Customer Experience
Bold Trust-Building Ideas from Mint.com
As tax time looms in the U.S., personal finance management weighs heavy on the minds of those of us who would rather put it off until next year.
A few of my colleagues, two of whom had actually used it, recommended Mint.com. I had been to the site a few times in December when I first heard about it. Back then, I wasn’t yet thinking about signing up, but I did recall Mint.com being extremely good-looking and well-written.
Months later — and this is rarely the case for someone with my attention span — I still knew the site’s unique value proposition: Mint is a free, online personal money management tool that can access bank accounts and credit card records without compromising security. (Oh, and it can help you get better rates on a credit card, which I don’t much care about since I’ve sworn not to use them ever since getting in debt when I was in college. But I digress.)
All of that was clear from the homepage.
But what really impressed me when returning to the site was the “features” page. Right away, I saw this:
Mint does NOT store your usernames, passwords or account numbers. Mint partners with Yodlee, the leading provider of online banking services to major banks for more than 10 years, to ensure a secure connection to your personal financial information.
Mint protects your information using bank–level data security and 128 bit-encryption, verified by Verisign and HackerSafe.
Mint is TRUSTe certified to provide industry–leading privacy protection and partners with RSA to provide anti-phishing protection.
Using Mint does NOT require any personally identifying information, leaving you as anonymous as you would like to be.
Instead of diving into what I presumed would be a sales pitch on technical features — boom — they addressed my (significant) privacy concerns. Then they went into the sales pitch. Very smart.
But consider how the same copy reads with some minor text and formatting changes:
Mint does not store your account numbers, usernames or passwords. Mint partners with Yodlee, the leading provider of online banking services to major banks for more than 10 years, to ensure a secure connection to your personal financial information.
Mint protects your information using bank–level data security and 128 bit-encryption, verified by Verisign and HackerSafe.
Mint is TRUSTe certified to provide industry–leading privacy protection and partners with RSA to provide anti-phishing protection.
Using Mint does not require any personally identifying information, so you remain totally and completely anonymous.
Which version do you find more persuasive? I’d be interested to hear your comments.
In the meantime, I’m going to create a Mint.com account. If it works as well as the site looks, and if it can get me to manage my money better, I’ll be thrilled. My only real concern — the only thing I didn’t see addressed on the website — is whether the credit card companies are going to spam me with “Limited Time Introductory Rate!” emails. (Mint is, after all, an affiliate site. They’ve got to make money somehow.)
. .
This Just In: FutureNow’s Persuasive Online Copywriting seminar returns to New York City on June 2nd.
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Written by:Robert Gorell
Why Free Web Tools Make Customers Want to BUY NOW
Makeup is like deodorant to me. I would rather not think about it — ever — and I only wear it because I have to.
I don’t know makeup brands or colors, and I don’t care enough to research what makeup would be right for me. Usually, my need for makeup only results in a purchase if a friend recommends something specific, or when I run out of an essential piece, like mascara. Then I’m found sprinting to the local pharmacy to pick one that looks decent.
How do you look for people who aren’t looking for your product? Anticipate their need.
Search engine marketing is a great platform for gaining the attention of those who already have some kind of motivation, need or want for a particular solution. It’s much more difficult to get the attention of people who don’t currently need or want whatever it is you sell.
Historically, the most common forms of online marketing tactics used to gain the attention of potential customers have been pay-per-click advertising, banner ads and email marketing. But today’s customers are ignoring unwanted marketing efforts, so our tactics can easily fall flat. In order to get a higher return on investment, marketers need to find new ways to speak to customers and help them figure out what they want.
How do you speak to potential customers when they aren’t listening? Find out when and where they’re listening and provide an experience that fuels demand for your solution.
Social networking sites are growing by the second and people are looking for more interactivity and experiences online. TAAZ.com captured my attention by first offering me an interactive experience.
First, I uploaded a picture of myself without makeup:
Then I proceeded to add different eye shadows, lip liners, mascaras, etc. Each shade or style that I chose was a real product color and brand. The quality of the widget impressed me, so I spent a good deal of time uploading the image of myself and messing around with different styles and colors.
Apparently, I was going for the Cindy Lauper look!
Not a bad look, I know, but I digress. 
Eventually, I played around with some shades I would have never even thought of purchasing and realised that some of them actually didn’t look too bad on me. Not only could I interact with different colors and brands of makeup, I could actually see what they looked like on me without ever trying it on.
There are some things TAAZ still needs to work on. The hair portion of the widget doesn’t look as real as the makeup portion. They don’t yet offer hair dyes relating to the color of hair you choose to place on your image.
I could go on, but suffice it to say, the look I ended up with…
…didn’t exactly measure up to their best makeovers. Still, this is a smart way to attract ad dollars from cosmetics brands like Revlon (pictured) and Sephora (which currently has banners on the site).
There’s also a great opportunity here to push the business model further. For instance, TAAZ could create a Facebook widget so users could share their makeovers amongst friends. They could get one of their advertisers to sponsor a “best makeover” competition. You get the idea.
In case you haven’t heard us talk about “The ROI of Free,” here’s what we mean: If you want to gain the attention of potential customers who aren’t actively searching for the solutions you offer, don’t just tell them about your solution, give them a way to interact without having to commit to anything. Bring the visitor into the experience and let the experience sell itself.
What are some interactive marketing examples you’ve seen have turned you into a sale or lead?
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Written by:Melissa Burdon
PayPal Should Go Undercover
PayPal recently announced a streamlining of its payment flow process that doesn’t require a PayPal account to use. In other words, you can “check out” via PayPal, reap the security benefits of the merchant store not knowing your financial details, and pay for your item without having created any long-term relationship with PayPal (although they wouldn’t mind).
Adding PayPal to an e-commerce site can sometimes result in lower conversions — which makes sense because you’re being taken away from the experience you were just having at the merchant site. On the upside, some mid-sized UK merchants using this new process are reporting an increase in their monthly total payment volume, with gains of over 9% on average.
But I’ve got a different request altogether.
I use PayPal. A lot. Probably at least $500 a month of online purchases of various things that, at the time, I’m convinced I really need. It always amazes me how confusing the PayPal part of the checkout process is. First I’m on the merchant site. Then I’m off it — but not so obviously that I notice right away. It’s just a white, empty-feeling page with the merchant logo and a familiar PayPal button. Then the interface changes again to make it obvious that it’s PayPal.
In order to return to the merchant site, I have to click a small-font text link that competes with PayPal-branded buttons for my attention. At this point, I’m still not sure if the purchase “took” — that confidence doesn’t come until I return to the merchant site.
Won’t some of those e-tailers enjoying that volume increase please, please, PLEASE put just a fraction of that revenue toward hiring a bright developer to create a way to do this undercover? Its seems this could be easily resolved with a bit of (*buzzword alert*) AJAX.
Enter your PayPal user name, maybe some kind of modal lightbox pop-up to asks for my password, it goes back behind the scenes to confirm this with PayPal, then seemlessly closes the pop-up and updates my status on the merchant site to say, “Purchase completed via PayPal. Thanks for your business!”
I like using PayPal. I just don’t want to notice it. Kinda like the electricity in my home; I just want it to be there when I plug in my laptop.
What do you think?
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Written by:John Quarto-vonTivadar
How to Prioritize Your Optimization
Everyone wants to optimize. If you’re like most companies, you have a laundry list of things you’d like to do with your site. You know instinctively that all the items on the list are of equal value. You know some might have more impact than others. You also know these items require different amounts of effort and resources. So the obvious question is, “Where do I begin?”
You’re likely familiar with Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, which states that human beings must first prioritize basic needs, such as food and shelter, before they’re able to seek higher needs, like social interaction and self-actualization needs. What good is owning a Harley-Davidson or finding the perfect outfit for a trip to a club if you’re starving to death?
Looking at your site in a similar fashion is extremely helpful. Since I first introduced our concept of the hierarchy of optimization last year, I’ve wanted to dig into it a little deeper:
Taking a step back and examining the entire pyramid will help you better assess where to start or assist you in knowing exactly what you’re optimizing now. The hierarchy also gives insight into optimization’s potential impact.
Let’s start at the bottom. Remember, the higher you go on the pyramid, the bigger the impact you’ll make on optimization. Also remember that the pyramid doesn’t indicate the level of effort needed to optimize, because this is as different from site to site as we are different from each other.
The Hierarchy of Optimization
Function is almost below the basics. Does your site have long periods of downtime? Do you deliver hundreds or thousands of 404s? Does your shopping cart constantly freeze up on visitors? Can users log in? Do images load? Is your site heavy on customer-facing errors? As a first order of business, work to make your site as reliable as the sunrise.
Another aspect of function is making sure that back-end functions are also in place. We’ve worked with companies that were spending ample on marketing and great site widgets, but the back-end shipping process was broken, causing an embarrassing amount of orders to go unfulfilled. This isn’t sexy marketing; it’s Business 101. Why go through all the hard work to market and sell a $1,000 dress only to have the customer walk up to a dirty checkout lane with a broken cash register circa 1950?
Having solid, clean user data for analytics also falls in the function level, otherwise anything higher up on the pyramid can’t be optimized with any accuracy or confidence.
How accessible is your site? Remember the recent lawsuit brought against Target.com for not having alt tags on its images? Font size, language issues, and pages and sections that don’t load correctly are other accessibility issues. Browser-specific issues fall in this level as well. Check your access logs to determine if you’re under-serving or ignoring a visitor segment. Optimize for people with disabilities, allow fonts to be resizable for users who need larger print, and solve browser-specific issues. If you remember, 38 percent of the retailers had difficult-to-read fonts in our 2007 Customer Experience Study. Optimize for dial-up users (there are still plenty of them out there). Access for mobile devices should also be considered.
Are your buttons easy to find and see? Is the search dialog where users expect it? Do you use drop-downs when you could use a radio button? Usability is about moving site elements around and using size, color, and contrast to improve the ease of use of your site. Thousands of great articles have been written about usability. Jared Spool’s are my favorites.
Call-to-action button optimization is a popular optimization item for marketers. For most, the effort is low, and it can have significant impact. Still, it’s only one aspect of the usability equation.
While similar to and often confused with usability, the intuitive layer is about improving the flow of the visitor’s site experience and optimizing aspects that keep the visitors from buying. Point-of-action assurances, product detail pop-ups, customer reviews, upfront shipping costs, and current in-stock messaging all reduce friction in the buying process, anticipate customer questions, and offer answers at the point the customer asks.
On a lead generation site, optimize form questions, try to shorten the time needed to fill out the form, and introduce ways for the visitor to take more control of when and how they’re contacted.
At the top of the pyramid are site elements that move a customer toward making a decision to buy your specific product. Persuasion issues are almost always high impact.
Improving persuasion on your site is mostly done by improving copy or product images. Product descriptions, feature tours, demos, and product comparisons (even with competitors) are considered persuasive issues. On a lead gen or B2B (define) site, it’s your service description, case studies, testimonials, and white papers. Make sure your copy addresses each of your personas.
Brand image and a site’s overall look and feel are often persuasion issues, especially if there’s a disconnect between the brand promise and site design. But have no doubt that a strong familiar branded product will forgive a multitude of site errors, as many of us have endured horrible sites and process to buy products and services we really wanted.
Assuming the bottom three levels are sound on your site, persuasion scenario planning will assist in planning and measuring the intuitive and persuasion challenges you face.
Conclusion
Start at the pyramid’s bottom and list each of the optimization tests or changes you need to consider. For each item, rank the effort it will take your team to make the change or test possible. Start with low-effort items, even if they’re low on the pyramid. Then work your way up.
Best of luck with your optimization efforts this year. If you need help planning and prioritizing your tests, we’d be happy to oblige.
This originally appeared in my ClickZ column from 2/29/08.
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Written by:Bryan Eisenberg
Does a 100-ton Drill Rig Need Web Copy?
Last week, one of our readers emailed Bryan after finding herself in a tough situation.
Her firm does content development for websites, so she’d never literally been at a loss for words — not online, anyway — until a new client hired her to write some search engine-friendly copy. For the first time, she questioned whether her client’s site actually needed Web copy to do its job. She was stumped.
The client sells new and used industrial drill rigs, augers, hammer grabs, oscillators — stuff they sell at construction equipment auctions (and, no, you can’t find it on eBay). The current website consists of a few image galleries and, thus far, the conventional wisdom has been that all they need to do is show pictures of massive, earth-moving objects, list some basic technical specs, and that’s all their audience needs to know before buying one of these things at a live auction.
A 100-ton drill rig is a 100-ton drill rig is a 100-ton drill rig, right?
Here’s how our anonymous friend described the situation:
According to the [client], there’s not much to say, and the pictures are apparently more important than words in conveying a description of the item. I suggested adding content — a product description — to each picture, so I could get in keywords and so forth, but there’s so little to say about it, and that’s part of [the] problem.
Their visitors are construction companies who already know what kind of equipment they’re looking for. It’s mostly a matter of price competition and whether they want new or used equipment. So descriptions are hardly necessary, especially with the descriptive pictures telling most of the story.
I’ve worked on a ton of web sites and never encountered this before. Any suggestions on what I can do to help them increase page rank?
Let’s start by unpacking some the dangerous assumptions she’s making:
- There’s not much to say
- Pictures are more important than words
- The problem is that “there’s so little to say”
- Their visitors are all from construction companies
- Their visitors already know what kind of equipment they want
- It’s mostly a matter of price competition
- Visitors already know if they’re looking to buy new or used
- It’s unnecessary to describe such products with text
- Pictures can tell most of the story
- Page rank and content are independent variables
Still, the most dangerous assumption she’s made is that the client’s assumptions are true. Yes, they know their business better than she (or any other consultant) possibly could, but that doesn’t mean they know how to market. Whether they can imagine a scenario where someone might need more than just a picture before purchasing 100 tons of construction equipment is irrelevant.
Besides, has a search engine ever bought an oscillator at auction?
Since this was taken on as an SEO gig, not a strategic planning and copywriting project, it’s based on a false premise (”We’ll pay you to help us rank higher, but you shouldn’t have to do much writing to accomplish that”). Until this client understands the value of Web copy — to both humans and search engines — this blog post will likely rank higher for relevant search terms than their website.
Here’s what Seth Godin says about this common SEO myth in his latest book, Meatball Sundae:
My position is that the clients are the problem, not the consultants. That’s because they want shortcuts, not hard work. The best SEO is great content. Don’t do that and you don’t get much.
Do they really believe “there’s not much to say” about a used hydraulic rotary drill rig that (probably) costs hundreds of thousands of dollars? Where has it been? What type of condition is it in? What sorts of jobs is it best suited for? What distinguishes one design or manufacturer from another? Are the needs of a big-budget construction project manager the same as those of an owner-operator of an excavation company? What should I know about each model before I show up to the live auction to bid? If it breaks, do you sell replacement parts? Is everything being sold “as is”? How long have you been in business? Why should I trust your brand?
These are fair questions, and the current site doesn’t answer one of them. There’s not even an ‘About Us’ page.
Of course the client’s customers “already know what kind of equipment they’re looking for.” Those are the only people who would ever be persuaded by a site with no content!
Could you imagine if a real estate website listed houses that were to go up for auction, but showed nothing except for a few pics of the exterior? This is how Christie’s hypes an upcoming auction. Her client should take a look.
Think that’s a stretch, comparing the way 20th century British art is sold to how one should sell drill rigs online? Volvo Construction Equipment begs to differ.
When Volvo hired Future Now, we started with an uncovery session to get to know their business and its key metrics. Then, based on what we learned, we developed personas to match various customer segments. We then performed a scenario analysis of the site to see how it met the expectations of each persona, and to identify fixes that could be made without a redesign. Once they could see how visitors’ needs were unique, they were able to write copy that sold gigantic new and used construction vehicles, machinery and parts.
There’s still work to be done, but with these adjustments, Volvo CE’s lead generation went up 700%. (Here’s the case study from Web Trends, if you’re interested.)
If her client wants rank well and sell more construction equipment, she needs to know more about their business. The client needs to be more forthcoming and she needs to push back for answers. Of course, it would have been better if they’d discussed these things before she took the job, but if both parties continue to look for quick fixes, the site will continue to be “nothing but pictures of drills, augers, and oscillators.”
. .
[Editor’s Note: This has been the first post in our new “Ask Future Now” series. If you have questions about interactive marketing optimization, let us know in the comments or contact us directly and we’ll start a dialog via email. We’ll answer your question in a new post.
Hat tip to Dave Young for reminding us of the Meatball Sundae excerpt.]
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Written by:Robert Gorell
The Cost of Leaving Hispanics Lost in Translation
Talking about Latinos — especially Latinos online — is quite trendy these days. We’re online, alright, but the numbers aren’t as impressive as one might think. Currently, one in ten U.S. internet users are Latino. Meanwhile, the conservative estimate is that 18.8 million of the 44.3 million Hispanics living in the United States today are online.
But that’s changing — fast.
You’re probably aware that Latinos are the fastest growing minority in the U.S., yet most businesses don’t realize that by 2050, Latinos will be 29% of the entire American population.*
On top of that, their buying power is growing at even a faster pace. This combination of factors has to add up for businesses, especially online merchants.
But in the words of countless political pundits — who, if you turn on your TV right now, are analyzing our voting patterns — “the Hispanic population is not monolithic.” In fact, there are quite a few factors that, combined, illustrate completely different types of people, living different realities, yet all part of the Latino community. (Without getting too deep, these factors include: country of origin; heritage; generation; place of residence; socio-economic status; acculturation; assimilation; and language preference.)
Varias Personas
Consider the differences between these two individuals:
Alejandro Ramirez — 19 years old. Mexican-American. Bilingual (speaks both languages but reads and writes better in English). 2nd generation (born in the US from immigrant parents). Lives in Petaluma, CA, with his parents, who come from lower-middle class families in Torreon, Cuahuila. His family’s annual household income is $80,000. Although he was born and raised in the U.S. and is quite familiar with the cultural landscape, his parents have nurtured a strong love for Mexico and have ensured that he understands his family’s roots.
Fernando Zachniuk — 43 years old. Argentinean. Moved to the U.S. 10 years ago to start a business. He’s bilingual, but more comfortable in Spanish. He rents a condo in Boca Ratón. He comes from an upper-middle class Russian-Jewish family from Buenos Aires. He’s dating a Cuban-American divorcée who has a 10 year old son. Their annual household income is in the low $20o,000’s. He enjoys the amenities and comfort America has to offer, but he will always be an Argentinean at heart.
You wouldn’t market to them the same way, would you?
Exactly.
I could go on, referring to each single difference that defines Hispanic subgroups, but let’s focus on Language preference for the time being.
En Español, Por Favor
Since many Latinos, especially those of us online, are either English-dominant or fully bilingual, it’s easy for a company to say they’re already reaching out to Hispanics. After all, if they’re online and able to read the content, isn’t that enough?
At first glance, that logic makes sense. But the reality is this: Even if the Latino who comes to your website is fully bilingual and looking for exactly what you sell, they may prefer to read about your offering in Spanish.
Example: If I’m reading about marketing, I have no problem — and may even prefer — reading a website’s content in English. But when the same bald guy (me) is suddenly presented with a desire or need for medical or financial investment information, you can bet the farm (la granja) that I would prefer reading it in Spanish!
The situation that bilingual and Spanish-dominant Hispanics encounter in many cases is that there isn’t enough online content that speaks to them. They either can’t find it, or — more often — it’ so bad that they go back to the site’s English version.
It seems most organizations aren’t taking their outreach to Spanish-dominant Latinos seriously. Instead, they choose to feel safe in the knowledge that there is a translation of their site — no matter how awful. Others pay some attention to the fact that a translated version should actually make sense, but such translations are often way too literal and don’t account for cultural nuance.
“Getting all your ducks in row,” a common phrase in America, is used to describe the action of being fully organized prior to starting a new course of action, but there is no literal translation of it that wouldn’t make a Spanish speaker break out in laughter! Same goes for “Barking up the wrong tree,” “Two peas in a pod,” “The whole nine yards,” and so on.
Translate Concepts, Not Sentences
If you’re serious about reaching out to the entire Latino community, your site should be bilingual. And when it comes to bilingual sites, “transcreation” is what separates the men from the boys. (Hey, it’s just a figure of speech!)
To paraphrase Lingo24’s definition, transcreation is a form of translation, closer to copywriting, resulting in a text linguistically and culturally adapted for its intended audience. Transcreated material is supposed to have the same impact on the target audience as the original source text.
Transcreation is like taking the scenic route instead of the direct highway, so it requires a greater investment to fuel it. Still, the rewards for businesses — especially considering what the numbers tell us about current and future supply and demand — are plenty to justify the expense. It will most certainly take more time, money, and effort to end up with a transcreated site, but my advice to anyone marketing in the U.S. is that they shouldn’t risk not having one.
Back to Alejandro and Fernando for a moment, since this could be the crucial element that either converts them into clients or sends them elsewhere looking for what they need.
Let’s assume they visit your site today. How will you speak to them? Will you give them the choice to experience your content in their preferred language? Will the Spanish section of your site be a straightforward translation or a transcreation? If they navigate your site in Spanish, would they actually care if the language were stiff, confusing, or (worse) boring?
I assure you, they will care.
. . . .
* Pew Hispanic Center report on social and demographic trends
[Editor’s Note: Each month, Juan Tornoe joins us on GrokDotCom to share his insights on Hispanic marketing trends.]
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Written by:Juan Tornoe
My Cup Runneth Over from High Slurp-Factor™
Have you tried Arizona Iced Tea? They aren’t bad at all, and I’ve really taken a shine to the No-Carb Blueberry Green Tea they produce. For the longest time I could not put my finger on why the product always make me smile, until last night.
After so many months, it dawned on me: the containers for the green teas are overfilled. When you open the bottle, there’s more product in the container than it should be expected to hold — even to the point that if you opened it up while exerting pressure on the bottle (careful, Readers-who-Test!), you’d spill blue-ish tea on yourself. Sometimes I have to reach down and take a “slurp” off the top so it doesn’t spill — which no doubt causes the rest of the family to consider that “Q’s own personal bottle” of the stuff. An interesting way to establish territorality.
Back to point: I feel happy when I open this product because I feel I’ve gotten more than expected, and certainly more than any competitive product. Obviously that extra slurp’s-worth costs them some finite amount of money, but I’m wondering if the delight I feel at getting more is common enough across their customers that it’s driving more sales than the cost of the slurp. And if I feel good about a product, I buy it regularly, and therefore my slurps and the slurps of my fellow… Slurpers represent significant lifetime value to the company.
Does your company’s product or service delight customers more than they expect?
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Written by:John Quarto-vonTivadar
Top 10 Online Retailers by Conversion Rate: An Analysis
[Erratum: The following report on the top-converting sites for January 2007 has been corrected, as it mistakenly references a previous year’s data. It seems a fellow blogger cited outdated numbers and we overlooked the error during fact check. Bryan stands by his analysis, however, as it was not intended to be time sensitive per se.]
Here it is, the list of January’s top 10 converting retail sites:
1. Proflowers.com - 14.1%
2. Coldwater Creek - 13.3%
3. FTD.com - 13.0%
4. QVC - 12.8%
5. Office Depot - 12.4%
6. eBay - 11.5%
7. Lands’ End - 11.5%
8. Tickets.com - 11.2%
9. 1800flowers.com - 10.0%
10. Amazon - 9.6%
[Source: Nielsen Online / Marketing Charts]
Only four of these companies were on December’s list:
(4) Amazon - 17.60%
(6) Lands End - 17.20%
(7) QVC - 17.10%
(8) Coldwater Creek - 17.10%
A big retail SIGH! If only people’s buying habits stayed consistent all year long, to be like they are in December.
My friend Craig provides an interesting analysis of this month’s numbers. He’s right on the money when he says:
There are many things most sites can do to dramatically improve conversion rates. There are also much smarter ways to measure and consider conversion rates than the overall site average. While that may be an interesting for conference-room conversation, it’s a lot more important to break down conversion rates by method-of-contact (email vs organic vs display vs PPC), based on the place in their buying cycle where visitors engage with you, or based on user intent as evidenced in their actions/expressions.
But then he tries to explain, then excuse, why small retailers supposedly can’t have a 10% conversion rate:
The message it seems is that if you need to deliver an overall conversion rate of 10% or greater, you need 30M registered users who buy from you 3-5 times per year, a 24-hour television channel, a pattern of inflicting back pain on innocent mailmen 3-4 times each year, or to sell products which are purchased as a result of some ages-old game of emotional blackmail.
Craig’s as smart as they come, but while offering an insightful analysis, he doesn’t nail the primary reasons. Then again, he hasn’t been focused exclusively on conversion for almost a decade, so allow me to shed some light: The number one reason the “average” small retailer hasn’t achieved a conversion over 10% is because they haven’t worked hard enough to deserve it.
Have you?
Oops! Have I tossed a turd in the punch bowl? (Don’t be offended, please continue reading.)
Several of the websites on this month’s list have been clients of ours and most of the others have staffs that I’ve known professionally for many years. What most of them have in common is they work harder consistently, year after year, at continuously improving their websites for customers than you (the average) do. Their results demonstrate it.
Let’s examine more carefully at some of the points Craig makes since, in one form or another, they are often repeated excuses that pass for the conventional wisdom about conversion rate optimization.
Catalogs Alone Are Responsible For High Converting Websites
It isn’t just having a catalog that gives you a high converting website. If it did, L.L. Bean that was on the list in December with a healthy 23.60% would show up the rest of the year. Lands End, however, has been on it in December, November, and September. Where are all the other thousands of catalogers? Why aren’t they making the list? A strong catalog brand can be a factor, but it isn’t always the primary driver of website conversion.
Television Home Shoppers Aren’t Auto Converting
I love it when Craig says, “QVC. What’s their conversion rate for TV viewers? Their website is functionally a cart, so it could be argued that they’ve got 86.2% cart abandonment.” Absolutely.
However, why doesn’t HSN (Home Shopping Network) or the other large DRTV advertisers show up consistently on the top converting list? While it’s true that many of these shoppers come pre-sold from watching the show hosts sell them the product, they aren’t arriving to the website in a hypnotic trance with credit cards in hand ready to click on that final order confirmation button.
Just Because People Replenish Staples Frequently, Doesn’t Mean…
Craig refers to OfficeDepot.com as having “many no-point-in-comparing products and I assume lots of business orders from people who have accounts and replenish online frequently.” So do Staples, OfficeMax, Quill, FreshDirect and many others. Why don’t they show up on the list? Again, while this might contribute to conversions it doesn’t guarantee a top converting website.
But You’re No Amazon
Craig’s right. Comparing eBay and Amazon to almost anyone today isn’t fair. Part of what helped these companies to become who they are is their commitment to the customer experience. They each had significant competitors but Amazon and eBay just kept pushing the bar higher. In the offline world, there are very few companies that could touch the retail influence of WalMart. Why doesn’t WalMart.com make the the top converting website list regularly?
Wal-Mart’s absence is simple enough to explain. Until recently, Wal-Mart hasn’t worked as hard online as they should have. Wal-Mart has been successful but, like other online retailers, sales volume online often covers up for all those customers that would have converted but didn’t.
Eliminate The Excuses
Do you have a road map to improve your conversion rate from where you are at today, then one to exceed that tomorrow, and then again after that?
FutureNow can help. I invite you to email or call us: 877-643-7244.
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Written by:Bryan Eisenberg
Don’t Hose the Canadians! (Our Dollars Are Equal Now.)
We Canadians already have a bit of a complex due to the fact that the rest of the world seems to lump us together with the U.S., calling them our big brother. Canadians are sick of being treated like leftovers. So, when certain North American companies leave us (and other international visitors) out of the loop by making it difficult to buy from their websites, they’re losing sales and annoying would-be customers like me.
It’s time for U.S. companies to consistently treat international customers the same way that they treat their compatriots online.
An experience that one of the attendees of our recent Persuasive Online Copywriting seminar shared with us demonstrates the frustrations Canadians face when shopping online: Bill was attempting to purchase a Northwest Airlines flight at NWA.com, so his son could attend a communications workshop in Austin. After going through the process of choosing his flight, seat, and entering his name and credit card information, he realized Northwest’s website had something against foreigners.
In what normally would have been a confirmation email (see thumbnail image), Bill was rejected. He was informed that if he does not have a U.S. billing address, his order wouldn’t be processed. Instead, he would need to go through a long list of bizarre, counterintuitive instructions on how to give them money.
Instead of booking on the homepage…
…he would have to click the “Reservation Center” drop-down menu on the top navigation, then click “Shop for Flights.”
Is there any way he would have figured this out on his own? And if international booking is such an issue, why don’t they just say so right away, or at least offer the same toggle button say that you’re not a U.S. resident on the homepage?
This is just one example of many. I’ve personally encountered countless situations just like this.
Do any of you Canadian or international readers out there prefer not doing business with U.S. companies because of experiences like these?
[Editor’s Note: For the sake of transparency, and because we don’t want to seem too cool for school, let it be known that we at Future Now have been, at times, just as guilty of cultural bias as other U.S. businesses. Although many of our Canadian friends, clients, readers, and (in Melissa’s case) colleagues know we love our neighbo(u)rs to the north, we have occasionally and regrettably missed out on international business. You can read the comments on Melissa’s last post for details. As always, the first step toward recovery is admitting you have a problem. ]
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Written by:Melissa Burdon
Would You Like a McFrappuccino With That?
As you may know, McDonald’s is trying to beat Starbucks at its own game — or at least steal some market share. According to The Wall Street Journal, the fast food giant is now hiring baristas and, starting this year, they’ll begin putting coffee bars in some 14,000 U.S. locations.
This isn’t the dumbest thing they’ve done lately, but it’s weird.
Starbucks, meanwhile, also hopes to emulate Starbucks — as it once was, anyway — now that Howard Shultz has returned as CEO, renewing his vows with customers. Considering that they’ve been the McDonald’s of coffee since at least 2000, when Shultz last held the position, this oddball battle of the brands is already the height of corporate irony.
Sure, this may seem like a good time for McDonald’s to get into the game (their share price went up 31% last year while Starbucks dropped 41%). And yes, there are a lot of great reasons to compete with Starbucks from the two-dimensional comforts of a spreadsheet. But do they really want trained baristas?
Besides, isn’t the current Starbucks mess thanks to the company’s over-caffeinated growth — the very growth that Shultz pioneered — and not because they abandoned their mythical, shade-grown je-ne-sais-quoi?
The bagel shop near my apartment has some of the best bagels in Brooklyn. They also have a cappuccino machine, if not a barista. You can order a “half-caff french vanilla iced latte” if you want, but I don’t recommend it. The guys behind the counter will sneer at you, as will fellow customers as you hold up the line. But there’s something nice about that. It’s honest. Terrace Bagels doesn’t want to be Starbucks, and neither it seems should McDonald’s.
Starbucks, on the other hand — yeah, they might wanna look into that.
Brand Autopsy’s John Moore, who wrote the book on Starbucks’ marketing, compares Shultz’s return with that of Michael Dell. It’s too early to say what will and won’t work for these two (*gulp*) cafe chains, but Moore has some good advice from the Starbucks playbook in the meantime.
UPDATE: Not sure how I missed this from the WSJ article, but here’s a video of the machine the McDonald’s “baristas” will be operating:
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Written by:Robert Gorell
