1. Look Nice – You want to put your best face forward. Your homepage is often the first thing that your visitor sees when they visit your site, so make sure that it is aesthetically pleasing and easy on the eye. Remember, for a vast majority of sites, the homepage has the highest bounce rate.  Give your a visitor a reason not to leave.

2. Make your prospect interested in what you have to offer – In the dating scene, this means opening up and making sure they know something about you that makes them want to learn more.  In website optimization, it means having a top notch Unique Value Proposition (UVP).

3. Remember them – Saving a visitor’s shopping cart for at least 30 days is a helpful tool for reminding visitors that they’re wanted (especially as Holiday shopping ramps up).

4. Don’t give them a reason to leave – The easier it is for your visitor to navigate your site, and the more quickly you can get them through their buying process, the more likely they are to convert.

5. Don’t talk up your best friend – The worst thing you can do is link to a site outside your own and push your visitor in that direction. Tools and references are always helpful, but don’t make them more attractive than the options that push them further though the conversion funnel. If you feel it’s necessary to link to outside domains, use a visual cue (like the common “tear off” icon) to indicate to the visitor that they’ll be leaving your site.

Now go ask for another date, or better yet, get down on one knee

Most valuable writing lesson ever.

“Nobody wants to read your shit.

Let me repeat that. Nobody–not even your dog or your mother–has the slightest interest in your commercial for Rice Krispies or Delco batteries or Preparation H. Nor does anybody care about your one-act play, your Facebook page or your new sesame chicken joint at Canal and Tchopotoulis.

It isn’t that people are mean or cruel. They’re just busy.

Nobody wants to read your shit.

There’s a phenomenon in advertising called Client’s Disease. Every client is in love with his own product. The mistake he makes is believing that, because he loves it, everyone else will too.

They won’t. The market doesn’t know what you’re selling and doesn’t care. Your potential customers are so busy dealing with the rest of their lives, they haven’t got a spare second to give to your product/work of art/business, no matter how worthy or how much you love it.”

Every online copywriter – no scratch that – every writer, marketer, advertiser, business owner, and entrepreneur should go read this post in its entirety.

This very powerfully states what Future Now has long taught: prospective customers are task oriented – they have lives and they are not on your Website because they are interested in you, or your company, or how you’d like to “position” yourselves within the industry.  Your online visitors have a problem and they are really only interested in whether or not you have a viable solution.

Once you understand that, you can move away from we-we copy in order to focus on providing visitors with:

• Ongoing visual and text assurances that they’ve come to the right place to find their solution – i.e., provide good scent.

• Copy that speaks to them about what matters to them.  Establish empathy with WHY they need your solution.  Figure out what has driven them to need your product or service, and make sure you address those felt emotional needs as well as ALL of their lingering, sales-killing questions and doubts.

• Pathways/links that allow each visitor to choose their own path, to either take the express train to grabbing what they need and converting, or to drill down to richer content on those elements where they need to assure themselves that you are, in fact, selling a real solution to their specific problem.

Nobody wants to read your copy.  But if they’ve voluntarily come to your Website in search of a solution, chances are good they will scan, skim, and yes, even read copy that addresses their task at hand.

The difficult part is often the task of separating out “your sh**” from the copy that’s actually needed to address visitors’ concerns.  Hiring outsiders often helps with this.  Personas are also extraordinarily helpful.  And so are the guidelines outlined in Steven Pressfield’s post – go read them!

And then go kick some online marketing a**

P.S.  If the name Steven Pressfield seems familiar, you may have read his (highly recommended) non-fiction book, The War of Art.  Or possibly his extremely popular historical fiction (also recommended).

[Editors Note:  The author of this article is now blogging at jeffsextonwrites.com]

Unanswered questions keep visitors from buying/converting — that’s not theory; it’s a fact!

So why, oh why, would you knowingly allow your persuasive copy to ignore a frequently asked question?  Why would you possibly be content with hiding the answers to your prospective customers’ questions in an FAQ page?  Are you trying to weed out all but the most determined of customers?

While I don’t have confirmed experimental numbers to back this up (yet), common sense says that for every customer willing to search for an answer on an FAQ page, there are dozens more who simply give up on the purchase or look to your competitors for the answer.

So instead of erecting a sign saying, “Beware of persuasive pothole, please drive around this hole by visiting our FAQ page,” and hoping your visitors are motivated and alert enough to navigate such an alternate route, why not simply fix the persuasive gaps in your copy.  Here’s how to do that:

If you currently have a FAQ Page, Here’s What to Do/Check

1) Determine where visitors are most likely to access your FAQ page. Look at your analytics to see where visitors are within their site visit/shopping process when they attempt to look at your FAQ. Do they do this early on in the process or later,  as a last resort?

2) Get a sense of context by going to those identified FAQ access pages.  You’re not just interested in the questions themselves, but in the context in which they are asked, so look at the page in terms of why visitors would be on that page.  Note that a persona-based or scenario-based analysis helps with this.

3) Go to your FAQ page and think about the emotional concerns behind the questions. Here are a few examples taken from actual FAQ pages, along with the emotional concerns that probably underlie those questions:

• Will we have access to the instructor to ask questions during the online ____ course? Translation: “how interactive is this course – how much better is it than just buying a book or a CD  DIY-type course?“  Going one step deeper: “I’m afraid I might not get the support I need to actually improve my skill level — how can you reassure me that your course will help me actually kick ass, rather than being an unused resource that makes me depressed about my own personal suck-factor?”
• How long will a [durable home good] last? Translation: “you’re asking a premium price and presenting yourself as the last ____, I’ll ever need – so what kind of proof do you have/historically, exactly how long will one of these suckers hold out?”
• How do I know that my ____ is working correctly? Translation 1: “You’ve sold me on the theoretical benefits of your fancy schmancy _____, but I still feel like I might be getting suckered, so how can I confirm for myself that your device is really doing what you say before my 30-day refund clock runs out.“  Translation 2: “I know this is crucial to making sure my ____ doesn’t die an early death, so how can I reassure myself that I’m not breaking my very expensive and brand-new _____?”
• What are your return/exchange/warranty policies? Translation: “Hey, idiot, you were too stupid to put any kind of point of action assurance near your buy/add to cart buttons and I’m not about to give you my money without knowing this stuff.”
• What differentiates you from other _____? Translation: “Someone told me I should check you out, but I’m not impressed so far – either you’re oblivious as to how hard you’re making it for me to figure out what you do and why I should do business with you, or you just plain suck; so which is it?”
• What kind of care/cleaning/maintenance does ____ require? Translation: How will this fit into my life?  Will I have to baby this thing?  Can it handle the normal knocks and dings of daily life without falling apart?  In 6 months or 2 years, will I look back on this purchase as a waste?

4) If you have live chat or a published phone number, comb through those records or ask your customer service reps for the questions people ask and where they are on the site when they launch the chat service or call in.  Once you have the list of questions gleened from Live Chat and Phone trasncripts/experience, repeat the process used in #3 by examining the emotions and concerns behind the question. How do those results differ from your FAQ?

5) Address underlying concerns or questions within your regular Website copy. You don’t necessarily have to do it with copy, as pictures, testimonials, videos, user reviews and other site elements can also address these concerns, but make sure the questions get answered.

Are there any excuses for having a FAQ?

Well….yeah.  Sometimes when you really need a “knowledge base” library, but you don’t want to call it that, or when you want to make the hard core geeks in your audience feel better about asking their un-frequently asked questions, a FAQ page can work.  Just make sure you ALWAYS provide links back to sales pages from within your FAQ answers.  Once you’ve answered the visitor’s question, move them back onto a persuasive path.

Oh, and sometimes there are some Q&A’s you might actually want to hide, like in this Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 FAQ – notice the first question ; )

But seriously, realize that an FAQ is basically a junk drawer; you’re shoving stuff there because you haven’t taken the time to find a proper home for it.  You realize this question may come up, but you haven’t figured out where it would come up – do the hard work to uncover the context and emotion behind the question and finding a better place for the answer within your copy becomes relatively easy.

[Editor’s note: The author of this post is now blogging at jeffsextonwrites.com

“Brilliant post. We get this all the time, when designing websites for our clients……..But our clients will often use the line “but my customer understands this terminology, these acronyms, my customer is from a particular niche and they all use this terminology”…….It can be hard to argue this point, the client knows their customer better than us…… Yes usability tests would be a good way to prove to a client this problem, however it can be very difficult to find users who fits the persona.”

Thanks for the comment, Hamish, and I’ve run into that situation a few times myself.  So here are a few strategies for dealing with that which have worked well for me:

In working with the client

• Properly frame the discussion: “So what you are telling me is that if prospective clients come to your site and are not as familiar with these acronyms and terms as your “ideal candidate,” your OK with turning those prospects away and losing the sale?” Ultimately, it’s their site, if they want to only speak to “insiders” and the hard core, then that’s a legitimate business decision, just frame the question in business terms so they can acknowledge the bottom-line costs to such a strategy.

• If the client relents when you ask him the “are you willing to lose the sale” question, suggest that you create and link to early-stage and newbie-friendly material. There is certainly no harm in taking an industry term and giving a fresh nuts-and-bolts analysis of it.  At best you’ll get a chance to demonstrate your expertise; at the least, you’ll get some keyword rich and internally linked content.

• Perform a Marketing Copy Autopsy on a piece of their current collateral.  Pull out all the self-applied labels and adjectives to show them how the jargon is really just covering up a lack of substantive content.  That should open up the client’s eyes, and if the autopsy reveals copy with substance, that’s a good sign that maybe the client is correct in their customer-knowledge assessment.

• Do what Seth Godin suggested in the first place: get a flip cam and interview some past or current client customers.  Don’t just test to see if they know the terms, but ask about the implications involved.   Knowing what a graphics card is isn’t the same thing as knowing why it can be critically important to have a powerful one if you’re looking to play hard core video games.

In crafting the clients Web copy

• Spell out acronyms at least once per main landing page, so if, say, COTS was a heavily used acronym, the site would say Commercial Off-the-shelf Technologies, once in a while, as sort of a reminder or lifeline for the reader.

• Insist that no more than 1-2 terms or acronyms appear in any sentence. The problem is often not just that jargon or acronyms are used, but that they are triple and quadruple stacked on top of each other in complex-compound sentences.  That’s when you end up with something like this: “Drawing on our long-term experience as systems integators, solid relationships with our suppliers, and a commitment to the successful execution of the concept of COTS in mission-critical applications, our reputation — and our customer base — has grown.”  Whew!  Even rough familiarity with the industry terms isn’t enough to save most readers from having their brains “go splat” while reading those kind of sentences.  The more complex and technical the material, the more you need simple sentence structures.

• “Aerate” the text with videos, graphs, and photos that provide a sensory experience of the most important technical terms or acronyms.  Imagine a sidebar or box that shows a COTS case study, complete with before and after pictures of the off-the-shelf consumer item and its new military cousin along with a cost comparison showing the savings involved.  As another example, I suggested showing beam shots of the different power LEDs in my product page critique of BalckDiamond’s Headlamp.

An now for a dissenting opinion.

Legendary copywriter Bob Bly has a well known article titled, “Six Things I know for Sure About Marketing to Engineers.”  Point number five plainly states that:

“5. Engineers are not turned off by jargon—in fact, they like it. Consultants teaching business writing seminars tell us to avoid jargon because it interferes with clear communication.

This certainly is true when trying to communicate technical concepts to lay audiences such as the general public or top management. But jargon can actually enhance communication when appealing to engineers, computer specialists, and other technical audiences.

Why is jargon effective? Because it shows the reader that you speak his language. When you write direct response copy, you want the reader to get the impression you’re like him, don’t you? And doesn’t speaking his language accomplish that?

Actually, engineers are not unique in having their “secret language” for professional communication. People in all fields publicly denounce jargon but privately love it. For instance, who aside from direct marketers has any idea of what a “nixie” is? And why use that term, except to make our work seem special and important?”

As I said, if you are narrowing your focus to a special group of insiders – or at least want to appear that you’re doing that – then an unapologetic use of jargon can work great. But I’d still try to test working in a few of my bulleted strategies

And here’s a little desert video on advertising terms – fair warning, though, George Carlin’s language may not be workplace appropriate:

Click here to view the embedded video.

In fact, you may not like the product, either, simply because you’re probably not part of their targeted audience.  So make up your mind now to look past that in order to see the marketing decisions behind both the product and the site.

Let’s start by imagining that you’ve just been challenged to enter the fitness category. Not to sell some machine or piece of equipment, but to sell a workout program.  You can pick any angle of approach you want, and let’s assume you have the wherewithal to find the science or content to make the angle of approach you pick the “real deal.”

What angle of approach would you choose?

And for what audience would you tailor your messaging?

Now, let’s walk through the likely thought process behind the mystery website

• As far as dedicated gym rats go, who really makes up the bulk of that audience? Men.  Younger men, in fact.  I’m guessing, but I’d say probably between the ages of 18-35.

• Why do they work out? The same reason why most people work out, if you ignore the rationalized claims and scratch deeper into their real motivations: they want to look good.  And given this age group, that means looking good to women; they want to attract more chicks.

• Now here’s the million dollar question: how may workout programs are brazen enough to say, “This workout is THE workout for attracting women”? Answer: none.  At least none that I’ve ever come across, until – out of professional curiosity alone, mind you – I clicked on a banner ad for The Adonis Effect.

Now, do I actually like the Website?  No.  I think the cartoon character at the beginning is a huge turnoff.  So is forcing visitors to engage with your “Calculate your Adonis Index” tool before letting them past the splash pages and onto the real sales copy.  Nor do I make any claims for the validity of the statements made on this site or by these entrepreneurs.

What I DO like is the incredibly intelligent approach to marketing a workout program. The last workout program to take such a brazen approach was the infamous buns of steal videotape.  You know, the tape that became a cultural icon, that spawned a 22-tape “of steel” series, and that launched Tamilee Web into fitness icon status?

Always make sure your messaging/copy is On Target

While I don’t think The Adonis Effect will become as high-profile as Buns of Steel (and that might well be a Marketing to Women lesson for you right there), I do think it’ll make a killing off its target audience.  And here’s the take-away lesson from that:

Always make sure your messaging/copy is speaking to the real, deeply felt, emotional needs of the prospective customer.  Crummy writing that’s on target will always beat great writing that’s directed at anything other than the heart of the reader. And of course, that goes for websites as well.

You can ding The Adonis Effect for it’s cheesy Website(s) – along with any number of usability and persuasive faux pas – all you want, but the essential message is on target. And I’d be willing to bet money on their success because of that one factor.

Why Persona-based copy matters – and which copywriting legend would (likely) agree

Back when Holly Buchanan and I used to routinely teach Persuasive Online Copywriting, we’d have the class write a short piece of copy based on a standard demographic/target-audience profile, then we’d replace that crappy (but typical) marketing profile with personas and have the students re-write their copy.

Invariably, the second pieces of copy blew away the first – not because we had magically turned the students into better writers, but always because the copy went from stereotypical advertising appeals to emotionally on target copy for intended audience.

And you know who else preached this same “On Target” message?  The late Gary Halbert.  Just watch this video and you’ll see exactly what I’m talking about at around the 1:40 mark:

Click here to view the embedded video.

P.S.  Although a public/open session of Persuasive Online Copywriting hasn’t been held in about a year, you can still get the majority of the lessons from that 1-day course by attending Writing for the Radio and Internet at Wizard Academy.  Chris Maddock and I co-teach that 2-day course, with Chris focusing on improving core writing skills while I teach a specific methodology for creating and linking on target web copy.

[Editor's note: the author of this post is now blogging at jeffsextonwrites.com]

But I just felt I had to call out an example of how poor copywriting and writing for search engine robots can ruin a decent Unique Value Proposition.

I was referred to a site to look at their homepage design (see screenshot, highlighting is mine), and immediately noticed that they had a prominent Unique Value Proposition (UVP) statement, which was promising.

The UVP statement wasn’t the best I’ve read, but at least it was an attempt that could be tested and refined. But the sub-text under the UVP was what irked me enough to write this post.

Someone decided to “we-we” all over the UVP! And it looks like they also tried to write for search engine robots instead of humans with credit cards:

“We specialize in custom ties, custom bow ties, bowtie / cummerbund / handkerchief sets, custom cufflinks, matching gift boxes, women ’s scarves, and much more. We can custom make your neckwear any way you desire. We have both standard ties and clip on ties as well as extra long ties for your custom ties. We even have custom ties for boys as young as 6 months. Our products are great for corporations, organizations, churches, choirs, schools, uniforms, athletic teams, fraternities, formal and special events, and many more.”

Notice that by focusing on SEO only, they end up with copy that will resonate with no one.

Here’s the official tally from our free We We Calculator:

Your Customer Focus Rate: 37.50% (3 customer-focused words)

Your Self Focus Rate: 62.50% (5 self-focused words, and 0 mentions of the Company Name)

You speak about yourself about 2 times as often as you speak about your customers. Might that have an impact on your effectiveness?

I’m not a Search Engine Optimization guru, but I’d wager that any SEO prowess you lost by fixing that kind of copy could be made up by 1 or 2 quality, keyw0rd-rich inbound links from reputable, related sites, don’t you?

Many companies don’t fully understand what to do with social media. They don’t see the path to benefit from it. Others have tried using it and walked away not seeing the value of social media. Others still don’t get it at all, and have left themselves completely to the mercy of the online mobs.

Most of us are somewhere in between.

Social media is at its best when used as a tool to listen and interact with buyers in the early-to-middle stages of their buying cycle. This is the time to focus on providing consumers with content that matters to their buying process. While it’s possible to direct sell and find customers “in the market” today, it’s also difficult. Most of today’s companies are overly obsessed with late-stage buyers; thus, this kind of thinking seems to them less valuable.

What It Can Do

Relationship building, goodwill, and improved customer service are what social media can do for you. Also, social media can:

• Help your company communicate with early- and middle-stage buyers more effectively and push them closer to a sale.
• Help your customers communicate the bad and the good, with you and everyone else they know.
• Help you listen to what potential buyers in your sector are talking about.
• Help you find opportunities to delight customers.
• Push you to become more focused on the customer.

What It Can’t Do

If you think putting up a Twitter account or a Facebook fan page will build huge gobs of closable traffic overnight, you’re kidding yourself. Relationships need nurturing. Social media can’t:

• Drive hundreds of thousands of new qualified visitors (yet) to your site or store.
• Let you take control of the customer dialogue about your company. Those days are long gone.
• Be your primary channel for marketing your mid- to large-sized company.

More on Buying Stages

A short example: early-stage buyers have only identified a need (e.g., “I need a winter vacation this year”). Middle-stage buyers know approximately what they want (e.g., “I want to go to Florida this summer”). Late-stage buyers know exactly what they want (e.g., “I’m going to Florida and I’m making reservations and buying plane and park tickets now”).

Do you think someone in early or middle stage might be influenced to by social media? If you aren’t convinced, look at what happened to United Airlines.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Anybody who is thinking about going on a winter vacation and happens to cross the “United Breaks Guitars” video (now watched over 3,000,000 times) will think twice about United. That is a negative influence on early-to-middle stage buyers.

Now, say it’s 10:30 a.m., you’re starting to think about lunch, and you come across this video?

Click here to view the embedded video.

Still, Not Everyone’s Convinced of Social Media’s Value

Patricio Robles, tech reporter at Econsultancy, recently wrote specifically about monetizing Twitter and real-time search. I agree, because Robles was talking about social media as an ad platform.

Where we part in our agreement is in thinking that real-time search and social media have no monetary value. Remember, social media can build relationships, though not paid traffic generation.

Some Practical Steps for Getting More From Social Media

• Reward customers who talk about your company in social media, both good and bad.
• Remember, bad word of mouth can be good for your brand too.
• Quit talking about yourself all the time. It gets old, really. Talk about your customers. Heck, just share a joke to break things up so you aren’t “wewe-ing” all over yourself.
• Unconvinced that social media has legs or is a match for your company? Test it. Offer a social media specific promo code and see if it gets traction.
• Use social media to take an interest in your customers needs. For instance, are you selling items in a vertical sector? Search for “follow” and “friend” people in that space. Add value to the conversation about their needs. (Early-stage buyer prospecting.)
• Use it to meet people. Meeting people is good.

Where’s the Value for You?

Social media isn’t everything people are hoping it will be, yet. Still, there’s value in participating and investing resources to be a part of the online 2.0 conversation. Just temper your expectation, and use it for what it’s good for.

Have you had to prove that social media has value to someone?

[Editor's note: the author of this post is now blogging at bryaneisenberg.com]

In my last post, I made use of a brick and mortar analogy to the current online behavior of some e-commerce Websites, and even recommended the use of those analogies when analyzing online persuasion strategies.

And since at least a few readers responded positively to the idea, I thought I’d share one of Get Elastic’s videos  dramatizing exactly one of those analogies, as well as sharing a link to their whole series.

So welcome to The Crazy, Messed-up World of E-commerce!

And if you haven’t already bookmarked Get Elastic’s blog, go ahead and do that now.

Never?

You mean no one has ever blocked the exit and said something like, “Hey, I saw you put that bottle of wine in your cart, why didn’t you buy it?”

It sounds funny until you realize that most online remarketing services offer to do exactly that to your website visitors.  They’ll pester them with e-mails, pop-ups, and phone calls should they have the bad fortune of visiting your site, adding something to your shopping cart, and then not buying it.

Why would otherwise sane e-tailers revert to such uncivil, gorilla-like tactics?  Really bad assumptions about both human nature and the nature of online shopping.  They simply haven’t compared what they’re doing to that kind of offline analogy.  So here are the bad assumptions, along with a few suggestions on how to correct them and what to do instead:

Assumption #1: Everyone is a late stage buyer

Related assumptions: Everyone who puts something in your shopping cart has a full-blown intent to purchase that item, and it was just chance or a shopping cart flaw that caused them to “abandon” your cart.  Cart abandonment is caused within the cart itself.

Corrections:

• Lots of people research and comparison-shop before they buy.
• Adding an item to cart is often a means of comparison shopping
• Adding an item to cart is often the only way to get important information for making the buying decision – stuff like shipping costs, whether express delivery is available, gift options etc.
• Most lost sales are caused by a lack of information and persuasion on the product page and the rest of the website – not by the cart itself.

Assumption #2: Long-term effects will parallel short-term gain

Related assumptions: sales that you recover from abusive or annoying tactics are easily tied to increased revenue and therefore are more important than the much-harder-to-measure ill will and annoyance created by those same techniques.  That the successes are as cumulative as the ill will generated.

Corrections:

• “He who would run his business with visible figures alone will soon have neither business nor visible figures to work with.”  -    W. Edwards Deming
• Don’t mistake a lack of hate e-mail or complaints as a lack of passionate response.  Or at the least, find out a way to measure the offense or annoyance you’re causing amongst the visitors who you don’t convert through your remarketing efforts.    If more people are converted than are pissed off, and the converted become repeat buyers, then keep doing what you’re doing.  But have the discipline to find out for sure.
• Pissed off people are a lot more likely to share their experiences than a visitor converted through remarketing tactics.  And even the converted visitor will be less likely to do ANY further early stage shopping from you now that they know what to expect from putting an item in your cart or visiting your checkout page.
• Ask any remarketing service what the longer-term trends for their customers have been.  If they can’t tell you overall impact on their clients conversion rates for periods of at least 1-2 years, you should be very, very suspicious.

Assumption #3:  It never hurts to ask.

Related assumptions: that the mere form of a question /offer renders it impossible to offend visitors’ sensibilities or violate their sense of privacy and online safety.

Corrections:

• Read this Seth Godin post
• Imagine that you had only started to fill out a check-out form, had not ever hit any kind of “submit” or “enter” button before closing out, but now have that website e-mailing and calling you because they pulled the info off of their server in real-time, as you typed it into the form.  How do you feel about that?  Think this thing doesn’t happen?  It does.
• A website forces you to create an account in order to checkout.  You create one.  Then you see that they gouge their customers on shipping charges.  You close out of the process and now you’re receiving spam from that company/website.  Are you EVER likely to do business with them in this or any other lifetime?

So are all automated responses and attempts to “save the sale” a bad idea?

Absolutely not.  Just let your offline sense of what’s appropriate guide you in your applications of this online technology. Pushy sales clerks can kill brick and mortar sales just as easily as over-aggressive re-marketing techniques for the simple reason that human nature doesn’t change just because a person goes online.  In fact, I frequently recommend Why We Buy to Web optimization specialists and online copywriters for exactly this reason.

So to use that offline analogy, let’s say you are looking at a more expensive bottle of wine and that the store owner sees you put it back on the shelf to grab a few other cheaper bottles.

Would it be ok for the clerk to approach you, mention that the bottle you were looking at is one of the best buys he has in the store, guarantee you’ll love it, and offer to give you a discount to get you to try a bottle?   Or for him to show you similar bottles closer to your price range?

As long as the clerk was respectful and took “no” for an answer, there’s no problem with that at all, right?  So how could you do it online?

• You could show special offers on previously-deleted-from-the-cart merchandise during the checkout process
• You could have a button on your product page that says “alert me to any specials or discounts on this product,” and then follow-up with a special e-mail offer AFTER the visitor has given you permission to contact them.
• For completed sales – and completed sales ONLY! – you could send a follow-up e-mail with special deals on previously-deleted-from-the-cart merchandise
• And a few other techniques that I’m sure you’ll come up with yourself if you spend some time thinking about it.  I don’t want to give away all my secrets without exacting any mental work from my readers

All of these things work just as well online as their offline counterparts, which is far more than can be said for most “gorilla” (re)marketing tactics.

P.S.  Before going through all this trouble to remarket, why not make sure you’ve fully optimized your checkout process to begin with?  Bryan Eisenberg’s initial and follow-up blog posts on this are a great place to start.

“…at no time does a brand own a customer. That chain is cut loose too easily. Brands that approach the online marketing space for customer ownership will be disappointed. Come looking for that precious bit of attention, and marketers get paid in full.”

Here are 5 strategies companies use to become market leaders.

They have great operations -

Operations that let them be more efficient than you at getting order picked, packed and delivered so that customers’ expectations are exceeded. These efficiencies in operations also allow them to keep their costs down.  At the same time those interested in capturing additional market share invest those efficiencies back into improving the customers’ experience. Walmart.com online exemplifies this quality.

They do a better job at generating word of mouth -

Everything they do is focused in on delighting customers. They are driven by service. They understand that success is a long term strategy and can afford to do what they need to in order to please their customers. They go to every extreme to delight their customers and offer lagniappe in many ways.

They live on “life-time value” metrics. They are driven by a passion to serve and a philosophy that it is easier to keep a customer for life than to try and keep acquiring new ones. These some times over the top efforts that lead to so many of their customers sharing the amazing experiences they have had with the brand. Zappos.com exemplifies this quality..

They deliver as good of a product/service in a more customer friendly way -

I’ve seen this one happen so many times. One day you, the market leader, the first person to market with the product, with significant marketing budgets, and with the hugest market share become aware of some smallish competitor and ignore them because their product isn’t up to snuff.

They slowly start winning customers, that just need the basic features they offer. All the while they keep building up their product/service. However,  from the get go they eliminated many of the hassles of getting started with their business. Instead of a complicated sale processes, or in-the-way sales people they made their pricing transparent and made it easy to sign up online to get started right away. GotoMeeting employed this strategy when competing with Webex.

They do a better job at being found when people need them -

Location, location, location. Budweiser is not the world’s finest beer. However, they sell a lot of beer. Bud dominates so many channels that they are always available. We know Bud and so we order it because often good enough is good enough. Amazon applies this principle online.

Wherever or whatever you search for comes up on their site or on Google as being sold by them. I am not just talking about having a first place ranking for the most competitive single word key phrase, but they have invested in having content (a large portion customer generated) that spans the long tail, from early in the buying process to later in the buying process. Their pages tend to keep showing up time and time again. They thrive on generating content that is relevant and are thrilled to live off the 3 or 4 searches a month for a particular piece of content or obscure product as long as they have thousands of them that people are finding. Amazon has utilized this to keep adding product categories to their vast catalog.

They developed a culture that continuously optimizes the customer experience -

This is different than being customer intimate, it is more incremental, it is about being metrics driven. The key is to focus on key performance indicators that drive success for your business and being relentless and innovative in way to drive up those numbers. They may not often start off as the category leader but through relentless testing and optimizing they gain market share. These companies tend to be less risk averse preferring gradual and continuous change. This is a very powerful strategy for companies to leverage in a down economy, because while your competitors are trying to maintain status quo you focus on constantly improving. Many of Intuit’s brands exemplify this strategy.

How can you leverage these strategies to drive your own growth?

Click here to view the embedded video.

Get Elastic’s recent post on reducing friction kicks butt – providing incredibly clear explanations of too-common Website flaws along with great examples of how to do it right.  I wish I wrote it.  Not only did the article reduced me to green-faced envy, but many of the post’s links pointed to further “must reads.”

Do yourself a favor and go read it now.

Most people don’t want to draw that sharp line of distinction, and it’s why their marketing efforts blend into the clutter.

Discernible edges and silhouettes allow us to visually “grip” an object and separate figure from ground.  Eliminate those edges and you’ll effectively camouflage yourself.

In the picture above, notice how the legs present a solid silhouette and are easily identified, while the man’s upper body camouflage breaks up his silhouette and blurs his edges into the background of trees and snow.  As a result, it’s much harder to make out his his torso and arms.

Like our eyes, our minds also depend on edges and silhouettes.  We define by giving parameters, mentally grasping a concept by its boundaries.  Without the “edges” of contrasting reference points, a concept or term remains ambiguous at best.

That’s why grabbing after an “infinite” market and seeking to be all things to all people ends up camouflaging one’s brand and messaging; without contrast it all just blurs into the background.

Want to stand out?  Sharply define the edges between you and your competitors.

The better you do this, the more strongly you’ll turn-off some customers.  But wouldn’t you rather powerfully persuade some of your market than be overlooked by all of it?

Just follow the example of this doctor:

I found this ad in my local newspaper and was immediately struck by the bold headline:

“You don’t want me to be your family doctor.”

Pretty ballsy headline for a doctor, huh?  Wouldn’t you feel compelled to read more about this doctor with the courage to so brazenly declare what he wasn’t?

Having gained the reader’s attention, the body copy further explains: “Neurosurgery is one of the few medical specialties for which I am well-suited.  I am not warm and fuzzy.  I could never be successful as a pediatrician or in a family practice – no one would come back a second time.  But I am very good at what I do.”

Dr. Goodman then substantiates his claimed expertise with a list of very impressive professional qualifications and accomplishments, rounded off with some examples of his extreme commitment to surgical excellence and his patients’ well-being.

While his professional qualifications are truly outstanding, most readers would never have read them without Dr. Goodman’s use of reverse camouflage in his headline.  Saying what he wasn’t allowed him to stand out amidst the clutter.

So here’s 3 sure-fire ways to reverse-camouflage your messaging.

1.    Get yourself an enemy and/or reject a reasonable alternative position
Nothing fires the blood quite so much as declaring what (or who) you stand against.  But you get no points for tearing down straw men; rejecting a reasonable alternative position puts teeth into your message.

2.    Present a tightly focused perspective
Once you’ve narrowed the group of customers that you’re most interested in attracting, focus your messaging to speak most directly to their felt needs, desires, and frustrations.  People who don’t share those experiences will feel excluded, but your core audience will feel an instant connection.  Both will instantly recognize you.  Tim Miles offers a brilliant example of this on his “About Us” page.

3.    Explain what costs you’re willing to bare and admit the downside to your offer/product.
This one is more about credibility than definition, but amidst a background of ad-speak, solid credibility acts as its own form of reverse camouflage.  Plus, you don’t just want to be seen, right?  You want to be believed as well.

Finally, if all else fails, you can always use your new-found knowledge of camouflage to escape weekend chores (just ditch the boots in favor of camo socks)

When Michael Lewis wrote his article on Coach Leach and the Texas Tech Football program, that program was known as an offensive powerhouse that relied on sheer scoring power to outgun opponents.  Its defense wasn’t mentioned in that article, and one can only guess the omission was intentional.  Just look at their game results against Texas and OSU for 2005-2008:

What you can see is that up to 2007, Texas Tech continually increased it’s offensive scoring, but to mixed results – because Texas and OSU still outscored them.  Texas Tech’s defense was losing these big games.  So immediately following his team’s 2007’s bitter loss to OSU, Coach Leach changed defensive coordinators.

And after that, well, you can see for yourself: Texas Tech is undefeated this season and the major game-changing difference in their match-ups against Texas and OSU wasn’t the ability to score more points, but to hold those other teams’ offenses to significantly fewer goals.

So what does this have to do with Web Optimization?

In tougher times, most companies reinforce their strengths; doing what’s worked well before.  But few are really willing to look at their organizational assumptions and weaknesses head-on.

In terms of web optimization for hard times, it might not be just a matter of improving website performance, it might be a matter of changing the offer.  Or changing the emotional appeal behind the offer.  Or the guarantees and risk-reversals that you’re using.

Roy Williams has addressed this issue over several Monday Morning Memos and I think his analysis and advice has only grown more relevant as the months have passed by:

• Expect more people to be hardheaded in judging value.
• Be willing to expand beyond your current comfort zone and offerings/marketing in order to reach and convert these skeptical, hard-nosed value shoppers.
• Expect stories and long copy to make products and services more saleable (faster to sell and more easily sold), but test very carefully before concluding they’ll allow you to sell them at higher prices.

So what about you and your Website: are you looking beyond what you’ve always done well?  What assumptions are you changing and what competitive weaknesses are you looking to shore up?

“Leach is unusual in giving his quarterback the authority to change every play, wherever the line of scrimmage. “He can see more than I’ll ever see,” Leach says. ‘If I call a stupid play, his job is to get me out of it. If he doesn’t get me out of it, I might holler at him. But if you let him react to what he sees, there’s a ton of touchdowns to be had.’ All Leach is really saying to Hodges when he sends in the play is, ‘Line up in Ace, see how they line up against it and call a good play…’

The Texas Tech offense is not just an offense; it’s a mood: optimism. It is designed to maximize the possibility of something good happening rather than to minimize the possibility of something bad happening…”

Unfortunately, most optimization consultants take the opposite mindset from that attributed to the Texas Tech Football Program’s by Michael Lewis in his NYT article I’ve been quoting from in this series of posts.  In short, most Web consultants focus their efforts on minimizing the possibility of something bad happening (of loosing an already convinced customer’s sale) by fixing usability flaws.

Yet if you want to move beyond page-level optimization, you’ll have to begin maximizing the possibility of something good happening – of convincing visitors to convert who may not already be convinced when they arrive.  And you do this by planning visitor interactions on a click-by-click basis, imagining:

• What questions will arise in their minds,
• What tasks they’re looking to accomplish,
• What expectations they had when they clicked the previous link
• What doubts and concerns are keeping them from moving forward

You’ll find that real scoring opportunities most frequently involve:

• Increasing the match-up between visitor click-through expectations and your content, as well as the match-up between their buying tasks and your selling objectives, and
• Adding content or hyperlinks to answer key questions and provide missing substantiation

Both of which are a far cry from simply tweaking buttons and testing navigation schemes.  And both of which require you to go beyond mechanically applying best practices or ‘mindlessly’ running A/B tests.

This kind of optimization requires that you see how visitor behavior lines up against the backdrop of your current content and then to choose a change/test based on your best hypothesis of why visitors are doing what they’re doing instead of what you want them to do.  Kind of like the Texas Tech QB calling a play based on the mismatch between the formation and the defensive response.

Here’s an actual example from LuLu.com*, specifically their page on softcover publishing:

Now, let’s say LuLu’s three desired actions on this page are, in order of priority:

1. Click the “Self-publish” button in the active window
2. Click the “Lulu Demo” button to the right of the tabs
3. Use the “cost calculator” tool located down below the fold

And just so you can see that cost calculator portion of the page, it looks like this:

Now, let’s imagine that the Web analytics are telling you that the majority of traffic is going to:

• The “Services” page as accessed by the top tab
• The Home Page (either from the back button) or main “Publish” page
• “Help” or “FAQs” either from the top tab or Footer Nav Links

And we’ll also imagine that very few page visitors are taking the actions we want.  Plus, those that are clicking on the “Self Publish” button are quickly closing out of the “upload/cart” – they’ve just got a huge abandonment rate.

Step 1: Take your best guess at what’s going on.

First, I’d imagine visitors coming here from the homepage, the Publish page, and maybe even directly from organic and paid search. And that means most of them aren’t quite ready to upload their manuscript just yet – they probably still have some questions.

Given that situation, the current label for the main call-to-action – the “Self Publish” button – will probably feel deceptive to the visitor.  They’ll likely think the button links to a demo or to more info, and then they’re taken to an upload page.  Is it any wonder they rapidly back out of the upload interface?  Do you see how the context of the click/hyperlink on the prior page can dramatically affect the performance of the current page?

I’d also guess that people aren’t seeing the real demo button because it’s outside the active window.  Plus, the page utterly fails to answer questions about the relative pricing, merits, and limitations of LuLu’s paper, book size, and binding options.  So instead of moving forward, visitors are moving backwards to the publish and home pages and navigating to Help and FAQ pages to try to find those answers/information.

Step 2: Test your hypotheses

I’d test an alternative main button label of “Start by uploading your manuscript for free” and I’d put some Point of Action Assurances near the button.  Something like, “No commitment to upload & you retain the copyright.”

This ought to better prepare visitors for where that button will take them, and it will better appeal to spontaneous shoppers, who are most likely to click that kind of call to action.

I’d also test moving the demo button down into the banner area, not too far from the “Upload” button.  This will make it more visually prominent and should grab some of the traffic now going to the “Services,” “Help,” and “FAQ” pages.  Plus I’d make sure the demo ends with a link to bring visitors back to this page; remember, we want to maximize the chances they’ll come back and convert!

Finally, I’d add copy next to the pictures of “Perfect Bound,” “Saddle Stitched,” and “Coil Bound” pictures, as well as creating some “How to publish as economically as possible” bullets next to the cost calculator so visitors don’t have to blindly guess at what size paperbacks are more expensive, what trade-offs are involved in using cheaper paper, etc.

Step 3: Get it done and learn from the test results

Here’s where a lot of companies get stuck.  They get the test ideas queued up and then they don’t get the new buttons or banners or pictures designed.  Or they don’t write the copy, or some such.  A week to a week and a half goes by so that they’re just starting the test by the time they should have actionable results.

At any rate, not every test goes the way you plan, obviously.  But here’s the beauty of testing this way: if relabeling the “Upload” button doesn’t have any success, but the other tests DO increase the time on the page, the use of the cost calculator, and the number of people watching the demo, maybe you need to test a special, “Upload Your Manuscript” landing page, with new assurances and upload info, giving visitors timelines, points of contact, etc.

Believe me, those kind of results aren’t a failure – they’re a first down!  Now you just have to keep driving toward the goal with follow-up tests.  And the cumulative results of this kind of testing creating the kind of customer insight for breakaway success.

So how can you jump-start this process?

Well, in the spirit of the Raider’s fast-tempo offense, I’m offering a fast-turnaround Web Optimization service, emphasizing do-able, quick-to-implement changes capable of driving real world touchdowns:

The 48-hour, $500 e-mail/ad campaign and landing page analysis

If you’re planning or in the middle of a campaign and want to optimize your results, I can personally analyze your e-mail, ad, etc along with the campaign’s intended landing page and provide you with insight-oriented and easily implemented tests/changes for driving results – just like the kind you saw with LuLu.com.

Better yet, I’ll provide you with an interpretation of the actual results – what to look for, how to make sense of what you’re seeing – and follow-on actions.  If we score a game-winning touchdown and you like the feel of that, you can sign-on for ongoing optimization with Future Now.

If you only walk away with additional insight and a better understanding of how to implement your own optimization efforts – hey, that’s more than worth it for $500 and 48 hours. If you’re interested, contact us.

* Note that LuLu.com is not a client and I have not seen their analytics.  Everything about this example is hypothetical.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Now, before discussing the ad, please name a brand developed in the last 10 years that was built largely on the strength of its advertising.  Go ahead and think a bit if you have to; I’ll wait.

You might be able to name one, dear reader, but I’m betting you’ll have strained a bit to come up with it, and that you’ll only think of just one (assuming you come up with any).

Now, name 5 brands created in the last 10 years (or that at least come onto the national stage within the last 10 years) and built largely on the basis of great user experience / word of mouth with very little to no traditional advertising.  Here’s my list:

1) Zappos
2) Krispy Kreme
3) StonyField Yogurt
4) Silk (soy milk)
5) Smart Wool

It’s not a definitive list by any means, and I’m sure at least one reader will write me with an example of some kind of ad or PR campaign run by one of those companies, but I trust you get the point: the new Mac commercial isn’t just a satirical poke at Microsoft’s non-response to its problems with Vista; it is indicative of the current marketing climate in general.

Unless you have a message that matters – in other words unless you have a product and customer experience worth talking about – why pay to broadcast it?  A false or inane ad message won’t just be tuned our or ignored: it will actively discredit you in the marketplace and might just prove a handy club for your competitors to beat you with.

So as you ramp your sites and marketing up for the Holidays, do you have a few innovations up your sleeve?

Let’s face it. Despite the economic troubles, people are still going to want to give gifts, and find the best gifts they can for their loved ones.  They’re just going to be more cautious and spendthrift.  So empathize with that sentiment as they shop with you.

Encourage them to take their time and find the right deals.  Advise them to buy multiple items to save on their overall shipping spend (Amazon has always ruled this game in my opinion).  Heck, if you’re really bold, cross-sell them with similar items that cost less…it’s sounds crazy, but they might convert instead of abandon.

For a more concrete example, think about gift cards.  A certain percentage of gift shoppers will always end up giving gift cards, and that means a certain percentage of your early-2009 traffic will be gift card redeemers.  The buying path for gift cards is usually OK, but have you optimized it?  Do you plan to test and optimize it in the weeks leading up to the Holidays?

Now think about the card redemption process, which I think has even more room for improvement.  Here’s the experience I’ve always had when redeeming Holiday gift cards online:

1. Receive the card, note how much is on it.
2. Sometime between and 12/26 and 7/4, decide to redeem it (I’m a notoriously bad procrastinator).
3. Look on the back of the card for redemption instructions.
4. Following the instructions, type in the URL and land on the homepage.
5. Now I’m overwhelmed with thousands of products to choose from and no assistance offered.
6. I poke around a bit, maybe try to search by price range, and maybe buy something.

Boring.  Uninspired.  A bit tedious.

Here’s a dream of a better experience:

1. Receive the card, note how much is on it.
2. Sometime between and 12/26 and 1/31, decide to redeem it (Made a New Year’s Resolution about procrastinating less).
3. Look on the back of the card for redemption instructions.
4. Following the instructions, type in the URL and land on a unique landing page or a microsite, 100% dedicated to gift card redemption. No distractions.
5. I can select the value of the gift card and be shown ONLY relevant price range items, or receive a few friendly suggestions of ways to spend the $, or find out how other shoppers have been spending their gift cards.
6. The checkout flow is customized to my unique task of checking out with a gift card.

Those are just a few changes that seem achievable.  Pair those changes with optimization, and you might turn 1-time gift card redeemers into repeat purchasers.
If anyone wants to share their innovative Holiday Season ideas, feel free, but we understand why you wouldn’t necessarily want to give up your competitive advantage .

Can anyone give examples of extraordinary 2007-08 Holiday gift card experiences out there on the Web?

We’ll be reviewing over 500 retail websites this year and won’t be reporting the overall results until the beginning of 2009. If you put in your request this week, we’ll provide you with a report that shows you how you measure up in our 4 categories and provide you with some tips to improve your customer experience.

Your site will be evaluated by one of our Conversion Analysts against 69 distinct questions in four critical areas of customer focus:

* Product Presentation
* The Checkout Process
* Delivery Options
* Customer Service

Want Your Report Now?

If you would like a better idea of what you need to do to make your retail website more customer focused then complete your request at Benchmarkmysite.com.

P.S. We are also thinking of adding a B2B benchmark as well. If you think this would be valuable, and would like to be included in it please comment below.

“Think of it! Millions and millions of people we can hyper target with relevant messages and offers, contextual targeting, behavioral targeting – THINK OF THE VIRAL OPPORTUNITIES!”

Um, you’ve got a little bit of spittle there at the corner of your mouth…there, yeah, you wiped it off.

Yes, the potential is huge. But some companies have been disappointed with the results in their early efforts. They have some great ideas, but aren’t always sure how to monetize them. (Read this insightful article on the challenges of monetizing Facebook applications.)

I couldn’t agree more – the opportunity is huge. But how can you really make money from social media?

Go Into Relationship Mode

I was fortunate enough to get to spend some time the other day with Joseph Carrabis of NextStage Evolution. (Are you jealous? You should be.)

One of my many questions to him was about social media – it’s all the rage, but can advertisers really tap into that power to sell their products and services? I was particularly interested in advertisers hoping to reach women. Women are huge consumers of social media. A recent rapleaf study found, while both men and women are using social media in increasing numbers, women far out-pace the men.

Joseph pointed out that social media is about building relationships – if advertisers want to reach her in that medium, they have to be in relationship-building mode.

I thought this was interesting. I was at a recent marketing to women conference where two presenters talked about the “mode” women are in on the Internet and how you need to match that mode. Shopping, communicating, and entertainment are just a few modes she might be in.

Which brings up an important point. If she is in relationship mode, respect her space. She may not want to deal with anyone who is too pushy or does not respect her space. For example, look at women on MySpace decorating and customizing their pages. This is their private sanctuary – just like decorating their room in a house. Be aware of that. It’s one thing to barge into a website she is viewing (with your ad). It’s another thing to barge into her “room.”

Another idea we discussed in relation to women and social media and building relationships is the importance of the concept of fair value. As Joseph says, “You have to give as good as you get.” Is there something of value you can give to her? Are you giving more than you are asking for?

And how do you build that relationship? A great way to start is through a conversation. Social Media is often a great way to have a two-way conversation with your customers and potential customers. Just keep in mind, does she actually want to have a conversation with you? And if so, what does she want to talk to you about? A good place to start would be to answer her questions.

Use Persuasion Architecture to Get The Most Out of Social Media

Some of the best advice I’ve heard on the subject came during a recent podcast interview with Forrester’s Josh Bernoff. Josh points out that you can’t start with the technology. You have to start with people and objectives FIRST. What a great point. I can’t tell you how many times someone has come to me and said, “I need to start a blog,” or, “I need to tap into the Internet,” or, “I want to create a discussion forum.” My reply is always, “Who are your customers and what do they want?” THAT’S the first question. What do they care about? How can you make a difference in their lives? What are your objectives? Next, you can come up with which technologies can help you achieve those objectives (i.e., blogs, forums, Facebook, etc.).

It’s a novel idea – start with the consumer and what she wants. (This is the entire basis for Persuasion Architecture.) It’s also about communicating with customers in the manner they want to communicate.

How Do Your Customers Want to Interact With You?

FutureNow recently put up a Facebook page. As our Director of Marketing, Brian Bond said,

“The way I see it, technology evolves to better facilitate the needs of consumers, to have their questions and motivations addressed. The evolution of tools like Facebook is an answer to a need to communicate differently. Just like letter writing was largely replaced by email as a more efficient communication method, I see apps like Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, etc., all evolving as alternatives to email and other current communication methods. For marketers and businesses, this represents a great opportunity to communicate with their audience with the method their audience chooses. This change is something we have to embrace because it’s how our audience wishes to interact with our brand. Who are we to tell them they are wrong? The beauty of the Persuasion Architecture approach, in my mind, is that is that it applies equally well to all marketing/communication methods. It’s all about communicating with customers the way they want to be communicated with and addressing customers’ motivations. If there are technologies that better support this communication, then we must embrace them to be relevant to the customer.”

How do your customers want to interact with you? How can you provide genuine value to them? Remember, relationships are a two-way street. You can’t always ask ask ask – you have to give in return. Think about what you could give your customers that would be of value to them.

Do Facebook Ads Relate

Here’s a Facebook ad that got my attention:

Now, I deleted the header because it was “(my age) year-old-woman.” That creeped me out. I don’t like someone calling out my specific age. It’s not that I’m that old (I’m barely out of my twenties, really). But screaming my personal information at me like that made me feel a little violated.

Despite the header, the ad got my attention because it was for free samples of products – many of which I recognized in the image. The fact that this company was willing to give me something first appealed to me. It felt like a welcome gift. It felt like the way I’d like to start a relationship. (Rather than flashing the usual banner ad at me, screaming at me, “Buy our stuff! Give us your money!”) Remember, I’m in relationship mode right now, NOT shopping mode. Offering me a gift appealed to me more than offering a percentage off a purchase.

I know some people would joke that women are always in shopping mode. But ads like this one to the left are a big flop; a belly flop. Ads like this make me want to ban all advertising on Facebook.

Want your social media ads to work?

Start with People

By all means, embrace social media. But start with people, in particular, your customers. Who are they? What do they want? Start with their goals first. THEN bring in technology to achieve your goals. And remember, conversations are a two-way street. Don’t just ask…listen. You’ll form stronger relationships. Isn’t that what it’s all about?

Since I’ve focused so much on Facebook, I’d love to hear from you – Advertisers – have you had success using Facebook? Tell me about it. Facebook Users – how do you feel about ads and applications on Facebook? Love ‘em? Hate ‘em? Sound off in the comments.

If you are doing social media advertising, would you like to do a research project with FutureNow to see how you can make those efforts more effective?  If you’re interested, let’s have a conversation about it. You can start by leaving a comment below.

Truth be told, what stopped me in my tracks when digitally thumbing through the Globe was not the headline, but the leading image of CC Chapman, all-around Podcaster-extraordinaire. Seems CC’s tv was on the fritz during a little thing called the 17th championship in Boston Celtics history, and he twitter blasted Comcast to make himself feel better (he should’ve realized in title-town, it takes a lot more than OD [original def] to keep a team down .) Here’s the amazing part – Comcast responded, via Twitter, within minutes. They also had a technician out to solve the problem…before the tip off of the next game!

We get asked a lot from clients about how to build communities online, or how to shape the conversations that exist online to be more favorable towards their company or product. I can understand and empathize with their perspective, but more often than not, the companies asking these questions haven’t done the basic fundamentals yet. Don’t worry so much about figuring out the 1-3-1 full court trap; rather focus on perfecting a well executed free throw. Not sure where to begin? How about:

1) Setting up Google alerts for your company and/or product name, and commit to spending an hour per day reading and responding honestly and in a human voice to the comments you read. Remember in the age in which we currently live, our heroes are more flawed like Jason Bourne, than the Rockwellian images of yesteryear. It’s ok to not be perfect, but you’ll get torched for not being honest. If you don’t believe me, see Pettitte, Andy and Clemens, Roger.

2) If Google alerts doesn’t give you enough fodder, try Technorati, or Twitter or Niche sites in your space, like Techmeme. Despite what the old commercial said, it’s tough to reach the end of the internet. There are plenty of services out there to help you comb through what’s out on the ‘net, but you may be surprised to see how much you can learn through sweat equity alone.

3) Go to sites that sell your product and have reviews. Mine through the treasure trove of data that your audience gives you about what works and what doesn’t about your product or service. What’s the vocabulary they use? In addition to learning why they hate your product or service at times, I’ll bet you a quarter you find new benefits you never considered that your audience is realizing as a result of your efforts. Bonus points if you use those benefits to rewrite some product copy.

4) If you don’t have reviews on your site (why not?- Is there something you are afraid of hearing?), read your competitors’ reviews, and instead of trashing them, learn from them. Reach out to the consumer base, and offer a few free products in exchange for free flow of feedback. You can’t improve what you don’t measure.

Those are just some top of mind ways you can get started. I’m positive the GrokDotCom audience base has far more, and even better, ideas for how they overcome these challenges, and learn from their current and past customers. Perhaps if we ask them politely, they’ll even share. Anyone care to share their stories & ideas in the comments below?

“Are you new to the team?” asks the nuclear engineer of the stranger who saves a frazzled control room from reactor meltdown.

“Actually, I’m with the tour group, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night.”

Holiday Inn Express has a brand promise: “Stay Smart.” Well, I had the opposite experience. Why? Blame it on their poorly named “Simply Smart” bathroom products.

It’s early in the morning — very early — and I’m looking for the hotel shampoo and conditioner. Not too difficult. Just look for the bottle marked “Shampoo” and the one marked “Conditioner”, right?

But I find no such thing. My choices include “Refresh”, “Scrub”, “Wash”, “Soften”, and “Tame”. I reckon that “Tame” is the conditioner, but as to which one was the shampoo, it’s a toss up, so I bring all the bottles into the shower with me. I then compound the situation by not brining my glasses, so now I can hardly read the labels.

Where was the helpful cut-out in the bathroom explaining what each “simple” bottle was? It wasn’t until later that I noticed tiny print on the back of the bottles explaining what each thing really was.

So, I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night, but did I feel like I could fix a multi-million dollar athlete’s sprained ankle or prevent a nuclear meltdown? Not exactly. I had shampoo on my legs, hair conditioner on my face, and mouthwash in my hair. I didn’t feel capable of pouring a cup of coffee. (Though I must say, their hot breakfast bar really is impressive.)

In hindsight, once I knew what each container was, it made a little more sense. (Though how you get Spot & Stain remover from “Rub”, I still don’t know) but surely I’m not their only guest who was confused.

Nothing against Holiday Inn Express. I stay there often and the staff is usually lovely. But this bath product labeling thing really threw me.

So, what’s the lesson here (other than mouthwash should never be used as shampoo and vice versa)?

Beware of cute and clever labels. I see this on websites as well. There’s no glory in being clever if you end up confusing your visitors.

I also see this in advertising messages. I read about an effort in Australia to pull over drunk drivers. The original message was “Don’t blow your license.” Testing showed this message had near 100% understanding. But the ad agency wanted to change it to “Don’t blow it.” Clever, yes, but only 5% of the people had a clear understanding of their message. Some people even thought they were promoting civil disobedience by saying “Don’t take the breathalyser test.”

Back to websites. I know sometimes you want to show your visitors how creative you are. But do you really look at your site from their point of view? I am often befuddled by advertising agency sites. Leo Burnette has an interesting category called “We’re Idea Centric.” The sub categories are “Start Clean,” “Stay Restless,” and “Amplify.” I honestly don’t know what any of those mean or what I would see if I clicked on them.

I’m sure you’ve run into this yourself. I’d love to hear your examples of websites that had labels or navigational elements that were “clever” but not easily understood.

Well, off to getting the furniture polish out of my hair (another story for a later date).

. .

About the Author: Holly Buchanan is a Persuasion Architect at FutureNow and co-author of The Soccer Mom Myth: Today’s Female Consumer: Who She Really Is, Why She Really Buys. If you’d like to meet Holly and judge her in person, join her on June 2nd for FutureNow’s Persuasive Online Copywriting seminar in Manhattan. Not only will you learn techniques for attracting customers online, you’ll get a chance to schmooze over hors d’oeurves and cocktails at our “Happy Hour with the Experts” reception, which we hope you’ll find to be appropriately named even though it will last for more than an hour.

Who had me doing the Tiger Woods I-just-made-another-eagle-putt fist pump? Avinash Kaushik. (The title of the Mya Frasier’s AdAge article is: “Google’s ‘Anayltics Evangelist’ Explains Why Websites ‘Suck’ — Kaushik: Despite Mounds of Data, Marketers Don’t Understand Consumers.”)

Why did this interview get me so fired-up? Because Avinash hit the hot button with the fact that, even with all the data available today, most marketing efforts still fail because advertisers don’t truly understand their customers.

Here’s an excerpt:

Avinash Kaushik thinks one of the reasons why so many websites “suck” today is because of the hippo — as in the “highest paid person’s opinion.”

And, yes, you’re likely a hippo — a successful advertising executive, CMO or brand manager, pulling in a six-figure income, often found pontificating about what does and doesn’t work online. You use tried-and-true metrics such as unique visitors and click-through rates to decide on the best design for your landing page or what content is best suited on your product site.

‘Least closest’
Yet, despite your mounds of data, Mr. Kaushik thinks you are the “least closest to the customer.”

Now, I work with these “hippos” all the time, and they’re some of the smartest people in the room. I have tremendous respect for them. The CMOs and other top executives I work with are master strategists. But like so many of us, they rely on the customer data that is collected to give them the insight into who their customers really are, and what those customers really want. That’s why not having regular, direct customer contact IS a problem. You’re forced to rely heavily on the data coming in from other sources.

And often, that data is compiled, sifted, sorted, filtered, and presented in a manner in which the original customer intent, words and emotions are missing from the final “customer data report.”

You may get insight into WHAT happened, but what’s usually missing is WHY it happened — which was exactly Avinash’s point.

What can you do to learn “why” your customers did something? Avinash suggests the two products he evangelizes:

• Use Google’s analytics tools, including Google Analytics and Ad Optimizer.

• Add a short, free 4Q online survey (from iPerceptions) to your site.

I still think nothing beats getting face-to-face interaction with your customers. Everyone on your ad team — from the CMO to the copywriters to the web designers — should have regular, direct communication with customers. Now, I hear some of you saying, “That’s impossible. We can’t take the time to send all our people out to interact with customers.”

OK. Here’s another idea: Bring customers to your marketing team.

I saw a presentation at the M2W Marketing to Women conference by a company called Snippies. They have “video journalists” who interview people in different market segments. What I love so much about this approach is, you get to hear from real people, in real environments (not focus groups), in their own words. It’s amazing what you can learn about people by hearing it in their own, unfiltered words. This documentary-style format is very engaging; the impact and insight from these videos is way more powerful than simply getting a report with a bunch of spreadsheets and data.

Smashing Stereotypes

I also love this approach because it helps smash stereotypes. When you see real people, it helps you get past stereotypical views and gain understanding. The further away you are from your target market, the harder you’re going to have to work to get past customer stereotypes to gain that understanding not only of what people do, but why.

Don’t be the one who’s “least closest” to your customers. Take the initiative to gain that greater understanding. It will keep you from wasting money on ineffective advertising and help you create messages that persuade people to take the actions you want them to take.

. .

About the Author: Holly Buchanan is a Persuasion Architect with FutureNow. Each day, she helps clients use personas to smash stereotypes about their customers. She is also co-author of a new book, The Soccer Mom Myth: Today’s Female Consumer: Who She Really Is, Why She Really Buys. If you’d like to meet Holly, join her on June 2nd for FutureNow’s Persuasive Online Copywriting seminar in Manhattan. Not only will you learn techniques for speaking to customers in their own language, you’ll get a chance to chat over hors d’oeurves and cocktails at our “Happy Hour with the Experts” reception.

I guarantee you a lot of CMO’s (and a whole lot of other people) tuned in to watch this frank round table discussion.

What industry is your website targeting? Are you a sales training company targeting sales managers? Why not get together a group of 3-4 sales managers and ask them to talk about their biggest challenges with employee training?

Are you a website development company targeting small business owners? Why not gather a group of small business owners and record a session where they talk about their experiences — good and bad — with trying to put up a website that increases business?

These would have to be candid, honest discussions about real issues people are facing. There’s no sales pitch for your company allowed in these videos. It’s simply your way to facilitate an honest discussion about the issues and challenges within your industry.

Consider of the power video. When a prospective customers comes to your site to watch this video, they gain knowledge and insight from watching peers discuss issues that are important to them.

THEN you can create copy and links, so that after they watch the video, you can show how your service addresses their issues, solves their problems, and overcomes their challenges.

It’s called building rapport. You’re letting your prospective customers know: “We understand you. We care about the same issues you do. We’re in touch with people like you, and if we’re listening to their concerns, needs, and desires, we’ll listen to yours, too.”

It’s about showing, not telling. Instead of saying, “We’re an industry leader, well versed in the problems that sales managers face every day,” SHOW them. It will be way more effective.

. .

About the Author: Holly Buchanan is co-author of The Soccer Mom Myth — Today’s Female Consumer: Who She Really Is, Why She Really Buys; and co-instructor of FutureNow’s Persuasive Online Copywriting seminar, June 2nd in Manhattan.

She’s part of a highly coveted demographic group, 18-34 year olds, that companies from Coca-Cola to Apple just can’t get enough of. Though her parents came from the Dominican Republic, she was born and grew up in the United States. She’s a fully bilingual, fully bicultural Latina, just about to finish her MBA. If you want to find her, you’ve got to go online.

Silvia has been on the internet since 1996, and uses it constantly for school, work, and at home. She communicates by e-mail, pays bills online, and prefers to shop at Amazon than go to the mall. Silvia catches up with friends on social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace. She follows the news on AOL Latino and keeps up with chisme on Terra. When she misses an episode of a telenovela, she downloads it on Univision.com.

But her favorite spot in cyberspace is the Miami-based portal Batanga. Last year, the company received a shot with a $30 million dollar investment. It’s paid off, since that’s where Silvia spends about 80% of her online time.

That comes as no surprise to Batanga’s CEO Rafael Urbina: “It makes her feel good that her music is being played there, that her language is spoken there,” he says.

Critical Mass

Silvia is not alone. In fact, she’s part of a growing trend among Latinos of growing internet usage. According to November 2007 figures from comScore’s Media Metrix, 18.1 million or 41% of Hispanics are online. These numbers make marketers salivate, though there may be even more. According to Dr. Felipe Korzenny, Professor and Director of the Center for Hispanic Marketing Communication at Florida State University, who has been researching Latinos online since 2000, usage may be significantly greater. He would raise the ante to 28.8 million, or 65% of the Hispanic population.

Anyway you look at it, the number of Latinos going online has reached critical mass. But to understand these numbers, you need to segment the market. The first to go online were acculturated Latinos with a higher socio-economic level, according to Danny Allen from Admixture, an online ad network with about 75% to 80% of websites in Spanish. This is echoed by David Morse of New American Dimensions, one of the top multicultural market research firms. He explains that online Latinos are better educated and have a higher household income. The longer that they are in the United States and especially when they have school-age children, the more time they spend online. But this isn’t necessarily the case for all Latinos.

“We need to keep in mind,” says Morse, “that there is still a digital divide among the less acculturated immigrants that tend to be poor.”

Many recent immigrants lack the education to realize the importance of the internet. When you go to their houses you are more likely to find a huge stereo system or a big screen TV before a computer. But as penetration in the Hispanic market gets deeper, the lower socio-economic levels and the less acculturated Hispanics will start to get online in larger numbers. This segmentation is demonstrated by a 2007 eMarketer report which reveals 78% of English-dominant adult Hispanics are using the internet, compared to 71% of non-Hispanic whites. At the same time, only 32% of Spanish-dominant adult Hispanics were online.

Allen notes that the broad availability of cheap broadband and cheap computers has helped getting Latinos online. The ability to get online through mobile phones has also has been an influence, since Latinos generally over-index in the use of mobile phone’s advanced features. One theory is that this is because they don’t have a computer at home so they do most of their interacting through cellular phones. With the advent of the iPhone and its ability to cruise the “real internet” it’s becoming less of an issue that websites have to be mobile-friendly.

Viva Batanga

Where are all these Latino internauts going? When analyzing the top 10 sites visited by Latinos in comScore’s Media Metrix, one notices that the most popular are those from Yahoo and Google, followed a bit down the list by Amazon and Ebay. The most popular Latino-themed site, Univision.com, gets a lot of traffic but is barely within the top 30 properties.

Yet there are several very successful sites that have caught the attention of the Latino consumer, garnering loyalty as well as eyeballs. Todobebé.com has been around since 1999, evolving into a full-fledged multimedia company serving Spanish-speaking mothers not just online but via television, radio, print, and event marketing. Terra is the portal of Spanish telephone giant Telefonica. Its CEO, Fernando Rodriguez, shares that one of the most visited areas in Terra is music, and there the most popular are the artists’ own pages, in both Spanish and English. He emphasizes that what is most important is content, not language.

Then there is also Silvia Medina’s favorite, Batanga. She certainly is not alone regarding her preferences. Rick Marroquin, Batanga’s chief marketing officer, joyfully shared that in comScore’s, November 2007 Media Metrix, Batanga was at 3.5 million unique visitors a month inside the U.S., 1.1 million of those identified as Latinos.

Batanga was born in 1999 in Greensboro, North Carolina as a Hispanic online radio station. Around the same time, Venezuelan native Rafael Urbina started a company by the name of Planeta Networks, offering internet video on demand. In 2005, both companies merged, with headquarters in Miami, and Urbina now serves as CEO. In August 2007, Batanga raised $30 million for the expansion of its marketing efforts and online content. The lead investors, Tudor Ventures and H.I.G. Ventures, both manage multi-billion dollar manage large portfolios, and have funded a wide variety of enterprises. What’s the secret of Batanga’s success?

“In the past, the value proposition offered by Hispanic media companies was primarily the language,” says Urbina. “We believe that Batanga is one of the first media companies to break this barrier. From the start, it began with a bilingual interface, giving visitors the option of accessing our content in their language of choice. We focus in offering culturally relevant content for users. That is why music was the logical first step. Independent of your heritage, or where were you born, or your language preference, there will be one Latino music genre that will touch your heart.”

Urbina emphasizes that Batanga is living proof that Hispanics are online. The fact that most of them are late adopters compared to the general market has resulted in them connecting to the web directly through broadband, rather than a dialup connection. This creates an interesting situation given that Latinos basically leapfrogged an entire technology. Currently, less than 50% of the entire Latino market is online and the Batanga team believes this number will continue to grow in a much faster pace than the general market for many years to come.

English or Spanish?

Despite the success of Batanga and its rivals, the debate continues. Yet marketers agree that the important thing is to define who you are trying to reach and then devise strategies that are meaningful and relevant to them.

Matias Perel, the founder of Latin3, a Hispanic interactive agency, catering to Hispanic divisions of global corporations, takes a step further on the segmentation of the Latino online market. According to the 2006 AOL Roper Study, he sees the Hispanic online market divided into three: Mostly Acculturated 15%; Partially Acculturated 66%; and Relatively Unacculturated 19%.

The mostly acculturated Hispanics are achievement oriented. 74% of them prefer to read online content mostly in English, 4% in both languages, and 22% don’t have any preference. Partially acculturated are more into social and fan oriented. 34% of them prefer to read online content mostly in English, 12% in Spanish , 27% in both languages, and 22% don’t have any preference. The relatively unacculturated are mostly oriented to family and home. 9% of them prefer to read online content mostly in English, 31% in Spanish, 41% in both languages, and 19% don’t have any preference.

Curiously, research has shown that English-dominant Hispanics have more blogs than any other group in the U.S. while Spanish-dominant Hispanics have more websites than any other. The latter is due to the cultural tendency of trying to be connected, to try to have relationships and connections. Dr. Korzenny has heard reports that many immigrants build their personal websites to show loved ones back in their home countries how they live.

But by far the greatest controversy is which language to use.

Fernando Espuelas, CEO of Voy, a leading Latino social entertainment network, quoted a recent study by the Pew Hispanic Center showing that 75% of the growth among Hispanic consumers will come from U.S. born persons as opposed to immigrants. The vast majority of the market place is American-born and the future of the growth will come from them. Also, Espuelas says, referencing another Pew study, English language adoption among Latinos is happening at a much faster rate. Therefore, he says, we can see that the U.S. Latino population is becoming predominantly English-dominant. Yet he is aware that Spanish language, culturally, is very important for the Hispanic community.

Some argue that English language sites should develop content in Spanish, since many users prefer reading in that language. But exactly the opposite has been happening with traditionally Spanish language websites. To reach a larger percentage of the Latino market, they have been producing bilingual content. Terra has been producing bilingual content, particularly to cover specific events like soccer’s Gold Cup and World Cup, as well as The Oscars. Terra executives have noticed that more and more bilingual and even English-dominant users are coming to their site looking for relevant content. Their conclusion is that language is secondary to the content’s appeal.

Keeping Pace

Have advertisers kept up with this growth?

Hispanic advertising agencies are starting to develop more and more interactive advertising capabilities and as they do they are looking for quality websites, declares Allen. In the last 18 months he has seen the agencies’ attitudes evolve from believing that Latinos weren’t online and they were going to reach them through print, television, and radio to now starting to realize that indeed they need to reach them on the internet. They are realizing that they are far behind the general market agencies regarding their online capabilities and are working really hard to catch up. Of course, there are some exceptions — several Hispanic shops have been doing interactive for a while.

Espuelas predicts that there will be a very rapid evolution of advertisers; those who never advertised in English to Latinos starting to do so and those who traditionally only used television will now broaden their buys to include digital. He foresees a very significant growth in the overall marketing and communications investment pie, and happening disproportionately in digital media as opposed to traditional media.

Media Economics Group tracks advertising activity targeted to multicultural markets. They have been tracking online Hispanic advertising for more than 5 years. Their president, Carlos Pelay, has seen a notable increase in activity in terms of the number of active brands advertising to Latinos online. The major advertisers are present on the major portals. In terms of campaigns, Univision.com ranks number one, then AOL Latino, MSN Latino, Que Pasa, Batanga,Yahoo Telemundo, and StarMedia. For major campaigns the big advertisers are buying several portals at once.

For example, Batanga currently has over 100 advertisers, and Marroquin believes there are still a lot more advertisers that should be opening their eyes to Latinos online. There is a lot of economic action amongst Latino consumers that is making the cost barrier to enter the web significantly lower than what it was even two or three years ago. The numbers don’t lie. When asked about advertising success stories on Batanga’s site, Marroquin said, “At the risk of sounding very arrogant, there are too many to count. Our advertisers have been doing unbelievably well.”

That’s good news for Silvia Medina, and for all Latinos online.

[Editor’s Note: Each month, Juan Tornoe joins us on GrokDotCom to share his insights on Hispanic marketing trends. This article is the debut cover story for LATINO magazine, now available in limited edition print format. To learn more about how to receive LATINO magazine, contact Juan at Hispanic Trending.]

Our firm is very skeptical of surveys. They can annoy customers. The questions themselves tend to reflect the bias of the person or company asking them. At best, they offer directionally-correct information, which is often taken out of context and used to replace an old assumption with some shiny new (and equally dangerous) one.

The great thing about Web Analytics is that it allows you to see how people are using your site — without surveying them.

Our motto: “Believe what they do, not what they say they do.”

But there are things your Web Analytics can’t tell you, especially if you didn’t use personas to plan the site in the first place. And if you haven’t planned the site with personas, even believing “what they do” can be misleading.

That’s when a survey can help. When handled correctly, surveys can provide a good starting point for gathering qualitative data about the customer experience.

Not just any survey will do. You need the greatest survey questions ever:

1. What is the purpose of your visit to our website today?
2. Were you able to complete your task today?
3. If you were not able to complete your task today, why not?
4. If you did complete your task, what did you enjoy most about the site?*

Avinash Kaushik, the man who developed these powerful (and modestly-titled!) survey questions has teamed up with iPerceptions to create 4Q, a free tool that allows you to add this survey to your site.

Seeking Analytics Nirvana

It’s rather strange, isn’t it? Why would one of the World’s foremost experts in parsing quantitative Web Analytics data — the guy who wrote the book on it, actually — insist we get excited about fuzzy, qualitative data?

Let’s see what Avinash has to say about 4Q…

If you have read my book or my blog you are quite aware of the What and the Why issue. All the quantitative data you and I have from our web analytics tools is really good at helping us understanding the What happened.

Visits and Visitors, pages viewed, referrers, keywords, bounces, paths (!), campaigns, and so on and so forth. All critical data that helps you step up your game – improve your campaigns, fix pages, fire someone.

It cannot, no matter how much you torture the data, tell you Why something happened.

[...] We overlay our own opinions and experiences and preferences.

Unfortunately we are not our customers. In fact being as close to our companies as we are, it is quite likely that we are the worst possible people to empathize with our customers.

Sounds crazy, we know, but this whole “visitor empathy” concept might be the best thing that ever happened to your relationship with Web Analytics — let alone your relationship with actual customers.

In this YouTube presentation, Avinash explains how qulitative and quantitative data live in harmony:

*Fourth question added by iPerceptions.

[Disclosure: Future Now's Bryan Eisenberg is an adviser to iPerceptions.]