a Strategy guy

IE Only? You Must Be Joking

Looking through my briefcase today I find a MasterCard gift card that I forgot that I had. It's still in the original package so I flip it over and on the back are instructions on getting started using the card. These instructions tell me to go to www.giftcardbalance123.com to register the card. So, I fire up my brand new Firefox 3.0 browser and get the following error page telling me that "Internet Explorer is required to access this website". I'm thinking to myself "surely they must be joking?", but after attempting entry once again in Firefox and hopelessly giving it a try in Safari - they're not kidding. So begrudgingly I give into the "Get IE" link and am whisked away to Microsoft to download IE. Except for one tiny problem - there is no Mac OS version. 

Now, I'm content with Firefox and Safari and thus have no use for IE, but if you're going to build a site exclusively for IE only then you better make sure ALL USERS that might possibly use your site have access to this browser.

For the development team of this site: you seriously need to learn a thing or two about something called the User Experience. Simply put - there isn't one.

Better Usability for Columbia.com

I was on Columbia Sportswear's website looking for a fleece liner for a waterproof jacket I had bought some time ago at a Columbia outlet store. I wanted to make the jacket more usable in colder weather and be able to throw on the fleece liner for chilly days. Well what I thought would be a simple thing to do has proven to be nearly impossible.

First problem was figuring out the terminology. The label in the jacket said "Titanium", but that doesn't represent a specific jacket, but rather an entire clothing line. Nor does it represent everything that is "interchangeable". So, I tried entering the product id number on the label "SM2113" in the search box on the Columbia website - that gave me nothing. So, I went back to looking at the Titanium line to see if I could just find fleece liners.

Again, terminology was not my friend. I had to decipher similar sounding terms like "parka", "soft shell", "shell", "base layer", "fleece", and "liner". Seemed simple enough as I was able to find three "fleece" products that were within the Titanium line. The description said it was interchangeable, but it also said "only available outside the U.S." Aargh! I spent more time looking around the site and trying search engines to help me out.

Second problem was the nonchalant customer service. Columbia has a nice FAQ section which I liked, but found to be not very helpful (and not visible to the user without digging) here's what I found:

"We would recommend taking your outer shell to a local Columbia Sportswear to search for a fleece or soft shell garment that may be interchange compatible."

"Please note that we do not guarantee the compatibility of interchange garments from season to season."

So, in other words I stumble around the site and the Internet for over an hour looking for a product I want to buy and the best answer I get is "Go to a store and search the racks until you find it. If you don't oh well, you might just be out of luck. Thanks for your business!"

So, I contacted customer service and asked which liners were compatible with my jacket. The list provided gave me a few options, but when I viewed the products on the site I noticed the "Columbia Interchange System" logo and name was absent from the product descriptions. Again, I was confused: "Was this interchangeable or not?" I checked out one of the products up close and it didn't have the necessary eyelets to allow it to be snapped-into my jacket. So, Columbia itself is confused on what is "interchangeable".

Some minor changes I'd recommend to make the site more user friendly:

1) Place a "Have a Question? link on the product view pages that takes the user straight to the FAQ's.

2) There already is a "Titanium" section, but unless I'm missing something not everything under Titanium is interchangeable. Currently, if you search for "interchangeable" you get a list of results (I got 83 products), but knowing what's compatible with what is still difficult. Of course, you could view the items under Men's>Jackets>Interchange but again this still requires some interpretation on terminology (if you even thought to look under "Jackets" for the link).

Interchange should be brought to the top of the respective gender sections and sorted by the garment layers. Making it easy for you to piece together an interchangeable system and see how these different terms (shell, liner, jacket, soft shell) relate to each other. Once there you can select a product and see a listing of other products it is compatible with (since we may have items that velcro-in, snap-in, or zip-in and thus not be compatible with other "interchange" labeled products). See my basic mockup to the left:

3) A terminology link to explain the different terms Columbia uses for its products. Yes, I can go into the FAQ (mentioned earlier) and find a description of say "Soft Shell", but this is a text description buried inside the FAQ (I had to search for "soft shell" to find it and got 9 results). This terminology page should show a sample of a "soft shell" product along with the text description of what exactly a "soft shell" is. Once you understand what a "soft shell" is you should be able to go directly to Columbia's line of "soft shell" products. Then be able to sort them by "gender". See my basic mockup below:

4) If a product is discontinued - instead of returning a search result page with "0 Matching Results" (as I got when searching for "SM2113") a search result page that at least confirms the product name and that it is discontinued would go a long way to helping customers find what they're looking for. You never want to return a blank screen to a user query. For me, having something that said: "Men's Titanium Selkirk Mountain shell, SM2113, THIS PRODUCT IS DISCONTINUED" would have helped me track down compatible liners and know that it was discontinued. Additional links that ask "looking for repair/warranty info?" or "looking for compatible products for your jacket?" would be helpful. As would a listing of questions from the FAQ that relate to my product. Even a link to the product that replaced mine could be useful. Especially if I came to the site looking for a replacement jacket since mine may be several years old and in need of replacement.

I think these small changes would go a long way to making columbia.com a more usable site. I'd also recommend to Columbia to do a better job internally on keeping their products lines simple. The variety is pretty confusing. Also, if a product is interchangeable it should carry the Columbia Interchange System branding and that interchangeability shouldn't vary season to season. I find it pretty silly that Columbia doesn't guarantee this interchangeability and that they can't identify what is and isn't interchangeable internally (and this goes back to simplification of the product line). There are many things to like about Columbia's website and their products, but these are just a few things I thought of while trying to find my liner - which I've still not been able to do.

Being Stupid

Case in point, I'm scanning my RSS feeds and come across this headline: "Steak 'n Shake Manager Denies Drive-Thru Service". Being a fan of Steak 'n Shake (and a stock holder) I was intrigued. I followed the link to a site called The Consumerist and read about how a legally deaf woman who couldn't use the drive thru speaker, because she couldn't hear it, pulled up to the drive-thru window to place an order. The employee at the window refused to take her order unless she drove back around and used the speaker. She explained to him that she was deaf. He still insisted and this went back and forth until he threatened to call the police for disrupting the drive-thru. Seriously? Time out - let me explain something really, really simple:

You can not afford to be stupid with your customers. Being stupid in today's connected world will cost you way more than being smart will. So what if there's a drive-thru window process in place. Can't it be modified to accommodate a specific customer need? Are your systems and processes so sacred you can't or won't change them even to help your customers? You are a business, right? You do need customers, right? You do want those customers to come back, right? I swear this is all common sense, but some are just way too dense to get it.

So, just how much impact has this one employee had? Well, I caught the headline out of 130 other headlines vying for my attention (while I'm half watching TV). Then there's The Consumerist who had 101 comments mainly supporting the woman against Steak 'n Shake. Then there was her blog where she originally posted the problem. She had another 121 supporting comments. So, we've gone from 1 customer with a negative impression of your company to a couple of hundred and they actually took the time to comment about it. Who knows how many more people read it (like me) and formed a negative viewpoint of your company.

Simply brilliant.

Update: The power of the Internet to spread the word of how stupid your company is. Again brilliant.

It's The Phone!

My earlier posts (pre-iPhone launch) about whether it's the phone or the network that's important in the cellular market (first post here and second one here) leaned toward it being the phone. A recent article over at Wired looking at the development and launch of the iPhone would seem to support this.

I found it interesting that carriers believed (and I'd say still do - the Lethargic Hippos out there - you know who you are) the value was in their network and if they emphasized the phone then their network would be de-valued and become a cheap commodity. Yet, in the end by emphasizing the power of the phone the network becomes more valuable and generates more, not less revenue. I see corollaries in other industries with similar mental roadblocks - namely music and video.

Some quotes from the Wired article:

"The greatest challenge facing the carriers wasn't finding brand-new consumers but stealing them from one another. Simply bribing customers with cheap handsets wasn't going to work."

"Meanwhile, about 40 percent of iPhone buyers are new to AT&T's rolls, and the iPhone has tripled the carrier's volume of data traffic in cities like New York and San Francisco."

Read the full article over at Wired here.

Update: Wired's blog Epicenter has a post about AT&T's recent profits and subscription numbers for the fourth quarter. AT&T saw the largest quarterly increase in subscribers of any wireless carrier. True, we can't attribute all this great news to the iPhone, but its influence is definitely there.

Random Thoughts and Influencers

I recently had been asked for my input on a new web application. After providing my feedback to the project lead/entrepreneur of the web application I decided some of my observations that were not specific to the app might be of interest. Below are some of those observations:

"...The Internet is clustered into groups, but when we search it we cut through these defined groups filtering out keywords of content we're looking for. We then have to figure out the relevancy of what we're looking for. Which often leads us back to these clusters. "

"... Just because I have an avenue to spread my opinion doesn't make me an influencer. I've got to have people who know me and value my opinion. If I read your review of why a product sucks/is great - I'll consider that as I form my opinion, but I don't know you or what your like or even how you used the product. I may be completely different and in how I want to use the product. So I get more noise - lots of people from different backgrounds talking about the same thing from different perspectives and applications. If you only like lagers and then write a bad review of an ale - well what relevance will I give that if I'm an ale guy? But if I know you and there is a common beer we both like then either through referencing that common brew to derive an opinion of the new beer or the common taste we share - I gain a more relevant viewpoint."

"...We see lots of new apps that come out that attempt to filter through the noise, but in the process they generate more noise."

Newt Quotes on Andreessen's blog

I had decided to catch up on my RSS feeds from countless blogs I've not read in several months when I came across a post on Marc Andreessen's blog about Newt Gingrich. Yeah, Newt Gingrich - I've not heard anything about him in years.

Well, there were some interesting quotes by Newt and my favorite has to be the one with the BBC reporter. Classic. Check it out here.

No Wine?

Off topic from my normal posts, but I wanted to voice my dismay over state laws and those wholesalers who lobby to keep them on the books when it comes to buying out-of-state wine.

We really like a winery in Texas called Messina Hof and also Oliver Winery back home in Indiana, but we can't purchase either wines locally nor online due to state shipping laws (thankfully Messina Hof says they can ship to NC so that's a plus once we get there). I was surprised at this, because I remember hearing about a change to the law that said you could buy wines from any state. Well, not so and after some research I found a good article about it in a Abilene, Texas newspaper.

I think we, as wine lovers, need to be more proactive in talking to our state legislators in pushing bills to remove these outmoded shipping laws. I also have problems getting the Wisconsin beers I like due to distributors. This is infuriating really - an archaic business practice that needs to go. Are distributors going to go out of business if we can buy wine direct? Don't they distribute other beverages? Wouldn't the fact that I can try new wines encourage me to ask my local wine store to start carrying them (thus benefiting the distributor)?

Hulu - a step backwards for TV 2.0

So, NBC last month introduced a beta of Hulu, their replacement for iTunes, and I have to say I think it's a step in the wrong direction in the future of having my own TV network, or TV 2.0, or whatever you want to call the future of TV.

A quick run down. Hulu lets you watch NBC products inside a web browser through a Flash based video viewer. The price increase that NBC was seeking from iTunes (that iTunes wouldn't budge on their industry standard $1.99) has been raised to $0. That's because, all content is streamed and includes some advertisement. In other words - ad supported video. Ya, NBC is now giving away content they used to charge $1.99 for, but they probably will recoup that lost revenue in the form of advertising fees (and the more viewers the more money).

Yet, despite being able to go onto Hulu and watch the latest episode of The Office for free - you're still watching it in a web browser on your laptop. It's not full screen, HD, surround sound, viewable offline or anything.

Mac Apps I Use

I thought I'd share some Mac apps I use for different tasks. So if you're searching for an app to fill a need or just new to the Mac this list might be of some help.

Email: Mail.app - built into OS X on the Mac. Some like Thunderbird and I always found Entourage to be a typical error prone Microsoft software.

Browser: Safari - I've got Firefox, but keep coming back to Safari. It just flows better, the built in RSS reader is much cleaner and easier to use than the plugins available for Firefox.

Instant Messaging: Adium (opensource) - talk to anybody.

Video Chat: Skype (freeware) - I use this for voice chat when I'm low on cell minutes. I don't have a webcam, so I miss out on the video side of things. iChat is suppose to be a good program too, but haven't given it a try yet. Probably will when I upgrade to a Mac with a built in webcam.

FTP client: Cyberduck (opensource) - many other choices out there, but this one is simple and works well.

Home Inventory: Home Inventory (freeware) - offered by the Insurance Information Institute and it works as a simple way to catalog your home inventory (including pictures) and generate a printable record to mail to a friend.

DVD Backup: Handbrake (opensource) - great for taking DVD's and converting them over to use on a Apple TV or just for backup in case your DVDs get scratched up.

Text/Programming Editor:JEdit (freeware) - TextMate is probably the best, but the steep $59 registration fee made me look for something cheaper. I tried skEdit, TextWrangler, Komodo, Smultron, Aptana (RadRails), and Aquamacs until deciding on JEdit. If I wasn't using JEdit I'd probably go with Smultron for a free option.

Password Storage: KeePassX (opensource) - tried one or two, but this works well and is easy to use.

BitTorrent client: Tomato Torrent or Transmission (opensource) - These are both small, light, simple - they just work. Haven't made up my mind yet on which one I like more. I did try Vuze by Azureus, but it was clunky and geared toward downloading video content. It had other pluses, but I was just looking for a simple bitTorrent client.

Media Player: VLC (freeware) - versatile, play anything media player. I use it for AVI or FLV files that won't play in Quicktime.

DOS Emulator: DosBox (opensource) - I was looking to see if there was a way to open up old Microsoft DOS programs. Sure enough DosBox will do it. So, you can still play those old x486 computer games on your Mac. Field tested from strategy, to RPG, to flight simulators - works great.

Del.icio.us Browser Plugin: Delicious2Safari (freeware) - I was looking for a simple way to import del.icio.us bookmarks into Safari. This does it with one click.

System Utilities: Onyx (freeware) - comprehensive utility program for all your Mac maintenance needs.

Screenshots: Paparazzi! (freeware) - the Mac has the built in ability to make a screenshot (Command+Shift+3), but this program takes it a step further.

Terminal: Mac's built in Terminal

Office Suite: OpenOffice (opensource) - always felt this was a great alternative to Microsoft Office. I got tired of having to run OpenOffice through X11 so I've stopped using it waiting on the release of the Aqua OpenOffice port. I tried NeoOffice (a native Mas OS port of OpenOffice), but found it clunky and slow. So, in the meantime I've reverted back to Microsoft Office for Mac. I would like to try Apple's iWork out and see how it is.

Presentations: Keynote (commercial)- makes creating presentations easy and generates some very impressive slides that would be hard to duplicate in Powerpoint. The only downside I found was some issues importing and exporting with Powerpoint, but that may have been fixed since it's now at version 4 I believe and I have version 1.

Music: iTunes - no brainer, it's also starting to become my video program too

Image/Graphic Editor: Adobe Fireworks (commercial) - Fireworks is my favorite especially for web graphics. I find its interface easier to use than Photoshop. On the free side is Gimp, but I find it to be a little difficult to use at times. Creating web graphics, image maps and the like is a little cumbersome at times and writing text is just painful. I don't have it installed anymore after dealing with one-to-many stalled startups while it attempts to build the font cache. Gimp version 2.4 is out so I may give it another try.

Game: TripleA (opensource) - a great turn-based strategy game based on the board game Axis & Allies. Several possible maps from Pacific War WWII to Europe WWI.

"New" Music I've Been Listening To

A couple "new" tunes that I've recently discovered. None of these songs are brand new, but are getting plenty of play time in my iTunes library. I discovered them by hearing them on some recent TV commercials.

Here they are - check 'em out:

Stars by Hum featured in the recent Cadillac CTS commercials. The song was originally released in 1995. I'm surprised I hadn't heard this song prior to the commercial. I would have thought this would have been a big hit back in the day.

The Passenger by Iggy Pop featured in the Vera Wang Kohl's commercials. This song was released in 1977.

Hold On Tight by ELO featured in the new Honda Accord commercials. This song was originally released in 1981.

Jeff Zucker? Who's that?

He's the NBC Universal chief and he wants you to know that Apple screwed them over. They wouldn't let them raise prices on their TV shows or give them a share of the profits from Apple hardware sales (I thought this part was a joke, until several media sources confirmed the comment).

Jeff and his coherts at NBC are demonstrating a lack of common sense, a lack of understanding their market and customers.

I've mentioned it before, but let me point out again that $1.99 an episode on iTunes will add up to more than what I can buy the complete season for on DVD. The advantage of paying less on DVD - I get actual DVD's, a box to display on my bookshelf, and all those DVD extras like behind-the-scenes documentaries, deleted scenes, et cetera. With a season pass on iTunes - I don't get any of this, and I pay more for it. Sure, there is that "on-demand" quality to it, but for those that have a DVR they get the same benefit without really paying for the individual TV shows.

So, Jeff's viewpoint that there would somehow be more demand for their shows if Apple allowed them to experiment with raising the price to $2.99 seems...well...stupid.

Jeff states that NBC has only made $15 million on the sale of TV shows on iTunes. I don't think the problem is that they need to charge more. If anything it may just be how much cut of that $1.99 that NBC gets from Apple. Yet, without knowing the details of the agreement and the exact volume for that $15 million it's hard to say how "unfair" or "fair" the current relationship is. Of course, that's $15 million on TV shows I can watch for free on network TV and save for free with a DVR or VCR. So, NBC found a way to make $15 million on something we can get for free (kinda like bottled water). So, maybe the arrangement with Apple is "fair" after all.

It sounds like NBC didn't want to risk the future possibility that iTunes might ask for that $1.99 pricing to drop to .99 cents (getting buying and downloading TV to be as mainstream as buying and downloading music). Or that they wanted to explore other options that would generate more revenue such as ad-supported delivery vehicles (making up for the low margins on the sale of the content).

Personally, I think season pass pricing (and the $1.99 pricing) needs to go down to see a strong increase in sales. With cheaper and free options available - DVD's, DVR's, the handy VHS tape, and the not so legal P2P - it makes no sense to decide to increase pricing and/or make your product more difficult to obtain in a market that needs more affordable digital delivery options.

Marketing Blog? Updating the Blog

I decided to make an update to the blog. After mulling over a previous post where I asked if this really was a marketing blog. I decided to update it to better reflect who I am.

I'm not an ad man. I didn't work for Leo Burnett or J. Walter Thompson buying ads or developing catchy taglines. I worked for a well known Indianapolis firm as a strategist. My background is strategy, my personality is strategy. This also isn't a how-to blog. I don't sit around all day trying out new tips and tricks, reviewing new marketing books or tools or finding new formulas in Excel to try to show ROI. So, I also updated the title notes to reflect that by adding a caution (that's where the "1C" comes from - the first caution - it's a pilot checklist thing). Which I'm a pilot by profession so I decided to leave these note(s) and now caution(s) to reflect that side of me.

There you have it.

Update: I've decided to take out my original [1C] [1N] sub headings and just put in some random thoughts. I'll change them out every once and awhile.

Does the Price of Oil Matter?

I've had my head buried in the sand lately. Partly due to the fact that I've been traveling a lot over the past several weeks. Partly due to the fact that this is the first time I've had some solid down time in over a year. So, I've not been watching the news or keeping up on the price of oil these days which has topped $92 a barrel.

I've seen some discussion of the price of gas, the effects on the economy in the news, in the papers and even on Twitter the few times I've bothered to check. I use to care about the price of oil when I had a 70 mile roundtrip commute. The price of gas was very noticeable to me every time it went up a mere 10 cents. Now I'm down to a 2-3 mile commute and burning about 1 tank of gas every 5-6 weeks. Needless to say my monthly budget for gas is closer to about $40-$50 (for two cars) versus $200-$300 (for one car) as it used to be.

So, it made me wonder if the price of oil really matters. Aside from the secondary and tertiary effects of the price of oil. Will people restructure their lives to save money? Will we see an exodus from the rural outlining areas to the cities? More tele-commuting? More interest in energy-efficiency (more than we've seen so far) Or will we simply see the status quo with people just dropping out extra luxuries to cover the increased cost the price of oil places on their wallets?

It's an interesting social study. Do people succumb to the rising costs, find alternate sources of energy, or simply restructure and adapt? I know for me when I move back to NC after my TDY I'll be looking to keep my commute short enough to keep my gas budget in check and keep it similar to it's current amount.

Update: As oil has reached about $120 a barrel I think I've answered my own question - "Yes, the price of oil does matter". I don't care if you ride a bike everywhere - the economic impact is noticeable.

Why You Should Be Part of WOMMA

I stumbled onto this video from WOMMA's Word of Mouth Basic Training 2006 (WOMBAT) in Florida back in January 2006. I think it's a good short intro to WOMMA and why you should attend . Your next opportunity will be the WOMMA Summit in Las Vegas from November 13th to 15th. Get all the details here.

Moronic NBC or We're Just Sick of Apple?

I just have to ask who is it over at NBC that came up with the idea to double the wholesale price of their TV shows to Apple. Which has spurred the ending of NBC's relationship with Apple later this year. In an Apple press release, Apple stated this would raise the price from $1.99 per episode to $4.99 per episode. This is one of those things that defies common sense. I'm perplexed at how a group of people can sit around a room and using basic math can pat themselves on the back and say this is a good idea. Let me illustrate:

The Office: Season Three on Amazon.com: $31.99

The Office: Season Three on iTunes: $34.99 (23 episodes that @ $1.99 each would total $45.77 - so a 24% discount off of the a la carte pricing)

The Office: Season Three under new NBC pricing on iTunes using the same 24% discount as the current model: $87.22 (23 episodes @ $4.99 each would total $114.77)

It's kind of like opening a car dealership down the road from your existing one and selling the same car for twice the money - and expecting to sell more that way.

Of course, this could be NBC's tactic to end the iTunes relationship and find a more profitable model for digital distribution of their TV shows. Which I hope is the real reason, because a 5th grader could see the error in the math on this one. Even then I'm not sure I see the logic. iTunes is a great distribution channel and certainly doesn't hurt NBC's bottom line (or their image by being associated with the highly regarded Apple brand). Looking at the example above, even at existing pricing the DVD option is still cheaper than buying through iTunes - if anything the price should be lowered not raised.

WSJ.com

I used to subscribe to the WSJ print edition and then added on the online edition for what I think was about $49 at the time. Later on I went with the online edition only at $79 a year. Last year my renewal came up and the yearly rate for online only had gone up to $99 a year (the WSJ currently has a $99 for print and online for one year - a pretty good deal, but my mail doesn't get in till 4pm kinda late to get the paper). I don't subscribe anymore.

There has been speculation about the Murdoch buyout of the WSJ and whether he'll open up the online edition or not. Part of me would like to see a free online WSJ and part of me sees the logic behind the subscription base. Here's what I'd like to see:

The WSJ open up their archives for free allowing anyone to search and retrieve old articles (say past 90 days). Let the archives be indexed by search engines to increase their reach - this would bring a wealth of information to the public sector.

Keep a subscription bases for the online edition, but at a more palatable price point say $39 per year. Could they generate more revenue by going free with just advertising revenue versus a subscription model with advertising? I've read some argue that they would because of the dramatic traffic increase the WSJ would see. But do you dilute your demographic and its corresponding advertising value for potentially more revenue based on higher foot traffic? If it were me I'd rather have that subscriber based community (something north of 2 mil for the WSJ print and online). There is intrinsic value in communities.