» uk-netmarketing: roundup: 30-03-2001

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Make Errors Work For You
UK-Netmarketing Weekly Round-up - March 30, 2001

Did you remember Mother's Day? Or did you find yourself on Friday afternoon hunting round websites for a company that could deliver the required floral tribute in time? Subscribers to the list didn't have much like trying Interflora, finding their website down for maintenance. The conversation focused in on the actual message that the maintenance page conveyed about the website and the brand.

Robin Page suggested ways marketers could use these errors as an opportunity, writing, "These 'standard' messages composed with about 5 seconds of thought baffle me. Why don't more marketers seize it as an opportunity to turn visitors into customers, instead of pissing them off left, right and centre?

It's the same problem with 404 pages - Hands up anyone who's sick of seeing things like.. 'the file you requested does not exist on our servers, please check your typing and try again' or 'error please contact the webmaster and quote code E34A690'? Funnily enough 'alternative' 404 pages are something we've always tried to do here. Anyone who currently lands on our 404 page gets offered a free document of ideas on how to create a useful 404 page.

Course you won't actually find our 404 page by accident because all our links work perfectly (ahem! She says with confidence) So if you're interested I'll make it easy for you. You can download the file at http://www.dvisions.co.uk/404.htm"

Tim Ireland suggested another resource, "I'm pretty sure I've posted this link before, but http://www.plinko.net/404/ is the mutt's for this kind of thing. They also explain this as follows: 'IE5 Users! You may be missing out on the wonder of 404! IE has its own error messages built in. That sucks! You can disable them by going into the options screen, to Advanced Options, and uncheck 'Show friendly HTTP error messages'.

Elizabeth Smith added, "Interesting thing I noticed on useit.com's 404 page (linked from plinko). The page address is http://www.useit.com/notHere.htm. It lists some common mistakes people make to find themselves at the 404, which are:

• Making the URL end in .htm - all pages on useit end in .html (note the trailing "l")
• Using UPPER CASE CHARACTERS - all names are in lower case only

So you immediately look to the URL of the page you're on to confirm that it's all lowercase and uses .html...."

Martin Lloyd spotted an even more enterprising use: "For a while Yahoo! carried adverts for Levis Twisted Originals on their error page (along with a 404 code) at the time I was pretty impressed with the placement strategy."

Jon Rimmer shared some of his research on the subject, "Sad but true, I have published a paper looking at user attitudes to errors on the Internet and their recovery strategies - actually they don't give a shag and would rather just go somewhere else - lost sale lost sale!! Your competition is only a click away blah blah - I also include some case studies of the "Web eCommerce giants" (very poor!) and offer design guidelines for improvements) - hassle me for a copy if you so wish or see abstract;

http://www.cogs.susx.ac.uk/users/jonr/publications.html#ozchi2000

Hope this helps - and remember if I'm a potential customer on your site and I click one of your links to check something out and I get an Error 404 what are you saying? Have I done something wrong? Made an error? Also, what file? I was looking for a 'Page', what's URL mean - what does Read Protected, even tried Multi mean? How do I go about contacting a server administrator (whoever that is) even if I wanted to? It's 2001, we really don't need sloppy "Customer Messages" like these (NB don't call them errors)."

The morale of the story is...even your mistakes present marketing opportunities, or at the very least a chance to ease the irritation of a broken link with a little humour.

Return on Investment

Making sure you're getting enough bang for your buck is high on everyone's agenda, particularly with a general squeeze across the industry. Chetan Damani asked for some figures for comparison, "Does anyone know where I can get published/official average ROI's for Web projects?"

Ray Taylor replied, "That's easy too! Average ROI for web project - NIL

I have spent several years researching this on a professional basis, and the fact is that the vast majority of web projects produce no tangible return whatever. The minority that do produce a return, produce such a small one in comparison to the cost, that they fail to bring the average up to a visible level.

Successful web projects that produce substantial return on investment are few and far between. Why do you think there are so many layoffs at present? And before anyone moans about 'the dotcom crash' let me tell you that the current trading position is closer to normality than last year ever was. It ain't gonna get better than this."

Alex Chudnovsky disagreed, emailing, "I would like to disagree with Ray. Naturally many firms gone down the drain because their ROI was NEGATIVE (not NIL) - infamous cash burn, hence layoffs and such. This was due to a number of reasons, which made ROI not important (just IPO, cash in and live happy). Luckily it's no longer the case.

I strongly disagree situation wont get better. It *will* get better, however, it may well get worse before that. Myself I am involved in a number of projects with VERY high ROI, which makes personally me optimistic about things to come. Can't spare any more details though, sorry!"

Sally Krumholz added, "I think applying a grand sweeping statement like ROI is wrong. Your ROI depends on your objective and models. It's been proven in some sectors that your can increase your ROI by streamlining some CRM capabilities and customer contact.

I believe ray's statement may be in reference to pure-plays, which may not have had an "offline" infrastructure in place to support their objectives. Some of our clients have seen increased acquisition efficiencies via the web as well as increased retention through remarketing & direct response. It all depends on your game plan. I agree with Alex that there's more to the picture than what we see."

HTML Email

Using HTML email for direct marketing is certainly gaining huge popularity. The plethora of different email programs and differences between email systems, means delivering the email is one thing, but getting it displayed properly on the recipients screen can be seriously hard graft.

Dave Smith had discovered some useful info and shared it with the list, "For those of you who dabble in HTML email, there was an interesting article on ClickZ today about some research carried out into what proportion of recipients can read formatted HTML. Summary of results: about 83% can read it, mainly Mac users and those using versions of AOL pre v6 fell into the unlucky 13%. Full article here: http://clickz.com/article/cz.3661.html"

Sally Krumholz added, "...this survey, I'd like to point out, was based on one site's own research to their own database. The survey covered only 450 persons who responded. Considering the highly focused nature of Dr. Wilson's site - e-commerce - i don't know if it's truly an indication of the mom's & pop's out there. unless your market is somewhat sophisticated, I don't think these figures are entirely an accurate picture of the email universe.

Here are some other metrics, which you might find interesting though. From an email vendor I work with: Numbers are based on an estimated user base of 300 Million and refer to numbers of mailboxes. This is as of 4Q 2000 and for US mailboxes.

Alex Chudnovsky highlighted a possible flaw in the Sally's numbers, "I agree with your bit on not [being a] representative survey (just 450 responses from a very special group of people). Your numbers do seem to reflect mail SERVERS (stores, routes mail) rather than CLIENTS (where you actually read mail). If they are supposed to mean CLIENTS, then I would seriously doubt this data."

Sally Krumholz agreed and suggested an alternative for marketers wanting to know what their email targets can handle, "... and what that makes it invaluable info? My point was to show that the survey was a limited shot. And i believe it's based off of info from their data. But it beats a snapshot of 450 respondents to a targeted audience survey IMHO.

As a sidebar, there is a company called TMX interactive offering MARKETERS the option of running a test email campaign that yields data on:

• bandwith
• flash versions
• email application/clients
• video players
• user's o/s

It's called a list tuner. i believe the sticker cost is US$ 5000 for the shot. Basically it allows you to get a snap shot of your own user database, run a test message & therefore be able to use it for leveraging into richer emails if you choose.

Matt Bacon wasn't quite so keen on the use of HTML email at all, "I don't _want_ the stuff. Why can't people use proper mail clients that send plain text only unless explicitly informed that the recipient _can_ receive HTML mail, and _WANTS_ to?"

Conversion Techniques

'Charon' asked, UKNM, "I'm doing some research into conversion techniques because I've been asked to write something about it. Basically I'm trying to uncover solid methods designed to persuade visitors to register, then ways of persuading them to become active and interact/buy something.

Before anyone says it, yes, I know this is like looking for the holy grail, and anyone who's got it right is off making millions and isn't interested in sharing what they're doing for free when they can be selling it instead. So - a long shot, but if anyone knows of any case studies, articles, decent books or sites on the subject, you'd really be helping me out."

Anu Upadhya replied, "I am reading a book which is probably out of date now but has some ideas of gaining and retaining customers anyways, the book is called 'Brand Building on the Internet' by Martin Lindstrom & Tim Frank Anderson the book was first written in 1997, but has been published in the UK in 2000"

Ray Taylor suggested, "

1. Give them one good reason to register
2. Give them zero reasons not to (e.g. too many questions)
3. Make it ultra streamlined

and to convert browsers to buyers, he continued, "Again, piece of cake:

1. Come up with the right offer (not necessarily the cheapest)
2. Make it compelling
3. Swift and immediate call to action to close the sale

But of course the reason that most sites fail is not because they don't do the above, but because they have lousy sites, poor content, no compelling call to action... etc... etc. Trees grow from the roots up"

Pete Bresser suggested an alternative, "Our technology has been used by Oxfam, The Energy Saving Trust and others to draw customers/consumers to register at web sites by incentivising them to log on, register and continue to come back by offering an intriguing pattern matching game that offers chances of winning prizes.

The idea of incentivising people to do something (i.e., a call to action) is not new and others are doing web-based things in a similar way - 24/7 for example made a BIG THING of its web-based scratch card a couple of weeks ago and PIMS-SCA is also in this space."

Craig Sullivan shared his experience, "Apart from the obvious techniques of providing an incentive for people to register, my .02c worth is that the best way is to:

1. Ensure you perform usability testing on your registration process

   Many people fall at the first hurdle here due to confusing registration formats, poor error messages, and lack of help and bad design. I'll give you one good example here and that is date formats - don't confuse people by mandating a date format that is inflexible. We encountered lots of problems with this during usability testing as we didn't accept different formats (dd/mm/yyyy and dd/mm/yy and d/m/yy and d/mm/yy etc.). We also found that error messages must explain what the problem is, which field is at fault and locate the customer at that field. Also, ensure that you clearly label mandatory fields.

2. Reduce the information you require

   Resist the temptation to include all marketing/lifestyle info that everyone wants. If necessary, separate these into a different section of registration and provide incentives to fill this info out. Don't make it a mandatory part of the registration process.

3. Use invisible registration if possible

   Take the customer through the buying process (a la Amazon) and build their registration details as part of this process (saves separate registration and purchasing activities).

4. Clear paths for new and returning customers

   Usability test the registration/browse paths (the flow) into your site for existing and new customers - this is a major area of confusion and should be tested as a unique task during usability efforts.

5. MUST DO USABILITY TESTING (repeat)"

LINKS OF NOTE:
A quick round up of interesting, funny, useful and other links gleaned from the uk-netmarketing list, office gossip and other nefarious sources...we take no responsibility should you chose to click...basically, it's not our fault. Enjoy:

• Children's Privacy Online?
• Upset with your bank?
• You Wait For Ages & Then...
• Basic Intro to Search Engines
• Pyscho Ex-Girlfriend
• Just in Case
• Chinese Love Calculator
• Learn Something Online

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