John Doe says: “In front of 30 of your clients, you asked one of them to order you panties? Seriously? What kind of *&^%$#@ lunatic are you?”
Dear John. Your wife left you for her personal trainer. How could she? With a fake name like John Doe, you must be terribly creative. (And seriously “John,” if you are going to write “anonymous” blog comments you might want to use something like Anonymizer. I mean really.)
Yes, I did ask one of my clients to order underwear online. Hanky Panky’s specifically. Whether or not they were for me will remain unknown. I got enough whore comments after my Are Crazy Women Better in Bed? post — I don’t need more.
YES, THERE WAS A VERY GOOD REASON. I was making a point. (Yes, it happens… sometimes.)
I was at a client’s and they went on and on and on about how much they wanted to be like Nordstrom. (One of the worst ecommerce web sites ever in my not-so-humble opinion.) Nordstrom does this. Nordstrom does that. On and on about Nordstrom as if they were actually an Amazon or eBags.
Finally, I had enough so I said “go online and order me four pairs of honey-colored, low-rise Hanky Panky’s — the 4 for $45 deal that they have now. If you can do it within 10 minutes, I’ll give you $1,000.”
To make a very long story short (involving having to prove that I actually had $1,000 cash in my wallet), the client earned NOTHING. Nada. Zip. Zero. Zilch.
Why? As much as I’d like to say it was because he’s an idiot, the truth is he’s razor-sharp and a very sophisticated online shopper. It was more to do with the fact that Nordstrom doesn’t have a quantity box (yes, you read that correctly) and their buy and save offer looks something like this:
Buy 4 or more & save!
Add 4 or more of this item to your Shopping Bag and save $0.65 per item—that’s 4 for $45. Use Promotion Code BUYANDSAVE on the Order Summary page in Checkout to reflect the special price. Items must be ordered at the same time but can be ordered in any combination of sizes and colors. While supply lasts.
Yeah, good luck with that.
The point is: just because they’re a big company doesn’t mean that they know what they are doing.
Just because you see something that you like on an Internet Retailer Top 500 site doesn’t mean it works.
Hmmm, that is certainly something to chew on, Amy. I admit I am occasionally guilty of “big-site” envy. However, I’ve been reading Seth Godin lately. He has helped me see that being the best “me” is far better than trying to be someone else. Like you said: just because they’re a big company doesn’t mean that they know what they are doing.
Thanks for the post, Double-A!
James — What would I do without you? As always, thanks for writing. You’re right — Seth does say that whole “be the best you” thing well throughout his writings — and the cool thing is that he sticks to what he says in his own work. Speaking of books, did you like Escape from Cubicle Nation? I haven’t read it but I thought I saw a tweet from you about it. P.S. By the way, please keep us posted about the new bambino on Twitter!
Do crazy women even WEAR underwear to bed?
If the offer was for underwear, when you told the story you should have said underwear. And you did.
The bigger story here, of course, is a classic failing by the marketer. He/she apparently didn’t go through his/her own Web site. No, no, no!
I design a lot of the editorial questionnaires for Penton’s marketing magazines. There’s a trick to good questionnaire design, and it is to go through the near-final draft while assuming a number of personas: A CEO, a CMO, a clerk, a mid-level manager, or anyone who might get a copy of the survey.
The task is to deliberately misinterpret or misunderstand every single question or potential response — and to re-write, re-write, re-write the damned thing to eliminate as much confusion as possible.
Similarly, e-commerce marketers should be going through their sites deliberately trying to misinterpret every potential option which stand between a customer and a sale. Sounds as if nobody bothered to test this system once it was implemented.
Also: sixty-five cents off an item which probably costs around, I’d guess, $12 before discount? That’s slightly better than 6% off as a reward for buying in bulk. Ho hum. I’m guessing Janet Reger ain’t spinning in her grave worrying about the competition.
Richard — you must have seen my tweet that said I’ve received a lot of emails saying I should have changed the word “panties” to “socks.”
You do a fantastic job with the Penton surveys — they are indeed written for the lowest common denominator. Of course, you also took the time to perfect every word when you were writing Loose Cannon — which I sorely miss, I might add.
In any case, your point about “trying to deliberately misinterpret every option” is well stated and something everyone should do, starting with their Quick Lead/Order pages, product pages, view cart page and checkout.
I think my ateries are getting qlogged. Meaty but sclerotic insights. Perhaps it’s just the excessive formation of fibrous syntax.
As usual, you are right, Amy. So many smaller companies want to follow the pack of big ones, and they should be working instead on makin g everything they do better.
My website for instance…when you mentioned that “HMMMM no place to leave an email address”.
Sometimes looking at our own stuff, like checking out our own kids…it is hard to see them objectively.
So, Yes…I’ll go back and review my own website.