AIAIO: Our Blog

I am an unabashed fan of 37 Signals’ Highrise contact management tool. For concentrated, straightforward sales and CRM, it’s an ideal web app. Between notes, contact information and useful task reminders, it’s a key part of how Canopy does business, and by and large it’s a delight to use.

Today Highrise rolled out LinkedIn profile integration, a nice idea that they say has been regularly requested. But the implementation is cumbersome and disappointing to the point where I’m probably not going to use it.

Here’s why:

It’s reactive. LinkedIn profiles are only added to Highrise profiles once the user has pasted the appropriate link from LinkedIn into a text field in the contact’s edit screen. There’s no dynamic list generation, no scanning the LinkedIn database, and more importantly, no recognition of post-login URLs. Which means…

It’s cumbersome. For each contact, I have to go to linkedin.com, find the right individual, click through to his or her full profile page, and copy the public link off the web page to add to Highrise. Grabbing URLs out of my status bar won’t work, because Highrise can’t reconcile them. (I suppose one could just find public profiles via Google, but that doesn’t seem practical at all.)

It’s account-reliant. Despite the need to use public profile links, Highrise and LinkedIn require users to log into both systems to coordinate data. But:

It’s not relational. Highrise doesn’t care if you have connected with the people whom you access on LinkedIn-via-Highrise. It also doesn’t care about your accuracy. I had no problem, for example, dropping LinkedIn CEO Reid Hoffman’s LinkedIn profile onto my own Highrise contact page. This doesn’t much matter when it’s being manually updated, assuming the user is careful, but it’d sure be nice to hit the right David Wertheimer by cross-referencing company, title and location data between the two services.

This seems like a great idea missing some key integration points that would make it as practical and useful as the rest of the system.

We are gearing up with excitement for this year’s Internet Retailer Conference and Expo. Canopy CEO (and erstwhile Ai director of strategy, and, well, yours truly) David Wertheimer will be giving his live website critiques for the fourth time, and Ai and Canopy have a large and gorgeous expo floor booth in the works.

If you’ll be attending the conference, do stop by and say hi. See you in San Diego!

We often state internally that “this year is the year of mobile.” We’ve been saying it since 2007–“2008 will be the year of mobile!”–and with the continued insurgence of Apple’s devices, 2011 may be the year we’re finally not ahead of the curve.

Part of predicting mobile, though, is in properly forecasting and anticipating use. In just over a year, our clients’ sites have seen mobile traffic trend from 1-2% of visits to 5-10% or more. (One colleague I’ve spoken with has a remarkable 32% mobile share on his informational website.) How well could that have been foreseen, and at what level is mobile adjustment important?

I’m on the record as saying mobile accessibility has become crucial, not unlike supporting legacy systems on the trailing edge of site traffic. I rallied for Mac support when Apple had 2.5% of the market; I insisted on supporting Netscape 4.7 until Netscape itself stopped supporting it; I forced Ai’s developers to accommodate IE 6 as recently as last year. With mobile traffic surging toward and past 10% of total online usage, having a site not load in iOS or Android is simply not an option.

However, that doesn’t mean the world is flocking in its entirety to mobile. Today eMarketer shared great mobile usage statistics that pegged 30% of Americans logging on via mobile more than once a week. Yet that same graph also noted that the majority of respondents, 58%, don’t use the mobile Internet at all. And two-fifths of that group doesn’t even have a web-enabled mobile device.

While we all push toward a mobile world, taking the late majority into account is just as important as embracing the early adopters. The greatest retail app in the world won’t make a difference if its target demographic won’t download it. Planning for the future, however, will.

Give the leading segment the access and utility it craves while maintaining a more traditional presence for everyone else. That will ensure across-the-board customer satisfaction–and position a site for the inevitable shift to a mobile majority.

Scott Porad put up a terrific blog post last week about conversion rates and a lack of true averages.

While a global conversion rate of sorts exists–apparently, it’s 2.4% these days–benchmarking site conversion is a futile task due to the variables that impact sales.

Porad mentions Starbucks’ 99% conversion rate in his post. To expound, consider the stores in a shopping mall. Brookstone and Spencer Gifts, for example, probably have a lower conversion rate than, say, Old Navy or Radio Shack, due to the mindset of shoppers who enter (try vs. browse vs. buy vs. fix). But that doesn’t mean Brookstone has a problem. Differences in pricing, margin, and foot traffic expectations all play into the relative success of each store.

Instead of focusing on benchmarks for conversion rates, look at consistency of purchase patterns, and identify points in the browse and checkout processes where barriers can be minimized and revenues maximized. Not every site can convert like ProFlowers–and not every site has to.

Last week Walmart announced free shipping on walmart.com for the holiday season. The scope is staggering: the offer covers more than 60,000 products and comes with no purchase minimum.

The move is a maneuver in Walmart’s price war with Amazon and Target, coming just days after Walmart lowered prices to compete more fiercely with its competitors. In the level-playing-field world of ecommerce, Walmart is making a compelling case for many consumers not to shop anywhere else.

So what does this action mean for the rest of the industry, not just the billion-dollar behemoths at war? Several things.

1. Expect heavy price wars this season. Indeed, they’re already underway, what with campaigns and discounts starting in October this year, in part to offset the sluggish economy. (Then again, this happened in booming 2007, too.) Every store will be watching its competitors’ prices, and consumers will, too.

2. Look for the spread of no-limit free shipping. Already, some larger retailers (like LL Bean, whose promo is shown here) have chosen to match Walmart’s offer. Amazon hasn’t budged yet, in part because its $25 hurdle is fairly accessible. If Walmart chooses to extend its offer past the holidays, though, watch for shipping costs to rapidly become an albatross on mass-market sites.

3. The small-business end of the online CPG market may be in trouble. Walmart’s promotion allows consumers buying $9.88 toys to shop walmart.com for value–good for consumers, bad for small competitors, who may spend $7 on average on shipping. Expect startup retailers to shift focus away from small-ticket items unless they have access to favorable postal arrangements.

4. Don’t expect this to hurt the specialty stores. Bloomingdale’s has free shipping on $300-and-up purchases, Nordstrom $100: this isn’t about them. Nor is it about niche brands whose distribution relies on the digital channel. Those retailers can still charge fair shipping costs, because people are seeking out specific products. Walmart may encourage an expectations shift, but those expectations may or may not extend to every corner of the online retailing industry. (Yet.)

Check walmart.com in January to see if free shipping sticks around or if it’s just a market-share maneuver for the holiday season. That pending decision by Walmart may permanently alter the industry.

Once again, Ai celebrated Halloween with its unique Secret Santa extravaganza, where the tradition of giving is extended to costumes. Today the office was filled with foosball players, rock stars, cartoon characters, Pauly D and way too much candy.

Visit the aiaio Flickr stream for some photos and videos.

A recruiter in New Jersey got ahold of my contact information last year. He called and managed to learn from me that I do some of Ai’s hiring. I did not choose to use him for any of our staffing.

Since then, he has called me reliably, every two weeks, to see if I need him yet. Last fall I got tired of his calls and told him, flat out, to please stop calling. We have no relationship and his repeated attempts to wear me down were not working.

He ignored this request and keeps calling. Today was his most recent ping. I now recognize his phone number on caller ID; I don’t pick up when he rings me and I delete his voice mail without listening. And still he calls. (It’s been so long that I feel like I blogged about him once before.)

What percentage of a user base gets worn down by this tactic? Is it worth alienating a high percentage of a potential consumer segment in the hope of finding a sale?

I’m sure my recruiter/stalker has found that repeated calls work on some people sooner or later, but in the meantime, I’ve memorized his name and sworn never to work with or recommend him. Is that good business?

This is a good thing for an online marketer to consider before buying email lists and defaulting signups to opt-in.

G’day mate! I am pleased (and a wee bit freaked out) to be flying to Sydney tonight to participate in Online Retailer, Australia’s leading ecommerce conference. With more than 4000 confirmed attendees, Online Retailer looks to be compelling and exciting.

I hope to be part of that excitement, as I am presenting at the conference on the ROI of user experience. It’s a frequent topic at Ai and one I’m looking forward to sharing. I am also doing live site critiques, my stock in trade at the Internet Retailer conferences, and joining in several other discussions and events.

If you’re in Australia, drop me a line, or swing by the conference and see for yourself.

I called US Airways the night before a recent business trip to ask about a travel detail I couldn’t find online. (I’m not name-checking US Airways just to pick on them; it’s part of the story.) Their customer service is obviously outsourced to an overseas location–I had to call twice, and both representatives had trouble speaking clearly and understanding my question.

But this isn’t about offshoring, or customer service reps whose native tongue isn’t English, which doesn’t offend me. (I certainly couldn’t administer tech help in Hindi.) Rather, it’s about training.

Upon completing my second call, the US Airways CS rep said to me, “Can I help you with anything else today?”

“No, that’s it,” I replied.

“Thank you,” she continued, “for calling Use Airways.”

Use Airways. I headed to the airport the next morning still shaking my head about the woman who doesn’t know her employer’s name. Shortly after taking my seat on the plane, a flight attendant got on the PA system.

“All electronic devices must be turned off at this time,” he said. “If you do not turn them off and put them away, we will return to the gate and deplane you, and you will have to rebook on a later flight.” (Emphasis his.)

My seatmates chuckled at his earnestness, but I just thought about my phone call. In the span of a few hours, I encountered two different but striking examples of poor training and comprehension by consumer-facing employees.

My trips on US Airways have largely been pleasant and comfortable. But what is the brand impact of these employees’ mistakes? How many other people notice what I notice, and book their next flight on another carrier?

Airline flight attendants routinely say, “We know you have a choice.” What they–and their management team–need to say is, “We know you notice. And we’re trying our hardest.”