good use of IP address tracking

As per the entry from a few days ago, I'm checking out travel arrangements for a trip to Athens, and found myself on Tripadvisor looking at a hotel called 'the Four Seasons'. Sadly, it wasn't part of the chain by the same name, but annyywhooo, look what happened when I followed a link to the Tripadvisor page:

Yep, those clever folk assumed that if I was looking for a hotel in Athens I might also need to book a flight. Add into that my IP address identifying me as being in Sunderland, and I was presented with a 'personalized' ad for flights from my local airport.

web and email = different

Probably a 'cut and paste' error - but check out the contact email address at the bottom of this [it's from a promotional poster]

Of course, an easy fix would be to have set up the email address as shown [it is possible to have almost anything before the @ in an email address] and have it forward emails to the correct address [student.helpline@], but at the time af writing, the published address was bouncing emails. D'oh!

excellent advertising practice

I have been quick to criticise poor advertising, including poor landing pages. However, TravelRepublic.co.uk excelled itself when I was looking for a hotel in Athens. Regular readers will know I have been a frequent visitor to the Greek capital, and so I knew of two hotels in which I would like to stay - so I searched on their names on Google. The first was the Residence Georgio*.

One of the AdWords ads listed was with TravelRepublic and I clicked on the link, which took me to 'their' Georgio page that included a calendar for me to select my required dates**. Here's the resulting page
After checking the price I returned to Google and searched for the Park Hotel. Again, TravelRepublic had an ad, so I clicked on it ...
And here's the good - no, make that great - bit: the TravelRepublic landing page for the Park Hotel already had my travel dates pre-selected. Excellent.
If you're wondering, its all magic - probably - done with IP address recognition. This should be standard practice for advertisers.

* footnote #1 - this hotel actually changed its name last year [to the Melia] and whilst there is a website on this name, the hotel seems to have retained its own brand online. A lesson on the problems of changing a brand/organization's name when it has an established online presence.

** footnote #2 - for any burglars reading: I have changed my actual travel dates on the examples shown

keeping shipping costs a secret

I was shopping for some contact lenses online, and came across some at a good price on lenstore.co.uk ....
... but the problem was that I had to register before I could see what the total cost was going to be.
Guess where I didn't buy my lenses from?

google speaks the lingo

This wouldn't work for everyone, a bank would be unlikely to get away with it for example, but this is the call to action at the bottom of a page promoting the search giant's new 'buzz' feature. As Mr Burns would say .... excellent

excellent fulfilment process from Tesco

It seems a while since I've found something positive to feature on this blog, but here is one. When I ordered a sat nav system online, not only did Tesco provide an online tracking facility [below], but delivered less than a couple of days after I ordered it. See the full story here.

costcutter cutting communication costs?

Somewhere along the line I had taken possession of an Irish £5 note. Not a problem for me, I worked in retail for a long time. I know that although it is not legal tender in the UK it is treated by the British banks in the same way as Scottish notes ie they accept them at face value [* see below]

Sadly, the nugget working in my local Costcutter store didn't know this. Neither did she know that the island of Ireland was divided into two countries, Northern Ireland and Eire. Neither did she know that Northern Ireland was part of the United Kingdom and that the £5 note was not 'foreign money'.

It was bad enough that a shop wouldn't take money from me [surely, the ultimate retailing sin?], but to add insult to injury, I was told that they accepted Scottish money but not Irish and was talked to as if I was an idiot and ... well, I was treated in such a way that I would have sacked that member of staff had she acted that way in one of my shops.

So I went to the 'contact us' page on the costcutter.com site [strangely, the .co.uk returns a '404' page despite the fact that costcutter own the domain name] and after reading the message: 'Our highly talented people are what make the Costcutter story amazing!' I fired off an email. Well, no I didn't fire off an email because they only had a contact form - but anyway, I detailed my poor experience at the hands of one of their 'highly talented people'.

Upon pressing 'send' I got this message:
Nice, although I think you will find thank you is two words, not one - perhaps they are not highly talented spellers.

The thing is ... that was over a week ago. Do I need to say any more?

* In case you aren't aware, only English money is 'legal tender' in England - indeed the term 'legal tender' is unique to England, other countries using the legal term 'promissory note' to cover the issue. However, because England, Scotland and Northern Ireland are all part of the UK, the banks have an agreement that they will accept each other's notes.

computers & hairstyling : associated selling?

I'm considering buying a netbook - and one place I checked was ASDA. Here's the page for one that interested me - but take a look at the ads on the right. Printer, OK - but hair straighteners? Cross selling is a big part of a retailers income. Can you imagine a salesperson in a shop saying "good choice of computer sir, now can I interest you in some ceramic straighteners?" No ... so why do it online?

let me out of here

I suppose if you really pushed me I might come up with an acceptable reason for using a notice - and facility - like this one that appeared when I went to close a tab with a website on it:

Perhaps it might be used on the page of a form where the user has completed the details and so might have clicked away from the page by mistake.

But as a general rule, if I have indicated that I want to leave the page I probably want to do so. Taking an offline equivalent [as I like to do to make an online point], how would you feel if a member of staff held the door closed as you went to leave a shop and asked 'are you sure you want to leave'?

exclamation mark com?

I saw the poster on a billboard:

Take a good look in the bottom righthand corner. I suppose it might have sounded a bit off-beat in the pitch, but domain names CANNOT have an exclamation mark in them. Of course, I know this - but when I asked my wife to go to the website she typed in the ! instead of 'dot'. My wife, by the way, is not stupid - she is as web-savvy as the average person. Big mistake, Britainthinks.

For more on domain names, go buy my book: choosing the right domain name: a marketing perspective.