WebPeel - Customer Loyalty and Online User Experience

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.

 

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 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.

 

Grockit Could Get Customers For Life

We are a BIG fan of business models that build customers for life. Microsoft did this with Windows and Apple is doing it with their products. The idea is to get users to adopt your products/services early in their lives (think McDonald's) and keep providing value that results in repeat purchases over the course of many, many years. 

In today's world it is much harder to win brand loyalty; there is simply a lot of competition and that makes consumers fickle. The slightest problem with a product and service can instantly mean a loss customer even if they have supported your company for years. This is definitely true with shiny new consumer products. However, there a certain niche products/services that don't get a lot of consumer and media attention, hence competition tends to be less even though the product/service is something that many people need. Educational/study aids is one of those products. We are all students in life and regardless of what you are a student of, there is always another test to take.  What's even more profound is that there is always an endless supply of students. When my son was 4 he was already taking home basic math problems from Pre-K. So when I stumbled upon this new site, Grockit, I instantly thought - wow, these guys could have customers for life.

 

As their site states, "Grockit helps prepare students for standardized tests including the SAT, ACT,  GMAT, GRE and LSAT. Grockit also provides a comprehensive curriculum in Math and  English Language Arts aligned to state standards for students in grades 7 – 12  to improve their skills inside and outside the classroom." When I read their "about us" blurb I instantly began to think of all the professional certifications that are out there. My wife is in the healthcare field and there are tons of certifications. I have years of project management experience and there are certifications for that. As a former real estate broker, there are tests for that. Just like, "there's an App for that," so there is "a Test for that." 

If this company does it right and expands their product offering slowly over time, they could get customers in their early teen years and keep them well into their professional careers. This is not only a great business model because it combines social media with helping students pass tests, but it brings repeat buyers. Here again, with a great product, great user experience, they can get customers to keep coming back to their site for years to come.

 

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.

 

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.

 

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!!