In the book, Malcolm X gets high by taking nutmeg.

Innovative, right?

Yeah. Not. So.Much.

Malcolm X is a liar.

Nutmeg, especially ingested in very large quantities, does JACK except to make you want to vomit.Violently.

If, after adding several heaping teaspoons of nutmeg to your daily coffee, or you know, mixing it with water in a stolen shaker from your parents liquor cabinet, you feel like you are having hallucinations, it’s either the placebo effect or extreme nausea.It’s no great high.  Period.

What does this mean?

It means you can’t believe everything you read.  (And yes, Geezer, I realize I’m giving you an easy out to stop reading this and/or mock me.  So be it.)

Besides Malcolm X, who else is lying to you?  Sadly, I can’t speak about your wife, mistress or teenager but I can tell you about the top eightPinocchiosI’ve seen hanging out in the ecommerce world lately.

Deluders who tell you that conversion is the be-all and end-all of internet marketing. Conversion is a great metric when used sparingly.  I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I can double your conversion overnight by blocking/eliminating all your garbage traffic.  Your conversion rate will skyrocket.  Your revenues?  Not likely.  Hell, they often drop.  Conversion rates are not the primary indicator of a successful site or campaign.  

Deceivers who say that the 200% lift in conversion you’ll get from their button test will “rock your world.”  Unless you’re reading the results at the same time there’s an earthquake, this is very unlikely.Granted, a 200% lift sounds sexy until you put it into perspective and realize that the difference may only be 2 orders.   (Which from an online perspective isn’t statistically significant anyway.)  Yes, there are times when the numbers are real – and amazing – but do some digging before you don a hardhat.

Prevaricators who yap that the only reason why people abandon their carts is because they want to look for a discount coupon.  Yes, there are people who do this – especially if you give your promotion code box/field a lot of prominence.  However, it’s not the majority or primary reason.  In fact, it’s usually on par with the “I-was-shopping-at-work-and-my-boss-walked-in-so-I-quickly-closed-my-browser” rate.

Falsifiers who report that the majority of sales from your remarketing campaign are incremental. I am a big fan of remarketing and if you have an aggressive email capture system and a solid abandoned program you’ll be able to pluck off a lot of the leads, without paying someone a commission.  

Misleaders who try to convince you that you should only email your customers once a week because people hate email.  (These are usually the same folks who say that you shouldn’t use pop-ups because users hate them too.)  Internet marketing is a numbers game.  Get your ego out of the equation and do what’s right for your business.

Fibbers who tell you that mobile marketing is difficult and expensive.  Yes, there are many consultants/agencies making boatloads of cash off of mobile.  However, that doesn’t mean you need to spend that much.  Right now, there are three keys to mobile: just showing up, speed and navigation.   Not to mention you simply must have mobile-friendly emails.  Do you need to spend $100k and $5k a month for service to get good mobile results?   Only if you can’t find some swampland in Florida.

Trickster ESP’s who tell you their delivery rate is 96%.  Unless you count delivering to SPAM and trash folders as “delivered.” As an aside, these are often the same folks who tell you to split your list into openers, non-openers, clickers and non-clickers.   You know what that does?  Puts all the garbage names into one bucket so they’re easiest for the hosts to delete!

Snake oil salesmen who repeatedly ask you “what the ROI of your mother is” when you ask how much money you can expect to make from social media. You’re right to ask.  They’re not liars for saying this, they’re just idiots.  Or maybe they’ve just pounded back too much nutmeg.

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.

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.

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.

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. 

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.

Betsey Kendall writes: “The Web Show was the first place I ever saw you without your bodyguard so I patiently waited in line to ask you a question but then I got interrupted by a phone call.  When I turned around, you were gone! We are struggling with our project list.  You said in your seminar this is a common problem and that ‘90% of your stuff should be axed.’  Can you talk a little bit more about that? Your point about emails was VERY well taken by my team.”

Hi Betsey –

My bodyguard?  You must mean my friend, Cristina.  Yeah, she’s tough.  Not physically. She can’t hurt a flea but that one-eyebrow-raise of hers?   VERY. SCARY.

Glad you took my point about emails seriously.  It blows my mind how many people spend 10-15 hours on a single thrust email, moving things back and forth two pixels – COMPLETE WASTE OF TIME.  If you’re spending more than a couple hours on any email, you need to rethink your strategy.

As for the axing….  Everyone and their brother – whether they have a full-blown ecommerce site or a blog — has a HUGE list of things that they want to do.  My experience is that the majority of that stuff is not going to make a difference — nor will it ever really get done.  So the best thing to do is put your list into a spreadsheet and then rank it.  (At Eight By Eight, these are one of the most popular things we do for clients.)

So, for example, let’s look at one item:

AREA:                                   Improve product detail pages

INITIATIVE:                  Develop recently-viewed items banner (so users know what they’ve looked at)

PRIORITY:                        1 (we rank things 1-3 with 1 being the highest)

EASE TO CHANGE:     1 (we rank things 1-3 with 1 being the easiest)

COST:                                    L (we use high, medium and low)

ROI:                                       M (we use high, medium and low)

TIMING:                            S (we use short and long-term & we define the days associated with each, for example, short-term in this case might be 120 days)

We may also add internal time, date completed and who is responsible.

After everything is put on the list, we sort by rank and then the appropriate (ease to change, cost and ROI) field(s.)

This sounds boring as Hell but it’s one spreadsheet and it makes things super easy and VERY efficient.  All the low ROI items?  You guessed it.  They get sorted right off the list!  And for most companies, that accounts for about 90% of the stuff they want to do!

Is this system perfect?  No.  But it works.  A lot of web stuff never gets done (i.e., improving your internal text search or testing email pop-ups) because the project itself seems too big.  So, we take care of the easy fixes like changing colons to semi-colons that Customer Service is nattering about instead.  Sadly, even though that kind of stuff seems productive, it usually doesn’t result in more sales or leads.

Have a question about your project list?  Jot it in the comments below or send me an email to info@amyafrica.com.

Jason F. writes “I recently saw you speak at Conversion Conference.  (I was at eMetrics and crashed your session.)  We’ve got an iPhone app (it’s not getting any traction) and a full-blown mobile site that we spent about a million dollars developing.  (Don’t ask, you won’t approve.) We’re not getting many orders and a lot of our users are bouncing off the first page.  What are we doing wrong? I know you said that people need to mobilize their sites, not miniaturize them.  We made the mistake of miniaturizing which we know we need to fix but it’s a huge process.  What can we do in the meantime?  You got any advice for us?”

Thanks for writing Jason.

Here’s the thing…

A lot of people are doing exactly what you did with mobile.  They are taking their big site with bazillions of products/services and they’re smushing it down into a little site.  That strategy, although convenient, doesn’t work for the user.

The good news is that you can fix it.

One of the best things about this new mobile world is that customers are extraordinarily forgiving, so here’s what you can do.

First, optimize your speed.  Right now, it’s one of the only things that matter.  Mobile users will not wait 15 seconds for your site to download.  Period.  End of story.  Your goal, whether or not you choose to accept it, is a low page weight.  (Under 100K, preferably closer to 10K.)

Second, develop a killer entry page.   This will make a huge difference in your success.  Why?  Because the first page that the user sees has a direct indication on their conversion success. 

How do you do this?  Be clear about your goals.  What’s your goal?  Branding?  Acquisition?  Engagement?  Retention?  Customer service?   Sadly, it’s very unlikely that it will work the same as your traditional site – in fact, it’s often polar opposite. 

If your site is an ecommerce site, then make it look like an ecommerce site from the get-go (you know, with things like a perpetual shopping cart.)  If you’re trying to get something else, focus on it.   

Focus on one thing — the lead, the order, the email address – whatever is THE thing that you want.  The most successful companies in the mobile space, live and die by their funnels.  They know what their end-goal is so they can work backwards accordingly.

Jason, you have an existing site that you spent a boatload of money on but even if you hadn’t, the key is to figure out what  you want in the end (orders, inquiries, customer service, etc.) and then develop a plan to get to it.  It sounds very simplistic but that plan starts at the very first page of your mobile site. 

Are people clicking on your store locator?  Are they signing up for a catalog?  Trying to purchase something?  Adding themselves to your email list?  Tracking their packages?   Comparing prices?  Reading the user reviews?  Downloading a white paper?  

Remember, this is somewhat of a self-fulfilling prophecy (when it comes to navigation, you get what I give you) so choose your topics carefully.

Pick the things that are most important to you, showcase them appropriately (you have room for about 5-8 solid choices) and then track the hell out of your results.

I realize that this sounds overly simplistic but developing a killer entry page is one of the very best ways to get a good foundation that you can build on.

Have a question you’d like answered?  Click here now.   It’s FREE!

First, you need to jump over the abortion protestors; then you must bolt around the pseudo-Boy Scout (River something) kids who charge $12 for a bag of stale popcorn that the very inebriated homeless person just outside the doors won’t even eat.  After that you need to make your way over the crosswalk where the crazy drivers don’t even stop for the traffic guards…  But I digress….

If only Trader Joe’s had everything I needed for the dinner I was making, I thought.   I guess I should have gone to The Scary People Store.   It’s a much longer drive and the cashiers do everything in their power to make you feel like a criminal for not bringing your own bags.  (“Even though you’re 3500 miles away from home, you should travel with them in your suitcase these days,” according to Gloria, the evil redhead whose line I always seem to end up in.)  But at least they don’t require your phone number to checkout.

Lost in my own thoughts and my virtual video game, the footsteps behind me quickened.

“I got your digits off the keypad when you were checking out.  Imma gonna use’em.”  The Kanye West wannabe exclaimed rather righteously.

“Go right ahead.” I replied calmly as I kept walking.  It’s amazing how many men use this exact same stalker-like strategy and think they’re the very first one. As if. 

Awkward silence.

“Whose number did you use?” He sheepishly asked, the bravado fading fast.

I didn’t answer.

I had to give Faux Kanye credit.  More than three quarters of the guys don’t figure this part out while they’re still in your vicinity.  (And yes, it really is much easier to use my sister-in-law’s phone number than it is to watch the checkout girls fall over themselves trying to get me to sign up for a savings card.)

As I kept walking, I heard his phone sing.   Gotta love a guy who has a Pitbull song as his ring tone. 

I had reached my car so I popped the trunk, put the groceries in and started to get into the car.  Faux Kanye put his hand on the driver’s side door as if he was going to block me.  “Imma gonna keep trying till I get you.  Then we’ll go out.  Count on it.”

I gave him my best mean-as-dirt glare (I am sure I looked like Po from Kung Fu Panda but it was all rather Angelina Jolie in my head), got in my car, and drove off.

As I was at the stoplight, it reminded me of one of the most important principles of online success.  (What, you thought this was the beginning of a love story?  Have you met me?  I mean really.)

Get the data.  Some data.  Any data.  But get something.  From a website perspective, it’s an e-mail address.  If you’re doing a lot of mobile, you want their phone number so you can text message them.    If someone comes to your e-commerce site, your blog, your Facebook page, whatever, your goal is to either get them to buy/do something OR at the very least, find out a way to communicate with them in the future.

A lot of sites ask for the e-mail address once at the bottom.   This is one of the BIGGEST mistakes you can make – asking only once and burying the capture box is a sin.  If you want to collect e-mail addresses, you’ve got to ask in every view (every screen that the user sees) and you should ask in a variety of ways.  For example, some people will sign-up for a FREE newsletter, others won’t.   However, they may fill out a quick survey or a poll; register for a free webinar/podcast; or download a free white paper.)

Did Faux Kanye get MY number?  No.  But if my sister-in-law (aka the mother of the tiny terrorists) ever actually answered her house phone, he would have gotten a good place to begin. 

Chances are if YOU ask for them, you’ll get real email addresses and real phone numbers which you can use for trigger e-mails, thrust e-mails, text messages, and more.    The start of a very good (and even more profitable) relationship.

This is the kind of athletics club where the women spend an hour BEFORE they break a sweat (cough) applying fresh make-up and readjusting their barely-there string tops and Spandex low-rise shorts.   (It would irk me except that none of the bimbelinas use the free weights side of the room so it’s basically estrogen free and sans drama. Just the way I like it.)

On this particular evening, there was only one 40-ish year old female along with her trainer on the side I frequent.  The woman had more plastic than a Mattel fashion doll and was wearing a faux cashmere get-up that made her stand out like a sore thumb in this crowd.  (Read: when you work out here it’s assumed that you’re available, you needn’t plaster JUICY all over your flipping a**.)

Barbie (not her real name) was being politely reprimanded by Ken (her trainer’s real name) that she was being unreasonable about the speed in which she was seeing results.

“A pound of muscle weighs more than a pound of fat” he exclaimed rather righteously.

Ahh, the lies personal trainers tell their clients so they don’t get fired, I thought. 

Yes, a pound of muscle take up less space than fat but last I knew, a pound weighed a pound, no matter what it was comprised of – water, muscle, fat…

As Barbie pouted and contemplated the complex math equations she had been presented, I reflected on a conversation I’d had earlier in the week.  The guy was very, very, very smart and based on the questions he was asking, I knew he was being bamboozled by his internet marketing consultant who was helping him with his platform upgrade.   It’s no secret that most of the consultants in this industry take a percentage of the action, so they often have a vested interest in the packages and add-ons their clients use.  (For the record, we don’t take a penny.) 

He had been told an internet consultant’s lie – on part with Ken’s personal trainer lie – that it’s best and most efficient to do everything at once.  “Saves time!  Saves money!  It’s more efficient! ”  Many consultants cry.

On what planet? I ask.  The one where a pound of muscle weighs more than a pound of fat?

Whether you are a blogger or a multi-billion ecommerce company, the rules are the same.  You need a good foundation to have a great house.  

The key to the most successful internet companies is that they focus on the things that are important to the user.  They know what they need and what they don’t.  And, most of all, they constantly read and react to their results.   

I understand what Ken was trying to tell Barbie – that as she was building more muscle, she may not have the weight loss that she was expecting short-term. But, in the long-term, she’d catch up because muscle burns more calories than fat.

That’s the same thing that happens with your website.  If you have a solid foundation, you will make more money than one with a weak foundation and a lot of bells and whistles.   Yes, the new forms of dynamic personalization are very sexy but if your checkout or lead forms suck, it’s not going to make a damn bit of difference.

What things make up a good foundation?  Easy.  Solid entry pages; the perfect checkout/lead forms; good navigation (including text search function); and aggressive e-mail programs (thrusts and especially triggers).   Those are your muscle.  Do you have those elements perfected?  Or do you need to work on strengthening them?