Return on Intention

As a culture, we seem to have an obsession with features. We always want it to do more and do it faster. Or, at lease thats what we think we want. 

In marketing, having more features does not mean “better”. In software, having more features isn’t better either. What more features will do is make things complicated. In marketing its hard to get across a compelling message when there are 8 pretty good messages. Good is the enemy of great. Its the same deal in software. The more options you have the more buttons you need. The more buttons you have the more crowded the UI (user interface) becomes making the software harder to use. 

One of the biggest reasons we go feature crazy is because when we are trying to grow our business, or create a new product in the market place, we tend to believe that adding one more feature will make our product stand out. Sometimes this is true, but if you do enough iterations of this processes, you end up with a mess. Sometimes finding a better, more elegant way of doing the same thing is a better proposition that trying to do more things.

The success of Palm was attributed to their resistance to feature creep. The Palm doesn’t do everything, but what it did do, it did well. This is also the reason that Basecamp is so successful. If you want full featured software, go away. If you want elegant software that works really well, buy from Apple… I mean use Basecamp (sorry, I try to control the Mac Freak within).

Whether in marketing communication, or software development, focus and elegance should be first priority. If that fails, add some new features :).

Thanks for pointing this out Mitch.

I have been asked recently by a few people “What is a landing page  and what does it do”? In a few short paragraphs, let me answer this question. I will post more about how to structure you landing pages later, but for now, here is the overview.

A landing page is the page on your website where a customer first comes in. If they just type in your domain name, they land on your home page. That would make your home page a landing page. As often as you can, use the page that your visitor lands on as a clue to find out what they want. 

Some customers will come to your site from places you have no control over, like blogs or links from friends. There is not much you can do to control this other than track these visitors, see where they came from and try to see if there is some context to give you an idea of what they are looking for. If these links push enough traffic to you, you might want to consider reworking the page to reflect you customers expectations, but other than that, lets talk about the landing pages you can control. 

Any advertising you do, traditional or digital, make sure to give a unique landing page address for each campaign, brand or channel. This allows you to not only find out where people are coming from (was it your email campaign or the print ad you have in the paper) but it also give you the ability to customize the page to reflect what the user is looking for. If you sell multiple products or services, this is a must. When a customer lands on your site, they do not care what else you can do yet. They only care about two things: 1. Is this what I was expecting, and 2. can you solve my problem. You can work on cross selling later, but the landing pages must be specific to the users needs. Don’t send all your traffic to your home page unless you only sell only one thing and advertise only one way.

In the information economy he who has the most information wins. Well, thats not exactly true. He who has the most relevant information that leads to insight wins. Trying to move forward and make positive changes without data is like trying to drive without a dash board. No, its worse than that. Its like trying to fly a plane without the instrument panel, at night, in a storm. Its a disaster. Imagine being on flight at 1:00 am and hearing the pilots voice comes over the intercom to say “Well everyone, we’ve lost power and have no visibility, but I feel like we should go left. Lets try that, I’m sure it will all work out”.  I can guarantee there is not enough tiny bottles of alcohol on the plane to make that announcement go over. We need information to make good decisions, without it we can only make changes based on our best guess, like going left and hoping it works out. 

One of the greatest things about doing business online is the ability to gain data about what is going on. Because of its nature, the internet allows us to closely track user interactions to a greater extent than any other channel. The truly amazing thing about this is not how much good data can be had, but the fact that so few companies actually use it. Perhaps its lack of knowledge, experience, budget or (I fear to suggest) care. To try and overcome some of these barriers, allow me to suggest a few simple, and cheap (or free) ways to gain better insight. 

1. Track your website usage. Tracking your website can offer you a chance to see how people are actually using your website. This means you can see how many people are showing up, but more importantly, what they are showing up for. You will be able to see what content they are reading, and what they aren’t. You can see how they move through your site and how they found you to begin with. This is the data that guides you to make the right decisions on what content to put up, and what your audience wants. Without this data, your really just guessing. 

It is true that in the past, getting this data required a software investment, and in some cases, a pretty substantial one. Alas, those days are over and you can now get a really great set of tools for free from google. Google Analytics takes nothing more than pasting a few lines of javascript on the bottom of each page of your website. Thats its, and did i mention its free? There is no reason not to use this. If you don’t already have it, go get it here. Right now.

2. Unique Contact Information. The internet has replaced the yellow pages as the number one way for people to find companies, products and services. Even the products and services that many people think are not “web” related, like plumbing. A client we work with wanted to know how many people were directed to them from their website. One of the largest revenue sources for this company was plumbing services. Not very techie is it. They weren’t getting a lot of responses from their “contact us” web form. Thats not really surprising, many people don’t use those. Many people like to call a phone number and talking to a real person. Imagine that. This companies market was no different.

To answer the question of how effective their website was at generating business, they published a phone number on their website that was different than all of there other collateral. On their trucks and service vans they have one number, on their phone book listings another. Because of this simple tactic they are able to track where people got the phone number. As it turns out, 63% of their business comes in through the web site number. Go ahead, steal this tactic. See where your customers find you. 

3. Ask. Yep, its that simple. Ask your customer questions. This doesn’t have to be a huge indevor, just ask. Think about this, when was the last time you were doing business with someone and they asked you for anything over “do you want fries with that”?  You can do surveys, paper or on the web. You could conduct focus groups if you have some extra budget allocation you need to spend. You could also pick up the phone and ask some of your customers how they are doing. Is your product / service working correctly? Is there anything that could make it better? It can take as little as three seconds to ask someone when they come into your store how they are doing. You might be surprised at what you find out. What have you got to lose, other than the opportunity to make a difference to your customers?

A lot of money is spent on experts to get a short cut to insight. This can very helpful, but consider this,  they are experts because they do this stuff over and over until they notice patterns in how people react to similar situations. They do this stuff over and over. Why not do some of that yourself and gain some expertise? It can only help. 

There are many other things that can be done to get a clear picture of what is going on. Many ways to slice the data and gain real bottom line shaping insight from it. This is where professionals can help. I hope this can at least get you started down the path of getting cleaner information so you can start to make decisions based on insight, not guesswork. When you have a good base of information, then call in the experts to help take you to the next level. 

The advice that follows pertains really to hiring or partnering with anyone, but for the purposes here we will focus on web development firms. 

There are many choices in the market place for nearly anything. Employees, stock brokers, financial advisors and of course web developers. In web development you will find usability firms, creative boutiques, consultants and many more specialties. We have been told that competition (read choices) are good for the economy, good for keeping vendors competitive in price and technology and good for the consumer. To a certain extent, this is true. Monopolies don’t help the market self regulate. The problems comes in when too many choices are introduced. In the case of web developers, it comes down to specialties. 

As the internet continues to mature and businesses find ways to leverage the internet, a multitude of specialties have grown into the field. While this is good overall because it gives us more people dedicated to expanding our understanding of the internets possiblities, technologies and applications; however, it also becomes harder for businesses to sort out what type of help they need. Due to the specialization of the web industry, not all firms can offer the same level of service across the board.

Imagine being the owner of small business trying to take that exceptionally hard leap to “medium” size. There are many things on your plate to think about. How will your operations expand to the needed size? Where are the economies of scale you can leverage? What infrastructure changes will be needed? What will it cost? How does the internet, social media and search marketing fit in? There’s a lot to do. Your going to need help. But from who?

If you hire a technology company, you will surely get great technology solutions. But will they understand usability? If you hire a creative firm you can probably get a really great looking web site. It might even win some awards. But do they understand how to leverage the internet to meet your business goals? How will you determine which skill set is right for you? How will you ensure you don’t make the wrong decision, potentially losing precision time and money? Its simple. Don’t worry about it. 

Don’t worry about it? Thats my advice? Well… Yes. Let me rephrase. Don’t worry about it YET. The internet is a fast changing environment. Its ok to make some mistakes. The best internet strategy to have is one based on failing fast and fixing fast. Keep that in mind and use it as a reason to not worry about hiring the wrong group. 

Forget the technology. This applies in two ways. First, it doesn’t matter if your developer wants to use ruby on rails, php, or .NET. You can’t compare firms by what language they want to use. Why? See this post. Second, technology is a means to an end, not and end in itself. At this point in the game, getting the strategy right is much more important. 

Forget the portfolio. Well, don’t totally forget the portfolio. Look at it, read the case studies, download the white papers and ebooks, but don’t base your entire decision on it, there is something more important. 

So what should you worry about? First and foremost, do you get along with them? Do they think like you where it matters and think different where you have less experience? Do you like them? This may sound a little touchy-feely, but I’m not making this up. The best case I have ever heard for this argument comes from Jim Collins. Jim Collins is an author among other things, and his two best know books are “Built to Last” and “Good to Great“. These are mandatory reading for any business executive in my humble opinion. In his writing, Jim makes a remarkable case for why all the important questions are “Who” questions, not “What” questions. Best of all his cases are built from massive research studies and empirical evidence, not just opinion. He sites many companies such as HP and Sony that started by assembling the right team before they even knew what they were going to do for a business.

So what does this mean to you? Start by identifying some possible firms. Ask other professionals you know, check out their websites, search google or the yellow pages (if web firms even advertise there anymore). Get your list however you can, then create a short list based on initial impression and the attitude you feel when your are on their website. Look at their work, must most importantly see what they think is important. Then, one at a time call your short list and invite them over. Sit down and talk to them. Don’t start with what you need (read “think” you need) or ask what they know. Start by talking about business in general. How is your business going. How is there’s. What challenges do you have at the business level? What challenges do they have? What books are they reading? Basically, anything that allows you to start a conversation based on anything EXCEPT why you want to hire them or your project. If you think this will be awkward, heres a tip: Arrange to meet with your perspective firm with a few people from your company. Have someone from you company run a few minutes late, so you can initiate the conversation without the pressure of “getting started”.

A good partner in business is just like a marriage, make sure you like the person (firm) first. If you don’t see eye to eye on imperative strategic  direction, it doesn’t matter how good they are at coding. If you don’t get along with your perspective vendor at a fundamental personal level, it doesn’t matter how good they can design. Your ability to work with your chosen partner is more important to the outcome of your project than anything else. Its just like dating, find a group that inspires you. Find a firm that talks and acts the way that you believe in. The foundation of the relationship should be about trust and mutual respect. If you don’t respect your chosen business partners, you are in for a rough ride. Don’t skip this step. Use the technology and specialization’s to choose between the firms you get along with, no the other way around. 

At the end of the day we are all people. We require the help and assistance of others to make it through this world. Brands are great and companies are too, but behind it all we spend our day with people. Make sure that you do business with people who you don’t mind interacting with. There is no web development shop out there that has the market corned on everything. Keep looking until you find the right group and your project will most likely turn out great. 

After some moving around of the dates, BarCamp Albuquerque 3 is now set for September 13th and 14th. BarCamp is an unconference, meaning that no one owns it, and no one profits from it. Without money, bringing in outside Keynote speakers is not possible. We can’t pay for them. This isn’t a problem at BarCamp because its all about leveraging the knowledge of the community. In other words, the attendees are the presenters.

BarCamps are happening all over the world, and they are all organized by people just like you. To get more information on BarCamp visit http://www.barcamp.org. See if there is one in your area and participate in it. If there isn’t one, why not be the one to get one going?

To learn more about BarCamp Albuquerque, check out http://www.barcamp.org/BarCampAlbuquerque, or check out some of the posts from this blog about past BarCamps here.

I received a flyer, home made and printed in black and white attached to my front door knob by rubber band a few days ago. This is a common occurrence in my neighborhood. I guess the slowing economy is making a lot of people search for different sources of income. What I found particularly interesting about this is that it was advertising two things. The top half of the flyer was showcasing a home based massage studio, but the bottom half was trying to sell a reusable shopping bag.

The headline read “Help save the environment. Stop filling our land fill with grocery store bags.” Then came some copy about how grocery store bags are not reused because they were so weak so most end up in the trash, and then the call to action was to buy a nice cloth reusable shopping bag.  All in all for a homegrown flyer it wasn’t bad. I’ve seen some “professional” copywriters do worse. The only problem with the message was the media.

I got this flyer from my front door. So did all of my neighbors. There are probably at least 350 houses in my subdivision, and they all got the flyer on their doors. I can’t help but think that all those flyer went in the trash. The flyer about reducing trash and being responsible… went in the trash… about 350 of them. That message, while unintended, was loud and clear to me.