I am a firm believer that the premise — anyone can cook — is true…   Although I must say, three of my closest friends constantly try to prove me wrong.

Cait’s idea of “cooking” is putting Cheez-Wiz on a Ritz cracker with some salami or “whipping up” Suddenly Salad or whatever that godforsaken pasta-in-a-box-WITHOUT-vegetables concoction is called.

Lynn can cook a little but she is also THE reason why frozen meals have VERY detailed, step-by-step instructions — in other words, to prevent her untimely death, she is the kind of person who reads and closely follows “first, take your nasty, little, shrink-wrapped, chemical dinner out of the box.”

Barbara, er, Cristina,  is one of those people who puts a full pot of water on the stove, sets the heat on low (if she remembers to turn it on at all) and then wonders why it has not boiled an hour later. Needless to say, when someone says “she can hardly boil water” it’s not true. “She can’t boil water. Period.”

Could they all be trained to cook? Yes. Most definitely. Everyone can cook.

Can everyone be a chef? Not. So. Much.

The thing about being a chef versus being a cook is that you’ve got to have passion — and you need to put muscle behind it. Not your biceps but that muscle the size of your fist — called the heart.

Everyone is a chef somewhere in their life. (if you’re like most, it will have nothing to do with cooking but something else that you’re ON FIRE about!) You have something. The company you own or work for has something. We all have that greatness inside of us. (Don’t cue the Kumbaya music quite yet, I haven’t finished.)

Take my dear friend, Lois Geller for instance. She’s unbelievably passionate about marketing — she doesn’t really seem to care what kind of marketing it is — catalogs, solo packages, websites, email, blogs, telemarketing, Facebook — Lois loves it all, just as long as it’s GOOD marketing.

Lois is a Twitter Addict (as in she REALLY needs a support group), corrects every Yiddish word I mispronounce (who can say kvetch as one syllable? I mean really.) and overall, drives me batty (in the best of ways.) She also had a tremendous impact on my career. Not because she owned a chi-chi-la-la agency on Madison Avenue or she wrote a lot of influential books on direct marketing but because she is one of the most creative people to walk the planet. Literally. She and her crackerjack team should be tasked with establishing world peace. They’d probably have it done by Christmas. That’s how good they are.

Lois is one of those people who has been there and done that. I swear, she’s worked at every agency, with every client in every area of the world. She has THE best stories of things she’s done for Weight Watchers, Fairmont, American Express, Apthorp Cleaners, and a bunch of others. Some of the tales are inspirational (like why she moved to Florida) and others are just plain funny — like mistakenly sending a bunch of hard-core sex tips to a bunch of diet magazine subscribers. She has a unique ability to make you laugh — cry — or want to smack her (if you follow her on Twitter.)

Then, you look at her blog — joyofdirectmarketing.com. It’s not that it’s bad — it’s just that it’s not very Lois — and truly not at all joyful.

It’s got a lot of white space and it’s quite vanilla — especially for a woman who gives out prizes (usually trolls) in her speeches. (Yes, I said trolls.)

The header looks like something that could be on any social media consultant’s site — which is not good as Lois Geller is way more than one channel. There is no picture of Lois. No red photo of her as seen on Twitter (over and over). Not a lot to see or do in the first view. A search function that doesn’t really work all that well. A calendar that does God only knows what. Limited navigation…

You get the idea. It’s the blog of a regular cook and NOT a chef, which is extremely unfortunate because Lois is indeed a MASTER chef. (And no, she can’t make anything but reservations when it comes to food either.)

It doesn’t really matter that Lynn, Cait or Barbara aren’t chefs in the traditional sense. Lynn eats things from a box, Cait eats things from a can and Barbara eats things that come in take-out containers from the latest in pretty-place-lousy-food restaurants. None of them are particularly passionate about food (although they all would sell their souls to the devil for a lifetime supply of chocolate) and the fact that they’re not up to date on the latest in molecular gastronomy is what it is… completely ok.

What does matter is that they are all passionate about other things in their lives — just like Lois is passionate about marketing and when they’re talking about those things — the things that are most important to them — they speak like chefs. (Chefs that can’t cook but chefs nonetheless.)

The case of Ms. Geller is a little different however. She’s constantly yapping on Twitter that she doesn’t like her blog and she wants ideas on how to fix it. My advice to her: embrace it like you do your speeches — pig hats and all.

A blog and a website (her website falls into a similar category) that is ALL-LOIS-ALL-DAY — complete with wackadoodle pictures, videos with her sing-song voice, successful case studies, favorite tweets, hopping trolls (ok, maybe not) and all the other things that showcase Lois Geller as the master marketer and creative genius she truly is would be so much better — and make her so much happier — than the frozen pizza site she’s got now.

In what areas of your business are you a chef and how are you portraying it to your users? It’s ok to be Lean Cuisine or Stove Top Stuffing about some things but not others — and definitely not on the important stuff.

Remember, your unique ability to highlight your inner chef is why people come to your site in the first place. You may have the biggest breadth of product line, free customization, incredibly unique merchandise or the best technical support. That’s what you need to promote. The chef in you. (Now you can cue the music — I recommend Carmina Burana as opposed to that religious campfire song however.)

P.S. If you have good examples of companies or people who show their inner chef really well, please add them to the comments, ok?

Tip: For those of you who skip to the bottom of my posts for the “meat”, here’s your tip: If you have an ecommerce site that sells promotional products, the promotional products are all about being a cook. Everyone and their brother has them. Everyone “can sell promotional products.” But if you can imprint them overnight like http://www.rushimprint.com/, that’s where you’re the chef. Your site needs to showcase your inner chef. Not your “anyone can cook” abilities.

If you start a blog, it’s inevitable that you are going to stare at a blank screen and have absolutely no idea what the hell to write about. I’ve been blogging almost daily for over four years, and I still struggle with what to write about. But here are five post ideas that can help you break the writer’s block and get over the hump:

1 – Don’t write about your products, write about how your products fit into your customer’s lives. This is the biggie. If you can master this one step, your blog will be more effective than 99.9% of the company blogs out there. I call this finding the ‘Bigger Idea’ for your blog.

For example, Kodak has a blog called A Thousand Words. Now if you’ve never visited their blog, you would probably assume that Kodak would be using the blog to promote their cameras and other products. It only makes sense, right?

Well it might make sense to you, but it doesn’t make sense to Kodak’s readers. Because if someone is interested in getting information about Kodak’s cameras, they don’t go to Kodak’s blog to get that information. They go to sites that review Kodak’s cameras, like Amazon. Or they search photography message boards to see what other customers have to say about Kodak’s cameras.

And Kodak understands this, so they instead focus A Thousand Words on discussing PHOTOGRAPHY. By shifting the focus away from directly promoting their cameras, and instead teaching readers how to be better photographers, they have made the content on the blog MUCH more valuable for their readers. Think about it, if you are in the market for a new digital camera, which post would you rather read; ‘Ten Reasons Why Your Next Camera Should Be a Kodak’, or ‘Ten Steps to Taking the Perfect Picture Every Time’?

The first one is self-promotional, the second one teaches you how to be a better photographer. Obviously, the second one is more valuable to readers.

2 – Write about the latest news and trends in your industry. Think about it, this is information that you are keeping up with anyway, so why not share it with your readers? In fact, pick a day of the week, say every Wednesday, and write up a ‘Here’s What’s Happening in the Retail Industry’. Or change it for whatever industry you are in.

This not only forces you to stay up to date on what’s happening in your industry, but by sharing that information with your readers, you are creating value for them AND helping to establish your expertise and knowledge of your space. AND by doing this once a week, you’ve already guaranteed your blog will have at least one new post up a week. Which means you’ve probably cut your blogging workload by 50-100%.

3 – Write about your employees. This one can work out well, but you have to be careful in how you do it. Believe it or not, most readers WANT to know more about the people that write the blogs they read, and by extension, you can also share some of the things that make your employees tick.

For example, on Graco’s blog, usually every Wednesday, they post a photo of one of their employees with their families, and normally with their children. You might think ‘Who cares?’, but Graco’s blog is aimed at parents, especially young parents. So if Graco can show and tell you a bit about the lives of their employees, who are also young parents, it helps re-inforce the idea that Graco’s employees can relate to their customers. That they too, are young parents that are going through the same issues in their lives that many of their customers are. It helps the readers connect with the bloggers and the company.

4 – Write about your customers. Find your evangelists, and put the spotlight on them. Do you have one guy that’s been a weekly customer for the past 30 years? Why not snap a quick picture of him when he comes in next week, and write up a post about him? Then show him the post the next time he comes in.

This shows your readers that you actually care about your customers. That you appreciate them and their business. Sure, it isn’t directly promotional, but it directly promotes the fact that your company values and appreciates the people that are keeping you in business. It also makes your readers more likely to trust what you write, and want to do business with you.

5 – Write about your readers. Does Cara always comment on your posts? Does Jim link to your blog and encourage his readers to read your blog? Why not write a post thanking them? And when you do, link to THEIR blogs and encourage your readers to check them out.

This shows your readers that you appreciate them, and guess what? It gives both Cara and Jim the added incentive to keep commenting on and linking to your blog. And it also encourages the rest of your readers to do the same thing.

Whether it’s your customers or your blog’s readers, when they are engaging in the type of behavior that benefits you, find ways to encourage that behavior in the future.

If you’d like to learn more about how to improve your blogging efforts, check out Mack’s site, http://www.mackcollier.com.  If you want to talk to him directly about how he can help your company get started with its blogging or social media efforts, you can either email him at mack.collier@gmail.com or call him at 1-256-668-8207.  Do it now.  Right this very minute.

I was there just yesterday and although I can’t say much for it as an effective disciplinary tool, it did get me to think…  But first with the story…

I was at my brother’s house with my two nephews: Anonymous and Nameless.  Anonymous is three and a half and Nameless (aka 2.0 or TWO, which stands for The Wee One) is 16 months.

I was making dinner and the boys were making cookies (read: destroying the kitchen and mainlining brown sugar.)

My brother?  Supervising, as usual.  (My brother is either extraordinarily helpful or unbelievably useless in the kitchen.  Yesterday, he was completely worthless.  Doesn’t matter which extreme we get, he’s ALWAYS bossy.)

If you’re a parent, you know that making cookies with children is an exercise in patience.  Just imagine making cookies with two terrorists-in-training, cooking paella the old-fashioned way, while having your sibling quarterback from the couch.  (He’s a real foodie so his tips are often helpful but really — do we need to use the vanilla from Mexico not the one from St. Kitts, in the kids’ cookies?  I think not.)

Every so often my brother would come in to inspect what was going on.  (Inspect means taste and offer pithy comments.)  Hearing simultaneous uh-ohs as the entire bag of flour spilled on the floor, he came in for a fourth time to offer his two cents on why his kitchen resembled my dating life.

I did what any sane woman would do at the time.  I hit him with a wooden spoon.

Yeah, yeah, I know.  In front of the kids yadda yadda yadda.  Call Child Protective Services.  It was actually a playful swat.

“YOU NEED TO GO TO TIME-OUT NOW.” Anonymous bellowed.  “RIGHT NOW.”

Cute, I thought.  He’s very cute when he’s angry.  Then I looked at The Wee One.  2.0’s arms were crossed, his chin was jutted out so far a bird could perch on it and he was tapping his left foot.  “Time Out.” He grunted.  TWO does not talk.  He can but he chooses not to.  Why would you talk when you get everything you want without it? (And yes, that’s a rhetorical question for you social media folks.)

TWO pointed to the wall.  Emphatically he repeated, “TIME-OUT.”

I looked at my brother.  “Are you flipping kidding me?” I said with my eyes.  He nodded at the boys, both of their little bodies positioned in defiance.

“There is NO hitting in this house.”  Anonymous bellowed.  Oh how I wish my brother was like my friend, Brian, who doesn’t punish his kids till he sees blood.  (Of course, Brian is a single Dad so that kind of explains why he gets to skip all these think-about-what-you-did pleasantries.)

I looked at my brother as if to say “I hope your dinner burns to a crisp” (yes, I am the picture of maturity) and begrudgingly did the Walk of Shame to the Time-Out wall.

Anonymous is diabolically smart.  I was convinced that he was sending me to Time-Out so he could finish off the chocolate chips.  He had already “snuck” more than we had left to put in the cookies.

“How much longer?” I asked after being there for about 3 seconds.

“There is NO talking in Time-Out!” The boys said in unison.  (Technically, 2.0 just did his caveman thing.)  Thank goodness, Anonymous is a redhead, not a blonde, otherwise I’d think he was in some sort of futuristic Aryan training school.

Stand and face the wall.  No talking.

What fresh hell is this and what on earth does this have to do with web marketing, you may ask.

First, two minutes is a very long time. I never remember that until I actually have to be still for two minutes.  (Yes, my yoga teacher says that if savasana was graded, I would fail miserably.)  When you are looking at your user sessions (the length of time people stay on your site) and you think that “seven minutes isn’t all that long” think again.  Seven minutes is an eternity.

Second, not only does your web site have a lot of screaming girls but it’s also really like Time-Out for a lot of your users. Huh?  What the hell does that mean?  It means that the perspective that you see sending people there is not at all what it’s like when you’re facing the wall, er, when the users are looking at their computers.

Long ago, in the days before Tealeaf (one of my all-time favorite packages), I used to do something that I encourage you to try.  It’s not sophisticated and it’s not statistically significant but if you do it, I guarantee you will learn something useful about your site.  (Yes, @wilsonellis, @zkellyq and @jamesfowlkes, I am looking at you.)

Take 10 or so random sessions that have just happened on your site.  Look carefully at what each user has done, what they’ve seen and how they’ve exited.  Look at the first page they entered in on and then follow, page-by-page, what they clicked, trying to figure out what they did and where they went next.  Act like one of those CSI guys trying to recreate the crime.

It won’t take you long before you start envisioning things in a different way.  You might find that the person exited because they were on a dead end.  You may see that they got stuck on a page because there were no action buttons to click.  You might find that your navigation disappeared when it shouldn’t have or that things just all of a sudden got very confusing.  No, you won’t always find what or why they left but you will share their experience of your site and how it actually works in practice, not just in theory.

No matter what, you’ll see things from an entirely new perspective.

P.S. I am completely aware that #2 (not to be confused with TWO) above sounds cheesy but I really do encourage you to try it.  In the ole’ days (when I was walking uphill to work, both ways, in raging blizzards, with no jacket and only cardboard on my feet), those kind of duct tape and spit things were the only kind of “usability studies” our clients could afford.  I can’t begin to tell you how much I learned from doing that kind of stuff.  You’ll know what I mean once you do it.

P.P.S.  If you’d like to comment on my brother’s parenting skills, I am more than happy to give you his e-mail address so you can write him directly.  Being the “bad influence” that I am, he doesn’t much listen to me and when I say “much” I mean NOT AT ALL.

NOT 2001.

You may wonder why I am telling you this…

Your “Choose Your Country” entry page?
Very 2001.

Actually VERY 1998.

I know you are a big retailer and all so maybe you’re just not paying attention to what’s been going on in the web-world but there are software packages — even free ones — that will automatically “choose the country” so the user doesn’t have to. Shocking, I know. What will they think of next? Little phones that can access the internet or something?

I guess if you prefer you can just stay like Burger King. They employ the same lame-ass strategy you do except instead of choosing from seven countries, they have a honking big map broken down into four sections. It’s been proven over and over that people just LOVE world maps.

According to my buddy, Dave Cleveland, Obama was on Letterman last night explaining that he was black before he won the election so maybe you just want to be the same way you were before Al Gore invented the internet? If that’s indeed the case, I think you’ve got it covered with your Shopping “Bag” as opposed to that crass things customers know as a “cart.”

Love,
Amy

P.S. Oh, and while you’re having your customers do all the work, you might want to come up with some more esoteric categories in your navigation — I mean really, EVERYONE KNOWS the difference between Tiffany Jazz, Tiffany Legacy and Tiffany Swing. If you really want to be mysterious, you are going to have to try much harder. Like I said, it’s almost 2010. We be smart.

On the 2.2 days a year that I am not traveling, I live in Vermont. My nephrologist is in Seattle.

If I moved to whatever the furthest place in the world is from Seattle, my nephrologist would still be in Seattle. Meaning that I would travel from anywhere on the planet to see him. I went through over three dozen kidney doctors before I found him. I saw the top guys in the world and I settled on him. Why? Two reasons. (1) He’s unequivocally one of the most competent, knowledgeable, skilled doctors I have ever had and he fits; and (2) He consistently exceeds my expectations.

The “fit” part is important and often underestimated. If you don’t like your doctor, no matter how much any person or report tells you that they’re the Best/Top/Most Published/Most Honored/Least Sued Doctor, dump them and find someone else. Period.

The expectations part is a bit more complicated. The thing about expectations is that one person has to set them first. Both parties can have expectations but one person needs to be in charge and manage them. (Yes, I know, all the “it’s about the conversation” types think both people should have equal expectations. What-the-flip-ever. Some stuff sounds a lot better in theory than it actually works out in practice.)

When I first met, Dr. A., I was over an hour late for my appointment. (That was not intentional. I get lost in a paper bag.)

I cycloned into his office as I normally do and after exchanging a few pleasantries (the guy gives succinct new meaning) I said something to the effect of “look, I can’t commit to a man. There’s no way in Hell I am committing to a machine 3-4 times a week. You need to figure out how to solve my problems without a transplant or a dialysis machine.”

He looked at me quizzically and then nodded at his nurse. I recognized the nod as it’s one that I have seen often — it’s the “make sure to request a drug panel on her blood work lab sheet because this girl is obviously smoking crack” nod.

But guess what? He did it. EXACTLY what I asked him to. He did something that some of the most renowned doctors at the most prestigious hospitals in the world told me was outright impossible. Yes, it’s true. A guy who calls his pocket calendar his “BlueBerry” — yes, blue, not black, because it’s got a blue PAPER cover — solved problems that were supposedly unsolvable.

It’s the same thing with your web site. When a user comes to your site for the first time, you set their expectations. The first view of your site (literally — the first view — the first screen) tells them what they’re supposed to do there.

Is your site a library or is it a bookstore?

Are they supposed to buy or are they supposed to browse? (Remember, any time the user exchanges their personal data with you, it’s a transaction — there’s a market value to their info — so even if you’re trying to get a lead, you can still have a “buying” site.)

Is your search in the upper righthand corner or is there a perpetual cart or lead form there? (A perpetual cart is a cart that stays with you throughout the buying process. You can use them for leads too.) One tells you to buy. The other tells you to browse.

If you have a blog, is there a way to contact you for information about your services or do you bury that somewhere below the fold?

Do you have an action bar or just navigation? An action bar tells the user what things they are supposed to do on your site (sign up for your FREE newsletter, order from a catalog, check out the web specials/overstock/clearance items.) Navigation tells them where they can go, er, in a nice way. (The best, for any site, is a combination of the two.)

Do you have “click here now” buttons or do you just assume that users will know where/how to click? (Hint: they won’t.) Do you have a home link or do you believe that users know to click on your logo to get there? (Hint: they don’t.) Does the top view have just one huge visual and/or a bunch of text or are there are a lot of things to do or look at? (Hint: the latter works best.) Do you ask them to raise their hand (i.e., fill out a survey/poll, download a white paper, sign up for a webinar) or do you just hope they will? (Hint: if wishes were horses….)

You have one chance to make a first impression.

The first screen on your site often determines your outcomes. First screen. One chance. One first impression.
What kind of expectations are YOU setting for your user? What are you telling them to do?

So, about a month ago, I got bitch-slapped. Literally.

Yes, I know, for some of you that was the best thing you heard all day monthyear.

To make a long story short, I was in the airport. There were two soldiers (in uniform) in front of me and a very smelly (read: hadn’t showered in weeks,months, years) woman in back of me.

As I always do, I thanked the soldiers for their service to our country. No, I don’t want to get into a political debate about whether this was right or not – I don’t have enough readers to lose any of you – so I am just going to say I have traveled all over the world and I know firsthand how incredibly lucky I am.  (Whatever your political beliefs may be, you know it too.  We are unbelievably fortunate.) Personally, one of the many things I am most thankful for is the folks who valiantly protect our rights & freedoms.  The least I can do is express my sincere gratitude.

The lady (and I use that word VERY loosely) in back of me heard what I said and went into a loud, violent tirade.

I ignored her. She got louder, repeatedly tugging at my elbow, all the while screaming about dead babies and murdering innocent civilians blah-blah-blah.

The boys (look, they really were kids) had beet-red faces and kept staring straight ahead, as if they were frozen. Mortified.

“I’m talking to you – YOU – look at me – YOU look at me now.” She tugged once more at the back of my shirt – hard enough that you could hear it snap – so I whipped around and looked at her square in the face.

Ms. Hippie-Crunchy-Granola was frothing at the mouth. Quite literally. She was VERY angry, emphasis on VERY.

I was about to say something snarky and she hit me.

Smacked. Me. Right. Across. The. Face.

As much as I’d like to say that I brought out my inner Gandhi or called upon the Nelson Mandela who sits on my shoulder, the truth is it took every ounce of control to not pummel Ms. My-Armpit-Hair-Is-Dreadlocked.

Basically, I had two choices. One (and admittedly, the more appealing of the two) was that I could beat her to a pulp. In my brain, this was unequivocally the most pleasurable choice short-term but long-term, it was fraught with negatives. Let’s not kid ourselves. No matter who started it, if I retaliated, I’d be the one who’d get sued and even though my lawyers (who eat raw steak & mainline Redbulls for breakfast) would decimate her in court, I’d end up with a lot of legal bills. (And let’s not pretend that even though the judge would order her to pay, she would. Hell, the woman could obviously not even afford deodorant.)

The second choice was that I could call for Security. There were at least three dozen witnesses nearby and twelve intimately involved in this soap-opera who’d vouch that the Chiquita was mentally more twisted than a pretzel. If I played my cards properly, not only would she miss her plane and get hauled away in cuffs (insert diabolical laugh here) but she’d get blocked from this particular airport for a minimum of six months.

So, what did I do?  Screamed bloody murder like a five-year old, pig-tailed girl who just had her lollipop stolen by the boy she kinda-sorta-liked, of course.

And how, praytell, does this all tie into the internet?

Easy.

Your web site is filled – and I mean jam-packed-overcrowded-with-more-folks-than-a-Mexican-bus – with screaming girls.

You may be thinking to yourself: “Screaming girls? Amy’s obviously two sandwiches short of a picnic today.”

But whether or not you want them – you have them. And just like airport security didn’t really want to deal with me and the Commie-Mommy, you don’t have much of a choice because really, as we both know, they just get louder when ignored.

Yes, it’s true. Your users are wailing on your web site right this very moment. They are crying because they can’t complete their order… They’re sobbing because they can’t find what they want using that dreaded thing you call “text search,” which would be more aptly named “Can’t Find”, I might add. They’re whimpering over error messages that refuse to be cleared; forms that can’t be filled; drop-downs that do anything but drop; “enlarge this” visual boxes that get smaller, not bigger; pops that won’t close; and live chat that appears to be, well, dead.

So, what do you do to identify these blubbering bimbelinas? How do you soothe these sniveling, squalling Suzys and yammering, yowling Yvonnes?

Here are three tried-and-true things you can do:

First, look at your bounce rate. If your bounce rate is high, you’ve got screamers. (Hint: they are likely either screaming “I should NOT have gotten here in the first place” or “I hate what I see. You should have shown me something better.”)

Second, look at your exit rate. The only acceptable exit pages are confirmations and thank you pages. If you’ve got a lot of exits in other places, you’ve got screamers.

Third, look at the time spent per page. Lately, there have been a couple articles floating around the internet that time spent is a useless metric. Just because you don’t know how to measure it oh-so-lovely bloggers, it means it’s useless? Yeah, not so much.

While I agree that AUS (average user session) is not always helpful, AAUS (average active user session) can be INCREDIBLY beneficial to measure.

Every site – yes, even yours – has an acceptable number of drills (or page views if you can’t calculate drills) for every minute that the user spends there. If you see that a user is struggling on a particular page, chances are that they are screaming – screaming for an action button (or other action directive)… screaming for better navigation… screaming for instructions on how to get into (or out of) their cart… screaming for how to get to the next step… and so on.

Sounds like a lot of work? It’s actually not. Try it. Look at your top 10-15 exit pages now.Take out the good ones (in other words, the acceptable exits) and then delve into the rest one-by-one. If one of your biggest exits is a lead form, try to identify where the screamer is hiding. Are there BIG, bold call-to-actions? Is the form easy to fill out? You should be using server calls (or more advanced sniffers) on form and checkout pages so you know EXACTLY where people are abandoning. Are you asking irrelevant questions? (Remember, relevancy is determined in the mind of the user.)

If the user is abandoning on a product page, are they getting the item into the cart? Are there enough Buy Now/Add To Cart buttons? Do you address availability near the photo on the first view? Do they know when it will ship/how fast they can get it? Are you using tabs in the middle of your product pages for more details and user reviews? (A lot of companies find that users get “stuck” in tabbed formats and that users much prefer the spilled out format as seen on Amazon.) Are you giving away too much information on a product page? Is it a coming-soon product? If so, can you preorder it? Are the products out of stock? Do you have an “I Wanted This” button? Sometimes folks lose people because they tell them too much – this happens a lot with backordered products and with payment choices. If you tell someone that an item is on backorder before they add it to their cart, you may never know whether they wanted it or not. If you give them a bazillion and one ways to pay before they’ve even said they want the product, they may get lost in setting up a pay-you-later account and never come back.

The whole process is fun.  ALMOST as much fun as watching them haul off the Liberal-Run-Amok. Funny thing is that she had a chance to make me look like the Bad Guy but being the sharp-thinker she was, she shoved the TSA guy. If only we could send her type to the front line. We wouldn’t have to worry about casualties. Yes, I know. But some of you were going to send me missile-mails anyway.

I recently delivered a keynote address at one of those chi-chi-la-la invitation-only conferences. Just before my speech, this guy, Jack, in the second row calls out, “I hope I learn something today.”

I must admit, before I slam him to high-heaven, that Jack’s a decent guy. He runs a privately-held company that’s worth a little over a billion that he built himself with virtually no seed money. He sold it to a VC firm in the late 90’s and bought it back two years later because he didn’t like what they were doing with it.

He’s been to over a dozen of my seminars and he’s FINALLY starting to think that this internet thing may stick. (No, I am not kidding.)This is a guy, who until a couple years ago, had a secretary print out his email three times a day so he could scrawl all over it and return it to her for typing up and sending.

“I mean last time I implemented one of your ideas it was a bomb. Did NOT work whatsoever.” Jack added with a smirk.

What is it with these people? I mean, bring a voodoo doll or something but not right before a speech. Good grief!

Just out of morbid curiosity and basically because I just couldn’t resist, I retorted, “What did you test?”

“Abandoned carts. The program was worthless.” He all but shouted.

Nice buddy, real nice. The flipping topic of my speech was “38 Sure-Fire Tips for Increasing Your Conversion” and Jack The Ripper was attempting to destroy my credibility.

So I started asking him questions… One after another… like an FBI interrogator.

What did you mail? When did you mail it? What was the subject line? Was it personalized? And so on and so forth. It took me eleven questions but I finally found a kink in his armor.

“How many did you mail?” I inquired, not really noticing that EVERYONE in the room was listening intently.

“Seven.” Jack exclaimed triumphantly!

“Seven what? Seven thousand? Seven million? ” I asked.

“No, just seven.”

I burst out laughing. I thought he was kidding. He wasn’t. He was dead-as-a-corpse serious. You could have heard a pin drop.

“How could you mail seven and think that you had any kind of statistical validity or that you’d get any results at all for that matter?” I shot back. “I’m not trying to be rude here (I really wasn’t) but are you smoking crack? I mean, you have a $350 average order and you only mailed SEVEN PEOPLE!

If you were lucky, four of them actually received the email which means 1-2 people might have clicked on it – MAX. How exactly did you expect to calculate a quarter to half an order? And just for my information, how long are you leaving your cookies open and at what point do you expire your carts?”

The host was getting anxious about starting on time, so I told Jack we’d finish the conversation after my speech and we did. I’ll spare you all the gory details, but the discussion got VERY heated before Jack got the point. In his defense, this happens with a lot of my clients.

Online testing is difficult.

I will be the first one to admit that. It’s not at all like offline testing. There are many more variables that you have to fit into the equation, the data can be suspect, all sorts of things can impact it, and so on and so forth.

Plus, people tend to do one of two things. They either look at data that is unreliable or inaccurate …. or they use data that is good but they read it incorrectly. Even worse, a tester may often have such a strong theory going into the whole thing that his judgment is clouded. (It took me a long time to become objective.)

8 Tips for Improving Your Online Testing

1. Know whether or not you have a large enough sample size to test. Jack sent just seven abandoned cart emails and then threw out the program because it “failed miserably.” The guy built a big business so it’s obvious that he’s not taking the little yellow bus to work, but he’s not alone in his poor testing decisions. I see literally hundreds of people make the exact same mistake (although mailing only seven was definitely the worst). If you’re going to test something, you need to have significance. A test that ends up with 32 inquiries on one versus 33 inquiries on the other should most likely be thrown out or retested.

2. Do not test anything within 10 days of a major holiday. That’s 10 days before and 10 days after. If you are testing something seasonal (i.e. Christmas, especially) and you simply MUST test, do as many things as you can to isolate everything except a solo variable.

3. If something major happens in the world, throw out the test results. They’re more than likely going to be garbage. If you are www.nbc.com and you are doing a big test of your store, don’t run the test during the night of TheBiggest Loserfinale and think it’s going to accurately reflect what’s going to happen the rest of the year because it won’t.

4. Make sure to separate your online-sourced users from your offline-sourced users. This will make a huge difference. You don’t necessarily need to have an equal percentage of each but you do need to segment them so you can track them separately. Same with e-mail folks — no e-mails versus e-mails must be a segment.

5. Make sure the TOD (time of day) and DOW (day of week) is the same. Many times people come up to me and say — “I did so-and-so test and this was the clear winner.” When I look at the results, I realize that one test was conducted on Monday-Wednesday and the other was Thursday-Sunday… Or perhaps one was conducted from 6 am to 6 pm and the other went from 6 pm to 6 am. That’s not a test, especially on the Internet where time makes such a big difference.

6. Considering testing the same variable more than once. From an online perspective, backtesting the control is almost always a must.

7. Make sure the test is an exact A/B split. You can’t test email creative and landing pages all at once and expect to come out with valid results. Separate your variables and test them one at a time.

8. Most important, watch your metrics carefully. One of my clients recently threw out a 3-month test because there “weren’t more orders at the end.” After closely examining the results, I realized that although there were fewer completed orders, there were over 70% more attempted orders with the test version than with the control. After a retest, we found that the new landing pages were getting a lot more people to ATC (adopt to cart) which, with a good email follow-up process was instrumental in increasing their overall revenue!

Yes, you read that correctly. I want a detailed explanation from a certified optometrist that I don’t need contacts, glasses, or Lasik.

I can see just fine. Why?

I get at least a dozen comments a week about our sites being uglier than a dog’s breakfast. Most of the folks who write give me the benefit of the doubt and think maybe I am “just too busy” to know what our designers are doing.

Others think we are testing ugly (as if this is a metric that needs measurement.)

Nobody ever seems to think that what we have is exactly what we want and/or need. (Ok, it’s not at all “exactly” but it IS pretty close, as unfortunate as the case may be for our creative team.)

Here’s the thing, folks… I know our sites are not going to win awards for aesthetics and the truth is, I COULD NOT CARE LESS.

I am not in this business to have pretty sites. I am in this business to make money.

Money comes from action.
Money comes from people clicking, calling and going to the final step. (The one wherefreshly-minted green bills are involved.)
Our sites are ugly but they do exactly what it is that they need to do. (And in a qualified way to boot.)

If you want to be REALLY successful online, you need to take your ego out of the equation.
No, you don’t need a site that looks like mine. (I am extreme, mostly to prove a point.)
But you do need a site that makes it clear for the user — NOT for you, for the USER — theyneed to know what you want them to do and how they should do it… and do it NOW (as in right this very minute!)

For those of you that like it ONLY when I write something “concrete” and send me missile mails any time I “try to act like Chris Brogan or Seth Godin” (which roughly translates to anypost whereI don’t list at leastthree tips), the ONLY thing you should take away from this is that you need to ask for the order/inquiry on EVERY VIEW of EVERY PAGE in AS MANY QUADRANTS and in AS MANY WAYS as you possibly can. Granted, it’s not pretty but it really does work.

Why? Because aesthetics really don’t matter as much as people think-hope-wish they do. The brain thatdoes the work online cares about security and speed. In other words, you could have the prettiest site in the universe and get no inquiries or orders because it doesn’t appear”safe.”(In the brain, that translates to a place where it’s ok for you to spend time.) The key to a good website isn’t being sexy, it’s being functional. (Read: action oriented.)

If you’ve gotten that down-pat, here are two BONUS tips,
just for you –

1. You are not your user. Just because you like something does not mean that your user will. Just because you do it one way does not mean that your user will do it the same way. You need to get out of your brain and into theirs. First place to look: your exit pages. The only truly acceptable pages are confirmation and thank you pages. If a user is exiting some other place, it means you didn’t do your job correctly. You weren’t clear about setting your expectations and so they didn’t live up to them.

2. Just because someone says they hate it, doesn’t mean they don’t respond to it. (The best way to figure this out for yourself is to spend some time at some adult content sites — no, not looking at the “content” per se, but the execution.) People say they hate billboards but for some companies, they are one of the most effective forms of advertising. People say they hate pop-ups. But do they work? For many, it’s the best tool in their arsenal. What actually works and what people say they like are often two very different things so try testing things that folks “hate.” (And yes, you MUST give the test your very best shot — as if your job depended on it. If you set the test up to fail, you should be shot.)

All purchases are still emotional.

The first book I ever read on direct marketing was Successful Direct Marketing Methods by Bob Stone (today authored by Ron Jacobs). This valuable book lists the human wants and needs that drive every decision. Those wants and needs are a part of human nature, and that’s something that has never changed. These emotional drivers fall into two categories: 1) the desire to gain and 2) the desire to avoid loss. Here are the lists:
The Desire to Gain

• To make money
• To save time
• To avoid effort
• To achieve comfort
• To have health
• To be popular
• To experience pleasure
• To be clean
• To be praised
• To be in style
• To gratify curiosity
• To satisfy an appetite
• To have beautiful possessions
• To attract romantic partners
• To be an individual
• To emulate others
• To take advantage of opportunities

The Desire to Avoid Loss

• To avoid criticism
• To keep possessions
• To avoid physical pain
• To avoid loss of reputation
• To avoid loss of money
• To avoid trouble

Why do you need to know these? Because whatever you sell, your online (or offline for that matter) product description needs to say more than the size, shape, weight, materials, price and other features of your product. It needs to translate those features into the emotional benefits they deliver to the user.

When you don’t spell out the benefit, your shoppers have to mentally make the connection, and you don’t want your buyers thinking.

Do you sell Bluetooth headsets with extra fit adjustments? Say how they are “so comfortable you’ll forget you’re wearing them.”
Are you offering a floor care cleaning product that’s easy to use? Tell your buyers they will “hardly lift a finger to keep your floors the envy of the neighborhood.”
Does your catalog include work safety glasses? Tell your shoppers they can “look sporty — even on the job.”
If your product or special offer will save money, say so. If your product is easier to use and will save time, say so. Your product description needs to create a vision of how happy, safe, comfortable, proud, attractive or other way your product will make your buyer feel. It’s a competitive world. So building an emotional connection to your product is the best way to stand out from your competition, whether you sell B2C or B2B.

Be sure to tell your buyers what you want them to do.

Once buyers have learned how your product will fulfill their dreams, you can’t assume they will take action unless you tell them to. Do it quickly and clearly.

• Buy now.
• Place your order now.
• Choose your favorite color and buy now.
• Click here to buy now.
• Find your size and buy now.
• Call now and let us help you find the best model for your needs.
• Imagine how you’ll feel and buy now.
• Call now for bulk pricing.

The easier you can move your shoppers from looking to buying, the more you sell and the more money you make. This ease comes from having an effective e-commerce site AND creating an emotional vision for your shoppers. It’s all just human nature, and it will never change.
Susan Fantle provides B2B direct response marketing copywriting services through her company The Copy Works and is the voice of B2BMarketingSmarts. Contact her today! Now! Right this very minute! {Amy: Yes, that last part was from me. We all know I LOVE asking for the order!}