Please note: this is not a post about Obama. I’ve already addressed how my brother saved his life once and I’m not going down that rabbit hole again. Ever. Too many full-tilt crazy people and LRAs on my list.
You ever get introduced to someone and the minute you hear their name, your brain kicks in and says “I knew it! This guy? Definitely a jackass!”
There’s a scientific reason for that feeling – and you know you’ve had it — but this is an ecommerce post so I won’t go into the details here. (Jump to the end if you want to know how you can find out the brain explanation.)
One of my closest friends has this hate-them-in-your-tummy feeling about girls named Amy. He despises them all. Well, except me and that’s because I frequently remind him that my touchy-feely-hippy-crunchy-love-light-and-joy mother wanted to name me Star so Amy is really just a placeholder for the poledancer/stripper name I should have had. Star Africa? Please.
But I digress…
According to my personal email address book, I know 17 Husseins (of various spellings.) Sadly, I don’t have contact information for the one I’d have married (you know, the guy who’d 100% be on my soulmate list) but I have a dozen and a half others – first and last name Husseins.
In my experience, Husseins are some of the sweetest people on the planet.
Till they’re not.
They’re all warm and cuddly and then you say something innocuous that sets them off, and they become a donkey on the edge with a dragon to prove it. (Hello, SEO traffic from random quotes.)
Bottom line: Husseins (which incidentally means blessed) are the scorpion to my frog. (#Measure people please note: sample size is too small and I know you have 111 ways to tell me my conclusion is not statistically significant. Feel free to move on and spare me the Excel spreadsheets that come whenever I post.)
So, the question becomes are all Husseins like this or am I making statements that purposely alter their action(s) so that my theory becomes true?
In other words, how Oedipal am I?
With or without the Oracle of Delphi’s help, we create self-fulfilling prophecies all the time ESPECIALLY on the web.
Navigation is likely the best example. You get what I give you. If I don’t give it to you, you don’t get it.
Navigation accounts for 40-60% of your success online. Over 80% on a mobile device.
People are going to do what you give them to do. If they want to buy a rake and you force them to figure out whether they should click on gardening tools OR gardening supplies OR outdoor gear OR outdoor living, it’s your own damn fault when they bounce or attempt to use your crackerjacked internal text search and fail.
Users are going to click on the things you tell them to click. If you don’t tell them to click, they aren’t going to click.
Your navigation controls their fate. It’s that simple.
What other predicted-behavior things are there web-wise? Here are six of the ones I see the most.
Low Adoption To Cart (ATC) Rate – These days, marketers are so caught up in the social proof, big data and omnichannel BS that they often miss the big picture. You know, like the fact that the majority of websites have plenty of traffic but they just don’t know how to effectively convert it. If you don’t have action directives on every view, you aren’t going to get the ATC rate that you should. This isn’t about having orange buttons or using Hevetica instead of Arial, it’s about having BIG, BOLD, IN-YOUR-FACE buttons that tell the user to add-to-cart or buy now all over the place. It’s about having more than one perpetual cart per page so that the user is constantly reminded they’re supposed to place an order. It’s about not having dead ends, creating urgency and causing people to act. It’s about asking for an order. Over and over and over. Till you get it. Period. (This works the same if you’re in lead generation.)
High Abandoned Cart Rate – Distracting links/navigation in your cart? A survey pop-up that asks the user to rate your order process before they’ve completed checkout (my personal pet peeve)? No ordering alternatives (meaning no phone number or other contact information?) Lots of rude error warnings? Address correction things that take you to sites that aren’t secure? Irrelevant questions? Too many steps? Exorbitant – and unexpected – shipping/delivery fees? All of those things – and dozens more – make your users jump ship. “Experts” tell you that people leave because they are searching for a discount/coupon – yes, that’s definitely a SMALL percentage of your folks – but it’s not the biggest reason people abandon. (Giving them large discounts is often the easiest way to convert them but it’s not why they leave you at the altar.)
High Bounce Rate – Let’s face it. If you’re like most, you deserve the traffic you get. Take it from someone who is recklessly using Shrek quotes (as seen above) just for the traffic/comic amusement. Link farming? SEO black-gray-ish tactics? Posting on random blogs and/or unmanaged comparison shopping/affiliate sites? Remarketing programs run amok? They’re all going to get you garbage traffic which is then going to get you a high bounce rate. It doesn’t matter how kinky I am, if I’m coming from an adult “finder” message board and you’re selling property management supplies, I have to be really creative to figure out how to make your leasing rental forms suit my needs (unless I have some sort of paper cut fetish, I suppose.)
Truncated Strategy – I see this more and more as of late, especially when it comes to mobile. Folks will tell me that they don’t need – or can’t afford – a mobile strategy in the same breath that they say they are increasing their email frequency but aren’t seeing the results they used to. Um, yeah. So over a third of your users are reading your emails on their smartphones. When they’re interested in a product/service they see, they click on the link – you know, the one YOU put in the email. If you don’t have a mobile site – or at the bare minimum a page that gives your phone number and a click-to-call button – you shouldn’t be shocked when you see a decrease in email orders as you’ve effectively terminated their path and given them nowhere to order.
Weak/Non-Existent Transfer – This is in the same vein as truncated strategy. We know that over 90% of carts and lead forms are abandoned on mobile devices. In time, that will get better but it’s not going to improve this season that’s for sure. If someone adds something to their mobile cart (or they start the inquiry process), and they subsequently abandon, you should transfer them to a CSR (best choice for phones, doesn’t work well for tablets) AND you should mimic their cart on your traditional (desktop) site. The whole “mobile department is different from our web department” schtick is as exasperating as the “web department is different from our catalog department” baloney. In the end, nobody should care where you get the order as long as you get it. Not sharing your riches with your other departments/colleagues just ends you all up in the poorhouse.
Email Deliverability Issues – I don’t know who the idiot consultant(s) is/are that are telling companies that they should email all of their old hard bounces and opt-outs (“as long as they are over 18 months old”) but I’d like to use them for target practice. Apparently there are more meth addicts in web consulting than I previously imagined as this is a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad idea. First, hard bounces are labeled as such because they are PERMANENTLY UNDELIVERABLE. Second, even though you may get some of your users back in the fold, mixing a bunch of crappy names into your file of good names is NOT good for deliverability. We spend boatloads of time on email creative when the majority of success happens outside the envelope – a big part of that success comes from getting your email delivered.
Have other things you think I missed? Give me a shout. I’m @amyafrica on Twitter. Why Twitter? I need to improve my Klout score to get more business SAID ME NEVER.
Oh, about that brain thing. In the next few months, I am starting a newsletter specifically about brain stuff. I am doing an email – not a blog – so I can write whatever I want without impunity – you know, like how I may or may not have found myself spread-eagled on a highway beside my car with a cop pointing a gun at me a couple weeks ago. If you want “in” on the list, send me an email to info@amyafrica.com. If I like you, you will be added. If not, sorry about your luck. It’s probably your name. As you’ve probably heard, I’m fussy.
P.S. My friend, JoAnna Brandi, says I use hostile language to get people to react. Clearly she hasn’t seen my in-box because I don’t need any more hate mail than I already get. She is right in one regard though – I do like to bat the beehive. Why? Because I genuinely like to remind people that you can change any/all of the self-fulfilling prophecies you have about your business…. your life…. your relationship(s)… your fate… The points above? You can fix all of them.