Tech Article for You

Let me repeat that..

“The technology may change, but human nature remains the same!”

In this wonderful Internet Age, we are all struggling, and succeeding to different degrees, to keep up with the technology. It’s a never-ending battle. Web Technology! When it’s good, it’s often poorly executed, and when it’s bad- it’s fatal.

Frankly, much of the time, the technology gets in the way of the sales and communication process. Unfortunately, it seems that many people responsible for website design understand the technology available and what they want, more than they understand their fellow man- their potential customers, and what THEY want.

Whoever…?

Whoever got the idea to ask for your name and email addresses before you can enter a site? Try that outside the front door of the local McDonalds!

Whoever got the idea for fancy Flash presentations that take 3 minutes of your time to show off how good the graphics designer was? Try telling people that they have to watch a video presentation before they can enter Wal Mart!

Why can’t more than half of Web shoppers find the product they want on a site? Would that be acceptable at the local sports store, or in a mail-order catalog?

Why do more than half of Web shoppers abandon their purchase after they’ve selected goods and placed them in their shopping trolley? Wouldn’t that send your local supermarket broke?

What About The Customer?

This is truly a fascinating time to be a Marketer, and to watch what is being done in the name of Marketing. Look at any successful business in the ‘dirt world’, and you’ll find that it is being rewarded for responding to the needs of its customers, and making more than enough profit to pay its bills. Then look at what has passed for popular success on the Web, and you find that it has to do with how exciting the concept is, how many eyeballs it attracts, how innovative the ‘business model’, or how revolutionary the technology used is. Nary a word about about the customer satisfaction or profit that are necessary in the real world.

I note with pleasure that some wiser heads are now writing about the “New New Economy”, and noting that it’s looking more like the Old Economy all the time! This trend will help give credit to those businesses that have been truly successful on the Web (and there are plenty of them), and set up a realistic expectation for those that come onto the Web in the future.

The Fundamentals Still Apply

Take away the technology, and to succeed in Web Marketing, you still need to deliver the basic requirements of Marketing:

-A good Product
-At the right Price
-At the right Time
-At the right Place

It also helps mightily, if you have a good rapport with your customer.

I was delighted a while back, to be asked to lead a Clickz Forum. It posed the following question…

“Whether, in a high-tech age when dot-coms are rushing to automate as much as customer contact as possible, there’s still an important place for ‘high touch’– old-fashioned one-to-one sales.”

MY answer, was a qualified ‘Yes’, and my belief is that ‘one-to-one sales’ isn’t ‘old-fashioned’ at all! Have a look at all the ‘new-fashioned’ sites that tried to sell autos. They were dismal failures. People used them for information, then went right on down to their local dealership to haggle and buy from real people. No matter how good a job the programmers did of automating customer contact, the customers didn’t feel confident enough to complete the transaction on the website. Some businesses are so “high-touch”, that wise marketers would choose to use a website only as an information, branding and lead- generation tool, with real people following up the leads.

Sure, you’re right, the auto example is an extreme case. And, no, you can’t afford to have a real-live salesperson selling that $9.99 CD online. I understand. Even in the real world, we have vending machines, so we don’t need a human holding our hand in every sales transaction. It varies with the nature of the product.

Understand Your Customer’s’ Needs!

No matter how much money and technology some Web businesses throw at automating customer contact, they’re doomed to failure. You can only successfully automate something you UNDERSTAND. Unfortunately, many of our dotcom whizz-kids have never had to make a living from real customers in the real world, so they just don’t ‘get it’. What online businesses DO need to do, is to understand what the customers’ needs are in the sales process, and fulfil them.

What is really needed, is a caring, thoughtful fulfilling of customers’ needs and expectations at every step in their experience with a Web business site. The better all the small steps are performed, the less need there will be for real-time human intervention (and the higher will be the conversion rate). This means;

-a professional, friendly tone to the complete website

-information about who you are- the company, the founder, the staff. Let your customer know that there are real people there

-sensible ads that don’t mislead and set up unreal expectations

-relevant descriptions from customer searches of Directories and Search Engines

-quick-loading web pages

-easy-to-understand page layout, with clear information

-easy-to-understand navigation

-a Privacy Policy to allay fears on privacy

-a Returns Policy and strong Guarantee to allay fears of making the wrong choice

-a clear description of your products or services, and clear pricing options

-secure credit card and information handling to further allay fears on privacy

-a friendly, easy-to-use shopping cart

-a sincere Thank You, and information about what will happen next

If all of these things are done, there will be little need for one-on-one selling on MOST sites. You will already have done the job. Through understanding your customer and providing excellent service, NOT by spending more on technology!

Of course, offering some ‘one-to-one’ contact is a real plus for any business, and necessary for those that are more “high-touch”. There are now a number of programs, some even free, that allow a customer to contact a live operator at your site. Check out LiveHelper.com and HumanClick.com Making it easy for your customer to contact your business site by phone, fax and email should be fundamental.

I read once that the definition of fanaticism was “Redoubling your efforts when you’ve forgotten your original aim”. Solving a lack of customer rapport by throwing more technology at the problem, comes perilously close to the definition.

John Payne is a lifetime Marketer, Publisher of Web Marketing Ezine, and an SEO consultant.

John also founded and heads up the fast-growing business Enviro-Friendly Products.

Tags: appropriate, Business, customer, internet, needs, online, service, technologies, Technology, Webappropriate, Business, customer, internet, needs, online, service, technologies, Technology, Web

Share This

I am an Internet creative writer and journalist and yet knowledge of the technical side of computers still eludes me. As I work with tech-heads I’ve always had a feeling that they were a different breed of people, with their strange language of numbers and abbreviated terminology. I’ve also had the egotistical belief that because they are always sitting at their computers, that somehow they were missing out on life, as opposed to people like me who try to spend as much time in fresh air as possible. Well, I had a wake up call today when I asked a few of my colleagues about the changing world of communication, television, film, and advertising that has begun to evolve at an alarming rate since the advent of the Internet.

First of all, after a short discussion I realized these people are just like me, they do all the things I do in their spare time. Secondly, I came to understand that a lot of these so-called ‘nerds’ are actually at the forefront of this revolution of technology and ideas that are changing our world for the better. Their well-kept secret is this: As they are the people designing these technologies that harness the power of the human imagination, they are actually prophets who can see into the future. I’m not saying that they are gurus who have mastered all aspects of life, on the contrary, I still believe that most of contemporary society still needs to focus much more time and attention on internal growth and understanding of our emotions and thought processes. However, as the tech-head jobs are usually based around ideas about how to make the world function better, they are miles ahead when it comes to knowing about which systems are going to implemented in the future.

Take communication for example. When the telephone was first invented by Alexander Graham Bell a lot of people questioned the worth of being able to speak to someone that they couldn’t see face-to-face. Of course after the benefits were discovered, the whole paradigm of communication drastically changed. Everyone now felt that it was ‘necessary’ to have a telephone. Many, many years later came satellites and with them the ability to talk to people on the other side of the world. Recently we’ve had huge cables constructed of optical fiber laid along the ocean floor, and with them came light-speed telephone and Internet connections. Well, the future of communication is now on the verge of a new revolution in paradigm as voice-over-Internet communication comes into existence and evolves.

A good example of this technology in its early stages can be found at http://www.skype.com/. Skype is a company whose service of computer-to-computer and even computer-to-phone communication has already had around 115 million downloads off the Internet. The reason that it is so popular now is that compared to a normal landline phone call, it is super cheap! A few of my friends and colleagues use it regularly so I’ll tell you how it works.

In the case of computer-to-computer voice communication, each person needs either a headset with built-in microphone and headphones, or a combination of microphone and computer speakers/headphones. At this stage you both also need a Broadband Internet connection, but let me tell you, until the big telephone and Internet corporations put a block on the current system (some US companies already have), you can now talk to people on the other side of the world for relatively free! The only cost seen is where the amount of time you speak is subtracted from your allowable download limit. Talking to someone for an hour on the other side of the globe hardly takes any download usage and as the Internet is the medium, the ‘phone call’ is actually better quality than a landline but with equal speed so there’s no time delay of speaker to listener like in the days of satellites.

The computer-to-phone service does have a fee but it still costs less than the rates on a normal telephone, although my friend says that the quality isn’t as good as the other Skype method yet. What does this mean for future communication in our world? It means eventually telephone companies will probably have to become Internet communication providers, and by that stage they will probably raise prices, as they will be losing so much of the revenue that they make now from overcharging on telephone services. It’s kind of like the situation we have with fossil fuels versus environmentally friendly energy production. Even though the technology exists, the oil companies aren’t going to bring it out until they’ve made every cent they can from the old technology.

However, as the Internet is a new medium where the general public has much more power and freedom from corporation and government constraints, this new technology has a much better chance of being implemented into our society straight away. 115 million downloads of Skype alone means that if the phone companies try and block this sort of communication completely, people probably won’t stand for it. This is also an important fact as it means that Internet nerds have a much better chance of bringing their ideas to reality, compared with nerds in other areas of human progress that are controlled more by big money-makers. As for now, if I were you I’d get onto Skype or another Internet voice communication provider and save your hard earned cash for as long as you can.

Tags: computers, future, internet, learn, nerd, online, opinion, prophet, Technologycomputers, future, internet, learn, nerd, online, opinion, prophet, Technology

Share This

Effective print design is laconic: no wasted ink; less is always more. A good designer can communicate a stunning amount of information with surprisingly few tools. Design is pervasive in our media-centric culture, and subsequently we are constantly absorbing information via color, line, shape and symbol. Likewise is technology pervasive. From cell phones, to handhelds, to PCstechnology has become a permanent and essential tool in our society.

But the way in which we interact with technology has yet to fully evolve; the connection often remains sterile and detached. The potential to improve this relationship lies with designers.

For starters, we need to acknowledge the lingering disconnect between print and tech design. The same minimalist ethos that drives effective print media seems lost amid a sea of bad websites and unwieldy technology.

First, the bad websites:

Affordable publishing software has enabled a host of amateur web designers to enter the fray. The benefits of empowering individuals to express themselves on the web are undeniableindeed this is the living, breathing heart of the information revolution. What these recreational desktop publishers do to advance design, however, is questionable. With so many untrained hands at the helm, proper design is at risk of being run aground.

Now, the unwieldy technology:

Technology, by definition, is an enabler: it makes our lives easier, better, or both. Without thoughtful design, however, technology only partly lives up to its definition. An example: Multi-purpose cell phones. In theory, they enable you to talk, calculate an 18% tip, take pictures and videos, and surf the web. But what these phones gain in potential functionality, they lose in actual utility: you can’t use the calculator while you’re talking; the pictures are low-res; the videos are sub-par; and the web access is slow and requires very small, nimble fingers. Why not design a phone that, instead of all the bells and whistles, gets crystal-clear reception everywhere?

The desire to pack a lot of functionality into a little package is tempting primarily because we can: technology gets continually smaller and faster. The exponential growth in circuitry described by Moore’s Law (which celebrated its 40th anniversary in April), has outpaced a concomitant understanding of how to humanistically design these extra circuits into our lives. The drive to harness technology’s full potential should be tempered with restraint and good design.

Consider the iPod. Its success has little to do with Apple’s unique or cutting-edge technologyit’s a hard drive with earphones. iPod is successful because it conveys a big idea with what are essentially Kindergarten shapes: a rectangle and two concentric circles. By limiting functionality, the designers create a sleeker user experience and clearly articulate the product’s identity and purpose.

This approach is the type that will humanize our relationship with technology. But how do we get there?

Ironically, the same advances that spawned an onslaught of poorly designed webpages also create the opportunity for systemic change. Technology has crossed a critical threshold. Just as you don’t need to know HTML to create a website, you no longer need assembly code or binary math to approach tech development. The pieces are out there, we just need to put them together. Instead of viewing technology as something to design around, we should design with it, engaging technology not as a mechanic uses tools, but as an artist uses paint.

Interacting with technology shouldn’t be taxing for the userit should be fluid and intuitive. Good print design communicates ideas this way; doing the same in technology design requires but one courageous tweak in the way we embrace the medium. The time is ripe for a shift in paradigm.

Tags: advertising, brand, branding, design, interactive, internet, marketing, online, Technology, Webadvertising, brand, branding, design, interactive, internet, marketing, online, Technology, Web

Share This