Photobox offers – when online special offers aren’t so special

It’s 30th July 2010 today and I used a website called Photobox to order several printed photos that I’d uploaded to them.  Everything worked well as usual but it’s fair to say that I could be classed as being an occasional user (perhaps 2 or 3 times a year).   However, occasional user that I may be, I’m still potentially a convert to spending more money.

After processing the photos order I got presented with not one but two offers.  “That’s good” you may think, but look at what I was offered:

That’s right, my special offers are valid a whole day and a bit.  I wonder what would have happened if I’d placed my order late at night on the 31st July – would I still have been given the same offer?

The point is this – I’m a fairly irregular customer of Photobox and they will know that.  Does it not make sense to, at the very least, have their system set up so that the special offers have a longer expiry time on them?   That could take it through to the end of the next month or better still, noting that I only buy periodically, perhaps longer to 2 or 3 months, and to email remind me of that offer every now and then.

I’d imagine that all buyers get similar ‘offers’ presented to them when they buy towards the end of the month and if that’s the case, how much potential repeat business are they missing out on purely because their system would appear to just focus on the current month end for promotions?

The Photobox site is pretty slick in general but as with any website, it’s sometimes these little tweaks needed that make a bigger difference to revenues being generated.   Let’s say that I had coupons that allowed me a 2-3 month chance to redeem them, and I was reminded along the way.  I could buy something else from them.  I could also tell other people about them as they’ll be more in my consciousness.  But I’m not going to buy anything in the next day and, as a marketer, I find it unforgivable that such a simple opportunity has been overlooked by them.

England Flags – Stock Control, Stupidity, and Opportunity

Walking past a branch of a sports store chain last week there was a huge stall outside selling large England flags for 10p each.   Clearly, the store had overstocked, hoping for a better England performance and hadn’t negotiated a sale or return deal.  At 10p each they’d still have been making a fair loss on each transaction.  That got me thinking about incompetence both offline and online when it comes to event-sensitive sales of products.

I had a search online under the phrase ‘England flags’ and although many PPC adverts were still relevant (i.e. they weren’t focusing purely on the World Cup market), two adverts stood out as demonstrating PPC campaign management incompetence – nearly 2 weeks since England dropped out of the World Cup …

Looking at the Woolworths advert first, the high street store died not too long ago and out of the ashes came an online incarnation.   Woolworths died because it didn’t move with the times and it would appear that some of that spirit has translated to this website.    Would it have been simple to make a diary note to take down the PPC advert when England were knocked out of the World Cup, instead of, nearly 2 weeks later, having an advert asking us to ‘Support the England team with flags from Woolworths’, which looks just plain stupid?   Of course it would have been simple but instead, they could be wasting clicks (although it’s hard to conceive who would be buying England flags to support the team right now) by being visible.   They also make the woolworths.co.uk online presence look out of touch.

Onto the other PPC advert.  In this case, they’re not offering flags but a World Cup Poster.   Clicking on that advert takes you to a page that has a poster that’s totally geared around the World Cup, so has limited interest now that everything is all but over.   What’s really interesting about that page though is the number of those A3 posters they have in stock:

Yes, 5,000 A3 posters in stock.  Highly unlikely to be used and destined for recycling.  So who has paid for those posters?  The people who fund Keep Britain Tidy of course.   Who was responsible for thinking there’d be a high demand for such a poster?  Probably someone who is funded by those who put money into the charity.   And then there’s the person responsible for keeping the PPC advert live, possibly attracting clicks, when there’s no point at all.   As with the Woolworths example, it’s just lazy PPC management.

So I’ve covered the stock control and stupidity, now onto the opportunity …

Going back to the sports store with all the 10p England flags for sale.   A week later those flags still haven’t been sold and are still there for 10p.  Where’s the innovation in this country?   Why doesn’t someone buy them all up (and more if they’re available), store them, and then sell them at the appropriate time?   White background with red cross – it’s an England flag – it’s not going to change between now and the next big England event.  At 10p a time it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to work out that they could create an ebay page, offer them for sale at prices much lower than typically sold elsewhere, and just let the orders trickle in.    If there are still flags left a couple of years down the line (for the European games) then demand may be higher.   If unlucky, they’ll still be in stock for the next World Cup, but what’s been lost by making those purchases at bargain prices and just waiting til they sell, undercutting the competition?

Barely a day goes by when I don’t hear someone moaning about how much things cost, or how hard it is to get business.  This is especially true with teenagers.  Perhaps it’s easier to moan than to innovate.  Perhaps the concept of buying up a stock of England flags isn’t the biggest short-term profitable activity to undertake and we’re living in a world where everyone wants quick wins and big bucks now.   But from small opportunities generally come bigger ideals about what’s possible to achieve and when sites like ebay make it so simple to start from those small beginnings, the opportunities open to people are limited only by how blinkered they are.

Folding up the England flags – 4 years is a long time

All over the UK, houses are returning to pure brick and glass as the long-suffering England supporters fold up their flags and put them into storage.

There are many analogies that can be drawn between business and the failure of England to beat Germany yesterday but the subject I’d like to focus on today is the 4 year gap before the next World Cup.   Whatever people may say about the coaching of the team, the players themselves, and whether the second England goal not counting was a pivotal point, the simple fact is that England are out, lessons may be learnt, and it’s time for business owners to turn their football passions to some practical use.

Looking back to the 2006 World Cup, it would be fascinating to see how well individual businesses have move forwards in that 4 year time period.   This means not just from a financial perspective but in other ways as well (e.g. improving efficiencies).  

Focusing purely on the financial perspective, all those ardent England supporters who run businesses would hopefully have progressed somewhat in the past 4 years.  It is perhaps worth putting a percentage figure on that – has business risen 10%, 20%, 30%, more%?   Perhaps it’s declined?   The Custwin business, for example, has seen an increase of over 300% (financially) since the last World Cup.

But it’s not just about financial improvement of course – businesses can advance in many other ways.  The key point here is that in a 4 year period, businesses should have advanced. 

In another 4 years time England should hopefully be at the next World Cup.  2014 seems a long way off and there’s so much potential for businesses in this country to advance within that time period.  In our day to day work we witness businesses failing from just one perspective (poor website and online marketing strategy, which is like a cancer eating away at the potential success of so many businesses), but there are many ways to create business efficiency and growth, the ‘web’ being just one (albeit an important one).

I’d encourage any business to look back to the last World Cup and assess how things have progressed (or not) since then.  If the view is that things should have been better then perhaps it’s worth focusing on what can be improved in order to put the business into a much stronger position in both the short term and the longer term – leading up to the next World Cup.  

Not every business initiative will work.  For example, many companies try to enhance the strength of their website but don’t gain the results they feel are deserved.  Much like Frank Lampard, the goal seemed to have been achieved but something just didn’t go right.  In the case of the England team, that negative experience probably had a detrimental impact on their performance in the rest of the game. 

But it would still have been a poor excuse. 

So what if the goal didn’t count?  Surely the efforts before that point should have been stronger, and surely the knock-back should have created more passion into turning that negative into positives (through more goals)?   Turning this to business,  the company that has spent time and money on strengthening their website may have felt they’ve reached their goal but if the strategy behind those website changes was flawed then the goal (gaining more business) wasn’t actually achieved.  The company then has the choice of thinking “well, that didn’t work – the web is rubbish” or thinking “we need to beat our competitors so let’s turn this around into a good result”.  Sadly, whatever business initiative hasn’t worked in the way desired (web or otherwise), it’s too easy to think that it just didn’t work and to take the focus off that subject when instead the failure should be analysed in more detail.

4 years is a long time in business and there is much opportunity to re-allocate the passion for England into a passion for business success in England.  So take a few minutes to see how successful your past 4 years have been and picture yourself sitting there, watching the first England match of the 2014 World Cup.   Will your business have progressed or not?  

When the time comes to take the England flags back down from the houses in 2014 you may or may not be pleased about how the team have performed.   But to be in the position where you can sit back and think “actually, it doesn’t matter – my business has advanced brilliantly while my competitors have fallen by the wayside”, is a pretty good consolation prize.

England v Success – The World Cup of Business

If you walk around any part of England at the moment you’ll find houses adorned with England flags.   The more passionate about England, the less brickwork is visible.   There is a lot of passion about our national football team.

But imagine what could be achieved if that passion for football could be translated into a passion for business success?  A recent example I’ll share with you can probably be replicated several times over …

A house nearby me has a serious amount of England stuff all over and around it.  When the games are on, they party and there’s no doubting the passion.  I got talking to the owner of the house who happens to have a (small) construction company.   He was talking about England and how all his mates go to his place for the games.  It turns out that his mates also include other people who are business owners or are high up in their businesses.   On match days such as today you could consider it to be a gaggle of business opportunity all wrapped up in white and red plus copious amounts of booze.

The conversation got interesting when he let slip that business wasn’t going so well.  He knows there’s been a downturn but yet some of his competitors seem to be doing better than him.  So I looked at his website and part of his problem became clear as it was woefully inadequate in so many ways.  Of course, a website is just one element in the mix of gaining new business but it’s my area of expertise so I can only talk about that.

So what we have here is someone in business who is extremely passionate about England in the World Cup, but who doesn’t have the same passion for his own business.  It just made me think about how fantastic it would be if we could bottle the passion people have for their interests (e.g. football) and then sprinkle it over people’s own businesses.    Just imagine what it would be like to sit down with a business owner and run through their website opportunities, with them exuding a similar passion to what they will be displaying during the game this afternoon.   How amazing would the result be?!

Whether England win or lose today, it’s worth looking at that phrase: ‘England v Success’.   If England don’t go through to the next round (or whenever they get knocked out if they do), people will still have businesses to run.  Long after the flags have come down from the fronts of houses, how many of those ardent England fans will have considered that they can transfer their passions to their businesses so that they can start beating their competitors? 

In the World Cup of Business the games are played on a rolling basis.  Those that don’t focus on strengthening their businesses (including website strategy and online marketing) will find themselves like Scotland, Ireland and Wales this year – not even making it through the qualifying stages.

So at the end of this World Cup, whoever wins, it may be worth thinking of that team as being the equivalent of your biggest competitor – what is it that makes them perform better than everyone else in your industry sector ‘world’?

nPower – how to create negative publicity

Readers of Martin Lewis’ MoneySavingExpert may have seen this week that there was an offer to win a free £400 fridge.  The offer was perfectly genuine (http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/deals/free-energy-efficient-fridges) and the added attraction is that nPower wouldn’t use your details to cross-sell to you.

However, when trying to go to that website, even a couple of days after the offer was first announced, I was greeted with the page shown below …

While it’s a tick in the box for having a decent looking error page, you do have to wonder why such a huge company are still having technical difficulties with their website two days after the offer was in the public domain.   It makes you wonder how many people they have working on the technical side of things and how such incompetence can be allowed to happen.   It also makes you wonder whether such incompetence may be replicated in other parts of the business.

Although this particular promotion has no intentions of cross-selling to other services that nPower provide, what impression are they sending out by having a website that can’t cope with traffic levels and has clearly had problems for a couple of days?    If nPower try to sell me something in the near future, I’m likely to associate their name with inefficiency and so would be less likely to respond to them positively.

In this case, nPower are the unlucky ones to be highlighted but it can equally apply to any other business that doesn’t put processes in place to cope with demand, or that doesn’t have a plan in place to fix problems (such as a website page or site being inaccessible).    The same rules as ever apply – don’t make yourself highly visible online if it’s going to come back and bite you.

Google Backgrounds – Copying Bing.com or Just Search Engine Evolution?

10th June 2010 was the day that the Google page changed, introducing background images instead of there being the familiar blank space.   Who knows what was behind that decision but there are likely to be comparisons to Bing.com, who have been providing pretty pictures for some time now.   Are Google copying Bing?   Possibly (but with a customisation twist).  Are Google concerned about the might that Bing will likely become in the next couple of years?  Most probably, which could explain why they’re trying to make themselves look a bit more like them.

At first I thought that the move towards bringing in colour to the background may have some sort of environmental benefit (less energy used) but the great posting at http://hubpages.com/hub/How-much-power-do-we-save-if-GOOGLE-screen-turns-black-or-grey made me think otherwise (while also being quite educational about energy savings in general).

What interests me is the impact the Google backgrounds change will have on productivity.   Although there’s an argument that the introduction of colour backgrounds will have a slightly positive impact on energy usage, let’s look at the (slight) downside:

1. People will spend time on changing the background image to the range available, or may add their own background image.  This in itself will reduce productivity (multiply the few seconds to few minutes people play about with the background up by the millions of people likely to do it).

2. If going with the automatically changing images, people will naturally spend a bit longer just looking at the Google page, which is time wasted.

And in the name of balance, some possible positives from the Google backgrounds …

1. It could make Google look a bit cuddlier and not so corporate (giving people the option to change the backgrounds).

2. People who choose to put their own favourite images as their background are more likely to stay using Google because they like that image (in the same way that they’d like a screensaver image or wallpaper).

We do also have to ask the question: “What happens to the Google logo art?”  A pretty picture in the background is highly likely to clash with any Google logo art – more so if people use their own pictures as backgrounds.  So does this mean the end of the Google logo art that we’ve become so accustomed to or will people’s Google search pages end up being a clashing mess between logo art and background image?  

Apparently the Google home page will be back to normal tomorrow (11th June) and people will then have the option to select how they want it to be displayed.   It’s been about a year since Microsoft started the concept of a pretty background picture and now (however much they’d attempt to deny it) Google have copied it and added a bit more.   A year from now it’ll be interesting to see how much further things have moved on with how the search giants treat their home pages.

Website landing page impact – Mercury Engineering

It was completely by chance that I stumbled across the website for Mercury Engineering (http://www.mercuryeng.com/) and it’s been a long time since I saw a website landing page that gave such a strong impact.

Upon landing on that website you get a Bing.com effect with a huge picture dominating the page.  That picture appears to be what must be hundreds of Mercury Engineering employees standing against a background of equipment and what looks like a project they’re working on.

The biggest impact is that it instantly sends out a message that the company is large (in terms of workers).  For someone who is going to potentially consider that company to supply services there can be no doubt that the company has the resources necessary.

I’ll admit that I’ve never been a big fan of splash pages that act as a barrier, making people then click on another link to enter the full detail of the website.  In this case though, the splash page is totally justified and does exactly what it’s intended to do – get across the impression of company size.   Thankfully, once within the website so much more has been done so well that it wasn’t a case of ‘nice face, shame about the rest’.

Well done to Mercury Engineering for creating enough of an impact to make me want to blog about them.

How stupid are so many UK businesses?

We’re coming up for the Kent 2020 exhibition in April 2010 and it’s started …. the stream of emails and phone calls from companies trying to sell exhibitors their services.  This could be printing, exhibition stand stuff, gimmicks, whatever.

Like local political party reps at election time, they come out of the woodwork expecting to gain business.  To be frank, it’s insulting, opportunistic, and in today’s climate, just plain stupid.

The winners in business in the future will be those that create an ongoing, but non-invasive awareness of themselves.  Does Custwin want to buy new exhibition popups etc. for Kent 2020 this year?  No.  Would we need to next year?  Possibly.   Would we be adverse to getting a blog feed, Tweets, or an occasional email newsletter from companies who supply such products, over the months?  No, we wouldn’t be adverse.   In fact, it would help to build up trust, it may even lead to us meeting the suppliers at some point, and it’s got a much stronger potential to turn into business for the suppliers at some stage.

Taking another subject, a company was pitching chocolate fountain hire for the Kent 2020 exhibition.  As a cold introduction to 100 people it’s possible that very few may respond.  But as a warm drip feed over a longer period of time, the percentage of buyers will increase.  HOW that drip feed is implemented is a subject all of its own but it’s not rocket science.

The focus here happens to be on an upcoming business exhibition but the principle applies for any type of business that wants to gain new clients, particularly at times of the year when those potential buyers are more likely to need such services.

Those businesses that don’t embrace the concept of drip feeding their message into potential clients will soon find themselves losing out to their competitors who understand what makes potential clients tick.

The future of those in the web industry

The web world evolves very quickly and those of us within the ‘web’ industry itself may benefit from looking inwards at how things are likely to change in the near future.

There was a time when a one-man-band could say to potential clients that they were experts at website design, programming, SEO (including PPC advertising), and more.   This is actually an impossibility.  They could be ‘ok’ at a mixture of all those and be stronger in some areas but they couldn’t profess to be experts at everything because there’s just so much to stay updated with.

In situations where a web company has a few members of staff and each one has an expertise in a certain area, then such claims of being a ‘one-stop-shop’ for website success could be justified.  But the majority of the web industry are one-man-bands or two to three people working together.

Looking at what makes a website successful, there are, in the Custwin view, a few important factors:

1.    Analysis (including statistical evidence) of how well a website is performing compared to the levels of traffic going to that website.  Recommendations for change would come out of that analysis.

2.    Website design and development expertise that converts recommended changes into results on the live website, or initially creates the best possible website in the first place.

3.    Strong skills in promoting the website through ‘mainstream’ channels (i.e. SEO, including PPC where appropriate), and in analysing the results from that promotion.

4.    Expertise in building on the website strength through blogs, Twitter, and so much more.

When you consider those four factors above, particularly how much expertise is needed for each, then it’s clear that one or two man companies/individuals can’t be at the top of their game in all those skills.

In our view, the future for companies and individuals working within the web industry is simply one of two things:

1.    Success through honesty and complementary relationships

2.    Failure

Failure will come to those companies or individuals who don’t have the required skills to give a client company success from their website, but at the same time, don’t find a way of gaining access to those skills.  The end result will be a company that has a website that generates mediocre results.   A company website with mediocre results will lead to that company being more receptive to good quality advice and the incumbent provider of web services will lose that business in time.   They will also not gain any positive referrals from their ex-client because they will have been seen to have failed through not getting results.

The successful companies or individuals in the future will be those who are fully honest with their clients.  For example, if a company approaches a web developer and says they want a website that’s fantastic, the web developer has two choices:

1.    Go ahead and provide a great website.

2.    Say that they can provide a great website but focus the attention of the potential client on how that website will be promoted and analysed once it’s been created.

Many web developers won’t risk option 2 because they fear that the potential client will go to somewhere/someone that offers all the expertise under one roof.   The savvy web developers though will make it clear to the potential client that they’re really good at what they do, but although they have some knowledge of SEO etc. they would utilise the skills of trusted contacts to ensure the website gets the best possible results.

Turning this round the other way, there are numerous SEO companies or individuals who make great claims about achieving search engine positioning  but they don’t focus on whether the website is strong enough to warrant being promoted in the first place.  The end result there is that a website may well be highly prominent in the search engines but the numbers of people who actually make contact with the client company are relatively small because people just don’t get on with the website itself.   In this situation, the SEO company or individual should have the honesty to say to the potential client that they can definitely help but the client would be better off focusing initially on website strength.   At Custwin we’ve had many situations in which we’ve either passed potential clients onto our own web developer contacts or back to their own web developers, noting that we’d be happy to help promote the website but not until it’s been made stronger.

Companies are getting wise to the pitfalls of websites.  Most have had their fingers burnt and they increasingly have an expectation that whoever they deal with needs to get them strong results from their investment.   For those within the web industry who aren’t prepared to provide a full range of services, even if those services aren’t within their own levels of expertise (and so have to be outsourced to trusted contacts), then there can only be longer term failure ahead.

A day will come when most companies will understand that they have to ask certain questions of those who they choose to get involved in their web presence.  They’ll understand that a website is more than just the physical online presence but is about analysis of visitor patterns, promoting the website effectively, and more.  They’ll also understand that there needs to be an ongoing process of analysis and refinements and that a website is never complete.  The future winners in the web industry will be those who can provide guarantees that the client will benefit substantially from their online presence.   Such guarantees  can be effective by ensuring that a ‘team’ of experts is used, each focusing on their own type of expertise so that the client gets the desired result.  That ‘team’ may be made up of several individuals or companies but ultimately, responsibility would be on the shoulders of the main point of contact that the client company has.

For those in the web industry who don’t encourage potential clients to consider the bigger picture than their individual area of expertise, the future will be bleak.  For those in the industry who understand that nothing matters more than an online presence that gets results, and that tie-ups with complementary skills are vitally important, the future will be strong because the clients will gain the required levels of business, are likely to stay loyal, and are also likely to refer onto potential new clients.

Video On Websites – From Fun To Business Generators

No, we’re not talking about normal corporate videos here, but something a little bit different.  We’re talking about combining your expertise with humour to generate brand awareness and new business.

In the world of website design, development and online marketing, those of us within the industry often witness very similar words coming out of the mouths of potential clients.  These words tend to be along the lines of “a website isn’t complicated to create, it’ll cost a minimal amount and it’ll look fantastic if you’ve used the logo created by the one-legged daughter of the bosses half-brother”.   That’s why a particular series of videos are particularly amusing to anyone who works within this industry. 

Those videos are all available on YouTube and there are many variations.  The examples below are probably the most perfectly matched to anyone in the web design/development/marketing industry.   Warning: the language is very ‘colourful’!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8sU3KaT74JE&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VfprIxNfCjk&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCjcwBGQtiw&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HyTpzgAW5NA&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kx14XCNNARw&feature=related

But let’s go beyond the fact that those videos will amuse most people working within the web industry and look deeper at what’s being achieved there.   At the end of each video there’s reference to the Xtranormal website, where such videos can be created.  When you go to that website, the best page to view is http://www.xtranormal.com/about_state/, which has a video you can play that explains how the system works and also allows you to download the product for free.

And pause …..

At this stage, the company that’s developed the video creation software has put an advert for their product at the end of each video that people create, which is free advertising.  They’ve also made it free for anyone to create videos of their own and through those people creating such videos and uploading them to sites such as YouTube, Facebook, and more, further people are seeing their brand name at the end of each video, and so want to find out how they can use the video creation software themselves.  There becomes an ongoing Xtranormal brand awareness and although most people would just use the free download to create videos, the more people using the system, the more potential there is to get people to buy into the premium edition.  This, of course, is a classic way to build new business – give away something for free and publicise it well, and then make money from premium subscriptions.

Let’s look at this from a different perspective though.  Let’s think about YOUR own business …

What is there that you could portray about your line of business, through the medium of such a video creation system?   Depending on your business sector, humour could be a great angle – even if you may think the nature of your business isn’t that exciting.   In fact, even better if the nature of your business isn’t exciting because if you can make people laugh in a way that’s not detrimental to the ‘real’ side of your business, then that could put you ahead of your competitors.

As an example, someone selling a service could portray that in an amusing way through such videos.   It’s not uncommon for many service type businesses to lose out to competitors purely on price but in reality the lower price services often don’t provide the benefits that the client actually needs.  A video could portray a discussion between a buyer of that service and the cut-price company that is selling the service.  It could be narrated with the buyer asking particular questions about what the service covers and the seller responding with comments about how poor the service actually is, but it’s cheap – to the point of mocking the buyer. However, the buyer doesn’t hear those words because they’re focusing purely on the cost of the service.

Through creating a series of such videos, including reference to your company as being ‘the good guys’ and publicising them effectively, brand awareness can be built and if you’ve made people laugh along the way then even though perhaps only 1 in 100 people will go on to buy from you, that’s still one more than would otherwise have done so.

On the other hand, if you look at those example videos and the Xtranormal software and still don’t see how you could use such systems to capitalise on the combination of fun and video, then feel free to contact us and we’ll give you some free pointers in the right direction.