Non-Line Blogging

Let me start with an apology.

Dear Ford, I am sorry that your email registration is so bad that for 3 years I have been using it as an example of how not to do it.  I am the owner of a Ford Galaxy and a Ford Fiesta and have owned more Fords than any other car brand.  My mother recently bought her 14th Ford car and so it is in my genes to be brand loyal.  It's only because I care that I choose to write about my on-line experience.  So there.

Now I've got that out of my system here's the business issue:  The aim of an email marketing programme should be to acquire, convert and retain customers.  When we focus on the start of this process we should be looking to convert as many vaguely interested web visitors into qualified prospects by encouraging them to part with an email address or some other direct relationship (RSS subscriber, or Twitter follower, or Facebook Fan, and so on).  

I'd like to think of these as "visitor-based micro-conversions".  Having the mechanism to get back in touch with people is an important first step in a long sales process.  So, maybe one of the most important things you can work on is turning a visit into a lead, and I did a little blog on that a year ago to help you with the maths.

Gentlemen, start your engines

OK, which one of these 2 sites do you think offers the best email registration experience?

Now, on first impressions it's a walk-over.  The sleek engineering of the Ford site will power past poor old Ling's Cars and their (deliberately) amateur look and feel.  And yet...

First challenge is to find the button that allows people to sign up.  It's in the top navigation on Ling's site and also a long way down the right hand content bar.  It's an image with a recognisable "Email Updates" or "Get Car Updates" heading.  In one click I am on my way.  

However, on the Ford site there is no obvoius link for people to begin an email relationship.  The call to action people may be looking for is something like "click here to sign up for our newsletter", but it's nowhere to be seen on the Ford site.  

Right at the very bottom of the left hand navigation is a cryptic "keep me informed" link.  Could this be the one we need to follow?  Who knows.  So, in terms of clarity of the navigation, Ling's Cars is a bit ahead in the race to generate a registration...even though it is harder to find, the objective is clearly shared.

Lap 2 - what happens next?

In my breathless haste to sign-up for the Ford newsletter I click on the least important link on the home page (that's what the Home Page Committee thinks of the importance of building relationships eh?).  I go to a new page that is strangely deviod of any of the magic and sparkle that was on the home page.  It is as if I have arrived at a completely new site, designed in about 1975.  

Where is the persuasive momentum in that journey?  There is nothing on this page suggesting that this is the right journey, how long it will be and what the rewards will be.  It's a leap of faith to click a button and proceed to the next page.  But, as you know, I love Ford and so I click the New Galaxy box and click in faith...  

Meanwhile, on Lings Cars, I'm on a page that delivers the value proposition, asks questions with explanations why you need to share the data and it is all done in a seamless, humorous way.  It's pretty good.

Not only that, the Ling's Cars registration page is dynamic, using client side rules to make the experience swift and painless.  And how about this for humour...the map of the UK alters dynamically based on your Post Code selection and comes up with some on-brand opinions about where you live...its about as fun as email registration gets...well done Ling! 

Better still, as you work through the form more dynamic content appears...like images of the car make and model that you have selected.  The whole process is engaging, relevant...even exciting! 

Error Messages?  Sorry again, Ford

In June 2008 I wrote a Blog piece entitled "The 1 Million Pound Error Message" and ventured to suggest that the way Ford told people off could be costing £1m of lost sales a year.  It's a pity that 2 years on we still have the same error messages.  Here is Ling's one, and beneath it Ford's version.  I venture to suggest that Ling's Cars uses red imagery and rude tone of voice in a horrible font because they are pretending to be un-professional, whereas Ford....?

Anyway, my point here is that "error messages" should be called "sorry, we didn't explain things very well messages" and we should be using all our persuasive techniques to re-assure people that they should continue in their journey.  

Page 3 - and Journey's end for Ling's Cars

Well, it's been a short, pleasant drive and we're greeted at our destination by Ling with a personalised landing page in the form of a sample email.  Delightful.  And at the same time a welcome email has pinged into my in-box and I am re-assured that everything is now under control.  Put the kettle on.  Have a cup of tea.  After a little while look out the window and see if there is any sign of the Ford email registrant.  I have a feel they are a very long way from home....

Where are they?

It's getting dark.  the Ford subscribers should have been here hours ago.  So you go out to find them and discover why they are so slow.  On page 3 of the Ford registration we are asked for our Post Code.  Now, that might be enough to dissuade plenty of people from going any further, and it seems a strange time to ask for such details.  I think Steve Krug sums up my views with a cartoon from his excellent new book.

 Anyway, as I LOVE the Ford brand I am willing to share my postal details and I get to the next page.  But Ford have done the web equilavent of changing road signs at this stage of the journey:  On most web sites the "next stage" button is at the bottom on the right, so I click on that button and find myself going round and round in circles wondering why they want my post code AGAIN.  After a few loops of this process I see the right sign post and, clicking on the left hand button I get to the next page.  This is what Her Majesty the Queen would see if she was popping her post code in...

Are we nearly there yet?

By now the passengers in the Ford car are getting a little fractious.  They set off on this journey a long time ago and its taking much longer than planned.  Only the people who REALLY want to get to the end will be still travelling (more of that in a minute).  We round what we think is the last corner and we are greeted with the most confusing, demoralising page so far...

 So, what a frightening form.  And look at all those mandatory fields - Phone Number as well...so unless I share my phone number my whole journey has been a complete waste of time.  Anyhow, let's just put our foot down, grit our teeth and drive on into the night and we should be home soon.

Eventually I get to a thank you page that does include my name, but there is little else to re-assure me that this is the start of a wonderful journey.  I'm tired, stressed and not really sure what I will receive and when.  A quick look in my in-box and, Surprise!, there is no welcome email for me.

What have we learned from all that?

Using Ford as a metaphor for any customer form we see that we should try and keep data gathering to a minimum, unless we are building the value exchange and encouraging people to keep going all the way.  Think about "persuasive momentum" as people are going through the process, remembering to make your error messages and any other navigation as on-brand and encouraging as possible.  

The delicious irony of all this is I reckon Ford probably get really good results from their email marketing...their open, click rates and outcomes are probably better than average.  But they have probably put off most of the prospects due to the lenghty registration process and the people who make it to the end really really want a Ford car.  Like me. 

Happy motoring.

Two years ago I wrote a blog about engagement through video.  I would like to think that the marketing world has embraced the delights of video and animation and taken web experiences onto the next level.  I would have to confess that when I am wandering around the internet there still seem to be less rather than more sites delivering wonderfully engaging content. 

Show me the money

Let's begin with the justification.  Zappo's have found that adding video descriptions to products boosed conversion rates by 6 - 30%.   This is such a big win that all organisations should be thinking about ways that they can integrate video and animation into their web experiences.  If you don't want to justify it with traditional business metrics like making money, then how about "engagement"?  There are more reports emerging into how people consume video via digital media and I am pleased to say that a brand new one for the media industry has been revealed by Brightcove .  They conclude that for media sites video consumption is significant...

On-line video content from broadcast networks average 2:53 minutes watched per stream followed by music labels at 1:50 minutes and newspaper publishers with 1:41 minutes per stream.

I Bet your products are not as boring as these...

No disrespect to Cisco, but I personally cannot get very excited about their 800 Series Routers.  This is a job for Osman Mohammad.  Osman loves routers.  He speaks about them with a passion and he'd loved to tell you about them right now.  Go on, just click.   

Osman can sell 800 Series Routers in his sleep.  His passion for Routers cannot be communicated through the printed word.  He never fluffs a presentation and he's never late. Osman is probably the most prolific sales rep Cisco has ever has.  I hope he's on commission.

So, video is not just for cool sneakers - its for business products too.

Let's take another BtoB cracker.  How do you sell an interactive white-board to schools?  This is the most delightful animation I have come across with cartoon characters in sync with interviews with real teachers.   

It's called "Teacher Comforts" and is drawing on some excellent animations from Nick Parks (of Wallace and Gromit fame) called Creature Comforts in the 1990's.  Skip to the end to watch the out-takes...a leaf out of Toy Story's book!

 How about video to explain things?

Here are 2 of my favourite "explanation" videos.  I run a lot of digital marketing training courses and try to blend the Powerpoint and web learning style with some video content.  CommonCraft is a company that continues to develop really simple, clear videos that inform and entertain.   The one on the left is for "social bookmarking" but check out their site for plenty of others (I can even recommend the "US Election" explanation as a puzzled Brit!). 

The video on the right is an explanation of ChatRoulette, the web phenomenon that seems to polarise opinion almost as much as Facebook did a few years ago.  It's very very well deisgned and deserves a wider audience, so share with your friends - it's from a designer called Casey Neistat and is a lovely piece of work.

So there you have it.  A quick round up of great animated experiences on-line and not a single YouTube logo in sight.  But of course, if nothing else, find a home for all your video content on a branded YouTube page or on your Facebook pages.  

Happy animation 

I was asked this week to share some "inspirational" digital marketing experiences by Ian Jindal, and came up with a couple of sites that "did it for me", as it were....more of those in a moment.  But a while ago I blogged about the way that in some marketplaces all companies were migrating to similar web site design characteristics.  It seems that on-line retailing is heading the same way as Financial Services was a couple of years ago.  As somebody who likes un-cluttered web design I'm finding it delightful and I'd like to share what we can all learn from it.  But first - the fun bit.

I love the way that Hema, a Dutch retailer have decided not to take themselves too seriously and a couple of yeas ago pulled together a fantastic home page experience.  It relies on people waiting for the page to load and for them to wait a couple of seconds before whirring into life but it is worth it to enjoy the chaotic exuberance of the web experience!

http://producten.hema.nl

On an altogether more serious note, I recently heard a presentation from the web team at Finnish ceramics and homeware company Iittala.  They have spoken a couple of times on the Certificate in Digital Marketing course that I run on behalf of the Internet Advertising Bureau Finland and the Institute of Direct Marketing.  I think its time the site shared a wider audience because it is so elegant.

It is everything that some of the lifestyle e-commerce players in the UK are trying to be, except this does it with even more elegance...IMHO.  They even drop a bit of the old social stuff on the home page.  And they carry it through with some great “non-line” integration and will soon have a single customer view via the MyIittala concept. And they tell stories...is the return of the “narrative structure” the next big thing in web marketing?

Specifically the site ticks all the right design boxes because: 

• Brand personality is strong
• Consistent, classy fonts across the whole site
• Bleeding the Capital "L" on the home page into the border oozes typographic confidence (!)
• "Navigation" pages built for 1024 x 768 browser
• Breathtakingly elegant photography
• Beautiful product shots
• Confident, approachable, conversational tone of voice – sometimes hard for non-UK countries.

And they are even taking on Howies.co.uk with the "we're a retailer and we really care" angle:

And they use excellent copy to build the story - and the experience

So, from the cheeky fun of Hema or the classy sophistication of Iittala it appears that we can build strong brand experiences through web site design.  And with sites like John Lewis and Marks and Spencer setting the pace for clear, un-cluttered web experiences in mainstream markets will the messy ones with multiple fonts and poor design suffer as the bar is raised ever higher?

For the past 3 years I have been using the Ford web site as the benchmark for BAD registration forms, specifically the dreadful way that it managed the "Brochure Request" process.  So imagine my horror when I arrived at the site this week to find it had all changed...this could seriously damage my career as a consultant. 

But I should have known better.  Despite spending huge amounts of money on the shiny shiny new site most of the critical tasks that support car sales are still dreadful. Oh yes, the home page is fantastic - they must have spent a fortune on it. In these times of credit-crunchery I'd have thought it was time for Ford to get back to basics and make their site support processes that make the till ring - brochure requests and test drive appointments.  But oh dear, they seem to have forgotten to do that.

When I blogged about the aggregation of marginal gains last year (focus on doing 1000% things 1% better), I got this precient response from Avinash Kaushik.  He said:

This is a fantastic post!

Just yesterday I spoke to 2,400 people in the Auto industry and each and everyone of them was trying to move the ball by "1000%". Yet they have horrible landing pages for even the simplest of keyword searches and their paid search ads.

So there we have it.  Automotive marketers across the globe are spending bucketloads of money (they don't have) on the least important parts of their business process.  

So, just how bad can it be.  Let's pretend I want to get a brochure and, as I have owned 6 Fords in my life, we can assume my "reservoir of goodwill" (from Steve Krug )is filled to brimming as I approach the lovely new Ford site.

First up, what do we think of a home page that is 460K in weight?  To be fair, if the site is great then maybe you have to pack it with features, but this is a pretty big home page, according to the lovely web site optimisation site.  Here is the page size analysis for the shiny shiny new Ford site: 

And here is their report for the "Classic" Google homepage, perhaps the most successful page in web history:

So, the new Ford home page comes with a range of "health warnings" that are probably quick and easy to fix for a speedier (and maybe better) customer experience, again from web site optimisation  

• Warning! The total number of objects on this page is 132 which by their number will dominate web page delay. Consider reducing this to a more reasonable number. Above 20 objects per page the overhead from dealing with the actual objects (description time and wait time) accounts for more than 80% of whole page latency
• Warning! The total number of images on this page is 115, consider reducing this to a more reasonable number. Recommend combining, replacing, and optimizing your graphics.
• Warning! The total size of this page is 466330 bytes, which will load in 119.34 seconds on a 56Kbps modem. Consider reducing total page size to less than 100K to achieve sub 20 second response times on 56K connections.
• Warning! The total number of external script files on this page is 9, consider reducing this to a more reasonable number. Ideally you should have one (or even embed scripts for high-traffic pages) on your pages. 

But anyway, lets say that the page loads and I'm keen to press on with my brochure request.  The navigation has been tucked down in the bottom left hand corner but with a bold heart I click on the right link and come to a REALLY important page.  OK, it's had a lick of paint in the up-date but the page looks awkward, dull and out of keeping with the home page.  It's a few check boxes - where's the passion, the dream of owning a new car - Volkswagen show you pictures of cars - how nice is that?!

Worst of all Ford insists on restricting it's "soon to be customers" to only 2 brochure requests.  Given that the Ford car portfolio often has 3 or 4 cars that overlap a persons needs this has to be a mindless barrier to purchase.  Not only that, we now come face to face with the 1 million pound error message (follow the link to my prevoius post with all the maths) 

So, there we have it - site with a fantastic new home page and vritually no money invested in the key checkout processes that turn visitors into prospects.

So to Avinash's "horrible landing pages for even the simplest of keyword searches and their paid search ads" we can now add "horrible check-out processes".  With customers so thin on the ground shouldn't we all be trying to convert the faintest of nibbles on our site into qualified leads?

It doesn’t take much to tip rational people (like me) into making emotional decisions.  One word did it for me the other day.  Walking past an optician’s shop I noticed (when I was close enough) a sign saying “Appointments Available Today”.   What was it about the word “today” that injected pace, excitement and a positive response from me?  Five letters on a sign and I’m a customer.  “KERCHING”.

I deeply enjoyed reading Brian and Jeffrey Eisenberg’s Call to Action: Secret Formulas to Improve Online Results book and love the passion with which they talk about “persuasion architecture”.  It’s the little things that can make a huge impact on a customer journey, they say, and come up with countless strategies for improving web page successful outcomes.   In an earlier blog I talked about the value of short, succinct copy in digital marketing.  I also blogged about the “Aggregation of Marginal Gains” and how lots of little improvements can end up with one whacking great big business win.  So, armed with these 2 pearls of wisdom I have been impressed with a few little touches from our friends at the world’s favourite airline. So let’s fly.  “Cabin Crew, doors to automatic and cross-check...”

Recently the British Airways site has improved, although there are still a few painful moments as I’ll share in a minute.  However, it’s the small things they have been doing that I like (and fall for).   On a recent trip to Helsinki I was checking in on-line and up popped an up-sell.  “Upgrade this flight for £138.50” they enthused.  So I did.  “KERCHING” went the BA cash register.  How easy was that?  It goes to show that if you don’t ask, you don’t get.  Can’t we all learn to adapt that simple technique to increase average-order value?

Not only that, I loved the way that they took me to a page with the “riff-raff” fare crossed out and “Club Europe” now proudly displayed as if to confirm my new-found social status.  It’s not often that we get to play with “strike-through” fonts but this time it persuaded me that my action was a wise one. “Hello” Executive Lounge and “Goodbye” Post-Purchase Dissonance.

Later that day I had to book another flight and I was seduced again by the BA Persuasion Team.  Just recently they have unleashed into the booking process every salesman’s 3 greatest friends – Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt.   Looking at my fare options I was persuaded to take a positive action and generate a successful outcome for BA.  All because of 64 characters...

The word that hurt the most?  “Disappointment”.   How would I live with myself if I let this golden opportunity slip through my fingers, I wept.  ”KERCHING”

So, BA recognises the value of using every single character to their advantage and I’ve been taken for almost £400 as a result... not bad for a day’s work in the persuasion architecture team.  But there are 5 characters they still use to humiliate me.  Sometimes in my breathless haste to book a flight I miss one of their mandatory check boxes.  No chance of an “Ooops” Message or a “Sorry something didn’t quite work out there” Message, or even a “we sneaked an extra tick box that you missed” Message.  Nope.  It’s an “Error” message.  And of course it’s in red font just to ram the point home.  With an exclamation mark!   Might be enough to put me off one day, just as the 5 characters in “Today” made me become a customer for another company.   Maybe not quite as appalling as Ford's £1 million Error Message but it makes you think about every single letter, doesn’t it?

As a post-script to this blog I just came across another use of strikethrough font - the hugely impressive Avinash Kaushik used it at the end of his latest blog to display to everybody that a great offer (to upgrade to Clib Class Google Analytics) was at an end.  Oh Woe those who dithered - the offer is crossed uot before your eyes...take action next time it presents itself or you too will be disappointed.