Modern Insider - Online Marketing Blog

5 Minute Usability Tip: Make drop downs default to the place people actually live.

2008-11-18T17:06:00Z

There's no doubt that the web is international but for most companies visitors come from just a handful of countries with a strong emphasis on one or two, like the US and Canada for a north American focused site. So why is it that thousands of forums show a list of every country in the world defaulting to Afghanistan (the first A in the list)? Sure it helps to be alphabetical but when a visitor has to scroll a list with over 200 entries to find a result that they and 70 or 80% of other users will select it's a burden. While this field alone may not be enough to get them to bail it adds time to the process and feels... cold. You don't know them, you aren't acknowledging them and chances are they know there aren't a lot of visitors from "Baker, Howland and Jarvis Islands" which shows up well before the US and Canada on most lists. And this doesn't apply to just transactional sites trying to get people through a purchase funnel, lead gen sites, surveys, registration pages all need to streamline this field.

You don't have to cut out countries to make it useful either. Simply take the top couple of locations (more if you have a lot of international traffic) and put them above the alpha list and again in the alpha list. This lets people quickly find their country 99% of the time while still providing a world of choices for your other, and by no means less important visitors.

]]> There's no doubt that the web is international but for most companies visitors come from just a handful of countries with a strong emphasis on one or two, like the US and Canada for a north American focused site. So why is it that thousands of forums show a list of every country in the world defaulting to Afghanistan (the first A in the list)? Sure it helps to be alphabetical but when a visitor has to scroll a list with over 200 entries to find a result that they and 70 or 80% of other users will select it's a burden. While this field alone may not be enough to get them to bail it adds time to the process and feels... cold. You don't know them, you aren't acknowledging them and chances are they know there aren't a lot of visitors from "Baker, Howland and Jarvis Islands" which shows up well before the US and Canada on most lists. And this doesn't apply to just transactional sites trying to get people through a purchase funnel, lead gen sites, surveys, registration pages all need to streamline this field.

Cutting optimization & online marketing budgets.... A wise choice?

2008-11-18T06:14:55Z

There's no doubt that the current economic climate requires certain cuts and pull backs especially as customers tighten their own wallets but does that mean you should be cutting your online budgets in marketing or optimization? While many out there have jumped up and say yes, stating that less consumer dollars necessitates less spending and less project development to save cash I'm not in agreement, and certainly not when it comes to taking big cuts and drastic steps.

]]> There's no doubt that the current economic climate requires certain cuts and pull backs especially as customers tighten their own wallets but does that mean you should be cutting your online budgets in marketing or optimization? While many out there have jumped up and say yes, stating that less consumer dollars necessitates less spending and less project development to save cash I'm not in agreement, and certainly not when it comes to taking big cuts and drastic steps.

Online marketing tends to be about direct response with branding as a secondary goal thus no matter how the market is doing, budgets can still be managed to profit and there's no reason to change that. So instead of rushing to cut budgets for the sake of cutting budgets how about reviewing the efficiency of your campaigns? If you're not already doing so, start tying your orders to each campaign, bring in discounts, shipping costs, gross AND net profits to your analytics and optimize your campaigns cutting what fails but investing in what makes a good return. And don't be afraid to challenge your idea of a good return either; the 50% margin you made last year may seem mandatory but what does the business really need to cover overhead and turn a profit? Will 40% do? How about 35%? Be realistic, be data driven and watching things, there's plenty of places to find results and probably a few to find more results than before.

Project work and "optimization" also seem like good areas to throttle back on at first glance. It saves money, reduces resources and allows the organization to become more profitable - but not only in the shortest of timeframes. With a concerned consumer comes a lot of shopping around and that necessitates having the very best experience; hiccups and UI issues will hurt more than ever. You don't see major retail stores skimping on signage and displays for the holidays so why should your website? If anything now is the time to be putting money into making improvements. Now is the time when consultants are available at better rates, when developers and agencies likely have less on their plates and when you can improve things for less. Skimping out to save a few bucks may seem prudent in the short term but all you're doing is lowering the odds that you capture what sales will take place. And let's be honest here while there will be sharp declines in some verticals, most categories are seeing a few percent drop which means most of the orders from last year will happen again. You want those orders.

Of course this isn't absolute. If you're seeing the same spend but conversion rates are dropping on an optimized page while traffic remains the same it may be wise to throttle back just like you may want to hold off on building the very coolest dynamic checkout process in favor of something sleek, easy to use but a little more cost effective. Just don't make the mistake of cutting back on profitable campaigns, analytics or optimization efforts. Research needs to take place, changes have to be made and campaigns that turn a profit should grow. It's easy to blame the economy, scale back and call it "smart planning" but if you aren't putting your best foot out there to pick up the sales that will come I don't call it smart, I call it missing opportunity.

Same old suggestions... no changes?

2008-11-18T03:29:54Z

So I'm browsing around some of my favorite blogs tonight I'm seeing a lot of the same suggestions from site to site... FutureNow is talking about common shopping cart mistakes, BeRelevant is linking to a post on using analytics to drive email, LunchPail is explaining the basics of using cookies, and Bazaar Blog is hyping up the perks of social media for increasing sales and decreasing returns thanks to relevancy. What's interesting here isn't what the suggestions are but that they keep coming up, month after money, year after year. One week I'll see a topic covered by one blog, a few weeks later by another and I don't think it's a result of sites ripping content ideas.

So what gives? Why are marketers having trouble optimizing their campaigns and adding features? Click in to keep reading...

]]> So I'm browsing around some of my favorite blogs tonight I'm seeing a lot of the same suggestions from site to site... FutureNow is talking about common shopping cart mistakes, BeRelevant is linking to a post on using analytics to drive email, LunchPail is explaining the basics of using cookies, and Bazaar Blog is hyping up the perks of social media for increasing sales and decreasing returns thanks to relevancy. What's interesting here isn't what the suggestions are but that they keep coming up, month after money, year after year. One week I'll see a topic covered by one blog, a few weeks later by another and I don't think it's a result of sites ripping content ideas.

So what gives? Why are marketers having trouble optimizing their campaigns and adding features?

Working with a lot of companies I use to discount a lack of change to a lack of IT resources but I don't think that's the challenge most of us face, even if we'd like to write it off as the big issue. The truth is most sites are adding features and tweaking tools. Most are expanding and while resources may be limited, the IT world isn't saying no, the marketers are through their priorities.

Acquisition has always been the focus of the marketing world and generally that makes sense... but only to a degree. However online marketing isn't just about driving people in. Traffic volume only means something if you sell ad views and even then it benefits from focus and relevancy. Brand awareness is a great metric but it doesn't make profit and in this economy it's the goal for only a few businesses out there.

What matters is sales and results but still most marketers seem to prioritize based on expanding their campaigns. What I see and hear is an old dilemma -- push more money into SEM, build a few new landing pages and improve reporting to drive traffic or improve the checkout process. Spend time emailing customers with discounts or to encourage reviews. For whatever reason growing the top of the funnel seems to win time after time so the optimization experts continue to end up frustrated as marketers ignore the backend and ignore the customer's experience.

Why not focus on acquisition first and foremost? I'm not suggesting that you don't focus on it but I would strongly urge every online marketer to focus on optimization just as much. Sure your site may convert an acceptable rate, maybe even above the rate you think your competitors get so adding traffic makes more sales but does it make more profit? With a little optimization and knocking off some of those easy wins you'll boost your conversation rates and maybe your average order size and repeat buy rates as well. That's no laughing matter either -- a simple 5 or 10% increase in conversions on a decent or large scale site can mean enough revenue to exceed company goals or to add in a better promotion campaign to drive some serious volume.

And face it, its difficult making things grow and work when your conversion rate isn't going up. Adding more traffic to the pipe to get less revenue makes no sense yet it continues to happen over and over.

It's not just about doing major initiatives too. Most of the posts I've referenced apply so sites that come off as state of the art. Often times best practices are applied -- to the big picture. A new shopping cart is rolled out, better product pages or new image tools get added in but the basics are often looked as too simple to matter. The truth of course is that the basics are what make the experience and unlike with branding or interest marketing, when you're trying to drive sales online, the customer experience is what matters, it's all that matters.

With a tough holiday season already started I challenge every marketer to spend just a couple of hours reviewing their site for those common issues be it UI hiccups, bad error messages or missed easy wins like sending an email when someone bails in checkout and prioritize just a few resources to address them. If you haven't don't this already I assure you, the results can and will astound you and may just make you hit your net rev. numbers for the period.

5 Minute Usability Tip: Don't Make People Confirm to Complete

2008-11-11T21:04:54Z

Here's a simple no-brainer that applies to just about every website yet continues to be an issue I encounter more than one would seem possible. When you have a transactional system that creates accounts let people complete their transaction without requiring email approval. Yes it's great to know the email address works and in some cases you may have to validate it after the transaction but think about the user experience... I come in, find something I want to sign up for, start signing up and am told to leave to check my email. If I use hotmail or another provider that may require launching a new browser and going off to login elsewhere with distractions galore. Maybe my email comes in every minute via outlook but I still have to sit around and wait. And guess what, during that wait time I've got other things to do and I bail.

It doesn't matter if you're selling widgets, collecting leads, letting people apply for jobs or signing up volunteers for an event. Your desire to validate data has to be secondary to the user's ability to complete the task. Take the steps you need but be sure they never stop the user from reaching the goal.

]]> Here's a simple no-brainer that applies to just about every website yet continues to be an issue I encounter more than one would seem possible. When you have a transactional system that creates accounts let people complete their transaction without requiring email approval. Yes it's great to know the email address works and in some cases you may have to validate it after the transaction but think about the user experience... I come in, find something I want to sign up for, start signing up and am told to leave to check my email. If I use hotmail or another provider that may require launching a new browser and going off to login elsewhere with distractions galore. Maybe my email comes in every minute via outlook but I still have to sit around and wait. And guess what, during that wait time I've got other things to do and I bail.

Getting user generated content (UGC) for your business - Ready to use in minutes!

2008-11-05T01:55:59Z

It's no secret, user generated content [that would be reviews, forum postings, blog contents, and so forth] drives business to those with a good name and drives it away from those with a bad one. The effects are even more impressive for smaller businesses like those in the travel industry; after all, picking a condo in Hawaii for a week is basically a crap shoot unless there's a comment to direct otherwise. So how do you go about getting your customers to talk about you without building a complex website or spending the time to create your own social campaign? Simple, you ask your customers to do it.

Click in for more information and sample create you can start using tomorrow.

]]> Ok, so you want to get content about your business on the web without having to work for it [much]. Normally I'd say you're stretching... getting things normally takes work but this is one case where you really don't have to do a ton and can have fantastic results, in fact you might get better results asking rather than building your own campaign. How you ask? Well, it's all a matter of getting your customers to talk when the time is right and motivating them to do so.

To make this easier to understand I'm going to approach this with an example. Let's assume your business is a rental property in a tropical destination - Hawaii will work, we'll even say Kona to be more exact. Customers are couples or families and on average you get 3 bookings in a month for about 10 days each. Your offering is something you feel is unique but right now you really sell it by price, location and the basic amenities (size, number of rooms, how "nice" the place is, etc...). Of course you want to move out that competitive category and start selling based on reputation but since you only have a single house you don't have thousands of customers every week to filter into results so getting content from as many people as possible is essential. And oh, the name of your place... how about Hale House. Scenario set, let's dig in.

Traditionally a social or marketing expert would suggest that you build some reviews for your website, they might tell you to sponsor a page on a popular travel site (VRBO anyone?) or build a presence on an existing niche network like a Hawaii forum or something larger like Facebook or MySpace. However when you think about it your business is small - reviews on your website are a great touch but if you're only going to have 5 or 10 comments in a 6 month period (3 customers * 6 months = 18 total * 25% response rate = ~5, 50% rate = 9) what's the point of building something to take reviews? How many Facebook "fans" will you really get? And if you only post reviews to your site how many people are going to see them... or trust them.

No, what "Hale House" needs is reviews on sites people actually go too driven in enough numbers to matter (at least 10 is ideal, anything under 5 is hard to measure) without a big cost.

How do you get content from customers without a big effort?

In a sentence, you ask them for it. Seriously - most businesses can comments just by asking but fail to do so. People spend thousands of dollars to stay in "Hale House" and most of them will leave with a great feeling which lasts for weeks. These people - these customers - are going to be talking up their vacation to extend that enjoyment feeling as long as possible and there's no reason why that talk has to end at the office or bowling alley. With a little nudging those customers can be pushed to talk in a way that's very public and very beneficial, so push them.

The push and come in a few forms one of the best being a follow up email. Here's how "Hale House" is going to do it... In April a prospect calls up and makes a booking for August. They get instructions on their stay, make it to the house and have a blast, or not, at this point we don't know. A few days after their trip ends an email is sent out. The email starts by thanking the customer and inviting them to share their experience on a list of sites. For their efforts they'll get a discount on a future stay that they or a friend can use. One simple email and you get two great results - reviews go out on the web for the world to see and the customer has a way to provide feedback and incentive to return or tell someone else to return.

Here's what that letter could look like... Click for a word version.

Ideally this all happens automatically and email providers ExactTarget can help make it happen using data right from your booking management system or any other API. You could also follow up your email with a physical letter; some businesses prefer this and will go to the length of hand signing the thank you card for added measure. Either way this is a great way to drive back business and throwing in the social element only adds to the benefit.

There you have it, a simple way to drive customers to talk. But it doesn't have to wait until people get back. Hale House has a whole book devoted to the local area, sights and places to visit and there's a page in the back of that book suggesting sites to share with, and since there's wireless in the house, some people are going to comment right from the house before they even leave. There's even a little note on the corkboard encouraging people again and a flier is included with their welcome packet that they can take home if they wish. Three more ways to drive the point but all centered around the "thank you" approach and all about sharing an experience, not just saying something good because after all, an honest opinion is worth a ton, they don't all have to be perfectly positive [nor should they be].

You could also follow up a second time a few weeks later after customers have had a chance to digest the trip and ask them to share a photo or two of their experience. For a business larger than Hale House, letting people share their experience right on their site would be a great way to get content but the point is there's a lot of chances to ask people for a lot of items be it a straight review, a posting to a discussion board or content that can be reused like photos or stories.

You don't have to have a house in Hawaii to apply this method either. Giving people options about where to post applies to almost any business that has a personal customer experience or just collects customer data. So if you aren't collecting customers' comments now there's really no excuse, get on it!

Get out and vote... it's good for your marketing campaign too!

2008-11-04T20:36:26Z

Don't worry, this isn't a marketing blog gone political and you won't find any endorsement in here [cough * vote for whoever you like, just vote * cough] instead this is about the marketing and product offerings that have accomplice this "historic day."

]]> Don't worry, this isn't a marketing blog gone political and you won't find any endorsement in here [cough * vote for whoever you like, just vote * cough] instead this is about the marketing and product offerings that have accomplice this "historic day."

As long as I've been aware there's been companies doing promotions around Election Day but this year there's more, it's more prevalent and its gone digital...

This year the Ben & Jerry's free ice cream promotion has gone social and can be found on Facebook [the FB page | their website] in an interactive form that lets you share it with friends. Good way to get the word out.

Starbucks sent out a blast email to their list encouraging people to vote today and get a free cup of coffee [the video]. They also push to be involved in issues year round. There's no push to one issue or party, it's just a message about being involved. Side note: While I got the email, saw it in the store and heard about it on TV I couldn't find the message on Starbucks.com anywhere... yikes!

Krispy Kreme [website] is also doing a free promotion today for a donut. Their website links to an offer and while it's a lot less impactful of a message (heck it's not really much of a message at all, just an offer) it's still there and it's still getting hype.

Roxy.com sent out a plain text email with no other message than to vote and a link to RockTheVote.com. Simple, straight forward and no confusion about the purpose.

Of course there's more companies doing things and it's all getting great exposure. I've seen comment updates to Facebook, Tweets on twitter and all sorts of other updates across the web today about the freebies and the positive messages some companies are sending to do something. And the media is involved too, one reporter on CNN jokingly referred to the election giveaways as a Costco-style free sampling - no matter what the comment it's all good [and cheap] PR.

What surprises me isn't that companies are doing this but that more aren't. There's been months of hype about how big of a deal this election is with numerous counties expecting, 60, 70, even 80% turn out rates. To say the topic will be on the mind of every American today is an understatement yet few companies have taken the step to identify with their customers. Consumers are thinking elections; Target.com and Walmart.com are promoting holiday gifts [save a small box near the footer of Walmart.com which mentions the candidates and links to video with answers whether or not walmart takes coupons just below the link... big correlation there].

The companies keying in on the election aren't just getting marketing exposure, they're getting brand loyalty. The Starbucks campaign says "We're here too, we want action too, we're like you, identify with us as a brand that gets you and isn't just sending marketing messages." Roxy doesn't offer a thing, they're just encouraging participation and to a generation which is always amped to talk but rarely acts - the relationship messaging is huge.

If you missed the election this year don't worry, you've got 4 years to plan your campaign.

5 Minute Usability Tip: No such username, no problem!

2008-11-04T00:47:25Z

We all belong to dozens if not hundreds or even thousands of websites so it's no surprise that one of the most popular errors people hit is the "invalid account" page. Whether it's because the login name was wrong or the user has never been to the site the fact remains, they're ready to take the next step.

Most websites produce an error page when someone enters a bad login name but why not take them to a registration page instead? Flag the error of course, make it visible and give them options (Think you entered your account wrong? Try again; Lost Your Password? Retrieve it, etc...). Throw in some basic personalization so the user know what the issue is ("you entered the wrong password" needs a much different treatment than "there's no such account") but keep the focus on getting them to create their account, not to click back, not to get lost and certainly not to feel stuck.

Instead take their name, prepopulate your payment or sign up form and get them moving on to the next step now. It's one less click and one less drop point. And it's easy.

Check back for more quick usability tips posted weekly, or as often as I find something frustrating on the web.

Growing your community - Features that set you apart part II

2008-11-03T03:17:59Z

Last week I talked about the importance of developing new and unique features to make your forum community stand out above the crowd in order to win & retain visitors. But the story doesn't end with adding features, there's a lot on off the shelf forum software to customize and customize it you must. In the second part of this series I explain a few of the prime areas to change because at the end of the day to win the user over your site needs to get them back.

]]> When it comes to using features to drive site usage and interest, what you do shouldn't end with new developing something new. As I mentioned in my first post, a great deal of forum development is done by programmers without thought to User Interface or best practices [this is especially true for the lower-tier products]. As a result there are some fundamentally broken parts of almost every forum out there, things which simply doom sites to have low conversion rates and high bounce rates.

Take a look at your site from the perspective of a user - how do they get there? Most forums find the bulk of their traffic coming in on subpages - forums, threads, photos, etc... I've seen some sites that had their top organic search term drive less than 1% of traffic, when you have stats like that you know people are entering all over the place. This means a lot of wandering users but again, most forums aren't setup to talk to new visitors at all, in fact most forums treat them like they must know the site to be that deep. Think about it - a visitor google searches for a long phrase topic, a forum pops up since the forum has content on the subject but what the visitor gets is a thread. There's no way to get to a Q&A on the subject, nothing telling them they can participate in the discussion, no next step, no direction. So unless all of your visitors are forum pros, the experience is lots of confusion, little direction. Most forums have huge bounce rates as a result.

Step forward a few ticks and assume the visitor does hang around enough to figure out that the site is a user community. They want to join so what's next... click some button called register and this is what they'll likely see:

If this was a lead gen form on any commercial site someone would be fired. Boxy layout, a page that scrolls when there's all of 10 fields on it and absolutely no sense as to benefits, costs or next steps. If the visitor wasn't certain about the site's purpose or the process this page isn't going to help much.

So how do you fix these issues? Take a traditional approach. Redo the registration page to something simple like in the example below which I've successfully launched for several clients. The results? Funnel completion rates for one client went from under 50% to over 85%. 15% abandonment is something most lead gen sites would kill for.

Here's an example of a basic, moderately optimized registration page:

Fixing millions of potential "landing pages" to guide visitors in topic by topic isn't possible but with some basic checks, you can make a great step. Greet guests with a message explaining the site, listing the options (other tools, registration benefits, etc...). If you have the technology resources and the time to do it, develop a logic tree and link topics to other pages, micro-portals. If you have a wiki this works wonders... someone hits a page on a very refined topic and at the top, after their welcome greeting, is a simple list of related topics. Boom, they get more content.

Every aspect of the site is up for change and should be reviewed. Most forums use a stock support page to get help, many never change their error message in the event of an outage, or their welcome email which reaches every member and so on and so forth. I encourage every one of my clients to visit their forum as a guest, register again and review the interface and copy in detail, you should too. If you really want to go further ask a few friends or family members to go through your site and complete goals, their feedback is invaluable at understanding how someone with no experience with the site sees it.

As a final thought, consider for a second who makes it to your forum and what your goals should be. I know most forum owners outside large corporations have never considered personas but they should - you should. There's a few rules tossed around out there that explain just why. 10% -- Out of tens of thousands of visits you're lucky to get 10% to register and 10% of those will be active at any given time. With that mind, you need to treat people properly. The typical guest is at your site for information. Not to participate, no to talk... just to get information. Thus your goal for them is to get a second pageview. To get a third and a fourth. Get them involved just enough to build a little awareness in hopes they return later and maybe, just maybe, increase the registration rate a few ticks.

Another persona set exists in your current membership. It's great to say you have 100,000 members but if those 100,000 came over an 8 year period and only 5% are active, the new competitor with 25,000 visitors 25% of whom are active has you beat. For those that do register only part will ever post and far less will keep posting but many will or would "lurk" [browse without being active]. Again, you can't stop this, people will fall out of the activity cycle, but you can respond to and embrace it. You can use messages and email to direct people to be more active but there's no way to get them all to be active. So instead communicate to keep them engaged as well. People who don't post lose touch faster which means you need to be reaching out to them. Newsletters with information [content], event reminders, whatever makes the most sense for your niche use it. This keeps you top of mind and increases the odds that someone returns to you later. People don't have to be actively adding to be of value, the more they read the more traffic you have and the more likely they are to jump back in overtime and use those new features from before.

Look at your community in terms of who is there, what their goals are and develop features, navigation and messages that corresponds to all of them, not just to your power users. When you do this your overall activity increases as does your participation and satisfaction. One size fits all just doesn't work in an area with so many types.

Remember, there's always another community looking to target the same niche, that's the nature of something with such a low cost of entry. To stay top or become top you have to offer more than the guy next door and that means implementing ideas that are not just what you think is good but features that people actually have a use for, can figure out how to use and can find.

I saw my first Christmas lights tonight... and a few emails too.

2008-11-03T03:12:31Z

Driving through the Berkeley hills this evening I spotted an oddly colored tree - only after slowing down [safely of course] did I realize what the color was - Christmas lights. While 2 days after Halloween feels early for Christmas decorations and probably is for most people this shouldn't be a huge shock - target has been selling lights for weeks and Costco has had gift baskets and other holiday items up for what feels like a month, maybe more. Of course things aren't limited to offline world; I've begun receiving holiday emails from all sorts of companies. Here's a quick look at what's come in...

]]> Driving through the Berkeley hills this evening I spotted an oddly colored tree - only after slowing down [safely of course] did I realize what the color was - Christmas lights. While 2 days after Halloween feels early for Christmas decorations and probably is for most people this shouldn't be a huge shock - target has been selling lights for weeks and Costco has had gift baskets and other holiday items up for what feels like a month, maybe more. Of course things aren't limited to offline world; I've begun receiving holiday emails from all sorts of companies. Here's a quick look at what's come in:

Target.com - Holiday Free Shipping Kickoff...

Macys.com - Psst... want more money for holiday shopping?

EddieBauer.com - Free Shipping, no minimum purchase + over 300 Original Gifts

BathandBodyWorks.com - Holiday Traditions are Back! | Great Gift Values - Get a Head Start!

So far the trend looks pretty much the same from site to site; discounts that introduce the holidays and messages that scream "hey, we sell gifts, we're ready for you!" Creatively there's holiday colors and no hiding the seasonality of the email but little of the flare or imagery we're likely to see in a month.

And for the email formatting/ deliverability experts it's interesting to note that most of these emails still include embedded search fields which don't work in outlook 2007 [which I used for these captures].

Check back for more email and creative examples into the holiday season. If you haven't finished your holiday marketing plan [yikes!!!] be sure to checkout the other articles in this section for tips and creative samples from past years.

5 Minute Usability Tip: Phone number formatting sucks!

2008-10-30T19:02:48Z

Here's an easy tip that can help you reduce abandonment in any form be it lead gen or ecommerce - don't require formats for your phone number field it's a huge error spot as we all type numbers differently. If you insist on having "valid" numbers (not that there's anything stopping people from making one up regardless) allow a variety of formats from all numbers to dashes to spaces to parentheses around the area code. Forcing people to just one format is an error waiting to happen and having an example of the one style you like won't change that. Remember, these days more and more people use toolbars to autofill form data and that means even more errors are happening when fields have unneeded requirements.

Check back for more quick usability tips, a new feature of the blog.

]]> Here's an easy tip that can help you reduce abandonment in any form be it lead gen or ecommerce - don't require formats for your phone number field it's a huge error spot as we all type numbers differently. If you insist on having "valid" numbers (not that there's anything stopping people from making one up regardless) allow a variety of formats from all numbers to dashes to spaces to parentheses around the area code. Forcing people to just one format is an error waiting to happen and having an example of the one style you like won't change that. Remember, these days more and more people use toolbars to autofill form data and that means even more errors are happening when fields have unneeded requirements.

Check back for more quick usability tips, a new feature of the blog.

Growing your community - Features that set you apart

2008-10-25T18:22:55Z

I'm sitting in the airport right now on my way to Las Vegas for DEMA, the annual Scuba Diving industry convention. My involvement in the dive industry started in the very late 90s when I, along with 2 partners, launched ScubaBoard.Com, a forum community, as a part of a large dive network. At that time communities were a new concept for most people and certainly something the dive industry, like many others, was struggling to understand. Still, we were late starters compared to other sites and faced fairly strong competition with both "basement startups" and major publishing companies already running successful forums. Just a few years later ScubaBoard was the largest diving community online and has since gone on to become the most visited site in the industry. So how did we do it? Features. I'm sitting in the airport right now on my way to Las Vegas for DEMA, the annual Scuba Diving industry convention. My involvement in the dive industry started in the very late 90s when I, along with 2 partners, launched ScubaBoard.Com, a forum community, as a part of a large dive network. At that time communities were a new concept for most people and certainly something the dive industry, like many others, was struggling to understand. Still, we were late starters compared to other sites and faced fairly strong competition with both "basement startups" and major publishing companies already running successful forums. Just a few years later ScubaBoard was the largest diving community online and has since gone on to become the most visited site in the industry. So how did we do it? Features.

If you run a forum chances are you use a boxed software package. On the "low" end [cost wise] there are programs like vBulletin, phpBB and Invision Board and a host of others. Moving up the ladder you get enterprise platforms like Jive. Regardless of the software you use or are considering odds are the features are about the same. You have forums and subforums, threads and posts, user profiles, private messages and a plethora of other minor features all designed to make your forum match those of everyone else. Lately more social tools have been added as well as some ajax for easier usability but the end goal is still the same - show discussion forums in the same way other sites do.

The truth is most forums are the same because most software is the same. As much as the public has embraced the idea of communities, businesses and the software companies behind them still struggle to understand them so what you see are limited innovations coming primarily from the low end market. This has lead to a "what fits everyone" approach as opposed to a richer development process. In more than 10 years working with forums I've seen almost no true research or development to figure out what should go next, mostly its guesses by developers copied by other software companies and called "new".

This is a tremendous negative to forum owners as there's constantly need to innovate on your own but it's also a tremendous benefit as not everyone has every tool available. The successful sites you see out there tend to be the ones that find or develop tools and utilities that fit their niche and move beyond "the box."

So what kind of features can you add? They say the sky is limitless and they're right but there are a few places to start so let's begin there.

Features that plugin (the obvious ones).

Photo Galleries. This is probably the most common feature you see on forums today, so much so that it's begun to be included with a few of the forum packages. What makes photo galleries worth mentioning isn't their inclusion, that should be evident, but rather their possible inclusion. Unfortunately a lot of forums treat photo galleries as separate entities from their discussions. Links are sparse, photos rarely appear in threads and there's little correlation between the two applications. Any community with photos, be it a dive site with dive photos or a model building site with projects, can benefit from a well integrated gallery. Showing photos in user profiles, making it easy to include them in posts, having a good category, comment and display interface all helps encourage participation and keeps people on the site rather than wandering off to Flickr or the likes.
Wikis. Wikipedia made them famous but more and more sites are beginning to add their own focused around a niche. The benefit of a wiki should be clear; you can sum up a common question, explain an item and really build an endless amount of content with the help of your users. Again, integration is the key to success. Don't simply run a wiki, include it. One wiki software tool I know of integrates directly into forum structure allowing forums to be headlined with wiki links. Pretty sweet when you think about it - someone comes with a question about the topic, sees a link that answers it and can jump back and forth between major topics and discussions.
Blogs. This is a toss up feature that can go either way. Some sites offer blogs to users as a means of journaling while others use blogs to update their users about the site or report on a tradeshow [like I'm about to be doing]. The first type is really ideal for letting users discuss in more lengthy activities like travel focused sites and less beneficial for small topic discussions like a cell phone site, although it's always possible for someone to make a blog on almost any topic. All that's needed is a way to name the blog, create entries and ideally search and categorize them.

Corporate or as they should be called "owner" blogs on forum sites are an interesting way to update the membership about ongoing events or the inner workings of the site and since the site is ultimately controlled by the user (if they don't like it, they leave) they're a great way to lend to some back and forth discussion and suggestions.
Done right blogs don't even require separate software [although it's generally nicer]. Simply using the right style and layout can turn a forum into a corporate blog. For user blogs you'll need something a bit more robust but fundamentally the idea is the same as a post only with a longer intro and less back and forth discussion thereafter.
Classifieds. Almost every forum I visit has some level of bartering but when that goes from a few posts to a full blown mini-eBay it's time to look for ways to let people make better exchanges. At the lowest level forums can be restructured to show open and closed offers. Thread prefixes help to keep things orderly [and should be something people can order off of] and some sort of rating system helps establish credibility. For the larger and more utilized marketplace putting in a full blown mini-classifieds system can have huge advantages especially if it has a good way of providing search results and automated updates.

As with most of the other easy features getting a classifieds system isn't so much the issue as making it fit well. Tools that require the user to leave the forum area tend to fail versus those that are integrated, work with existing profiles and show up as a forum, as a part of the profile as an integrated offering.

Features that are specific (the hard[er] to get ones):

Member Search Tools. Whether it's to plan a dive, meet up and cheer for the team, or talk shop, finding other members is probably one of the most common themes between sites. However most sites leave users to ask for locals when of course few people check back to see these requests. A strong member locator can help people connect up, extend their network and thus build a strong reason to return to the site. This can be done using maps, straight text search tools or a combination of the two.

Think about it, would you rather post a request for a member with a shared interest, wait a few days for replies and contact each other or just click a few fields and find people instantly.
Directories & Databases. Regardless of what type of site you have there's probably a reason to create a directory be it of places, of products, of hikes, quests, ideas, recipes, etc... If done right directories allow users to create volumes of content and information which is extremely useful for search, for visitors looking to get ideas about a topic and for other members. Integrate the directory back to the forum with contributions showing up in profiles, reviews showing up in forums and you have an easy to use way of making for a much easier user experience.

Relying in forums to act as directories is a problem most forums have - problem is threads get old, don't tend to have many search fields and the same topic comes up over and over. With the help of a directory information is easier to sort through and gets used. Simple.
Group Tools. Many of the forums out there have strong subgroups sometimes external to the forum (i.e. topic clubs) and sometimes included. Regardless of the nature of the group the experience tends to be pretty poor - users to go a subforum and talk with likeminded members in the same interface with the same links. Simply applying a customized skin (cobranding) to various group forums is a huge step in giving them an identity that remains clear. Member badges, group identification and group lists are all directly features that likely exist with little or no technical change but directly extend the experience even further.

Of course this can go further and should. Why not create specialty calendars for groups with the fields and elements they need? How about letting group leaders send out email updates and newsletters? Creating custom registration pages for the group is also a no brainer as is landing pages, welcome greetings. Everything your site has or should have can be customized to a group to help its identity and use remain strong which in turn boosts that of the overall site.
Portal Pages. Nothing is worse than launching features no one uses but often times no one uses them because no one can find them. Once you find your site becoming cluttered with forums, blogs, wikis, photos and all the other features you've decided on it's time to get into portals and micro-portals.

The initial portal most sites turn to is simply a homepage gateway which pulls in content from different features and helps users find the area they want to explore next. As your forum grows however it may be useful to build subportals around specific forum topics. These become part of the navigation structure so rather than clicking straight to a discussion list in your forum, users are transitioned to areas pulling together other relevant content information. The more you have the more necessary this becomes especially if systems live outside of the forum which is typical for photo galleries, directories and the like.

Think about it, when you go to a discussion site how often to you click off a forum to try other features if they aren't part of the content stream? If instead of going from discussion to discussion you went to areas pulling content in would that change? You bet.
News Feeds. Facebook made this one popular although it's something you can find on any number of sites and something many forums would truly benefit from. News feeds have two major draws, first they help users sift through the massive amounts of content your site probably has and follow the events they started, participated in or were linked to through a connection. Secondly a news feed can bring in events from outside the immediate forum world which, like with a portal, helps push adoption of all those features you added.

What can a news feed include? For starters there's the basics like when a post is made by a buddy, a thread is responded to, a new private message is sent and so forth. You can also include reviews of places the user has favorited, photo uploads & comments, new members in the area, group updates and on and on.
All the other things that fit your site. Again that sky is endless, your site should determine your feature set and you should develop features to extend the site. The goal of features is not to replace members or content, nothing can do that. Rather features give your members something to use and places to add content be it photos to a gallery, listings in a directory or whatever else you chose to add. As you develop more content and people find more interesting tools, more users talk about your site, more referrals are made, people come and it all grows.

Whatever you add be sure it makes sense for your audience and niche. Adding a game portal may seem like a good way to get more activity but what's the actual value? How does it help your site get more niche visitors? This is no different than deciding your forum topics and content areas; if you allow a small off-focus area you may do fine but if your site is 50% random conversations is it really on point? Do new members really want to participate, to use those tools and will the old ones stay around or find other, more focused sites to spend their time at? Activity is not the only goal, relevancy and value count too.

The second consideration point should really be from your users. Whether you come up with an idea from your own brain or from user suggestions it needs to be user tested. One of the great things about forums is the availability of opinions. Ask your moderators, as your super users, poll people and get feedback. Drive innovation from usage (analytics), from comments (feedback) and from your own brain, not just one source. And don't settle for inferior, your users won't. If you can't develop it well, don't do it. As much as we want to have every tool our competitors have, when you simply copy or clone a tool in a second rate manner people won't be happy.

ScubaBoard beat other sites because it embraced the transition from classic threaded discussions to linear forums first. We continued to grow by adding photo galleries before others, by making the software we plugged in fit the layout, fit the experience. We embedded elements directly into the forums to promote usage and remove things that didn't get used. Not everything was a dead on fit but it was innovation, it was features that mattered and people used them enough to return to the community, register and use that. Features aren't all about being your activity; they're about helping to support it. Not everyone wants to post to a discussion but they may want to share a photo, review a business in a directory or on and on. The more options you have, the more people there are with a reason to use and return to your site.

Remember, sites that stagnate and fail to innovate are sites that die. It doesn't matter if you're big... just as Yahoo!

Next week I'll address two major challenges with features you already have that impact your conversion rates [registrations] and retention rates [page views] as well as suggest ways to fix them.

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Social networking for small businesses

2008-10-21T18:19:48Z

Everyone knows about social networking these days and if you trust the media or have been to a marketing conference in the last couple years, you probably think you have to be represented in it. But if you own a small business resources are always tight and expanding to new territories isn't something you can just jump into because everyone says to. In this post I'll explore some of the benefits and realities of social media as well as explain who should be involved and who should stay away. Let's begin.

]]> Everyone knows about social networking these days and if you trust the media or have been to a marketing conference in the last couple years, you probably think you have to be represented in it. But if you own a small business resources are always tight and expanding to new territories isn't something you can just jump into because everyone says to. In this post I'll explore some of the benefits and realities of social media as well as explain who should be involved and who should stay away. Let's begin.

The first thing to recognize about the social media space is that there's a lot of hype and a lot of change. Let's start with the hype.

You may not know but even though you sites like MySpace and Facebook are only a few years old social networking isn't new and in fact it's just about the oldest thing on the internet... before there were webpages there was bbs which was pretty much a simplified forum.

Speaking of Facebook & MySpace, while they get most of the attention they aren't the only places on the web and certainly not the only places to put your business forward. Other sorts of networks from forums to photo galleries, professional contact lists to wikis exist all over the web and cover almost every topic imaginable. Social networking is about interactions and you don't need to have a big logo to have interactions.

Of course it's those interactions that create the excitement. Social networking has changed the way people communicate. Wedding invites go out over Facebook [seriously], groups discuss changes without ever meeting, dates are setup, job referrals are made and a million other interactions take place. Problem is people go to social sites to do all of these things and not necessarily to look at ads, make purchases or have anything to do with the purchase funnel. That's where the hype hits reality - it's not enough to just be seen, you need to get results otherwise what's the point?

I also mentioned change and that's something very much worth mentioning. Why? Because change is something you'll have to keep up with. A few years ago everyone under 30 I knew was getting into MySpace, now they're all on Facebook and even more of them. Years ago geocities and other free hosts offered the personal websites which were a less robust but very similar way of letting people express themselves. Now twitter lets people communicate in all of 140 characters. Every day new sites come out that change the way people communicate and every year or two the important sites shift around a bit. That's not to say you'll put up a campaign and have everyone bail on the site the next day but it is very possible that by the time you find results on one site the next one will be ready to steal its users away.

So with so much change, hype and distraction it's a common theory that social media can't drive sales. This of course isn't true and it's proven every day. I've worked with and seen businesses grow using social as a huge building block. I've also seen companies falter and fail when they launched terrible campaigns or did things in the social space that were taboo, like overly censoring or seeding reviews.

You benefit when you create buzz and you create buzz by getting people involved. The reason social media works so well is again because it's about people communicating. Te companies that succeed really do the same thing but with a corporate point of view. Yes things change, no social media isn't all about buying right then and only right then. Yes it's something with positives and negatives but you can succeed in it if your brand fits the bill. Not all do.

Another common misconception is that only big brands benefit from being social, this I anything but true. The truth is people talk about businesses they like and use and while Hyatt can throw more weight at a campaign they're also more likely to have a legal and marketing nightmare process to go through to do anything. Compare this to a B&B which can encourage every guest to post a comment and act immediately to respond to negatives on any number of sites.

The difficulty with being small doesn't come from people not being willing to talk about or participate with your business socially but rather about the size of the scale. If you have just a few people talking be it in a discussion board, reviews or some other manner it's disappointing and looks amateur. That's why it's critical to establish a critical mass in any channel you pursue.

For example, if you decide to start a Facebook campaign and seed it only to your customer base which is say 5000 people it's unlikely you'll see anything huge. Yes this move is great for a start but of those 5000 only a few percent are likely to make it to the page let alone befriend it. If however you start by seeing it with customers but leverage them and the larger community to drive more traffic you could get several times that number involved but that requires your campaign to be broader and more inclusive, just doing things that customers get wouldn't work.

Ultimately it's not about your size, if you can scale and move your impact will be far greater than just being big. But making a big impact isn't easy, there's a lot of companies out there trying to get people's time from them and a lot of uncertainty in how to do it.

So how do you know if your business is going to benefit from a social campaign? Run through these basics and you'll find out.

1. Does your audience use social sites in a way that relates to your product?

For example, if you sell a consumer product, will people acknowledge they own it to others? Will they talk about it or respond to it?

If you have a service in a niche is there discussions about it or is it something which people simply do and at the end of the day chose to no longer think about?

2. Is there a right place to get people involved around it?

You may have a product that feels worthy of reviews, social in nature and all set for a great campaign but where will it go? Facebook and Myspace get the biggest groups but even these days they skew young. There has to be a suitable place to put your campaign or there's no point.

3. Do you have the time to manage it?

It's easy to think of your social campaign like a media buy - you put money in, customers come out. The truth however is that no matter what your campaign is you have to work with it. An ideal campaign encourages people to communicate with you even if that's secondary. A less ideal campaign still relies on you updating information, you contributing to the ongoing campaign and you creating or reviewing content. If you don't have time as is this is not an area where you want to be caught failing to check updates. Things happen and they happen quickly.

4. Are you willing to take the negatives with the positives?

The first time one of my clients gets a negative comment on their campaign page I almost always get a call "how can we take this down?" Of course the answer is always that they can't [unless the post is more than simply negative]. This may seem silly after all unless your campaign is about reviews it should be positive but the truth is when you put your business out there to be discussed people will discuss it. It doesn't matter if you run a Facebook promotion that allows comments, a discussion community, photo sharing or anything else, people with things to say will say them and censoring them beyond the basics [extremely rude, vulgar] backfires. Furthermore few people believe an all positive page regardless of if it's true or not.

5. Do you understand the results?

Like with some of the other points it's very simple to go into a social campaign thinking results will be immediate sales and be measurable and while those things do happen, they're the exception to the rule. Most social campaigns are about spreading something which leads to actions. Perhaps it's a contest people share with friends giving you data and a wider audience. Maybe it's a tool they can use on their site which mentions your brand and relates to your offering but is still a far cry from a sales interface. Being able to tolerate sales that take some factoring to track (i.e. looking at trends, capturing data about referring sources in the order process and following up with surveys to further measure impact) is crucial.

If you just want sales now you may try social sites but not with a social campaign - making a media buy on a social site is not social marketing.

6. The last question to ask yourself is do you have a brand worth putting out there?

This is a touchy one since we all like to believe in our companies but before you build any campaign you have to ask yourself what your experience is really like and how long it's been that way. A lot of businesses do not have a positive vibe and some don't have any vibe at all. Maybe you just bought a company and turned it around, but does everyone know it's going to improve or will old and upset customers post anyways? Perhaps you're focused on cost and don't provide much support, what will people say now? Brands that do well socially don't get ripped apart because they're good enough to have supporters in the first place. If yours doesn't, don't launch a campaign until you've had a chance to change it.

The trick to social media, the real way to success gets back to your brand's value because at the end of the day the campaigns that rock are the ones where customers / users are the evangelists. Your goal in your campaign no matter what the exact nature will be to turn customers into amazing evangelists. Evangelists hype you up, say good things [mostly] and ideally tell others all about you online and off. That's what you want out of any social campaign and if you can leverage your customers and general fans to this point you have success and can build traction.

Finally while we all want to have people on our site contributing to our pageviews and right in our navigation the truth is that most social interactions happen off the site on another site or network. Be where you customers are and offer tools they'll use. Find relevant forums and participate as a member to augment campaigns. Get into the big networks if they have your consumer and create fan pages with events, media and other elements. Don't force people to your site to do something, force your brand on to theirs in a way they find useful. This is crucial to building more relationships and to eventually getting people right back to your business. After all it's much easier and therefore more likely for someone to check your updates on Facebook every day than log on to your website.

One price... one experience

2008-10-19T17:25:59Z

While watching football this morning I caught the tail end of a Circuit City commercial about a "One Price Promise". It's a pretty simple statement so what makes it interesting to me is that it's still an issue. Any store crazy enough to change their pricing in store and online is simply missing the boat. Sure your overhead online is lower but your customer doesn't care. Customers shop the channel they want whether it's because they still don't buy online [yes they do still exist - scary, I know] or because they want immediacy or just to put their hands on the product.

Furthermore if you're asking for less online you're encouraging people to abuse your price structure testing offline and buying online. Smartphones, iPhones, phone a friend, people don't stop looking online just because they aren't there anymore. When your prices don't jive the customer isn't going to be fooled and trying to deal with returns from overpricing doesn't help your overhead or brand reputation.

If you want to incentivize online sales make it easy to buy online. Offer simple to returns, useful sales suggestion tools and give out free shipping either without qualifiers or at low levels. These days everyone is online and offline so rather than trying to penalize people into a channel for margin reasons it's time to wake up and realize that multi-channel means getting customers wherever you can. Over charging them in one spot won't win them back in another.

We shouldn't need a commercial telling customers pricing will be fair.

Now back to the game...

Do you know why people are at your website? Analytics by segment.

2008-10-02T20:34:04Z

1-3%, that's the typical first-visit conversion rate most websites see. Whether you're at the high end or the low end or even if you have twice the top rate you're still looking at more than 90% of your visitors not converting. Not converting more than 90% of people who come to your website? That seems bad but if that's all you're looking at that number and that number alone you're kicking yourself in the foot; 90% not converting? Maybe they are, you're missing the customer's goals. 1-3%, that's the typical first-visit conversion rate most websites see. Whether you're at the high end or the low end or even if you have twice the top rate you're still looking at more than 90% of your visitors not converting. Not converting more than 90% of people who come to your website? That seems bad but if that's all you're looking at that number and that number alone you're kicking yourself in the foot; 90% not converting? Maybe they are, you're missing the customer's goals.

These days every website from the smallest store to the biggest brand site has multiple goals be it to get support, call in an order or buy online. Not all the goals are something we want people to do but people come for them none the less. However when most online marketers look at conversion rates as if the goal is absolute and everything else is unimportant. This strategy is is lacking; it lacks in understanding and in accuracy. What if 10% of your traffic is coming to find a local store? What if 10% come for job listings? Or if 30% come for support? When you take out the segments that can't convert, the ones who are not there to convert the metrics change.

Let's say you're a multi-channel retailer with an online store that converts at 2.5% (not a bad job). Let's assume that the numbers I listed above are the same so your traffic breaks down as follows:

Job Seekers - 10%
Customer Support - 30%
Store Locator - 10%
Prospective Buyers - 50%

Wow, now your conversion rate is way up, way, way up.... Up to 5% and it doesn't end there. This rate assumes an immediate sale and a sale online. If you're multi-channel retailer you're probably driving sales offline, maybe 30% of your buying traffic is looking for that option. Chances are some people won't buy right away and even if you're measuring same day conversions is that really enough? The typical conversion takes almost 20 hours to occur... to get an average of 20 hours you have an awful lot of people who take more and while most conversions may come up front, if you bucket everything into neat little daily blocks you're not giving yourself proper credit.

So let's say you're getting another 0.5% conversion there from those delayed conversions. Well now you're up to over 5.5% in direct conversion and presumably even more factoring the offline and phone conversions. That's a whole lot better number.

So how do you get these buckets sorted out? It seems difficult but the start is a simple as asking... Survey your visitors. Ideally you'll want to use something easy and short (3 or 4 questions) that asks what they came for. Categories include to purchase, research, find a store, find a phone number, customer service, corporate information, jobs, charity involvement, pr and other. Go a step further and ask people if they accomplished their goal and you'll get two great wins - you'll know what people are coming for and how they managed to do on their task.

And you can add to this with data. Start with your analytics; what percentage of your top paths go directly to jobs, corporate information, store locators or other tools? How much traffic comes directly to those pages and stays there? Add those numbers up and you'll have a starting basis. Finally look at secondary actions. You should have a phone number on your site and you should be using a different number for your site, track those calls [and ideally sales] and add that number in as well. Talk to people in your customer service department and stores [if applicable] and see what they hear about the site, what they're picking up on, this also helps you figure out why else people are there.

Factor your survey data and your hard data together and build your buckets, now you can get a real conversion rate. Sweet.

The more buckets you can break out, the more accurately you can measure your conversion rates. Of course these buckets aren't absolute and shouldn't be measured as such; a landing page with virtually no navigation on a specific product should bucket out mostly to buyers, researchers and potentially some people looking for support, using the store locator or job seekers buckets would be bad analytics.

As a last step why not put a value on these actions? Posting job listings is expensive and even more expensive if you get a lead through one of the sites. How much do you value from every direct application? How about offline sales.... Can you get any sense as to that impact either through formal research or from talking to reps? Put a value on as many of the buckets as you can be it a dollars saved for jobs, a prospective sale from offline, phone based sales, customer service time reduction from using online FAQs and so forth. Add all those values together along with your sales and you'll see a whole lot more value than you get looking at conversion rate alone.

So next time you think of conversion rates ask yourself, is this rate looking at people who can buy or those who came to buy? If it's the former change the metric.

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So it begins... the holidays are here... kinda

2008-10-02T18:46:58Z

It's barely October and already you can see the signs of the holiday season kicking into gear. Whether it's fear of the consumer spending slowdown or just a belief that people are already out looking for gifts, several retailers (walmart, target) have already begun their holiday campaigns and announced discounts online and offline. Here's a quick look at what's happening... [Click to see Photos]

]]> It's barely October and already you can see the signs of the holiday season kicking into gear. Whether it's fear of the consumer spending slowdown or just a belief that people are already out looking for gifts, several retailers (walmart, target) have already begun their holiday campaigns and announced discounts online and offline. Here's a quick look at what's happening:

Of course there are some seasonal events that are actually close to happening which are also seeing strong campaigns mainly Halloween. As in past years, Spirit Halloween's campaign has been strong and unrelenting with emails hitting at least once a week since mid-September. Spirit gives a good lesson for those looking forward to the main holiday season - use offers wisely. Early campaign offers were strong, major discounts and great incentives but with very limited time qualifiers. As Halloween slowly approaches they've softened up, made people pay a price for waiting and have moved mostly to free shipping - my gut says they'll start with expedited shipping offers soon and follow up with a strong 50% or more discount to clear inventory before Halloween even hits but too late to get the product in hand.

Whether you think it's time to start selling into the holidays or not it's certainly time to be ready for them which begs the question... are you ducks all in a row? For holiday marketing tips and tricks checkout this year's guide to the holiday season.