(Alternate title “…you’re soaking in it.”)
I’ve ranted here before about SEO companies (paragraph five). I’ve frequently discussed advertising sales people and their brand of snake oil. This is where they both come together.
Allow me to link John Gruber here and explain why this is so important. And Gruber’s made this point before, as I have. Here’s Gruber:
Pageviews, as a metric used for directly billing advertisers, are a scam. Publishers game it with sensational link-bait articles and bullshit tricks like breaking articles into multiple “pages”. Advertisers get stuck paying for valueless impressions. Readers get stuck with the sensational bullshit articles, the tricks (like breaking single articles into multiple “pages”), and suffer through too many annoying ads surrounding actual content.
As the web evolves so have the hucksters. They’ve always been here. At one time it was all about “hits“. Millions and millions of hits. Then pageviews which, for a time, were a better metric but no means perfect. As net sales and marketing strategies have developed so has the gaming of the system, for now, the only really important metric is the CTR (that’s click through rate).
The local newspaper (that’s www.lancasteronline.com for you out-of-towners) loves to sell this junk. They love to rave about their ridiculous pageviews. Of course, it’s mostly unsubstantiated and mostly artificial, much like their paper circulation figures. I’ve seen the CTR of several of their “front page” campaigns. It’s translates, quite literally, to dozens of views per week. And when I say dozens I mean, like 17 (or less). For this they charge top dollar and then some. Their ads look cheesy and perhaps that’s part of why their click through rate is so low. I happen to think it’s because their web site, just like print product, is utter trash. Actually, that’s not fair, their online product much worse than their print product and that should scare the living hell out of you.
But I wanted to make a larger point. Look, blow all the money you want chasing rainbows and leprechauns with Lancaster Newspapers. The real problem is much bigger. When publishers break up articles into multiple pages just to juice their pageviews, they’re not delivering, to you, the advertiser, what they’re claiming to deliver. They’re messing with the system and obscuring the reality of what you think you’re paying for, people seeing your ad and then clicking through to your site. It’s not only an unpleasant experience for the reader (and your potential customer) but it inflates the price you should be paying for advertising.
I’ve also said this before but it seems like a night to repeat myself. When you spend money with a company, do you spend any time doing due diligence? Do you even click on their web site? Let’s look at Lancasteronline. Look at their front page.
It’s a terrible, blinking nightmare and look at the full res images of both above and below the fold. There’s almost no information there. Why would anyone spend any time on this page? It’s all click through links. There’s virtually no real content on their front page.
While you could say that my opinion of this page is subjective, how much time would you spend here? Does looking at this page make you want to stay and read? Because that’s what you, the front page advertiser wants. You want to the reader (your potential customer) to sit there and dig into the page before clicking away.
This isn’t just about Lancaster Newspapers half-hearted attempts to separate you from your money. Newsweek, to name only one and there are many, is just as bad (well, it’s a lot prettier and they actually do reporting and…well, you get the idea). You want people to find your business. If you’re going to pay to do that shouldn’t you be at least getting value for that money? Do you expect some return? Of course those are all rhetorical questions but the point is, look at those pages. Lots of folks are blowing their marketing dollars on mostly hot air. Be careful how you advertise and at least take the time to educate yourself on what you are buying past sitting patiently and staring at the salesperson’s powerpoint presentation (I still see ring binders here in Lancaster, ring binders!).
And please allow me to slap the SEO folks as well because they’re another part of this picture. In trying to game the search engine system they screw up the web for every person who uses a search engine. When you can’t find what you’re looking for on the web because some SEO slimebag has set up multiple link depots just to be able to charge one of their vict…errrr..clients for “raising your page rank” and for their “optimization” service, they’re screwing everyone and yes, you, the client. Truly great SEO is as simple and difficult as building a great web site with clear links and solid metadata. That’s how people will find your site. It’s make the web more efficient and it helps people find you on the web.
So the next time the online ad person wants to sell you something based on pageviews, be insulted, because you have been. And the next time some greasy voice on the phone tells you they can raise your Google page rank tell that’s great until your site gets delisted and banned by Google and you still have to pay their bill. Understand, these people are doing one thing and one thing only, looking to take advantage of your lack of knowledge and profit from it. There’s no bright side here. No silver lining. No serendipitous returns. It’s not the only game in town, it’s a con game. Make no mistake, this is a not rant intended to scare you away from spending money marketing and advertising on the net. My point is that you should be doing it and doing it right.
If there anything more consistently annoying than photographer’s web sites I don’t know what it is. Grossly over-animated with Flash, navigation that is slow and counter intuitive and music.
Music? Is it 1995?
At least the mobile web will wipe these people out.
Sound mean? Sure it is. But that’s life. Making a decent, workable web site isn’t rocket science and using one shouldn’t be either. Pretty, over designed sites are usually compensation for something. I leave that to you, the discerning the reader, to determine the inadequacy.
Next time you read about how social media is creating a backlash and people are abandoning it, keep in mind, the newspaper, magazine, radio or television station has a vested interest in convincing you this is true and that they are still the dominant media in this world.
But then, the facts creep in…
Yes, this is the web measured against itself. My point is that any “backlash” where people are walking away from social media is only part of the story. The rest of the story is that for every persons that drops Twitter or Facebook in disgust, another ten new people sign up and the existing users get that much more involved.
But sure, book that add on the local radio station for only $5 a spot. It will sound great and deliver! At least that’s what the station manager will tell you.
This is effing brilliant.
Do you get it yet? And forgive me if I’m not all that sensitive to your feelings but do you get it yet? If you’re a business, the best place to shove your artistic sensibilities isn’t the web. Just because your competitor spent a bunch of money for some high profile web designer to create their site (and probably some decent money every month as extor….errr…”maintenance”) doesn’t mean you have to. Make your site usable. Make it work for the viewer.
This isn’t brain surgery but you do need to think about it.
*and don’t get me wrong, it’s not that pretty is bad in and of itself, but that stupid flash splash screen, the idiotic navigation that doesn’t really work and the lack of legible, critical information is not offset by your sites awesome animation. Grow up and stop pretending you’re sixteen and this is your first car. Create usability first.
It’s so nice to see a local business grab something and run with it and do it so well. There’s a little personal satisfaction, not that I had anything to do with the change, I didn’t, when said business is one I use from time to time. I’ve smacked Coe Camera here before, primarily for this:
There is no excuse for this. This is the way the Coe Camera site has looked for years. Someone actually “created” this in FrontPage, the meta data is still set at “default”. But that’s aside from my point here. Let’s pretend web pages are difficult to make and even a basic placeholder like this is the very best they can manage. Ok.
But very recently I’ve noticed Coe Camera popping up on Facebook with little updates like this one from today:
This is brilliant use of social media to fill the gap. This communicates important information to their customers. It’s succinct and it will help bring people to the store or at least tell them when they should come to the store. Sure, I said it’s “brilliant”, it doesn’t take genius to figure this out. I hope that Coe Camera is paying whoever is doing this a few extra bucks because it’s the best thing I’ve seen Coe do in the seven years I’ve lived here. And I’ll guess, it’s brought them some business.
So now the friends of Coe Camera on Facebook will know when they get something new in and as important, they’re being updated on when things expected do not arrive so that they don’t waste trips to the store only to be disappointed. What’s more, they’re not spamming Facebook with a bunch of useless drivel. They’re posting short updates on new stock in the store. Judgment is important and keeping your posts important means not posting ten times a day just because it makes your post count look good (a huge Twitter mistake I see constantly).
Huge props to Coe Camera to figuring out how to use something very basic such as Facebook in a way that benefits them and their customers.
Now, about that web site…
This is not a man you want mess with.
Sometime in the future business classes will dissect this meltdown for the cascade of problems it highlights.
The Culture of Corporate Lying
If you’ve flown anywhere in the last ten years it’s likely you’ve encountered this. “It’s a weather delay” “It’s a safety issue” “This is just a brief delay” These are all phrases that employees toss off like so many used tissues. They’re almost never accurate but it’s accepted phraseology of the company they work for. And it’s certainly not limited to airlines. Nor, is it an exclusive corporate policy issue. At one time or another you’ve seen someone pass the buck or offer some sad excuse that you knew was bullshit rather than confront the truth.
When Southwest kicked Smith off the plane they told Smith the Captain said he posed a safety risk. Smith relates in his story that finds hard to believe the Captain ever even saw because he was the last passenger to board the plane. He thinks the Southwest employee just used that as an excuse.
He’s probably right.
And that’s the problem with institutional lying. It debases all communications between the customer and the company. Why should the customer believe anything they’re told when they know some of it is an outright lie?
And this goes far beyond “little white lies”. This isn’t about fudging the truth to preserve someone’s dignity. What it is, is the 21st century excuse. It’s the easy way out. It’s the path of least resistance. Once again, it’s the result of customer management in place of customer service. And it completely erodes any bond between the customer and the company.
Southwest Airlines policy is ridiculous, unevenly enforced and utterly disingenuous. It’s not a matter of safety as there is no evidence that anyone, anywhere at anytime has ever been injured or killed by having to sit next to someone who is too big for their seat. Inconvenienced and made uncomfortable, no doubt. We’ve all been there. And with that said, it’s the cloaking of this policy as a “safety” issue that I find so disingenuous. Don’t mistake my message here. I’m not saying that fat folks get to inconvenience the person next to them. I am saying that the policy as it exists is mostly unspoken and unenforceable without precipitating more events such as the one Smith recounts.
And let’s be clear about what the airlines are selling and what passengers think they are buying on Southwest. Since Southwest’s 2002 announcement that they would be strictly enforcing their policy of larger passengers being required to buy two seats Southwest has not modified their advertising in that regard. There is no announcement, anywhere publicly visible that says when you buy a coach seat on Southwest you’re buy a space 17″ wide and 28″ deep. They continue to advertise that you’re buying a fare that will transport you from one destination to another. In almost every case a passenger affected by this decision won’t find out their fare just doubled until they’re at the gate or in the seat on the plane. Good planning? Open, transparent implementation of policy? Not really, not at all.
At the same time airlines have been reducing the distance between rows of seat (referred to as “seat pitch”) and the width of the seats they, rather unsurprisingly, find themselves in the situation of charging some passengers for two seats because they don’t fit into them. You don’t have to look far to find complaints about comfort during travel by air. What was once a grand experience has become a marathon of discomfort and humiliation and it starts in the terminal and continues right through to the actual flying experience.
Yes, market forces are at work here. There’s no question people want cheap airfares and will put up with a lot of indignities to get that cheap fare. Jet Blue experimented with slightly larger seats and deeper pitch but, according to Jet Blue, the experiment failed and they’ve gone back to smaller seats with less pitch between rows. People don’t want to pay more to fly. And why should they? They less now than ever before. The airlines themselves have created this situation running on price alone and sacrificing every other aspect of flying to meet that goal.
Back to Smith
Kevin Smith’s story is interesting but not only because of what happened to him. The real kicker is in what he experienced on his Southwest flight home a few hours later. Seated in a row of three, Smith bought two seats. However, he only sat in one, with the armrests down and the seatbelt buckled, as required by Southwest to qualify for a single fare.
As the plane filled up the third seat in his row was taken by a woman of size. According to Smith’s description, somewhat like him, bigger than normal but able to fulfill the Southwest requirement with the armrests down and the seatbelt buckled. Yet, immediately before departure he was to re-experience almost the same thing he had gone through on an earlier flight but this time he got to see it from the outside. An attendant called the woman and spoke to her away from her seat explaining that even though she would be allowed to fly at this time with one fare in the future she should buy two fares to guarantee her seat.
When Smith learned of this woman’s experience he was outraged. Why humiliate her when the same people who were lecturing her on buying two fares knew that it wasn’t an issue since he purchased the middle seat and it would remain empty?
And Smith is right. It was another example of uneven enforcement of a policy that is bad, at best. It’s possible that the woman should be buying two seats but on that flight, next to a passenger who had just had a major conflict with the airline on the same issue. It’s stupidity on a grand scale. What’s more, it’s an example of the arrogance many airline employees have assumed since 9/11. And that’s another essay entirely but there has been much commentary on the attitude changes in flight crew and airport since 9/11 and most are not positive. Making in flight staff into dictators and law enforcement officers was not an improvement for the customer.
To add to Southwest’s trouble, consider this. Let’s say I buy two seats to adhere to their policy. Southwest is famous for their “open seating”. We used to call it riding cattle car. Basically, passengers scramble for the seats they want, seats are not reserved. So how does a late boarding passenger who has paid for two seats guarantee that the seat next to them is open? From what I could find there is no mechanism for this. Southwest has once again created a policy which cannot be reasonably implemented, however rational the reason for the policy itself may be.
Part of the reason Southwest is profitable is their cattle car seating. It’s quick and requires less people to manage. If they changed their system to accommodate special seating requirements, whatever they are, it costs them more. It’s one thing to institute a policy. It’s another to have the ability to humanely and compassionately administer it. Clearly they’ve failed at this.
The final, sad coda to this is the customer service reaction from Southwest. Southwest is publicly claiming they’ve contacted Kevin Smith. Smith says otherwise. I’ve been a party this myself. Southwest says they’ll get back to you, they do not. They say they will respond, they do not. They’re doing the same thing in this situation via their blog site and Twitter. It’s clear to me that Southwest is playing a public game of CYA that they normally play in private. What’s works with one person who is not a celebrity won’t necessarily work when someone like Kevin Smith crosses your path. The man has made his living being painfully, if not brutally honest about his life. When the Southwest site says their veep of customer experience has called him and Smith says no one from Southwest has called him, chances are, Smith is going to be believed here. The cover lie only backfires and makes Southwest look worse.
So am I advocating brutal honesty and total disclosure as business policy? No. There are times when being diplomatic or courteous trumps your “by the cold light of the day” honesty. But those situations generally don’t make it to the policy level and when lying is institutionalized, then you’re traveling down a path that inevitably separates you from your customer. Make no mistake, in the days of social media, one customer’s experience with your company is shared by many. The old one or ten adage about positive or negative experiences is now at least an order of magnitude higher. That person who feels they have been wronged by you can easily, from their cell phone, tell a thousand people about their experience and do it while standing in your front door. Once again and as always, honesty overall is the best policy and establishing a good and dare I suggest, genuine relationship with your customer is the best way to do business.
Disclosure; make no mistake, I dislike Southwest and always have. Back in the days of Pacific Southwest Airlines they were fun, quirky regional carrier whose personality often made up for some ugly plane interiors and terrible timing. The beats that has become Southwest however is fueled two things, the echo of the quirky personality which exists mostly in their own minds and, primarily, cheap airfares. When all you sell is price then everything becomes subordinate to that goal. That might work for some things but for air travel it has, in my opinion, done nothing but make flying a terrible experience. That polls indicate people don’t want to pay more for better service is, again in my opinion, besides the point. People, if polled, probably don’t want to pay more for healthcare than they absolutely have to but imagine the airline industry running your doctors office? Then again, given the state of healthcare, maybe they already do.
Additional edit: I want to clarify something. I get that Southwest has to do something to manage large people not fitting into their seats. It’s not fair to a smaller passenger that some huge person takes up their space. That said, it’s Southwest’s problem to fix, not the passengers to work out on their own, not the flight crew that already have other things to deal with. Southwest should have dealt with this twenty-five year old policy in some more rational manner years ago. There is absolutely no excuse that a policy existing as long as this has should be, A. So poorly implemented and inconsistently enforced and B. so vague and trap for anyone who needs to enforce it. Look, I get it, there’s a real problem here. Aside from the “Safety” bullshit (which it is), this is a problem but it’s a problem which Southwest has mostly ignored. This time, it bit them on the ass real hard.
That said, given how they’ve treated Smith and my experience, I think Southwest will just kick this can further down the lane so that their PR people have something to deal with in the future. They’ve not acted like a pro-active company yet, no reason they should change now.
Owning or running a small business can often be confusing, challenging and sometimes daunting. Very often you’re called upon to be a jack-of-all-trades, everything to everyone, you get the idea. I live in that world too. It’s not enough that I know what my core business is I have to be proficient in a myriad of other trades.
Often times we small business owners (and big business owners) go outside for help. We can’t know everything. So we try to hire the best people we can to do work for us that will help our business. Sometimes, finding that outside expert can be treacherous. We can waste time and money (somewhat redundant, I know) working with people who appear to be good but aren’t. So here are my thoughts on helping to find the right people to help increase your business.
The biggest problem I’ve seen is a lack of willingness to be involved. I understand that. It’s great when I have a service provider who knows my needs and can, with no effort from me, do what I need to have done without wasting money and effort. Those providers are few and far between. This might be tough to hear but you have to have them explain what they are doing in terms you understand. The provider than has to execute that plan and following that, they need to go over the results of their work with you, again, in terms you understand. These providers won’t always be successful but if you’re not learning from the failures then you’re losing a lot more. If you feel as though you’re being baffled by bullshit, you probably are. In other words, be involved. Understand what is going and demand some kind of accountability that means even if what you do doesn’t work you profit from that knowledge.
The second biggest problem occurs when everything in the business isn’t in good working order and the owner/operator just wants to try to buy themselves some market share. You can advertise all day long, if the customer arrives at your business and has a bad experience, you’ve just paid to spread the word that you suck. Congratulations. Before you spend any money to bring people into your business make sure your own house is in order. Make sure that what you promise in public you deliver in your location. Like the above issue, it’s tough. It’s time consuming and requires effort on your part but let me reinforce once again how it’s doubly bad for you if you’re spending more money to draw people to your business only to piss them off inside your doorstep (virtual or otherwise).
OK, so that was the hard part. You can’t just pick up phone and order success. You have to be involved and committed.
Anyone, and I mean anyone, who advertises SEO solutions is, at best, very lazy in selling their business to you. SEO, Search Engine Optimization is this decade’s snake oil. The truth is simple. Guess what, success isn’t easy. It can’t be bought for a low monthly price and it isn’t the result of some jiggery pokery with Google. No one you can hire is smarter than Google and if they tell you they have the secret to boosting your site, they’re lying (and you’re rather naive for believing them). There is no secret. You want to know what the real answer is? I’ll tell you for free. Content and an exceptionally well made web site. That’s it. If you have those two thing in place, you’ll rank higher than most. It’s that simple and it’s that much work. A well designed web site is search engine optimized by definition. The right meta keywords are in place and you’ve done everything you can to cross link to other sites. You need to be regularly adding new content that demonstrate your business is the one to seek out and why your products are better than your competitors. It’s nothing that requires a special monthly charge, it’s work that should have taken place when you designed the site and it’s work that should be ongoing, either by yourself, someone inside your business or a trusted service provider.
Marketing and advertising is similar. The old saw about being able to cut your marketing/ad budget by one third and see no change in your business is true, the trick is identifying that one third. To do this you have create programs that you can track. Season this attitude in being realistic in your expectations. Don’t expect that everything will bring hordes of cash waving customers to you. Sometimes image marketing is more useful than advertising a blow out sale price (arguably, better for your business long term as well).
Ad agencies are wonderful but, like attorneys, never forget they make money whether you win or lose. Do the ads make sense? Are they placed well? Are you paying the lowest price for the best ad? Maybe. Maybe not. And please allow me to reinforce that their business model requires you to advertise whether it makes sense or not. When you’re not advertising, they’re not making money. And just to toss in another hand grenade, the ad agency makes more money off a boring, expensive newspaper ads that few people will ever see much less act on then they do on a very influential Google ad campaign that sends people directly to your site or business.
I’m not here stumping for Google. From my end, if you never interact with Google nothing changes, for me. Right now Google is the big player on line and the fact they come into these conversations is simply a result of that reality because online is where most of the lucrative customers are (with some notable exceptions for some businesses). Twenty years ago it was the phone book and most businesses signed insane re-curring contracts with the phone book company for expensive ads placed in multiple locations. Problem is, as the phone book’s impact waned (and make no mistake, it has) businesses just kept doing what they’ve always done and an expenditure that, at one time was critical, was now just a parasitic drain of cash. Things change and if you think your last X numbers of years of success guarantee you something going forward, please allow me to disabuse of you that notion. And, sadly, chances are that unlike GM, the feds are not going to bail out your moldy business plan.
As a business owner/operator is it your duty to research service providers and advertising sources not just go golfing with them. Before you sign up with that new lifestyle magazine, have you actually read it? Maybe looked through the last six editions of it? Have you looked at their web site? Have you talked to any of your customers to see if they in fact ever read it? Or, was that nice lunch at Macaroni Grill and that spiffy presentation folder enough to grab you? In the end, it’s your job to make these decisions and to make them based on something more than a good feelings or a family relationship because, in the end, chances are your cousin or in-law isn’t going to save your business.
Sorry if you were hoping for “Seven Quick Tips To Success”. I only have one, there is no quick way. Now, get to work.
Social media? That’s another topic for another time. Or call me, we can talk about it. Same rules apply though.
So I will.
I am constantly haranguing local businesses for their poor or non-existent attempts on the web. It’s really quite pathetic when you think about it. The huge number of business that don’t even have web sites and even amongst those who do, most of look like bad geocities sites from the nineties, at best. Most are woefully inadequate when it comes to the basics, like telephone numbers and business hours. I won’t even start ranting about sites that aren’t updated.
So that said, what a pleasure it is to come across a nice example:
I’m totally unconnected to this business but check out the site. It’s simple and fun. The site has all the information you need and it’s simple to find. The site loads quickly and it’s well thought out. I could change the site around but I doubt it would be a huge improvement, different, not better.
And this is what frustrates me about local business sites. Some people try to make them so over-complicated they’re useless. This Little Piggy did a very nice job on there. Cheers to them.
Please allow me to extend my very best wishes to you for a happy and prosperous 2010.
I’m really disappointed by the new year’s eve options this year. The standard NYE downtown is a joke. That will change next year when a different organization is waving the baton but for this year… The Marriott’s throwing a bash, $349.00 which might be great but I don’t need a room there, I can walk the two blocks to my home. Rosa Rosa has sort of modular plan starting around a c-note. It’s just disappointing to me there aren’t more and dare I suggest, better options available.
Maybe I don’t know about them. Maybe.
Scanning the web sites of some local places won’t tell you much. Annie Bailey’s, for instance, hasn’t updated their site for events past 12/19. I called and a rather sullen person seemed surprised I would want to go there for NYE. They have an acoustic guitar playing and, according to the AB staffer, not much else.
There’s no reason this should be and if downtown businesses are serious about attracting people to downtown and keeping us center city dwellers here, they need to try harder.
