I’m not gonna lie…what you’re about to read was inspired by a real-life online shopping experience.  I won’t mention the guilty site, but I’ll say they sell clothing and jewelry to young urbanites.

As I relate the following three eCommerce mishaps, be thinking about whether you can eradicate all of them from your business by the time the “Holiday Rush” hits. ALL are preventable, if you start today and take one item at a time.

Let’s start at the “precipitating event;” the spark…

...continue to read "3 Ways to Lose an Online Sale"

Or at least why the assumptions behind the review are off-base

According to the nifty pie-chart to the right and the related study, because  print newspapers reach people who are actively looking for, or “checking,” ads, they are still a solid advertising medium.  How these people can conclude one thing from the other is utterly beyond me.

While newspapers may be a medium that still draws people  who are actively searching out ads, that hardly means newspapers are…

...continue to read "Radio and the Internet Put the Smackdown on Newspapers"

So apparently the Internet Advertising Bureau is dissatisfied with search-based Internet ads.  Seems they want to “overcome perceptions of ‘creative shabbiness’ in online media, and to help prevent the slide toward a ‘performance-based’ Internet advertising economy.”  Ouch.

While I can’t help but shake my head at the elevated nose and depressed intelligence of a dying attitude that associates “performance-based advertising” with creative shabbiness, that’s not what really bothered me about this piece.

What bothered me was two-fold:

1)  …

...continue to read "Let’s Get Rid of Performance Based Marketing, Huh?"

Well sports fans, here we go.  Black Friday.  Soon, Cyber Monday.  (Forgive me for the brief digression, but did you know neither Black Friday nor Cyber Monday typically deliver results, in the form of conversions, er, sales, mainly just delivering traffic   Unsurprisingly, retail numbers thus far have been bleak, to say the least.

Retailers are hopeful however, and doing everything they can to jumpstart the economy and try to turn a profit this holiday season.  …

...continue to read "Black Friday or Bleak Friday?"

While most copywriters have avidly studied Claude Hopkins’ Scientific Advertising, very few have even heard of Theodore MacManus, let alone read his book, The Sword Arm of Business.  And yet MacManus was, in some ways, a more successful ad man, having:

Established his own (very successful) ad agency Launched the Dodge and Chrysler brands Hired and mentored Leo Burnett, creator of the Marlboro Man, Tony the Tiger, Pillsbury Doughboy, and many other advertising icons that made his clients rich Turned positioning…

...continue to read "Sword Arms vs. (Semi) Scientific Advertising"

I had finally tracked down that hard to find item online.  It was the right size, the right shape, the right finish, and a tolerable price…and free shipping!

I clicked the nice, big, obvious “Add to Cart” button to dive headlong into the conversion funnel.  ERROR.  Some gobbledegook that only a developer would understand.  No phone number.  I did what anyone in the mood to buy would do – I clicked the back button and tried…

...continue to read "Offline Reps Need to Care About the Online Experience"

With annual revenues for the weight-loss industry estimated at $60 billion a year, competition is fierce. Food-based programs like Nutri-System and Weight Watchers account for hundreds of millions of dollars, so getting the right message across to potential customers is critical.

While other companies have featured real-life success stories in their advertising, Jenny Craig has chosen another route: the celebrity spokesperson. While I’m not a big proponent of celebrities as an effective marketing tool, Jenny Craig has applied the use of…

...continue to read "How Jenny Craig Uses Personas for Successful Marketing"

Viral videos are typically one-off affairs: Numa Numa, The Machine is Us/ing Us, and The Inner Life of a Cell – stand alone videos, one and all. But the only successful viral marketing effort I am aware of, was launched as a campaign rather than as a single video.

And that makes sense, right? No matter how tightly integrated your business message is with the premise of the video, prospective customers will probably require more than one exposure to remember that business…

...continue to read "One-shot Videos Miss Target While Campaigns Hit Bull’s-Eye"

I was recently looking for a new speaker stand for my iPod. It would never even occur to me to go into my local electronics store to see what was available and what might be right for me. I do what I always do when researching a new product. I go to Google. Once I do my research on the Internet and decide what I want – THEN I may go to a brick and mortar store to buy it.

Seems…

...continue to read "How Online Searches Affect Offline Sales"

June 1 marked the official launch of the new Borders.com. Prior to then, Borders had partnered with Amazon, using the e-commerce site to handle the heavy lifting and delivering Borders customers mostly an Amazon experience for about seven years.

Now that Borders has total command of its site and controls its customers’ online experiences, I have some questions:

What does it expect? What is it trying to do?

Of course, we can’t discuss selling books online without talking about Amazon’s dominance. Does Borders…

...continue to read "The New Borders"