Sterling Commerce surveyed US adults this summer and found that — surprise-surprise — customers like to buy on their own terms, regardless of channel. eMarketer has the story:

Sterling found that 55% of consumers thought it was important to be able to complete orders in a store, on the store’s Web site or through a call center, regardless of which channel was used to initially place the order. Nearly two-thirds of consumers also expected to be able to cancel or modify orders…

...continue to read "Lines Between Online and Offline Retail Continue to Blur"

...continue to read "Web Analytics is Like Eating an Artichoke…"

It all seemed so innocent at first. A few weeks ago, when Wal-Mart announced it would market to college students on Facebook, the idea seemed simple enough: Allow students to use their Roommate Style Match group (Facebook subscription required) so they could coordinate their dorm room shopping. Now that it’s been up for awhile, though, Wal-Mart’s getting grilled by detractors.

BusinessWeek’s Burt Helm noticed this gem of a Facebook comment:

“do people realize WHY prices are so low at Wal-Mart? cause THEY DO NO…

...continue to read "Can Wal-Mart’s Facebook Campaign Survive Transparency?"

Not surprisingly, I agreed with almost all of your responses to my earlier post on creating intrigue by “Surprising Broca” with your web copy. It took an act of will not to respond to each comment as they came in, so I could save my thoughts and organize them into a new post.

First of all, intrigue, mystery, and suspense are all incredibly useful for gaining and holding your audience’s attention. But you still have to make use of the audiences attention…

...continue to read "The Intrigue Continuum"

If you’re responsible for planning, measuring or optimizing online marketing, you’re already too busy to breathe. Nevertheless, you have to keep up with all the latest and greatest developments.

That is why you look to the blogosphere and the collection of publications that publish advice from “experts”.

Like you, I keep current with a lot of what industry experts have to say. Some of it’s excellent, some is good, some of it’s neutral, but a dangerous yet substantial portion of it is…

...continue to read "Hey, Web Guru, Your Advice is Toxic! (Avoid if Easily Offended)"

There’s a pervading theory in marketing that all women love the color pink. While some women and certainly many younger girls do seem to like the color pink, I’ve found many women and girls don’t like the color pink.

What’s really going on here? I believe the color pink evokes some very strong associations; some positive, some negative, depending on your viewpoint. Many advertisers or product developers get lazy and think “We need to appeal to women, so let’s just take…

...continue to read "Do Girls Really Prefer Pink?"

Clark Hoyt, the New York Times public editor, serves as the readers’ representative. In his Op Ed column, he writes:

A BUSINESS strategy of The New York Times to get its articles to pop up first in Internet searches is creating a perplexing problem: long-buried information about people that is wrong, outdated or incomplete is getting unwelcome new life.

People are coming forward at the rate of roughly one a day to complain that they are being embarrassed, are worried about losing…

...continue to read "SEO Ethics: New York Times is Challenged"

For this screencast, after recalling a post on the top-converting e-commerce sites, I chose to focus on Fingerhut, Best Buy, and TigerDirect. Like many of the other top-converting sites, these are backed up by print catalogs as well. So, what I’m going to show you now is what each of these sites does well and offer a few pointers for how they could improve their product pages to convert better.

I’ll discuss the importance of:

...continue to read "Screencast: Optimizing E-Commerce Product Pages"

A recent New York Times article covered the advent of some new platforms for showcasing video clips of funny ads with intent of attracting, or “pulling,” visitors seeking ads that promise to entertain; a move the article implied might be the answer to TiVo, media fragmentation, and a host of other problems affecting traditional advertising. What the article misses, though, is the need to account for viewer intent and message repetition.

First, a little background.

In Waiting for Your Cat to Bark, Jeff…

...continue to read "Push vs. Pull Messaging and Visitor’s Intent"

I just got back from speaking at Search Engine Strategies where I kept hearing about the challenges companies are facing with getting value from their web analytics investments. Companies spend serious money gathering and trying to analyze the data they get from the Web — and they want more out of it.

My advice:

Practice Fundamentals — To become successful in any sport meas practicing the basics over and over and over again. Such is web analytics. If you want to be the Michael…

...continue to read "How to Squeeze More Out of Your Web Analytics"