Reducing Friction

Go to this website, click that link, call this number, fill out that form; Anytime you ask people to do something you are creating a point of friction. Your audience will not continue unless the reward is greater than the friction they are experiencing. It is easy to forget about friction but doing so may severely inhibit the success of your campaigns.

Now that I have you thinking about friction, let me show you what happens to your marketing efforts when you reduce it.

Old “friction” form

Old form

On our website we have a 30-day free trial download page and when people download the trial they have an option to add their email address.

Problems that caused friction:

• Unnecessary instructions: There are four steps involved in downloading the free trial. We are telling the audience that the steps to downloading a free-trial are so complex that we had to give you instructions! That kind of complexity is surely going to cause friction
• Wrong order: They came to the page in order to download a free trial, but instead we talk about their email address and ask for it first. The actual links to the free trial downloads are much lower on the page.
• Email form field: We ask for an email address, but don’t say why. Sure we mention it way up at the top of the page, but they didn’t need to make a decision to give it until now.
• Too many versions: You want someone to make the decision about which version they need after they have decided they want to download it. Showing all of those versions and (unnecessary system requirements) makes it look more complicated then it needs to be.
• Special instructions: Install instructions do not belong in the download form. That information should be on the thank you page. Once someone has invested the time to actually download the free-trial.

New “reduced friction” form

New "reduced friction" form

• Removed all of those unnecessary instructions.
• Included a product picture and positioning message to remind them why they want to try out the software.
• Added a drop-down input field with the most popular version preloaded so that most customers will not have to change version.
• Email request is after the form free trial option and there is a clear benefit associated with providing their address.
• Large “download now” button makes it easy to understand the purpose of the form.

After implementing these changes our average email subscriber rate jumped more than 300%!

Only part of your overall strategy

By now it should be apparent that reducing friction will go a long way in creating more successful marketing campaigns. But remember it is only part of the solution; You still need to create marketing programs to attract new customers.

As part of your high level marketing strategy, map out the entire path a person takes from first-contact (whether it is an ad, a trade show booth, search engine etc.) to successful conversion to paying customer. Now that you have identified all of the areas of friction, you can build a marketing program with the greatest chances of success.

Have you had personal experience optimizing the customer experience to reduce friction? Did this article convince you to make changes? If so I’d love to hear from you!

What areas of your site are vulnerable?

Forms/ input fields:

FTP:

Files and folders:

File Permissions: Thats how they got me

What the heck is CHMOD?

This is how I fixed it

Folders:

Files:

What kind of measures have you implemented to safeguard your website?

Image by: Zach Klein

Google asynchronous tracking optimizes how browsers load the Google Analytics JavaScript, so its impact on the user experience is minimized. It also allows you to put your Analytics snippet higher in the page without delaying subsequent content from rendering. Visitors get to see your pages faster, and Google gets to serve more adds – everybody wins!

I put together a new Joomla 1.5 plugin so that you can easily add the new tracking code to your Joomla powered site.

Installation is easy:

1. Download the plg_FCGanalytics1.0.0.zip
2. From the Joomla administrator console go to Extensions/ Install
3. Under “Upload Package File” click “choose file” and browse to the file you just downloaded. Once you select it, click “Upload File & Install“
4. Once you see the “Success” message, go to Extensions/ plugin manager and click on the plugin named “FreshClicks Google Async Analytics”
5. Under the plugin paramaters add your Google Analytics UA Code (the code should look something like UA-123456-1), under Enabled choose “Yes” and then click “Save”

That’s it- You new site should now start reaping the benefits of Asynchronous Tracking!

If you find this code useful or have any questions, please comment below and make sure to vote for this plugin on Joomla!

One of the most valuable assets a company has is its database of email subscribers.

Just ask highly successful large companies like Papa John’s, Scotts, and Hitachi Data Systems as well as hundreds of small and mid-sized companies like CardsDirect, Aptera Software, and Powell’s Books. Each of these companies has the ability to deliver relevant and timely information and offers to their email subscribers – when they need to do so. By “owning their own communications channel,” these companies are not dependent on traditional print or broadcast media to attract customers or drive repeat sales. They have the advantage of choosing when, how and with whom they communicate.

Start With the “End” in Mind

According to a recent study conducted by Forrester Research, titled Email Marketing Comes of Age, “Those who buy products marketed through email spend 138% more than non-readers of email.”

Clearly, email has proven its value for aiding the customer’s buying process and driving repeat sales. And in testing conducted by the Direct Marketing Association (DMA), email delivered the highest ROI of all direct response marketing methods tested.

So if your objective is to use email as the backbone of your company’s marketing, sales, and customer service operations, you need to invest in the right strategies and tactics to attract email subscribers.

Here are 3 subscriber acquisition strategies I recommend:

1. Search Engine Marketing. Usage of search engines like Google and Yahoo that make information on the Internet easier to find have revolutionized the way brands and companies “lead” customers to their websites. That’s why you should not overlook Paid Search as a tactic for attracting new email subscribers.

Chris Dawkins, founder and CEO of search engine optimization company Trace Media Marketing, had an excellent article in BtoB Online in July in which he discussed using PPC (Pay Per Click) or paid search in combination with SEO (Search Engine Optimization) or natural search to attract visitors to your website or landing page. As Dawkins points out in his article, “testing various keywords and phrases with paid search can be beneficial to your SEO efforts. For example, you can figure out quickly which keywords convert to leads or sales.”

I like paid search because it allows marketers to attract the “right kind of customer” to their website. And once you get them to your site, you have a golden opportunity to invite them to become an email subscriber.

2. Social Forward. Social Forward is “new age word-of-mouth-marketing” and is fast becoming an incredibly effective technique for attracting new email subscribers. By embedding social media icons in the email content for top social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIN, marketers can empower existing subscribers to share the email they receive with friends and colleagues with whom they are connected. And when the email is shared with a non-subscriber, they are invited to opt-in.

Social Forward provides two big benefits:

• It allows recipients to share special offers, articles, and other content in the email. This type of word-of-mouth promotion is invaluable.
• It enables companies to expand the distribution of the email campaign beyond current subscribers. This “multiplier effect” can be huge for driving brand awareness and sales.

One brand that uses Social Forward very effectively to expand their database of email subscribers is Dreamfields Pasta. In two years, the brand has built a database of 400,000 consumers and 18,000 healthcare professionals. Email and word-of-mouth-marketing have become the cornerstones of Dreamfields phenomenal success.

3. Mobile Opt-in. Smart phones have forever changed how marketers use text messaging as a direct response tactic to engage consumers and provide them an opportunity to subscribe to the company’s email communications, special offers, and customer service alerts.

For retailers like Pier 1, consumer packaged goods marketers like Scotts, restaurants like Taco John’s, and service providers like Expedia, text is fast becoming an ideal tactic for interacting with customers – regardless of whether they are in a store, at an event, or on foot. And that’s why it’s so smart to use text to make it easy for consumers to subscribe to your email communications. By inviting consumers to opt-in when they are most interested and engaged, marketers dramatically improve their chances of gaining new subscribers.

About Joel Book

Joel Book is Director of eMarketing Education for ExactTarget, the world’s leading provider of on-demand software for permission-based email and mobile marketing.

With more than 30 years of experience in database marketing, Joel combines proven strategies and tactics for customer development and retention with contemporary one-to-one marketing and social media technology to teach organizations how to attract new customers, aid the customer’s decision-making process, and drive repeat purchase.

In 2009, Book was voted one of the “50 Most Influential People in Sales Lead Management.”

When he’s not speaking or teaching, Joel shares his perspective on strategies and tactics for successful one-to-one marketing in his blog: Email Marketing by the Book

Please go check it out and let me know what you think. You can post a comment to their blog, this site or just @ me on twitter, @LaryStucker

Tomorrow FreshClicks will be publishing, “Wining Strategies for Growing Your Email Subscriber Database“ by  our first guest writer, Joel Book

As a marketer you spend a great deal of time planning, executing, and monitoring the results of your online campaigns. You watch CTRs, CPCs, and Conversion rates. Then create monthly reports that are supposed to demonstrate the value these campaigns bring to your organization. Unless you are running a sole proprietorship, this means convincing others that all of these numbers and percentages translates into a net gain for your organization. The following steps will make sure that your creating reports that are convincing and have the support of your entire team:

Step 1: Online tracking:

Once someone clicks on an online ad and visits your website what did they do next?  Did they immediately leave, visit multiple pages, or fill out a form? You need to make sure that your web tracking software can accurately identify traffic from your online ads. If you haven’t done so already, pop on over to Google Analytics and follow the steps to setting up your account.

Step 2: Identify visitor goals

When people visit your website what is it that you want them to do? If you’re with a B2B company you may be looking for new leads. Maybe they have to fill out a form to download a white paper, or to get a product demo. Maybe your run an ecommerce site and the goal is for them to make an online transaction. Its possible that you may have several goals that a visitor could potentially achieve depending on where they are in the sales cycle.  It is crucial for your organization to clearly identify what you want your visitors to do. This is also your first opportunity to get other involved in the project. Make sure you cover all of the obvious goals and then ask key team members if there are others goals that are important on the site.

Step 3: Determine goal valuations

Once your team has identified all of the website goals, you need to set values for each of them. It is important that the same people you will be trying to convince with your reports are involved in this process. They need to agree with the methods used to determine the values of each goal and believe in the final values. As an online marketer, goal valuations should be one of the most important metrics that you use. They should be well documented,understood, reevaluated regularly, and believed by everyone in your department. Once you have goal values that your organization believes in, the rest is easy!

Step 4: Track Goals

Most analytics applications make it easy to setup the tracking of website goals. These goals are typically represented by a pageview, or a virtual pageview. Virtual pageviews are JavaScript actions that are treated as a pageview by your web tracking software. If you are using Google Analytics, quick go learn how-to setup website goals, then come back here and finish reading the article.

Step 5: Decipher and simplify your reports

With Impressions, CPC, CTR, RPC, Bounce rates, and a bunch of other possible metrics, it is easy to get bogged down in data. Each one of these metrics might be important to you when you are trying to determine a specific aspect of a campaign, but it’s information overload for anyone else trying to read your reports. Stick with basic metrics that will show how the ads are performing and include a glossary that explains the purpose of each metric.

• Impressions: The number of times your ads were displayed. This can also be seen as a branding opportunity. How many times did you ad appear in a clients browser?
• Clicks: The number of clicks on your ad.
• CTR: Clickthrough rate is the percentage of impressions that resulted in a click. This will tell you how well your ad was received by the total audience.
• Goal1 Conv: number of conversions completed for Goal1. IT obviously wouldn’t say “Goal 1″ but something like, “Free-trial download” or “completed lead form”
• Conv.1 %: The percentage of Visits that resulted in a Goal1 conversion.
• Conv.1 Value: Goal1 Conv. x Value of a Goal1
• Cost: The cost of your online ad.
• CostPerConv.: Costs / Goal1 Conv.
• ROI: Cov1 Value – Costs

I like to display my reports in this order because it matches the progression prospects actually follow when experiencing the campaign. They first see the ad (Impressions), they click on the ad (Clicks and CTR), they reach one of your conversion pages (Goal1 Conv., Conv.1 %, Conv.1 Value). Following this kind of logic makes it easy for the rest of your team to understand your reports.

Conclusion:

Online advertising can be the fastest most cost effective way to market your products or services. It can also be the fastest, most visible way to burn through company resources, so it is important that your company understands and believes in your online ad reports. Instead of being seen as a drain on company resources, your online ad campaigns will be seen as the valuable, income-producing powerhouses they are!

What kind of struggles have you had when convincing others in your company of the value of your online campaigns?

Gmail

The first thing they have you do when you’re at Verizon is have you enter a Google account. What happens if you don’t have a Google account? You can sign up for one right on the phone. If you don’t want to sign up for a Google account then you’re going to be missing out on some of the cool functionality that is built into the phone. I have a few Google accounts so it wasn’t a problem for me.  I logged in and suddenly my Gmail and Google Calendar were synced to the phone…Nice.

Is there an App for that?

So, I know Google Android is behind the iPhone when it comes to apps, but how many “fart machines” and simulated AK-47 apps do you really need to feel superior? As far as I can tell, all of the major apps have already been ported over. Since Android doesn’t lock developers out of a lot of the functionality of the phone, a lot of these apps “power up” when they become an Android app. I am sure there are many specialized apps that haven’t ported over yet, but I don’t think any of them are deal breakers.

Google, iCal, and Exchange Calendars

You might have remembered me mentioning the auto sync with Google Calender, well the DROID can also sync with both your Microsoft Exchange email and calendar which makes it great for keeping up with your corporate email.  What about iCal? Why there isn’t a direct sync with iCal and DROID, starting with OS 10.5 you can sync iCal and your Google Calender so it all stays up-to-date.

Facebook

The phone also comes pre-installed with a Facebook app. One of the cool things that happens the first time you sign into Facebook is it asked if you would like to merge the Facebook friends with the contact list on your phone. You get three options; “Sync all”, “Sync with existing contacts”, “remove Facebook data”. I chose “sync with existing contacts” which updated the contacts that are on my phone with pictures, email address and other contact information it found about them on Facebook which was a nice touch.

Google Navigate

You tell an iPhone user that the DROID has Google maps and they will yawn and say, “Yeah, I have an app for that.” What you should actually say is, “I have Google Navigate.” The new app exclusively for Android phones that, when Google made the announcement it sent Garmin’s stock plummeting 16% in one day of trading and has continued to lose ground.  So what’s so great about Google Navigate? Well, take the power of Google Maps, add GPS, turn by turn directions, live traffic information, Google’s local search, a sweet voice recognition system, and you can see why  you’d never need a Garmin or any of those other systems that they sell pre-installed in some cars. I have used it a couple of times and though I find my Garmin a little more user friendly, Google Navigate is a nice system. One thing though, Google needs to work on their text-to-speech, that voice is a little difficult to understand.

Camera

With a 5mp camera I expected the functionality to be awesome. Well, I am a bit disappointed by its performance. I’ve heard a lot of other people complaining about the camera software too so I am hopeful that Google is working on a update soon. The quality of the pictures are good, but the delay just kills you. A bigger disappointment then the still shots was the video. It was supposed to be a big deal, “DVD Quality” recording in a smart phone. I recently shot this video and I think the results were anything but DVD quality. Hopefully Google is also working on a better compression codecs well.

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYAdIx5nPog

Disappointments

• Google Apps: You would think that Google would have made sure that all of their offering would have successfully been ported over as Android Apps, but they haven’t. Google Finance makes you login every time it is launched, Google Listen just gets stuck in a never ending login loop, and Google Reader, Google Docs, and Google Earth are not even available.
• SMS  Character count: SMS messages have a 160 character limit. If you are sending a message to Twitter, it is only 140 characters. Every other mobile phone I have come across give you a character count as you type (Except iPhone and the DROID) not having  character count is a pain.
• Slide out Keyboard: I actually like the keyboard, I just wish they would have done two things differently.
  • Give direct access to the number keys: When I send text messages I still make use of the numbers quite a bit. It is a pain to have to hit an alt key every time you want to input a number.
  • A little more room on the top row: Your fingers have to smash up against the slider in order to hit the top row.
• Camera Quality: Worth repeating the camera software needs to be improved!

Final thoughts

This is a great smart phone and it holds up well to an iPhone. The touch screen is very responsive and the screen orientation is faster then the iPhone. (Yes, I ran side-by -side comparisons). Unlike the iPhone, the DROID has a replaceable battery, and removable storage. (It comes with a 16gb microSD card, but can be replaced with a 32gb card.) You can use the supplied USB cable or bluetooth to add music and other files to the phone. The music player works great. Since it is on the Verzion network it has great connectivity and as new apps come online and patches are released this phone is only going to get better.

If I had a choice between an iPhone and a Google DROID, I think it would be a touch decision but ultimately I would chose the DROID because of the superiority of the Verizon network, the ability to upgrade the device and the open source aspects of the phone.

If you have a DROID or are thinking about getting one I would love to here what you think.

This article assumes that you already have a Facebook account, created a Page (If you haven’t, go create a Facebook page!), and are logged in.

Get the RSS Graffiti Application

1. At the bottom left corner, click “Applications> Browse More Applications
2. In the Search box type in, RSS Graffiti and press ENTER. Click on the RSS Graffiti image and it will take you to the RSS Graffiti Facebook Page.
3. Under the the Image on the left side you will see “add to my Page” a window will pop up and display all of the Pages that you are responsible for. Click on the ones you want to add RSS Graffiti to.
4. Go back to the bottom left corner, click “Applications> RSS Graffiti. Click on the Page that you want to add RSS Graffiti to (It will have a grey icon next to it)
5. You should see a status that reads, “Page Status: Not enabled” and a big blue button, “Click here to add RSS Graffiti to this Facebook Page. (If you don’t see the button, try refreshing your page. I had this problem and a refresh helped)
6. Next you’ll have to grant publishing permission, (again, if you don’t see the option try to refresh the page.) then click on the big blue button, “Click here to rant stream publishing permission.” and the click on the “allow publishing” button.
7. Now you can click the green, “+ add feed” button so lets add some feeds!

Status updates

An important part of Facebook is the Status Update. The small input form at the top of the page that is supposed to answer the question, “What’s on your mind?” Think of this as the same kind of micro-blog as Twitter or Friend feed and while your thinking of it, wouldn’t it be nice if those feeds would automatically update your facebook status?

1. Go to your twitter page. (mines http://twitter.com/LaryStucker) scroll down and on the right hand column you will see RSS feeds of LaryStucker’s tweets.click on it and you will get a URL, http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/11821852.rss
2. Add your twitter feed to the Feed URL and give it a name to easily identify it, you know something catchy like, Twitter Feed.
3. Under “Handle as” choose “Status updates”
4. Under “Title” choose, same as item’s title. I figure if you took the time to give the original item a good title, why change it now.
5. Click, “save”

News and Post Updates

When you have more substantial things to say about your products or services you probably do so on a blog or news portion of your website. (Either of those publications should have an RSS feed, if they don’t, what’s wrong with you? You seriously need to update your site to include RSS feeds.) If their important enough to say to your blog/ news audience than your Facebook fans should want to know about it too!

1. Go grab the RSS feed from your blog or news site. (I use feed burner to syndicate this blog: Freshclicks.net)
2. Add it to the Feed URL and give it a name to easily identify it, like “FreshClicks Blog”
3. Under “Handle as” choose “Generic Feed”
4. Under “Title” choose, same as item’s title. I figure if you took the time to give the original item a good title, why change it now.
5. Click, “save”

Thats all there is to it! Now your Facebook Page will start filling up with your content automatically, the only thing you have to do now is monitor the responses. I wonder if there is a way to do that automatically…

When Google translate was first announced it was seen as a potential boon for E-Commerce sites and with their new Google Translate widget it seemed like a “no brainer” for any website with an international audience. So, I recently embarked on a feasibility study for our website to see if our customers could benefit from computer translated content.

Secure Checkout fails in Google Translate

Google translate cannot handle Secure Socket Layer (SSL) pages. SSL is a necessary step in protecting your users during the checkout process and Google translation services can’t handle it. This has to do with how Google Translate actually works. Google basically scrapes your site, does a find and replace to translate the text, and presents the results on their servers. Secure socket layer is meant to make whatever is happening on the page private between your visitor and your server, so if the page is trying to load on a different server the connection fails.

Can’t exit Google Translate

Okay, so visitors can’t have the check out process translated into their native language. That puts a real damper on improving eCommerce. Maybe translating the product pages and the rest of the site will provide them with enough information that they would be willing to stumble through an english language checkout. All I would need to do is implement the translation widget and have it exit if the visitor clicks on a link to our store. Surely Google provides some documentation on how to programatically exit a visitor out of Google Translate. Actually, they don’t. I’ve read through all of the documentation and even put in repeated calls to Jeff Chin, the Google Translate Product manager but he hasn’t returned my calls.

Google Translate = terrible user experience

Message that appears if you click on a secure link

At the end of the day, this really comes down to offering features and services that are going to improve the user experience of your visitors. Unfortunately, if you have an eCommerce site, or any secure location on your site, Google translate is completely out of the question. Unless you’re okay with your visitors getting a Google error messages.

Hopefully Google has something in the works to address this problem but in the meantime make sure you let them know this is something that you care about.

I would love to hear you’re thoughts and experiences with trying to implement Google Translate on your own site.

I am going to use Adobe Dreamweaver as a case study to demonstrate the various kinds of customer tweets and how Adobe could be positively engaging their Dreamweaver customers on Twitter. I’m picking on Adobe a little bit because I think their current Twitter Dreameaver account isn’t very engaging and could be a valuable resource to the company.

Millions of Twitter users are talking about what they are doing, experiencing or interested in at any moment in time. That practicality guarantees that someone, somewhere is talking about your products or service. You can group these tweets into five categories:

• Praise: The best kind of Tweets. Spontaneous endorsements from actual customers.
• Problems: Oh oh, someone is having a problem with your product or service and they are complaining in a public space! Quick, turn that negative into a positive by showing your commitment to customer service and a speedy resolution.
• Solution: Congratulations, someone has figured out that your products or services are actually helpful at solving some kind of problem. Even better, they are telling others about it.
• buzz: Sometimes your product or service just because part of a conversation.
• Pirate: Some has just posted a link to a message board or another new “warez” site. Oh great, yet another avenue for pirated software to make it into the hands of your potential customers.

Classifying the types of messages that are likely to be generated by your customer base makes it easier for your marketing team to create workflows and policies for corporate communication. You need to create policies that can engage these users and have a positive influence on the twitterverse.

Praise Tweets

These are the best kind of tweets, and I would typically try to do three things:

• Retweet: It shows people on twitter that others are very happy with your products. It will also encourage the original twitter user to say more good things about you in the future.
• Follow: Following the person will not only encourage them in their original tweet, it will make them feel like you are more engaged with them. Engaged customers are happier customers and more likely to recommend your products to others.
• @ reply: You can also encourage them to try out specific features of the product. This is for their benefit and the benefit of those that follow you.

Problem Tweets

When you start seeing tweets where customers are having problems with your products you have two issues to resolve.

1. Did they just find a new bug, and if so you need to get your developers on it.
2. Can you resolve this customers problem?

In a situation like this, I like to publicly engage the customer and ask him to Direct Message (those are messages sent privately between twitter users) for details regarding his problem. If there is an easy solution (like an updated release) make sure you also tell him that publicly. If this is an open, unresolved issue, privately tell him that the dev team is working to resolve it and ask if he would like to be notified when a update is released. It shows this customers that you’re a company that cares about their customers. Even if you can’t immediately resolve their problem, it can turn a frustrated customer into a content, possibly happier evangelist for your products.

Solution Tweets

Of course your software solves a problem, but when a customer says it, it carries a lot more credibility. These are a lot like “Praise tweets” except more substantial so I recommend following the same retweet, follow, and @ reply philosophy.

Buzz Tweets

There typically isn’t much you can do to engage a customer that just casually refers to your product. What you can do however is keep a monthly tally of the number of buzz and positive tweets your products receive as another way to measure brand awareness.

Pirate Tweets

When someone tweets with a link to a pirated copy of your software or information regarding circumventing your copy protection, they are in violation of Twiter Terms of Use. If you report it, the tweet will be removed and the account can be suspended. What ever you do, don’t engage the Twitterer directly. Instead, flag the account and send an email to copyright@twitter.com

Final Thoughts

It is easy to create a Twitter account for your organization or product and start broadcasting content to the world. However, the companies that are really successful on twitter are the ones who actually engage their customers. I want to hear from you. Does your comapny have an engaged twitter policy? What’s stopping you from developing one?