Take a look.  This is edgy and futuristic, but it’s a great thought-starter: Ubiquity for Firefox on Vimeo

So we’ve finally reached the level of restaurants being afraid to make peanut butter sandwiches.

While this is a good lesson in how our lawsuit-a-feared culture has gone overboard, it’s also a convenient lesson in how to match user behavior with product delivery. I don’t know about you, but I’m no good at spreading peanut butter while driving, so why would I want it from a drivethrough?

Understanding common customer behaviors and expectations are key.  I would not commonly spread peanut butter while driving, and I expect a restaurant to be able to spread peanut butter for me!  (I know, I’m demanding, ain’t I)

Which brings us to a nice little post over at Functioning Form where they talk about a mismatch between common consumer behaviors and site design.  It details a poorly designed form on JetBlue.com which I have noticed often but never blogged about.

Enjoy.

I was, therefore, delighted by this excellent post from E-Consultancy, highlighting how merchandising and catalog-assortment decisions typically made by a grocer can have a thoughtful influence on even the least-grocer-like online retailer.

What in-store retailing can teach us about how to sell better online.

We were talked through this supermarket’s key categories: “Destination”, “Traffic”, “Routine Volume”, “Routine Assortment”, “Impulse”.

Have you ever really thought about the real value in selling milk if you’re a supermarket? Is this a destination, traffic or routine volume category? How many categories, or sub-categories do you need for wine to provide the optimal customer decision tree?

For every category there is a very clearly defined purpose and role, very clear guidelines for store managers on the in-store promotional strategy, tactics, placement and pricing for each category.

And this is all before even thinking about shelf and space planning etc.

Yes, I’m talking to you, AT&T. For the multitudes of iPhone prospects now visiting your site, they are seeing the following:

I’ve added a red box to show the EXCELLENT placement of the iPhone advertisement. Unfortunately, clicking on this item sends me to the following page:

(Perhaps they didn’t know the product was launching?)

This wasn’t a case study… I was trying to find out more about the phone! I’m ready to order, pre-order, or simply gawk. I’d have provided my email address. I’d have sent the page to friends. I’ve have blogged about it (in a good way). Even though I can’t buy this product for a month, I could make my purchase decision today, or I could simply become a valuable lead for AT&T to use on July 11th.

Lost financial opportunity for sure, but this also leaves with a decidedly negative impression of AT&T which will become a permanent part of how I view the brand.

Your website is the first place most customers will turn for the latest information and news. Make sure you maintain situational awareness of the role your brand plays in the current web/etail landscape. It means dollars in the door — and a stronger brand.

Facebook, Flickr, and MySpace are cool, but these hotshot websites are just the latest embodiments of concepts originated in weblogs.  Weblogs—“blogs” for short—amount to personal websites where “regular people” (read: non-technical types) share information about themselves and spark discussion.  Cynics charge that bloggers suffer from needy exhibitionism, but ultimately the whole of the Internet has always been—and continues to be—driven by the subtle truisms that people love to share, love to talk, and tend to trust each other. Blogs merely brought these truisms into finer focus.

Be it egocentricity or human nature, the drive to blog created a far more important side effect for marketers: blogs gave a permanent online home to personal opinion, and they made those opinions easy to Save, Send, Share, and Syndicate. These “four S’s of social networking” reveal the true power of Web 2.0; they connect informal knowledge with trust, in the form of personal relationships.

This connection holds vast implications for marketers.  Brands were invented as stand-ins for real people—to endow mass-produced products with the same assurances and personality that a local maker or shopkeeper had traditionally provided.  For the last hundred years, marketers built brands by publishing brand-centric messages, in the channels and formats they chose, in a way un-personalized to end customers.  Brands literally controlled the airwaves, and “you” were forced to tune in on the right channel, at the right time.  This was broadcast marketing, and it worked well: national brands like Coca-Cola, Ivory, and McDonald’s became far more trusted than their local or boutique counterparts.

But now, ever since “you” took control, you decide the where and when.  And you demand that communications be personal—if they are not, you can now simply tune them out.  Tivo past the commercial break.  Tune in to XM.  Read the newspaper via RSS.  Though brands were created to build trust, consumers now trust each other more than they trust brands, or experts, or newspapers, and certainly more than they trust advertisements.  Web 2.0 has enabled customers—both advocates and detractors—to endlessly opine on brands and products.

The result is that Web 2.0 turns traditional branding inside out. Social networking sites like Facebook are popular because they help to uncover hidden relationships between people—expanding each person’s network of opinions that can be trusted.  To marketers, these networks are a bounty of information about consumer preferences, but they also represent an as-yet-untapped marketing communications network.  Now “you” can share information fast and easy.  Now you’re able to uncover expertise within your social network, effortlessly.  And like never before, you can know about a product’s flaws and faults, in detail, from a trusted source—before you even think about buying.

Instead of creating stand-ins—broadcast brands—to provide products with “person–ality,” marketers should engineer their brands to engage the public directly and participate in the social networks and relationships that characterize Web 2.0.  Marketers can know who’s evangelizing a product—and who’s complaining.  And they can respond.  Instead of placing ads on broadcast networks—radio, TV, print—use the network of existing customers to directly engage their like-minded friends.  After all, a friend’s referral is a more trusted channel than NBC or PBS.  This is narrowcast marketing.

Because of this dramatic shift in the communications landscape, national brands have never been more vulnerable to insurrection.  For the small business, this spells opportunity.  Brands were invented to help large companies compete with local businesses, but if the brand no longer functions efficiently for that purpose, then small businesses have a chance to level the playing field.  Consumers desire a personal relationship; who’s better positioned to offer that relationship, a large company or a small one?  Take advantage.

This experience reminded me of a practice I regularly employ on Amazon.com. When ordering something for, say, $20, I typically add items to my order to break the $25 barrier and get free shipping. That’s exactly what Amazon wants, yes? The problem is that I routinely add the same item to my cart to reach the minimum basket size. What item? Batteries????????. AAs, Cs, Ds… I don’t care, they all get used because I have small children (and I never run out, in spite of nearly endless toys beeping and buzzing).

This is a problem for Amazon, because batteries are extremely heavy to ship. By adding them to my basket, I get free shipping, but Amazon actually pays more in shipping costs. Batteries are an excellent change-maker for me, but a terrible one for Amazon. I am forcing Amazon to bear the entire cost of the shipping surplus and I am likely stealing most (or all, or more than all!) of the additional profit associated with the batteries.

In rural areas and foreign lands, the change-maker is often penny candy (Chiclets especially). If a transaction comes up near a currency threshold (a whole bill or coin), often the storekeeper will offer candy as change instead of currency. The consumer wins (they typically get more candy than the face value of the currency due) and the retailer wins as well (the candy costs less than the currency would). In this manner, the retailer and consumer split the surplus and everyone wins.

For all us etailers running incentives and upsells at the cart level, are we encouraging those sales which raise our actual margins, or are we simply giving more surplus to the consumer because we’re using blunt measures (e.g. basket size) to measure success?

Since I have small children, candy would be an effective change-maker for me at Amazon.

Cotton candy would, as you can already see, be the ultimate profit engine here.

Steve Meade asked:

What are the best titles to use for website navigation? Is there something better than the standard “about us”, “services”, “resources”, etc? If you try to be more creative does that just confuse people?

And I answered:

I agree that user conventions should be leveraged, but ultimately if these are the primary navigational choices on your site, then your site it not doing much for your business.

You sell bikes? How about “Road Bikes” “Mountain Bikes” and “Accessories” as your top level links.

You do consulting work? How about “MnA Consulting” “HR Consulting” and “Brand Consulting” as your nav choices.

Trust me: anyone who is looking for your “about us” or “contact us” content will find it — even it it’s in tiny type in the header or footer. What they WON’T find easily is the message/differentiation of your company, and placing those ideas into the navigational/information structure of your site is the first and most critical step to designing a site that benefits your business.

So yes, stick with the standard options for these “maintenance” links, but invest serious time and energy into communicating your business model or meeting primary user goals directly in the navigation.

In large part, retailers might translate this advice pretty simply as “put the things you sell right out there in the front window.”  Indeed.  And yet how many of us are doing this most effectively?

See the whole QnA here.

We’re undergoing some improvements at etailology over the next few days.  Let me know how you like them!   Also, I’ll be condensing the categories in the hopes of focusing the blog a bit more — around strategy, great etail models and concepts, etc. .  I’ll be writing/posting less about etail news and tactics (though I will be providing a reading list … stay tuned!) and more about the ideas and concepts I can uniquely bring (a la my customer experience, woot.com, etc. postings).

Keep the comments and email coming. 

–David

First: I agree.

Second: That doesn’t mean it’s a good marketing platform.

Third: Etailers should still focus on gaining traction with SMS as the core of their mobile marketing campaigns.

Fourth: Your thoughts? Enter your comments below…

It talks about the “finishing touch” as part of a consumer experience…. in this case, the example (and the term “weinie”) comes from Walt Disney, but once you understand the concept I’m sure you’ll be able to identify countless examples.

Does your customer experience have a wienie?

“Sometimes, the best part of buying something…is the buying part.”

The movie’s makers have capitalized on the sudden enthusiasm around the concept of “sweding” in the real world and have created an excellent YouTube channel which promotes the film and shares sweded materials from regular people around the world.

So here it is: a film invents a word, Internet users run with it, and the filmakers run with the Internet-users’ idea and turn it into a fantastic marketing vehicle.  Genius.

(And oh, btw some of the sweded film submissions are hilarious!)

Attached to this post is a diagram I use quite a lot to describe the online media landscape and the etail customer lifecycle. It continues to evolve, but I thought I’d share it. Click for the full size version. Some key points and takeaways:

• Customers are at different stages: This simple truism is oft forgotten. Customers come from different stages in the buying cycle; what may be appropriate for your most loyal customer, might not be appropriate for someone trying your product for the first time. And despite the clear arrow at top moving from left to right, it’s important that customers move back and forth quite a lot — the sales funnel is less like a funnel than it is like a popcorn popper.
• Pursuing competitor evangelists is often a waste of time and resources. You’ll find that your competitors’ true evangelists may in fact be your worse prospects. Note the opposing arrows on the diagram and the relationship between “your” conception of customer-lifecycle-stage and your competitor’s perception of the very same individual. Remember the “popcorn popper” concept: instead of bombarding happy customers of your competitor with costly interruption marketing, wait instead for those customers to “pop” out of the evangelist column (read: wait for your competition to screw up.)
• Online media consumption is different: When we recognize that customers may be at different stages in the lifecycle, we (naturally) target messages differently: for offline awareness we might use a billboard, and for offline customer service we might send a personal letter. While this spectrum of communications methods seems clear, what’s less than obvious is that it’s unlikely that any individual customer will be seeing the billboard and reading the letter at the same time. That is, in the offline world, media tactics are usually separate and distinct because of geography, format, and media consumption patterns.The same is not true online. A customer performing a search might see a pay-per-click ad, then a banner, then read a customer service review, then visit a website… all in a single user session. The separation of messages we enjoy offline rarely exists on the Internet. In addition, customers evolve more quickly: a web visitor might transition from being a “stranger” to an “evangelist” (by writing a review) all within a single site visit.
• Online conversion and offline conversion strategies are different: In online communications that drive online response, the primary goal is action. In these cases, customer response can be immediate (i.e. if they receive an online message, they can immediately respond/act by visiting the website). Design these communications with the goal of quick action towards conversion without necessarily trying to embed a lasting memory or impression. For online communications that drive offline actions, our primary goal is instead “recognition and memory” of the offer and benefit. Users responding to an online promotion requiring offline action need to remember that promotion during their next drive past your store.

Ultimately, this means we need to think a bit differently about online marketing. While technologies like behavioral targeting might make it easier to identify buying signals and place customers at the appropriate stage in the sales funnel, the reality is that most marketers won’t be employing such sophisticated (and expensive) techniques. For the have-nots (e.g. you and I!) it’s important that we consider these factors during offer and creative design, and that we — above all — insist on consistency and clarity in brand messaging.

Which is why I was delighted, but not surprised, to find this page on Google’s Webmaster Guidelines which basically summarizes all the presentations I’ve seen on a single page, in easy to understand language.

Print this one out and tape it to your monitor.  Save your conference budget and simply do what Google tells you to

Since I’m in Rochester, I’ll be on the lookout to try this myself and I’ll let you know how it goes…

Facebook users are in profile-pic-scanning mode and this ad is less likely to overlooked due to “banner blindness.” I imagine the brain will at least check to see if you know that person, then you realize “oh, this is an ad.”

 

The photo looks amateur, the lighting is terrible, the models aren’t airbrushed. It looks like a user-uploaded image. Brilliant.

OpenID is a project which solves just that problem — providing a single login/password for users across a multitude of sites. And while this provides enormous convenience for customers, it also suddenly allows etailers to identify a single customer across multiple sites and channels. Powerful stuff.

Microsoft Passport was the first major attempt at this concept, and it didn’t really go anywhere. But now, Techcrunch reports that Yahoo has Implemented OpenID and that the likes of Google, IBM, etc. are mulling the idea as well. If it happens, this will (IMO) be the most important technology development of 2008.

I welcome it. And at the same time I worry that it provides “Beacon-like” oversight of advertisers on customers. And that’s scary.

Now, combine this development with the concept behind OpenSocial, and it looks like the web might just unify itself for users. Finally. Big stuff.

Enjoy!

I know a lot of people are unfamiliar with this concept, and it goes by other names as well (most notably: “guided navigation.”) The non-obvious benefit of this type of technology (supplied by industry leaders as Endeca In-Front, Right Now Technologies, and IBM Omnifind) is that it can effectively turn a search utility on your site into a strategic selling platform. Search becomes more than something users expect and can instead provide them with an unexpected and delightful brand experience.

Don’t forget my own comments in this regard: Seven Essential Tips for Driving Sales through Landing Pages

Enjoy

I was then delighted to see Eyetracking technology evolve enough to be used for online retail. And now, the “circle is complete” as Path Intelligence Monitors Foot Traffic in Retail Stores By Pinging People’s Phones.

Creepy? Absolutely. Innovative and useful? No doubt.

While a single shopper’s specific path through a store may be information as trivial as “who is David Thiel’s favorite band” the aggregation of this information through an ambient method like Path Intelligence can lead to all sorts of data driven commerce strategies.   This automatic collection of ambient information (vs. the self-promotional blogging/tagging/posting requirements of Web 2.0) is my vote for Web 3.0.

Exciting stuff.

Enjoy

The bad news: since cellphone user interface design is incredibly bad (with the exception of iPhone), this type of online demonstration hurts many of the brands it demonstrates. (I’m not saying that’s their intent, nor am I saying it’s a bad thing.)

Notice how all the cellphone advertisements you see fail to show you even a single screen of the user interface for the device? (Microsoft, with outstanding chutzpah, chooses to create stylised — and totally fictional — visual interface designs for it’s Windows Mobile ads.)

Compare that with iPhone ads, which feature nothing but user experience.

Get it?