WebPeel - Customer Loyalty and Online User Experience

Netflix and Substitute Goods

One of my favorite classes in college was macro economics even though I barely passed a single exam. It was a perfect example of thinking you know what you’re doing, but you really don’t. One concept that I did correctly understand was the idea of Substitute Goods. As I look at how the Netflix story plays out, I can’t help but think about my economics class.

First, Netflix announced they would raise their subscription rates starting in September, which alienated a lot of customers including myself. Today in the news we hear that negotiations to continue licensing Starz content broke down, which resulted in their stock taking a hit. No matter what happens in the short-term, Netflix is going to have a tough road ahead as more companies want more money for their content. Whether you’re pushing sitcoms, movies, or articles in a magazine, content always has and always will be king.

In anticipation of the September rate increase I put my subscription on hold and took Blockbuster up on their offer to woo Netflix customers. Now, I am not a Blockbuster fan since they went bankrupt and wouldn’t accept my gift card at their store, but given the cheaper price I thought I would give them a second chance with their Total Access offering. Today, I got my first 2 discs and the verdict… so far so good, which is bad for Netflix. To be fair, while price was a factor, Blockbuster also offers video game rentals and my son is an Xbox addict. These video games can be $50 to buy and get played for a few weeks before they just sit on the shelf. So on my first order, I got (1) movie and (1) Xbox game. While Blockbuster may not have as many movies and their web interface is not as easy to use as Netflix, the video game rental service and the ability to drop off movies in the store (if you can still find one) almost makes this a perfect case of substitute goods.

At the end of the day, I get to see more movies than I would see otherwise with no subscription. I get to save money. I get the same level of convenience. And, I get a son who thinks his dad is the best. In all honesty, I still struggle with cases like Blockbuster and Borders who couldn’t get an online strategy in place quick enough to decimate the competition. But it goes to show you that don’t always assume the strongest will win, and don’t always assume that a fallen hero won’t ever rise again.

So what’s the lesson?

Lesson 1 – When changing price or service, make sure you really understand your customers’ alternatives. Is there something compelling that your competitor might offer that makes up for the product you compete head-to-head on? In my case it was video games. Netflix has a lot of smart people who I’m sure ran the numbers to account for a certain percentage of lost subscriptions. So, like Netflix, always do the math and understand what the impact to the bottom line could be.

Lesson 2 – Blockbuster will need to keep fighting tooth and nail to get new movies and streaming deals as well. If they don’t then I will switch. Beware of switching costs. The switching costs are so low for customers in this model it is scary. I signed up online for Blockbuster Total Access over the weekend and had my first discs in 3 days. The only finger I lifted was to get my wallet.

Lesson 3 – MOST IMPORTANT to readers of this blog. A great web experience doesn’t mean anything without the right price and the right products and services. Before investing more in your web site, make sure you’re polling your customers to ensure you’re not missing the basics. In Netflix and Blockbuster’s case they need to keep feeding the insatiable appetite of consumers wanting every movie available at anytime through any format (DVD or streaming). Oh, and don’t charge a lot.

It’s tough running a business!

Are You Making It Easy To Evangelize Your Site?

One of the most powerful means to extending your brand is through social media. There are numerous accounts of things going viral after one person shares a link on Twitter or Facebook and within hours several hundred people if not thousands know about it.

While your company’s site may not be the type of content that spreads like wildfire, it is critical that you offer some type of sharing on your site. The usual approach is for people to go with the Big 2: Facebook and Twitter. This usually involves your web developer going out to each of those sites to get javascript that is installed on your pages.

This method works well; but makes it hard to keep up with all the new sites gaining traction every month - should I allow sharing on FB and Twitter only, or add in Stumbleupon? ShareThis solves this problem.

ShareThis allows you to pick and choose a multitude of options for sharing your content on a variety of social networks including Facebook, Twitter, Digg, LinkedIn, Reddit and more. They even allow a person on your site to share the content via email. Instead of keeping up with all the latest code snippets and networks, these guys take care of that for you.

In less than 5 minutes, and with one line of code, I had buttons for my favorite social network sites on my homepage. Now anyone visiting can quickly share my content and become an instant evangelist. The options that ShareThis provides and the ease at which a novice web developer can implement their code is truly impressive. And for now, it’s FREE.

 

Dove Chocolate Didn't Get The Memo About Playing Audio on Their Site

This morning I got the scare of my life as I went to the Dove Chocolate homepage after someone gave me one of those chocolates with the promise saying inside. While I love Dove chocolate, the homepage of their site immediately launched into a video - a mini commercial that was obviously not targeted for me since it was talking about shoes and leg waxing.

Having an audio track or video start when someones comes to your site is very 2005, yet someone forgot to tell Dove Chocolate. Here's why:

• It can be a bandwidth hog, especially for people on slow connections - yes those people still exist.
• It can scare users, especially if they're in a place where audio would be frowned upon (library, work, next to your wife when she is asleep, etc.)
• The audio or video message may be irrelevant

Many sites have gotten away from this practice for the better. Even video sites like Vevo and YouTube don't automatically start playing audio when you hit their homepage. My promise message for Dove is to lose the audio.

Do You Communicate a Snow Day Online?

Last week we had a minor snow storm sweep through our area. And while many of the businesses and schools in the area have experienced snow before, it still amazes me how much confusion is caused every year.  In the age of web sites, company and school Facebook pages and Twitter, many places still manage to do a terrible job notifying their customers if they're open. We have so many standards and rules for everything, but when it comes to letting people know if a place is open, everyone does something different. If you take schools for example - some schools follow other schools, some schools only post their closure on one particular news station. Why? Some schools send an email, some tell you to call the main number for a voice mail, some use a telephone chain that may be manual or automated. Some use Twitter, some update their web site. Some just let you show up and be surprised.  My personal favorite is when the communication channel changes between snow days. 

Thankfully, these events only happen a couple times a year (except if you lived in the Northeast this year). But it offers an important lesson, especially for businesses that expect customers to show at a specific time. I include schools in this as well, because schools provide a service and there is a level of customer satisfaction that is expected by parents for them and their children. Whether you run a school or a small clinic, your online strategy should improve your communications not make them worse. During the snow event last week, I received an email about a snow closure from My Gym saying they don't send emails about snow closures. Uhhh? The email wasn't all that bad, and I kind of know what they were trying to say, but it did make me pause. If you are like me, you may have to scan close to 100 emails in any given day so when I receive something, it's super-important that the message is clear. 

  

So Here Are My Tips for Better School/Business Closure Alerts: 

1. Have multiple channels - yes, I know, not everyone is still "online" - good 'ol telephone still works. 
2. Be proactive and reactive - some people will call before they go anywhere, others will not, but will expect to be notified. 
3. To point #1, if you use multiple channels, make sure some are web/email based - if you have a web site, use it. 
4. It is super-easy and cheap to setup a mailing list and send an email from a web-based account. Take the 10 min. to do this at 6:30am and avoid a bunch of pissed off customers at 7:30am. 
5. Relying on other triggers to dictate if you're closed doesn't get you off the hook; you own your business and your customers - don't put your fate on someone else's schedule. 
6. To the previous point, if you do tie your fate to someone else's schedule, be consistent - open when they open, close when they close, and still have your own channels to communicate. 
7. Encourage customers to use efficient channels - if most of your customers check Twitter, then use that as a primary channel. If it's email, then use email. 
8. Make sure your web site has an easy to find closure/emergency policy section. Make sure that section lists telephone, email, address and other key pieces of contact information. 
9. Be prepared. If you run a small clinic in a small town where it snows a lot, you probably shouldn't own a two-wheel drive sports car if people are depending on you to open the clinic during the winter. 
10. Don't be afraid of updates. People don't mind status updates when it's important. If there's a chance you'll open later, or be closed for a second day, notify early and often.

 

Does Your Name Help Customers Engage With You?

I have always been interested in the science and often art of naming companies and products. There is a great article today on TechFlash on why a company had to change its name from Untitled Startup. Innocent decisions often lead to problems later on.

http://www.techflash.com/seattle/2011/01/why-we-changed-our-name.html

Does Your Online Community Help or Hurt Your Image?

Last week the story broke about Google's CEO (Eric Schmidt) stepping down from his post. As an avid stock watcher of the tech industry I went to one of my favorite sites, MarketWatch, to see what the press and users were saying.  While the comments that follow many articles on this site sometimes get off topic, I was amazed to see how bad the forums had become. In fact, for the Google story, I scanned through reply after reply to try and find anyone who was actually making a comment related to the story. Most comments left were either spam for products and services on other sites or basically insults to other users on the forums.

 

I  began to ask myself, what is the point of so many web sites offering these comments sections when there seemed to be little value other than proving how heartless some people can be when they are anonymous. It couldn't be too build a sense of community, as the example seen on MarketWatch is just as prevalent on other sites across the web like CNN and others. These sections are almost pure entertainment now. 

Lesson Learned: If you are going to take the time to build a forum or community on your site, really think about the questions below before just diving in. Otherwise you're just wasting time and money: 

• What is the goal of your forum? To build community? For people to share ideas?  To gain ideas or get feedback? 
• Do you want to control the content? If so, who will moderate so that comments stay on topic? How much time will this take? 
• How will you handle negative comments about your products or services? 
• How will you handle spammers or even worse, people who place links to sites that contain malware? 
• Are you or someone you work with going to add content or start topics on a regular basis to keep the forum fresh? 
• What topics are off limits? 
• What information will be shared amongst members of the forum? 

If you want entertainment, that's fine; but if you want your site to come off as a professional and useful resource then you will need to put some controls around your users.

 

What are the Best Web Site User Experiences?

This question was raised awhile back by someone on the LinkedIn User Experience Group, but has continued to generate a lot of comments and feedback from other members. I have only recently joined the group, but do agree with one user's comments that UX is more than just the look and feel of the site; albeit, a very important component. I was very interested to see what other users on the forum thought so I scanned the hundreds of comments to collect the URLs and put them here. 

Note: These sites are not listed in any particular order, nor do I endorse any of these sites. I have clicked each link to ensure they go to a legitimate site. The descriptions were pulled from the sites so that you would have some idea of what the link was. One thing of interest was the length of time it took me to understand some sites versus others. Some had a great elevator pitch while others required 3-4 clicks to really get at what they did. One lesson here is that if you're a brand new company, it is probably more effective to keep the elevator pitch pretty upfront as opposed to a company like Nike and their ACG site which just jumps you into an impressive animation since most visitors know what they're looking for.

• http://www.bbc.co.uk - Provides news and information; funded by the licence fee that is paid by UK households
• http://www.hotelmaxseattle.com - The Most Artistic of All the Downtown Seattle Hotels
• http://www.methodhome.com - Household products
• http://www.wwf.org.uk - Best known as the world’s leading conservation body
• http://www.openideo.com - An online platform where people design better, together for social good
• http://www.coroflot.com - Largest pool of professional creative portfolios in the world
• http://www.carbonmade.com - Mmanage your online portfolio with a variety of tools that allow you to change how you display your work
• http://www.clearleft.com - Web design and consultant firm
• http://www.xing.com - Homepage offering everything you want to know about your network on first sight
• http://www.amiando.com - Setting up a whole event with only some clicks
• http://www.animoto.com - Easy to build video presentation
• http://www.netvibes.com - Intuitive customization of your Feeds
• http://www.etsy.com - Ways to Shop Visualizations
• http://www.flickr.com - Photo sharing site
• http://www.google.com - Simple, clean interface for searching the Internet
• http://www.ning.com - Allows you to create your own social network
• http://www.stumbleupon.com - Helps you discover and share great websites
• http://www.nike.com/nikeacg - ACG Apparel from Nike
• http://www.booking.com - One of the world's leading online hotel reservations agencies
• http://www.visahq.com - Online visa services and U.S. passport solutions
• http://www.icicibank.com - India's second-largest bank
• http://www.desibusinesses.com - Directory of self-promoting companies and associations
• http://www.bofa.com - Bank of America site
• http://37signals.com - Web-based apps for collaboration, sharing information, and making decisions.
• http://www.anthropologie.com - Clothing, apparel
• http://bakingforgood.com - Online bake sale that supports great causes
• http://www.thesixtyone.com - New artists make music and listeners decide what's good
• http://www.shopkick.com - In-store mobile coupons
• http://www.sonjamueller.org - Professional photographer's personal site
• http://www.elementd.com - Web Design and Web application development firm
• http://www.manipulator.com - Personal web site of artist

I went for speed here instead of accuracy so apologies if I missed any sites.

Microsoft Tag - Not Just a Print to Mobile Phone User Experience

If you have read any of the major print magazines lately, you will notice that many publications are using QR Codes to provide a reader with additional information about an article or product. With a special app that many users have on their smartphones, they can simply take a picture of the pixelated-square in the magazine (on their phone) and be immediately taken to an app or web site on their mobile device. 

Microsoft uses a similar version of a QR Code called Microsoft Tag. This technology uses a cluster of colored triangles to achieve a similar effect. Whether QR Code or Microsoft Tag, I have seen these 2-D bar codes not just in magazine pages, but also on paper cups and even large posters or banners. But what all these mediums have in common is that the user experience goes from print to mobile device. 

On a recent search for mobile apps for my new Windows Phone using my computer, I noticed that you can now download apps to your phone using the same 2-D bar code technology. Searching for apps on the computer is a much more pleasant user experience in my opinion, because you have much more real estate to work with on the screen - you can view the app's description, comments, ratings and screen shots all in one view with practically no scrolling. And now, with the advances made in laptop screen resolutions and camera resolutions, I was able to hold my Windows Phone up to the computer screen, take a photo of the Microsoft Tag, and instantly have that particular app downloaded to my phone - no searching for the app or mistyping a URL into my phone. Just one camera click and two taps on the phone's touch screen - we now have a "computer screen directly to mobile" user experience. No need to type anymore. This is a very fast way to engage users especially if the users are on someone else's computer (e.g. using a computer at the public library).

TypePad vs. WordPress - Why Switch Blogging Platforms?

In  today's 24x7 world, many consumers are making judgments about your business around the clock. Picture some influential small business owner sitting in his underwear 2 o'clock in the morning deciding if he wants to use your web service for his company or your competitor's. At that time of night he is looking to make a decision and there is no sales rep sitting next to him in his underwear giving him the value proposition on why he should choose your company. It is at this moment that your web site needs to provide a compelling story that speaks to what you can provide over your competitors. 

Switching costs for web services can be very, very low and I recently found out from TypePad that my credit card had expired. I had heard so much about WordPress, that I decided to investigate switching to their blogging platform. After all, if I had to get my credit card out, I might as well sign up with the best service if it was easy to transfer my posts - It was; almost too easy. Both TypePad and WordPress allow you to import/export to other blogging platforms. In less than 15 minutes I had an entire replica of this site (WebPeel.com) on WordPress, complete with images, comments, etc. But after 2 days I killed the site and decided to stay with TypePad. Why? 

To be fair, WordPress has an impressive suite of tools, especially if you want to self-host the application and truly customize it. I spend too much time coding my own sites, so the last thing I wanted to do is start being a code master for my blog as well. My evaluation was very, very quick - 4 hours over 2 days, but I think that is reasonable considering how fast people make decisions today just based on how the homepage looks. Here is what I found: 

• Themes are a key to a good looking blog, and there weren't enough of Wow themes on WordPress to say it is worth me switching just for the design. 
• Certain themes didn't offer me the most important feature (which by the way is not offered by TypePad at all) - the ability to arbitrarily flag more than one post to be featured in a side bar at the top of the page (i.e. a list of post titles with excerpts and thumbnail images). 
• Lastly, WordPress mentioned on the site being able to bring in your blog from TypePad, but there was not enough story to say why it would be so much better. 

Lessons: 

1. Watch your competition like a hawk and don't be shy about publicizing your benefits over theirs on your site; this is seen all the time on television ads (think Apple vs. Microsoft vs. Google). 
2. Make the switching costs loooowwwww... press a button and your done is what people want. 
3. And if you already have the customer, don't automatically assume they will always auto-renew, make sure your website or email reminders show the benefits of staying with your company. 

All in all I am very happy with TypePad, now if they would just feature my blog that would be great ;-) 

 

Is Fandango or the Theater to Blame for Wrong Showtimes?

Accountability is becoming harder and harder as the web and phone apps become more pervasive in our every day lives. We share content amongst friends, and sites/apps aggregate and compile information that is really not owned or authored by the provider. When everything is working fine, things are great, but when there is a blip in the matrix it can cause havoc. While my theater expedition this morning wasn't catastrophic, it was a little annoying to find out that someone got the times wrong. 

I have been waiting to see TRON Legacy for awhile now, being a fan of the original movie. With an extra day off, I looked at showtimes for one theater that had a 10:00am (repeat AM) showing. I confirmed this on Saturday and Sunday night by visiting Fandango.com for the Monday showtimes. When I got to Lincoln Square Cinemas this morning at 9:50am, there was no one at the ticket counter  and even two workers were sitting outside waiting to get in.  I could immediately tell this was a bad sign. 

As it turns out 2 other parties also showed up for the 10:00 showing. A manager happened to open the door to let a vendor in, when one party asked about the 10:00 showing. The manager quickly replied, "Oh... it's 10:00PM not AM," and promptly closed the glass door. After picking my jaw off the ground I slowly limped back to my car having wasted a trip to the theater on my day off. When I got home and checked Fandango, the times had already been updated. I would normally just pass this off as me losing my mind again, but considering that 3 unrelated parties all showed up at 10:00AM to see a movie tells me that that I wasn't crazy. So what's the lesson?

 
 

I think there is some blame to put on both Fandango and the Theater. If we assume that Fandango's code is correct, then they are simply posting info that has been given to them from the theaters. I have used Fandango before and never had a problem. In this case I would think that most of the blame should fall on Lincoln Square Cinemas for not having an accurate feed that was sent to Fandango. In hindsight, the 3 parties should have spoken to the manager and asked for a better explanation and alerted them to the problem, but between not knowing each other and a little bit of embarrassment, it probably wasn't the first thing on any of our minds. 

As for Fandango, if the times were indeed PM and not AM, then I think there is an opportunity here for all movie sites (not just Fandango) to add the "am" or "pm" text after the time. Many movie sites I have visited look to save precious screen space by not including the "am" or "pm". Why leave even an ounce of ambiguity? Hence, we as consumers assume the leftmost time displayed is always early in the day (i.e. morning) and the rightmost time is in the evening going to past midnight in some cases.  When I checked the site, the first time was indeed 10:00 which I assumed to be AM not PM, just like the lady who asked the theater manager. 

All in all, it doesn't hurt in the future to bring a printout of what you see on the web, maybe I could have gotten free tickets for the inconvenience.  For site owners, if you are pushing data to others, it is your duty to ensure the accuracy and timeliness of that data. If you are using other people's data, it is critical that you have a support plan in place when people make decisions off of data that they found on your site. Imagine the implications of stock trading, if the price of a stock was completely wrong on a third party brokerage site. If you don't have a reasonable support plan, then it is critical that you clearly state where the data comes from so that you don't get in hot water when inaccuracies crop up.

 

Prefinery Tests Your Site So You Don't Have To

DISCLAIMER: I have not tested out this company as of yet, but look forward to doing so on one of my next projects. I highlight the service here because the idea speaks to an area in user experience that often gets neglected not because of oversight, but because of time and resources. 

If you are a small business owner, in a best case scenario you can afford to hire a small shop to design your web presence. In a worst case scenario you may had had to build the site entirely on your own. In either case, you will usually have a handful of people testing your site before it goes live. Testing is a game of numbers - more users means more scenarios, which means more ways for people to figure out how to screw up your shopping cart, or checkout process, or registration system. Prefinery enables the small guy to very quickly get hundreds of beta testers taking their site through its paces to find any problems before real customers do. 

I think this is a great concept and hope that the testing extends not only to just core functional testing, but also usability/workflow. The latter type of testing can sometimes be a little more subjective, but I could think of several ways where this company could offer an array of services to help their customers get their sites just right.  This is something that should be done not just at site launch either. If you actively manage your online presence, your site will never be done; new functionality will always be getting added, and this means more potential problems in the system.

How Bing Can Leverage Social Media to Keep People Engaged and Grow Share

As many of you know, I am a huge proponent of designing user experiences that make customers come back. Even if your product is something that is only purchased once every 10 years (e.g. a home, a car) there are many ways to keep customers coming back to your site. Social media has created the opportunity  for people who share a common interest to come together and discuss their passion.  Even when people disagree it is amazing how many people will join into a discussion to debate their point. Just look at any popular video on YouTube or a CNN article to see how many people comment on a particular story. So when I visited Bing today to do a search I was suddenly hit with the idea... Bing needs to provide the ability to add comments about the homepage image.

 
  

I have always been a big fan of the photos on Bing (yes, because I have some affiliation), but more because I am a big fan of photography. When I saw the photo of Palm Jumeirah  I was inspired to visit the official web site and learn more even though I had already seen many documentaries and other articles on this "master planned" community. As an engineer by training, to call it a master planned community is really an insult; this creation is truly awe inspiring. It was at that instant that I wanted to communicate with anyone who had actually gone there or better yet, lives there.  Here is where Bing has a huge opportunity to actually have people gather on their homepage just to discuss various unique places. Imagine people getting pinged by their friends on Facebook to take a peak at some exotic location on Bing and then having that person visit the homepage to discuss and find out more about traveling there. This would enable people who had no intention of doing a search on Bing that day to all of a sudden find themselves in a deep conversation on the culture of a particular place. 

Keeping people coming back and keeping people engaged on your site is Web Marketing 101. I hope Bing takes my advice and gets this implemented quick. Now, if I could just get the $3M to buy a property there.

 

I'd Visit Consumer Reports More Often If I Could Remember My Password

If you want repeat visitors to your web site that requires a login, make sure your username and password requirements are not too stringent.  It sounds simple, but with so many security breaches that have happened over the past few years, web sites increasingly demand what they call strong passwords. And while I understand the need for this at banking sites, if your site is simply serving content that is subscription only, I would argue that a super strong "unique" password policy is probably overkill. It's one thing for someone to get access to a user's account to read the latest refrigerator reviews; it's an entirely different story when someone can transfer your entire paycheck once they have account access. 

The whole problem with strong passwords is not in the password itself, it is really the fact that a typical household today has over 15+ sites that require some type of login and even if a user wanted to use the same password, they often cannot. Users should try to use different passwords for different sites just so that a compromise of one site doesn't leave a user fully exposed to a hacker gaining access to all of their sites. While this best practice is good for 3-4 sites; anything above that and most users are forced to start reusing usernames and/or passwords. This leads to our second problem. Some sites allow you to pick your own username, some give you one based on a combination of characters in your name, and others just opt for your email address. Passwords can be just as problematic with some requiring that you always have a letter, or number, or one uppercase character, or disallowing passwords that start with a number. The list of requirements and restrictions can be endless. As a hardcore user of the Web I have resorted to having to keep a file just to maintain all of my usernames and passwords (I am easily over 30+ sites). 

Now, If you are going to have some 'funky' requirements on your username and passwords, you absolutely must be clear with your users on what those requirements are. On a recent visit to Consumer Reports online, I came across the following registration screen. As usual, their password requirements did not allow me to use a common format I like, but what I really couldn't understand was the message around passwords being "case sensitive". If your values have to be all in lowercase then you should not even be able to submit a password with uppercase letters. If their system has the ability to distinguish case, then why not let me type a password with lower and upper case letters like every other site? I get what they're trying to say, but the message certainly made me pause on entry. Furthermore, because I use some upper case letters on every other site I login to, every time I visit this site I usually type my password wrong the first time. I end up mumbling, "Oh, I'm on THAT site again that doesn't allow uppercase letters." Having users remember strange passwords is just one more stumbling block to getting them to return to your site. Just look how much fun captchas are now. Keep that in mind when building out your requirements.   

So, Consumer Reports, I love your reviews and they have saved me a lot of money over the years, but please standardize your username/password policy to be more in line with everyone else.

IHOP Likes Gmail

Many of my posts have a small business slant, because I empathize with these companies that have to stretch every marketing dollar they can spare. They usually don't have the big budgets to do a huge branding and awareness campaign and projecting a certain level of professionalism is key to instilling confidence in potential clients. When the Web first took off, many small businesses signed up with these massive ASPs to get a free web page to promote their business. Companies like GeoCities  would give businesses a domain name like (http://www.geocities.com/bakery/mycupcakeshop/) to host their homepage. As people got more sophisticated, the rules of branding said that you must have your own top level domain name (http://www.mybusiness.com) and your email address had to have the same domain name (service@mybusiness.com). This branding needed to extend to your business cards, letterhead and the list went on and on. These ideas were sound then and still make sense today. I cringe when I see a business with a homepage hosted under someone else's domain. Web hosting and purchasing a domain name is so cheap there is almost no excuse.  And for big companies, there is absolutely no excuse. 

So I was a little surprised when I took my son to IHOP for their Kids Eat Free promotion to get a receipt with a "Gmail" email address. I applaud them for providing an email address to let them know how they did, but why the "IHOPSERVICE@GMAIL.COM" address. IHOP already owns the domain name IHOP.com, so why not have a dedicated IHOP.com address for feedback. I cannot verify if this is just the restaurant near my location or nationwide. IHOP is a franchise so it could be this franchisee is just being proactive about collecting feedback and is not able to get an email account on the IHOP.com domain. If that is the case, then I can cut the franchisee some slack, but maybe IHOP should develop a company wide strategy to ensure all franchisees can have a dedicated email address for feedback on their restaurant. A common form where all submitters had to select their restaurant would also work too. 

But what do I know, this is a minor inconvenience if my son gets to eat FREE! 

Can Your Online Reputation Stand Up to Your Offline One?

Last weekend I had to return a Black & Decker mini fridge to Walmart. I am one that hates returning things so I typically make it a point to do extensive research before making a purchase and then live with the consequences of my choice for better or worse. What made this return easier was the fact that it was not my first pick to begin with. Prior to going to Walmart we had decided to go with another brand that we saw on Walmart.com. Unfortunately, the brand we wanted was not in store and could only be ordered online - I learned that after we made the 45 minute drive to the store. When we arrived the only mini fridge they had in our price range was this Black & Decker version. My wife convinced me that since we made the drive that we might as well get it. But as I stood on the checkout line I told her there was some reason I didn't want this one. I remember the reviews were bad online, but couldn't remember why. Instead of just relying on the fact that the reviews were bad, I made the purchase simply because I couldn't remember the specifics and was trying to make my wife happy. After all, Black & Decker's reputation offline is very well regarded especially when it comes to power tools - How bad could the fridge be? I see their products all the time when I am in Home Depot - they must be doing something right. Sure enough by the time we got home and I read the label closer, I remembered that it was one of these new thermoelectric environmentally friendly refrigerators (no compressor). It keeps things cold, but has two major drawbacks. It doesn't get cold enough to store frozen foods, and it gives off a lot of heat into the room. Considering we needed to store milk for my son, we needed something that would store dairy close to freezing temperatures. To be honest, after 2 days the fridge seemed to keep things cool enough for dairy, but the amount of heat it generated in my child's small room was enough to take it back. 

After going back online, the comments about this fridge on the Internet were all confirmed first hand. Even the part about a lot of these cube fridges getting damaged during shipping. Ours had a dent in the left back corner of the fridge similar to when you try to crush the edge of a box by stacking too much weight at the corner. This one experience has now made me a strong believer in online customer reviews for products. While some companies are victims of unwarranted attacks and some companies falsely post positive comments about their products, overall I think the system is working. More and more "real" customers are going online to post real experiences about their perceptions of a product or service. In my case, I ruled out a product only to forget why. In the end, I wasted a week, but the comments online only helped me further justify the hassle of going back to return the product. If all the comments had been positive I probably would have just overlooked the excessive heat and dent in the back - I would have just assumed I was crazy. But seeing my perceptions in writing by other people who had no relation to me, was a huge factor. 

Businesses must start to address all feedback good and bad on the Internet as more people come online. In fact as more people get mobile devices the problem becomes magnified. If I had my smartphone with me, I could have looked up the reviews while I was still in the store and eliminated the fridge right there on the spot. If you're not tracking your online reputation, you could be losing valuable business and not knowing why. Startups like Yelp and others are building entire business models on giving customers a forum to voice their pleasure or displeasure. Make sure you are taking an active role in managing your reputation in the digital world.

 

Veer - The Best Customer Service is a Free Trial

I have probably developed over 30 web sites in the past 13 years. And when I say developed, I mean everything from selecting the domain name, creating the logo, coding the site, writing the database queries and most importantly designing the look and feel of the pages. When it comes to this last task, stock photography is a must. Everyone wants a site that catches the eye and that means often buying stock art from one of the major players like Jupiter Images (http://www.jupiterimages.com). 

Since my endeavors have been mostly for hobby (or at least that's what my wife says since only two ventures were somewhat successful)  buying royalty free stock images can be expensive. Even if a site uses just 3-4 good images, I have paid on the order of $60 per image if it's something I really want. Enter Veer.com (http://www.veer.com). I stumbled upon this site by accident and was intrigued by their offer on the homepage - register for free and get 10 credits to use towards the purchase of an image. Wow, I thought, someone actually giving away a quality product just for me to register with no strings attached. Then I thought their art must be expensive. It wasn't, I found one quality image for just 6 credits and it truly was no strings attached. I also must tip my hat to whomever chose the 10 credit price point. Since now that I have tried the service and like the images, I am incented to buy more credits rather than just let my 4 credits go to waste. In a 10 minute process they got a customer for life. 

If you're a wanna be graphic artist like myself give Veer.com a try. They have not asked me to plug their service, but it's worth mentioning on this blog because it gives us a perfect example of making a great first impression. Not every business can afford to give even one of their product away; but with something like stock art which is always in demand, Veer is setting themselves up for another repeat customer. If your business model allows you to give away your product (or part of it - think Gillette razors) to bring customers onboard, don't be shy about exploring this option. Sometimes the best customer service is a free trial. To be honest, the download part of getting my image was not that intuitive on Veer, but the registration process was so easy, that I probably would have called customer support if I didn't figure it out a minute later. 

 

It Is Not Always Easy to Walk Away From Free

Consumers are interesting creatures. If we have to pay for a service and are not happy with that service, assuming other options are available, it is easy for us to walk away. But when a service is free and we're not happy with our experience, we often choose to just let the service sit indefinitely, instead of cancelling the subscription or membership thereby simplifying our lives. Consumers love free; it's the same reason why we have tons of crap in our house that we really don't need; "I really didn't need another coffee grinder, but it was free." 

I was on a recent business trip where I forgot to check my free web based email account. To my dismay, I failed my son by missing a birthday invite from the parents of one of his friends. This is an account that I don't use often, so it's not checked every day. Unfortunately, by the time I saw the email it was too late to make plans to attend. At first I was angry at the parents for not using traditional paper invites like every other student in my son's class, but I quickly realized I was just looking for excuses to not blame myself. But my attention quickly turned to my free email provider. Why was it that I used this account so infrequently? Why is it that many of us have multiple accounts. The answer is usually pretty simple; we use different accounts for different purposes and the reality was that I really wanted to use this account, but the service quite simply sucks. So why not cancel it? Well, it's free. Besides, I would have to update all the people and companies that do send mail to this address. So instead of just cutting bait, I choose to login maybe once per week. The login process and time required to download my mail is so painfully slow, I can only put myself through that torture once per week. 

So What Is The Cost of Free? 

Interestingly enough, this phenomenon happens with many services across many industries every day. The sad truth is that the cost of free can be quite expensive for both the consumer and the business providing the service. For me as the consumer, I paid the cost of a disappointed son, parents who are offended that we didn't attend their son's party, and the time cost of managing multiple email accounts because each has different benefits (while this one account is slooow, the email address is real easy for people to remember). For business owners, if the service is truly bad, but free and non-evasive, they end up with up bunch of inactive accounts on their books. An inactive account is overhead and overhead is bad. If you're running a service business online, inactive accounts are taking up space. Each account has data that must be stored and backed up, even if the person only logs in once per month. Then there is the liability of holding that person's data. In the event of your business being compromised and data stolen, you now have a pissed off customer who wants to sue you for the potential identity theft that may occur later, and they haven't added a single dime to your bottom line. LinkedIn has millions of members, but how many actively use their accounts in any given month? 

If you're a business owner looking to grow your empire with free memberships, go for the new customers that will be actively engaged. It use to be that just getting subscriptions was enough to build an ad-based business model, but even on those web sites, advertisers are demanding more and more for active eyeballs on the screen. An engaged audience usually means a happy audience. And a happy audience will bring in more customers. Just remember your product has to work to keep all of those members.  If you don't believe this strategy will work, just look at Facebook - it's free, makes people happy to keep in touch with friends they wouldn't otherwise call, and it's reliable. Now go make your billions. 

Someone Else Getting Your Gmail? X-Forwarded-For

If you look at the most common used applications on the Internet today, web-based email is in the top 3 along with other programs like messenger apps. Contrary to some social media pundits, Facebook and the like will never completely take the place of email; it may make a dent in some demographic groups (think younger audiences who want to broadcast everything they’re doing to everyone they know), but for 1-on-1 directive communication (think business users) there is no substitute. I have about 4 web-based email accounts along with another 2-3 aliases that direct to one of these four. The reason for this many accounts is the subject of another blog, but the simple fact is that I probably would not have this many if it wasn’t so easy to setup a new account. Plus, the real advantage is the elimination of the email client like Outlook and Eudora that people used in the 90’s. Yes, I still use Outlook today to download important files from my web based account, but when you’re on the go – checking mail from wherever you have an Internet connection is really handy.

So what’s the downside of web-based email accounts. Well, if you go with a service that is very popular like Gmail, Yahoo or Windows Live Mail you will have a hell of a time finding a username you want. But even if you get past that hurdle, the bigger problem is one that I recently discovered on my Gmail account. There are literally so many users with similar usernames, misspelling and email address by just 1-letter is bound to have your email end up in someone else’s inbox. This is fine if you’re just forwarding the latest viral video, but could be disastrous if you’re sending someone flight information, personal info, or worse – the username and password to some account you have.

There is even a bigger problem with web based apps like Gmail which allow you to forward your Gmail email to another account. What if you accidently setup the forwarding address incorrectly? Well, that is exactly what someone has done to me. From what I can gather, a girl in the California area has setup her Gmail account to forward mail to an email address that is very similar to mine. For the past 6 months I have tried to contact this person via email and regular postal mail to no avail. With so much garbage on the Internet today, she has probably looked at my notices as some type of SPAM or Internet Scam. The bad thing is that the only reason I was able to send her a snail mail is because I have received her home address many times over from all the sites she has subscribed to. I can tell you what games she plays, what she reads, what school she attends and the last 20+ songs she has downloaded from iTunes (hmmm, kinda like Google can - I digress). It makes me shiver just thinking about it. From what I gather on Gmail’s support forums this is what happened:

In checking emails that come addressed to her I can clearly see my email address in her “X-Forwarded-For” information. Apparently Gmail is not much help in resolving these types of matters, but I worry about people who may have their info fall into the wrong hands. Lucky for this girl, I have no intent of doing anything malicious with the info, but it is pretty annoying.

So what’s the lesson in all of this? When setting up a new email account, always check and double-check that you have correctly entered the right username you want plus the right forwarding information. I always send myself and close friends test messages to look at all the email headers to ensure nothing is out of whack. And when sending something important to other people that use a popular web based email account, make sure you have the right address.

Be safe!!

Update on MarketWatch

As suspected, MarketWatch had the problem corrected by the time I finished my previous blog post and uploaded it to the site. A matter of a few hours if that:

Internet Traffic on the Weekends

How often do you check your web site on the weekends? If you run a web-based business only, I hope a lot. If you’re in an industry where business picks up dramatically on the weekends, like residential real estate, I hope a lot. As a “wanna-be” day trader I often find myself visiting MarketWatch.com on Sundays to see if there is any early breaking news for the financial markets the coming week. To my surprise today, MarketWatch had a section of their web site’s content repeated on the homepage.

An article about GM and the Canadian Auto Workers was showing twice, along with several other articles including letting us know that Bill Gates was dumping some shares of shares of Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (BRKA, BRKB). Either this was MarketWatch’s way of really trying to stick it to Bill, which isn’t too hard too imagine if you read their regular stories on Microsoft (i.e. John Dvorak) or simply an error in their content management system. My guess is the latter. I am sure this problem will be fixed by Monday morning if not sooner. However, it does raise an important question on how well we monitor our sites on Saturday and Sunday. It is not uncommon for sites to see a drop in unique visitors of 30-50% on weekends. This may not be a big deal for B2B companies or brick-and-mortar based entities, but for those relying on weekend clicks it can be a killer if your site has errors on it. Whether the perception is a site that looks unprofessional or worse, simply does not work, a lost visitor is a lost transaction. So if you are making content updates at 5pm on Friday or relying on feeds from other sites that update your web property daily, make sure you check your site at least once on the weekend. Even if there is a problem, you at least have that time to correct the situation before traffic picks up on Monday.

Always Check Your Homepage after Adding Content

There are many web content management systems on the market that web site managers can use to add or modify content on their web site. On the high end for enterprise users there are solutions like Vignette and Interwoven. On the lower end you have semi-customizable templates that are now offered through some domain registrars or web presence providers. No matter which path you choose it is always critical to check your web site often, especially after adding or modifying content. If you have many people updating your site, it is critical to build some type of notification into your web presence that can alert you if something is wrong.

Many enterprises use a combination of content management systems along with custom built ASP or JSP pages. Quite often, changing the underlying page code and leaving off a closing tag or uploading content too big for a given space on the web page, can leave some pretty “funky” results. In really bad cases it reveals the underlying modules, database paths and other “behind the curtain” scripts that you just don’t want users to see. As the screenshot below shows, I stumbled across Bank of America’s web site, when it wasn’t having a good day – hopefully it was fixed within the hour.

   

In a future post I’ll discuss some really cool technologies that can mimic the actions of a real user on your site to catch things before the general public does.

More Gripes About Web Forms

While we’re on the topic of web forms, another problem I see way too often is the truncation of letters in the address fields. This is even a bigger problem if the site does not provide a second address field line. For example, my street name is eleven characters long and starts with a 5-digit street number. I live in the Puget Sound Area of Washington state, where many streets also have a 2-character direction like NE for Northeast. By the time I add the street type designation and town home unit with hyphen, I’m close to 40 characters with spaces – that’s pretty damn long compared to my old home which was half the number of characters. On several e-commerce sites, my address gets cut-off at around 30-33 characters. So what’s the lesson here? If you provide only one address field, make it long – maybe 50 characters if your DBA doesn’t kill you. The other option is to use two address fields and follow my advice in my earlier blog.