What we can learn from Yahoo
Yahoo is an extremely popular website, yet its stock has performed really badly. Why? Because it sells stuff (banner ads) people don’t want to buy.
Carol Bartz, CEO of Yahoo, stated in 2009 that “My fortunes are tied to my pages.” Yahoo has lots and lots of pages and lots and lots of page views. It […]
The changing role of marketing
Marketing has become everything you do. Everyone in your organization is a marketer.
In classical management thinking, marketing, advertising and branding were often separate from the product and company. This is a particular type of thinking best associated with what is called Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG), but has become popular for all types of […]
Measure negative behavior, not just positive behavior
The Web is not just another medium, another channel. More than anything it is another culture, another way of living and thinking.
If you sat a mathematics exam and got 3% would you be happy? Probably not. But those who create banner ads think a 3% click-through rate is amazing. In fact, they’d be ecstatic with […]
Web support worsens: here’s how to fix it
The way to improve web support is to develop an evidence-based continuous improvement model that measures success based on completion rates of top tasks.
A report from the Technology Services Industry Association (TSIA), “paints a disturbing picture of self-service in 2011: successful visits to self-service are continually trending downward, customers have all but abandoned online knowledge […]
The price of doing business on the Web
The Web dictates that you put the customer first. That means taking on more complexity yourself.
Last week I was doing some research on a product and I came to a website where the email contact address was like this: “sales AT blahcompany.com”. I know why they did that. They don’t want their email collected by […]
Effective web lead generation techniques
More people will sign up if you ask them AFTER you give them something than will sign up if you ask them BEFORE you give them something.
“I found that only 9% of prospects filled out a form required to access some valuable content on my website,” states Mac McIntosh, one of the leading experts in […]
OECD case study: Customers are looking for answers, not books.
Why do people read a book? Why do they watch a video? In a business setting it’s because they want to get something done. They have a task to complete, a problem to solve.
The OECD is one of the world’s largest publishers in the fields of economics and public policy. I asked Toby Green, […]
Why focus groups don’t work
The biggest problem in getting to know our customers is that they don’t know themselves.
Years ago, British Airways (BA) decided to introduce a new service for its first class passengers on long haul flights. It was basically a mini fridge full of goodies so that if you woke up in the middle of the night […]
Old Survey Methods are Broken 1
Why traditional web surveys are broken
Did you ever get a question on a website that asked you to rate, on a scale of 1 to 5, the “interactivity” of the website? And did that sort of question puzzle you? You wouldn’t be alone. This sort of question has two fundamental flaws that make any results […]
Web customers crave speed, not emotional experiences
Great websites focus on solving top customer tasks. They solve problems as quickly as possible.
“We’re trying very hard to get you something fast,” Google CEO Eric Schmidt stated recently. “Never underestimate the power of fast. Quick, quick, quick–we want to help you right now.” Speed is the essence of the modern economy. The more advanced […]
