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.

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?