I was thinking about this as I was asked how a recent flight was. I told them the flight was great - but what I really meant was that my flight was entirely uneventful. I got to the airport with plenty of time, did not have to wait very long to check my luggage, and was able to make it through security without having to be strip-searched or anything. I went right to my gate, got on my plane, and everything happened exactly the way it’s supposed to. Plane goes up, peanuts, diet coke, plane goes down.

So the question I started asking myself is what part of that experience was great?

The great part was that nothing was a colossal failure. Nothing went horribly wrong, or was terribly annoying, or caused me any serious money or grief. How sad is it that? I thought it was great because I wasn’t assaulted by security, and the plane didn’t go down in flames.

The airport is one easy example, but it got me thinking overall - are the things that I have built great, or do they merely do exactly what they are supposed to do? What about the customer’s experience using my website/product/widget is going to surprise them and bring a smile to their face?

Taken as an example, Netflix’s greatness is not that they are able to send you movies a few times a month for a low fee. They become great when they leverage their data to provide recommendations on what movies to watch, and you end up watching and loving those movies.

So what examples can you think of? I would love some comments illustrating what makes your company/product/experience great versus just “uneventful”.

It’s Shopping.com’s header, with an exciting little vertical word above it that says “Advertisement”.  Awesome right? 

It’s understandable (I guess) that Shopping.com won’t be able to sell all the available adspace on their giant website. I mean, they have hundreds of thousands of pages to populate with targeted and meaningful advertisements right? It’s not out of the question that they would have some fall through the cracks, right?

Uh.. no. Wrong.

So you are never supposed to see the big empty space - it’s the default place-holder, which should always be covered up by an extremely useful ad. Well if there is one thing I know about website management, it’s that if you don’t ever plan on something getting used or seen on your site, it will anyway. The fact that it is a “default” should tell you that someone is going to see it. 

We all know that a 404 Error page should be optimized for your site - users should never see the ugly browser default, but land on a well thought-out page that provides useful navigation and/or recommendations without interfering with their browsing experience. It’s really become a best practice to make sure that you take these otherwise lost opportunities and provide real value through those unfortunate pages.

But what about all the other parts of your site with dynamic, changing content? What about the ad container above your navigation? 

How about one of the following:

• Another ad with a high click-through: You probably shouldn’t charge the advertiser for the impressions, but what a great way to add value and increase the ROI for the advertiser without losing anything in the process!
• Your own ad for another part of the site: Why not pit the ads you sell against advertising your own products, services or websites? Use the available space to showcase lesser known portions of your site, call attention to sales or other categories, etc.
• Recommendations: Take some of that user data that we are all collecting and turn it around to make recommendations for customers. 
• Browsing History: Show the recent browsing history for the user.
• Um.. Nothing. Your website is not the freeway, and those banners are not billboards. If you don’t have anything to display, you don’t have to leave the big white sign there. Take the space down if it is empty, it’s not hard to do.

Michael Wesch, however, astounds me.

He is the Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology and Digital Ethnography at Kansas State University. You have almost certainly seen his most famous video, The Machine is Us/ing Us, which was released in January 2007, and became one of the most popular videos of the time (even beat out the Superbowl commercials). If you haven’t watched it, you should do that right now. Seriously. While you are at it, you should watch another of his videos, Information R/evolution. They are only 5 minutes long; take the time.

So why is he brilliant? Why does he astound me? There are a lot of reasons. I think the most important is that he has really figured out a way to speak to me that is unique, powerful, and thought-provoking. He has a message that he is trying to deliver, and the medium he designed to relay that message is so perfectly suited that it exponentially adds to the validity and power of the message itself.

The other thing is that the message he is trying to portray (as I understand it) is something that I can relate to and have felt but not been able to internally articulate. The nature of communication has changed, and the systems and processes for things like storing data and teaching are no longer sufficient. The internet has substantially and permanently changed the world.

I also think is a bit interesting that, at least with those two videos, his primary method of communication is text. There is soothing background music, a few pictures and faces, but really what he is trying to say is written down. It’s especially powerful to bring his point across about the changing nature of data and text, by showing data and text changing. Brilliant!

Oh, if you have some serious time, here is a 55 minute presentation Dr. Wesch gave at the Library of Congress in June called An Anthropological Introductino to YouTube. It will likely change the way you look at video online.

What are your thoughts on Dr. Wesch’s work?

All the posts and comments from MarketingGiblets have been moved over, so nothing has been lost (not that there was much to lose). The only pain point is that you will have to subscribe to this feed, and unsubscribe from the other. I unfortunately could not push that through.

So what is ConversationRate.com?

This is a blog that will from now on be devoted to ecommerce and conversational marketing. If you are not familiar with that term, you can check it out on the ol’ Wikipedia if you would like. What it really boils down to though, is marketing through the “new” media channels, with an emphasis on cross communication with the customer or end user. It’s not broadcast media, but rather blogging, social networks, word-of-mouth, listening to your customers, etc. I like to take “communication with the consumer” to another level though, and incorporate behavioral communication as well (user behavior tracking, targeting, analytics, etc).

Long story short, this is a blog on internet marketing and ecommerce. It should be a lot of fun.

The actual URL? A play on words. “Conversation” because all markets are conversations and “Rate” because it makes it sound like conversion rate, and URLs are hard to come by nowadays. :)

Pretty awesome. Clicking the link takes you here: http://www.shibumi.org/eoti.htm

Google is no stranger to the occasional easter egg or hoax. (Try this, this, or this). This one made me chuckle though. :)

Oh, and in case you want to test out the Next button, you enable it by going into Google Reader > Settings > Goodies. Kind of fun.

As I mentioned, in this series I will be writing about some of the things that your employees need to succeed. This post tackles the first: Ability.

I actually look at this in two different ways: personal ability & environmental ability. Both are important!

I realize that personal ability sounds like something that a middle-aged man who lives with his mother discusses with his reflection to the soundtrack of a CD box set of self-help dogma, but hear me out.

People are often put in positions that almost guarantee their failure. Optimists however, throw out phrases like “you can do anything if you set your mind to it” and similar crap on personal accomplishment. Blah blah blah.

Let’s pretend your grandma was right. What she didn’t tell you though, is that this doesn’t really apply to something that needs to be done now.  If you commit a few years to learn and get the right background and training, sure - you can do anything you want. But what about when you are handed something you have never heard of, and by the end of the day you have to have it fixed?

When managers put people in situations where they don’t have the education or experience necessary to do the job when it needs to be done, they set their employees up to fail.

Your job (managers, I’m talking to you!) is to have the insight to know if someone can do the job you gave them when it needs to be done. And when you fail at this (eventually you will), you have to have the courage to realize it and fix it.

This is a hard! You have to stretch your employees so that they can improve, but you also have to get your work done.

Now just because the person isn’t right for the job they are doing, doesn’t mean they are a lost cause. Firing is not always the answer.  Everyone has a unique set of skills, and it’s your job as the manager to make sure that their strengths are being (for lack of a better term) exploited.

In the book Good to Great, Jim Collins talks a lot about getting the right people on the bus (read the book if you haven’t already). I like to look at this as making sure they find the right seat once they are there.

Now… environmental ability. I am actually talking about resources - the things your employees need to succeed that don’t come directly from them. Mostly they come from you. Assuming you have the right person in the job, you have to make sure they have the support and tools they need to do it.

You can’t always know what they will need to succeed - but you can pay attention! If your people are coming to you saying they need another person on the team or they need more hardware or whatever, don’t brush them off (immediately) as just being whiny. More often than not, the people doing the work know better than you what it will take to succeed. If you didn’t trust their judgement, you wouldn’t have given them the job, right?

I think the thing to do is to make sure and give your people the best chance possible to succeed. Give them everything you think you would need in their position right out the gate, and see what they can do with it. If they come to you asking for more, really evaluate what they are asking for and why.

Remember, their success is your success, and your success is the mortgage payment. Really take the time to make sure that your employees have the ability to succeed - both the skills and experience, as well as the resources and tools.

Thoughts?

A manager’s success, and ability to sleep through the night, is due in large part to the success of his employees. To set your employees up for success requires that you give them all opportunity to do the work as best they possibly can.

Along these lines, I am working on a multi-part series, hopefully with entries to be posted at least every few days. The question I hope to answer is, “What do I, as a manager, need to provide to make sure my employees have the best chance possible for success?”

Stay tuned, we’ll have the first installment soon. If you have any initial thoughts, please do leave a comment.

That’s pretty crazy - for smaller sites, that’s a really good reason to use Google search for your engine. When the big G starts including a search box for other sites (hello retail) - that’s going to change the game a bit..

Here’s the link to the search results page.

1. Read - The more you read the better marketer you will be. Follow good blogs, read good books, and keep track of your thoughts and the things you learn.
2. Take one step - Don’t procrastinate yourself into inaction. Take that first step and do whatever unpleasant thing you don’t want to do, but know deep down you have to.
3. Be interesting - The people with whom you work and interact at work are likely going to determine your future employment. Networking is everything.
4. Get your point across - Don’t beat around the bush too much. Make sure that if you have something to say that people understand it when you say it.
5. Deliver the goods - Make sure you only promise what can be delivered.
6. Be consistent - You will always be remembered for the extremes - either the worst or the best. Make sure that what you produce you want to be remembered for. 
7. Prioritize quality over quantity - Quality work is far better than a lot of crap, or simple repetition. Head On!
8. Develop expertise - Whatever you are doing, or claiming to do, make sure that you are an expert at it. Take the time to build the trust and authority.
9. Hold on to passion - Be absolutely passionate about what you do. If the fire starts to go out, do what you have to to rekindle, or move on to something new.
10. Communicate fascination - Make sure that your passion is visible, real, and contagious. 
11. Write better - Take the time to hone your skills. Get help and training if it helps, but always be improving.
12. Grow your experience - Do new things, broaden your horizons, stretch yourself.
13. Share your experience - When you learn something new, tell your coworkers about it. Share you knowledge with others. Helping others succeed is half of becoming successful yourself.
14. Explore and experiment - Keep trying new things, and keep your mind open. Always give new ideas a fair shake.
15. Be unique - If you are the same as everyone else, why are you there? What sets you apart?
16. Look good - Don’t just be good, make sure it’s measurable and trackable. Get credit for your hard work. 
17. Make a great first impression - When you meet new people, do they know what you are about or what you are an expert in? If they have a question later, will they come to you?
18. Build momentum - Keep pushing every day, do not be content, it takes less effort to keep going than to stop and start over.
19. Optimize - Keep tweaking, continuously improve.
20. Write Work with focus - Don’t hop from one project to the next, never finishing what you start. Get things done, and focus on the task at hand. 
21. Build your reputation - Know what you stand for and deliver it consistently.
22. Go for keywords - Find out what your employer is looking for, and deliver it.
23. Write compelling headlines Get the proper attention for your work - Get attention for what you are working on. Provoke interest.
24. Offer full feeds Don’t withhold information - Lay your cards on the table.
25. Interview - Supplement your knowledge by interviewing experts. Learn from those more experienced than you.
26. Break news - Stay on top of your industry - know about the big events.
27. Run contests - Uuh.. have fun? Play games?
28. Research, survey and poll - Do your homework. Make sure you know what you are talking about before you talk.
29. Toot your horn - Celebrate successes, but not too much.
30. Monitor your stats - Keep track of how you are performing at work. Make sure you are always moving in the right direction.
31. Comment and answer comments - Keep the people that are engaged with you engaged. Don’t ignore anyone.
32. Link generously - Give others credit where it is due. Often.
33. Join forums - Break out of your bubble, meet people where they are. Get involved.
34. Give stuff away - Give away help, advice and information.
35. Make friends - Really make friends. Don’t fake it.
36. Guest blog - Hmm…
37. Ask questions - Curiosity is a virtue. Ask the right questions to the right people though.
38. Twitter - Probably not at work though.
39. Stumble - Train yourself to discover, recognize and share brilliant ideas and content.
40. Rebel - Change the way you look at things. Don’t maintain the status quo - break outside the shell.
41. Enjoy - Keep doing what you do until it stops being fun. When it is no longer fun, bring the fun back.

I love taking lists and stories and reading things into them that were not originally intended. What do you think? Does any of this make sense?

Yeah, wrong. Usually when you sign someone who is big enough for the situation above to ring true, they absolutely can do what you do. They just don’t want to. Maybe it’s time, maybe it’s money, maybe you are just their first step into a new area. Why is this important?

The fact of the matter is that third parties are almost always more expensive than in-house solutions over the long run. There are exceptions of course, and those are great, but in my experience this is the case. Many times the partnership is really a stepping stone, because it’s much faster to throw data at someone that already has a solution in place than it is to build something.

What you have to remember is that sooner or later your client realizes, “Hey, we already have all the data they do and more, why do we need to keep paying them to do ____? Let’s just build that functionality ourselves, and save $XXX,XXX next year. When does that contract expire?”

Know what really triggers this? If during the time you have been working with someone, you don’t develop anything new. If BigCompany.com is going to continue to pay OverpricedSolutions.com for another year, you had better have shown them something worth paying for.

The same product should probably not exist for longer than 4-6 months without a major upgrade, because that’s how fast things have to change online. Any slower and you become totally obsolete.

So what’s the point of this rant? If you are selling services or products to another company, either make sure you are fully patented, or you continue to add value. And I mean constantly. Upgrade your products, provide free (and useful) consultation, introduce new solutions - I mean what are you doing with all the money you are paid? Otherwise, sooner or later you will slide right off that gravy train you’ve been riding. (I’m not really sure what that means. Gravy is slippery, yes, but why on earth would you have enough gravy that you would need a train?)

/Rant.