e-Marketing: examples of good and bad practice

no way out

2012-02-14T10:15:00.001Z

I have already posted two entries in this blog about bad practice on the Blackpool Football Club's website [see Register - just to check availability? and just the ticket. not ] - and here's another which follows on from those. This morning, I got the following email:

As it is of no interest to me I decided to 'unsubscribe' and so clicked on that link, which took me here:

... where I entered my email address and password. But it was rejected ...

... so I clicked on the 'get new password' and got this email:

So I put that password into the form and got:

If anyone at Blackpool FC [for it is in their name] or Ticketmaster [who seem to run the system for Blackpool FC would like to tell me how to unsubscribe from something I never wanted in the first place please let me know. Oh ... and by the way, if anyone from either organization is reading this: you are now [probably] breaking the law in this issue.

email: instant communication?

2012-02-12T10:47:00.003Z

I have already posted an entry on this subject [email - [still] the poor relation of customer service?] - and that was back in 2008 when I asked the question. Well, it's now 2012 and 02 [they are a teleCOMMUNICATIONS company] still want me to wait up to two days to respond to an email.

Why? Phone calls can be answered immediately, why not emails?

It gets worse for 02 in this entry however. I needed to conatct them because I had exactly the same problem I posted about in oh oh oh oh O2. Oh dear.

no charge?

2012-02-05T16:43:00.000Z

I wanted a mains charger for my sat nave system - and so put the relevant term into Google. Top of the ads was one from chargers4u.co.uk - which means they had bid most to be there. So I clicked on that link and was taken to the site - see below ...

£2.99 seemed to a fair price, so I thought I would order one. However, when I had added the order to my basket I clicked on the 'delivery and account information', but guess what? They wanted my delivery and account information - there was nothing about how much the delivery was going to cost me. And to get that information I would have to complete the form shown below.

So I went to ebay where I bought the same product for £2.49 including delivery.

I would file this example under 'there is still work for me'. Good e-commerce sites gave up on this prcatice years ago - if, indeed, they ever started to doing it. I was telling organizations about telling customers the full cost of products in 1997. And yet companies still do it. Ho hum ...

login or signup to download your identity

2012-01-25T19:59:00.000Z

I was looking to access a report and was presented with this option. Now, I have read how this facility has increased access to password-protected sites because folk don't have to register on the site but 'sign in' using their Facebook membership. But take a look at what I would have to give up for that convenience:

1 Access my basic information. Well, no biggy you might say, this is all available on a personal Facebook page - errr, yes but mainly only to 'friends'.

2 Access to my profile information. Yep, all the stuff folk can make private from 'non-friends'.

3 Post to Facebook as me. I'll say that again: Post to Facebook as me. Yes, these folk can go to any Facebook page they like and say things and they will be attributed to me.

Needless to say; I didn't 'login with Facebook'.

no news is bad news

2012-01-12T11:52:00.003Z

Here's another entry where I am criticising an organization that does some good work - but lets itself down on its website. This is their 'media center' page:

I tell my students [and I say so in my book] that you should not have any element of your website that depends on being frequently updating if you do not have either the news or the commitment / resources to keep it up-to-date [the same applies to any and all aspects of social media].

What makes this worse is that it is the media page of a media company.

bad language?

2012-01-03T11:21:00.001Z

In my book I advise against using flags to denote languages - but this one is a doozy. This is on the website of a university in the UK - but the US flag is used for 'English'. If you are about to say it refers to 'American English' ... don't. My colour and behaviour both have Us in them. Similarly, French is spoken as a first language in many other places that don't fly the French Tricolour. And are these six the most-spoken languages in the world? I would have thought Spanish would be in there somewhere [it is close to be the most spoken language in the USA].

In addition - around this time of year I am always on the lookout for out-dated copyright notices - I was going to use Tesco as an example this year [their notice still says 2011] - but I'll use this one instead ... only five years out.

Biased advice?

2011-12-30T09:43:00.002Z

As I'm from a sales background I know all about associatedselling [yes you youngsters, Amazon did not invent the concept with " peoplewho bought this book also bought … "] – but in my book and seminars Iemphasise the point that for this to be effective online, experienced sales staffmust be involved in the choice of 'associated' products [it's all part of mywebsite 'dream team' issue].

So when I was looking for a new pair of Levi's, I was a surprised at Debenhams' recommendationsfor associated sales for the jeans I was looking at.

You will note that the model showing off the jeans iswearing a pair of baseball boots – and yet the recommended shoes seem to be twopairs of 'dress' shoes and one that might be described as 'casual'. A quickscan of the other Levi's on offer revealed that the vast majority of models arewearing 'trainer'-type shoes with only one in 'dress' shoes. I should disclose thatI am firmly in the no-dress-shoes-with-jeans camp, so that might influence mehere.

More objectively – I have to assume the Levi's are modelled in what is considered to be themost appropriate footwear for the jeans? So why the three shoes shown here?Could it be because they are on offer and that 'show on-promotion shoes' the 'default'setting for all types of trousers at this time of the year? OK, so I could livewith that for one or two recommendations – but why not include the actual shoesshown in the jeans picture? After all, if I were in a store and talking to asales person would they try and push associated sales that are not reallysuitable for the primary product? They might … but only if they are no good attheir job and if they don't want to see you back in the shop again.

On the plus side – well, partial plus is – that in theproduct description of the jeans the height of the model is given along withthe size of jeans being worn, so giving buyers a better idea of the size andfit of the products. Why 'partial' plus? Not all jeans' descriptions includedthis information – including the 501s I was looking at.

not that ... but this

2011-12-17T16:18:00.002Z

For reasons I won't go into I was looking for an early Toyota MR2 - that is, a Mk1 [Mark One] MR2. Amongst the pages that appeared after a search was this one from Kelkoo.

You will note that it is for a different car.

So who decided that Kelkoo's on-site search should present this return - and why? OK, so I worked in sales and I know that if a customers asked for a black shirt and if you don't stock them you might suggest a dark blue or dark brown one and maybe the customer will take a look at them. But this is not a shopping experience, it is a specific search for a specific product. Ho humm.

listen: I said we are closed !!!

2011-12-13T10:21:00.004Z

When researching a new assignment for my e-marketing module [yes students, I do put some thought into these things :) ] I was looking at some online jewellery stores - and came across this one in Kuala Lumpur [the module is also delivered in Malaysia].

OK, so I do not know why this business is closed over - and before - the Christmas period. There could be a perfectly valid reason - though it is unlikely to be 'Christmas' as Malaysia is an Islamic country. Perhaps, historically, it is the quietest business period of the year and so they take their holidays in this time - though it does make a mockery of the 24/7/365 nature of online-shopping. Anyhoo, the owners have decided to close it, but that is not the point of this entry - it is the way they tell customers about it. Or should I say, potential customers. Or maybe I should say never-to-be-customers?

Unless you were already a satisfied customer who had made previous purchases, would you return to this store in the New Year? Why not explain the closure, or just have a softer message rather than this one which is the equivalent of slamming the door in customers' faces?

jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none?

2011-12-11T15:43:00.000Z

I'm back on my hobby-horse again - you know ... the one about techies developing websites. This is a website I came across as a link at the bottom of another website [if you own a website you NEVER have a 'designed by' link on your site]. Here's the navigation bar from the designer's site:

Yep - these folk are experts at all of these things. It is my experience that few - and I mean very, very, very few - can do all of these things. Of course, it might be a biggish company employing staff with this range of skills - but the content of their site suggests otherwise. In other words, the same people who handle the hard- and software issues also design websites. Which means they might be able to produce a website technically - but can they produce a website that can meet the online objectives of that organization? And do they even ask what the objectives are? And do they have the marketing skills and/or qualifications to help the org realise those objectives? In my experience, the answer is no. And so their customers get ineffectual websites - oh, they might look nice, but do they do the job they are there for? [and if you think I am the only one who feels this way, take a look at the quote from James Dyson in my review of the Stranger's Long Neck]

I have removed anything that might identify the company concerned - but this is the page you get when you click on the 'web design' link.

Notice how it makes no mention of marketing, communications or content - but instead concentrates on ASP, HTML, VB, database [there should be a hyphen in here as it is a compound adjective] driven sales, Flash animation and dynamic sites. I don't know what some of those are - so will your average business person? And do they need to? These are technical aspects of a website that might [a big might, regular readers will know my opposition to Flash] help it meet the needs of its visitors, but the business person doesn't need to know about the behind-the-scenes IT aspects of the site. Ho hum - it is developers like these that keep me in consultancy work.

Footnote - I cover this same issue all over the place, but the latest is on websites made easy.

Google on message?

2011-12-06T09:47:00.001Z

I got a leaflet in a Sunday supplement last week - well, I say 'leaflet' ... think more 'small brochure' - and yesterday I saw the same promotion featured in an ad in The Times newspaper. It is for Google's good to know campaign.

I find the whole thing very interesting - on a number of levels. I suggest you spend a few minutes on the site before considering my comments.

On a marketing level: telling the 'person in the street' that Google [still?] does no evil and how it [Google] helps them live their lives?

On a content level: I find my students struggle a little with things like IP addresses [they're marketers not techies, see what is it with me and IT?] and yet the promotion uses such terms - though yes, it is in simplistic terms.

So do I like the campaign? Well, it is in partnership with the Citizens Advice Bureau [a UK non-profit organization] which means it carries some validity in its stated aim of being primarily about privacy and safety online.

So why do I still have an uncomfortable feeling about the search giant's new privacy portal? And why does the term 'PR stunt' keep coming to mind? [in fairness, if it is - kudos for a good PR stunt]

switch & bait?

2011-12-03T16:12:00.000Z

The concept of bait and switch includes the practice of advertising at a low price - with the actual buying price being higher. This ad does just the opposite. Oh dear.

just the ticket. not

2011-11-16T12:09:00.001Z

At the beginning of the year I posted register - just to check availability complaining that I had to register on the Blackpool FC website just to see if there were any tickets still available for a match. Welllll ... that's not the end of the issue, because yesterday I received this email:

Now, I'm pretty sure that somewhere in the registration there was small print saying they could contact me with marketing offers [I can't remember if the was a tick-box to opt out], so this isn't illegal - but it is very bad practice to send direct marketing emails out on a 'cc' basis so that all of the recipients can see all of the emails addresses of all of the other recipients. I would be really surprised if my address - along with around 300 others isn't already doing the spam rounds as I type.

Oh, and by the way ... related to my original posting - take a look at the greeting on the email: 'dear BFC season ticket holder' - clearly I am not.

demandware demanding too much

2011-11-10T11:52:00.000Z

I've hi-lighted this kind of thing before - but it seems some folk just don't learn. This one is more ironic because the requested document is a piece of commissioned research - let's hope the research questionnaire was better designed than this form.

I can remember back in the 1990s how it was common practice for US-based organizations to insist on a 'zip code' on their online forms. Well, I thought we'd moved past that ... but apparently not. This form actually gives the user of choosing their country from a long list - but still insists on a State being entered [Sunderland is now in Wyoming, by the way]. All it needed in the 'States' field was a 'not in the USA' option. Or better still, have the techies override the necessity for the 'State' field to be completed if the user selected a country other than the USA.

an email from Emily Bronte?

2011-11-07T13:23:00.002Z

One of the problems of having me as a customer is that I get the opportunity to point out your faults - and it's KLM again. My personalized copy of the latest edition of their 'ifly' online magazine looked like this:

Am I the only one in thinking that this greeting was not only a bit too personal, but from the pages of a Nineteenth Century novel?

double vision

2011-11-04T11:41:00.000Z

No explanation required on this one - though be sure it is the designers' fault and not that of my computer. If my PC couldn't handle whatever software that is being used it is not my fault for owning that PC, it is the designers' for serving up a page which its target market couldn't read.

bad connection from Sky

2011-10-26T10:41:00.001+01:00

I had reason to contact Sky about my broadband connection. When I eventually found a contact phone number on their website, the page gave me pop-up message:

... but when I typed sky.com/callpricing into my browser I was redirected to this page:

... and on it I could find no trace of call pricing. I've got a feeling that the provision of call rates to 08 numbers is a legal requirement?

fishing for a phishing link

2011-10-11T10:49:00.002+01:00

I got an email in my inbox which - to me - was an obvious phishing attempt which purported to be from my Cahoot credit card account. So being the civic-minded kind of chap I am, I logged on to my Cahoot account to tell them about it. Now, many sites [eg eBay, PayPal] have an obvious 'report suspicious emails' link where you can forward such emails so that the company is aware of them and so take action to prevent them. Sure enough, when logging on to Cahoot [it is a Santander brand] the following was next to the log-on box:

However, when you get into the site there is no 'report phishing' link or email address. Indeed, the only email address on the site is complaints@santander [anyone else see the irony there?] - so I forwarded my phishing email to that address, asking that it be passed on to the right folk. I then got an immediate automated reply, which is standard practice, but take a look at part of that message:

Hello
Thanks for your e-mail.
This is a receipt to let you know we've received your message, and we'll reply as soon as we can.
...

Please note - A NUMBER OF FRAUDULENT E-MAILS ALLEGING TO BE FROM SANTANDER ARE CURRENTLY IN CIRCULATION.

Santander will never send you an e-mail asking you to click on a link, or to enter, reconfirm or change your security or card details. We will never ask you to tell us your passwords by e-mail or over the phone.
...

You can also help Santander by forwarding any Phishing email you receive to:
phishing@santander.co.uk

We can’t respond directly to any questions via this e-mail address, but all e-mails are processed, and urgent action is taken against Phishing sites identified.

Is it stating the obvious to ask why that email address isn't on the main website? And how many people would have set out to forward the phishing email - but given up when such a contact email wasn't on the site? The cynic in me asks if Santander really want you to send them your phishing emails - or is it just poor website content management?

would you like some snake oil with that sir?

2011-10-08T20:00:00.000+01:00

My regular postman [person?] knows that my monthly box of contact lenses goes through my letter box, but when it arrived on his day off the temp guy took it back to the Post Office - leaving a card saying what he had done. So I went online and selected another day for it to be delivered [very efficient use of the web]. Sadly, it didn't turn up, so I completed the relevant 'missing parcel' form online. To cut this already boring story short, the box arrived eventually - but the following is the final email from the 'Escalated Customer Resolution Team' [escalated ... do they all arrive in the office on a moving staircase?]

Dear Mr Charlesworth

Thank you for your further contact with Royal Mail.

May I offer my sincere apologies for the concern and inconvenience that this matter has caused. I fully appreciate how important it is for our customers to have confidence in our ability to redeliver mail when requested and it is always disappointing when a customer expresses dissatisfaction with any aspect of our service.

On receipt of your email I contacted the Manager of your local Delivery Office asking for a report into this matter.

I have been advised that the item had been located at callers' office in Mary Street for redelivery. This I was advised was taking place on Saturday 1 October and I’m please to learn from your further email that the item has now been received.

In closing, I would like to give you my assurance that we at Royal Mail are not complacent about such failures in our service, and we are constantly striving to ensure that you receive the level of service you have every right to expect. I hope your future dealings with us are of a more positive nature.

I trust you will be satisfied with my response. However if you remain unhappy you can have your case reviewed by the Postal Review Panel. The Panel will take a new look at your complaint and will provide you with a final response on behalf of Royal Mail. They can be contacted by emailing:

postalreview@royalmail.com

or by writing to: FREEPOST Postal Review Panel.

Regards

**** *******
Escalated Customer Resolution Team

In my book [page 103], I say that website content should never be 'self-serving' - well this moves into being sycophantic. OK, I know this is in an email, but the same applies. As I suggest in the title of this entry, this has the ring of a snake oil salesman about it. A simply; 'sorry, we got it wrong but it out sorted it out in the end' would have meant much more to me.

Apple: stylish in memorial

2011-10-06T15:37:00.001+01:00

Can't say I'm a fan of Apple - but I can appreciate that its products have changed things a lot [with a lot of help from some world-class marketing]. One thing Apple has is style - and that is reflected in the apple.com home page on the day Steve Jobs died.

no saving this subscription

2011-10-05T11:54:00.001+01:00

Here's an online store I have spent a lot of money with over the years - but it is an example of getting your email promotion frequency wrong. I buy a pair of gloves once, maybe twice, a year - so do I need emails every week? No I don't. Which brings us to the subject of this entry to my blog: I decided to unsubscribe, but the 'unsubscribe' link is embedded in the image, and doesn't work [note in the image below, the arrow should have become a pointing finger to denote a link]. I'm pretty sure that in the UK at least, that is illegal.

putting your foot[er] in it

2011-09-28T10:11:00.001+01:00

I noticed that every external email sent from the University of Sunderland's email server had the following footer added:

I don't know where to start with this one. It might [big might] be OK for a brand to do this - but I would still point at the following.

First off; why the full URL ? Soooooo 1997. It's 2011, email clients will read a link, so we should be looking at something like

See the University's new TV ads

... where 'new TV ads' is the hyperlink. On the subject of aesthetics - why the Times font? Again, sooo 1990s. That it might sit at the bottom of an email in a sans serif font makes it appear 'ugly'. And given the target recipients [see below] won't those people have their 'show images' option on - so make it an attractive mini-banner [with a clear 'alt text' so folks with their images off will still know what it is]

So OK, I can live with this marketing message if the email is going to a prospective customer [student] and possibly some stakeholders [to show them we do TV advertising]. But how many emails go to those people? Won't the majority of people being emailed already have contacted the uni [eg the email is a reply to an email from them] and so be aware of the uni, its prospectus, website and promotional material? How many people will see that link. Then click on it. And then move down the purchase funnel as a result?

Compare that small advantage over the disadvantages:

Every email has this on. That includes those going to [for example] academic colleagues or contacts in other universities. Perhaps the submission of an academic paper to a journal. A supply to place an order or request a quote. An enquiry to the Inland Revenue about an employee's tax details ... I could go on, but what about : the student - or student's parent - who has raised a serious complaint about the university and whose email includes that footer? Or perhaps the email from a lecturer or student who is being told they have failed a module or programme? Or a similar email from a member of academic or support staff offering condolences for the loss of a family member and that we will sort out their studies when they are able to rejoin us?

Finally - if the footer needs to be added automatically, select members of staff or email addresses - the recruitment department or staff, for example - and add it only to their emails. Or better still, have relevant staff add it to their own email options - with the knowledge that they can delete it from the 'wrong' emails.

computers: can't live without them?

2011-09-25T12:44:00.001+01:00

Just another example of computers telling you are wrong - but proving that is not you it is them at the same time. By 'computers' I mean, of course, the people who write their software programmes - computers only do what they are told.

This example is from hotel company Gran Melia. Follow the images down and you will see my rewards card with its number - which subsequently I am told does not exist. Ho hum.

... and as a footnote: a couple of days after I posted this entry, I got an promotional email from Gran Melia. Here's the header of the email, note my membership number which - you will recall - doesn't exist. Oh, and note also that I have 6312 points, not bad for an 'account' which at least part of their IT system doesn't recognise.

Travelodge talking with forked tongue

2011-09-04T14:09:00.000+01:00

I needed a cheap hotel for a night away from home, and was booking a room on the Travelodge website, when I got this message ...

Couple of things: first, notice how the onus would appear to be on me to sort out the error in their system? And second, CSR? I've written two 'dictionaries' on e-commerce/marketing and I do not know what a CSR is. The only CSR I have come across is 'corporate social responsibility'. Furthermore, I did not know whether my booking had been processed of not.

Sainsbury's: poor service ... and an opportunity lost?

2011-08-15T12:55:00.003+01:00

My local Sainsury's has - and still is - had significant renovation, including a big extension. Over recent weeks [months even] I have been mightily impressed with the project planning as various parts of the store were worked on and the building extended in several directions. In all that time the shop continued to trade with minimal impact on customers - full marks for the planning department and the contractors and staff involved. Sadly, the same cannot be said for the online-marketing department.

You see, to bring the project to an end with the 'old' shop becoming the 'new' shop - it has closed. No problem there; big signs around the shop last week saying it was closing - but I can't remember when it said it was re-opening. And I need some groceries. So I went to the Sainsbury's website .. and for 'my' branch got this page:

No mention of it being closed [the poor service] - and nothing about the improvements being undertaken which will [presumably] make it a better place to shop. Two points:

(i) the exercise will have cost a lot [millions?], so developing a temporary web page would have been a drop in the ocean in financial terms, but even worse ...

(ii) why is 'online' treated as insignificant in the planning of the refurbishment and re-launch of a 'new' store? I bet the local media advertising was booked months ago.

Footnote #1, a couple of days later: Last night there was a [PR] article in the local newspaper about the re-opening of the store - but still no message on the website saying that the shop is now bigger and stocks a wider range of products.

Footnote #2, beginning of the next week - and a flyer through my door, which includes this page:

... but still no mention of the new meat & fish counters or the new clothing and homeware on the web page for the branch. Ho hum.

a website that I do not warm to

2011-07-18T21:16:00.000+01:00

In my Internet Marketing module I show the students a web page I have made which is full of errors and ask them to list those faults. I end the session by saying that this is just an exercise and there should be no commercial websites as bad as my example. And then I come across sites like this ...

Note also at the bottom the link to the developer's site ... 'nuff said?

no entry without a house number and street

2011-06-09T14:13:00.000+01:00

Another example to file under 'no big deal' - but if something is worth doing it is worth doing it right.

I was ordering a book from Oxford University Press [us lecturers get them free :-)] and this was part of the 'checkout' process:

Note how the 'house number and street' has no asterisk, and so is not a 'must fill in field' - and yet I was not allowed to proceed without something being in it. I appreciate that it is rare to have nothing to put in this box - but my work address is a campus with no numbers or streets.

as safe as the Royal Bank of Scotland?

2011-06-04T13:44:00.001+01:00

Like a lot of people [I suspect] I sometimes register with websites and then don't visit them again for quite a while by which tine, of course, I've forgotten the username and password I set up for the account. That happened tome today when I went to the website of one of my credit cards. I typed in what I thought was my username, but got this...

After a couple of other tries I decided that it would seem I had not registered with the account, so went to the 'register' form - where I typed in my a username - the one that had been rejected on the 'sign in' form, and yet I got this ...

So how come RBS's system one form said the username did not exist - but on another that it did?

elephants and double glazing?

2011-05-31T10:09:00.000+01:00

For reasons I won't go into, I was looking for a line from the film 'The Elephant Man' and came across this site. Let's ignore the fact that a website about quotes in films had no quotes from this film - take a look at the ads on the right.

Now ... AdSense is meant to serve up ads that are in sync with the content of the web page - but can you find a connection between anything on this page and windows or double glazing? And - in case you are wondering - no, I haven't been searching for, or looking at, double glazing websites in the recent past [Google tracks your web usage to deliver 'relevant' ads].

is it the un-seasonal weather?

2011-05-23T07:14:00.000+01:00

OK, so as I type this towards the end of May [in the UK] it is raining, windy and a bit chilly outside - but it is still not winter. Which is what it would seem to be on this page of the Debenhams website which I looked at this morning.

A statutory lesson that website content management - like the seasons - is an ongoing thing.

this airline ad lands in the wrong place

2011-04-05T20:37:00.003+01:00

I'm off to Athens [again] in the summer, so wanted to book a hotel - and as I knew the one I wanted to stay in, simply typed its name into Google - and this is the SERP, note the top ad [ie, the one that is the most expensive for the advertiser*]

So I clicked on that ad, and got this page:

Note that it is part of the 'holiday booking' page - and so I could only find the cost of the hotel if I put in flight details as well. That was no good to me as my flight was already booked on another airline, and anyway easyJet don't fly to Athens from my local airport.

So I clicked on the 'where to stay' link and got this page:

But I then had to search for the hotel I wanted. Guess what, I gave up and booked on the hotel's own website - which carried the claim 'guaranteed cheaper than any other website'. An ambitious claim and [obviously] part of a wider strategy. Students of mine and readers of my book will recognise this issue in my Gilded Truffle Hotel case study.

* OK, I know there are other issues, but it does mean that easyJet are willing to pay to be the number one listing.

a not-so-clear call to action

2011-03-26T10:11:00.001Z

This example has a double whammy - a direct-marketing email without a call to action, and some invisible text. In chapter three of my book I raise what I think is the basic issue of putting dark text on a light background [as I do on all my sites] to make it easy to read. Indeed, I give my students a 'bad web page' exercise with an example of light text on a light background and they usually scoff at the idea of a commercial web developer making such an error - well, take a look at this:

Furthermore, the 'hidden' text is the call to action - arguably the most important words on the email. Ho hum.

landing page[s] that land you on a different continent

2011-03-16T21:13:00.004Z

Ironically, I came across this at the end of a week when I was delivering sessions on online advertising - which, of course, includes landing pages. I was looking for a small netbook, and came across this ad - note that I was searching on Google.co.uk:

Rather bizarrely, clicking on that ad took me to an American web page. I suspect it was a glitch somewhere along the line, but still one that shouldn't happen.

And then only a couple of days later I received an email from Amazon, promoting their new Kindle book reader

...and when I opened the email I got this - note the price

... and when I clicked on the link in the email I got this page

Ho hum. It seem that even one of the best in the business get it wrong sometimes.

football registration again grrrrrrr

2011-03-02T20:28:00.001Z

Unlike a previous entry on this subject [see Register - just to check availability?] this time I was off to see my team, on this occasion playing at Middlesbrough. When I've been there before I just got there a bit early and stood in the queue at the ticket office before the match - but this time I was going straight from work, so thought pre-ordering the ticket would save time. Sadly, however, although I might never [ever, ever, ever] buy another ticket from them, Middlesborough Football Club decided that my credit card details were not enough and insisted I register to create an account.

In the event, just set off a bit earlier and stood in the line to buy a ticket. And guess what, they didn't insist that I create an account.

Footnote, my team grabbed an undeserved equaliser in the 93rd minute to draw the match 1-1.

even for free - it's poor value

2011-02-27T15:08:00.001Z

I was doing some research into integrated marketing and wanted to check the claim of offline ads against the advertiser's online offerings, and found myself on the website of whatsmycarworth.co.uk - so I decided to take up their offer of a free valuation of my car. But found myself stuck at this point:

You see, the system allowed me to select my car as being in a group made from '04 onwards, but then limited the exact year to '08 or '09 - mine was registered in 2004.

When I checked, there was another option before this page for my specific car, so in part is was my fault - but why did the system allow me to choose this option when it clearly isn't an option. As it was, I could choose the correct option because I knew the bhp of my car - I wonder how many other people would have been able to do so? [I suspect many don't even know bhp stands for 'brake horse power'].

hotel pricing small print

2011-02-18T20:31:00.006Z

Over the years I have been a regular visitor to Athens - the one in Greece - and one of my favourite hotels is the Sol Melia [formerly the Hotel Georgio].

I am scheduled to go back this summer and I hope to stay there again - part of the reason why I signed up for their newsletter [it is actually a chain of hotels]. The newsletters are generally quite good, but in the one that came today, I noticed this in the small print:

Whilst the first four points are valid, why send out a newsletter which includes featured prices and yet says that the prices might not be valid? I can only assume that this is to cover the fact that some folk might take a while to open the email, but it does say on receipt, not when you read it. And if you are going to feature prices, why not fix those prices for a few days? Just seems strange to me.

credit where credit is due

2011-02-17T08:41:00.001Z

I have had a PayPal account for [probably] longer than most people. I find it incredibly handy for online purchases, and tend to shop only on sites that take it [there's a marketing message in there] - in fact, I can't remember the last time I typed a credit card number onto a web page.

Anyhoo, as I have mentioned in earlier entries [see 1, 2]I have been switching my primary email address to my Gmail account [I've also had a Gmail account for longer than most - it comes of doing a lot of reading about the whole 'Internet' thing] but despite changing my address with PayPal, I still got a message at my 'old' address.

It is a bit more complicated than that as the message was about a credit to my account - it is easy to accept online payments via PayPal also - and the message was 'from' the company making the payment to me. As I had also informed that company of my change of address, it was not clear who was at fault.

So I put this onto PayPal's online form - and within 24 hours got a reply which included comprehensive instructions on how to sort the problem [by deleting the old address rather than simply letting it remain 'dormant' in my profile].

If I want to be picky; the email came from PayPal's office in Luxembourg and so the English was a bit, well ... 'second language' [eg "please be informed"] - making it border on the sycophantic rather than 'friendly'. But hey, that really is being picky :) .

try doing something right today

2011-02-05T14:04:00.000Z

Following a theme from previous entries [see 1, 2, 3] - here is online confirmation when I decided to unsubscribe from Sainsbury's email list.

So ... how much do you thing the retailer spent on the development of their logo? And how many hours went into deciding on the text and font for the 'try something new today' tag line? So who came up with the unsubscribe message, the cleaner? No, I retract that - it is unfair on cleaners. This looks like another example of a techie's handiwork.

It is not only so wrong in marketing terms - it is also very poor grammar.

nice idea, poor execution

2011-02-03T14:43:00.000Z

One of the elements of social media is product reviews. And an element of social media marketing is to generate reviews for any products you sell. Hence, this email from DIY outlet Homebase has been sent with the best of intentions.

Sadly, this email is the result [I assume] and an automated system - for the product I purchased was a light bulb. Not really much I can say in a review other than: 'it lights up when connected to electricity'. And would you look for reviews before buying a light bulb?

Hoseasons lose the [caravan] plot

2011-01-29T14:51:00.001Z

I've covered this subject a number of times before - but it still amazes me how often organizations pay for advertising and then mess up the landing page ... and here is another example.

South Shields is just down the road to me [actually, it is up the coast] and I often have a drive along the sea front there. So when my sister was asked about caravan parks in the town, she got in touch with me. I knew the name of a site right on the sea front, so I put it into Google. And there at the top of the paid ads was this one for Hoseasons [note, it is not the caravan site I was looking for - so I suppose this is an advantage of buying ads on SERPS].

When I clicked on that ad, I was taken to this page:

You will note that not only was the page a 'home page' rather than the page for the South Shields camp site, but the page never downloaded fully. Furthermore, upon trying to use the page's search facility, I found that the county in which South Shields sits - Tyne and Wear - was not listed.

So, being a switched-on online marketer, I went back to the SERP and copied the URL that was listed [hoseasons.co.uk/south_shields] and put it in the navigation box. And got this page:

Double whammy on this one; obviously there is the fact that the link is to a dead page, but check out the 404 message. Nothing along the lines of 'sorry, we have lost the page you are looking for, click here to go to the home page' - but the message refers to a 'resource'. What's that then? [see also 404 for the common people].

Oh yes, and as a footnote: Hoseasons don't have a holiday campsite in South Shields. Ho hum.

getting a relationship off on the wrong foot

2011-01-19T21:37:00.000Z

I bought a rather splendid shemagh from the emilitary.co.uk website. The site was OK, the price right and the postage free. So I placed an order and the scarf arrived within a few days. So far so good. However, I did have to register on the site to place the order - and so received this email. It was friendly, it was trying to develop a relationship with me. It was promoting their SMM efforts.

So why was it signed by '4sg Ltd, Store Owner' and not a real person?

Register - just to check availability?

2011-01-19T21:36:00.001Z

I'm off to Blackpool this weekend with the chaps. The reason we're going is that my local footy team is playing there. I am not, however, a Sunderland supporter - and so unlike my season-ticket-holding chums, I have no ticket. So I thought I'd check out the Blackpool FC website to see if any tickets were available.

Sadly, however, before I could even find out if any tickets were available I had to register with the site!

Not only that, but as soon as I had registered, I got this message:

I still don't know if there are any tickets available or if the game is a sell-out. I might have to spend the afternoon in the pub. Harrumph.

Footnote after the event: I did get a ticket at the last minute, so saw the match. There was also plenty of time spent in the pub ;-)

good campervans, bad arithmatic

2011-01-19T21:34:00.000Z

I was just passing the time thinking of what I would spend the money on when I win the Premium Bond million pound draw when I visited the website of Danbury Campervans. Their products have a very good reputation. Sadly, not so their website. Amongst the problems were some issues with their arithmetic:

Yes, in this case the 'special offer' is that it is £500 more expensive! And in the second example I think I would rather pay the weekly rate.

'404' for the common people?

2011-01-19T21:29:00.004Z

I was having problems finding a page on the Saga.co.uk website [yes ... I am over 50] and came across this '404' message.

I wonder what this techie-speak means in the language of the ordinary person? And what is a 'resource'? [OK, so I know, but I'm supposed to be an expert - not an ordinary person].

unsubscribing - with a hidden message

2011-01-19T21:23:00.000Z

As I have commented in recent entries, I have been switching my email address for a lot of my incoming mailings. In some instances I simply cancelled my subscriptions - this one from contactforlenses being an example.

The 'thank you' element is OK [though it could be better], it is that last bit that is confusing. Does it make any sense to you? Furthermore, if you were a bit wary, the web page which carried it was on the domain cts.vresp.com. Now, I know that will be the email provider for contactforlenses - but for the uninitiated it only adds to the uncertainty.

going nowhere from Newcastle airport

2011-01-19T21:10:00.000Z

I've complained a few times about travel companies sending me emails promoting flights from airports miles from where I live [bad practice KLM], and I've also hi-lighted the fact when they get it right [KLM:listening?], but in this example I thought lastminute.com had got it right - only to fall at the first hurdle. This is the email I received. Note the 'from Newcastle' reference [it's my local airport]

So I clicked on the link for 'Las Vegas', and got this page:

Which took me to this page where, you will note, there are no details of flights from Newcastle. Ho Hum.

so Egg, do you want me as a customer or not?

2011-01-15T15:36:00.002Z

I have a number of credit cards and it is my habit to swap around which one I use. Somewhere along the line, however, my Egg Card got ignored, so I was not too surprised to hear from Egg about its use. I was surprised, however, at the tone of the letter. It said:

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Your Egg Card will not be renewed

At Egg we review your credit card account in the period prior to your existing card's expiry date and our records show you haven't used your account for more than 18 months.

Here at Egg it is our policy to close accounts when this happens.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Although there is an 'if you would like to discuss this ... ' paragraph it is down at the bottom of the page, it looks rather like an afterthought.

Note how I have no option in this - I am give a [rather rude] definitive statement [you are history].

Where is the question: 'we are sorry to lose you', 'is there a reason for you not using your card?', 'did we do something wrong?' or 'is there any way we can improve our service?'

Nope, I am an ex-customer. Maybe I deserve to be? So why is this included in my online practice blog? Well, although they had me as a customer but cut me loose - they are still sending me promotional emails like the two below. So, you folk at Egg, either make your minds up - or get your various departments synchronized.

saying goodbye should be easy[jet]

2011-01-11T12:05:00.001Z

For reasons that I won't go into, I am switching most of my email traffic to a different account. In the main, this is: [a] all of the e-marketing-related newsletters/blogs etc to which I am subscribed, and [b] all of the promotional emails/newsletters I have agreed to receive.

I am pleased to report that most offer an easy-to-access 'change email address' facility - but then you might expect that from e-marketing newsletters [practice what you preach, and all that]. For others, you have to unsubscribe and the subscribe your new email address - not too bad if it is only a case of entering your email address in a box and clicking 'enter'.

Others made in even better 'marketing' job by using the 'goodbye' page for either research [see a good goodbye] or simply showing a nice message along the lines of 'sorry to see you go'.

However, there were others where, it seems, little thought was given to the procedure. Remember, at this point the customer has chosen to break the relationship with the organization, and so any obstacle will - in their eyes - become an annoying mountain that will only increase their assumption that ending the relationship was a good idea. Weigh this against the pleasant 'sorry ...' message that might make you think, 'oh, I'll stay with them'. Anyhoo - EasyJet take this a stage further. When you click on the 'unsubscribe' button at the bottom of their promotional email [there has to be one by law] you are taken to their registration/log-in page. If you can remember your password [I couldn't, I couldn't even remember registering, I have never flown with EasyJet and I guess I had to register to check flight prices?], you then have to go into your 'account' page, find 'contact preferences' and then unsubscribe from the promotional emails.

Why not ask why I am unsubscribing, and perhaps offer a more refined messaging regime - perhaps only offers for flights from a particular airport to specific destinations? Just as a though.

shotgun emails don't hit the target

2011-01-04T21:22:00.002Z

When I'm teaching segmentation and target marketing I often use the analogy of shooting: a rifle picks out a single, identified target and a shotgun fires off a thousand pellets in the hope that it hits something useful. I apply the same concept to email marketing. If you send thousands of emails one might hit the target -but like the innocent victims who might get caught in the shotgun blast, most people simply get fed up with a constant barrage of irrelevant emails arriving in their inbox. The net result being damage to the brand. My example of this comes from kitchenware retailer, ProCook.

Back in November I saw a dish drainer in one of their retail outlets, but not in the colour I wanted - so I went online and order one in a suitable colour. That's it. A one-off purchase. I hadn't even heard of the company before this. And I doubt I am in their target demographic. Certainly the product arrived promptly - but the emails soon followed. This culminated i[n the run-up to Christmas Day] when I received a promotional email from them every day from the 11th to the 24th of December. That I was deleting them without even opening any should have triggered alarms at ProCook - I just was not interested in their promotions. Or for that matter, their products. Sure, I could have hit the 'unsubscribe' button - and to be honest I let them keep coming just to see if they would take the hint and stop them without me saying.

Equally bad for volume - though I am, perhaps, in their target demographic - is Orvis. Previously in this blog I have praised their service and quality of product [see good after-sales service], but since they delivered the jacket I ordered, they have also delivered a promotional email every two or three days. Again, I deleted most without opening them - that should have been flagged on their system.

Oh sure, I know the run-up to Christmas is peak sales time and in a poor economy companies have to go for every last penny with the potential for gifts as well as personal purchases - but hey, both of these examples are closer to blunderbuss than shotgun - and there has been collateral damage to the ProCook and Orvis brands.

updates are not optional

2011-01-03T16:10:00.001Z

Even broadcasters of long standing like the BBC can, it seems, be guilty of poor content management.

In this case their iPlayer offering for the popular 'Pick of the Pops' programme states that it is presented by Dale Winton. This despite the accompanying picture being of Tony Blackburn - who took over the show two months previously.

a personal detail too far?

2011-01-02T12:16:00.001Z

OK, so it's not too 'personal', it's the name of my employer - but why does KLM want it on my registration for their 'Flying Blue' programme? OK, I will accept that most of my flights with them over the years have been on business, but it is me that is the member, not my employer. And ask, by all means, but don't make it mandatory. Oh, yes - and what if I'm self employed? Or retired?

captchas you can't read ...

2011-01-02T12:05:00.001Z

... include this one from ebay:

Can you tell me what the first and/or second characters are?

In case you weren't sure, here's a definition of 'captcha':

CAPTCHA (Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart) A security device that requires human input rather and so prevents any kind of automated access to protected areas of a network. The most common online application is that of active tokens.

Note that this is from my book, Key Concepts in e-Commerce.

mission statements: burn them all

2010-12-27T13:32:00.003Z

I really [really, really, really, really] don't like mission statements. They are all self-serving claptrap. They serve no benefit to the customer whatsoever. So, in turn, customers ignore them. Or go elsewhere to a site/organization that cares more about the customer than they do their own grandiose.

And here is a classic example I came across when researching my previous entry in this blog. It comes from the home page of the website of the Serco Group plc.

At this point, picture me putting two fingers in my mouth to illustrate that reading this is making me sick.

Two things:

1 Write down on a piece of paper what the Serco Group do. That is, what they manufacture/develop/sell - anything. Tell me anything about the Serco Group from that mission statement. I could say, tell me without going to its website - but even when you get there, it is still difficult to tell what they do.

2 Which breaks one of the cardinal rules of home page design: Let visitors know why they should stay on your site. In less than a second. Boooiiinnnggg. Too late, they've already bounced back to the search engine. Wave goodbye to that potential customer.
Footnote to this second point. As visitors can arrive on any of a website's pages from a search engine of link, every page should let visitors know why they should stay on that page, and so, your site.

techie designers: a perfect example of bad practice

2010-12-27T13:18:00.002Z

I have lost count of the amount of times I have come across this error. It is a perfect example of why a marketer should head up any web-development team.

The University that employs me recently added new facilities to the staff 'portal' on our website. The platform used has been provided by a company called 'Serco'. Now, when you buy in proprietary software it always has elements where what the customer sees on their screen can be personalised to suit the organization that has purchased that software.

Techies, of course, have no interest in that content. They have no need to. It is nothing to do with them. It has nothing to do with how the software functions. So users can end up seeing messages like this one:

A marketer [or a decent one] would have ALL content checked before the system goes live - in print, it is called copy editing. I would call it absolutely essential in any publishing environment. No, better still, I would call it the right way of doing things. Full Stop [or if you are reading this in the USA; Period].

Oh, yes, I would also have made the header grammatically correct - the software's default would say 'welcome to' and then if would probably insert the title given to the application [by the techies]. Hence, a missing 'the'.

I would also have looked to change the images to some from my organization - but I could live with the mice and hands if I had to.

a good goodbye

2010-12-16T20:18:00.001Z

Leaving aside the fact that after having to register in order to find out more about buying online and then being bombarded by promotional emails - at least when I clicked on the 'unsubscribe' button, M&S's marketers were doing a bit a research to see what they were doing wrong.

when an option is no option

2010-12-16T20:13:00.001Z

On a whim, I thought I might go away for the New Year and found my way onto this website:

Trouble is, I wasn't sure where I wanted to go, so I selected the 'Any Destinations' option [let's not even go down the road of pointing out that it should be 'destination' singular] - but it told me I couldn't search on the option it had given me.

Two points - why list it in the drop down menu if the option isn't an option? And secondly: why isn't it an option? Surely I'm not the only person who would consider anywhere if the price/dates/flights were right?

nice viral touch

2010-12-16T20:04:00.000Z

Me and the chaps at work decided to go out for a Christmas meal [just an excuse for some drinking really] and so I booked us in at Wetherspoon's 'The Lampton Worm' in the city centre - and when I sent off the enquiry I got this message on the screen:

Not intrusive, and I'm not sure how successful it will be, but it reflects some thought being put into the pub chain's marketing.

email enigma [that's a code joke]

2010-12-16T19:53:00.000Z

Do I even have to make any comment on this email I received from KLM?

joined up thinking

2010-12-16T19:50:00.000Z

Doing a bit of Christmas shopping I noticed this survey 'enticement' on the receipt as well as a discount code for first time online shopping, AND facebook and twitter listings.

To be honest, the till receipt is so small it is all hard to read [as you see it on screen is roughly the actual size] - but at least they are making the effort to integrate their off- and online marketing. Below is the feedback page.

no gambling with these chips

2010-11-25T10:50:00.008Z

Another long story for this entry - with multiple failings along the way.

It all started with a pack of McCain microwave chips. On the pack I noticed a promotion where you had to go online and enter the promo code from the pack your were using:

So I fired up the interweb and typed in the URL given on the pack - www.pingandwin.co.uk - and got this page:
Hmmm, so McCain didn't make sure they had registered the domain name they were using for the promotion. And then didn't bother to try and get hold of it - either buying or renting it. Or even paying for a message on that holding page which said 'for the McCain ping and win competition click here'.

Not to be out done I put Mccain.co.uk into my browser and got this page:

Note that there is nothing on it about the 'ping and win' competition [even scrolling down revealed nothing]. However, the main message on this page was about the new website - on a different domain. I will assume that is a strategic decision, but give my experiences with this promotion, I'm not confident that it is.

So I clicked on the link to go to the 'all new site', and got this:
Or to be more accurate, after a wait of a couple of minutes while it downloaded, this was the page I got. Or, at least, I got some of the page - not that I needed to scroll both down and across to see the content. Note that scrolling across has been a no-no since ... well, since forever.

However, on that page there was a link to 'check out our latest competition' and got this page:
Again, note that scrolling was required - but still nothing on the ping and win competition.

So, McCain, no much how much I enjoy your chips, your online marketing is hard to swallow.

the Kangol hat saga

2010-11-18T14:58:00.008Z

Let me start this marathon story by saying that none of the following is the fault of Kangol's - they just make the hat in question.

I have said before on this blog that I often feel mine is a dying trade - that is, teaching e-marketing is becoming redundant because so many people know how to do it. And anyway, it's not rocket science is it? Fortunately, events like the one in this story give me hope of earning through to my retirement.

The prologue: I have a Kangol hat - one of those that actor Samuel L. Jackson has made famous. Someone I know enquired about the my hat, saying she wanted to buy one [for someone else] as a Christmas present. Same as mine, but size 'large'. I said mine was bought online and I would look into it for her.

So I typed "Kangol wool 504 large" into Google. Pretty explicit I would say: 'wool 504' is the Kangol product code [taken from my hat] - the only thing missing is the colour, but black was not essential for the present. And I got this SERP ...
e-Marketing error #1
Notice the add for for M&S? That means that someone at, or on behalf of, Marks and Spencer has bid on either all or some of the term "Kangol wool 504 large". Hmm, I thought, why would they do that - they don't sell kangol hats? "Men's flat caps" - yes, maybe a would-be-Xmas-present buyer might search on that term. But I have searched on a specific style of a specific brand - which would suggest that I know exactly what I'm looking for, and sorry M&S, Samuel L. and his like would gain zero street cred wearing a hat the same as their grandad. But then I thought: 'I'd best just check that M&S don't stock Kangol, so I clicked on that ad, and got ...
e-Marketing error #2
Yep, I wanted a specific style of a specific make of cap - and got a generic landing page. Had this ad link taken me to a cap of the exact same style [but not Kangol], maybe I might have considered it. Actually, that's still not true - but how many of you have ever been bought clothes by your mum that are 'just the same' as the branded attire you actually wanted?

So, anyhoo - I clicked on one of the e-Bay links and found myself on this page ...
e-Marketing error #3
Now, I know that the Kangol 504 has the Kangol logo on the back of the hat - or the front, if you where it backwards as is the fashion. So, I might already be suspicious if a 'Kangol 504' hat was advertised at half the price of other eBay sellers, but I would be even more so if the image didn't include a view of the rear of the hat showing that all-important logo. OK, maybe this hat was a genuine 504, but I wasn't going to take the risk. The error - when you are selling online, get the description - and picture - right.

So I went back to eBay and clicked on the link for a more expensive seller of the required hat - available, it said, 'in all sizes'. Except it wasn't ...
e-Marketing error #4
Maybe this was available in all sizes when it was first advertised, but it isn't now. eBay pages are easily changed - do so, don't sucker people in like this. Oh, by the way - that kind of advertising is against the law in the UK.

Like I said, not rocket science but - it seems - easy to get wrong.

targeted advertising: but targeted at whom?

2010-11-15T11:22:00.002Z

I have signed up for the alpha version of a new search engine called Qwiki and here is the 'welcome' email.
Now, if you are reading this blog, you should already know that the ads on the right-hand side of this email [it is to my Gmail account] should be associated to the content of the email message. However, there is nothing in the email body which has any connection to 'love letter', 'valentines cards' [in November?] or 'iris plants'. So what keywords have the advertisers chosen for their ads to match up with?

I think it must be 'qwiki' - as in 'a brief sexual encounter'. Seems a rather vague connection to me - but I can't see anything else, can you?

online requires the same attention as offline media

2010-11-07T13:24:00.005Z

I think this situation is getting better - but this proves the problem is not solved. Take a look at the hi-lighted part of this web page from UK telecomms provider, BT. Note that I saved this image after reading the page a couple of days ago.

For those of you that don't know: the football season started around three months ago. I do not know the reason for this, but as this kind of thing wouldn't happen on another media - imagine BT running an ad for a Christmas promotion at Easter.

So whey does it happen? Someone, somewhere in BT should - if nothing else - have a note in their diary for the beginning of August that says 'change this web page'. It's just plain sloppy. But here is my worst fear - this kind of thing happens because either [a] the marketers simply do not understand the Internet, or [b] the Internet is still a junior partner in the promotional mix, so it does not receive the same resources and attention to detail as other media. Both stink.

Here's another example, this one hi-lighted by the excellent Bowen Craggs website -ExxonMobil : Sleeping at the wheel.

[more] good after-sales service

2010-10-27T19:57:00.007+01:00

In an earlier entry I mentioned that I had ordered something from Orvis. Well, this blog is mainly full of examples of bad practice, but Orvis deserve a mention for their after-sales service.

I placed the order at 8.53 pm on Tuesday 19th of October. Although I was on their UK site, the jacket was dispatched from America. It arrived at my house on the morning of Tuesday 26th of October. That's less than a week - including a weekend, and the shipping cost was only £4.95!

It doesn't end there, however. And before I go further, I should add that the product was - to me - expensive [though perhaps no so much for others] and so my service expectation was high. But no matter how high it was - it was matched and more.

First was the packaging. A robust cardboard box. Upon opening it up I find a 'suit holder' containing the jacket - which came complete with a nice and wide, wooden coat hanger. The jacket itself was as described [though I had tried on a similar one in Orvis's Harrogate branch].

Then there's the letter that was enclosed [see images at the end of this entry]. OK, so by UK standards, the wording is a bit syrupy, but hey ... that's better than too formal. Best of all is the facility for returning the jacket if I had need to do so. Free return shipping, pre-printed address label, a dedicated UK phone line and email address and an online live chat feature available from 11am to midnight. If I had got ordered the wrong size, a replacement would be sent shipping free.

I've been in business long enough to appreciate that I have paid for all of this service within the price of the jacket, but hey ho; it's a quality jacket and a competitive price - as I have said many times, price isn't everything.

BTW - still no sign of the £10 discount :)

good after-sales service

2010-10-25T09:51:00.004+01:00

Amazon is often held out as the example of good practice - and it is a notion that is hard to argue with. Here is another example [see also why online retail works]. This time I made a purchase on Amazon Marketplace [where Amazon host other sellers' online offerings, reather like an offline consession] - and a couple of days after the purchase I got this email:
Excellent stuff - I can think of a lot of companies who would have put my money into their bank account straight away - refunding it if the order fell through for any reason. OK, so it's not that big a sum of money, but multiply it by thousands - or millions - or purchases and you have a significant amount of interest being gained over those few days.

Footnote: I used the Amazon email to reply to the seller and received an automated reply saying they would look into it when they were back at work [I sent it at the weekend]. On the Monday morning I got an email from Amazon and one from Millet Sports - both confirming the product had been despatched.

titles for titled customers

2010-10-19T21:00:00.005+01:00

This made me smile - so I thought I would share it.

I was looking to make a purchase on the Orvis.co.uk website. Now, Orvis cater for - how should I put it - a better class of customer. Don't for one minute assume I am in that league, they just had a jacket I liked the look of. Anyhoo ... back to the order - and normally, when asked for your title, you are given the choice of Mr, Mrs, Ms ... maybe Doctor - but take a look at Orvis's options.
One negative, however. Before placing an order I joined a mailing list for which I was promised a discount of £10 from my first order over £50. The only detail they had was my email address, so I assumed that when that address appeared on an order I would get the discount. But I didn't. If I remember, I'll give them a ring tomorrow.

Footnote: I also like this nice touch in the order's confirmation email. Can't see that too many folk will share an email address, but still ...

this form goes to the bottom of the class

2010-10-09T15:22:00.008+01:00

So imagine you are a sixth former - or the parent of one - and you just want to take a look at what a few universities have to offer. Let's suppose you want to take a degree in marketing but are particularly interested in online marketing. So you just want to look through the marketing programmes to make sure e-marketing is included [not all UK universities teach the subject]. So you go to the websites of the various unis hoping that in a couple of clicks and typing in your name and address [or, for switched on organizations, just your post (zip) code and house number].

Sadly, at the University of Sunderland getting a prospectus 'ain't quite that simple. Here's the form you have to complete [click here for the real thing].

I make that 15 fields that must be filled in, and another raft of options you may or may not be interested in - including requesting information that should be available on the website anyway.

But don't worry, you do get a 'personalised VIP web page' - whether you want one or not.

Neither does the page include that old-fashioned facility: the telephone number. Or maybe an SMS number? Remember, I am just making a general enquiry. I don't even know my [or my child's] A level results yet. In marketing terms, I am right at the top of the buying funnel - not half way down - which is what this form is designed for. If you disagree with my analysis, you have to disgree with this too: website usability for improving online forms.

And finally ... there is no statement on how your email address will - or won't - be used. The Data Protection Act is quoted - but does that cover using your email for other promotional purposes? Or passing it on to other interested parties? Legal requirement or not, it is good practice to include a message outlining such things.

Oh, and I nearly forgot. If you go to the prospectus page it sits on the following URL:
https://sunderland.hobsons.co.uk/emtinterestpage.aspx?ip=student16.
Two things:
1 - that form is sitting on the domain [and so, website] of a third party - Hobsons. In my opinion, perhaps a questionable move as the univsity has no control over that domain, site or page eg if Hobsons' server goes down, so does that form. Unless Hobsons agreed to hosting a fourth level domain of theirs on someone elses server - an equally poor idea even if it is technically viable, and
2 - why not host the prospectus for Sunderland University on either:
Sunderland.ac.uk/Prospectus
or
Prospectus.Sunderland.ac.uk
Of course I know nothing about these domain name issues. Oh, sorry, yes I do - I've written a book on the subject: Choosing the right domain name - a marketing perspective

link building amateur hour, me thinks

2010-09-24T17:08:00.004+01:00

This is an odd entry as it is about this blog!

Most [I hope] of you will know that having more links into your website will normally raise your standing with Google. One 'spammy' way of doing this is to tour blog sites and add comments, but include a link to your website in those comments - so developing many links going to your site. This is usually done by using software programmed to go and find blogs and insert comments.

On this blog, I have it set up so that I check the comments before I publish them. And here is one comment that arrived for checking today:

Note that there are three links to the company's website embedded in the text. How do I know it's spam? Look at the message: 'Hi Dear' !!! The blog entry being commented on is not a podcast, and 'very thanks' what's that mean?

Of course, if I'm wrong, I look forward to hearing from the Toronto Marketing Company.

convenience, not price

2010-09-17T12:47:00.004+01:00

I've been making this point for years - indeed, there is an example in my book - but shopping online is not all about saving money, and just today I had cause to confirm this belief.

I wanted a couple of digital pictures printed as old fashioned hold-in-your-hand photos. So I went to photobox [note: this is not a promo for that organization, I'm sure there are dozens of similar services out there, I just happened to have used them before]. At 10.35am I placed the order. At 6.35pm I got an email telling me the pics had been despatched and at 10.20 the next morning they arrived through my letterbox. That's less than 24 hours from order to taking possession. Cost: 10p per photo plus £1.49 postage = £1.69.

The alternative would have been to [a] drive into town, park the car, walk to Boots [or similar] and printed the pictures, return to the car and drive home. The printing cost is around the same and the car park would have been around a pound, time taken about an hour, [b] caught the bus into town and back, walking to the shop [saving the planet?], cost around a pound each way, time taken around an hour and a half or [c] walked into town - cheaper but takes a couple of hours and it was raining.

So there you go - unless I had wanted the pictures in my hand on the same day seems to me that it was £1.69 well spent. Saving an hour or more of my time was worth much more.

I think this is probably a spam email

2010-08-24T13:52:00.003+01:00

I usually simply delete spam without reading it [hmmm, how do I know it is spam if I don't read it?], but this one came in on my university email's spam filter.
Email's promising tax refunds are fairly common - but not from a design company in Hong Kong. Come on spammers, you can do better than that!

offer - what offer?

2010-08-14T08:28:00.003+01:00

It is a fundamental of marketing that to be successful, any promotion must be appealing to the potential customer. As I have said many times - online is no different. So when I got this email I asked myself; "who will be interested in this offer?" I would have to be travelling this week [I received the email on Saturday the 14th], but surely, if I have a trip planned, I'd already have booked my hotel? Plus, Thursday isn't included in the deal. And the deal isn't available on Thursday night. Oh, and the small print under this ad says; 'All rates are subject to availability at the time of booking and may not be available at every hotel every night'. Or what if I had already booked with Travelodge and had paid a higher price?

coming soon - for the time traveller

2010-07-28T14:22:00.006+01:00

I recently came across the concept of tan-though T shirts and so went looking for them online. One site I came across was that of safer-suntan.co.uk. The product looked reasonable, but availability seemed to be a problem. The first colour was listed as being available in M, L and XL - unfortunately, the exact same sizes that were not available.
It was a similar situation with the camel shirts, it's a good job new stock is arriving two years ago.
As a footnote: This website uses a third party for its online sales facility. Nothing wrong with that, it is common and - particularly for small businesses - sensible. However, when the user clicks on the link on safer-suntan.co.uk to 'enter the e-store', the URL becomes:
https://sslrelay.com/s77608230.oneandoneshop.co.uk/ [and a whole lot more gobbledy gook].
Note there is no sign that the store has any connection to Safer Suntan UK. Indeed, two domain names are listed in that URL, but neither is safer-suntan.co.uk. It might make some think twice before handing over their credit card number and other personal information.

good job it's not a Christmas present

2010-07-20T19:22:00.009+01:00

For reasons that I won't go into, I spent several hours today killing time in the lovely town of Harrogate - and I called in one shop called Orvis. They had a nice jacket - but not in my size. The staff told me about the website, so when I got home I took a look. Selecting my size I found there was a problem with availability ...

Yep, that's the end of December before it can be dispatched. That's five months away. Hmmm. Furthermore, in the shop it was on sale - 30% off, but no sign of such an offer on the website. Consistency of pricing on- and offline is an issue, with best practice normally being 'same price' for all channels. I know I would have been sick if I had bought online and then seen the jacket in the shop for 60-odd pounds less.

As a footnote: this is only my suspicion based on my retail experience - but I suspect that this particular jacket is being discontinued, to be replaced later in the year with a new style. This would explain the long lead time for online orders and the discount of what sizes remain in the shops. If I'm right, why not just say that? Indeed you could actually make it into 'good' news, and collect email addresses of folk who want to be informed when the new style is available.

As is the case in all my entries to this blog: if Orvis's reputation management team pick this up [which they should - if such a team exists] I would be happy to amend my assumption if I am wrong.

Footnote: as you can see, someone from Orvis did contact me and we exchanged emails with regard to the issues - he concluded by saying my comments would be passed on to the appropriate folk.

not exactly nectar to my lips

2010-07-16T08:16:00.004+01:00

I was signing up for a Nectar card and as part of the procedure I was - naturally - asked if I wanted to get emails with details of promotions, offers and so on. I ticked the boxes for 'no' [in itself, a questionable practice - ticking for 'yes' is more ethical] but on the last one this pop-up appeared.
Now, if you read it slowly it is not misleading - but for most people [it's a usability thing] if you tick something and a pop-up appears with 'OK' or 'cancel' as the options, clicking on 'OK' confirms your action. In this case it does the reverse. A bit sneaky you Nectar people.

you're where?

2010-06-12T10:48:00.005+01:00

It is the case that the search engines look for key words in the text on a website - and having those words at the beginning of the content is deemed to be best. But - and it is a big but - you should never [ever, ever, ever] sacrifice the user for SEO. The text should be written for humans, not search engines - in other words, the content should make sense to humans.

And here is an example. Whoever is responsible for this website's content obviously thinks that getting the keywords 'Moorside, Bingley and Bradford' is more important than making the owners look like blithering idiots.

Want to test my opinion here? Try reading that first paragraph as if you were answering the phone at that garage.

localized ads on the Internet

2010-05-26T20:24:00.005+01:00

I was listening to Spotify whilst working in my office at home. As I'm a cheapskate I have the free version - which has verbal ads every few tracks. And then - between 'The Wind Cries Mary' and 'Voodoo Child' - on came an ad recruiting staff for a Barclays call centre 'here in Sunderland'. Nice. Pretty basic IP recognition ... but still good.

why online retail works

2010-05-14T07:54:00.003+01:00

Here's something that is theoretically possible offline, but not really realistic - for both buyer and seller.

I couple of months ago I ordered a few books from Amazon. Most arrived within days, but one was not published until this week. And yesterday I got this email:
Now, here's the thing: yes I know there was this price guarantee - but effectively I had agreed to pay the [then] price of £5.99. Would I have ordered without the price guarantee? Yes, I would. I could have put the book in my 'basket' and bought it later [another excellent facility from Amazon] - hoping the price might drop. But hey, it's £2. My total order was for around £60. Would I have noticed or even checked up on the current price when the book is delivered? No. My time is more prescious.

And there's the rub. Convenience. I've been saying it since 1996. Sure some folk will use the web to seek out the cheapest price - but for a lot of people, buying a lot of products, ordering online and having goods delivered is convenient. It save time, if not money. But as any half-decent marketer will tell you price isn't everything. If it was no premier product or service would ever sell. Ask BMW.

yourmove - the rightmove?

2010-04-13T19:22:00.005+01:00

For reasons I won't go into I was looking at property on the YOUR MOVE website [your-move.co.uk]. There is a search facility that allows you to target your search - and yet the spacing of the house prices seems a bit off.

I would assume professional house sellers know what they are doing [and remember, I am a trained salesperson and I've been in marketing for some time] but why the jump from £100,000 to £150,000? Can't be a space issue, because up to £60,000 the steps are in 10s - and who buys houses for less than £60,000? And yet - and I could be wrong - surely there are lots of houses for sale for between £100,000 to £150,000? I would have thought the better sales tactic would have been increments of 10 so that a buyer might be tempted into searching for [say] up to £110,000 - when they really have a limit of £100,000.

Competitors Rightmove seem to agree with me, not only going from £100,000 to £150,000 in 10,000 increments, but even including £125,000 in the middle.

sweet FA on this splash page

2010-04-07T08:44:00.007+01:00

I went to the Football Association [FA] website to checkup on my Saturday morning footie team's fixtures - but I was not on my computer and couldn't use my bookmark, so I went to the home page and clicked on the link for 'Durham'. This opened a new window and this page came up.
Now ... as you would expect I'm quite experienced as a web surfier, but I couldn't see a link to get me off this page [the content of which was of no interest to me]. Notice how this advert fills the screen - and I was using a reasonable sized screen, not a laptop or mobile device. As I do know something about website development, I looked at the location bar, and saw this:
Let's not go down the road of questioning this poor se of file names [the search engines would ignore this one, for example], buts as I know what a 'splash' page is I knew there must be a way off of it - and when I looked down in the right hand corner [see red arrow in ithe first image above], sure enough there was a tiny bit of page that had not appeared 'above the fold' and when I scrolled down, got this:
I wonder how many folk made the same mistake as me? I wonder if everyone found their way past this page? Think I was stupid not seeing it? maybe, but web developers MUST design for stupid people - for they are customers too.

a communications survey that doesn't communicate

2010-04-01T13:37:00.006+01:00

This email arrived today.

As I though the results might be interesting, I clicked on the 'take the survey' link - and I got this page:

Yep, in the few minutes between receiving the email and visiting the site the survey had ended. Hmmmmm ... something amiss me thinks?

UPDATE: this email arrived this afternoon
Not sure blaming it on a prankster works, more likely a mistake on their part - but hey ... at least they resolved the error quickly.

universities are customers too

2010-03-30T14:29:00.004+01:00

Obviously, I keep up with the e-marketing environment online, and so I've signed up for loads of online newsletters. One such [from e-consultancy.com] pointed me at what looked like some interesting research from ATG [atg.com]. As is the case when research papers are produced as part of a marketing strategy, I was required to 'sign in' to get access to the research details. This included my email address. Now, before my complaint I will add that they do say 'corporate email addresses only' - but as you can see below, my UK university address was rejected I am assuming that this is because all .ac.uk addresses are blocked. As this blog entry makes clear, I think this is a mistake. However, the only other reason I can see from their rejection message is that my address includes two uppercase letters [my initials] - surely that is not the reason for the rejection? If that is the case - double shame on the techie who set up the fields because ... email addresses are not case sensitive [before you jump down my throat, they can be set up to be case sensitive, but convention is that no one does so].
Well, I can appreciate that they may be trying to limit access to the report - but why? The significant results are already in the public domain - probably as a result of their PR efforts. Don't want students quoting the figures in assignments ... and if so, why not? And remember, students become managers and business owners.

But more importantly [for ATG] ... I could have been the marketer from a university who was interested in buying their services [the whole point of the paper being researched, written and published].

To get the report - which was very good - I entered my email address on my .eu domain. Don't ATG know that anyone living in the EU can register a .eu domain - including students?

Or was it just a techie's error that .ac.uk domains were rejected by the registration software?

come and collect it for free

2010-03-26T09:57:00.006Z

As a shop, I like Debenhams - there aren't many of the old 'department' stores still around. However, I think someone got this promotional message wrong:

Yep ... if I use my own car [and petrol] delivery - or is that collection - is free. Yes I realise they are referring to delivery to your local store, but surely they will put the goods into their [highly efficient] distribution system rather than using a third-party carrier. Why promote it as free delivery - other retailers [all of them?] refer to this as 'click and collect'.

Footnote: I may be wrong on the last sentence - March 2010 saw Halfords also launch its 'free delivery to store' option. I wonder if customers will consider this to be 'free delivery' - or see it along the same lines as me?

Not practicing what you preach

2010-03-13T16:19:00.005Z

I'm disappointed in this example because it comes from someone who professes to be an expert marketer. Sadly I can't mention his name or his website's – as you will see, it strikes me that he is the sort of person to instigate legal action.

It all began when I saw an article on a 'famous' e-marketer's email newsletter about Twitter, it being a list of organizations that were effectively using the 140-character social-messaging system. I decided that I would add my own comments from a user's – that is, receiver's – point of view. At no time was I critical of the original work, indeed, in my introduction I praised it. Note that, so long as the appropriate reference to the original is included, this is acceptable in academic articles. Indeed, it is often seen as both a compliment and an opportunity for the original to reach a wider audience.

Because I was reproducing much of the original article, I started mine with: I am indebted to *name of company and author of the article* which was hyperlinked to the company website. Out of courtesy, I emailed said expert advising him that I had used the original article and included the URL so that he could check it was OK [note that for this I had to use a form on his website, far from the best means of online communication].

Within a couple of hours I received a reply. It had no greeting, simply saying:

*e-marketer's name* wrote:
Your verbatim use of my content without my prior consent falls outside of fair usage guidelines. Removal of my content from your site is formally requested herewith.

This looked like an automated reply to me. No greeting. No introduction. No reason. Not good marketing practice. Not good PR practice. To be frank – out-right rude. Now, I don't think I should get any different treatment than any other reader of the expert's web page – but perhaps a little professional courtesy for a fellow e-marketing expert wouldn't have been amiss?

Thinking it may have been an automated response, I sent the following email:

Hmmm, a rather terse [automated?] legalese reply to what I thought was a reasonable request - particularly as it would drive 'new' readers to your article and the musing starts with:
"I am indebted to *name of company and author of the article*

Still, ho hum - as someone who has had entire books reproduced without my permission I can see where you are coming from, though I feel in this instance you are being a little short-sighted on the PR front.

It is not a problem as far as I am concerned, the page will be deleted by the end of the day , as will all the links from my site to articles/pages on your site and my advice to students to sign up for your newsletter.

Best wishes ... Alan

OK, so a bit like throwing my toys out of the pram, but I felt I was making a valid point. The response came soon after:

Thank you. Have a good weekend.

So ... I've changed the article so that none of the article's content is present. I have removed the link to the expert's website from that article. I have removed the link from my 'useful websites' page. I have removed all 15 links that I had on my website to articles on the experts website. Yep, my hyperlink toys are out of the pram. Will it affect the expert's website in any way? Probably not. But in one of the article's own articles he advises organizations to establish "links of a feather" with affinity sites similar to yours. That sounds like a good idea.

it might be yourspace ... but it's not myspace

2010-03-11T09:54:00.004Z

I got an email from myspace:

Now, I rarely use myspace, but I do have a page, so I thought this might be an important announcement - or perhaps someone trying to contact me. So I clicked on the 'read the full message' link - expecting it to open within the email. But no, it opened a browser with a myspacepage. This one:
So here's the thing. myspace's marketers know quite a bit about me from my registration with them and my activity on their site. They know, for example, that I am a 50-something University lecturer. Apart from anything else I suspect that rules me out of the target demographic for a chat with Steel Panther.

Hello myspace's marketers, guess what I'll be doing with the next email you send me?

good use of IP address tracking

2010-02-25T18:10:00.003Z

As per the entry from a few days ago, I'm checking out travel arrangements for a trip to Athens, and found myself on Tripadvisor looking at a hotel called 'the Four Seasons'. Sadly, it wasn't part of the chain by the same name, but annyywhooo, look what happened when I followed a link to the Tripadvisor page:

Yep, those clever folk assumed that if I was looking for a hotel in Athens I might also need to book a flight. Add into that my IP address identifying me as being in Sunderland, and I was presented with a 'personalized' ad for flights from my local airport.

web and email = different

2010-02-24T16:34:00.005Z

Probably a 'cut and paste' error - but check out the contact email address at the bottom of this [it's from a promotional poster]

Of course, an easy fix would be to have set up the email address as shown [it is possible to have almost anything before the @ in an email address] and have it forward emails to the correct address [student.helpline@], but at the time af writing, the published address was bouncing emails. D'oh!

excellent advertising practice

2010-02-20T13:47:00.007Z

I have been quick to criticise poor advertising, including poor landing pages. However, TravelRepublic.co.uk excelled itself when I was looking for a hotel in Athens. Regular readers will know I have been a frequent visitor to the Greek capital, and so I knew of two hotels in which I would like to stay - so I searched on their names on Google. The first was the Residence Georgio*.

One of the AdWords ads listed was with TravelRepublic and I clicked on the link, which took me to 'their' Georgio page that included a calendar for me to select my required dates**. Here's the resulting page
After checking the price I returned to Google and searched for the Park Hotel. Again, TravelRepublic had an ad, so I clicked on it ...
And here's the good - no, make that great - bit: the TravelRepublic landing page for the Park Hotel already had my travel dates pre-selected. Excellent.
If you're wondering, its all magic - probably - done with IP address recognition. This should be standard practice for advertisers.

* footnote #1 - this hotel actually changed its name last year [to the Melia] and whilst there is a website on this name, the hotel seems to have retained its own brand online. A lesson on the problems of changing a brand/organization's name when it has an established online presence.

** footnote #2 - for any burglars reading: I have changed my actual travel dates on the examples shown

keeping shipping costs a secret

2010-02-16T21:48:00.003Z

I was shopping for some contact lenses online, and came across some at a good price on lenstore.co.uk ....
... but the problem was that I had to register before I could see what the total cost was going to be.
Guess where I didn't buy my lenses from?

google speaks the lingo

2010-02-10T20:21:00.003Z

This wouldn't work for everyone, a bank would be unlikely to get away with it for example, but this is the call to action at the bottom of a page promoting the search giant's new 'buzz' feature. As Mr Burns would say .... excellent

excellent fulfilment process from Tesco

2010-01-27T20:32:00.003Z

It seems a while since I've found something positive to feature on this blog, but here is one. When I ordered a sat nav system online, not only did Tesco provide an online tracking facility [below], but delivered less than a couple of days after I ordered it. See the full story here.

costcutter cutting communication costs?

2010-01-26T19:31:00.003Z

Somewhere along the line I had taken possession of an Irish £5 note. Not a problem for me, I worked in retail for a long time. I know that although it is not legal tender in the UK it is treated by the British banks in the same way as Scottish notes ie they accept them at face value [* see below]

Sadly, the nugget working in my local Costcutter store didn't know this. Neither did she know that the island of Ireland was divided into two countries, Northern Ireland and Eire. Neither did she know that Northern Ireland was part of the United Kingdom and that the £5 note was not 'foreign money'.

It was bad enough that a shop wouldn't take money from me [surely, the ultimate retailing sin?], but to add insult to injury, I was told that they accepted Scottish money but not Irish and was talked to as if I was an idiot and ... well, I was treated in such a way that I would have sacked that member of staff had she acted that way in one of my shops.

So I went to the 'contact us' page on the costcutter.com site [strangely, the .co.uk returns a '404' page despite the fact that costcutter own the domain name] and after reading the message: 'Our highly talented people are what make the Costcutter story amazing!' I fired off an email. Well, no I didn't fire off an email because they only had a contact form - but anyway, I detailed my poor experience at the hands of one of their 'highly talented people'.

Upon pressing 'send' I got this message:
Nice, although I think you will find thank you is two words, not one - perhaps they are not highly talented spellers.

The thing is ... that was over a week ago. Do I need to say any more?

* In case you aren't aware, only English money is 'legal tender' in England - indeed the term 'legal tender' is unique to England, other countries using the legal term 'promissory note' to cover the issue. However, because England, Scotland and Northern Ireland are all part of the UK, the banks have an agreement that they will accept each other's notes.

computers & hairstyling : associated selling?

2010-01-16T18:54:00.007Z

I'm considering buying a netbook - and one place I checked was ASDA. Here's the page for one that interested me - but take a look at the ads on the right. Printer, OK - but hair straighteners? Cross selling is a big part of a retailers income. Can you imagine a salesperson in a shop saying "good choice of computer sir, now can I interest you in some ceramic straighteners?" No ... so why do it online?

let me out of here

2010-01-11T16:18:00.008Z

I suppose if you really pushed me I might come up with an acceptable reason for using a notice - and facility - like this one that appeared when I went to close a tab with a website on it:

Perhaps it might be used on the page of a form where the user has completed the details and so might have clicked away from the page by mistake.

But as a general rule, if I have indicated that I want to leave the page I probably want to do so. Taking an offline equivalent [as I like to do to make an online point], how would you feel if a member of staff held the door closed as you went to leave a shop and asked 'are you sure you want to leave'?

exclamation mark com?

2010-01-10T14:39:00.010Z

I saw the poster on a billboard:

Take a good look in the bottom righthand corner. I suppose it might have sounded a bit off-beat in the pitch, but domain names CANNOT have an exclamation mark in them. Of course, I know this - but when I asked my wife to go to the website she typed in the ! instead of 'dot'. My wife, by the way, is not stupid - she is as web-savvy as the average person. Big mistake, Britainthinks.

For more on domain names, go buy my book: choosing the right domain name: a marketing perspective.

if there's no price ... you can't afford it

2010-01-10T11:14:00.004Z

I recall my mum quoting me the titular phrase when I was about six and staring in the window of expensive toy shop. By the time I was working in retail management I knew the theory behind the concept as well as how it worked in practice. However, I cannot see an application online - which makes HP's (Hewlett Packard) website something of a nonsense ... see below:
Do they really think that anyone would click on 'buy now' without knowing anything about the product or even how much it costs?

Newcastle Airport - it's snow joke II

2010-01-06T10:28:00.008Z

Following on from an earlier entry - hey Newcastle Airport, it's snow joke - it would appear they do not run any kind of reputation management software and so have not read my blog [or more to the point, do not seem to care too much about their customers].

Last night saw a continuation of the bad weather in the UK, and the morning radio said that Newcastle airport was closed because of the snow. So I immediately went to the airport's website, and here's the front page:

Yep, same as it was on my previous entry on the subject; ie same as always. Similar story on the other relevant pages. The lack of updating is betrayed in this message on the 'latest news' feature:
For those who do not follow football, this match was played 4 days ago. Latest news ???

The same BBC radio news report said that both Gatwick and Bristol airports were closed - I was pleased to see that the website management [read: cutomer care] of those was better, here's their frontpages:

unintentional bait and switch by Argos

2009-12-30T15:15:00.007Z

As my students will tell you, I hold Argos up as an example of best practice in multi-channel retailing. However, even the best can get it wrong - albeit in an issue that might be considered beyond their control [though I think with a bit of vigilance and considered web content it can be effectively addressed]. Here's the problem.

I managed to overfill our coffee maker which caused it to short-out ... and anyway, we needed a new one. Being happy the one I'd just blown up, I typed its name into Google, and got this as part of the result ...
Great, I thought - on offer for half price at Argos. But when I clicked on that link I got this page ...Now, I suspect the link in the Google index was an old one, referring to an offer that has since finished - but it still reflects poorly on Argos.

The solution? Well, first-off you folks at Argos' reputation management dept, I would hope you are monitoring blog enteries with your brand name in them, so you should read this - so let me know how you sorted it out.

To address the issue, I would look to change the content of the page with the 'offer' price on it - Google will continue to list it, but the text should not be damaging. And to stop it happening again you are going to have to monitor search engine results for any returns that link to your website - I'm sure there will be software available help out with this task.

UPDATE - a few days later I went back to Google and used the same search term - and the Argos entry had changed to this:
Note that the URL for both entries is the sames - suggesting that the textual content has been changed. Coincidence? I would like to think someone at Argos saw this blog? [if you did, let me know, I would love to use this as an example of good practice in my next book].

Furthermore, this entry wasn't in the listings when I searched last week

hey Newcastle Airport - it's snow joke

2009-12-20T09:39:00.010Z

Today we fly off for our winter holidays. And last night it snowed. Again. Its been snowing since Thursday. So I go to the website of Newcastle Airport - from where we fly in a few hours time.

Now, I would expect I am not the only person concerned about their flight today - the radio is talking of flight delays around the country. And these are the homepage, the flight information page and the arrival and departures page from the airport's website. You will note how two of them have ads in prominent places - what you will not see is any kind of announcement about the state of the runway, and whether or not flights are operating as normal. Checking the 'departures' page would suggest everything is OK. Replacing those ads with a nice clear message [everything Ok, flights delayed, check-in on time, whatever] for a couple of hours would have been good customer service. And no, it being Sunday morning is not an excuse for those responsible for web content not being at work is NOT an excuse.

hello America ... rest of the world calling

2009-12-11T09:24:00.009Z

I like Lulu.com. They provide a good service in on-demand printing. I've used them to publish books. They have my full details from my registration with them. They've sent books to my home address.

So why did I get this email?

Times' search is behind the times

2009-12-07T09:39:00.005Z

I read an article in the hard-copy version of the Sunday Times that I wanted to add a link to from my website. So on Monday morning I searched for the online version of the article - starting on the Timesonline.co.uk. But this was the return I got:
So I went to Google, and with the same search term got this:
Now, there is an ongoing debate at this time about newspapers complaining that the search engines 'steal' the newspapers' content. Hmmm, well maybe you should look to satisfy your own readers on your own site before taking that stance?

Footnote: when I went to the online version of the story its title had been changed. So I searched for it also and got no return on the Timesonline site.