It drives me crazy when Forrest Gump says that “life is like a box of chocolates, because you never know what you’re going to get.” What in life is as knowable and safe as a box of chocolates? You might not know if the filling will be caramel or a goopy cherry, but you know you’re getting BITE-SIZED CHOCOLATES IN ASSORTED FLAVORS, and you can look at each one for many more clues. 

When your brain (yes, I am talking to YOU) processes any new piece of information, it asks itself a series of questions…

Can I eat it?

Can it eat me?

Can I mate with it?

Can it mate with me?

Have I seen it?

Have I never seen it?

That’s right….  Have I seen it?  Have I never seen it?

This is critical to your website.

In my speeches (you know, the ones I used to do before I got tired of hearing myself talk), I spend a lot of time discussing grocery stores.  When you go to Piggly-Wiggly in South Carolina, Hannafords in Maine, Safeway in Seattle, or Kroger in Texas, you know that the milk is going to be near the eggs.  You know that the bananas are going to be near the apples.  And you know that the ice cream will not be on the shelf in the dog food aisle.

You know this because supermarkets are FAMILIAR.  Sure, there are differences in the end-caps and signage, but for the most part, grocery stores are all the same.  You’ve seen one, you’ve seen ‘em all, right?

Why is this important?  It’s critical because when your brain recognizes something as familiar, it knows whether or not it’s safe.  If you don’t need to evaluate whether or not something poses a danger to you (meaning your brain can skip that entire step), you can start to interact faster. 

On the web, faster interactions typically equal greater conversion, more adoption to cart/lead form and thus, more sales/profits.

Companies send us RFP’s all the time for complete redesigns.  They’re bored with their websites (or some new VP comes in and wants to mark his territory) and thus automatically think their customers are too.  Not only is that NEVER the case but it’s also VERY dangerous to start demolishing everything familiar. 

You need to make changes?  Refresh.  Don’t completely redesign.  That way when the user asks himself ”Have I seen it?” he’ll be able to say “yes” and move right along to the important things.  You know, the ones that make you money.

Amazon is the perfect example of a company that constantly makes little, but VERY significant, changes.  Over the years, they’ve added all sorts of bells and whistles to their site.  Do you notice at first glance though?  Not likely.  Why?  Because the look and feel is virtually the same as it was the last time you were there.  Same colors. Same layout.  Same search in the same place.  Amazon’s website has changed (for example, the recent addition of the flash cart) but it’s still comfortable… and familiar. 

So next time you’re tempted to overhaul your entire website, just rearrange a couple of the chocolates in the box instead. Or as the Southerners say, “Don’t move just because you need to clean house.”

This is a guest post from Sappho.  If someone told me the world was going to end and I could only save a dozen of my favorite people, Sappho would be first amongst the list.  She’s unbelievably smart but the truth is that her intelligence is not the reason I’d bring her along with me.  When I say she’s quick-witted, we’re talking lightspeed snarky.  I need a pause button when I am hanging with her — just so I can finish one laugh before beginning another.  Oh, and for the record, she’s one hell of a copywriter too.

I recently had to stop a colleague from sending out an e-newsletter with the subject line, “B2G1 Roses.”

“But it’s a good deal,” he insisted. “People should know.”

I replied that it didn’t sound like a good deal; it sounded like a rejected character from the original Star Wars movie, which most of our customers did not see in 1977 because they were too old for it.

“But everybody knows what it means, right?” my colleague insisted.

I said that I hoped not, because if they did, the subject line would actually read, “Buy 2 Get 1 Roses,” which is a little too close to the actual experience many gardeners have with growing roses. So I suggested he spell out the words “Buy” and “Get,” then add the critical “Free” afterwards.

He agreed, but not without grumbling that my additions made the subject line “really long,” nearly exceeding the 6-word maximum limit recommended by market research. {Note from Amy: The golden rule about subject lines?  There are no rules.  You have to do what’s best for YOUR business.}

I probably would have forgotten about this little incident if it hadn’t gotten reinforced the following day when, on our way to the beach in a car crowded with fast-food bags and teenagers, my husband remarked irritably, “What is bogo milk and why do I want it?”

I looked up and read the announcement in front of a drugstore: BOGO Milk. Really? My tech-savvy (well, he has an iPhone) husband was blind to the ubiquity of BOGO? So I quickly asked the kids what the sign stood for. Both of them stopped texting long enough to tell me they didn’t know either (but were they being honest, or texting LMAO to their friends just seconds later?).

“It means buy one, get one,” I told my husband.

He laughed. “Well, there’s a concept.”

All of this reminded me uncomfortably of an ad my aunt had wrestled with in the local newspaper last summer. A computer-addicted septuagenarian who spends her leisure time outbidding the less nimble for antique quilt tops on eBay, she has shown me a thing or two about manipulating a PayPal account, but she was baffled by this part of an ad placed by her favorite Mexican restaurant:

Text El Jimador to 39756

Bring text to checkout & receive Special Discount

“There aren’t enough digits in the phone number,” was her first comment, followed by, “And whoever heard of printing out a text?”

Her solution, of course, was to carefully cut out the ad from the paper and wave it under the nose of the waiter at El Jimador, who made sure she got the Special Discount, in addition to the profuse apologies of the manager and a paper coupon for a free margarita on her next visit.

But are our e-commerce customers this lucky, or this persistent? Do we even know what they don’t understand about our cryptic subject lines and mysterious offers, or realize how we are disappointing them with our flights of verbal fancy? I confess that I was really excited when I received a recent email from the veterinarian with the subject line, “Activate Your Pet Portal Now.” Immediately I pictured some sort of tunnel — perhaps a huge pneumatic tube? — that could transport Spanky, Butter, Bob, and Goblin straight to the vet without pet carriers, shredded car upholstery, and those nasty fights in the waiting room. (Imagine my disappointment when it turned out to be just an online recordkeeping system.) And just yesterday a cruise line promised me that I could “Sail from [my] backyard for less than $70/day,” which is pretty impressive considering I live 5 hours from the coast.

Anyone who has had to write large numbers of e-newsletters or churn out repetitive website headlines knows the temptation to come up with something, anything new to say — or, failing that, a new way to say the same old thing. It’s easy to forget that to our customers, phrases such as Buy 1 Get 1 Free are nothing short of poetry, and like all classic refrains, only improve with repetition.

Want to get a hold of Sappho?  Write info@amyafrica.com.  Yeah, that’s right.  You have to go through me to get her e-mail address.  Does the Colonel give out his secret KFC recipe?  I think not.  I promise I won’t charge you but there will be a comprehensive background check… 

Good question.  I know they are not sexy but exit pages are still one of the very first things I look at before I do a site critique.  Why?  Because they’re often one of the easiest ways you can identify what’s wrong with a site. 

Here are 4 things you need to know:

1.  What are your top ten exit pages?   Top five? Top one? Those are the pages you need to look at and/or fix first. Every company needs to find it’s own conversion levels, but a good rule of thumb is that no single page (with the exception of confirmation pages) should account for more than 10% of your exit traffic.

That’s not a global rule (meaning that not everyone can follow it). However, you can easily determine benchmarks for your own site(s). If you have an extraordinary amount of people leaving from a particular page, chances are that page needs work. (You’re either getting the wrong traffic or giving the wrong sales pitch – there aren’t a lot of other choices.).

2. How many exits does your premier entry page (often referred to as a ‘home page’) have?   How long are people spending there? If you are getting a lot of traffic that suddenly makes a hasty exit, chances are that traffic shouldn’t have been on that page in the first place. You need to check that.

On the flip side of the coin, if they’re coming to your home page and then spending oodles of time (meaning more than a minute) on that page, your navigation probably needs improvement.  (The amount of time that a user spends on the first page they land on almost always tells the story of how they will act and what their propensity to buy (or do) will be.

3. Where does text search fall in your exits?   Unfortunately, for most companies, it’s usually at the top and it’s, by far, the most difficult thing to fix. About half of the companies I’ve seen wouldn’t need text search if they had solid C-Navigation. (C-Navigation is top, bottom and left-hand navigation.) Those companies are usually service companies or businesses with just one or a couple products. If you fit in that category, ask yourself… What will happen if we get rid of text search altogether?

If you’re a company that needs text search, you need to figure out where people are exiting.

Is it on a no-find page? (where you don’t have any results.) Those are the best places to add “if you can’t find what you’re looking for, here are some products you may be interested in…”  messages, along with your most popular products that EVERYONE needs.

Or is it on a successful search results page? It cracks me up when someone tells me that they have the perfect search. Even with my favorite search tools, there’s really no such thing as the perfect search. Users aren’t smart enough to make your search function look good.

But I digress.  A lot of times users leave on “successful search” results pages meaning that your search probably wasn’t so successful. Explore your search and its direct relation to your exits in detail. It will be one of the best investments you make.

4. Do you REALLY need a particular page?   I’ve found that often times, users leave from category-like pages – pages where they can’t do anything so I try to determine…. Do we really need that particular page? What will happen if we don’t have that page? If we got rid of it altogether?  If we must have that page (and sometimes it’s a must), how can we make it better?  Does it have Buy Now/Add To Cart buttons on it?  If you’re not an ecommerce site, can you inquire or get a quote from it?  (If your goal is to get people to raise their hands, you have to ask them several times per page.  Best case scenario: at least once in every quad.)

I was standing in a very busy, noisy, 50-floor, city office building, impatiently waiting for one of the two (out of eight) elevators that were working.  EVERYONE was on their phones  (in fact, most of us had a phone in one hand and a BlackBerry/iPhone in the other) and nobody was paying much attention to anyone else.   We were all grumpy; the one of us who couldn’t find the stairs to bypass this exercise in futility (that’d be me) the most cantankerous of all.

When my turn finally came, I was the last person to squeeze in.  I pushed my button, the door closed, and then, and only then, I felt a tug on my leg.

Staring up at me — eyes rapidly filling with tears — was a boy who looked to be about 1.5 years old.

He did not belong to me.

Naturally, I ignored him.  It’s always fun to try to tempt the Elevator Gods to see how many e-mails you can type before you lose service.  Plus, his Mom or Dad must be in here somewhere, right?

Wrong.

Turns out that his Nutter Butter Mother didn’t hold the little terrorist’s hand (and yes, after spending OVER AN HOUR with him, I can tell you that the kid came directly from the clearance bin at Brats R Us) and he had snuck into the elevator right as the door closed.

I found this out on Floor 17 when a burly guy who was about to exit wished us all – specifically me — good luck.

I won’t bore you with the rest of the details of this story or that when the mother finally reunited with her child, she screamed at me for six minutes.  She couldn’t care less that I had missed my appointment or that she should have stayed in one damn place instead of chasing us up and down the floors in a different carriage.   Apparently, she just needed to lash out at someone for her lame-ass parenting skills.

I still believe that 99% of parents do the best job they can with the tools they have. 

Unfortunately, many of them have very limited tools.

Kind of like a lot of web marketers these days, eh?

I know my opinion isn’t a popular one, but I believe that the chasm between good internet marketing and bad internet marketing has grown by leaps and bounds in the past six months.  Catalogers and traditional direct marketers are not only falling behind but they’re dropping out of the race.  They can’t – or won’t – seem to keep up.

What are some of the most critical tools you need for 2010?

VIDEO – YouTube is the second largest search engine but that’s not the only reason you need to look at video seriously.  Video is, of course, visual.  It works because the optic nerve plugs directly into your reptilian brain, which is where your “buy buttons” are located.   You do NOT need a multi-million dollar studio.  Start with a Flip camera and a VERY good, VERY aggressive script.

UGC/REVIEWS – Consultants have all sorts of myths why User Generated Content (UGC) and reviews work.   Most of them are wrong.  They work for two reasons.  First, they create “evidence” that someone else just like you was already on the site you are looking at.  Second, they are one of the most effective methods for forming contrast.   Our buying brains like beginnings and ends and they best understand and function/act with contrast (dark versus light).

LIVE CHAT – Six years ago, I thought live chat was one of the worst things you could do on your site because, for the most part, it not only didn’t work but it actually hurt conversion.  Today, I am one of its biggest proponents ESPECIALLY  when it comes to instigated (aka proactive) chat.  It’s great for carts, forms, search and all those other nasty places that people like to leave from.

MOBILE – A lot of the mobile consultants make mobile marketing seem extraordinarily complicated.  Here’s a secret for you.  It may be the easiest thing you’ve ever done.  Start by optimizing your e-mails.   Then, add a handheld CSS file.   Take the mobile stuff in baby steps.  It’s easy and it’s incredibly worthwhile (read: lucrative.)

DYNAMIC RELEVANCE – If I tell you that I don’t like pink shirts, you shouldn’t show me a pink shirt.  Period.  You don’t have to go all Amazon tomorrow but you need to start looking at what you can do to make your site personalized.  Start with a Welcome Back message, if you must.

TRIGGER E-MAILS – Trigger e-mails are different than thrust e-mails because they are based on a user’s individual actions.  They are more than just abandoned cart programs and EVERY site – B2B, B2C, B2G, needs them.  Plain and simple as that.

Organics – Let’s face it. Most folks killed their organic SEO efforts the minute they heard about PPC.  Paying for clicks was so much easier than working for them.  Now Social Media is hot and PPC is not, right?  Wrong.  PPC still works and organics, if you build your program properly, still works even better. 

LISTENING TOOLS – If you’ve spent 2.2 seconds with me you already know that I’m not the world’s biggest social media proponent.   I truly believe that, in most cases, it’s massively over-rated.  With that said, this is the year you need to have a presence, you need to listen and you need to respond to the users who are talking about you.  Most social media “experts” don’t like it when I say this but for most companies, it’s truly a customer service thing and you need representation, just like you need a phone. 

ANALYTICS – I’ve got to say, I’m over Google Analytics.  Yes, I believe you should use it (even if it’s only to get accurate reads on your PPC) but only as PART of your arsenal.  Analytics is the key to your online success and you’ve got to take it seriously.   If you aren’t using a high-powered package, this is the year to look at one.  Buy it.  And then use it like crazy.

Additionally, consider analytical tools like Chartbeat (which is especially helpful for seeing what’s happening right this very minute on your bsite – for example, what happens after you deploy an e-mail); Clicky (good for real-time spying as well as social networking), Crazy Egg (one of my all-time favorites, great for visualization), ClickTale (also for heatmaps), TrafficSpaces (good for banner tracking) and so on.

What am I missing?   Please add your thoughts in the comments or drop me a line at info@amyafrica.com.

*Look, DJ’s daughter, due in March, already has her own Twitter account. @babywaldow.   This is obviously clear and blatant abuse.

**And yes, because if I don’t say it here, I’ll likely get questioned about it.  I adore Papa Waldow (@djwaldow on Twitter.)  That’s why I am teasing him.   DJ’s smart, funny and very genuine and I am happy for him, his wife and their new bambino, even if her name will likely be something like Narcissa.

What about the last time?

Ok, now tell me about all the ones in the middle. 

Yes, you heard me….  Talk to me about every kiss you’ve ever had.

Don’t remember them all?   Hmmm….  Why?

In the past couple months, I have started several speeches and webinars with the “kiss” question.  Everyone can tell me about their first and last kisses but after that, folks quickly start drawing blanks.

Is it because there are too many?   If I asked you to only tell me about ALL the memorable “middle-kisses” – could you do it? 

Probably not.  Sure, you could name some but you’d leave others out and likely, you wouldn’t tell me them chronologically.

Interesting, huh?

Strangely enough the same brain that processes stuff like that is also the brain that makes your buying decisions.

Over the next few months, we’ll talk more about the different brains and how they work together as well as the buy buttons (yes, everyone has them.)  In the meantime, let’s concentrate on the fact that the “brain that buys” likes the beginning, it likes the end, and it gets kinda-sorta mushy when it comes to the middle.

What does this mean when it comes to your web site? 

• The first 2 seconds (yes, two) are critical.  Everyone knows that.  What folks often underestimate are the last two.  What are you doing to get the users to stay and/or come back quickly?  If the secret formula to your web success is your first impression — and your last impression – what are you doing to make them special (read: aggressive?)
• Deadlines work because they create urgency and they cause people to focus.  They are especially effective on the web because they combine the user’s need for speed and the self-service aspect of doing anything online.
• Use more action directives.  Action directives (aka embedded commands) tell people what they are supposed to do on your site – click here now, proceed to checkout now, sign up for our FREE newsletter/webinar/podcast/white paper now, and so on.   A lot of consultants will tell you that you do not need them – that users are so sophisticated now that they don’t have to be told what to do – that’s completely bogus (and only said by folks who clearly have no understanding how the brain works.) 

Figuring out how to get your user to do what you want them to do isn’t rocket science, it’s neuroscience.  There’s  a very BIG difference. 

P.S. Want to see another example of how good your brain is when it comes to beginnings and ends? Click here now.

Ann Kennedy says: “Please tell me, Oh Web Goddess Extraordinaire, why do sites like Craigslist do well?  They’re butt ugly and that’s on a good day.  I just don’t get it.”

First, I like the greeting.  I’m hardly a goddess – more like a jester – but since it’s the nicest thing I’ve been called in days weeks months, I’ll take it. Thank you.

Second, I’m not sure that this is the best question to start the year off with.  I am LOVING 2010 and getting a bunch of folks all hot and bothered about aesthetics may not be my smartest move. 

With that said, I get this question at least twice a day so here’s the thing — and yes, it applies to every business — whether you sell penny knock-offs from Taiwan or luxury automobiles, your site will be MOST successful if it’s functional.

Functionality is in the user’s brains. (Yes, with an -s.)

Take the Fairmont Hotels, for example.  Last week, I stayed in three.   They are nice places and I enjoy a lot of their benefits (read: the Willow Stream Spas.)  However, from a business traveler’s perspective, they suck.  Yeah, yeah, I know.  They say they have EVERYTHING that a business person needs but then when you get in the room, you find out things like there is only one outlet underneath the desk.  Even more horrifying, one plug has already been taken for the light.   So, you end up plugging the computer in one place and your cell phone, iPod, Kindle, and other stuff in multiple places, halfway across the damn room.  

Compare that to the Hampton Inn.  They have a boatload of plugs – and usually at least one extension outlet near the desk.  Their internet is wireless (as opposed to a lot of the luxury hotels) and FREE (not $14.95 per day!)

Are Hampton Inns as pretty as Fairmonts?  Not in this lifetime.  But sometimes you don’t want pretty, you just want to get the job done…. 

Getting the job done is where sites like Craigslist come in.

Remember, you don’t always need to be first or the cheapest when it comes to web stuff, you just need to do it right.  And “right”, like functionality, is determined by your users.

The first 4 tried-and-true steps to making your site functional…

1. Make sure you have action directives in every quad of every view.   Action directives tell people what they are supposed to do on your site. They also make it clear as to whether your site is a library or a bookstore.
2. Add an e-mail sign-up to the top of the lefthand column. Everyone knows that capturing e-mail addresses has lots of benefits. What folks may not know is that when users give you their e-mail, their AAUS tends to increase and be more balanced.  In other words, they drill the right number of times per minute.
3. Speed is a deciding factor for the majority of users.  In fact, it’s one of the top three reasons why someone stays on your site.  Make sure your load time is quick and easy.  There are still far too many sites where you have to wait for the page to load.  (Very 2001, not 2010.)
4. Personalize the site with as much information as you can.  This includes not only “Welcome Charles”-type personalization but utilizing specialized landing pages, recently viewed items/articles, whip-its and catfishes, etc.

This is a guest post from Dave Cleveland, a copywriter, graphic artist and marketer from Woodstock, VT.   I’ve worked with Dave since I was knee-high to a grasshopper (read: a very, very long time)  and he’s unequivocally one of my favorite people on the planet.  Despite his alarmingly bad taste in politicians, he’s one of the sharpest, most creative people you’ll ever meet. 

In a recent QLOG, Amy warned against sending emails that were all image and no text, because so many recipients these days have their images turned off, or they use a service like Gmail where many people have it set up that images are not loaded unless they say to load them. So if your HTML email is all image, none of your message gets through.  Also, some email programs are suspicious of all-image emails, and label them junk.

But how DO you get text into your HTML emails effectively, using a program like Dreamweaver? This post will show you one way to do that.  I’m not saying it’s the only way, but it has been effective, allowing me to have good-looking graphics for people who want them, making sure the most important parts of my sales message can be seen by people with their images off, and getting low SPAM scores.

First, create a master image of your email (I use Fireworks for this, but Photoshop or any other similar program will work.)   In your design, create at least one place for text. You can actually put the type in as part of the image for now.  The text doesn’t have to be a lot of text — just a paragraph or two is sufficient — but it should be enough that the major points of your email — including your offer, your phone number, and a link to start ordering — are covered there. 

(The point here is to make it so that if this text is the only thing people see in their email, they can still get the main message of your email, and be able to start the ordering process by clicking through to your site.)  Click here to see a sample email. You can and should still put the main parts of your message in your graphics, too.

I generally create the text as an image first, so I know it looks the way I want it to, and then I duplicate the text in a word processing or text file. Important — Save this word processing text and put it aside for a minute to use later, but don’t style it in the word processing program.

Then, slice up your image as usual, and be sure to put the entire text portion of your email in its own slice.

Next, go into your HTML creation program, such as Dreamweaver, and create a simple HTML table, with one column the same width as your master image, and with three rows.

Do NOT use Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) to style your email, or the text you will be putting into it.  That’s because the most commonly used email programs can ignore the CSS info in your file header — so unlike web pages, CSS-styled emails may not look styled at all.  Instead, you need to use old-fashioned “in-line” styling, which I’ll explain in a minute.

So, you’ve now got a 3-rowed table.  Leave the first row blank for now.  In the second row, import your entire sliced graphic.  Then, click on the slice that will contain the final text you’ve created and delete the text that may be in there now as a graphic, if that’s the way you created your master image.  What you want there now is just an empty table cell.   Here’s where we’ll use our in-line styling.

In DreamWeaver, set up your screen so it’s split between Code View and Design View, so you can see both.  Click in the table cell that will contain your final text.  In the Code view screen, you’ll see code that looks something like this:

<td>&nbsp;</td>

Highlight the &nbsp;  part with your cursor, and substitute the following code:

<p style=”font-family: Trebuchet MS; font-size: 11px; font-style: normal; line-height: 12px; font-weight: normal;color: #000000;”> copy here </p>

Then click on the design portion of the screen.  The words “copy here” should now appear in your table cell.  (You may want to set the Horizontal table cell setting to “left” and the Vertical to “Top.”) You’ve just created your inline style, and are ready to put in the actual type you want, and change the styling if need be.

Go get the text from your word processing file, copy it, and paste it in place of the words “copy here”.  (You can do this in Dreamweaver in the design screen or the code screen.)  Your text will now appear, styled in Trebuchet,  11 px tall with a line height of 12px.   Now, if you want a different type face, type color, etc. just make the changes in the code snippet, and your text will reformat when you click back on the design screen.

Email programs recognize in-line styling like this, and your email will look like you want it to in most email programs.  (Use pixels instead of points for type sizes, as point size may vary some between Macs and PCs. I also suggest you use common PC faces like Arial, Trebuchet, and Verdana, so it will be likely your recipients will have that typeface.) 

To get line breaks use the Insert line break command in Dreamweaver.  To get bold type,  use the Bold (B) button in Dreamweaver, so you will be using the >strong< styling. If you want to do some more research, you’ll discover you can control even more factors with such in-line styling.

We’re almost done.

We still have an empty top row, and an empty bottom row.  In both, in code view you should  put in your styling code again, so the words “copy here” appears in both rows.

In the top row, you can put your message about “click here if you can’t see this email”.

But I also strongly suggest you put in a simple text sentence that summarizes your offer or the most important message of your email — remember, this may be the first and only text your recipient reads, if his images are turned off.

In the last row, put your standard unsubscribe text.

And finally, go back to each slice or image in your email, and use ALT Text liberally. When the images are off, the ALT text is still visible in programs like Gmail.  So use that text to explain your offer, repeat your phone number, emphasize your deadline, and more.

There.  You have readable text in your subject line, your lead-in eyebrow, the body of your email, and in the Alt text.  People can get a lot of your message, even with images off.

P.S. Make that message good enough — in all your emails — and your customers will start turning those images back on for you.

Chris Ziter, resident expert at Eight By Eight, adds:

1. Using a lot of and/or large images could trigger SPAM filters.  Many desktop/server/gateway filters consider the balance between images and text when flagging as well as the image size.

2. Inline styles are stripped out of some email clients (Gmail, for example) so if you want to be sure the styling works, you need to stick to the antiquated <font> tags to declare font size, color, family, etc.  I typically do a mixture of both so it “gracefully degrades” to the email client’s restrictions.

3.  Dave has a design wrapping around a text area.  If the user’s email/browser settings are set to display larger of if you don’t leave proper space below the HTML text for it to grow vertically, the content could break that area of the design (which may look sloppy).  I try to avoid that when designing emails. And when I get a design that presents that issue, there is usually a way to work around it.

“And what store is that?” My brother asked.

“The store where Amy takes me.” The Diabolical One answered.

“Which store is that?” My brother repeated S-L-O-W-L-Y. His mind obviously spinning with the possibility that I’d taken his {evil demon} spawn to a tattoo parlor, a sex shop or perhaps the infamous erotic bakery. (They really do have the best cakes.)

“The one with the SCARY people.” He shouted, having NO patience for this discussion. (They look so innocent in their car seats. What a flipping illusion that is.)

As my thoughts raced to exactly where I had taken him with scary people (no, none of the three choices above), I realized where it was. Two can play this game, I realized. “Where the bunnies are?” I asked.

“Yes.” He whispered, likely knowing I was about to bust him.

You could see my brother’s brain race to the nearest casino with the cocktail waitresses sporting only the latest in Playmates uniforms.

“Relax” I said. “The poker isn’t good till well after Anonymous goes to bed.” I paused, purposely. There’s nothing like getting older and still being able to poke your brother as much as you did when you kidnapped all his G.I. Joes and sold them back to him for about ten times what they were worth.

“He’s talking about Whole Foods. The organic carrots are right when you walk in. He thinks a lot of bunnies eat there.” I explained.

My brother raised one eyebrow. Obviously, he wasn’t buying it so I continued. “I took him there on Halloween. All the cashiers were in costume. Remember, I made you osso bucco? I had to get wine for it and the wine guy scared the hell out of him. He was dressed like a zombie.”

Silence.

As my brother debated whether or not he should call the poker room to see if they have a Kid’s Klub (they do), I thought about first impressions and their impact.

I love Whole Foods so much that I want to marry it and have its babies. (As an aside, if you haven’t read I Love You More Than My Dog by Jeanne Bliss, you should do it now.*) However, I totally get why my nephew was traumatized. The wine guy is scary WITHOUT being dressed up. He knows way more than anyone should about wine AND on a good day, he looks like he just came out of a cave. (Think a milk-fed Osama Bin Laden.) Couple that with a ghoulish costume… you’d be terrified, ESPECIALLY if you believed in monsters.

Granted, my nephew would sell his thrice-mortgaged soul to the devil to eat at McDonald’s. (What the hell do they put in McNuggets?) But the truth is, even if he had never been to a McDonald’s in his life, that day at Whole Foods still would have had a lasting impression on him — an experience so traumatic that he’d never want to return.

Kind of like your web site, eh?

I find that most folks — especially the “experts” — don’t talk enough about repeat visitors and how they impact your business.

Our knickers get twisted about bounce rates but we don’t focus enough on the people who come back and more important, how long it takes them to come back.

Of the ten or so metrics you MUST know about your business, that’s absolutely one of the most critical. Knowing if and when your customers repeat.

When someone new comes to your site today — whether you have a blog, a robust e-commerce site, or something in between, the user decides, in less than ten seconds, whether or not they’ll EVER come back. Some folks look at a lot of pages. Others leave on the very first one. But all of them decide if your site is a place they’d like to revisit.

Your goal is to figure out how many people are visiting again and how long it takes them to come back. Chances are you can influence how long it takes them (thus shortening your Days To Sale/Action) with tighter deadlines, everchanging carousels/visuals, polls/surveys, and more.

It’s either that or figuring out what they put in those damn McNuggets.
*No, that was not an Amazon link or a sponsored anything. I avoid customer service/care books like the piggy flu. However, I happen to like Jeanne’s. It’s quick and worth a read. Plus, you’ve got to admit, the title alone makes it worth buying.

I am a firm believer that the premise — anyone can cook — is true…   Although I must say, three of my closest friends constantly try to prove me wrong.

Cait’s idea of “cooking” is putting Cheez-Wiz on a Ritz cracker with some salami or “whipping up” Suddenly Salad or whatever that godforsaken pasta-in-a-box-WITHOUT-vegetables concoction is called.

Lynn can cook a little but she is also THE reason why frozen meals have VERY detailed, step-by-step instructions — in other words, to prevent her untimely death, she is the kind of person who reads and closely follows “first, take your nasty, little, shrink-wrapped, chemical dinner out of the box.”

Barbara, er, Cristina,  is one of those people who puts a full pot of water on the stove, sets the heat on low (if she remembers to turn it on at all) and then wonders why it has not boiled an hour later. Needless to say, when someone says “she can hardly boil water” it’s not true. “She can’t boil water. Period.”

Could they all be trained to cook? Yes. Most definitely. Everyone can cook.

Can everyone be a chef? Not. So. Much.

The thing about being a chef versus being a cook is that you’ve got to have passion — and you need to put muscle behind it. Not your biceps but that muscle the size of your fist — called the heart.

Everyone is a chef somewhere in their life. (if you’re like most, it will have nothing to do with cooking but something else that you’re ON FIRE about!) You have something. The company you own or work for has something. We all have that greatness inside of us. (Don’t cue the Kumbaya music quite yet, I haven’t finished.)

Take my dear friend, Lois Geller for instance. She’s unbelievably passionate about marketing — she doesn’t really seem to care what kind of marketing it is — catalogs, solo packages, websites, email, blogs, telemarketing, Facebook — Lois loves it all, just as long as it’s GOOD marketing.

Lois is a Twitter Addict (as in she REALLY needs a support group), corrects every Yiddish word I mispronounce (who can say kvetch as one syllable? I mean really.) and overall, drives me batty (in the best of ways.) She also had a tremendous impact on my career. Not because she owned a chi-chi-la-la agency on Madison Avenue or she wrote a lot of influential books on direct marketing but because she is one of the most creative people to walk the planet. Literally. She and her crackerjack team should be tasked with establishing world peace. They’d probably have it done by Christmas. That’s how good they are.

Lois is one of those people who has been there and done that. I swear, she’s worked at every agency, with every client in every area of the world. She has THE best stories of things she’s done for Weight Watchers, Fairmont, American Express, Apthorp Cleaners, and a bunch of others. Some of the tales are inspirational (like why she moved to Florida) and others are just plain funny — like mistakenly sending a bunch of hard-core sex tips to a bunch of diet magazine subscribers. She has a unique ability to make you laugh — cry — or want to smack her (if you follow her on Twitter.)

Then, you look at her blog — joyofdirectmarketing.com. It’s not that it’s bad — it’s just that it’s not very Lois — and truly not at all joyful.

It’s got a lot of white space and it’s quite vanilla — especially for a woman who gives out prizes (usually trolls) in her speeches. (Yes, I said trolls.)

The header looks like something that could be on any social media consultant’s site — which is not good as Lois Geller is way more than one channel. There is no picture of Lois. No red photo of her as seen on Twitter (over and over). Not a lot to see or do in the first view. A search function that doesn’t really work all that well. A calendar that does God only knows what. Limited navigation…

You get the idea. It’s the blog of a regular cook and NOT a chef, which is extremely unfortunate because Lois is indeed a MASTER chef. (And no, she can’t make anything but reservations when it comes to food either.)

It doesn’t really matter that Lynn, Cait or Barbara aren’t chefs in the traditional sense. Lynn eats things from a box, Cait eats things from a can and Barbara eats things that come in take-out containers from the latest in pretty-place-lousy-food restaurants. None of them are particularly passionate about food (although they all would sell their souls to the devil for a lifetime supply of chocolate) and the fact that they’re not up to date on the latest in molecular gastronomy is what it is… completely ok.

What does matter is that they are all passionate about other things in their lives — just like Lois is passionate about marketing and when they’re talking about those things — the things that are most important to them — they speak like chefs. (Chefs that can’t cook but chefs nonetheless.)

The case of Ms. Geller is a little different however. She’s constantly yapping on Twitter that she doesn’t like her blog and she wants ideas on how to fix it. My advice to her: embrace it like you do your speeches — pig hats and all.

A blog and a website (her website falls into a similar category) that is ALL-LOIS-ALL-DAY — complete with wackadoodle pictures, videos with her sing-song voice, successful case studies, favorite tweets, hopping trolls (ok, maybe not) and all the other things that showcase Lois Geller as the master marketer and creative genius she truly is would be so much better — and make her so much happier — than the frozen pizza site she’s got now.

In what areas of your business are you a chef and how are you portraying it to your users? It’s ok to be Lean Cuisine or Stove Top Stuffing about some things but not others — and definitely not on the important stuff.

Remember, your unique ability to highlight your inner chef is why people come to your site in the first place. You may have the biggest breadth of product line, free customization, incredibly unique merchandise or the best technical support. That’s what you need to promote. The chef in you. (Now you can cue the music — I recommend Carmina Burana as opposed to that religious campfire song however.)

P.S. If you have good examples of companies or people who show their inner chef really well, please add them to the comments, ok?

Tip: For those of you who skip to the bottom of my posts for the “meat”, here’s your tip: If you have an ecommerce site that sells promotional products, the promotional products are all about being a cook. Everyone and their brother has them. Everyone “can sell promotional products.” But if you can imprint them overnight like http://www.rushimprint.com/, that’s where you’re the chef. Your site needs to showcase your inner chef. Not your “anyone can cook” abilities.