as a percentage)
How much new traffic are you getting and where is it coming from? How many of your users are repeating (in other words, coming back to your site again?) Online businesses are typically built on repeat visitors. If you don’t have a 40% repeat visitor rate, it’s often an indication that there’s something wrong in River City.
With that said, you also need to make sure that your new traffic as a percentage is enough to get those repeat visitors, so if you have all repeats and no new traffic, it probably means your pipeline will fail in the not-so-distant future. Every site has an optimal activity traffic balance level and you need to figure out what yours is.
3. Abandoned Carts.
How many of your folks are coming to your site, starting a cart and then leaving without completing the sale? If you’re not an ecommerce site, then look at abandoned leads, quotes, or sign-ups — whichever is most important to you.
The key to this metric is to figure out how many abandoned carts you have, as well as identify exactly which step they are leaving on. For example, if a high percentage of your abandons come from your payment page, you may be offering too many or too few payment options. Or, it’s possible that you forgot to adequately address security and privacy issues which are paramount on that page.
4. Conversion
Look at each activity on your site and determine the corresponding conversion level. How many people are signing up for your newsletter or Webinar? Requesting a quote? Ordering from your site? Do you have multiple add-to-cart/buy now buttons on every view? Are you asking for the order often and aggressively? Do you have phone numbers on every page for the quarter of the folks who don’t and won’t place their order on the Web?
How many people are finding something they want to buy and then adding it to their cart? Abandoned carts are easy to fix but getting people to start their carts takes a bit more work. This is a big issue for many companies and one of the best indications that they’ll soon be entering into the Death Spiral.
5. DTS (Days To Sale)
How long does it take to get a sale from the first site visit? (Again, if you don’t have an ecommerce site, measure whatever matters to you – how many days does it take to get a quote, for example.) This is a killer statistic because it’s one of the things that will make the BIGGEST difference when you develop an e-mail campaign. If you know what the number of days to sale is, you can often shorten it by e-mailing more over a shorter period of time. Many of our clients have seen huge differences in their businesses by using trigger e-mails for this purpose.
6. AAUS (Active Average User Session)
How long does the average user remain ACTIVELY involved on your site? – meaning each click happens in less than 40 seconds. Since over 80% of transactions occur in 10 minutes or more, this is an excellent benchmark for you to know. My general rule-of-thumb is, “the more they stay, the more they pay”, so this is a metric I pay a lot of attention to.
I look at a site’s AAUS and user drills (actions) to figure out if they are staying long enough to accomplish a particular goal. For example, if you want someone to request a quote and they are only spending 1.2 minutes on your site, it’s not likely to happen – that is, unless your site is ONLY a lead form!

5 Proven Techniques for Improving Your Navigation

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I’m this close (see my fingers almost touching) to murdering one of my clients…

Don’t get me wrong… I adore the guy but he and his team are just TOO SMART to be good Web marketers. They just don’t seem to be able to think INSIDE the box. Looking at things from a Lowest Common Denominator perspective is THE key to Web success.

Here’s the abridged story….

One of the things this company sells is trash cans. In fact, according to them, they are the market leader in trash can sales. So, my client, Oscar (named changed to protect the guilty) says to me recently “I don’t understand what’s happening. We sell the majority of the trash cans out there. In fact, we’ve sold over umpteenbazillion (I honestly can’t remember the exact number) each week offline. So why aren’t we selling any online? YOU must have done something wrong with our navigation.”
I love it when he personally attacks me because it gives me the chance to remind him that their sales are up over 35% from last year thanks to all my “screw ups” and “by the way, where’s my commission check?”
Actually, I had very little, if anything, to do with their navigation because the recommendations I suggested were overruled by their “internal team”. They thought I was “too archaic.” In their words, people don’t need things spelled out for them today — they’re savvy enough to know what’s what.
This, of course, is a VERY BIG FALLACY! Even though users have been shopping for a long time, they’re actually LESS savvy online than they used to be — mostly because they spend less time on your site which means they are less likely and less inclined to learn anything about it.
In any case, to make a long story short, Oscar’s team had put all the TRASH cans under Receptacles. Not under garbage. Not under trash. Not under waste. Not rubbish. And certainly not under all of them (which is the way I recommended.) But under receptacles.
OSCAR, I AM SORRY TO BE SNARKY BUT WHO IN THEIR RIGHT MIND IS GOING TO THINK RECEPTACLES WHEN THEY THINK TRASH?
Um, yeah.  THAT WOULD BE NOBODY.
Frankly, I don’t care what you list trash cans under in your catalog — catalogs are TANGIBLE and much easier to navigate than a Web site with seemingly infinite possibilities. Catalogs have a clear beginning and end. You can easily take a catalog in your hand and flip through it untill you see the picture you want. Web sites are NOT the same.
Navigation on a Web site is a self-fulfilling prophecy.
You get what I give you. If I am a bookstore and I give you the categories history, fiction, non-fiction, children’s, poetry, and lifestyle and entertainment, where are you going to find a cookbook? What about a book about how to play golf? How about a book on how to make things out of polymer clay? Since there are no cooking, sports and crafts categories, is everything supposed to be under lifestyle and entertainment? Do you honestly think L&E when you’re looking for a cookbook? No, you think cooking. (By the way, the above is a real example of an online bookstore.)
 If you don’t see cooking as a category, what do you do? Statistically, over 50% of the people will leave immediately. The third of the people (if you have a good brand) who stay will drill around and most likely adopt your text search (the #1 place of abandonment, after the cart, for the majority of Web sites.)
So, in a nutshell, pretty much everyone leaves and nobody is happy. Your users aren’t happy because they didn’t find what they wanted and you’re not happy because you didn’t get the sale.

The good news is that it’s fixable.

Find out what your customers want. Track what they are using to find you and what they are looking at and for on your site. Look at exactly what words they are using and make sure those words are represented on your site. If Oscar’s team had really looked at their statistics, they would not bring someone who searched for trash cans on Google to a site that had NO representation of the words “trash can” on the entry page, category page or any other page between. 
Make sure the most important things you have are listed. If they are REALLY important make sure they are listed two, three, four, five, or even ten times. The more ways people have to find them, the more likely they are to find them.
List the index section (no more than 22-ish items, please.) in alphabetical order so the user can figure out what you sell and where they should go AT-A-GLANCE.   If a big percentage of your business comes from a couple items (or categories), put them in a highlights section above the index and then put Bestseller! icons near them in the alphabetical section underneath so they stand out.
Then watch. Chances are, you won’t hit perfection right off the bat. However, if you pay attention to what’s happening on your site, you will know what’s working and what isn’t so you can fix it.

As a footnote…

Oscar and Co. changed their navigation and their online sales of trash cans as a percentage are already exceeding their offline sales. I haven’t gotten my commission check yet, but according to his team, I am no longer an archaic dinosaur but a forward-thinking Web Diva, which is worth way more to me than the check.  (Yes, I am well aware they are not using “diva” in the flattering sense of the word but frankly, it’s still fine.  I’ve been doing this for a long, long time.  I’ve been called a heck of a lot worse.)

Measuring my DTS?

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I recently saw you speak at a seminar and you made a comment about measuring DTS. What is it? I asked around and nobody here seems to know. We use Omniture.

Good question.   It seems that very few people measure DTS and it is, by far, one of the most helpful metrics you’ll find.

DTS is the number of Days To Sale.  If you want to calculate yours, just determine when a user first came into your site and then figure out how many days it took for him to make his purchase.  The time between his initial visit and his PV (purchasing visit) is your number of days to sale.
Of course, you can’t just look at one individual to get your average so now that you know how it works, figure it out for 1,000 (or 1,000,000, depending on how big your company is) users.

How is this metric helpful?   Companies who know what their DTS is often have a higher conversion rate because they plan their thrust and trigger e-mail campaigns around decreasing it (in other words, making it shorter.)