Archive for March, 2007
Measuring the “Piss-Off Factor”
“It was like this sales woman was following me all over the store. I told her I didn’t want any help, but she didn’t listen to me,” commented my co-worker John Q. “She was always right on me, constantly looking over my shoulder. I half expected her to come into the dressing room and help me into my underwear!”
Wow… creepy.
Sound bizarre? It’s a real experience, though in the virtual world. John was shopping online at an ecommerce site and was followed everywhere by the nice looking woman with the headset in the “Live Chat” window. She wouldn’t leave him alone. So he left, and may not ever be back.
John experienced what might be dubbed a high POF (Piss-Off Factor).
When you measure ROI are your taking into account POF?
Every website and online communication has a POF. There are things you are doing that are pissing-off customers and potential customers. Trust me: no one is immune from POF.
There are two reasons why POF is an important factor:
One: The vast majority of your online visitors don’t share this information with you. You have no idea WHY they left (or what upset them).
Two: These are people who willingly came to you, wanting to buy, and left disappointed. These are qualified buyers who want to do business with you; they’re extremely valuable customers or potential customers that you’re paying a lot of money to attract in the first place.
Here’s the problem:
Imagine if you will that you’re a single guy with a profile on a dating site. An attractive single woman looking for a guy visits your profile. But there is verbiage in your profile that turns her off. She leaves. Not only do you not realize what you did to turn her off, you don’t even know an amazing woman looked at your profile and left.
Now, yes, you can measure “abandonment rate.” But can you measure whether that person was just in the wrong place and not really interested vs. whether that person was very interested and wanted to buy?
That single guy has no idea there was a really hot woman ready to date him. And more importantly, he doesn’t know what he did to piss her off. But he is not focused on measuring his POF, he’s only focused on the women who actually do contact him (i.e., his conversion rate).
Hmm… does this sound familiar? Are you so busy focusing on your conversion rate that you’re not paying attention to POF?
I’m sure the online retailer John Q visited, like many e-tailers, found that introducing Live Chat increased conversion. And the more intrusive that live chat was, the better the conversion rate (incrementally, of course). But what about the visitors who found that constant live chat surveillance intrusive? What about the visitors that left the site and won’t come back because they were pissed off about that intrusion into their sacred online space?
Subscription sites suffer from some of the highest POF of any online business model. “Oh, you want to see that? Well first you need to give me lots of personal information and fork over your credit card.” The kicker is, this model proves very effective! People aren’t happy about it but if they want/need what you have badly enough, they’ll fork over the information and the money.
But what about the portion of visitors who want/need what you want but just need more information? Need more questions answered? Need a few vital pieces of persuasive copy that would give them enough confidence to move forward? What is the opportunity cost of the visitors you’ve “turned away”?
What about the overall customer experience? Is that 0.05% conversion increase with constant live chat intrusion worth the opportunity cost of all the customers who leave and don’t come back because the experience pissed them off? What if that percentage is actually higher than the conversion increase?
How much money are you turning away? Are you measuring your POF?
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Written by:Holly Buchanan
Conversion Rate Optimization, Upside Down
Way too many conversion rate optimization projects are coming up empty. Companies feel they work too hard for too little return.
Most conversion rate optimizations efforts are focused on pages and elements (we’ve identified over 1,000 variables) but don’t focus on the entire persuasion scenario. That’s how people cheat themselves. Most organizations face structural issues that prevent them from recognizing or correcting the problems. They simply optimize blindly.
Perhaps if I explain the issue, this column will help some smart CEO or CMO get out of the bind…
Continue reading my column on ClickZ…
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Written by:Bryan Eisenberg
The Web’s Old Wives Tale: People Don’t Read Online
Web developers like to say it. Designers love to say it. Web execs feel good saying it to justify investing as little as possible–and in the lowest quality content they can get away with.
People Don’t Read Online? Bull-crap!
If only I had a nickel for every time I’ve heard that statement, I’d make Bill Gates look like a pauper. Think about it. What’s the first thing most people do when they get online… read their email. What’s better yet, new research from the Poynter Institute’s Eyetrack study released at the American Society of Newspaper Editors (courtesy Editor and Publisher) shows that:
When readers chose to read an online story, they usually read an average of 77% of the story, compared to 62% in broadsheets and 57% in tabloids…
In addition, nearly two-thirds of online readers read all of the text of a particular story once they began to read it, the survey revealed. In print, 68% of tabloid readers continued reading a specific story through the jump to another page, while 59% did so in broadsheet reading.
The research also found that 75% of print readers are methodical in their reading, which means they start reading a page at a particular story and work their way through each story. Just 25% of print readers are scanners, who scan the entire page first, then choose a story to read.
Online, however, about half of readers are methodical, while the other half scan, the report found. The survey also revealed that large headlines and fewer, large photos attracted more eyes than smaller images in print. But online, readers were drawn more to navigation bars and teasers.
We knew it all along. We’ve been saying it for years since our clients’ web analytics proved it to us. Now you have the proof we can share. Give your readers something relevant to read and they will. Or are you still buying into that old wives tale that people don’t read online?
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Written by:Bryan Eisenberg
What We Call The News
The folks over at JibJab are at it again 
Check out their newest video “What We Call The News.”
Sometimes humor has to stretch the truth to be funny, the sad part is that on this topic they don’t. It’s been said that we get the government we deserve. Do we also get the journalism we deserve?
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Written by:Jeffrey Eisenberg
From The Stupid Persuasion Techniques File: Microsoft Again…
Wired News reports that “Microsoft Sends Secret Dossier on Reporter, To Reporter“–there’s a lot more details there and it’s a fun read. Microsoft really needs to buy a copy of How To Win Friends And Influence People by Dale Carnegie.
If you haven’t read it, I highly recommend you do.
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Written by:Jeffrey Eisenberg
Present, Persuade, Powerful…
If I were allowed to share only three words to describe what Bert Decker is all about, there they are.
I had the privilege of spending a few hours catching up with Bert in his hometown of San Francisco. Bert’s been busy. He’s just agreed to be one of the judges of the World’s Best Presentation contest with Guy Kawasaki, Garr Reynolds and Jerry Weisman. He’s coaching quite a few execs and organizations on how to create communications experience. What we do for marketing and websites, Bert and crew do for presentations. The best news is he told me he’s doing one of his Communicate to Influence seminars in New York City on April 23-24th, and has just 4 seats left. (Sorry I didn’t share with you earlier. One of those seats will be going to one of my staff; we’ve sent others in the past.) Don’t miss it if you are going to be in NYC on those days!
Discover how you can better present, persuade and deliver powerful communications.
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Written by:Bryan Eisenberg
Are Websites Just for ECommerce?
This past weekend, I had the pleasure of presenting a seminar on the topic of marketing to women, to the National Association of School Music Dealers. During the segment on the importance of effective websites, a participant raised his hand. “We don’t have e-commerce on our website,” he said. “If we’re not selling online, is it really important to invest in a good website?”
I could have given several answers, but with limited time, I simply presented him with one statistic. According to a recent study cited in eMarketer.com, 58% of broadband users who did research on a product made the purchase in a store.
Not surprisingly, the room became very quiet. I had just provided a wake-up call.
You may not be selling product online, but you’re definitely selling your brand. You’d better do a good job convincing me online that you’re my best choice; otherwise, you probably won’t see my face in front of your cash register.
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Written by:Michele Miller
Are You a Certified A$$hole?
No, I’m not trying to be offensive.
I’ll let Guy Kawasaki explain - ARSE: The Asshole Rating Self Exam
Here are some of Guy’s observations.
In case you’re wondering, I scored a two. I hope my co-workers agree. What did you score?
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Written by:Jeffrey Eisenberg
Life Offline is Dead?
More than ever, it’s become clear that the scope of media distribution has changed–even eroded–some our most treasured entertainment models.
But whose obituary should we read first? Newspapers, Magazines, Music, or Video… Hmm… How about all four, thanks to Chief Blogging Optimist, Don Dodge, whose Next Big Thing blog gives us some in-depth research with a light garnish of buzz.
Linking around the blogosphere, Dodge shows us that:
Robert Scoble declares newspapers are dead. PaidContent says InfoWorld Magazine is dead. TechMeme has collected lots of blogger stories on the subject. Disrupted maybe…but not dead. Napster disrupted the music business and YouTube is disrupting video. Anything that can be digitized is being disrupted by the Internet.
I wrote about this a year ago in Are newspapers and magazines dying? Here is the killer quote from that blog post;
At its peak in 2000, The Mercury News had a Sunday circulation of 326,839 subscribers, according to the newspaper. Last September, the company counted 278,470 Sunday subscribers, a drop of about 15 percent. Revenue from the company’s help-wanted ads fell to $18 million a year from more than $118 million, according to the paper. The newsroom was whittled to 280 people from 404, a 30 percent decline.
Dodge goes on to announce that the “music business is dying,” and that sales are off 20% from last year continuing its 7 year decline. “Did Napster kill the music business or is ‘rap’ todays ‘disco’?” wonders Dodge.
As an erstwhile music journalist, I couldn’t help but comment. Sure, online media have been more powerful than expected. But isn’t it true that, until lately, the entire online space has been at once over-hyped and under-valued? Bloggers need news organizations in order to ensure that they’re not drowning in their own hype. News organizations need bloggers to help ensure their content is topical, fresh, and edgy.
Is the music industry dead, or are physical albums dying because the distribution model has shifted? Are newspapers dead, or is selling news on recycled newsprint dying?
Over at ye olde struggling newspaper, The New York Times, Jeff Leeds ads some depth to this story in a piece entitled “The Album, a Comodity in Disfavor.”
As Leeds tells it:
Last year, digital singles outsold plastic CD’s for the first time. So far this year, sales of digital songs have risen 54 percent, to roughly 189 million units, according to data from Nielsen SoundScan. Digital album sales are rising at a slightly faster pace, but buyers of digital music are purchasing singles over albums by a margin of 19 to 1.
Because of this shift in listener preferences — a trend reflected everywhere from blogs posting select MP3s to reviews of singles in Rolling Stone — record labels are coming to grips with the loss of the album as their main product and chief moneymaker.
In response, labels are re-examining everything from their marketing practices to their contracts. One result is that offers are cropping up for artists like Candy Hill to record only ring tones or a clutch of singles, according to talent managers and lawyers.
At the same time, the industry is straining to shore up the album as long as possible, in part by prodding listeners who buy one song to purchase the rest of a collection. Apple, in consultation with several labels, has been planning to offer iTunes users credit for songs they have already purchased if they then choose to buy the associated album in a certain period of time, according to people involved in the negotiations. (Under Apple’s current practice, customers who buy a song and then the related album effectively pay for the song twice).
But some analysts say they doubt that such promotions can reverse the trend.
“I think the album is going to die,” said Aram Sinnreich, managing partner at Radar Research, a media consulting firm based in Los Angeles. “Consumers are listening to play lists,” or mixes of single songs from an assortment of different artists. “Consumers who have had iPods since they were in the single digits are going to increasingly gravitate toward artists who embrace that.”
All this comes as the industry’s long sales slide has been accelerating. Sales of albums, in either disc or digital form, have dropped more than 16 percent so far this year, a slide that executives attribute to an unusually weak release schedule and shrinking retail floor space for music. Even though sales of individual songs — sold principally through iTunes — are rising, it has not been nearly enough to compensate.
Speaking of the media landscape’s whiplash-inducing evolution, Time, Inc. just announced that it will be pulling Life magazine from the shelves in order to maintain the American staple an online publication.
According to Yahoo! News, which posted the story compliments of Reuters:
Time Inc. said… it would stop publishing Life, the iconic photography magazine that has been a weekly newspaper insert since 2004. Although April 20 will be Life’s last print issue, the brand name will survive on the Internet.
It is the latest magazine to shut down as more readers desert print publications for online news and photos.
“Growth requires taking risks, and the potential upside was huge, but unfortunately the timing worked against us,” Time Inc. Chief Executive Ann Moore said. “The market has moved dramatically since October 2004, and it is no longer appropriate to continue publication of Life as a newspaper supplement.”
Time is laying off 15 editorial workers and 27 in its business department in connection with the shutdown, said spokeswoman Dawn Bridges.
And now for the obvious rhetorical question du jour: If Life itself is dying offline, doesn’t that mean everyone who wants to be spared should be online?
(For more daily analysis on stories like this, be sure to listen to Blog Buzz on WebmasterRadio.fm.)
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Written by:Robert Gorell
Bryan Eisenberg on Persuasion & Customer Focus
Search Engine Watch’s Eric Enge recently interviewed our own Bryan Eisenberg about how we use Persuasion Architecture™ to plan, measure, and optimize the customer experience–online, offline, and across channels.
In the interview, Bryan talks about his past life as a social worker, founding Future Now when “accountable online marketing” was considered laughable, and how to speak to customers and online visitors on their own terms (the only terms they’ll accept).
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Written by:Robert Gorell
