Tell me what I'm getting before you bill me

I bought a gently used car this past summer with the tricked out navigation system and ability to receive satellite radio. I spent about an hour a day in my car on my typical round trip commute and happy with NPR, the radio or my iphone for audio company. One day not too long ago, I noticed while cycling through my audio options that XM radio was enabled. I had not asked to activate it but thought 'Hey, I'm getting something for free!" Had I stumbled into one of those consumer utopian moments when you receive a subscriber based service for free? (Sort of like free HBO!) Don't ask, don't tell and hope that it continues.

I haven't spent much time in a car that receives satellite radio so I had to explore the selection of this service. I didn't have a program guide so the trial error was  hitting the next button and then trying to decide if I liked the current song playing or could interpret something from the name of the station (cryptic  titles like 'The Loft' or 'Willie's Place', the genre (Rock, Hip Hop, Country, etc.) and then the name of the song and artist. Was this station worthy of getting a button assignment on my radio? Very trial and error. I suppose I could have gone to XMradio.com and found the guide but I managed to find a half dozen stations I liked and was content.

So, you see what's coming. I got a bill for the next 3 months of satellite radio service from XM the other day. I had been enjoying a 60 day free trial. I was disappointed. Slightly angry that my 'free' service was just a trial and now the gig was up. I would have savored it more if I knew it had a life span!

So, companies out there who operate off the subscriber or freemium model, follow these guidelines for happier participants and likely a higher sign up rate:

1. Tell people up front! Don't let them stumble into it. Consumers like knowing what they get.
2. Tell them what they are getting and how to get the most from it! I spent a lot of time educating myself on the service and where to find music I liked. And there were likely other stations I would have enjoyed that would have endeared the service even more. 
3. Remind me what I'm getting during the trial period! Check in with me. Am I liking it? Did I try this feature? And create some urgency to sign up.
4. Then, bill me. Offer me something compelling to continue the service. 
5. And don't forget to check on me. Nurture me. Make me consistently happy. This is probably the most important step companies forget. 

It would work. It does work. And I'm back to NPR.

Why are we not shocked?

Today The Wall Street Journal published an article stating that Google preferenced results in Google's favor when it offered a service that matched the visitor's query. For example, if a user searched for a cloud based email service, Google Mail will be listed first. Hello?! Any search engine worth its weight in pixels preferences results in favor of the provider or product margin or affiliate bias--you name it. Why should Google, the most sophisticated search engine on the planet do that differently? And not just do it different, likely better than most.

It is probably no secret that search-based web services --auction sites, online travel sites, sales bots, etc-- all have rules running in the background which push favored results toward the top. In my experience working in online travel agency (OTA), when search results were returned for a flight there is often price parity in the results. OTAs are traditionally compensated most by airlines and hoteliers with minor contributions from purchases and service fees. And airlines, for example, offer OTAs volume incentives for selling X number of flights per route per month and get $Y in compensation. So if there are 4 airlines offering flights from Dallas to Houston at $139, you better believe they are going to list the airline first with the best incentive terms since most customers click on the first result. (Wait until Google launches its own travel site powered by ITA in 2011!)

The article concludes intimating that the EU sees this as suspect antitrust. I don't think there is much of a claim as their are alternatives in the marketplace and that this is a common practice in the online industry. If white hat companies were getting excluded from results, then there are problems. Otherwise, Google is rightfully featuring its services and will continue to reap the harvest of providing the leading search service. Get used to being pushed down the list, folks.

Is this better or is this?

A modern day scenario in desperate need of personalization: I took my wife to the optomitrist this past weekend. We've gone to this doctor/storefront for a number of years because they have a great selection of frames. The process of getting lenses (is this good or is this better?) with one's doctor hasn't substantively changed in decades. Nor has the process of selecting a new eyeglass frame with prescription in hand. Many years ago, I went frame shopping with a girlfriend (way before I met my wife) who couldn't understand why I had to try on so many frames to find the 'perfect' one. She had never worn glasses. I told her that if she had to wear the same shirt everyday, she would spend some time making the selection as well. She nodded, rolled her eyes and wandered away to shop for something else.

So back to trying on eyeglasses... The process starts with just scanning frame candidates, trying them on, and looking in a mirror. Never mind if you are terribly near or far sighted and can't see yourself clearly in a mirror without your prescription glasses. Tedious, at best.

Wouldn't it be great to introduce some modern day personalized technology to this process? Could I upload my straight on head shot to screen with some basic measurements (space between eyes, etc.) and then have the frames appear on my face. I could spin through multiple frames a minute and see how I would look. Then narrow it down to a handful to actually try in front of a mirror to check for fit and proportion. This would be great in a storefront or even better on a website. Somebody make this happen, please!

Where's the 4th dimension?

Most folks consider the 4th dimension to be Time. When we look at the online experience, depth is really metaphorical for an onscreen medium, but by 'depth,' we ask does it have gravitas or substance. By 'time,' I mean--does it make me come back. Does it have stickiness. Is there a retention strategy to make me come back and find it useful and relevant, time after time.

So, looking at the OMMA list of Web Award Finalists in their September edition, it was curious that there we no (or at least explicit) sites that had a prolonged usefulness. Most seemed to be a 'one and done' type of experience--albeit a beautiful and rich experience. It would be great to have a category in addition to Beverage, Automotive, Blogger(?!), and Financial Services which sought out rich experiences that served as an enduring resource and not just a one time, ooh-ahh experience.

Salesmen emulating salesmen

One of the cliches about online personalization is that the customer experience on your website should emulate your best salesman. This is a salesman who has met you, gotten to know you, and can, through explicit questions and inferences, tailor his or her message to you.  It is this promise that some personalization companies give to prospective clients.

As anyone who has attended a conference will attest, you talk to a lot of vendors who are eager to do business with you. I work for a Fortune 100 company so I was prime meat. So we talked--some short and some longer conversations; exchanges business cards; and I assumed there were be a follow up.

Lots of types of followup ensued. Some were quick, others taking 2 to 3 weeks. Some were personal emails; others were generic emails which were quickly trashed.  Some requests to talk or meet were so dogged, I felt like was being stalked. If this were an online relationship, I'm leaving the site and never coming back.

Here's my quick guidelines for after conference follow up. These work well for any online relationship too:

1) Get to know me. The best opportunity is the initial conversation. Ask the right quesitons and remember it.
2) Follow up. Not too fast and not too slow. And don't stalk me or we are through.
3) Offer me something of value. Why should I talk to you again? What do you have that is relevant to me?
4) Come prepared. OK, I will meet with you. When I do, let's not rehash what I already told you or someone else from your company.
5) Ask permission to nurture the relationship. Unlike a typical transactional relationship online, getting your solutiono inside my company will take time. Let's discuss how our relationship will go. I'm open and honest. If there isn't a future, it's only honest of me to say so. Let's not waste each other's time.

If you followed these guidelines while talking to me offline or online, we might have a long term relationship.

Credibility of User Review Writers

Up till recently, one could post a review powered Bazaar Voice or PowerReviews or the like to a product with a blurb and an ID like 'Dan W. Austin, Texas' And that was that. One didn't know Dan's trustworthiness any more than anyone else. Maybe because he was authentic, grammatically correct, a good speller or explicitly gave a clue to his identity that lent him credibility or trustworthiness. For example, dropping the line 'I've tried them all and...' or 'As a medical professional, I appreciate...' or the like.

So it was with some curiosity that I read a short article in Internet Retailer this month about porting Facebook info into a user reviewer's signature. See article.  The tool, from consumer ratings and reviews vendor PowerReviews Inc., enables willing shoppers to integrate their Facebook profile content, such as gender and age, into their reviews and their reviewer profiles on e-commerce sites. 

So Facebook is offering to push info to another site in addition to the pull it typically does. And, ever the opportunist, Facebook will ask if you would like to publish the user review on your Facebook page.

Would you be more likely to read a review posted by a doctor, professor or other esteemed professional? Or be biased toward a younger or older poster? One who lives in New York City or one who lives in Wyoming? One is intrigued with how far this could go and whether more than demographic information would be used.

Maybe the review would be signed like this: ".... I wholeheartedly recommend this product" -- Dan W., Austin, TX, age: 52, Computer Programmer, likes pepperoni pizza, Siberian Huskies and photography.

The article states early adopters as Diapers.com, Campmor and Abe’s of Maine but I was unable to see a treatment on these sites. Might be too new.

How much information would you amend to your review? Would it sway you the next time you read a review?  Hmmmm

Trading Privacy for Personalization

I've enjoyed the recent series of posts by IDEO on Fast Company's design site. Their recent article entitled "Why Would Trade Away Your Online Privacy? 6 Case Studies" is a terrific explanation of the trade-off with some relevant examples of companies doing this well. Personalization at most any level requires the input of some information (often provided as behavior at the least, and explicitly provided data at the most) and then we hope there is value in return. Think of a astute sales person who you have done business with over time. And that relationship, whether virtual or personal, establishes trust. To borrow IDEO's succinct explanation:

As people share more, their expectations are evolving from archiving services to personalized services that adapt to them, and even anticipatory services that nudge them in positive ways. This has resulted in services that capture people's history, filter their information, and turn it into tailored recommendations, options, alerts, and connections.

And then provides 4 tenants of trading data for personalization:

1. Make people feel safe
2. Support the moment of decision
3. Nudge, don't push
4. Don't be obtrusive

This list could be lifted from a recent Sales 101 training brochure but is well articulated for use in the online world. Sounds so basic but so difficult to execute, particularly in the online world. The article proceeds to give some great examples of new apps or sites that utilize these tenets to craft a more personalization user experience--mint.com, flickr, Netflix, FoodFlex, and Zumelife.

The web on a Hunch

Great story yesterday on NPR on Caterina Fake, the CEO of Hunch.com. Fake was also recently featured in an article in WIRED.  Hunch's 'decision engine' collects answers to seemingly random questions to help visitors answer their own queries. She states that the average number of questions answered is 120. That's an amazing level of contribution to the collection of data hunch has amassed--for free. And if participants don't give enough info in these 120 responses, the login is through Facebook or Twitter (although Twitter wasn't work when I just tried it.) I imagine that if you got an opportunity to ask someone you had never met 120 questions and poke through their Facebook page, you could infer quite a bit about someone's life!

In any case, it's a provocative business. I'm curious to learn more about their business model.

700 billion minutes a month

Wow, that's over 11 billion hours! What does this time represent, you ask? Amount of time the US population sleeps in a month? Maybe watches TV? Or amount of time Spongebob episodes occupy the airwaves?

No, it is the number of minutes the world population spends on Facebook. Per Month.

This was the most astonishing stat I heard at shop.org last week as stated by Facebook's VP of Global Sales, Mike Murphy.

Assuming that time spent on Facebook is not a measurably productive past-time, that number is a serious drag on the world's GDP. Sure, there is value in creating and maintaining relationships, in many cases over great distances, but there is no economic benefit to reading what friends had for lunch--except maybe to Facebook. Do we really have the time to spend on Facebook given the world's current economic doldrums? Can someone find a way to make that time productive and benefit people and places (other than Facebook employee stock options?)

Shop.org 2010 Annual Summit Summary

Great to attend the shop.org conference in Dallas with about 3000+ of my online colleagues. The broad themes of the conference probably have not changed that much from last year. The difference is learning from some early adopters and success stories of these media while also working on basic blocking and tackling practices to optimize the business as they go. (Here’s the official shop.org summary here and several good blog posts). Themes and thoughts below:

·        Mobile will be huge. No surprise here. Companies are still figuring out how to leverage this new medium while the mobile platforms gain more widespread adoption. Some companies are doing interesting things to integrate phones with loyalty programs at brick and mortar stores to supplement their online relationships. As people get more comfortable doing online transactions, this platform is poised for tremendous growth.

·        Social Media & Community is getting mature. Companies are still working to leverage the strength of their brands in a community environment and also measure results. There was a great keynote featuring high level execs from Groupon and Facebook. Both talked to the hyperlocal geotargeting initiatives they have underway and the power of group think or swarm activities at the grassroots levels.

·        Multichannel is still a good idea but difficult to implement. E-commerce really is Everywhere commerce. Several presentations on how to execute this well (and not so well.) Customer are coming to expect that brands offer multichannel commerce and services and don’t care about how it works on the backend. Many companies are busy revamping infrastructure and accounting practices to accommodate this customer centric-everywhere movement.

·        Personalization was an underlying theme—Certona was the “Diamond level” sponsor. But these companies are still focusing on product recommendations and not the boarder level personalization experience. (Good video preview of the future of shopping.) Really personalization is the expectation of all 3 themes above integrated and relevant to me.

·        Expo-Vendor show—really great concentration of relevant vendors, particularly those in the personalization space (Baynote, Monetate, RichRelevance, Certona, Amadesa) as well as some vendors concentrating on predictive analytics and ‘customer valuation management.’ I expect an onslaught of sales calls.

Help us personalize!

Today I received an email from Groupon--the phenomenally successful coupon service that relies on mass distribution and volume acceptance to generate business for its 'partners.' The email stated:

New: Personalize Your Groupon Deals

Now you can customize your Groupon experience. Complete your profile in 15 seconds, and we'll start sending deals that better suit you.

Sounds appealing. I like Groupon and it's ilk and I like personalization of any service to make it more relevant to me. (Let's not get stuck one the semantics of personalization vs. customization for a moment and why they offer both.) And I like that it only takes 15 seconds!  When I clicked through on the email, I got the box above asking for my gender, zip code and date of birth. 

First, gender--OK but I often look for deals for my wife (manicures, hair styling, clothing, etc.) and would this exclude them. Second, zip code--I've already self segmented stating I like in Austin, Texas. That piece of info is tagged to my user account. If Groupon is offering a compelling coupon, I'll  drive across town for a deal. That's my choice. Finally, date of birth. I've now passed into the age range where I don't proudly state my age. That seems a little personal to me. How about asking for a date range instead? And would my tastes differ from someone of a different age? All of the Groupon deals that I've seen are pretty age neutral.

My point is that it seems that Groupon is limiting the range of deals for me by 'personalizing' the offers presented to me. Sure, they may be more "relevant " to me (as determined by Groupon) but for a service that relies in part on people sharing the bounty of a good deal either through social media, gift giving, or mass quantity coupon redemption. Don't they want more people rather than higher-quality people redeeming their coupons? Does a business who offers a coupon on Groupon care about whether their coupon is dead center relevant to me or just sort-of interesting to me? As long as I buy, they are happy. (Although there are tales of too much of a good thing. Check this story on one business's challenge after offering a Groupon.) Perhaps this is brand extension so that partners get higher quality first-time customers rather than coupon redeemers who never look back after the first visit?

Which makes me wonder what their objective is. Is Groupon trying to tailor it's coupons or collect user data? Probably some of both but maybe a different tactic would have worked better. Perhaps a 'I like this deal' or 'it doesn't appeal to me' or thumbs up /down type of rating could have sufficed. Or a user survey to gather market attitudes and aptitudes. 

In any case, if you volunteer to personalize or offer the ability to customize, tell the customer the value and benefit of doing so. It may not necessarily be in their best interest-- just yours.