Modern Insider - Online Marketing Blog

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

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 09:06:00 -0800

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.

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

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 22:14:55 -0800

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.

Same old suggestions... no changes?

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 19:29:54 -0800

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...

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

Tue, 11 Nov 2008 13:04:54 -0800

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.

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

Tue, 04 Nov 2008 17:55:59 -0800

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.

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

Tue, 04 Nov 2008 12:36:26 -0800

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."

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

Mon, 03 Nov 2008 16:47:25 -0800

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

Sun, 02 Nov 2008 19:17:59 -0800

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.

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

Sun, 02 Nov 2008 19:12:31 -0800

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...

5 Minute Usability Tip: Phone number formatting sucks!

Thu, 30 Oct 2008 12:02:48 -0800

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

Sat, 25 Oct 2008 11:22:55 -0800

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.

Social networking for small businesses

Tue, 21 Oct 2008 11:19:48 -0800

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.

One price... one experience

Sun, 19 Oct 2008 10:25:59 -0800

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.

Thu, 02 Oct 2008 13:34:04 -0800

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.

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

Thu, 02 Oct 2008 11:46:58 -0800

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]