Google Analytics Broken?
I can only get Google Analytics to work about half the time these days (I get an messagewhen trying to login that says “An Error Has Been Detected”).
This is happening for every site I monitor (which is significant). I don’t know if this is just a problem for me or if other people are seeing it as well but it’s really frustrating.
Internet retail still growing
Apparently the National Retail Association is forecasting 17% growth in the internet retail sector for 2008 to $204B in sales. We’ll see how this plays out, but it seems to be one of the few industries with a bright outlook right now.
Social features for internet retailers
At Sewell (an internet retailer of computer hardware, for those of you who don’t know), we have experimented with a few things over the past few years. We have tried showing in-stock quantities, 360 degree views (see the Phoebus, next to enlarge image), a support blog, a tech forum and more.
Like all most companies we just want to find the most ways to make our customers happy without losing money in the process. Recently we rolled out some features that I think really raise the bar for us and internet retailers - specifically, customer reviews (pretty common) and a product-specific Q&A’s for each individual product. (To see an example of the new features check out the USB to DVI - you will see a few extra tabs under the product image).
Most pure-play internet retailers claim to understand the value of social features - specifically in the context of leveraging 3′rd party sites, such as Facebook and Digg. What confuses me is why more don’t try to incorporate social features on their own site - giving shoppers the ability to communicate questions, answers and thoughts to other shoppers provides SEO benefits, lowers support costs, boost conversion rates, etc.
The only conclusion that I can draw is that most retailers don’t have the technical ability to customize their sites. My prediction is that a shopping cart provider will bridge that gap soon - having tried quite a few shopping carts out I can tell you with a pretty high degree of confidence that there is nothing available for a small business right now that is easy to use and will provide these benefits.
The expenses of incorporating social features on a website are the kind of expenses retailers should be looking for - fixed costs that provide residual benefits. If the marginal costs of maintaining the features (moderation, etc.) exceeds the marginal benefit, it obviously makes no sense to maintain - my guess would be that this would be rare for a retailer.
InvisibleShield and Social Media
A few months ago one of my good friends, Cameron Gibbs, went to work at InvisibleShield, a company that makes scratch-proof covers for iPods, laptops, cell phones, etc.
Today he sent a link to a YouTube video that they made showing just how strong their shields are - check it out. I think this is a really good example of harnessing the power of social media - Gibbs - who would have thought? 
What I really like about it is that they found something that actually made a very boring product interesting. The last thing that anybody wants to sit and watch is some video about how a little piece of plastic keeps your cell phone from getting scratched - watching the shield keep 1k pounds of weights from crushing the phone, though, makes it a little more exciting.
While InvisibleShield isn’t an internet retailer (they do have their own web store, but I have a feeling that the majority of their sales will go through distribution channels with time), it’s an important lesson for internet retailers - just because your products are boring doesn’t mean that your marketing should be!
Godaddy Always Takes 2 Clicks
Every time I want to do something on the godaddy website I get an error the first time I try and it works the second time.
This has been happening for me for at least a year - am I alone here? How must that impact their conversion rate if it happens for even a small percentage (say 5%) of their users?
Customer Service vs. Being Accommodating
We had a conversation here at Sewell the other day about the differences between an internet retailer offering good customer service and being accommodating.
Basically, some companies (B&H, Crutchfield, etc.) really go out of their way to make sure that people are always treated well - this obviously involves huge payroll expenses and training. Other companies have extremely liberal return policies (sometimes even shipping you a return label with your order) - some examples include Buy.com and Zappo’s.
To be honest, I’m not sure whether most customers prefer good customer service, or easy-to-use self-serve tools. My hunch is that a frequent online buyer would value an accommodating company above a company with top-tier customer service, but there are obviously room for both online (and some companies probably do both well).
Some people don’t “get it”
With the explosive growth of internet retail I always kind of wondered why more traditional retailers weren’t decimating their online counterparts with better websites (with the obvious advantage of better distribution).
Over the past few years we have seen more and more retailers turn to the internet and actually do a pretty good job. I would put Target, Best Buy and (begrudgingly) Walmart on that list.
The bigger question, really, is can old companies adapt and compete when all the rules change? We know from history that some can, and some can’t.
Maurice Levy is a good example of somebody who really gets the new digital era. As the CEO of the 4′th largest advertising company in the world his ability to innovate and maintain his company’s dominance in traditional media should be frightening to would-be competitors. (Note: he has been known to criticize the web 2.0 business model, but come on, who wouldn’t?)
We have a lot of examples, however, of people who really don’t get it - and when I read things like Donald Trump’s assessment of email in the work place I breathe a big sigh of relief…
Checking Adsense on a Palm
If you own a few sites with Adsense you are probably addicted to checking your earnings several times a day. One of the problems I always had was checking Adsense on my Treo - the login boxes would not load.
I finally figured it out. Here are my tips:
1) Change the browser to “Wide Page Mode” as opposed to “Optimized Mode.” It makes navigation a little trickier (you have to scroll in 2 directions), but this was the only way I could login to Adsense.
2) When you try to go back in later it will tell you that your browser is not set to accept cookies even though it is. This only happens after you have logged in once. Go clear your cookies out and reload the page - that should fix it.
3) Develop a Palm Adsense client and I will provide a free, in-depth review on this site.
Pubcon 2007
Last week I had a chance to attend Pubcon, a Webmaster World marketing convention, for the 3′rd year in a row.
As always, I learned a lot from the sessions and came home with more ideas than we could ever implement to improve our website.
While I think some people can get carried away with attending conferences, if you haven’t ever attended one Pubcon would be a good way to get your feet wet. The show is less expensive, smaller and caters mostly to smaller companies. The one thing I wish Pubcon had was more advanced sessions - more than once I wondered if the information wasn’t too basic.
Mortgages: Are Americans that Short-sighted?
My wife and I have been going through the fun process of house-shopping (some sarcasm intended). One thing that has really surprised me is that the lenders we have talked to are still pushing ARM’s and other “creative” financing options to get people to buy houses they can’t afford.
Haven’t we been through this before? Isn’t that why banks are writing down billions of dollars right now?
The last mortgage company I talked to kept trying to tell me that I should pay more for a house in order to buy the interest rate down - it doesn’t stop there - for 2 years. That’s it - pay 3% more for your house so you have a lower payment… for 2 years.
So what that tells me is that at least some people are willing to implicitly bet that their income will increase over the next 2 years despite all of the economic data that would should convince them otherwise. Oh well - hopefully it will leave plenty of nice houses on the market for good prices when the next wave of ARM’s resets…
RSS feed
