Amy Africa's QLOG

99% queries & quintessentials. 1% quibblings

The #1 thing you need to measure that nobody ever tells you about…

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Last week I wrote about my inability to put together a piece of IKEA furniture.

Turns out that, based on the post, many readers had strong opinions about my intelligence (or lack thereof.)

According to exactly 38 emails, I am about as “skillful as a surgeon with the tremors. “  (And that was one of the nicer of the comments I received.  You’ve got to love those Southerners.)

What does that mean?

NOTHING.  NADA.  ZIP. ZERO.

I got over 567 emails from that post.

So 7% of the people who wrote think I am three French fries short of a Happy Meal.

Or, to put a more positive spin on it, I’m kid-tested and mother-approved (if only) by more than 9 out of 10 of my readers.

In my book, that’s fantastic.

Perhaps I think a 93% satisfaction rate is because I have a traditional (read: offline) direct marketing background) where we’re elated with pretty much any number over 2%. 

Maybe it’s because I am just grateful for any response – good or bad. 

More likely, it’s because I know that whether or not 9 out of 10 people like me and/or my stuff doesn’t really matter if they don’t buy, quote, inquire or take some other action that will make me money at some point.

I know.  I know.  That sounds very harsh.  What about people who recommend me?  What about the journalists who subscribe and sometimes even comment.  Don’t I care about them?

A little but not as much as I care about the people who have the highest propensity to buy.

Whether you are trying to generate leads or sales, you need to measure what matters.

I’ve been doing this internet thing since before Al Gore invented it.  I’ve made many mistakes and I’ve had many scores.  Two things that I know for sure are:

  1. In most cases…  Your boss/owner will only really care about the home page.  People obsess over what their home page (and sometimes emails) look like but after that?  Not. So. Interested.
  2. In almost all cases, you’ll look at all kinds of statistics and do all kinds of reports that won’t tell you a damn thing about whether what you’re doing is right or wrong.

Measuring what matters on the web is critical.  Too often we get caught up in the wrong things – we get obsessed with social media mentions or our bounce rate, when we should be looking at our adoption to action.

What is adoption to action?  Any time a user completes a predetermined goal on your website.  (Your goal, not theirs.) 

Let’s take ecommerce for example.  Right now, everyone and their brother talks about abandoned carts.  Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been talking about them for over fifteen years, I get the appeal.  Abandoned cart programs are sexy and they can make you a boatload,  yachtload, fleetload, of money.   However, if you don’t get enough adoption-to-cart – meaning not enough people add stuff to their carts/baskets – isn’t that a much bigger problem?

Yeah.  It certainly is.

Adoption to action as a percentage is one of, if not THE, most telling metric you have.

Yet very few people talk about it.

Why?

Because when it comes down to it, it’s a really depressing number.   We can spin conversion numbers ten ways to Sunday to make ourselves look good but adoption to action numbers are a bit different as they’re at a more qualified root level.

How do you determine your adoption to action number(s)?

First, figure out what action(s) you want.  What your end game is.  Again, if you’re an ecommerce site, you want an order.  If you’re a service site, you likely want an inquiry/lead.  If you’re a blogger, you may want something else — people to buy your ebook…. to use your consulting services…  to +1 you in Google?  Hopefully you have more of a strategy than just being liked or plussed but… whatever you want, put that in a big box at the top of your paper.

Then figure out what you need to measure to get whatever actions you need.  If you’re an ecommerce site, you want sales/orders/revenue, thus checkouts.  So the main action you want is for people to go through your checkout.  The only reason why people would checkout is because they add something in their cart.  So, to get checkouts (or to close sales/orders), you need to get someone to adopt-to-basket.  (In other words, put something in their cart.)  So, the things you will focus on most are things that will impact a user’s ability to add something to their cart or perhaps to sign up for your emails because that’s a long-term way of getting them to adopt to cart.  (This is especially true of triggers.)

If you’re selling a service, you’ll likely want leads/inquiries.  To do that, you’ve got to get people to give you their information – whether it’s an email address or full-blown contact information.  The action you want is A LEAD.  You get leads by offering something of value to the user.  From a user perspective, when they give you their information, a “sale” is completed because there is market value to their information.  They have it.  You want it.  You give something to them to get it.

There are bazillions of ways to get leads: free newsletters, webinars, podcasts, white papers, quotes, and ask the experts, to name a few.  So, on your paper, you’ll write lead.

After you figure out what action(s) you want, look at what you need to get those action(s).  Don’t look at anything else.  Just look at the action and how you’re getting it. 

Does this process sound too simplistic to be of interest?  Absolutely.  Try it anyway.  The internet is purely a numbers game and this exercise will give you an idea of where you’re missing the most opportunities, which for me, definitely aren’t the comments questioning my intelligence especially when they start out “YOUR AN IDIOT.”

Perhaps Jackass but at least I know when to use you’re.

 

Exit Strategies (or why I could never get a job at IKEA)

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There’s a comedian who tells a story about getting lost in a forest which he had apparently mistaken for an IKEA.  “I thought the instructions just hadn’t been stapled on to the trees yet.”

Most people, especially those who know the difference between a Phillips and a whatever-one-of-those-other-screwdrivers is called, don’t really think this joke is all that funny.

I, however, find it hilarious.

I put together a piece of IKEA furniture once.

Well, technically that’s a lie.

I bought a piece of IKEA furniture once.

It never really got put together.

I carefully opened the box. 

I gently laid out all the pieces.

Next, I took off all the A-B-C-D labels that were dotting the furniture.

It was a hassle.  They really stick those suckers on.

Then, I looked at the directions.

“Put A into B.  It should latch tightly.”

Um yeah.  About those stickers.  I looked at the little pile of them in the garbage and remember distinctively thinking “you are not so smart.”

Yes, I tried matching up the pieces of wood to the little map inside.

For about 10 seconds.

Then I went and got a Hefty Cinch Sak.

There are some things that are not worth $99.

Specifically my heart.

So what exactly does my incompetence have to do with the web, ecommerce, mobile, email, and whatever else I occasionally (yes, I am being generous here) write about?

Web users – YOUR users – are much like me.

They may be Rocket Surgeon sharp, dumber than a box of rocks, or somewhere in between but when they come to your site, they’re going to do it their way.

Then, they’re going to ask for help.  Or, you know, they’ll just throw your crap in the trash and go with pre-built find a “better company to do business with.”

The difference between me and YOUR user is that you have a good chance of saving them.  IKEA had no chance of saving me – sitting on my floor contemplating whether or not I should start taking the short bus to work – but you have a good chance of saving your users from leaving when problems arise.

What’s the best way to do this?

Exit strategies.

There are lots of different types of exit strategies.  These are the best four:

Develop an instigated chat program.  It blows me away how few companies use instigated chat.  Sure, a lot of folks have regular chat (which incidentally is almost never on when I need it) but very few companies are using instigated chat to their advantage.  Where do you start with instigated chat?  Checkout/cart and search functions are usually the best.  (If you are not an ecommerce business, start with your forms: quotes, inquiries, etc.)  Help your user in the place(s) they  are struggling the most – not only will you reduce your abandons and increase your revenues but you’ll learn what works and more important, what doesn’t, on your site.  It takes about 9-12 months to get your instigated chat formula down pat, so don’t give up on it a minute before then.  Why does it take so long?  Usually it’s because it takes that amount of time to figure out who the best “chatters” are in your company.  (Hint: they’re typically not the best phone reps but instead the people who can text message, Tweet, and so on.)

Implement a usability program, even if you just use the Google tools that are available to you.  Yes, I am a big fan of TeaLeaf.   No, not everyone can afford it – and even if you have the money to buy it, you may not have the people resources to use it.  However, there are lots and lots of other user tools available to you – check out Bryan Eisenberg’s honking big list, er, site here which includes ClickTale and Crazy Egg, two very economical packages.  Heck, if you don’t want to spend the $350 a year, use the free one provided by Google.  None of them are perfect but they will give you a solid indication of what’s happening on your site: what people are clicking on, where they are stumbling, and so on.  Plus, they’ll really help your creative team (including your artists and your copywriters) by showing what messages and art styles are the most compelling for your users to click on.

Add the phone number to your top navigation, your righthand column and the bottom navigation.  Put it all over the place in the cart/checkout and internal text search results. I’m a huge proponent of putting the phone number at least once per view, especially on your top exit pages.  Many companies are allergic to this – they think that customers shouldn’t need to call – and they’re right.  Customers shouldn’t need to call.  The reason they do is because your site sucks and they are giving you one last chance to get the order.  If you’re like most, you will get a quarter of the people on the phone.  If you don’t get a quarter or more, your website is often either terribly efficient or just plain terrible.

Utilizing effective pops.  Pops are another one of those things that marketers avoid like the plague.  Their logic is “I hate pop-ups, they’re very distracting.”  Um yeah, you bonehead, that’s why you use them.  You want to distract the user from leaving.  Pops come in all shapes and sizes.  They don’t have to be anything like the ones you see on the adult content sites.  (We all know that’s what scares you – you can’t close those suckers fast enough and you freak.  Stop looking at things you shouldn’t at work or when your wife is 10 feet away.  You’ll like pops a lot more.)  Pops can pop up or pop under.  They can come in the form of midis, catfishes, or sidewinders.  The key to good pops is killer creative.  If your creative isn’t killer, thehe pops aren’t going to work. 

What other exit strategies do you use that work?  Share them in the comments below or send me an email at info@amyafrica.com.

17 Proven Tips for Improving Your Abandoned Cart Email Program…

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  1. Focus on “outside the envelope”  There’s a reason this is first.  If your email isn’t opened, it’s not going to convert and it can’t get opened if it’s not delivered.   Outside of the envelope things that make a difference:  the “to” address, the “from” address, the subject line (you have 24-35 characters for traditional, 12-16 for mobile) and the format..
  2. Use a series of emails, not just one.  There’s not a day that goes by that someone doesn’t tell me that they have an abandoned cart program, when they only have ONE email.  One email does NOT make a program.  Many consultants think three emails works best.  I’ve found that most of the “3 is the magic number” take a cut/percentage of the profits so basically they’ve found 3 is the best way to cherry pick the good names.  Personally, I’ve found that more works better.  I like to start programs with a series of 5 and I prefer that the first two (sometimes three) go out without a discount.  (Sure, you can offer 10% off or free shipping right off but why give away the margin if you don’t need to?)  The goal of your series should be to work your user through an appeal-type process (much like a church would do.)  For example: #1: Did you forget something? #2 Your cart will be emptied soon.  #3 Here’s a special offer.  #4 Here’s an extension of that special offer just for you.  #5. Last chance.  You can also intersperse your series with low stock notices and/or holiday deadline notices.  (These can be very effective if used appropriately.)
  3. Employ a sense of urgency.  Deadlines create urgency and they cause people to focus.  Even if you don’t use an offer, you should have a deadline on your abandoned cart emails.   “Only 24 hours left!”  “Offer expires 9/14 at noon.”  “We need to put this item back in inventory at 11:30 am tomorrow.”
  4. Personalize the email.  Far too many companies are still using “Dear Valued Customer.”  If that’s the ONLY thing you can use, it IS better than nothing, but first name typically doubles (or more) your clickthrough rate.
  5. Be sure not to bounce.  Personalization is important but you don’t want to scare your customers away.  “Bouncing” (which is admittedly a poor word for it) is when you freak your customers out by using too much information.  For example, “Dear Debra, we noticed that you tried to use your VISA at 4:32 this morning and got stuck on the CID field.”  That’s bouncing and unlike Tigger, it’s neither cute nor friendly to your users.
  6. Work your timing.  Timing is one of the most important elements in any trigger email program.  Figuring out when you should mail is key.  The “secret sauce” is different for every company so I recommend you test different intervals thoroughly.  Don’t know where to start?  Send out the first email two hours after your open window.   Then 1 day, 2 days, 3 days, and 5 days respectively.
  7. You’ll also want to test sending at different times of day – and be sure to keep your triggers at least two hours away (either side) from your thrusts, at least at the beginning.
  8. Individual emails work better than batched emails.  This tip is similar to #4, if you can’t send out triggers individually, batching them is better than nothing.  However, they will work better (the timing and the deliverability improve) if you send them out on a person-by-person basis.
  9. Test your offer(s).  A lot of folks default to FREE Shipping or 10% off because they’re both best practice-type offers.  So, start with those if you wish but then test against them.  You don’t always need to give away money/discounts to get people to purchase.  A large specialty food company gives away a PDF booklet of free recipes as it works better for them than a discount or free shipping.  A drugstore chain gives away access to a 90-minute webinar by two famous weight loss consultants.  You won’t know what works best for you till you try it.  (Companies who can’t/won’t give offers, should play around with the timing of their deployment and inventory or shipping deadlines.)
  10. Limit the number of links.  The goal of an abandoned cart email is to get a user to place the order so the big focus should be on the RETURN TO CART NOW BUTTONS.  From a deliverability perspective, the fewer the links (under 5) the better.
  11. Put the phone number all over the place.   Every time I see an abandoned cart email without a phone number, I want to punch someone in the face.  (My yoga breathing techniques aren’t all they’re cracked up to be.)   Who should get the smack?  The dumber-than-a-box-of-rocks-consultants who tell people that folks primarily abandon because they want a discount.  Most customers abandon because they’re either not ready to make a purchase OR they get stuck in the purchasing process.  (Stuck could mean an issue on your end or on theirs.)  MOST customers are not marketers and they don’t even know you’ll offer them a deal.  For the users in the stuck group, it’s not going to help them to go back to the place they were when they first abandoned so pushing them to the phone (or live or v-chat) may be your best solution.  Put a special 1-800# in your abandoned cart emails – it will help you better track the orders and it will allow you to develop a special troubleshooting script, if necessary.
  12. Test taking the user directly to the cart.  This may or may not work for you but if it does work, chances are it will work like gangbusters.  If nothing else, make sure that it’s clear how the user gets back into their cart and that the item(s) that they abandoned are still there.   (Carts should NEVER be cleared.  NEVER as in not in a million years.  If you’re out of the inventory, offer a substitute.)
  13. Work the preview panel.  It’s appalling how few companies work the first two inches of their email. (This applies to thrusts/blasts and triggers.)  Remember, half your users will stop reading after the first two lines of your email so make them count.  Chances are, you’ll also want a big phone number and an action button in the first view.
  14. Show thumbnails of the item(s) the user has abandoned.  Showing picture(s) of what the user abandoned will increase your clickthrough and more than likely your overall conversion.  It also typically allows you to mail your series for longer periods of time.  (For example, if your close date is normally six months, you’ll probably be able to mail 10-12 months with pictures.)  Don’t have the ability to add thumbnails?  Send out your emails anyway.  It’s better to do something than nothing.
  15. Use larger-than-life action directives.  Big, bold RETURN TO CART NOW buttons.  Use ‘em.
  16. Sign the letter from a “real” person and use a P.S.  Trigger emails don’t need to be fancy.  In fact, the more one-to-one they look, the better they usually work.  The P.S. should remind the user of the offer (if you have one) and the deadline.  If you aren’t using an offer, you still want to use a deadline (“we can only reserve the inventory for one more day”.)  Deadlines create urgency and they cause people to focus.
  17. Develop a separate program for your mobile users.  Customers who abandoned their mobile carts often need a separate program.  Most important, they need to know that their cart is shadowed on your traditional site.  And, in most cases, your timing (schedule) should be different as well.

Have any other tips you’d like to add?  Please jot them in the comments below or email them to info@amyafrica.com.

P.S.  I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that abandoned cart email programs ONLY work if you have the user’s email address.  Ask for the email address as many places as you possibly can (perpetual cart, abandoned cart pop-ups, lefthand column, top action bar, righthand column, bottom footer, rotation in carousel, and so on.)   After you have the address, you can use that space for something else.  Till then though, ask and ask AGGRESSIVELY.

Image blatantly stolen from Larry Davis, one of the most brilliant marketing minds on the planet.

This is part 5 of a 5-part series.  Part 1 can be found here.  Part 2 can be found here.  Part 3 can be found here.  Part 4 can be found here. 

Do You Keep Hoping For the Best?

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Yesterday, I spent $624.17 in a bookstore.  The old school bricks-and-mortar kind where you can actually touch and feel the books.

If I had bought the same books on Amazon, I would have gotten them for under $400.00.  ($363.20 to be exact.)

I read everything on my Kindle, my iPad, my Tablet, my Droid, my iPhone, sometimes even my BlackBerry but unless the publisher isn’t selling an ebook version or it’s a cookbook, I rarely buy “paper” books any more.   Except for the tiny terrorists.   They get REAL turn-the-page books.

However, this post isn’t about how much I overspent or my nephews — which according to the missile mail I got last week, I talk about FAR too much.  Cute considering blue moons come along more than I blog as of late.  But I digress….

I was waiting to meet a friend for lunch.  I was early and since he is Iranian (translates to he will undoubtedly be at least 45 minutes late at all times) I knew I had some time to kill so I wandered into a small children’s bookshop.

The place was cluttered and just-a-little-bit-dusty in a magical sort of way.  There were all sorts of nooks and crannies filled with overflowing beanbags and little chairs.  There was a tot-sized stuffed animal tea party going on in the back.  The entire store was dotted with colored 3×5 index cards with handwritten reviews.  And the owner, a doppelganger for Angela Lansbury,  had a pink name tag on that said “Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle,” one of my favorite children’s book characters.  (I still have my Mom’s copies of the Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle books from when she was a child.  Yes, Sherry Chiger, I do have a mother.)

It was absolutely perfect.

“Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle” spent about an hour helping me find new children’s books.  I told her what my nephews liked and she found all sorts of things for them.   The boys have a lot of books so for every 10 books she showed me, there were about 2-3 I didn’t think they had.  

I read the first six books she suggested and then I just took whatever I thought was missing from their collection and added it to my stack.  I totally trusted her recommendations.  The quaint little lady who smelled like lemon and gingersnaps knew exactly what she was doing.

When I went to checkout, I gave her my credit card and asked her if she could keep my number on file and just send me new books every month.

“Why would I do that?” She inquired in earnest.

“Because I love your recommendations and it’d be great to send the boys a surprise package of books each month that have already been pre-approved.”

“That’s a lot of work.” She said in a somewhat exasperated voice.

I looked at her and smiled.

I wanted to explain to her that another $300-$400-$500-$600 (or whatever) order a month was a lot of money – especially since she DIDN’T DISCOUNT A PENNY and WAS MAKING FULL PRICE ON THE BOOKS.  (Not to mention I had been the ONLY one in the store for the better part of an hour — at lunchtime on a very busy street.)

Or that the UPS store was just two doors down and she could basically drop off the books with our account information and they’d take care of the rest.

Or a bazillion other things that would help her make money. 

But I knew it was a lost cause.  Mrs. Piggle Wiggle knew her children’s books but things like deploying triggered emails and mailing packages were way outside her comfort zone… and her scope.  Her strategy was, in her words, “to keep hoping for the best.”

Haven’t we already proven this hope stuff is sort of depressing? 

Customers tell you what they want all the time.  They tell you what would make them happy and how they would spend more with you if they could.  Sadly, most of us choose to ignore it.

What would happen if you didn’t?  What would happen if you tried a bunch of new things to see which one(s) worked so you could add them to your arsenal?

Chris Hansen co-owns a company called Great Garden Plants.  His business is growing like weeds, er,  gangbusters while the other behemoths in his industry are falling and failing.  Why?  Because he’s always asking his customers what he can do to make their gardens better.  He’s not like me – he doesn’t say “I want to sell you more stuff” – he says “what do you need that I am not offering?  What problems are you having in your garden (i.e., are the deer eating your trees?) that I can solve?  What favorite things are you not growing because you think you can’t – I know I can find something similar that will work for you.”

Great American Business Products is a much larger company and they do the same thing.  Take their Convenient No-Hassle Refill Program for example.  You pick the products you want to receive on a regular basis and they’ll automatically ship them to you FREIGHT-FREE on your schedule.  They guarantee you’ll never run out and that you won’t get price increases.  Their overworked-and-often-frazzled customers LOVE it — they lock in the product AND the savings and they lock out the stress!

Stave Puzzles customizes your puzzles JUST FOR YOU – not just in the level of trickiness but in the pieces too – you can get different shapes, different words, different whatever in your puzzles.  (As an aside, they are my VERY favorite puzzles on earth.)  Eastwood offers instructional product videos.  Stonewall Kitchen and King Arthur Flour both have recipes.

What are YOU doing?  How are you listening? 

P.S. Remember, for every 10 things you try, you only need a couple to work.

Are you a race horse or a rocking horse?

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Do not confuse motion and progress. A rocking horse keeps moving but does not make any progress.
—Alfred A. Montapert

Lately, I’ve read far too many #measure reports (I really should set up an analytics firm that understands the difference between theory and practice) and seen far too many project lists (the perfect cure for insomnia) that are packed with a whole lot of nothing.

I’ve already written about How To Axe 90% of Your Project list so today I thought I’d share a list of some of the things that you might find worth concentrating on for the Fall.

INSTIGATED CHAT:   Late summer/early fall is a great time to test the waters of instigated chat if you don’t already have it.  Start with your shopping cart and/or lead forms and then move on to search results and top exit pages.  It may take a while for you to get live chat down pat so keep playing with it till you get it to work.  It WILL work but if often takes time to perfect your secret formula.  You should give chat at least 9 months before you even start reviewing the results.  (Tip: The best phone reps often suck at chat.  Chat is a different beast and a lot of your success will depend on whether or not your folks can sell/solve via what it basically text messaging.)

REVIEWS:  If you don’t have a review program, now is the perfect time to get one.  There are a lot of companies (from PowerReviews to BazaarVoice) that handle reviews well.  Remember, if you are going to commit to a review program, you need to work it.  Develop solicitation emails and tools on your site (midis and catfishes on return after a purchase work really well) to get your users to rate and review their purchases.   Want to get the biggest bang from your buck out of your user reviews?  Organize them by importance.  A lot of companies organize their reviews by date.  It’s unfortunate.   Reviews typically work a lot better when they’re prioritized by significance.   What’s a good formula?  One fantastic (i.e. 5 stars review) and one not-so-great (i.e., 1 star review) at the top.    On another note, don’t delete or hide negative reviews but do respond to them.  (This is something that a lot of companies forget — if it’s your site, you can – and should – respond to as many reviews as is appropriate.)

THRUST EMAILS:  Deliverability is going to be a big issue this Fall.  (Read: more problematic than ever for a lot of companies.)  So, it’s now more important than ever to seed your list.  Set up 6-10 boxes each at Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, AOL and anywhere else you can.   Open half the seed emails and leave the other half unopened/unclicked.  It will give you a good indication as to where your emails are being delivered – inbox, SPAM folder, or the trash.  As an aside, do this in-house, don’t just rely on your provider to do it for you.  (Yes, you can also get a service to do this for you – I am not opposed to using a service but I’ve found that if people do it themselves they actually monitor and manage it.  If it’s just another report?  Not. So. Much.) 

Test pop-ups to capture email addresses.  The Golf Warehouse (www.tgw.com) often uses a sweepstakes, Birkenstock Central (www.birkenstockcentral.com) gives away a free gift (socks, for example.) You can test an offer, a sweepstakes, a Deal of the Day, or even just uber-compelling creative.    Pop-ups will work.  If they don’t, it’s likely because your bias against them is keeping you from developing killer creative!

Be sure your phone reps are collecting email addresses (to the tune of 85% at a minimum) as well as mobile text numbers.  Yes, you really should try to obtain mobile numbers even if you don’t know how to use them right now.   It’s also a great time to train your customer service reps on upsell items that your web customers are most likely to buy.

TRIGGER EMAILS:  Triggers should be the MOST successful program in your arsenal.   Don’t have a trigger program? Start with order confirmations and abandoned cart emails.

An abandoned cart program is made up of a series of emails (not just one but a series of 3-5 at least.)  Keep the emails simple (they shouldn’t look like your regular thrust emails); personalize them;  include the items that the user has abandoned; and make sure there are lots of clear action directives (i.e., RETURN TO CART NOW.)

With abandoned carts, you’ll also want to test some kind of pop-under on entrance (reminding the user they have something in their cart) and/or taking them right to the cart when they come back.  Additionally, you should consider internal remarketing banners and plugs (plugs are non-animated banners) and outbound telemarketing.

Your order confirmation program should also be made up of a series of emails.  If you are able to test your confirmations, test your standard “thank you email” versus an immediate thank you letter that allows the user to add anything to their order before it’s shipped – use this space to upsell anything the user should have bought but didn’t.  It may take you a while to figure out this formula – what the user will add to their order – but once you’ve discovered it, it often adds a whopping 15-30% to your average order value, depending on your order size.  You’ll also want to send out a shipping confirmation as well as a “you have your order, now’s the time to order more” and a “please rate and review your order” emails.  A lot of times, companies use generic, written-by-IT-type emails for order confirmations – order confirmations (and any other kind of thank you emails) are great opportunities to sell more stuff.  Use them wisely.

If you’ve mastered both order confirmations and abandoned carts, you should look at EBOPP’s (emails based on past purchases) and reactivation emails.  The holiday seasons is the ideal time to reactive old customers and old inquiries.  Again, these should be personalized triggers.

If you have time to do it now, you may also want to look at ECOA (email change of address), e-append (adds email addresses to your snail mail names), and reverse append (adds snail mail addresses to your email names.)  All of these programs will work as long as you stick to the best practices that your provider recommends.  (They really do know what works best in these type of situations.)

EXTERNAL REMARKETING BANNERS:  The holiday season is a great chance to test remarketing banners.   Your banner success will be largely dependent on your creative so test out a bunch of versions before you roll-out your program.   If you can, be sure to test a version  where you add the picture of the last item the user abandoned to the banner – RBI’s (remarketing banners with items) are typically the most successful by A LOT.

OUTBOUND TELEMARKETING:  Have a lot of abandoned carts?   Test calling the carts with the highest average orders that have been abandoned.  You only need to test a few of these to know if this program will work for you.  (Hint: Chances are it will work like gangbusters.)

MERCHANDISING:  Promote in-stock messaging.  Availability is a big issue for a lot of folks, especially around the holidays.  Look at messaging that showcases your availability and delivery times near your pricing.  (For example: In Stock!  Ships Today!)  If you’re already an availability messaging whiz, test tickers.  Tickers are great because the rolling deadlines emphasize urgency and cause people to focus.  Need it tomorrow?  Order within the next 3 hours and 33 minutes and you’ll get it by noon! (Amazon does a great job at this.) 

Increase the size of your action directives. Keep in mind: the BIGGER the buttons the better and the more, the merrier.  Remember, you should ask for the order (or inquiry if you’re a lead generation business) in every view.   We design pages but users see views – there’s a VERY big difference. 

NAVIGATION AND INTERNAL NAVIGATION:  Internal search is one of the most difficult things to master.  Even with a fancy package, you can’t change the fact that users are often abysmal at finding what they want.   However, you can look at the top 100 searches you’ve had on your site this year and make sure those words (the words and phrases the users searched for) are better represented in your navigation. 

It’s important to remember that the order in which you present the results is critical to your success in search.  Take the 100 top searches and conduct them yourself, one-by-one.  Review each result.  It’s important that the item you most want to sell is first and the rest are in descending priority. 

Be sure to review your refinements as well.  Due to the onslaught of guided navigation, many companies have gotten really sloppy with their refinements – when someone chooses “sort by bestsellers” from your dropdown, they should get your top selling products and not a hodge podge of garbage.  Same with new – if someone is sorting by new and they get all your items from Fall of 2008, it diminishes your search credibility and makes your search look broken. (One of the top two reasons why users abandon searches.)  Again, if you take your top 50-100 searches, you’ll get a good indication of how you’re  measuring up in this area of your ecommerce business.

Take a quick look at your top navigational bar to make sure that the right items are emphasized.  If you are getting a lot of traffic in a particular area (clearance, sale, or overtock for example), consider making it stand out more – either as a bigger or different colored tab.

Navigation is one of the biggest determinants of your online success so you may also want to do a quick elimination of all the unnecessary/irrelevant items that have gotten added (especially to your top and left hand navigational bars) along the way.  We tend to muck up our top header with all sorts of customer service elements when we really want orders.  We tend to list everything and the kitchen sink in the left when only half of those links ever get clicked on.   Do a quick clean-up.

ANALYTICS:  For many, the holiday season is an extremely busy one both personally and professionally so make your life easier and develop some Read and React reporting.  This one-page report should include ONLY the essentials you need to run your ecommerce business.  The format should be an overview so you can look at it at-a-glance and then delve deeper into areas where you see problems.

Make sure to separate your iPad and tablet traffic from your smart and feature phone traffic.  iPads and other tablets make great shopping devices so you often see twice your regular conversion on them.  You don’t want those results to influence what might be happening on your other mobile results.   You may also want to consider adding a package like Bango to help you with your mobile data as it’s not always well interpreted by some of the other analytics providers.

MOBILE: Speaking of mobile, if nothing else, you should make sure your emails are mobile-friendly.  Less than ¼ of the emails sent out are and it’s a BIG issue for a lot of folks.  Do you need a mobile website or app for the Fall?  Depends on your business and the traffic you are getting from mobile.  With that said, if you are sending out a lot of email, you likely want to add at least a couple mobile jump pages.  And if you do PPC, you may want to test a mobile program.  (PPC keywords for mobile are still A LOT less expensive for the most part.)

Anything else on your list?  Please add it in the comments below.

Sounds too good to be true? It usually is.

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Faceted NavigationJulie Capshaw writes: “Tony from {Name Redacted} says nothing would make him happier than your death!!! He had me convinced that you were wrong about everything related to our internal text search until today. Today we got their new contract and you were right.  They’re slimebags! Our price increased SIX times over what it was this year!!! Now where should we go? I need a new vendor ASAP!!!”

Julie!  Julie!  Julie!

When will you ever learn?

As much as I’d love to out {Name Redacted}, I am too busy engaging in Twitter Flame Wars to get into another kitty litter dust-up this week so you’ll have to suffice with this short post and recommendations in a private email.

Do you like Amazon’s internet text search function?

Two days ago, I was searching for Kevin Hlllstrom’s new book.  (The $95 one that I won’t understand not the $.99 one that I can understand and already bought.)  It’s called Hillstrom’s Digital Profiles.  When I searched on Amazon for “Kevin Hillstrom,” it listed his books (print and Kindle editions) and then books about Indians, the Cold War, the Michigan Adventure Guide, and Watergate.  I was on my phone so I kept scrolling and then I finally got to the new book.

So you tell me, was my search experience good?  Bad?  Indifferent?

I’ve bought every one of Kevin’s books.  Amazon knows this.  Amazon employs wizards and fairies with pixie dust and unicorns AND spends MILLIONS  OF DOLLARS to PERFECT their search.  They know all the books I buy (averagely 10-12 books a week – yes, a week) and they know that I am far more interested in marketing than Michigan.  The best thing about Michigan is @netmeg and she’s so mysterious God only knows if she really lives there or even exists for that matter.  She could be a bot. But I digress…

Amazon uses rainbows AND THE POTS OF GOLD UNDERNEATH THEM, yet, they still don’t do it 100% right.

Am I picking on Amazon?  Absolutely not.  I love them.

But if Amazon can’t perfect their text search – in a simple area like FLIPPING books?  Well, there’s not a lot of hope for the rest of you.

Which brings me to Reason #1 that Tony hates me.  I do not believe any internal text search will ever be perfect (because users are not) and promising a package will be?  Heh.  Hilarious.

Reason #2.  (Don’t worry, I am not going through ALL the reasons.  I have neither the time nor the inclination to write a tome tonight.) Many (not all, but many) text search companies tell people all sorts of bogus “facts” (cough) based on their “years of testing and proprietary research” which roughly translates to their sales and marketing departments making up crap and the lawyers blessing it with “no, we can’t really defend it but nobody sues anyway so don’t worry about it.”

For example, most of the companies will tell you to put your search box in the upper righthand corner of your site because that’s where it works best.

They’re right. That’s not a complete lie – it’s one of the top two places. 

What they OMIT however is that many of them know that putting it in the upper righthand corner often increases the number of searches, which may or may NOT be a good thing for your business.  Usually it’s not.  Depends on how good your data is.  A lot of people leave on search – failed searches and searches that you deem “successful” where the user can’t find anything.  (In other words: UNsuccessful.)

The sneaky thing is that only 1/3 of the users typically leave on the search results page – the rest leave on the 2-3 subsequent pages.

Do the search companies tell you that? Yeah.  Not. Usually.

One of the main reasons why they want people to take advantage of your search is a lot of them have commission deals and get paid per search and/or directed search result page.  Thus, they have a VESTED interest in telling you to put it in the place that’s best for them.

Is this a rant?  No.  It’s a reminder for us all (myself included) – when vendors tell you stuff and give you all their stacks of back-up information, it’s usually for a purpose and it’s often VERY biased. 

Review the sources.  Figure out what the sample size is.  Look to see if there was a control group.  Determine what kind of significance there was to the study.  Find out who paid for the research.  Find out if the participants were compensated.   You get the drill.  

If it sounds too good to be true?  It usually is.

Have a question you’d like answered?  Click here now to submit it for FREE or email me at info@amyafrica.com.

Sell Where Your User Wants To Be Sold…

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Kathryn Curran writes “I just listened to your Selling on a 2” x 4” webinar and was amazed by your depth of knowledge.  We now have 21 people on our mobile team and if we had hired you before we started we would have saved countless dollars and days.  The thing that I didn’t quite understand was that you kept repeating ‘sell where the user wants to be sold.’ That seems like common sense.  Am I missing something?”

Hi Kathryn:

On F-Commerce. 

Over the phone.

Through text messaging.

Via email.

In a bricks and mortar location.

At your website.

In live chat.

Over V-chat.

Sell where the user wants to be sold IS indeed common sense.  Unfortunately, many folks don’t have it when it comes to this point.

The thing about mobile that is much different from regular ecommerce or online lead generation* is that there’s a bigger chance that you WILL NOT get the lead/order on a mobile device than you will.

When you foray into mobile, you’ve automatically entered into the world of multi-step marketing (unfortunately it’s not the same as multi-level otherwise I’d have pink Cadillacs to promise you.)

Someone goes to your mobile site and then what?  What do they do next?  What are the steps of the sale?  As you figure them out, you’ll find that people who come to your site from the Facebook app on their Droid may want to be sold on Facebook and not on your regular site.  (Not always but a possibility.  Trump Hotels is a good example of someone who is doing this kinda-sorta-a-little-bit-right.) 

A person who comes in direct/no referrer and clicks on the call button may want to be sold through video chat or over the phone immediately.  This is a basic, but important, point as right now a lot of call center reps only get trained one way (i.e., to help lead people through the website – and not to take the order directly, which is NOT a good thing.) 

Folks who use your store locator are likely headed to one of your stores, so the transactions will typically be completed there.  

If you know the user has propensity to buy/act and you know it’s in a specific place, you can change your marketing methods to accommodate them.  You may ask the guy who uses the store locator to enter his email address so he can get an instant savings download coupon to use in the store.   I’m not suggesting you should give people money for nothing – although e-mail addresses are valuable – however, you might want to try giving them a coupon for a higher dollar average order.  (If you normally have a $100 average order, you could try $10 off $150.) If you don’t want to give a discount, maybe they can get a freebie when they come in. 

How do you figure out where folks want to be sold?  Lots of testing and more important, really delving into your stats: looking at EXACTLY what the users are doing by AC (aggregated click) and then following through the typical user path of that batch of users.  It actually sounds much more dramatic and complicated than it is but to start just pick a couple unique actions and follow those through.  It’s fun, easy and you’ll undoubtedly increase your conversion almost immediately.

Have a mobile question you’d like answered?  Click here now or email me at info@amyafrica.com.

*For all you folks who don’t do ecommerce but do lead generation, you “sell” too.  In the user’s mind, you are constantly selling them.  Why?  Easy.  Their information has a market value – I mean, if you want it, it’s worth something, right?  Whenever something has market value, and a trade is made, a transaction or “sale” has taken place.

Stalin Is My Soulmate

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V. Czechut writes: “I am wondering if you can clarify a point you made in today’s email.  {Note from Amy: she’s referring to this blog post which she gets via email, not RSS.}  You said that ‘most folks can’t look at data objectively.’ What does that mean?  I ask because we just spent $80K+ with a web analytics consultant who gave us lots of fancy reports but confused us far more than he helped us.  My VP thought it was a waste and won’t give me any more money for training or help and now I have to sort through it on my own.  How do I look at things objectively?”

Hi V.  (I’m always so suspicious of you one initial people):

I’m sure I will get hundreds of missile-mails for this comment but here goes:

My friend Brian (the one who thinks crazy women are better in bed) finds me to be incredibly judgmental of, well, just about everything.  To prove his point, he sends me a never-ending stream of quizzes like the following:

Here are the facts about three candidates:

Candidate A: Associates with crooked politicians and consults with astrologers.  He’s had two mistresses. He also chain smokes and drinks 8 to 10 martinis a day.

Candidate B: He was kicked out of office twice.  Sleeps until noon.  Used opium in college and drinks a quart of whisky every evening.

Candidate C: He is a decorated war hero.  He is a vegetarian.  Doesn’t smoke.  Drinks an occasional beer.  He has never committed adultery.

Which of these candidates would be your first choice?

Decide first and then scroll down for the response.  Then come back.  I will wait.

Now here’s the thing…

These type of quizzes, as corny and ill-conceived as they may be, are very similar to what happens with web analytics.  (Not for every company but for many companies.)

They look at the data and pick choice C – and then when they find out what choice C is/means, they immediately say “Oh, that can’t be right, Choice B (or whatever) was my choice and this is what we are going to do about it.”

I’ve been doing this web stuff long enough that I can justify or rationalize pretty much anything I see in someone’s web analytics.  That is NOT a good thing.

The key to making solid business decisions when it comes to the web is to look at the information that’s presented to you, WITHOUT bias, and then work from there. 

Yes, you can readjust your thinking – and there’s merit to being able to do that – but if the issue(s) is/are evident/apparent, don’t discount it/them because of your personal bias.

Stalin is my soulmate and Mussolini is the guy I will most likely marry.

I don’t even want to tell you what I do with Gandhi.

*** 

 

Candidate A is Franklin D. Roosevelt

Candidate B is Winston Churchill

Candidate C is Adolf Hitler.

Focus.

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Debbie said “Hi. I don’t know if you remember me but I met you at a MarketingProfs conference. I came up to you after your session and shoved my stats in your face and then when you said you had to go to the ladies room, I followed you in like a stalker so you could not blow me off!  You looked at our Omniture data for 10 minutes and then told me to ‘bag 90% of what we were doing and focus on a few very specific items.’ We did and we went from the verge of bankruptcy to a place where we now have a little money in the bank for a rainy day.  We were also able to hire back the six employees we had laid off and thirteen new ones too. Thank you.  I mean that from the bottom of my heart.   My question is, and I don’t know if you’ll remember me but if you do, what did you see in our stats that made you say to us what you did? I ask because I need to do it again and I don’t see anywhere I can stalk you!)

Thanks Debbie.

After all today’s drama (hello people who misconstrued my post about blog comments), it’s nice to get a  note like this.

I do remember you although you are not the first person who has chased me into the bathroom.  Hell, I’ve even had people shove me paperwork under the stall begging me to take “just one look.”

Here’s the thing…  In business, focus is what makes you successful.

People don’t talk about it much because it’s simple and not very sexy.

But it’s reality.

I get hundreds of emails every week (sadly, that is not an exaggeration) from folks wanting to know about the latest and greatest trends (today it’s Empire Avenue, yesterday it was BO.LT)  Some of them are worth testing.  Others?  Not. So. Much.  (Translation: many of them are not worth the time you spend reading about them.)

When I looked at your stats, it was clear that you were getting enough traffic but you weren’t converting it.  When I looked a little deeper, I saw that you had a huge amount of direct/no referrer traffic.  I also saw that there were huge abandons on your quick order form so I recommended that you change “Catalog Quick Order” to “Ordering from a Catalog?” and then really work that page till you got it close to perfect. It’s been awhile but I believe I also recommended doing specific things with your non-brand PPC keywords as well as developing a trigger email program in lieu of all the time and effort you were spending on social media, which at the time, wasn’t bringing you any return.

The thing about your analytics is that they’ll tell you everything about your business you need to know… and then some.  The challenge is that most folks can’t look at their data objectively – in other words, they make excuses for how things are or even worse, they don’t look at the stuff that matters.  (They get caught up in stuff they can’t change or they look at things that they won’t be able to impact.)  We also tend to ask the wrong people for advice.  If you have a medical problem that can be fixed with surgery, medication or a lifestyle change, a surgeon is going to tell you to opt for the surgery because surgeons like to cut.  That’s what they do. 

Not every company needs a Twitter or Facebook account or a blog.  Nor does every company need affiliates or a mobile app.   You need to do what’s best for your business.  Test new things (this really is a must unless you’re struggling and then sometimes it’s a good idea and others it isn’t.)  However, pay special attention to your biggest winners.  Those are the things you need to do more of and programs you need to keep improving.

In the big scheme of things, business is simple.  Most of the times, our egos are what complicate it.

Oh, and if you want a place to stalk me — come to MCMLive.  If you use my priority code (AMY), you’ll save $100 off the registration fee and you’ll get a FREE hour of consulting. Sign up today! 

Have a question about your stats or the direction you’re moving in from an online perspective?  Jot it in the comments below or email me at info@amyafrica.com. 

Do you really need comments on your blog?

by 37 Comments

Jen L. writes “Three weeks ago, I watched you fight with Mack Collier and Wilson Ellis on Twitter.  The guys were insistent that comments were very important and you said they were overrated and misleading.  You promised that you would write a blog post about it but I have checked your blog a few times a day ever since and I haven’t seen anything.  I am sure you are very busy but when are you going to get to this?  I don’t mean to be rude but I am desperate. I am the social media director at one of the  biggest engineering firms in the world and my review is in July.  I am pregnant and my husband is recently unemployed so I really can’t afford to lose my job but I am afraid that I am going to get fired because I have not reached the blog metrics that I set out for myself.  I got the Facebook likes and Twitter followers (that was easy) but the partners think ‘Twitter is stupid and that Facebook for B2B is a joke.’  They are obsessed with blog comments and say that they’ve spent a lot of money paying for posts (we use freelancers to help write our posts as the concepts are very technical and the engineers aren’t very good writers.)  Whatever you can do to help me would be most appreciated.  Thank you very much!”

Jen, you sound like a country song.  You just need a dying dog and a rusty pick-up truck!

First, Wilson Ellis is a woman named Debra (her company is called Wilson Ellis Consulting) and Mack and I go at it about just about everything.  He’s from Alabama and I’m from Vermont (thus a Yankee) and he’s still fighting the war.  (Just kidding.  Well.  Sort of.)  Hopefully they’ll both comment below (yes, I realize the irony of that statement.)

I think blog comments are VERY overrated.  “Social media experts” act like they are the be-all-end-all but personally I think they are insignificant for many (not all, but the majority of) companies.

If I ran an SEO blog, I’d expect comments from my peers and MAYBE a few clients.  However, if I was in charge of a blog for plumbers, I would NOT expect any comments. Plumbers are going to be out fixing sinks and such all day long, they are not going to be sitting in front of their computers waiting to weigh in on clogged toilets and whether or not industrial Drano is environmentally friendly. 

You need to know your audience.

Kevin Hillstrom of Mine That Data (@minethatdata on Twitter) is unequivocally one of the best bloggers (and most prolific) I know.  He writes every day and his stuff is ALWAYS solid – not throwaway “I believe the sky is blue, do you feel the sky is blue too?” garbage type posts that a lot of the A-listers kick out.  (I am partial to Kevin’s Glieber’s stories mostly because they’re fun and I can actually understand them!)  According to Kevin, 80% of his posts get ZERO comments and the ones that do get comments are “pedestrian or controversial!”  He sells three times as many books (this is my favorite) per post as he gets blog comments per post.  (SELLS as in directly makes money!)  Till recently, Kevin got 70% of his business from his social media efforts and I believe all but 1% of that was from his blog.  In other words, Kevin  makes the big bucks from his blog WITHOUT m/any comments.

Social media people like to talk about community and how important it is.  Many of them believe that if you build a community you may eventually get business out of it.  That’s often (although not always) true.  However, it’s BS that if you build it they will just come.  It takes time and effort and even if you do put in both, it may not be worth it to you.  In other words, you can’t take this whole “listening is the new black” social media people spew literally from a balance sheet perspective.

Take me for instance, I’m the world’s WORST blogger and I feel that if I REALLY worked at it, I could probably get 25 comments per post on average.  However, of those 25 comments, my potential for business would be $0.  Yes, ZERO. ZIP. ZILCH. NOTHING. NADA.  It’s possible that I’d get referrals that would lead to business but I have no confidence that I’d get any direct work from it.  Why?  Because the people who hire me don’t typically comment on marketing blogs.  (Think this is too broad of a statement?  Study the top 10 players in your market and figure out who is commenting – is it your clients?  Competitors?  Students?  Vendors?  Both?  None?)

Does that mean blogs shouldn’t have comments?  There are actually several good SEO reasons to NOT have them but if you position them properly, there’s often no harm in allowing them.  With that said, I don’t think people should set up getting blog comments as the sole measure of success.

For example, Jen, you said you’ve seen my blogs a couple times a day for the past three weeks – which means you’ve seen my blog at least 30 times and have never left a comment.  However, you did send me an email.  So if someone was measuring me based on blog comments, I’d get a whopping F.   However, if you were evaluating my success based on good leads, I’d get a better score.  I’m not listing your company name out of respect for you, but your company would be a good client for us, especially if I could convince you to develop a trigger email program.  If we put you in one of our aggressive follow-up programs, there’s a big chance we’d convert you, and your email would result in a sale.   That’d result in at least a passing grade.  Give me several of those and I’d have an A+!

So, what should you do?   Look at the metrics that matter.  For a blog, you should look at your visitors – you should study how many of them come back again and how many of them take some sort of action.  Those are two of the MOST important metrics – repeat visitors and adoption-to-action. (Sadly, very few people measure adoption-to-action and EVERYONE should.)  Look at how many of them sign up for your RSS feeds, email program or whatever else it is that you offer.  Every important action that the user could take – for example, filling out your lead form – should be tracked. 

Should you track your comments?  Sure.  If they’re important to you getting business or whatever it is that you’re blogging for.  I have a client who posts technical support information to reduce customer support calls.  They track visitors and they do in-depth tracking on what pages and products are most popular so they can improve their front-end service. 

What other things can you do to increase activity?  There are lots of things you can do.  For example, you could get people to sign up for your email list by offering some sort of incentive.  Social Media Examiner offers a FREE Facebook Marketing Video Tutorial.  Neil Patel from QuickSprout offers a free guide with 13 simple business strategies.  John Chow offers a free ebook. I have a section on my blog called Ask Amy where users can submit whatever pressing internet-related questions they have.   There’s no limit to the number of things that you can do, so do as many as you can to determine what works best for you.

Focus on the things that you can do that will make you money or get you to your end goals.

My recommendation to people who’ve promised lots of comments and can’t deliver is to readjust your metrics.  If you really MUST get comments in the short-term (before you change your metrics), you’ll read all sorts of bogus advice like “comment on other people’s blogs and they’ll be sure to reciprocate.”  That sounds great in theory but my (and many others) experience is that it doesn’t work in practice.  And even if it did, it’s not very predictable. 

So, I’d recommend being MUCH more aggressive about soliciting them, i.e., asking people via Twitter DM or through email, for example.  (I’ve just killed about 20 social media people with that blasphemy, er, recommendation.)  You can also offer prizes – sweepstakes and giveaways really do work. (Yes, even in B2B.  You just need to offer something REALLY fantastic so the visitor will be compelled to click.)  You can also proactively solicit tips from your users – this works in all sorts of unique situations – and then use them in a blog post.  Don’t forget to respond to all the comments – if nothing else, that will double your comments!

Have other suggestions for Jen?  Put them in the comments below.  Have questions about your own blog that you don’t want to put in the comments?  Send me an email: info@amyafrica.com.

P.S. I’m not going to lie, it can suck to have a blog that doesn’t get comments.  You spend a lot of time writing posts and then you get nothing but CRICKETS.  Sometimes it’s demoralizing.  However, I can name at least a half a dozen popular bloggers who get dozens (sometimes hundreds) of comments and are REALLY struggling for business. (Translation: they don’t have any.)  In fact, if it weren’t for their speaking efforts, I don’t think they’d have any incoming money at all.  (At this point, Verizon doesn’t accept Atta-Boys and Amens.)  Comments don’t necessarily correlate to money.  They may.  They may not.  Figure out what’s right for you.

P.P.S.  Why do I have comments on this blog? I test doing them on and off.  For me, they do not matter in terms of business and I do not measure them whatsoever.  I like them because once in a while I get to see a friendly face (hello James Fowlkes and Michael McCormick.)  When I reformat this blog, they’ll likely be gone.