I recently read a fantastic blog post from Kevin Ertell (of ForeSee Results fame) suggesting single digit conversion rates are a result of online marketer elitism.  Ertell is quick to point out Michael Summers (Senior Director of Usability for GSI Commerce) as the original voice behind such a bold statement at GSI’s Connect Conference a few weeks ago.  While I may not be so quick to call the majority of our clients, friends and readers elitists (OK, I may be sucking up here), the underlying message shouldn’t be ignored.

OK, that last sentence was a very politically correct, but you get my point.

The average online shopper doesn’t think like you and I do.

One of the greater eCommerce challenges is to plan your website and online shopping experience around how your visitors/customers think.  Online marketing professionals are smart, well educated and spend far more time in eCommerce than your average customer probably does.   But can e-Tailers honestly say websites are designed around how the average visitor thinks, navigates, behaves, etc…?

When I look at strong online companies who I respect, I find the majority of sites difficult. And I consider myself very much in tune with the world of eCommerce.  Sure, these sites look great, but flashy-cool websites only get you so far.  To me, the best sites always have the simplest designs.  May not be the most appealing website, but why fix what’s not broken?  I like how ecommerce-blog.org puts it, “most people don’t care how good of a graphic designer you have.  Lucas Film LTD may be interested in your work, but the rest of us aren’t”.

All that said, I realize and appreciate the amount of research, development, studies, testing and more that goes into site launches and redesigns.  I’m not saying companies intentionally create overly complicated web experiences or aren’t trying to think like their visitors/customers (in fact, I’d accuse them of trying to do just that… or at least they should be!).  However, I do believe we – as an industry – aren’t there yet.

Perhaps the online marketing community is evolving faster than the customers that fuel it.  Or the problems we’re trying to solve (shopping cart abandonment, low conversion rates, improved marketing strategies, etc…) are pushing for fixes that are far too elaborate for today’s needs.

I fundamentally believe a majority of eCommerce challenges can be overcome with a straight forward and easy-to-use website with clear and dynamic messaging.  Talk to your visitors, keep them engaged and show them the products/information they want to see.

I’m on month three here at Sitebrand, and man, how time flies when you’re having fun.  I find one of the most interesting things to take in, is the company pitch and core values when you’re new.  Rarely can you experience this in such an unbiased fashion after you’ve spent time with a firm.  So I wasn’t surprised to hear the buzz around web site personalization.  Coming from the audience measurement space, I was no stranger to the idea, but was anxious to hear what Sitebrand had to say about it.  Let me illustrate with a bricks and mortar example.

This past weekend, I was walking through our local big box hardware store; I needed furnace filters, excitement at its best.  I rounded the corner of the furnace aisle and was greeted by a salesman.  He very quickly realized my intention and prompted me with ‘What size filters are you looking for?”.  Nothing remarkable about that you say.  But ask yourself, how does that compare to the online experience?  The fact that I entered the store obviously meant I was a visitor and the fact that I walked down the furnace aisle meant I could be segmented.  But it was the combination of those facts along with a relevant message that made the experience truly personal, and that’s where I’m going.

Personalization isn’t just about segmenting users, and it isn’t about delivering a unique message to a visitor because you can.  It’s about optimizing the conversation you’re having with your visitor.  It’s about having a dialogue rather than a monologue. The ability to segment web traffic is no different in the online world than the ability to stand in the furnace aisle and whistle Dixie.  The key is combining a set of likely visitor expectations with the information you have, to deliver you guessed it: the right message to the right visitor, at the right time.  I wasn’t asked whether it was my first visit to the store, nor was I directed to the humidifiers section.

So what’s the takeaway here?  It’s simple, don’t get lost in the technology, or with the variety of methods and techniques to get in front of users.  Sure, we now have the ability to stand in that online furnace aisle, and that’s a great thing for Marketers, but that’s not the end of the story.  Success always comes down to relevant messaging, segmentation just places you in the aisle.

After I had the right furnace filter in my hand, the salesman kindly asked if he could help with anything else, “no” is what I said, so he pointed me in the direction of the checkout counter.

Put your hands up if you’ve seen or heard a conversation about social media today.  Week after week I postulate if social media is at its peak.  And week after week I’m wrong.  I’m not sure when this streak will end either.  Reminds me of Tim Horton’s roll-up-the-rim… except I’m only kidding myself until May.  With this social media thing, it could be a while.

Note to our American friends: roll-up-the-rim is a Tim Horton’s annual promotion Canadians cannot get enough of.

And here we are – 2009, social media this, social media that.   Can you imagine the look a 15 year old kid might give you if you told him/her that Facebook didn’t exist 20 years ago?  Actually, can you imagine our own faces?  We’ve all become increasingly reliant on social media in one way or another.   Many of us are finding our personal and professional Facebooks, LinkedIns, Myspaces and Twitters intersecting.  I blame smartphones, but that’s another conversation altogether.

Here’s the thing with social media.  Number one, we’re all self-professed ‘experts’ with social media, yet don’t have the control we think we have.  And two, as good as we think we are with social media, today’s kids are quickly becoming better.

Think about it.  We’re all trying to find ways to integrate social media into branding, campaigns, sales, etc… but kids aren’t.  For many kids and youth, social media has forever been a part of life.  They’ll use it more naturally and probably in ways us, the good expert, will never think of.

Scary?  Us ‘experts’ should really figure out a Plan B.

My biggest gripe with social media?  Limited ability to personalize, customize and tailor appearances.  We as marketers have embraced social media, but social media hasn’t embraced us.  Everyone from Skittles to Coca-Cola is using social media for all sorts of reasons and experiments.  And despite this, we can’t even brand our Twitter and Facebook pages properly.  Social media is all about self promotion, expression and information sharing, but they aren’t sharing.  Instead it’s “you can put your logo in this 200×300 space on the left hand side and your choice of background is blue.”

Look no further than the Skittles phenomenon we’ve nearly forgotten about.   We know the Skittles colors (especially since we all bought a pack or two after their infamous experiment), but each social media site didn’t really reflect the company and product like it could and should have.  How cool would a red Skittles Facebook page look?  Certainly better than blue.

Every time a new social media application pops up, the first thing analysts, experts and everyone else says is “I don’t see potential for a revenue model.”  This is the perfect opportunity for Facebook, Myspace and Twitter (especially Twitter!) to do just that.  How much more valuable would your fan page be if you could have it reflect your company, brand and online marketing strategies?  Brand Managers have slaved to ensure the colors and messaging are perfect.  Social media is about sharing information and for businesses, is a great opportunity to act as an extension of your website, banner ads and wacky commercials.  If your colors are red and white (random example), what differentiates your page from a competitors?  Or Andy’s Local Fish & Cactus Store?  And seriously, would it be that hard to accommodate?  The only other question is would you, the marketer be willing to pay for that kind of personalization?

My name is Kevin and I have a social media problem.   Now if you’ll excuse me, I have several notifications to attend to and I need to create a viral marketing strategy based around Twitter.

A colleague of mine – who we’ll refer to as “naD” for anonymity sake – recently told me my blogs are verbose. I’ve never considered myself to be loquacious before, but I suppose there’s a first for everything. Am I really of the garrulous kind?

Anyways, this all came full circle as some co-workers, naD and I were caught up in a rousing game of lunchtime Scrabble via Facebook. Without divulging any further information about my lunchtime habits, I got thinking, with so much emphasis on social media, what web 2.0 medium is most effective for e-commerce companies? I had an interesting conversation with another co-worker recently regarding social media and despite the emphasis placed here in the last few years, it’s very uncontrollable. I’ll get to that shortly…

Full disclosure: I realize it will differ for each company and that this blog is probably one of 2,000 blogs that will touch on social media today. And while there are numbers of books and blogs from experts like Dave Evans (Social Media Marketing: An Hour a Day, and Dave, if you are reading this, I don’t own this book yet and December 25th is right around the corner), this is a take that directly affects Sitebrand users or those further looking into web 2.0 strategies with personalization, targeted content and other marketing strategies. It’s a look at segmentation, how to work with open environments (users are free to say what they want, when they want – regardless of validity or truth) and avoiding the “boil the ocean” mentality.

Hypothetical example here… let’s assume you are an online electronics retailer selling everything from alarm clocks to MP3 players.

You are up to date with all the Facebook’s, Linked In’s, Twitter’s (this itself can be daunting, I know) and a specific intent is established for your internet marketing plan. You know you want to use Facebook and Twitter for different promotions. Those could be two vastly different kinds of visitors, right? Going back to a comment I made earlier, you can’t control what’s being said about you and any preconceived notions that go along with it, so how do you deal with this, without having a face-to-face conversation with every visitor? Since my example has us selling the coolest widgets and gadgets, understanding your visitors based on where they are coming from is just as important as anything else on your site and the need to segment your audience and dynamically message them truly begins.

The traffic coming from your hourly/daily tweets trust your promotions or the source it came from (and let’s suppose your analytics tell you nearly 12% of your traffic is from mobile browsers). Your landing page could offer minimal images and focus on messaging/links that load quickly and since I’m in ultra-merchandising mode, focus on the latest in smart phones and Bluetooth headsets. Since that trust is there (or at least higher than most first time visitors), you can focus on what the visitor should buy, not why. And that’s just for first time visitors. When they come back, you can target these same visitors to help increase brand awareness and drive home non-financial conversions/goals. Ultimately, ensuring they’ve seen your great promotions, seen why you are a great company and changing any preconceived notions they may have had about you before. This is your chance to get into your visitors mind and represent your company the way you want. The power of targeted messaging, eh?

For traffic coming from Facebook, you know this is either from paid ads or a link from a user profile. Either way, they aren’t as connected to you and your company as the Twitter crowd. Seems like a good opportunity to segment, right? One way or another, you’ve paid for this customer to be on your site, so it needs to count and needs to capture the visitors attention/trust. At this point, having a banner run through the entire session for these visitors (clickable or not), telling them the site is secure, potential refund info, shipping info based on geography/location might be worthwhile. Maybe the message changes and talks to the visitor based on their click patterns or the fact they came from Facebook, who knows – the sky is the limit here. Since it’s a more general crowd, you could opt to show an array of your different products and special sales. Or perhaps you want to focus on company branding more than particular promotions and quick conversions. Personalization and visitor segmentation give marketers a window to brand like never before. You can drive home your message in a conversational way. Imagine having your customers line up to have a face-to-face conversation with you. I’m sure you can make them a believer in your company (at least you could for me… I know how convincing our Sitebrand blog readers are) and isn’t that the whole point of a webpage in the first place?

If all this sounds cooler than a $4 sweater on Christmas, then hold onto your hat: I’ll be running a product demonstration webinar this coming Wednesday, December 17th @ 2pm EST (BTW, they are only 29 minutes long!). In the new year, I’ll be running these webinars bi-weekly, so this Wednesday’s presentation will be the neonate demo. I’ll be talking about web 2.0 integration with Sitebrand,  showing its ease of use and effectiveness. If your conversion rate is lower than 4% and you want to get more out of your existing traffic, I’d love to meet you. Remember: the tools your company uses to tap into your visitors represent the kind of company you are and the kind of customers you are after.

To everyone who can’t make it, happy holidays and see on you on the other side (2009).

No first blog is complete without some kind of introduction – but this is no ordinary blog, my fellow readers. As a Sitebrand blogger, I have but one mandate: write rich and compelling stories worthy of your time and subsequent follow up dialog. That’s a hint for any welcome comments below… you know you want to.

Allow me to be the first to say I am new to the world of e-Commerce and internet marketing. I appreciate the experience of those around me and often feed off their wisdom and knowledge, but with all due respect, I’m going to think outside the box here, so don’t act like you aren’t impressed.

Perhaps it’s the youth in me talking, but I’d love to know why marketers aren’t marketing to reflect the times we currently live in? The economy, social media/web browsing, multi-level branding, targeted content to stand out from the clutter of other, general ads… I smell foreshadowing here, mmmKay?

The opportunity for marketers to drill down into audiences via personalization and segmentation is becoming easier and increasingly more available, yet remains as popular as the last X-Files movie (approximately). I see the relationship between analytics and Sitebrand very much in the same vein as the Smoking man – source of information and Mulder – the action and reason behind the data. Bad analogy? Maybe, but I digress.

We rely more and more on analytical data to better understand web traffic and underlying trends, our day to day priorities have us running in multiple directions, yet personalization/optimization never nears the top of that list. Is there a risk we as marketers don’t want to take? Is it a fear of the unknown? Are we still waiting for that TPS report?

Here’s how I look at it: you’ve spent money, time and effort driving web traffic, increasing site awareness and engaging shoppers. You’ve succeeded in building baseline interest from tens of thousands of e-shoppers, so why not speak to those shoppers directly, peaking additional interest based off consumer behaviors and actions? You are 90% of the way towards the sale, yet the remaining 10% means showing the customer the right solution, of the thousands of products and SKUs available on your site. There’s only so much a static message can say to shoppers who are seeking relevant and targeted information. They may not even know it, but you do. Having a web site that dynamically speaks to customers, driving the right content at the right time, all in real time is the key here. With today’s economy struggling more than the latest release of ICQ (seriously, who knew they are up to version 6.0?), why not retain your initial investments and efforts? Driving new traffic to your website may increase your sales, but won’t help conversion rates or other e-Commerce challenges.

“But Kev, dude, these aren’t the droids I’m looking for, what should I get from this blog?” Glad you asked; I have a challenge for anyone doubting my message: Request a Sitebrand consult and we’ll show you the power of behavioral marketing and segment specific marketing strategies.

A quick recap: if Personalization isn’t on your laser guided radar, maybe it should be – start looking at it as a viable way to reinforce your investments and initiatives with slants of pop culture thrown at you (via my blogs, so in the famous words of Apu, please come again). If that doesn’t put a smile on your face like an office Hawaiian shirt day, nothing will.