Charlie Rose Brain Series
This fascinating 53 minute video talks about how the brain makes decisions (economic and moral)–
Geo Mining
You are a gourmet chocolatier. You open Google Analytics, access Map Overlay report, and segment by Transactions. On the screen appears a heat-map of purchase data. States that are dark green have had heavy transactions and light green states have slow activity. You can see Michigan is a strong base, Texas and California are fairly good but Utah and Indiana …
Delicious SEM
Hotlix, a confections company, embeds real insects inside their candy. Here is how their biggest fans bookmark the site- Does your AdWords campaign target delicious.com tags?
Piggyback
One day I randomly discovered steepandcheap.com. My first thought was, “this site is so similar to woot.com”. I added a tag on steepandcheap.com called “woot” to remember it for future reference. Now every time I type woot into Firefox address bar I’m reminded of steepandcheap.com (see red box below)- In the last two years I estimate I’ve visited woot.com 200 …
Give Me A Reason
As long as I understand why an option isn’t available I’m cool. Have a look at this screenshot from Amazon (observe red box)- On click- How are you explaining unavailable options to your customers? Related article: Why Is This Item Discounted?
An Unnecessary Email With A Very Important Marketing Purpose
There is absolutely no need for epicurious.com to send this email- Browsers store login information indefinitely. Plus there are cookies. Finally, I can always click the forgot password? link on their site. So why did epicurious.com send this email? Because their user data probably says something like, “users that don’t visit in over 60 days have a 3% chance of …
Hero Shot Fail
I’m all for testing, but to display different Founder photographs in the same visitor session is a sure-shot way to maximize abandons-
Secret To Winning Online (Venn Diagram)
Assume you’re a young pure-play etailer competing against a well established multi-channel retailer with 15 locations. Your competitor’s strategic advantages are… 1. Ability to offer customers multiple shopping formats- catalog, store, phone and online. 2. Being a larger company driving higher volume they have greater pricing power. Translation- deeper supplier discounts. 3. Their advertising costs are amortized across 15 stores, …
Coupon Codes Gone Wild
For pretty much every etailer name I type into Google’s search box I get a prompt with a variation of “coupon code” in it. Screenshots- These are literally the first five companies I ran the test for. Start typing the name of your favorite etailer into Google and see what happens. So, what is the solution? Is there a SEO …
What Came First?
Not investing in conversion optimization because you have disappointing sales. -or- You have disappointing sales because you haven’t invested in conversion optimization?
Desirable Difficulty Example: McDonald’s
Sometimes making things easy for the buyer is the right idea. But there are times when you want to make things a little hard. And it has everything to do with buyer psychology.
Share Of Wallet
Total discretionary consumer spending is a fixed number. It’s a finite pool from which millions of retailers are drawing sales. When you look at your store don’t frame the question as, “Why would people buy from me?” frame it as, “Why would a moderately satisfied consumer change buying habits, sever existing vendor ties and buy from me?”
When Data Lies
Just because your metrics don’t show the customer has abandoned doesn’t mean she doesn’t hate your guts. I’m not terribly fond of LegalZoom and have a fleeting feeling their agents are pushing only their most profitable products. That said, I’m unwilling to shop around for a number of reasons- 1. I already have an account and transaction history with the company.2. How …
Prediction
I’ve never made a prediction on this blog. My friend’s dad was a creative director at an ad agency. He once told me that a TV commercial needs to be aired six times before it starts registering with viewers. If that’s true, which I believe it is, retargeting will be a huge deal online…
Common Misspellings
Hotbuckles.com has a page dedicated to all the ways in which “belt buckles” could be misspelled- Does this strategy work?
