After a 5 hour flight, and tired children, all we wanted to do is start our vacation, not feel like we’re being taken advantage of. However, the Hertz representative seemed to have other plans:

• 

  Hertz's considers the Corolla an "intermidate" size car

  When mid-size means “compact”: After failing to sell us on an upgrade from our mid-size to an SUV, the Hertz rep informed us that our mid-size car was going to be a Toyota Corolla. Huh? With 104 cu.ft. the Toyota Corolla would easily be classified by the EPA as a compact car, but apparently Hertz had their own categorization when it comes to vehicle size. Their “compact” cars are what most of us would consider “sub-compact”. When a company creates their own categorization, it is either to help clarify or to confuse their customers. I’ll let you guess why Hertz doesn’t follow the EPA or the car manufacturers classifications.

• Bring it in empty: The idea of not having to worry about filling up the gas before bringing it back is tempting, and could be sold as a convenience package. Instead Hertz tries to convince you that buying a full tank of gas from them is a financially wise move. “You know our gas is $0.10 cheaper then what you’ll pay out there.” It’s simple math. lets say the average price per gallon is $3.50 (and Hertz charges $3.40), the vehicle has a 10 gallon tank and you happen to use 9 gallons.
• Fill it yourself: $3.50 x 9 = $31.50
• Bring it in empty: $3.40 x 10 = $34.00
• Premium insurance: Depending on your auto insurance or credit card, your rental may already be covered under your policy. Most people don’t know, and Hertz has absolutely no interest helping you find out. Instead they are willing to sell you premium insurance that can cost more than the rental itself. The insurance option and rates are not available in advance or online. They wait until you are at the counter and not in a position do do research or change your plans.

What could Hertz have done differently?

Instead of feeling like we were being taken advantage of, we could have left feeling like Hertz was looking out for our best interest and still sold us on all of these additions. Here is how:

• Use commonly used terms to describe vehicle types. Use terms that will clarify, not confuse your customers.
• Properly position options. Don’t try to convince customers that they’ll save money, when the real value is convenience.
• All additional options should be available in advanced so that customers have the ability to do the proper research and make informed decisions.

What sales practices have you seen that made you feel like you were being taken advantage of?

I just added QR Codes to a new batch of business cards for Fresh Clicks so I figured I’d walk you through the process, so that you can create your own:

1. Tag your URL: I wouldn’t be much of a marketer if I didn’t recommend adding tracking code to your hyperlink. If you use Google Analytics, tagging your link is easy. Just hop on over to Google’s URL builder and plug in your information. I added the following values, but feel free to add whatever you want:
   • Campaign Source: mini (I chose “mini” because these particular cards were moo mini cards)
   • Medium: businesscard
   • Campaign Name: QRcode
2. Create a shortened URL: QR Codes get more complicated as you add more data. To make it easier for smart phones to read your code, you should use a URL shorting service. You can use bit.ly or any number of other URL shortening services. I recommend using Google’s URL shortner for two simple reasons:
   • It’s Google, so you know they are going to be around for a while
   • The .gl extension is a domain of Greenland and not Lybia, like the .ly extension in bit.ly. Many have argued, just like Arron Pigeon in his article “Why investing in Bitly last week was a bad idea“, that the .ly extension is a risky bet because Lybia could pull the plug whenever they want.
3. Create your QR Code: There are plenty of free QR Code generators out there but I liked using the KAYWA QR Code generator. It was easy to use, didn’t have a lot of complicated options, and it generated a large QR Code (324px × 324px) in PNG format. You could just add a .qr to the end of your newly shortened Goo.gl link like this, goo.gl/KPWVm.qr, but I wasn’t happy with the code it created. The pixel size was a bit low, and though I couldn’t be sure, it seemed like the QR Code it generated was more complicated than the one from KAYWA.
4. Creating your business cards: For this batch of cards I decided to use the moo mini cards. I have been very happy with the quality of their service and the mini cards are another great way to set you apart. You have the option of uploading a different image on every card, and you can add your QR Code to the back with your standard contact info. You have to be careful not to make your QR Code too small. It is recommended that your don’t make it smaller then 0.70 inches. To make it easier I’ve created a Photoshop MiniMoo Back Template Card QR Code for you to use.

If you end up adding a QR Code to your business card make sure you let me know about it! Have fun, and happy scanning!

Photo by Rob Shaer

Your team has spent the last eighteen months cooking up the latest, greatest, video game to hit the market. Countless hours of effort and now the big payoff. You release the game for distribution and within hours it happens, pirated keys start showing up on Twitter. You cringe as you try to calculate how much revenue you’re going to lose to software pirating.

It is an all too familiar scenario and, according to WIRED magazine editor-in-chief, Chris Anderson’s latest book FREE: A radical new pricing structure, you’re the one t.o blame for all of this pirating.

According to Anderson, setting the price too high, making an inferior product, or even adding DRM (Digital Rights Management) software are all possible reasons why people who would rather pay for your product have turned to pirating. But should you believe him?

Anecdotal evidence is no way to prove a theory

As with most modern books in this genre, it is filled with anecdotes that weave together a powerful story meant to support the author’s claims. Though that is not the best method to build one’s case, it seems to be an accepted practice.

Especially if the anecdotal evidence is false

If building a theory completely on anecdotal evidence isn’t bad enough, falsifying or misrepresenting the results of an anecdote so that it fits your theory is dangerous to your readers. In FREE, Anderson makes a lot of arguments for his FREE business model. For this article I am focused specifically on the case of pirating software. Anderson claims that software pirates are really just customers waiting for the proper motivation to buy. He writes the following account of Cliff Harris, the owner of a small video game software company called Positech Games as his primary evidence. Harris went to slashdot.org a popular technology forum and asked them why they were pirating his games. According to the book, Harris was surprised to find out that the DRM (Digital Rights Management) software was making it difficult for his actual paying customers and that it was priced too high. Anderson wrote, “Much to his credit, the sincere responses to his questions changed Harris’ mind. He decided to alter his business model. He reduced the price of his games in half to $10….” and, “…with his survey he looked into the mind of the pirate and saw a paying customer looking for a reason to come out.”

The real story behind Positech Games

Having spent enough time being a pirate (in my early days) and later working in software development, I just didn’t believe the above story. So I did a little research and tracked down Cliff Harris from Positech Games to hear it from the source. The first thing that surprised me was that Harris didn’t even know he was in the book. It seems that Anderson was using a secondary source for his story and not going directly to the source… odd? Second, Harris had a much different takeaway from his experience talking with the pirates.

Directly from Cliff Harris,

My experience after talking with pirates was this:
Lowering the price didn’t work. It actually made less money overall. Maybe this is because my products (strategy games) are a niche market. I have carried out countless experiments price-wise and the current price ($20-24) is the best one for my products. It turns out people will always demand that stuff is too expensive when asked, even if it isn’t . I’ll believe that ‘free’ is the new business model the day my local grocery store lets me take the food for free. Till then… it isn’t happening outside a tiny media bubble. At the end of the day, someone has to pay for everyone’s food and shelter.

Removing DRM was a good move in the long run. it meant less hassle for me, and happier customers, and a boost to reputation in terms of being an easy company to buy from. I suspect it has had a long term boost in sales, although such things are extremely hard to quantify for a small business such as mine. I’d guess a 5% boost in long term sales, but that is just a guess.

A much different (and less compelling) story but it is the truth.

Who do you trust?

Whether Anerson’s theories in FREE are correct or not, false anecdotes are no way to win them over. In order to protect myself, from what could be dangerous and misleading ideas, I now treat all of Chris Anderson’s writings with suspicion. In all fairness, Anderson may have just been guilty of sloppy research. In his source notes Anderson quotes Why People Pirate Stuff as his source for the Cliff Harris story, but if Anderson would have followed the link in the article he could have read Harris’s own words on the topic, Talking To Pirates. In Harris’s own words, “I think my current games are priced right,” He halved the price of an older game just prior to releasing the sequel and planned on keeping his new games at their usual $20 range.

So, do you think Anderson was trying to mislead his readers or just guilty of sloppy research?

Photo by Rob Shaer

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

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 than 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 better compression codecs as 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.

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.

You can see areas where they have changed code and stopped web site functions in order to improve website retension:

/* Commenting out to try to fix exit and bounce rates in Google Analytics */

What I find most encouraging is that our new president seems to have surrounded himself with smart people.¬† Including people who know how to leverage technology like Google’s Website Optimizer and Analytics¬†to¬†improve their campaign, while at the same time keeping down their overhead.

Here is my typical response:

1. SEO: Search Engine Optimization is the best, long term strategy for increasing qualified traffic to your website. Pick two-three keywords per landing page and optimize!
2. Forums: Get active in the places where your customers gather. Include a link to your website as part of your signature and be helpful, offer your advice, opinion, and position yourself as an expert in that category. WARNING: Don’t just jump in and start hawking your wares (they call that SPAM)
3. Google Adwords: No time for SEO? Want Customers on your site now? Then Google adwords is the place to start. Create a couple of contextual based ad campaigns, throw in a few keywords and set a budget. Before the end of the day you will have visitors on your site.
4. eMail Newsletters: Giving your visitors a place to sig-up for a newsletter or to receive updates is a great way to increase traffic to your website. It takes a dedicated effort to write effective content and deliver relative information to your audience but they will reward you greatly by frequenting your website and telling their friends and colleague. If you don’t have that kind of patience, dedication or time, you can always rent a list or sponsor a newsletter by a publication relative to your audience.
5. Yahoo! Answers: Yahoo! Answers is a new way to find and share information. You can ask questions on any topic, get answers from real people. This is similar to the forum technique in that you are helping people find answers to direct question. Positioning yourself as an expert on that topic will go a long way in increasing traffic to your website. You may even get people asking direct questions about your goods or services.