Posts Tagged ‘email’

• Clear out your inbox

  Saturday, December 5th, 2009

  You may not realise it but safely guarding all your emails that include your passwords is a very bad idea.

  Imagine that your computer is stolen. The thief accessed your email inbox simply by clicking on Outlook, or going to Gmail, hotmail etc. Because, of course, for easy access and because you don’t think of this as a shared computer (right now in this scenario it is though), your passwords for entry to these places is saved.

  Once in your inbox, a simple search on the word “password” will bring up untold emails unless you are one of the very few who delete these type of reminder and registration emails, and store passwords in a much safer place away from the computer.

  It may be your registration to Amazon (it turns out the thief could really do with some new DVDs), or to the admin area of a client site (s/he really fancies changing a few things on that website you have worked so hard on), or your blog (you *know* you didn’t write that post), or one of any number of sites you have been sent the password to.

  Try it now. And then put those passwords somewhere much safer and delete the emails!

  Tags: email, passwords, security
  Posted in Tips & Tricks | No Comments »

• Phone calls are the next big thing in online marketing

  Tuesday, November 24th, 2009

  I know you won’t believe me, but it’s true.

  Recently, we wrote about phone call tracking. The point being that it gives very strong data about conversions from landing pages when the call to action is to ‘p.p.p.p.pick up the phone’.

  Interestingly, this has now cropped up again as a subject for discussion on SearchEngineLand.

  Let’s ask why consumers might call a number, rather than send an email or complete a form. The article above fails to address the issue from a consumer point of view, instead looking at all the reasons why the industry has ignored phone calls to date and why there is now a resurgence of the humble call.

  As a consumer, how many times have you emailed an enquiry to a company and then not received a response? Not received a timely response? Or not received *any* response? Ditto with forms on websites. You complete the form, which is often far more lengthy than it need be, and you hit ’submit’. You get an error and are thrown back to the previous page, yet now all the fields are blank. UGH!

  Having cursed all coders under the sun for that last primary school error, which are you most likely to do:

  a) just return to a search engine and seek another company offering a similar deal?

  b) start all over again completing the form and pray that this time it will actually be delivered and that there isn’t another bug in the system that has failed without informing you?

  Now, let’s look at it a different way, but still from the consumer’s point of view.

  You are looking for a particular item, to be delivered by the weekend, and the first website you fall over clearly has the item in stock (great landing page, BTW, it took you straight to what you were looking for!), they can deliver in 2-3 days guaranteed (force majeure excepted), and have the item at a price you are prepared to pay.

  You have Skype or similar installed, and the only call to action on that page is “Call this number and order today”. No alternatives. Just call. No email address, no online web form, although there is obviously clear navigation to the rest of the site.

  You click and the phone call is initiated. Within moments you are through to a lovely receptionist who, within literally moments, has taken down and double checked your address, your order and removed a reasonably substantial amount of your money from your account on your instructions.

  Two days later, the item you wished for is on your doorstep and is precisely what you had anticipated.

  Next time you try online shopping, having been more than happy with your last purchase, and less than happy with other companies’ failures to answer emails, respond to forms etc, will you be:

  a) More confident using the phone to order

  b) Less confident

  Each time a company gets it right by having well-trained staff to answer the phones, a back-end system that confirms the product is in stock, processes the order, and ensures that is sent out to the customer’s spec, that customer will use the phone.

  Any company who starts ensuring that their phone answering process is up to scratch, and PROMOTING THAT FACT publicly, will begin to win out as customers feel let down by technology and revert to the one thing that they can rely on – the goold old telephone.

  

  Tags: email, forms, Landing page, marketing, search engine, telephone, Web search engine, website
  Posted in CRM, Online PR, Small Business Resources, Stats & Trends | No Comments »

• Facebook changes – again!

  Thursday, November 19th, 2009

  More changes to come on Facebook. This time, some actually seem to make sense.

  However, there is one particular change which seems likely to upset users, advertisers and hence Facebook’s potential revenue.

  Last week, almost below my radar, a small notification appeared which casually stated, amongst other text, that notifications would be vanishing in the New Year and that if you want to keep informed of application updates, you would need to ensure that the application had your email address.

  My instant reaction was – that’s me out of visiting Facebook regularly then. Like many people, email is no longer the communication tool of choice.  It has its place, but so do tweets, SMS, phone calls, IM, Skype and so on.

  The email inboxes of far too many people are overladen with a surfeit of incoming messages, many for newsletters subscribed to moons ago that you always mean to read but never quite do, offers that you are sure you never wanted to receive, spam, forward chain letters from ‘friends’, and a host of other tosh.

  These can often hide the important messages so people resort to other solutions to ensuring they don’t miss an important communication. If you need to talk to another business person, LinkedIn is a great way to ensure attention. If you need an answer instantly, you seek your respondent’s online status in Google Chat, jabber, Skype, IM – knowing before you hit send that they are present at the other end and will respond quickly.

  SMS isn’t strictly reliable but in most cases will get a reasonably instant answer – if the message is delivered promptly, if the phone is on, if the recipient is checking their texts etc.

  One wonders the logic behind Facebook’s decision. For many people, the notifications are the means to getting engaged in FB, telling them who has said what, posted a photo, commented in a discussion group and so on. It is also a means by which applications drive users to their page or app, relying on people power to encourage viral marketing.

  This issue will no doubt cause untold discussion and heated debates shortly and on implementation. It isn’t that users hate change (of course they do!) but it takes away one of the primary mechanisms for users to know what others have been doing. It puts all the footslog and hard work back onto the users, instead of making it easy for them to engage and socialise.

  It is a valuable lesson for any company to consider. When you plan changes to your website, are they for you or for the users’ benefit? Or both? Can you meet the target of satisfying your desire to make your life easier without making your users’ lives harder?

  

  Tags: E-mail, email, facebook, usability, website design
  Posted in Social Media, Website Usability | No Comments »