Beth Kotowski asks: “Why are you so obsessed with exit pages? No other consultants ever talk about them.  Are you behind the times or do you see value in them that others don’t?”

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.)

The other day, while I was debating whether or not to report father-to-be, DJ Waldow, to Child Protective Services for FUTURE neglect*, a funny thing happened. 

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.

Do you remember the first time you kissed?

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.

“I want to go to the Nuggies Store and NOT the scary people store.” Anonymous ordered, as if he had the one and only vote.
Anonymous is three and a half but he stirs up trouble like no boy — or man — I’ve ever met.

“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.

Did you see the movie, Ratatouille?

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.

Have you been to time-out as an adult?  (No, not Time-Out, the trendy restaurant in Dubai, the place in the corner of your house or on the stairs.)

I was there just yesterday and although I can’t say much for it as an effective disciplinary tool, it did get me to think…  But first with the story…

I was at my brother’s house with my two nephews: Anonymous and Nameless.  Anonymous is three and a half and Nameless (aka 2.0 or TWO, which stands for The Wee One) is 16 months.

I was making dinner and the boys were making cookies (read: destroying the kitchen and mainlining brown sugar.)

My brother?  Supervising, as usual.  (My brother is either extraordinarily helpful or unbelievably useless in the kitchen.  Yesterday, he was completely worthless.  Doesn’t matter which extreme we get, he’s ALWAYS bossy.)

If you’re a parent, you know that making cookies with children is an exercise in patience.  Just imagine making cookies with two terrorists-in-training, cooking paella the old-fashioned way, while having your sibling quarterback from the couch.  (He’s a real foodie so his tips are often helpful but really — do we need to use the vanilla from Mexico not the one from St. Kitts, in the kids’ cookies?  I think not.)

Every so often my brother would come in to inspect what was going on.  (Inspect means taste and offer pithy comments.)  Hearing simultaneous uh-ohs as the entire bag of flour spilled on the floor, he came in for a fourth time to offer his two cents on why his kitchen resembled my dating life.

I did what any sane woman would do at the time.  I hit him with a wooden spoon.

Yeah, yeah, I know.  In front of the kids yadda yadda yadda.  Call Child Protective Services.  It was actually a playful swat.

“YOU NEED TO GO TO TIME-OUT NOW.” Anonymous bellowed.  “RIGHT NOW.”

Cute, I thought.  He’s very cute when he’s angry.  Then I looked at The Wee One.  2.0’s arms were crossed, his chin was jutted out so far a bird could perch on it and he was tapping his left foot.  “Time Out.” He grunted.  TWO does not talk.  He can but he chooses not to.  Why would you talk when you get everything you want without it? (And yes, that’s a rhetorical question for you social media folks.)

TWO pointed to the wall.  Emphatically he repeated, “TIME-OUT.”

I looked at my brother.  “Are you flipping kidding me?” I said with my eyes.  He nodded at the boys, both of their little bodies positioned in defiance.

“There is NO hitting in this house.”  Anonymous bellowed.  Oh how I wish my brother was like my friend, Brian, who doesn’t punish his kids till he sees blood.  (Of course, Brian is a single Dad so that kind of explains why he gets to skip all these think-about-what-you-did pleasantries.)

I looked at my brother as if to say “I hope your dinner burns to a crisp” (yes, I am the picture of maturity) and begrudgingly did the Walk of Shame to the Time-Out wall.

Anonymous is diabolically smart.  I was convinced that he was sending me to Time-Out so he could finish off the chocolate chips.  He had already “snuck” more than we had left to put in the cookies.

“How much longer?” I asked after being there for about 3 seconds.

“There is NO talking in Time-Out!” The boys said in unison.  (Technically, 2.0 just did his caveman thing.)  Thank goodness, Anonymous is a redhead, not a blonde, otherwise I’d think he was in some sort of futuristic Aryan training school.

Stand and face the wall.  No talking.

What fresh hell is this and what on earth does this have to do with web marketing, you may ask.

First, two minutes is a very long time. I never remember that until I actually have to be still for two minutes.  (Yes, my yoga teacher says that if savasana was graded, I would fail miserably.)  When you are looking at your user sessions (the length of time people stay on your site) and you think that “seven minutes isn’t all that long” think again.  Seven minutes is an eternity.

Second, not only does your web site have a lot of screaming girls but it’s also really like Time-Out for a lot of your users. Huh?  What the hell does that mean?  It means that the perspective that you see sending people there is not at all what it’s like when you’re facing the wall, er, when the users are looking at their computers.

Long ago, in the days before Tealeaf (one of my all-time favorite packages), I used to do something that I encourage you to try.  It’s not sophisticated and it’s not statistically significant but if you do it, I guarantee you will learn something useful about your site.  (Yes, @wilsonellis, @zkellyq and @jamesfowlkes, I am looking at you.)

Take 10 or so random sessions that have just happened on your site.  Look carefully at what each user has done, what they’ve seen and how they’ve exited.  Look at the first page they entered in on and then follow, page-by-page, what they clicked, trying to figure out what they did and where they went next.  Act like one of those CSI guys trying to recreate the crime.

It won’t take you long before you start envisioning things in a different way.  You might find that the person exited because they were on a dead end.  You may see that they got stuck on a page because there were no action buttons to click.  You might find that your navigation disappeared when it shouldn’t have or that things just all of a sudden got very confusing.  No, you won’t always find what or why they left but you will share their experience of your site and how it actually works in practice, not just in theory.

No matter what, you’ll see things from an entirely new perspective.

P.S. I am completely aware that #2 (not to be confused with TWO) above sounds cheesy but I really do encourage you to try it.  In the ole’ days (when I was walking uphill to work, both ways, in raging blizzards, with no jacket and only cardboard on my feet), those kind of duct tape and spit things were the only kind of “usability studies” our clients could afford.  I can’t begin to tell you how much I learned from doing that kind of stuff.  You’ll know what I mean once you do it.

P.P.S.  If you’d like to comment on my brother’s parenting skills, I am more than happy to give you his e-mail address so you can write him directly.  Being the “bad influence” that I am, he doesn’t much listen to me and when I say “much” I mean NOT AT ALL.

On the 2.2 days a year that I am not traveling, I live in Vermont. My nephrologist is in Seattle.

If I moved to whatever the furthest place in the world is from Seattle, my nephrologist would still be in Seattle. Meaning that I would travel from anywhere on the planet to see him. I went through over three dozen kidney doctors before I found him. I saw the top guys in the world and I settled on him. Why? Two reasons. (1) He’s unequivocally one of the most competent, knowledgeable, skilled doctors I have ever had and he fits; and (2) He consistently exceeds my expectations.

The “fit” part is important and often underestimated. If you don’t like your doctor, no matter how much any person or report tells you that they’re the Best/Top/Most Published/Most Honored/Least Sued Doctor, dump them and find someone else. Period.

The expectations part is a bit more complicated. The thing about expectations is that one person has to set them first. Both parties can have expectations but one person needs to be in charge and manage them. (Yes, I know, all the “it’s about the conversation” types think both people should have equal expectations. What-the-flip-ever. Some stuff sounds a lot better in theory than it actually works out in practice.)

When I first met, Dr. A., I was over an hour late for my appointment. (That was not intentional. I get lost in a paper bag.)

I cycloned into his office as I normally do and after exchanging a few pleasantries (the guy gives succinct new meaning) I said something to the effect of “look, I can’t commit to a man. There’s no way in Hell I am committing to a machine 3-4 times a week. You need to figure out how to solve my problems without a transplant or a dialysis machine.”

He looked at me quizzically and then nodded at his nurse. I recognized the nod as it’s one that I have seen often — it’s the “make sure to request a drug panel on her blood work lab sheet because this girl is obviously smoking crack” nod.

But guess what? He did it. EXACTLY what I asked him to. He did something that some of the most renowned doctors at the most prestigious hospitals in the world told me was outright impossible. Yes, it’s true. A guy who calls his pocket calendar his “BlueBerry” — yes, blue, not black, because it’s got a blue PAPER cover — solved problems that were supposedly unsolvable.

It’s the same thing with your web site. When a user comes to your site for the first time, you set their expectations. The first view of your site (literally — the first view — the first screen) tells them what they’re supposed to do there.

Is your site a library or is it a bookstore?

Are they supposed to buy or are they supposed to browse? (Remember, any time the user exchanges their personal data with you, it’s a transaction — there’s a market value to their info — so even if you’re trying to get a lead, you can still have a “buying” site.)

Is your search in the upper righthand corner or is there a perpetual cart or lead form there? (A perpetual cart is a cart that stays with you throughout the buying process. You can use them for leads too.) One tells you to buy. The other tells you to browse.

If you have a blog, is there a way to contact you for information about your services or do you bury that somewhere below the fold?

Do you have an action bar or just navigation? An action bar tells the user what things they are supposed to do on your site (sign up for your FREE newsletter, order from a catalog, check out the web specials/overstock/clearance items.) Navigation tells them where they can go, er, in a nice way. (The best, for any site, is a combination of the two.)

Do you have “click here now” buttons or do you just assume that users will know where/how to click? (Hint: they won’t.) Do you have a home link or do you believe that users know to click on your logo to get there? (Hint: they don’t.) Does the top view have just one huge visual and/or a bunch of text or are there are a lot of things to do or look at? (Hint: the latter works best.) Do you ask them to raise their hand (i.e., fill out a survey/poll, download a white paper, sign up for a webinar) or do you just hope they will? (Hint: if wishes were horses….)

You have one chance to make a first impression.

The first screen on your site often determines your outcomes. First screen. One chance. One first impression.
What kind of expectations are YOU setting for your user? What are you telling them to do?

I recently delivered a keynote address at one of those chi-chi-la-la invitation-only conferences. Just before my speech, this guy, Jack, in the second row calls out, “I hope I learn something today.”

I must admit, before I slam him to high-heaven, that Jack’s a decent guy. He runs a privately-held company that’s worth a little over a billion that he built himself with virtually no seed money. He sold it to a VC firm in the late 90’s and bought it back two years later because he didn’t like what they were doing with it.

He’s been to over a dozen of my seminars and he’s FINALLY starting to think that this internet thing may stick. (No, I am not kidding.)This is a guy, who until a couple years ago, had a secretary print out his email three times a day so he could scrawl all over it and return it to her for typing up and sending.

“I mean last time I implemented one of your ideas it was a bomb. Did NOT work whatsoever.” Jack added with a smirk.

What is it with these people? I mean, bring a voodoo doll or something but not right before a speech. Good grief!

Just out of morbid curiosity and basically because I just couldn’t resist, I retorted, “What did you test?”

“Abandoned carts. The program was worthless.” He all but shouted.

Nice buddy, real nice. The flipping topic of my speech was “38 Sure-Fire Tips for Increasing Your Conversion” and Jack The Ripper was attempting to destroy my credibility.

So I started asking him questions… One after another… like an FBI interrogator.

What did you mail? When did you mail it? What was the subject line? Was it personalized? And so on and so forth. It took me eleven questions but I finally found a kink in his armor.

“How many did you mail?” I inquired, not really noticing that EVERYONE in the room was listening intently.

“Seven.” Jack exclaimed triumphantly!

“Seven what? Seven thousand? Seven million? ” I asked.

“No, just seven.”

I burst out laughing. I thought he was kidding. He wasn’t. He was dead-as-a-corpse serious. You could have heard a pin drop.

“How could you mail seven and think that you had any kind of statistical validity or that you’d get any results at all for that matter?” I shot back. “I’m not trying to be rude here (I really wasn’t) but are you smoking crack? I mean, you have a $350 average order and you only mailed SEVEN PEOPLE!

If you were lucky, four of them actually received the email which means 1-2 people might have clicked on it – MAX. How exactly did you expect to calculate a quarter to half an order? And just for my information, how long are you leaving your cookies open and at what point do you expire your carts?”

The host was getting anxious about starting on time, so I told Jack we’d finish the conversation after my speech and we did. I’ll spare you all the gory details, but the discussion got VERY heated before Jack got the point. In his defense, this happens with a lot of my clients.

Online testing is difficult.

I will be the first one to admit that. It’s not at all like offline testing. There are many more variables that you have to fit into the equation, the data can be suspect, all sorts of things can impact it, and so on and so forth.

Plus, people tend to do one of two things. They either look at data that is unreliable or inaccurate …. or they use data that is good but they read it incorrectly. Even worse, a tester may often have such a strong theory going into the whole thing that his judgment is clouded. (It took me a long time to become objective.)

8 Tips for Improving Your Online Testing

1. Know whether or not you have a large enough sample size to test. Jack sent just seven abandoned cart emails and then threw out the program because it “failed miserably.” The guy built a big business so it’s obvious that he’s not taking the little yellow bus to work, but he’s not alone in his poor testing decisions. I see literally hundreds of people make the exact same mistake (although mailing only seven was definitely the worst). If you’re going to test something, you need to have significance. A test that ends up with 32 inquiries on one versus 33 inquiries on the other should most likely be thrown out or retested.

2. Do not test anything within 10 days of a major holiday. That’s 10 days before and 10 days after. If you are testing something seasonal (i.e. Christmas, especially) and you simply MUST test, do as many things as you can to isolate everything except a solo variable.

3. If something major happens in the world, throw out the test results. They’re more than likely going to be garbage. If you are www.nbc.com and you are doing a big test of your store, don’t run the test during the night of TheBiggest Loserfinale and think it’s going to accurately reflect what’s going to happen the rest of the year because it won’t.

4. Make sure to separate your online-sourced users from your offline-sourced users. This will make a huge difference. You don’t necessarily need to have an equal percentage of each but you do need to segment them so you can track them separately. Same with e-mail folks — no e-mails versus e-mails must be a segment.

5. Make sure the TOD (time of day) and DOW (day of week) is the same. Many times people come up to me and say — “I did so-and-so test and this was the clear winner.” When I look at the results, I realize that one test was conducted on Monday-Wednesday and the other was Thursday-Sunday… Or perhaps one was conducted from 6 am to 6 pm and the other went from 6 pm to 6 am. That’s not a test, especially on the Internet where time makes such a big difference.

6. Considering testing the same variable more than once. From an online perspective, backtesting the control is almost always a must.

7. Make sure the test is an exact A/B split. You can’t test email creative and landing pages all at once and expect to come out with valid results. Separate your variables and test them one at a time.

8. Most important, watch your metrics carefully. One of my clients recently threw out a 3-month test because there “weren’t more orders at the end.” After closely examining the results, I realized that although there were fewer completed orders, there were over 70% more attempted orders with the test version than with the control. After a retest, we found that the new landing pages were getting a lot more people to ATC (adopt to cart) which, with a good email follow-up process was instrumental in increasing their overall revenue!

I don’t need to have my vision checked but I want a PDF report from an eye doctor that I can e-mail to folks.

Yes, you read that correctly. I want a detailed explanation from a certified optometrist that I don’t need contacts, glasses, or Lasik.

I can see just fine. Why?

I get at least a dozen comments a week about our sites being uglier than a dog’s breakfast. Most of the folks who write give me the benefit of the doubt and think maybe I am “just too busy” to know what our designers are doing.

Others think we are testing ugly (as if this is a metric that needs measurement.)

Nobody ever seems to think that what we have is exactly what we want and/or need. (Ok, it’s not at all “exactly” but it IS pretty close, as unfortunate as the case may be for our creative team.)

Here’s the thing, folks… I know our sites are not going to win awards for aesthetics and the truth is, I COULD NOT CARE LESS.

I am not in this business to have pretty sites. I am in this business to make money.

Money comes from action.
Money comes from people clicking, calling and going to the final step. (The one wherefreshly-minted green bills are involved.)
Our sites are ugly but they do exactly what it is that they need to do. (And in a qualified way to boot.)

If you want to be REALLY successful online, you need to take your ego out of the equation.
No, you don’t need a site that looks like mine. (I am extreme, mostly to prove a point.)
But you do need a site that makes it clear for the user — NOT for you, for the USER — theyneed to know what you want them to do and how they should do it… and do it NOW (as in right this very minute!)

For those of you that like it ONLY when I write something “concrete” and send me missile mails any time I “try to act like Chris Brogan or Seth Godin” (which roughly translates to anypost whereI don’t list at leastthree tips), the ONLY thing you should take away from this is that you need to ask for the order/inquiry on EVERY VIEW of EVERY PAGE in AS MANY QUADRANTS and in AS MANY WAYS as you possibly can. Granted, it’s not pretty but it really does work.

Why? Because aesthetics really don’t matter as much as people think-hope-wish they do. The brain thatdoes the work online cares about security and speed. In other words, you could have the prettiest site in the universe and get no inquiries or orders because it doesn’t appear”safe.”(In the brain, that translates to a place where it’s ok for you to spend time.) The key to a good website isn’t being sexy, it’s being functional. (Read: action oriented.)

If you’ve gotten that down-pat, here are two BONUS tips,
just for you —

1. You are not your user. Just because you like something does not mean that your user will. Just because you do it one way does not mean that your user will do it the same way. You need to get out of your brain and into theirs. First place to look: your exit pages. The only truly acceptable pages are confirmation and thank you pages. If a user is exiting some other place, it means you didn’t do your job correctly. You weren’t clear about setting your expectations and so they didn’t live up to them.

2. Just because someone says they hate it, doesn’t mean they don’t respond to it. (The best way to figure this out for yourself is to spend some time at some adult content sites — no, not looking at the “content” per se, but the execution.) People say they hate billboards but for some companies, they are one of the most effective forms of advertising. People say they hate pop-ups. But do they work? For many, it’s the best tool in their arsenal. What actually works and what people say they like are often two very different things so try testing things that folks “hate.” (And yes, you MUST give the test your very best shot — as if your job depended on it. If you set the test up to fail, you should be shot.)