I'm still waiting ...

Note the date of this post: February 24th ... 

UPDATE: March 7th.  Well ... it's taken them 45 DAYS, but KLM have replied saying the system is working now. There's a relief.

Christmas is coming ... or has it just gone?

Obviously, as spring is almost upon us, like everyone else I'm looking to get my garden in order for the summer [yeah, right 😜] ... anyway I came across the website of a local garden centre - which seemed to have been trapped in a time warp.

But here's the kicker - and it's why I get frustrated with organization's attitudes towards the web ...

I have shopped at this garden centre for years. It is very good. The folk that work there know their stuff. 

But if someone who had never been there found this on their website they might actually wonder if it is still trading. Furthermore, it's a bit out of the way - would a potential customer decide to make the journey based on this website?

I'm absolutely certain that if a sign outside, or on, the premises blew down or got damaged it would be replaced as soon as possible. That would be the sign seen only by passers-by and customers who were already there. 

Yet the website - seen by an untold number of potential customers - is ignored for months.

Worse still is that I've been saying this for more than 20 years.

Ho hum.

Booting up a deal

I normally rail against pop-up appeals to join some scheme or other that impose themselves when you arrive at a site's home page - but at least this one offers 10% discount on your first order.

Given the price of their boots, that's an acceptable bribe from Doc Martins. 

Roamers get it right

Purveyors of desert boots, Roamers, have put some thought into their e-commerce site.

Here's a couple of things that I liked.

First there's a nice sales 'trick' - though I mean that in a positive way. Like most clothing, there is always the issue of size - is their size 10 really a 9? To address that issue - in sales we'd call it a barrier - for just a pound you can buy a returns label. On a 30-odd pounds product, that sounds like excellent insurance.

The second thing I liked was the out-of-stock message. It didn't end with the message, it offered to email me when they were in stock. The double whammy for Roamers with this is not only am I pleased at the service - they get my email address: that is ... the email address of someone who is actually interested in their products.

Why adidas is going uphill - in more ways than one

OK, so I've been a fan of adidas for, well ... longer than most folk reading this have been on the planet [I got my first pair of sambas in 1971, I didn't dare tell my mum how much I paid for them].

But, that has no influence when I see good or bad practice - and this is excellent.

I came across a marketing article about how the sports and leisure wear company was entering a new marketing - hiking - and, at the same time, changing hiking's 'stale' image ... so introducing the pastime [sport?]  to a younger, trendier audience. 

Win-win all round; adidas sell more product; people get fit, adidas tick the box for doing their bit for the heath of  everyone on the planet.

Having read the story, I thought I'd take a look at the product in question - Free Hiker Shoes [I'm assuming 'shoes' will sell more, they look like boots to me?].

And sure enough, there is an online [only?] campaign to launch the shoes, which, as it happens, is tonight [full marks to adidas' PR folk for ensuring the marketing story was published today].

And here's the relevant web page on adidas.co.uk ...

Nice clean page design. All the necessary info is there. And there's a countdown clock to add a sense of urgency [always good to encourage sales]. If was into hiking I would want a pair. Heck, I walk a lot, I do want a pair.

PS If you're thinking 'that page has no price' - the price was on the link that took me to this page. And that price? Nigh on 170 of our English pounds. Pricey? Yes. But not for the target segment adidas is aiming them at.

Why M&S is going downhill, an example ...

So I was surf-shopping on the Interweb for a jacket.

Amongst the opinions presented to me by a  Google shopping search was one at Marks and Spencer. 

This means someone at M&S had made the effort to ensure their product appeared as a result of this search. 

However, sizes are a funny thing, and I wanted the jacket for when I travel abroad for work, so it needed to be 'roomy' to be comfortable on flights. Which meant I wanted to try on several sizes, essentially to buy one that is - by size - too big for me.

So I clicked on the 'find in a UK store' link, where I put in my postcode - and got this:

That's it. One store. 

Yes, it is the one closest to me, but they [the digital marketing team at M&S] obviously think I am incapable and/or unwilling to travel to any one of the numerous stores they have in my area. Perhaps I do only want to shop in Sunderland, but they could try and tempt me to another by telling me where the jacket is in stock. Indeed, one of their biggest stores in the country is at Gateshead's Metro Centre, which is just down the road.  

And here's the kicker - and it relates to my non-marketers in digital marketing rants - if I was in a store and they didn't have my size, any decent sales person would ask 'shall I see if they have one in another branch?' and then ask where I would be willing to travel to.

And if decent sales folk were involved in the development of e-commerce sites they would tell the techies to make that happen online. 

It ain't rocket science, it's just good old fashioned customer service. Or is that good old fashioned sales?

This data-driven marketing really works ...

... errr, think again.

Check out this message I got in an email this morning.

It's for a theatre I've never been to in a town I've never visited. Which is bad enough in itself, but it is in Tunbridge Wells, which Google Maps tells me is 309 miles and a journey of five and a half hours away.