Marketing Hipster

A co-worker and I were interviewed for a story that has been posted on the E-commerce Times today about the recent announcement from Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, that he will be launching a wiki search engine called Wikiasari. There is nothing truly ground breaking here, but I was proud of my off the cuff (Cord Silverstein) description of “People Powered Search”. I am already copywriting that so don’t even think about it.
What are your thoughts? Could a search engine truly be Wiki powered and be credible? Could it be a true competitor to the mighty Google?

Technorati Tags: E-commerce Times, Wikipedia, Cord Silverstein

In Part 1, we discussed why the customer experience is so important. Now I want to focus on how and what a web site owner can do to ensure their users are getting the best customer experience and that their site is representing their company and brand accordingly. So where do we start?
My initial recommendation is to start collecting any and all data that you have on your web site. This can include Google Analytics or any other metrics program you have installed on your servers. Most of these analytics programs are good, but there is nothing better than getting the true raw data from log files. Even though server log files are incredibly messy and depending on the amount of traffic to your site, they can also be quite big; there is nothing that can provide you better information than straight log files.

Specific data you should initially look at are as follows:

1. What specific pages are users landing on within your web site? Are there other pages other than just your home page? Knowing what your most popular pages are will allow you to prioritize which pages need your attention first.

2. What are your bounce rates? Are you having a problem with people quickly landing on a page within your site and within seconds leaving your domain all together? – A number of clients I have worked with had this issue of users quickly leaving their site upon entering. What is causing this? Does your main landing pages not immediately address what the users are looking for? Are the pages too busy? Does it lack proper navigation? Does it immediately portray confidence and integrity? We need to figure out why people are deciding very quickly that your site is not what they were looking for.

3. Where are they going and what are are they clicking on? Is it the direction you want? – The main focus of every user should be to turn them from an anonymous click into a paying customer whether that is through purchasing online or filling out a lead generation form. If they are not being driven to these key pages, changes need to be made.

4. If you have a shopping cart or a lead generation form, how many people are abandoning those pages without completing them? – Is your form too long? Is your process to complicated or intimidating? Are you portraying confidence to your users so they feel comfortable giving you their credit card or personal information?

5. How sticky is your web site? What is the average time a user spends on your site? - Longer stays is not always the best scenario either. You need to find that happy balance with the constant focus on conversions.

6. Finally, where are people coming from when they first land on your site? What are the referrer sites? Are these people being driven from search engines, either natural or paid search, links on other sites, etc.? What keywords had they used to find a link to your site? – Knowing where people are coming from and why they found you will again enable you to prioritize what is important today compared to tomorrow. You will be surprised what you think your priorities are compared to what your users are telling you.

If you are able to get answers to the six questions above, you will have a distinct advantage over your competition because they not have this great wealth of information. What this information will give you is a clear picture of what is happening on your web site today. It is not based on what you think or anyone else, it is true data from what people are doing once they hit your web site. If you go into this with an open mind, you will be incredibly surprised on what you learn and what you thought before going through this exercise. This fairly small exercise could have dramatic impacts on your business.

Technorati Tags: customer experience, metrics, log files, bounce rates

I have had a Yahoo! email address since 1998 or somewhere around there. I have always used Yahoo as my primary email address. It has always been convenient, easy to use, reliable and since it is web based, I can sign in to it anywhere. Recently Yahoo! put a link on their mail page asking you to try their new beta Yahoo! Mail. When I chose not to click on it, every time I sent an email, Yahoo would interrupt me and send me to a page asking me to try their beta service. I hate to see a multi-billion dollar company cry so I choose to try the new Yahoo! Mail Beta.As I started using it, it reminded me of how Outlook looks and works except web based. It was so similar I thought Microsoft may not be happy with Yahoo!, but I have not heard anything of that nature yet. Though as I started getting use to it and playing with it, I ran into several problems with it.

1. At times it is slower than my grandmother and she has been dead for 10 years. Come on Yahoo!, sometimes I have to go and shave because I am waiting for a 4 line email from a friend of mine to load.
2. Do we really need that stupid figure in front moving while the site loads? I understand why you put it there because the site is SLOW as discussed in point 1. Though my thought is if you have to put up a animated gif to keep us occupied while the page loads, this puppy ain’t ready for prime time.
3. Is it just me or since I moved over to the beta, I have been getting inundated with spam? I had all my filters setup and my old email was rocking and spam free, now I am hitting that spam button 20 times a day. Did the filters not move over to the beta? Of course not.

You know Yahoo! I could deal with all this as it is still a beta product and you are working out the kinks, but there is one thing that I cannot and more importantly, will not deal with. When I bookmark my Yahoo! Mail page, the reason I do that is cause want to READ MY MAIL!! For some reason, one of the Yahoo! geniuses, I would have no doubt that at one time he worked for Microsoft decided that instead of allowing users to go right into the mail page, we now have to go to a front page that has news and sports, etc. on it. Did I ask for news or sports Yahoo!? I don’t think so.

So let’s get this straight, you are forcing every person with a Yahoo! Mail account to click one more time to go into their inbox just so you can have people view your front page? I would say that is a terrible customer experience Yahoo!. And I would suggest that you remedy this problem very quickly or I can guarantee you there will be a lot of people like myself moving over to Gmail full-time and not just part time like we are doing today.

This is a very important time for you Yahoo! You know you cannot beat Google in the search game, so you are left with the opportunity of being a true social hub for an incredible amount of people. Though forcing a user to do something they do not want to do will not deliver you the success your looking for and do much more harm than good.

Technorati Tags: Yahoo! Mail, Mail Beta

For the last couple of weeks, I have been going to a number of different company Christmas parties. While I along with most people were drinking, eating and being merry, a couple of thoughts popped in my head that I just have not been able to shake. I found it interesting just listening to employees from a number of different companies talk honestly and openly about the companies they work for. I thought this would make an incredible focus group for companies to hear an unbiased and totally raw opinion of what their employees are saying about them when the gloves come off.
When I meet with clients and we begin to discuss things like brand reputation and customer feedback, I always like to ask what they believe their employees are saying about their company. Usually they feel their employees are happy and would provide positive feedback. I would say 50% of the time, they are usually wrong. One of the areas that companies have spent very little time or money on is internal communications. Simply, this is developing a plan and process that allows for two-way communications between management and its employees. And I want to stress the term two-way. Anyone can send emails and have a newsletter distributed throughout a company, but that does not allow for any feedback from the people a company should focus on most, its employees. These people are on the front lines of your business, which represent your brand to your customers, potential customers and anyone else within ear shot.

I did a brand analysis for a company I work with who believed with total certainty that based on their internal metrics; their employees are satisfied and believe in the companies vision. It took me a half an hour to find a half dozen blogs written by employees whose main objective was to bash the company. Here are some specific quotes that I found:

“Company Name could give a damn about its employees. Its sole focus is on quotas and profits.” “It blows my mind how management can continually show absolute total disregard for their employees. How do they expect to stay in business?” “I have been working for him for almost 5 years now and I am constantly amazed how a CEO can continually lie to his employees and still show up everyday with a smile on his face?”

I could go on and on, but the wake up call for this client along with many other companies out there is that you need to start at square one and that is your employees. Opening up a line of communication, a place where an employee can feel like he/she has some sort of voice is incredibly important for an employee’s attitude and state of mind. In part 2 we are going to go into specifics of what a company can do to open up these lines of communications.

Technorati Tags: brand reputation, customer feedback, internal communications, brand analysis

The first time I remember really being introduced to the term “The Customer Experience” was from a gentleman named Michael Dell when I worked for him in the Online Division of Dell Computer Corporation. It was a mantra that he drilled into each person who worked for him especially our group as we were trying to prove that if given the best online experience, customers would not only go to, but prefer building and ordering computers online compared to through phone or fax.

Now many years later, technology has evolved so quickly that many of the most challenging issues we dealt with back at Dell have now become somewhat commoditized and even basic. Though with all this great technology it seems that web site owners are getting further and further away from focusing on their customer and the experiences each of them have when they land on their web sites.

So why is the customer experience so important? I could easily write a book on that sentence all by itself, but let me try to drill it down to a few main points:

• No matter what industry you are in, B2B, B2C, there is and will always be competition. Specifically when it comes to the web, customers have a wealth of choices and options out there on the information superhighway. Every time a potential customer of yours has to click one more time, do another search or waste one more second of their lives that they do not want to on your web site; it is one more chance you are giving them to leave and buy from one of your competitors.

• A smart business person knows that it costs a lot more money to gain a new customer / client than it is to keep an existing one. How does a business continually grow while keeping margins down? Repeat business and the only way a customer is going to come back and buy from you is that if you provided them with a pleasant and rewarding experience on your web site the first time and each time after that.

• Your web site is a huge representation of your brand! I always cringe inside when a client says to me, “We know our web site is not good, but we just have not gotten there yet.” My immediate response usually is, if a brick of mortar store of yours had items lying in the aisles and the store looked terrible would you immediately go and clean that up? Why is that any different than your web site? Especially since your web site can bring in tens, hundreds, even thousands of times more traffic a day than a brick and mortar store ever could. Bottom line, each time a user lands on your web site they are forming an opinion on your web site, your products/services and definitely, your overall brand.

Alright, so hopefully I have made my point on why The Customer Experience is so important. The next question needs to be where do I start? Where do I begin to start making the changes needed? I don’t want this post to go on forever so we will take on that subject in The Customer Experience – Part 2 so stay tuned.

Technorati Tags: The Customer Experience

I have to be honest usually by this time I would of dropped this whole Sony PSP thing, but after Sony posted that flippant response saying that they were “Too Funky Fresh”, my opinion is that they deserve everything they get. So the latest episode of Sony putting their proverbial foot in their mouth’s continues as a spoof site of the old, fake, terribly done ‘all I want for xmas is a psp site’ has just launched. It is very funny with some great artwork and pretty much the entire site is dedicated to bashing Sony and their marketing practices which by the past behavior I am all in favor of.
Dear Sony, here is a clue for you. This is not going to go away on it’s own. Your degrading remark admitting it was you just added more fuel to this already raging fire. Now it is time that you take your heads out of the sand and do what any 5 year old knows to do when he or she has made a mistake, APOLOGIZE! Just release a press release saying the following:

“We did not realize how this blog was going to be seen and we have now come to the realization that the last thing we as a company wants to do is alienate and lie to people most important to us, our customers. This will never happen again and we will begin working to regain your trust immediately.”

Technorati Tags: Sony, flippant, APOLOGIZE

Microsoft released many weeks ago their iPod killer the Zune. Now I want to say first that I have not tried nor handled the Zune yet, so I have no opinion on this monstrosity myself. Though Leo Laporte sure does have an opinion on it, he is not a big fan to say the very least. Take a look at his thoughts below. Also, what is up with the brown color? Is Microsoft trying to make brown the new cool color like Apple did for white?

Technorati Tags: Microsoft, Zune, Leo Laporte

Honda’s robot the Asimo was caught trying to get up some stairs and I am sorry to report that he just did not make it. Keep your chin up buddy, I have done the exact same thing many times.

What’s worse is that Wieden + Kennedy has just come out with a new commercial for Asimo and before you can say stairs there is already a spoof out on YouTube.

Technorati Tags: Asimo, Wieden + Kennedy

Time Magazine has chosen their best gadgets for 2006 and the one that stood out for me was The Hug Shirt. According to the developer, it is a shirt that simulates the embrace of a loved one.

Technorati Tags: Time Magazine, Hug Shirt

One of the things that I hate most in this world is going to a mall. It doesn’t matter if it is a big or small, good or bad, great deals or not; if it is a mall, I would rather have my teeth pulled out with a pliers than go to one. So because of my hatred for malls, online shopping has been my haven for holiday shopping for many years. I am usually already done my shopping by this time of this year, but I have run into a couple of problems finding the right gifts for a couple of people. I have spent the better part of today scouring the internet looking for good gifts to wrap up my holiday shopping for this year.

One of the sites I use most when it comes to both holiday shopping as well as shopping for myself is Amazon. I have been a regular shopper on Amazon for many years. I have found their web site to have excellent navigation, good look and feel, plenty to choose from and I love the customer reviews. I am such a fan of them that I joined their Amazon Prime service I think two years ago where I pay them $40 or $50 bucks a year and I get free second day shipping for anything that Amazon sells.

So today as I was browsing around Amazon, I ran into a little issue with the site that I thought would make my shopping experience even better. When I did a search, let’s say for a digital camera, I wanted to have the results come based on which products are part of Amazon Prime first, so I do not have to see a bunch of products that I will have to pay more for shipping. After trying many different things, I came to the realization that Amazon does not have this feature so I wanted to send them feedback to see if they could add it.

Here is where things got interesting. I surfed around their site for almost a half an hour looking for somewhere, anywhere that I could provide this feedback. I checked the help section. I went into my account. I looked everywhere and there was no-where that at least I could find that offered an online form or a mailto that I could send them this feedback.

This really caught me by surprise to be honest. Why would Amazon not want to hear from me? I understand they do not want some place where people can send in complaints, etc., but you see all over the web, web sites offering links for site feedback. Especially, if you are a paying customer, like myself and one who has been for many years. Why would Amazon make it so hard for me to provide what at least I consider to be valuable feedback?

I think this is one of the major issues that is going to determine the success or failure of many companies in the future. Companies need to start realizing that they cannot assume what their customers want anymore and they need to hear it right from the horses mouth, their customers or clients. More importantly, even if a company’s assumptions are correct, it still will not be enough. Customers want, no demand, to feel empowered when it comes to where they spend their hard earned money and time. There is so much competition and variety to choose from, we as consumers have enormous choices of who to buy from and when. Companies like Amazon and many others need to realize that they need to take the relationships they have with their customers to the next level. I know I want to feel that a business is going the extra mile for me. If not, I will choose to take my business elsewhere. Bottom line is customers need to be shown that they are valued and the simpliest and easiest way to do that is by listening to what we have to say. During my career, I have gotten better ideas and feedback from my clients’ customers far more often than I do from my clients’ themselves. I am going to go into more detail on how to listen to your customers in a future post.

If you happen to know anyone who works for Amazon, please send them a link to this story, I would love to hear feedback from Amazon to see what their thoughts are on this.

Technorati Tags: online shopping, Amazon, shopping experience, feedback