GYBO or “CANADA GET YOUR BUSINESS ONLINE” as the big YouTube ad said, peaked my interest because a) being in the business of helping businesses with their online strategy I welcomed more sales ammunition, and b) I was surprised that there were any businesses left in the category of “not online”. Unfortunately, this launch party ended with a whimper.

Legitmised by the promise of TV loudmouth and celebrity entrepreneur Kevin O’Leary, and with well known sponsors, I figured this would be worth checking out. It turns out that clicking on the one link on the landing page takes you to a webpage with the URL of “http://www.gybo.ca/getstarted” but the subtle online business secret of “Error 404″.

I don’t want to be purely critical though. Despite being in pole position and crashing into a ditch just before the finishing post (mixed metaphors, I know), the web page did some things right. This is a well crafted landing page.

• Big call-to-action
• Obvious button
• Massive hit spot

Firstly, the most obvious item on the page is the one thing the site owners want you to click on, the link. By using a block of vibrant colour against an otherwise subdued palette, it’s the first thing you see. Many users, me included, coming from an ad that promised something, won’t even read the text on the landing page to get context, they’ll look for the link and click on it. I didn’t care what the format of the result was going to be, I just wanted to know what information there was going to be about getting a business online.

Admittedly, that last sentence was a lie, I did have some expectations and they didn’t include what I was actually delivered.

Secondly, there was only one action that I could perform on the page. By creating a simple but rigid funnel for visitor actions, the chances of losing visitors through indecision, confusion, trepidation, or irritation is highly reduced. That’s going to keep the conversion rate high.

If I were to make further recommendations, they would be these:

1. Don’t waste money on advertising to broken landing pages. Conversion is going to be low, real low.
2. Clarify the call to action text within in the button. As discussed, there’s a good chance visitors won’t read any other text on the page – you want them to click on the link. Tell we exactly what to do and expect. e.g. “View the live broadcast with Kevin O’Leary”.

How do you delete a birthday from the birthday calendar on your iPhone?

Just another minor iPhone annoyance – but it seems unbelievable!

When I enter the contact information for my employees, I like to record their birthday. Birthdays have been a good excuse for all sorts of practical jokes around the Sage  Internet office.

Recently, I noticed  that birthdays of former employees still showed up  so I decided to delete some of them. In most cases, I did not want to remove them as a contact – just keep them from showing up on my iPhone calendar.

Seems like this is not a simple task …it may not even be possible.

Here is a good post on the subject http://www.thoughtasylum.com/blog/2010/7/31/tracking-down-the-iphone-birthday-calendar.html

See this article for a more comprehensive article of iPhone annoyances

There is  so much hype about the iPhone 4. I studied a lot of reviews. I bought one. Did I make a mistake switching from Blackberry to iPhone?

I decided to write a review from a business user’s perspective. More specifically, from the perspective of a small business user, a long-time Backberry user,  who  recently switched to the iPhone4.

To get straight to the conclusion for those of you with attention deficit disorder: If the iPhone is your first SmartPhone, you will be tickled to bits. It does lots of cool stuff and does it pretty well. There are also lots of apps to make up for shortcomings.

BUT

If you are a business user coming from Blackberry to iPhone, and your primary needs are  email, contacts,  calendar scheduling, and synching to your PC (especially if you use Outlook), you will likely be very frustrated. Most simple tasks like entering a calendar appointment task take longer to perform on an iPhone. Some of the things you took for granted on a Blackberry (like default reminders for calendar appointments) cannot be done on the iPhone.

Background

I am a longtime Blackberry user. I used my smart phone primarily for business and to communicate with my family. My laptop computer, Microsoft Outlook, and Gmail are the centre of my universe. I am in a small business environment without Exchange Servers and an IT department.

Most of the articles I see out there are filled with a bunch of cool things the iPhone can do but do not really focus on the main core items:

• Is it a good, efficient, phone that lets me readily call contacts?
• Can contacts be easily maintained and synced with a desktop computer?
• Can calendar appointments be entered efficiently and synced with a desktop computer?
• Can you easily and efficiently send and receive emails?
• Can you efficiently send text messages / instant messages?
• Can I keep a handy to do list for items that don’t really belong as calendar appointments?
• Does it have a decent battery life and is it easily and quickly rechargeable or are spare batteries available?
• After you have satisfied those core needs:
• Does it have a good web browser?
• Does it have a decent camera?
• Are there a lot of useful apps readily available?

Most of the reviews I read made the iPhone sound like a slam dunk choice over a Blackberry.

I switched to an iPhone 4 from my beloved old Blackberry Curve:

Why did I switch from my beloved Blackberry Curve to a new iPhone4?

My Blackberry finally broke where the charger plugs in and it was not worth fixing. It owed me nothing. I went out looking for the next great SmartPhone. I was seduced by the sexiness of iPhones good looks and members of the Apple cult were tugging at my brain. Still, prior to switching I did a lot of homework and reading reviews. The problem is that most of the reviews seem to be done by high-school students and not business users.

Am I happy?

Not really – I got a phone that is a top-notch web browser and has a second-to-none screen but other than that I am pretty pissed by how it handles most of my business needs. Oh, it looks nice too – still the best looking phone out there.

General annoyances

• Keyboard (not as bad as I thought but the autocorrect becomes very annoying)
• Battery life not great
• No BBM  Blackberry Instant Messenger (WhatsApp App softens the blow a bit)
• Any holster, even the raved about Otterbox sucks compared to the one handed case of use of Blackberry holsters
• There are a lot of things you can do one handed with a Blackberry – with an iPhone, plan on using two hands
• Voicemail password -  you cannot simply enter one like you can on a BlackBerry

email annoyances

• Can’t delete multiple messages simultaneously. This is just plain dumb. I can manage my inbox at least 10 times more efficiently on a Blackberry.
• Slower to navigate through emails (even with the threaded view)
• In the end, you will want to set up a gmail account and do everything through there

Calendar annoyances

• It takes at least 3 times as long to enter an appointment on an iPhone than on a Blackberry on average
• Can’t drag a calendar appointment from one time to another
• Calendar lets you enter appointments in the past, even with reminders, with no warning that the event is in the past. This is dumb – I can’t tell you how often this feature on the Blackberry saved me from entering an appointment in the wrong time/day/month/year…
• Can’t tap on an empty time slot in calendar to start opening an appointment that would show the correct time
• Can’t enter default reminders for appointments
• Can’t set default appointment lengths ??
• Can’t accept .ics calendar entries – Blackberry does this with no problem. If someone sends me a meeting Invite from Outlook, it will only go to my main outlook calendar and not to the calendar that syncs with Mobileme
• Not setting automatic alarms in calendar.
• Not being able to click on appointment time and enter appointment – have to use scroll wheels.
• Calendar does not default to current day. For example, if I was last looking at tomorrow, it will default to look at that day when I reopen the calendar

Contact annoyances

• There should always be a search box at the top. The little magnifying glass at the top right is almost impossible to reliably hit without  hitting the add a new appointment button. Maybe put the magnifying glass at the left. A widely unknown workaround is that you can just tap at the very top of the screen to get a search box
• The search box should stay persistent even when you are scrolling through contacts – it scrolls off the screen
• Can’t sort contacts by company for example: I have the names of 5 local policemen. I have them in my Blackberry under Company “Police”. In the iPhone, I wanted to look up “Police” but it is not there. You have to use the search function. This is a very basic and MAJOR oversight for any business user.
• Any easy way to add another contact from the same company?

Syncing issues with MobileMe and Outlook

• Syncing from iPhone changes the sort order of Outlook contacts to lname fname and removes company.
• Synchronizing to Outlook not as fast or as good as Blackberry. I even subscribed to Mobileme which made life a bit easier but still took a long time to set up. It gets very confusing by establishing multiple calendars on your iPhone and your Outlook. If you are like me and want just one main calendar with everything in it, it is not nearly as simple as it should be.

Camera annoyances

• Should be a way to look at the properties of a photo to find out the date and time it was taken. All this information is captured, just no easy way to see it withoutout downloading it to your computer or perhaps another app you really should not have to add on
• Digital zoom only available in still camera not video camera.
• Digital zoom is basically a waste due to quality loss – same as sending the old unzoomed version to someone and having them “pinch-out” to enlarge.

Please comment on whether you agree with some of these shortcomings and suggest ways to get around them. I will be trying to add to this article in future posts.

I like REI. This is based on an experience, some 10 years ago, when I scaled the free-standing climbing wall in the Seattle store, and found the staff to be very helpful and pleasant.  However, I live in Canada and don’t find the emails for the U.S store to be that useful so finally, after a decade, I decided to clean up my inbox and unsubscribe to the newsletters.

I like REI, but at that point, my feelings of goodwill were dented. REI made the simple act of unsubscribing anything but simple.

I believe that my reactions are reflective of a fairly typical web user and so illustrate how a small website usability problem can alter customer perception of your brand.

Let’s walk through what went wrong:

When I click “unsubscribe”, that’s the only action I want to perform

After I click unsubscribe at the bottom of an email newsletter, I expect the next thing I see to be a confirmation page saying, “You have successfully unsubscribed”. If you must ask me why, you could include an optional survey. Taking me to a page where I have to a) think, and b) do stuff, is not what I want or expected.

It feels like one of those scam phone calls where you’re told, “you’ve won a trip” and then find out that you have to listen a 3 hour sales pitch from some vacuum cleaner salesman in your living room.  sleazy

Give me Titles that confirm what I’m expecting

Don’t confuse me with titles that don’t match the action I’m performing.  I chose to  “Unsubscribe”,  you took me to a “Your REI Email Preferences” page. I don’t want emails so why are the “preferences” relevant?

This is confusing and at the same time does not feel at all transparent. I’m questioning your motives.

Don’t force me to provide more information

The form pre-filled with my email address and first name and then asked for surname and zipcode as required fields.

Why do I have to give you more private information?  I’m unsubscribing, why do you need my surname? You sent the email to my email address, and pre-filled the form with my first name, so you clearly already know enough information to be able to unsubscribe me.

Privacy is a serious issue for most people and they don’t like giving out personal information for free. Asking for more contact information implies that you need it for something else. My imagination takes off: Are you going to invade my privacy further by sending me more information, or selling my details to someone else?

Good-will meter severely depleted. I am now looking at REI with distrust.

Note that I almost decided not to unsubscribe rather than provide more private information. That’s not a good incentive to read REI emails.

Use comprehensive instead of sequential validation

If I haven’t completed the form correctly, tell me every single bit that I need to attend to in one list. Don’t drip feed them to be one by one as I fix the previous issue and then hit “submit”.

There were 2 required fields that I didn’t notice which meant that I had to edit and submit 2 extra times before I could actually unsubscribe.

My frustration at this point is not with the form, or with the page: it’s with REI. I feel that REI has let me down by causing me needless pain.

Remove unnecessary steps

The cardinal rule of usability is make the user action as simple as possible. Steve Krug sums it up best with the mantra “Don’t Make Me Think“.

The REI form forces me to select which types of email communication I want to subscribe to. This is unnecessary AND confusing terminology. Why should I select what I want to subscribe to when I wanted to unsubscribe? Besides, can’t you work out what I want to unsubscribe from based on the fact that I just hit the unsubscribe button within the very thing I want to unsubscribe from?.

Bad taste in the mouth.

For example, why choose now to up-sell me? I clearly don’t want more information.

Make it work properly

There’s nothing that’s going to irritate people more than broken functionality, with the exception of treating your users like second class citizens because they are not from your country. This page managed to do both.

“Zipcode” is a required field but I don’t have zipcode, I have a postcode (and at this point in time, I’ll do anything I can not to give it to you). I have to stop and really read the text around the box now. That stops the flow

Ahh, there is an exception. If I live outside of the U.S., I should type “0″ (zero) into the field.  BUT THAT BRINGS UP A VALIDATION ERROR.

REI, you forced me to lie (I don’t actually live in Beverly Hills but 90201 but is the only zipcode I know).

Try this instead

This is my recommendation for what the unsubcribe page should look like.  Clicking on “unsubscribe” in an email is unequivocal. It’s the initiation of an action that should be immediately carried out without any further questioning. There’s no ambiguity and no need for any intervention before carrying out the task.

This is what I should have seen immediately after clicking unsubscribe

End result

I should point out that I also unsubscribed from a number of other publications and, on average, it took around 4 seconds. It took over 2 minutes for me to unsubscribe from REI. That’s 30 times longer than the companies that did a good job. Imagine how long it would take a non web-savvy user.

The end result is that REI now has someone with a negative experience who it likely to tell others, and  some useless, inaccurate, contact information.  Weighing it up, I don’t think it was worth the potential effect on the brand to try to hold on so tightly.

It’s important to remember that even non-customers can affect the buying choices of potential customers.

]]> http://blog.sageinternet.com/2011/web-design/usability/destroying-good-will/feed/ 3 http://blog.sageinternet.com/2011/social-media/facebook-deals/ http://blog.sageinternet.com/2011/social-media/facebook-deals/#comments Mon, 31 Jan 2011 23:03:24 +0000 Chris Burdge http://blog.sageinternet.com/?p=2037 Check in.  There’s a Good Deal Waiting for You

Love a good deal?  Sure we all do, but the right deal isn’t always easy to find at the time you really need it.  Say you’ve got your eye on a pair of jeans at your favourite store.  Waiting for it to go on sale could mean your size won’t be there by the time it happens.  What if you were rewarded with a deal on those jeans because you shop there frequently, without having to wait? Yeah, nice eh!

Starting today, Facebook is offering Deals in Canada through Facebook Places, giving local businesses another way to engage, provide value to, and retain customers simply by enabling them to check into their location on their smartphone devices.

Finding nearby deals is easy. Login to Facebook on your smartphone, touch “Places” and then touch “Check In.” Places with Deals that are nearby are displayed with a yellow or green icon to the right (see image below).

Select the Place by touching it, then you can view the deal and check in to claim it:

Then show your phone to the waitress/cashier/server to redeem your Facebook Deal:

Search your favourite local stores to find out who’s offering deals. At the time of writing, the only company in Victoria offering a deal is American Eagle Outfitters in the Mayfair Mall. If you know of any other local businesses offering Facebook Deals leave a comment below.

Foursquare for Business

Millions of users are turning to Foursquare every day to help them find explore their world. They’re checking out new restaurants, visiting their favourite stores, and they are sharing their activities with their social network (users send check-ins to Twitter and Facebook), and earning badges along the way.

From nationwide chains like American Eagle Outfitters (Special Offer), to mom-and-pop shops like Nautical Nellies (Special Offer), and everything in between, businesses are attracting new customers and rewarding their most loyal ones with foursquare Specials – mobile coupons, prizes and discounts.

Specials create an incentive for customers to stop by and “check-in”. Offers like 20% off a meal, a free drink, or even a reserved parking spot for your most loyal customers. Specials can be tailored to fit your needs, whether it’s a discount for first-time customers or rewards for the 5th visit in a month.

If you register for Foursquare’s free Merchant Platform you can access to your venue analytics dashboard, which enables you to track your customer traffic over time.

Acquire, Engage & Retain

This tutorial shows you how easy it is to acquire, engage and retain customers on Foursquare.

Wondering which businesses in Victoria are on Foursquare and offering specials? I’ve created a Twitter list here which I keep current. Feel free to contact me if you are offering specials and would like to be added to the list.

Tags are free to create and use. You can add them to your magazine ads (or editorial), business cards, posters, product packaging, billboards, clothing…anything analog really.

To scan a Tag you need to download the free Tag Reader application onto your mobile phone. When you scan a tag it will automatically display a message, open a webpage, add a contact to your address book, or dial a number.

Tags are free and easy to create. You can create Tags in black and white or colors that represent your business or brand.

Here are a few benefits to using Tags:

• Direct Response: Use Tags as a direct response marketing tool for print campaigns. Check out this Tag in a BMW ad in YAM Magazine linking to a related video.
• Manage customer experience: Use Tags to link to a website or on a business card to instantly add someone to your address book; dial a phone number; or display a message.

• Analytics: Measure campaign effectiveness with Tag reporting. You can track the number of scans of a Tag over time and by geographic location.
• Maintain brand identity: It’s easy to customize the look of a Tag to reflect your brand identity.

Check out the latest issue of YAM Magazine for a few examples of tags in ads and editorial content. I know I’ll be adding a Tag to the next version of my business card.

1.     Write for your Reader. One of main mistakes writers make with SEO friendly blog copy writing is trying to write for search engines at the risk of alienating visitors to their website (customers).  Website copy should be written specifically with your intended reader in mind. Focus on solving your customer’s problem first, the search engines will take care of themselves.

2.     Use Images to Support the Main Message. A relevant and contextual supporting image can draw the reader in. But be careful not to clutter your pages with unnecessary or irrelevant images. Find the right image(s) to support the main message of your blog post. Two good sources of images are the Creative Commons section of Flickr (generally free), and iStock (modestly priced).

3.     Keywords. Research your keywords carefully. Choose 2 or 3 priority keywords and work them naturally into your blog copy. Try to work the keywords into your copy naturally with about 3 to 5 mentions, but most importantly copy should flow naturally and make sense.

4.     Use Headlines. The headlines should feature your keywords. Search engines crawl this information first and will use this information to determine the relevance of your post. Spend time choosing the right headline copy.

5.     Copy Length. Try to keep your copy above 250 words to ensure that there’s enough space to get your message across without over-saturating or cramming in the keywords.

6.     Benefits not Features. Describe the benefits of your product or service to prospects and customers. Consumers don’t buy features, they want to know what’s in it for them? When a prospect gets to the point where they feel that your product or service would benefit them, they will consider buying.

7.     Paragraphs and Emphasis. Keep your blog copy to bite sized paragraphs. Don’t make the reader work too hard. Blog readers seek immediate gratification and like to scan copy or skip to the important parts. Use emphasis formatting like bold or underline to draw attention to important points – with moderation.

8.     Proof Reading. Often people are so happy to have finished a blog post with great copy that they can forget to go back and proof read it. Simple mistakes make you and your company seem thoughtless and unprofessional. I know, I’ve done it.

If your company has a physical location it makes sense to have a Facebook Place so you can track the people coming into your venue (store, restaurant, café, etc) and allow them to help promote you. Facebook recently released a guide to show businesses how to merge Facebook Pages and Facebook Places into a single Page. The result is a newly designed, and radically different, Facebook Page which includes location-based information.

To Merge or Not to Merge

If you merge your Place to your Page, your Place page will be updated with a richer design that includes maps and check-ins. The core content, such as Photos, Videos and Events from your Page will remain, as well as any custom tabs, or vanity URLs. If you are running any ads that direct to your original Page, your ads will continue to run as usual.

If you don’t have time to read the Facebook Guide I have broken down the process into 3 easy steps.

Step 1: Create Your Place

The first thing you’ll need to do is check too see if your “place” exists on Facebook. You can do this by to opening Facebook on your iPhone or Facebook for touch devices on a compatible phone and searching for your business. If your venue doesn’t exist, you can create your “place” by clicking on “Add” or the “+” sign depending on whether or not you are using Facebook for touch devices or Facebook for iPhone.

Nautical Nellies - Facebook Place

Step 2: Claim Your Place

Claiming your place will allow you to manage your  address, contact info and business hours, etc. This is similar to managing your Facebook page but with additional functionality like, maps, directions and check-ins. To claim your place you’ll need to:

1. Login to Facebook search for and select the name of your place. Click the “Is this your place?” link.
2. Check the box to declare that you are an official representative.
3. Facebook will then attempt to call the phone number listed to provide a 4-digit verification code (much like Google local).
4. Enter the 4-digit verification number. Once verified you will receive a message that it has been claimed.

Step 3: Merge Your Place & Page

The final step is to merge the Place and the Page. The result is a combined Page which effectively serves as a local business page. The design is radically different from existing Facebook Pages so you’ll want to check a few out and decide if it’s right for you before finalizing the merge. However, it is possible that Facebook will move in this direction for all Pages.

If you have any questions about Facebook places or would like to talk to someone about helping you with your Facebook marketing leave a comment below.

Check back next week when I talk about how to create your Facebook “Deals”.

What is Paper.li and How Does it Work

Paper.li, launched in April 2010, organizes and displays content from links shared on Twitter into an easy-to-skim “Twitter paper” webpage that looks like an online newspaper. It allows you to turn your Twitter stream, a Twitter list or hashtag into a Daily Paper.

Paper.li extracts links to news stories, photos, videos which it then analyzes, using a tool the company calls “semantic text analysis” to determine the relevance of the stories. The site then displays the links and related content in sections based on the context of the link. You can use the service to create themed pages based on specific topics using hashtags, such as #Tofino or #YYJMusic, in much the same way that newspapers create special sections around an event or topic.

Paper.li also automatically creates topical sections such as technology, business, arts & entertainment, photos and politics. If you mouse-over the source of each link or photo, you can reply, retweet, follow / unfollow, and favorite that user. It also embeds the creator’s Twitter stream in a sidebar,

The Tofino Daily

Paper.li fills a niche in the social ecosystem of news. Here are a few of the newest Twitter Dailies popping up around YYJ.

• The Social Daily
• The Open-Government Daily
• The Foursquare-Victoria Daily
• The Tai-Chi Daily
• The YYJ-Weddings Daily

Paper.li developer SmallRivers, is getting ready up to launch in beta, and has already attracted a lot of attention from established social and traditional media companies for partnerships.

The company is currently working on adding more functionalities and content (like Facebook) to the service and adding support for multiple languages. The new beta version is reported go live in the next few weeks. I’m looking forward to the updates.

This is a great way to track or promote a topic or group of Twitter users you are passionate about. So go ahead and create one – it’s actually pretty easy.

What new social media development has got your attention – let us know in the comments box below.