Software
PayPal Should Go Undercover
PayPal recently announced a streamlining of its payment flow process that doesn’t require a PayPal account to use. In other words, you can “check out” via PayPal, reap the security benefits of the merchant store not knowing your financial details, and pay for your item without having created any long-term relationship with PayPal (although they wouldn’t mind).
Adding PayPal to an e-commerce site can sometimes result in lower conversions — which makes sense because you’re being taken away from the experience you were just having at the merchant site. On the upside, some mid-sized UK merchants using this new process are reporting an increase in their monthly total payment volume, with gains of over 9% on average.
But I’ve got a different request altogether.
I use PayPal. A lot. Probably at least $500 a month of online purchases of various things that, at the time, I’m convinced I really need. It always amazes me how confusing the PayPal part of the checkout process is. First I’m on the merchant site. Then I’m off it — but not so obviously that I notice right away. It’s just a white, empty-feeling page with the merchant logo and a familiar PayPal button. Then the interface changes again to make it obvious that it’s PayPal.
In order to return to the merchant site, I have to click a small-font text link that competes with PayPal-branded buttons for my attention. At this point, I’m still not sure if the purchase “took” — that confidence doesn’t come until I return to the merchant site.
Won’t some of those e-tailers enjoying that volume increase please, please, PLEASE put just a fraction of that revenue toward hiring a bright developer to create a way to do this undercover? Its seems this could be easily resolved with a bit of (*buzzword alert*) AJAX.
Enter your PayPal user name, maybe some kind of modal lightbox pop-up to asks for my password, it goes back behind the scenes to confirm this with PayPal, then seemlessly closes the pop-up and updates my status on the merchant site to say, “Purchase completed via PayPal. Thanks for your business!”
I like using PayPal. I just don’t want to notice it. Kinda like the electricity in my home; I just want it to be there when I plug in my laptop.
What do you think?
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Written by:John Quarto-vonTivadar
Advertising Framework or Big Brother?
It is amazing, the length advertisers and marketers may be willing to go just to put ads in our faces.
InformationWeek chronicles a software patent filed by Big Brother, er, I mean Microsoft….
Overall, the software is like adware that figures out what ads to display based on files on the hard drive and what’s being displayed on the screen at a given moment. The advertising software, which could be part of the operating system, a standalone app, or an application feature, would use information gleaned from documents, music, computer status messages, and e-mails as context for ads. However, the software could conceivably gather information on every file on a user’s hard drive and send it to advertisers, and the application does little to assuage security and privacy concerns. Read the entire spooky article...
So, you mean to tell me there’s software in the works that’ll gently reach into my happy little computer, harmlessly read my innocent hard drive, stream my private data on a soft, fluffy cloud back to Microsoft, then, based on what it finds, kindly deliver me even more pleasant and delightful ads than I already get?
Boy, I can’t wait! The pop-ups, the spam, and the intrusive banner ads just aren’t enough to feed my appetite. Please, please, please give me more.
The answer to your marketing woes is not some new ad delivery system, or some new technology. When are businesses going to figure out that the simplest thing to do is work create a great product or service experience and let the rest take care of itself?
If you want a more sophisticated marketing strategy, try this.
If you don’t know how to create a great customer experience, try this — and pay special attention to Chapter 14.
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Written by:Anthony Garcia
The Bling on Jing
TechSmith, the folks behind some of my favorite applications — SnagIt, Camtasia, Morae and UserVue — just released a new “project.” All I can say is I’m blown away by it. Ever since moving to the the Mac, TechSmith’s products were the only ones I truly missed. Not anymore. Jing is available to capture images, movies and more; and in a way that’s just so sweet.
Go ahead and download it now: Mac - PC. I promise, you won’t be disappointed.
(Betsy, I want more!!!)
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Written by:Bryan Eisenberg
A Tool for How the Mind Works
Is mind mapping for you? If so, then this is our favorite software!
And now for something completely different.
We do a lot of brainstorming … projects, problems, reports, how to communicate a difficult idea. And we’re pretty visual folks around here; we work best when we can “see” how our thoughts relate.
A while back, I wrote an article about the top ten application toolsthat consistently made our day. MindJet’s MindManagerwas (and still is) on the list. It’s the tool that lets us develop our ideas and visually map out plans of action on the spot, then share those creations with others.
Given our happy experience, I’d love to turn you on to mind-mapping. We mentioned the program to our colleague, Fredric Gluck, who was so thrilled, he wrote up this review so I could share his (and our) enthusiasm. Think of this as one of my very few word-of-mouth spots! Read the rest of this article.
Read the entire newsletter: Volume 126
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Written by:The Grok
Tools of the Trade
Ten business tools we wouldn’t be without!
Let me first swear up and down: nobody bribed me to write this and nobody is planning to pop my picture on their “packaging” (although I am receptive to offers!). We were just sitting around the offices one day feeling really happy. The source of that happiness? Folks out there had developed a particular application that helped us accomplish some task with a minimum of fuss and bother.
And that got us thinking about those applications without which we really couldn’t do our job well. So what essentials are in the prop room of a conversion rate marketing boutique? Walk this way …
Read the rest of this article.
Read the entire newsletter: Volume 95
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Written by:The Grok
