I’m Christian Cabuay, a Living Room CEO. This blog serves as a journal for my side businesses, software testing, social media, business trends, technology and beer. A web analyst by day and a webpreneur by night.
Zappos does it again. One common problem with online retailers who provide coupon codes is that they display the promo box asking the customers to enter a discount code if they have one. Why is it a problem?
It interrupts the purchase process
Once they reach this step in the order, the customer has pretty much committed to buy the item.
Can cause the user to leave your site
The promo box tells them to google a promo code and try their luck finding one that works. While searching, they may get distracted and abandon the cart.
Loss of $
If the customer does find an online coupon, you as the retailer will loose $ on something that most likely would’ve been sold as list price.
Zappos does a great job dealing with this. The ultimate killer is that they don’t offer coupons. They also made a page (with a great title) explaining why they don’t do so. This of course is the #1 result when searching google for “Zappos coupons”.
Welcome to Zappos.com. Many other sites out there may claim to have Zappos coupons, but the truth is Zappos does not offer coupons. Zappos.com is based on service and selection, not price.
From Zappos coupon page. If you do offer coupons you can get rid of the box and just stick the promo info in the url or add an email form next to it so you can capture addresses. Say something like, “Enter your email to receive promos”.
In my translation and design service on PinoyTattoos.com, my customers order designs that are supposed to mean something. I would say the buyer anxiety is much higher compared to ordering a typical product. Getting a wrong or meaningless tattoo would be really bad. Some customers have expressed it’s taken them years to choose what to get inked. I myself took 10 years. I’m glad I waited, otherwise I might have been stuck with a barbwire armband or cartoon character.
To reduce (probably cannot kill it) buyer anxiety, I implemented a few simple things to my checkout page.
1) Paypal Verification seal
2) Contact info including a phone#
3) A Meebo Me widget that connects to all my IM accounts
I’ve had more than a few customers call me while they were on the checkout page needing assurance of the product or the checkout process.
I just did an interview for my Baybayin site with Michelle from Philippine Script Designs via the Facebook iPhone app. We did it via email 1 question at a time rather than me emailing a bunch of questions. While it’s no Twitterview, it’s quiet effective due to the layout of the app. It’s much better than the browser version. My wish though would to be able to export the conversation somehow keeping the speech bubbles.
I attended the Web2.0 Expo last week. Here are some of the highlights:
I recently attended the Web2.0 Expo last week here in San Francisco. The theme of the event this year was “The power of less”. Due to the economic environment, companies were pushing optimization of what you already have and what you can by for $$ to save your $$$$$$$$.
The buzz this year was:
· Cloud computing
· Enterprise mashups
· Enterprise social networking with productivity/collaboration features (again)
· Customer social networking
A list of presentation PDF’s, PPT’s and video can be found here.
My favorite keynote was Open Source Administration - John Maeda (Rhode Island School of Design)
April Fools Day is a chance for business to have fun without worrying too much about ROI. That said, there’s still some opportunity to make some money off April Fools Day. You will have to subscribe to the “I don’t make money from my site, I make money because of it” philosophy (I forget who said that).
Poking fun of web celebrities works
Smellr.com did good by featuring a who’s who on the internet. Kevin Rose, Michael Arrington, Scoble and the rest will definitely write about it, Tweet, Facebook, etc. Besides harnessing the web celeb power, they also did good by not trying to sell us their products. Their catchy Web2.0″ badge looked great compared to a generic About or Contact links. Check out sll the buzz on Google.
Missed all the tech April Fools day gags? Techcrunch has a list of the best.
Google recently started testing the waters with “interest” based advertising in hopes to provide more interesting ads and of course higher CTR (click through rates). Basically, if you like MySpace themes, you can add it to your interests and adds will show up. While I don’t think many people will use this because they see ads as obtrusive or have become “Adsense blind” and it wouldn’t matter to them, I do see the purpose of it. I think this blows away any company that uses “Interest” and “User demo” based advertising as their business model such as these guys.
Privacy issues? Google answers some questions and provides transparency on the Google Blog post.
This kind of tailored advertising does raise questions about user choice and privacy — questions the whole online ad industry has a responsibility to answer. Many companies already provide interest-based advertising and they address these issues in different ways. For our part, we’re launching interest-based advertising with three important features that demonstrate our commitment to transparency and user choice.
Transparency - We already clearly label most of the ads provided by Google on the AdSense partner network and on YouTube. You can click on the labels to get more information about how we serve ads, and the information we use to show you ads. This year we will expand the range of ad formats and publishers that display labels that provide a way to learn more and make choices about Google’s ad serving.
Choice - We have built a tool called Ads Preferences Manager, which lets you view, delete, or add interest categories associated with your browser so that you can receive ads that are more interesting to you.
Control - You can always opt out of the advertising cookie for the AdSense partner network here. To make sure that your opt-out decision is respected (and isn’t deleted if you clear the cookies from your browser), we have designed a plug-in for your browser that maintains your opt-out choice.
As I was watching the Pete Sell vs Matt Brown fight UFC 96, I noticed a nice looking shirt Pete Sell and his entourage was wearing. I did what everyone who thought the same thing, Google Tokyo Five. The 1st 3 results are a band, photo blog, and a fashion blog (that has some screenshots). After tying a different keywords, I finally get to the official Tokyo Five site. Upon entering, I get an overlay pop-up showing their UFC 96 sponsored fighters Pete Sell & Gabriel Gonzaga (who both lost).
Once I “X” out of the advertisement, I’m taking to an under construction site. No photos of their products. Nothing! What a wasted opportunity. I’m sure it wasn’t cheap to sponsor two UFC fighters. People are perhaps looking to buy your products. There’s no excuse for not being prepared after a major media campaign.
Here are some basic things Tokyo Five Jeans should have done to better prepare even if they would still be under construction.
While attending college in the Philippines, I did some part-time modeling. It was probably my most eye-opening experience to date. Being a freelance model also meant that I was my own CEO, CFO, CMO, and CIO.
1) Perception rules
Modeling: As a model, it was all about how people perceived you. Casting directors didn’t care how nice of a person you were (for the most part). If you looked good, you got the job.
Business: In business, it’s how people perceive you is what matters. If you site is ugly but has great products, they may not stick around long enough to find out.
Lesson: Make a great 1st impression. Don’t release a product that’s not extraordinary.
With the business environment to fragile, it’s never been more important to setup a website. It can be done with a very low budget and fast. While it’s now totally acceptable to use free web applications such as Youtube and open source programs such as Wordpress to run your business, here are some things to watch out for when setting up a website on a budget.
1) Bad domain name
This is probably the 1st and most important thing you need to do. If your company name is not available, find out why. Find out who owns it and try to get it back if you have a legit argument to do so. If you have to register a new domain name, try to stay away from THEyourbrand.com. Not only is it confusing to customers, people may miss typing THE in front of your domain. THEcoolapps.com sounds weird. Register a .com. Stay away from .info, .cc, .biz, and .mobi. You don’t need them unless your bigime and need to protect your brand name.
2) Hosting your site on Blogger
If possible, try to host your own site on your own server. Stay away from free hosts such as Blogger and Wordpress.com. These free services are not flexible enough if you grow your business. It may be difficult to implement ecommerce and other upgrades. Also, it makes you look cheap. These sites usually have a footer message “Get a FREE site”. If your still under a buget but need flexability of a self hosted package, check out Weebly.
3) Comment spam
Watch your comments. If your articles are overwhelmed with viagra and cialis ads, it looks like you don’t A) Have the proper technology to filter spam or B) Don’t care.
4) Inconsistent brand
Don’t do the Dr.Jeykle and Mr.Hyde with your online/offline business. If you have a professional tone offline, then you need to keep that same tone online. Would you talk in slang or swear in the “real” world? There should be no surprises when you lead visitors to your website.
For over a year, I pretty much had a monopoly for my translation and design services on PinoyTattoos.com. Recently, I’ve come across a young go-getter that I’m treating as a possible threat. While I was initially a bit annoyed due to the “talking shit” nature of the callout of my business, I also found it flattering. Finally, I have some external pressure to get my ass in gear. OK, it’s perceived pressure that I’m probably overstating it as “competition” but nonetheless, I’m using the situation to be innovative. If there was no competition, it would be good to shadowbox to keep in tip top shape. Here are some things I’m exploring to react:
1. Additional products
I’ve been thinking of expanding my product line for a few months now. The challenge has been how to keep the buying experience simple since with custom art, there can be loads of options.
2. Wider profit margins
I have/had the advantage of being the only one doing what I’m doing, so I’m able to keep my prices and not go down the price slash route that’s been so prevalent during these challenging times (yuck, sounded like a newscast). The problem with my products is that it takes time for me to draw. Sometimes I’m definitely in the red for a “fully engaged” client :) So what’s a good product that has high margin? Knowledge. Create it once and that’s it.
3. More personalization
Customers want to be put up on a pedestal. With tattoos, they have to be 100% confident in what I’m designing for them is the best and will not look like anything else. The essence of tattoos is uniqueness. Even though I’ve done “strength” dozens of times, it must be uniquely fashioned towards my client.
4. Show off
I need to do a better job promoting myself. That means asking my clients for more photos of art I’ve done for them as well as testimonials.
