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!

Hosting.com has rebranded by VPS account to Cloud Hosting and wants to charge me 3x more per month. I prefer the old name and lower price.

Netflix Unapologetic for Raising Rates

So, I received my email from Netflix today regarding their price change in which they will split their DVD rental business model from their unlimited streaming model. If you have been following the news, the move is not surprising considering Hollywood is going to be asking for way more money in the future to license their content.

I have been a huge fan of Netflix in the past if you have read my prior posts; however, I was a little disappointed in the tone of the email. It was like, "Well, we are raising our rates, hope you accept the new price, but if not - see ya!!" Netflix doesn't have to apologize, but it would have been nice to see a little more empathy in the email, some people don't read Mashable and MarketWatch everyday and may not have the context. In any case, I will have some hard decisions to make, for starters maybe I'll go to just one movie by mail instead of two. I love the streaming service, but lately I have been having major buffering problems while streaming some movies. I'll also start looking more at the Amazon Prime offering which gives you unlimited streaming movies - not as robust as Netflix, but it may suffice. The best plan I read on one site, was to pick the cheapest option and then spend the rest of your time reading a book for once. Tell me what you think. Could Netflix have built better loyalty by spinning the email a bit better?

 
 

 

Blockbuster Misses Opportunity to Re-Recruit Old Customer

Yesterday I learned another lesson that translates well into the digital world. I won a gift basket this week that contained a $15 gift card to Blockbuster. If you read this blog, you know that I am a long time fan of Netflix, but I used to be a regular at Blockbuster over 8 years ago well before they started to get into real trouble. I remembered they used to have these great deals on previewed movies like 5 DVDs for $20. So I was rather excited to add some good ol' fashioned disks to the collection. As great as the cloud is there is something about holding something in your hand that the cloud can’t replace. Second, no matter how fast the Internet becomes, it still requires that your connection be good for the whole 2 hours you’re watching a movie. I have never had a movie stop working halfway through unless my disk was scratched.

I happily went to a Blockbuster that I found near my house. It had been over 2 years since I had stepped in one. They had a few great classics that I debated over for more than an hour. I wanted to take advantage of the 5 for 20 deal and the 3 for 20 deal on some of the newer films. With 10 great movies in my hand I had to decide which 2 wouldn’t make the cut. After 60 minutes of looking and deciding I went to checkout my movies for the grand total of $43 dollars. I handed over my $15 dollar gift card to be greeted with an awkward look from the cashier as if I had given him a wooden nickel.

I later found out that as part of the Blockbuster bankruptcy filing the judge had ordered that Blockbuster stop accepting gift cards over 2 months ago. In all honesty the 8 classic movies were well worth the $43 price, but on principle and sheer shock I just walked out the door empty-handed.

So what's the lesson? While, I can blame the person who gave me the gift, I put some of the blame on Blockbuster as well. I wasn't mad I lost $15 dollars, I was mad that I passed my house in Friday July 4th traffic to waste an hour in their store. Now if I ran Blockbuster, here is what I would have done.

I would have notified customers via mail or email on the policy change. While it's been over 2 years since I engaged with their company I should still be in their database. Lesson here is you should determine what the shelf life is for your customers. Maybe 2 years is the right timeframe to say a customer won't come back and never send them an email or postcard again. Whatever the period is, it’s good for your employees to know and even better if your customers know. I get reminders all the time from companies I haven't dealt with in years just to let me know that they  would still like my business. Magazines are really good about re-recruiting past customers and on more than one occasion I have re-subscribed.

As for the store itself, I would have put signs on the door so that customers knew that gift cards would not be accepted before they started shopping. I wasn't the only person that “didn't get the memo” as an elderly lady was asking the same question on my way out. Unlike me, she was smart; she asked before shopping, but I assume she must have heard about it on the news or from someone else.

Because of the experience I will not be going back to Blockbuster again, which is too bad because my interest had been renewed in the business when I was able to experience the joy of looking through rows and rows of movies once again.

When customers come to your website make sure you cover the following:

• Be clear about gift cards and/or using multiple coupons in one transaction.
• Be clear about your return policy.
• Be clear about your mailing lists and privacy information, do you plan on sending them emails forever or just for 12 months after their last purchase?
• Be clear about how to unsubscribe from your mailing list.
• Be clear on how to contact customer support if something fails during the checkout process or if they are unhappy with their product when they receive it.

A lost customer may not be lost forever, but if you get a second chance you have to make the most of it, since it will usually be your last.

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.

 

Soap.com Backs a Good Web Site with Great People

So if you have been following my posts about my ordering experience on Soap.com, I am happy to say that my issue is finally resolved. My order was never received because it was damaged during shipping and then I only received a partial refund even though nothing was ever delivered.

With one email to their customer service address I received a wonderful reply from a “Marla” who apologized for the mix up and not only refunded the rest of my money but said they would resend my order free of charge. I received everything a few days ago and my wife and I are very happy.

We will be ordering from Soap.com again.

Lesson Learned

Even the best web sites using the best technology can have breakdowns in the system, especially when it comes to things like ordering and shipping logistics. It is a great reminder that no matter how good your front-end is, at the end of the day, we still need real people behind every web site. It’s people, not computers that make the decisions to do what is right for the customer.

And if you’re a business owner, it is critical that you empower your people to make the right decisions at the right time. This does not mean giving everyone the keys to the castle, but setting limits for when someone should be able to resolve an issue quickly. If I had ordered $1,000 worth of Tide and Palmolive, I don’t know if Soap.com would have sent me the order “on them” but there is a price point where it pays for the company to do what is right. Past experiences with McDonald’s have been like this. If your $4 Big Mac is a little cold or the bun not really fresh they would just give you a new one, no questions asked – I don’t know if they’re still this liberal.

In short, make sure someone is keeping tabs on the technology and the system; don’t assume that just because the support system doesn’t show a lot of complaints people are happy. I hate having to contact customer support, but this time I am glad I did. There are many cases where people are not happy, but they just forget or don’t want to bother following up.

Listen proactively to your customers (that means asking when they don’t).

Does Soap.com's Front Office Know What Their Back Office is Doing?

This is a follow-up to my earlier post regarding my recent order at Soap.com. Unfortunately the story does not have a happy ending; but at least I have more material for this blog. After a few more days had passed, I received an email from Soap.com saying that my order was being refunded. I was not expecting or wanting a refund. I actually wanted my product. I found this approach a little disappointing considering I was not ordering some very unique hard to find item. It was literally, some dishwashing liquid and razor blades.

 
 

Now here is the kicker - I was charged $35.78 on by debit card and the refund was only for $22.78. I never received any shipment from Soap.com so now I have to go figure out where the rest of my money went. And the icing on the cake is this - I was sent a second email to write a review about the products I ordered.

 

I am very surprised how bad Soap.com's fulfillment process has been. There is obvious a total disconnect at various points in the system.

Why People Love Netflix

This email was so timely considering I just finished my post about Soap.com and being proactive with customers. Here is an example of doing it right - it just arrived in my inbox. I was not impacted by the Netflix outage, yet this company is using the honor system to give you a credit if you were impacted.

 

 

How On Track is Soap.com and OnTrac?

So I recently jumped on the Soap.com bandwagon solely because I was enticed by their 20% off coupon for new customers and I am tired of lugging gallon jugs of Tide from the supermarket. The first time I ordered the process was perfect - Good user interface, easy checkout process and delivery showed up in exactly 2 days as promised. The second time around I wasn't so lucky. The ordering experience was again very good, but 2 days came and went and no package. If you're like me you always second guess when you ordered the package especially if you do a lot of midnight shopping like myself - do I count today as one day or the next day since it is already past midnight, etc... Nonetheless I went back to the email to verify the actual delivery date and sure enough it should have come yesterday. Soap.com uses a service called OnTrac which I am not familiar with - every ecommerce site that I have ever used has delivered through FedEx or UPS in the past, unless it is some special delivery. Logging onto the OnTrac site was simple as Soap.com provides a link to track your packages - there in plain site was the reason my order was not here. Apparently the delivery reached the distribution center damaged so it's on it's way back to the sender. I love the ability to track packages, but it begs the question if Soap.com and other ecommerce sites can be more proactive when a problem does arise. This would require tighter logistics with the shipper, but something I would think is quite possible. The shipper would have to have access to my email address or some mechanism that when the note was made to send back to sender, I would also get the notice saying my shipment was delayed rather than guessing what happened.  I am satisfied knowing what happened, but it is a good example of how companies can still do a little more to be proactive with their customers.

 

I am still a fan of Soap.com only after two tries simply because of the convenience. If you're interested in experiencing the service for yourself, use the code below to get a discount:

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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

My local Borders took back a book that was purchased on Borders.com over 60 days ago. They didn't have to, but it was a great show of customer service. I explained I buy there all the time and just forgot to take this book back during the holiday season. The manager's willingness to give me a gift card now makes me a loyal customer of Borders.com and the local brick and mortar store.

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.

Using Customer Content to Provide Details About a Venue

Back in August of 2010 I posted an article about wishing that theaters used a seat selection tool similar to what the airlines have adopted.  With the Super Bowl fast approaching I thought it would be good to highlight one company that is doing this very thing with tickets to NFL games and other sporting events.

You can go to FanSnap.com to see specific seats at specific stadiums for upcoming games. What is really nice is getting the photo of the view of the field from that seat. While only a few sections have photos available, it demonstrates the ability for visitors to the stadium to help future visitors by uploading their shots from their seat location. This is a great example of customers being incented to come back and use the site to not only submit their own photos but reap the rewards the next time they need to pick seats at their favorite stadium and want to see a real shot from their section of the stands.

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).

I contacted Fandango about my blog post regarding the TRON incident and they did confirm that they rely on the feeds from the box office. They are not sure what happened, but recommended always checking with the theater web site if there is one. I did appreciate the very quick response to my inquiry and the thorough review of my post. That demonstrates a willingness to engage with the customer and not just brush off complaints.

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.

 

As a follow-on to my post about Prefinery.com, if you are really hesitant about coding your own site (and you should be); here is a site that will connect you with great coders for a fair price - http://www.canyoucode.com/

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.

Free Shipping without Free Handling Doesn't Make Customers Feel Good

My wife wanted a hard-to-find item for her SUV this winter and so I found a company called ShurTrax.com that offered what she was looking for. There on the main site in big letters it said Free Shipping - great, because I am spoiled and buy almost nothing that requires a shipping fee especially 1-3 weeks before Christmas. Then during the checkout process  I get hit with the "bait and switch" - free shipping under $99 in the 48 states, but there is a handling fee. I have not seen this term in a very long time.

While technically there is a difference between a shipping fee and a handling fee, the average customer doesn't care. What the customer does care about is if additional money is coming out of their pocket above and beyond the list price. Most customers are accepting the fact of having to pay taxes online now and if you have to pay for shipping, then fine, but just call it that. Saying free shipping then having to pay for handling is just an insult. Notice how on the confirmation email, the $12.99 fee is listed as a shipping fee, not "handling" or even "shipping and handling."

 

Furthermore, now that my order has apparently shipped, they give no UPS tracking number on the email confirmation which is almost standard for many ecommerce sites. My hunch is that the product will be as good as advertised when it gets here. Unfortunately, this company is probably like many traditional retailers who have great products that deserve a better online sales, marketing and fulfillment strategy.

 

Eddie Bauer Bows to the Cyber Monday Pressure

I used to be a big fan of Cyber Monday, because I hate crowds. There is nothing fun about standing in line at 4am (in the cold) to fight some old lady over a television set. I have actually never got anything I really wanted doing this simply because most stores only stock 4-5 of the most desired products and since I am lucky if I am number 20 in line, I am not willing to run over someone for merchandise. So the start of Cyber Monday seemed like a great way to even the playing field - no crowds, everyone has an equal chance. Well, this year I didn't get any great deals online either - I got good deals, but not great deals - free shipping galore, but you can get that during the rest of the year now for most stores. 

The fact is that nowadays many people have a fast internet connection, and crowds do exist online!! At least with doing the shopping spree in person, if you manage to wrestle that digital camera out of some teenager's hands, you get to keep it - all you have to do is waste (sorry, wait) in line for the next cashier. It may take 20, 30 or even 40 minutes to checkout, but it's yours. Online, not only does the crowd problem surface with slow response times to web pages, but then once you have added something to your basket, you have to pray that you can get through the registration and/or checkout process before the site goes into a cyber coma. This was my experience with Eddie Bauer a few hours ago. 

Eddie Bauer was offering 30% off on almost everything plus free shipping, so I bit.  I was only buying 2 small gifts, but it took 2 times for me to add the gifts to my cart, the site was just spinning until I finally backed out and went into the cart to see that it had added the correct items and correct number of items. I then added the discount code. As soon as I did that, it gave me the lovely message below.

 

Since I knew the tax in my area, it was not enough for me to want to stop the purchase. On the final submit, the site hung again, so I never knew if my purchase went through. 30 minutes later I received an email, so I am assuming my order took, even though I never got the confirmation page on the site. While I am going to give EB some slack, it does bring up some important lessons to remember: 

• Always keep your checkout process as short as possible. Many steps on separate screens means many steps that can break or lockup during high volume times. 
• Always, always, always follow-up with an email confirmation - 2 at least; one to say we got your order, and one to say when the order has shipped. And if you read my Gap blog entry you would send a third about requesting them to write a review. 
• Always ensure your coders have built in safeguards so if things like sales tax don't show up, you give the customer an opportunity to help themselves. Include a phone number for direct support. If this was a 40 inch flat screen for $199, I would have been on the phone in a panic. 
• If you have the means - load test, load test, load test. How many simultaneous users can your site handle? Do you even know - 10, 100, 1000? Most small businesses would be surprised how few transactions can occur simultaneously before end users start to see a slow down on their shared hosting site. The big boys like Amazon.com invest millions to handle thousands of transactions in minutes. While most of us would kill for that type of volume, keep in mind how big you want to get when building your business online, especially if you are only online.  If your traffic were to spike tomorrow would you instantly lose 90% of the people who tried to make a purchase?

Christmas - The Season for Writing Online Reviews

If you read this blog a lot, I am big about advising companies to manage their online reputation. If someone is going to write a bad review, I would rather have that review on my own site than find it on some other random site on the Internet? Why, because I can control the outcome a lot better. If someone who has made a purchase from my store is unhappy and leaves an online review, it is a lot easier to engage with that person to correct the situation. If they cared enough to login and leave a message, they might just care enough to allow you to fix the problem instead of just bad mouthing you across the web. 

What amazes me is that while many sites offer online reviews of their products, many companies are not proactive about sending emails to customers to actually write a review. Gap Inc. is obviously getting it right. I received the following email the other day after I made an online purchase. The email contained a picture of the items asking me to leave a review for each. This should be the standard in the industry.

 

Now, if I were Gap I would even go a step further. If I purchased these two items in the store, they should print out a code on my receipt that would allow me to go online and leave a review as part of my online account?  Please comment if you know whether Gap does this or not - it seems like it would not be too hard to do?

 

Old Navy and Time Zone Discrimination

Old Navy uses a good tactic to call you to action - they send out coupon codes via email that have a decreasing savings percentage with each passing day. On Monday it may be 30% off your total online order, but if you wait until Wednesday it may only be 20%. Last week was the first time I ever took them up on this offer. 

 

While I did save some money, I was a little peeved that I lost 5% because the day for me apparently ends at 8:59pm not midnight. I was shopping on their site for a good 45 minutes before checking out. When I entered the coupon code, it gave me a discount of 5% less than I thought I should be getting. I quickly went back to the original email only to "read the fine print." 

 

To get the savings for that  day, you had to make the purchase by 11:59 ET. Since I live on the west coast, this translated to 8:59pm for me. I quickly looked at my computer screen and the bottom right clock said 9:40 - Ugghhh!! Old Navy was perfectly in the right, but it just irked me that I had been rushing around all day knowing I was going to make the purchase later that evening. By the time dinner was fixed, kid was in bed, etc. I had missed my window. In the grand scheme of things 5% may not seem like a lot, but when you factor in taxes and the fact that I didn't get free shipping, this would have paid at least for the shipping. 

I have programmed a couple of web apps that send reminders to people at various times in the day. So I know first hand that dealing with time zones can be a pain in the butt. However, as companies do more and more business online, it will be important to make these disclaimers a little more prominent. In a sense, Old Navy is cheating me by 3 hours. If the average person starts their day in New York at 7am, it doesn't mean the average person in L.A. starts their day at 4am (unless you’re a stock broker). If my day ends at 5pm like most people, I have 4 hours to make the cutoff where someone in New York has a whole 7 hours. 

Now, Old Navy has customers all across America, so maybe this is not a big deal, but it would be interesting to know what percentage of their customers lose the 3 hours. If 50% of your customers were negatively impacted would you change the expiration to 3am or solve it with technology and use the person's zip to determine the local time? Or would you do nothing?