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.

if there's no price ... you can't afford it

I recall my mum quoting me the titular phrase when I was about six and staring in the window of expensive toy shop. By the time I was working in retail management I knew the theory behind the concept as well as how it worked in practice. However, I cannot see an application online - which makes HP's (Hewlett Packard) website something of a nonsense ... see below:
Do they really think that anyone would click on 'buy now' without knowing anything about the product or even how much it costs?

Newcastle Airport - it's snow joke II

Following on from an earlier entry - hey Newcastle Airport, it's snow joke - it would appear they do not run any kind of reputation management software and so have not read my blog [or more to the point, do not seem to care too much about their customers].

Last night saw a continuation of the bad weather in the UK, and the morning radio said that Newcastle airport was closed because of the snow. So I immediately went to the airport's website, and here's the front page:

Yep, same as it was on my previous entry on the subject; ie same as always. Similar story on the other relevant pages. The lack of updating is betrayed in this message on the 'latest news' feature:
For those who do not follow football, this match was played 4 days ago. Latest news ???

The same BBC radio news report said that both Gatwick and Bristol airports were closed - I was pleased to see that the website management [read: cutomer care] of those was better, here's their frontpages:

unintentional bait and switch by Argos

As my students will tell you, I hold Argos up as an example of best practice in multi-channel retailing. However, even the best can get it wrong - albeit in an issue that might be considered beyond their control [though I think with a bit of vigilance and considered web content it can be effectively addressed]. Here's the problem.

I managed to overfill our coffee maker which caused it to short-out ... and anyway, we needed a new one. Being happy with the one I'd just blown up, I typed its name into Google, and got this as part of the result ...
Great, I thought - on offer for half price at Argos. But when I clicked on that link I got this page ...Now, I suspect the link in the Google index was an old one, referring to an offer that has since finished - but it still reflects poorly on Argos.

The solution? Well, first-off you folks at Argos' reputation management dept, I would hope you are monitoring blog enteries with your brand name in them, so you should read this - so let me know how you sorted it out.

To address the issue, I would look to change the content of the page with the 'offer' price on it - Google will continue to list it, but the text should not be damaging. And to stop it happening again you are going to have to monitor search engine results for any returns that link to your website - I'm sure there will be software available help out with this task.

UPDATE - a few days later I went back to Google and used the same search term - and the Argos entry had changed to this:Note that the URL for both entries is the sames - suggesting that the textual content has been changed. Coincidence? I would like to think someone at Argos saw this blog? [if you did, let me know, I would love to use this as an example of good practice in my next book].

Furthermore, this entry wasn't in the listings when I searched last week

hey Newcastle Airport - it's snow joke

Today we fly off for our winter holidays. And last night it snowed. Again. Its been snowing since Thursday. So I go to the website of Newcastle Airport - from where we fly in a few hours time.

Now, I would expect I am not the only person concerned about their flight today - the radio is talking of flight delays around the country. And these are the homepage, the flight information page and the arrival and departures page from the airport's website. You will note how two of them have ads in prominent places - what you will not see is any kind of announcement about the state of the runway, and whether or not flights are operating as normal. Checking the 'departures' page would suggest everything is OK. Replacing those ads with a nice clear message [everything Ok, flights delayed, check-in on time, whatever] for a couple of hours would have been good customer service. And no, it being Sunday morning is not an excuse for those responsible for web content not being at work is NOT an excuse.

hello America ... rest of the world calling

I like Lulu.com. They provide a good service in on-demand printing. I've used them to publish books. They have my full details from my registration with them. They've sent books to my home address.

So why did I get this email?

Times' search is behind the times

I read an article in the hard-copy version of the Sunday Times that I wanted to add a link to from my website. So on Monday morning I searched for the online version of the article - starting on the Timesonline.co.uk. But this was the return I got:
So I went to Google, and with the same search term got this:
Now, there is an ongoing debate at this time about newspapers complaining that the search engines 'steal' the newspapers' content. Hmmm, well maybe you should look to satisfy your own readers on your own site before taking that stance?

Footnote: when I went to the online version of the story its title had been changed. So I searched for it also and got no return on the Timesonline site.

proper e-commerce recruitment

Anyone who has attended one of my sessions [education or training] will have heard me rant about organizations employing techies to do online marketing jobs [see: what is it with me and 'IT'? and what is wrong with e-marketing].

Well, here is an example of a company that puts round pegs in round holes. It is no coincidence that said firm is really good at e-commerce. Click here to see the ad that notonthehighstreet.com put out to recruit new staff - give it a while to open, I made the quality high for clarity.

In particular, notice how the 'techie' job [web developer] emphasizes usability and not just 'Flash'-type visual eye-candy and that the value of textual content is recognized by employing specialist copy writers. Oh yes - and they will be managed by a marketer. Hurrah.

give this landing page the boot[s]

I was looking for a HoMedics product, so I typed the term into Google - and there at the top of the SERP was an ad for the brand at Boots ...... but look at the landing page on which I was taken. Oh dear.

city with no county

I like Omniture. They do some good stuff - and give it away for free. Well, not quite free, they ask for quite a lot of details about your job [it's for lead generation, but is wasted on me], including your employer and where it is. This includes the location's county. Problem is, I'm in Sunderland, Tyne and Wear, but it is not listed on the drop down options.

PS Omniture, if you do read this, I selected 'Durham' - which doesn't exist, it is actually County Durham.

Update, October 2011: The list is still the same - and the download I wanted this morning was on 'segmentation'. Students or practitioners of geographic segmentation will - I hope - see the irony.

informal needn't be scary

It won't work for all organizations, but a bit of humour can help your marketing communications be better received by the target audience. This example is from self-publishers, Lulu - with the halloween offer using the coupon code BOO. Nice.

Update: this is obviously an ongoing strategy, here's one from December '09:

why the paid ad?

There is a reasonable argument that suggests paying for ads on search engine results pages [SERP] for certain keywords can help develop your brand even if your site is high in the organic listings. But take a look at the first page of the SERP for a search on "Sunderland University".

Yep - 9 of the 10 listings are for Sunderland University. So why bother with the paid listing also? Having been derogatory about this, the university has got ads on other keyword searches where it doesn't feature in the organic listings. But then again, some of the sites in those organic listings seem to be there almost by accident. Maybe a serious SEO campaign might be a better long-term plan? [I assume its marketers know the stats on organic vs ad clickthrough performance].

questions you have to answer

OK, so questionnaires exist outside the online environment - but I did respond to this one on the web, so I've included it here. To be fair, getting questionnaires right is very difficult - I rarely see one with out at least one iffy question. The grammar used in this one suggests that I might not want to tick any of the three boxes ['which, if any ...'], yet as the response to my original answer shows, no answer is not an option - and yet I do not want any of the three options.

Note that this was part of questionnaire from a company that conducts research as a business model and so is simply poor practice. If this were on a website and customers had to answer the question as part of a purchase process ... it would be illegal.

Teesside University : keeping up with the times ... or not

It is nice to see that an academic institution is moving with the times and featuring all manner of social networking links on its website [facebook, twitter, flickr etc], but this week I got a snail mail letter from them requesting a reference for one of my old students.

The thing is, it was dated the 30th of September and asked for a reply by the 2nd of October - and it arrived at my uni on the 6th ! But that's not the subject of this posting [though it is something that should be addressed]. So, seeing as the student might miss out on a post graduate programme because of the delay, I thought I would email the sender of the letter and let her know the reference was both positive, and in the post.

So here is my complaint. I spent a good while on Tees.ac.uk and all I could find was an 'enquiries@' email address. Nothing for the admissions dept [from where the email came] and putting the sender's name in the site search produced a 'Your search did not match any documents.' reply.

So Teesside uni - social media might be sooooo 2009, but email is soooooo 1996, get the basics of Internet communication right before moving on to more advanced stuff.

Unless, of course, they don't want potential students [customers] and other stakeholders to contact them by email - now that is sooooooo, well .... 1950.

puzzling website (sat) navigation

I'm sure they have their reasons - it is probably related to stock categories and display in physical stores, but from this front page for Tesco.com, where do you think you would find in-car sat nav systems?
I went for 'DIY & car', but there was no sign of sat navs on that page. Now I know Tesco do sat nav systems as I have seen them in-store, so I looked for a site search facility. But there is not one on the front page [they must think their product categorization and site navigation is so good that they don't need it there - though it does appear on all subsequent pages ... go figure]. So I looked around the other product-category options and tried the only one that had any vague connections to what I was looking for - 'PC, photo & gaming', and got this page.
Again, I assume they had their reasons, but taking up around half of the above-the-fold page [and I have a fairly big screen] with a single ad strikes me as being questionable - maybe it works as a promotion, but it certainly knocks usability. This is because I didn't realise I needed to scroll down to see the full navigation bar of featured categories [which is in the middle of the page, not where you would normally expect it to be], and 'sat nav' beginning with and 's' put it at the end of the alphabetical list.


It was only at this point that I realised there was an in-site search, and used it to find the relevant pages. But I can't help thinking that Google would have found a seller of sat nav systems for me a whole lot quicker.