Online Marketing Stuff – Diary of a web start-up – internet marketing

This Friday, Interactive Minds is running an event on “What Customers Want: Improving Your Customer’s Website Experience”.

If you’re interested in hearing about how companies are measuring and improving on their website customer’s experience then come along!

We have some great speakers lined up including Adam Goodvach from Global Reviews, Tania Lang from Peak Usability and Andrew Cooper from dStore.

There aren’t many tickets left so visit www.interactiveminds.com.au to find out more and make sure you register to attend.

I have tried to join a few websites as a member recently and have been confronted with what seemed like a laborious double opt in process in order to join. This has got me thinking about the value of a double opt in process for a membership based website. Does it help or hinder the cause? Does it add value and if so what and would I use it if I ran a membership based site?

What is Double Opt In
A double opt in process in this context involves a user filling in a form (to become a website member) and then before getting access to use that membership, being asked to verify the account by clicking on an email link sent to them.

Reasons for Using a Double Opt In Process
The key reason for using a double opt in sign up process is to ensure that the person registering is who they say they are and that they are using a legitimate and correct email address.

The Downsides of the Double Opt In Process
In my view the double opt in process does have quite a few negatives associated with it. Primarily I feel it partially hinders marketing efforts as companies have potentially spent a lot of time, money and effort in getting a person to the site in the first place only to then send them back to their email (a potential distraction) before letting them interact with the site.

I think the impact of a double opt in process on your site will depend on the nature of your offering and also how well known your brand is. If you are a popular site with a strong value proposition or if you will be providing access to content that is sensitive in nature it may be more important to verify the user’s identity before you let them “in”. This may be particularly relevant for sites that focus on transactions or user generated content as this can then form part of the moderation process.

Nevertheless, I personally find the double opt in membership process rather annoying as I am focused on doing one task and sometimes waiting just a minute or two for that confirmation email to come in can be enough to take my attention elsewhere. It makes me question how badly the site wants me to be involved. Or perhaps it just demonstrates that I need to focus a bit more and do one task at a time! Still in the day and age of “busy people” it would be interesting to get some insight into the drop off rate between the initial sign up and the confirmation process for companies using this method.

Sites That Do and Sites That Don’t
When I looked around at large membership based sites, a few were making new users go through a double opt in process, but many also weren’t. Here is a snapshot of what I found:

Sites Supporting a Double Opt In Process

• Facebook.com
• Ebay.com

Sites Without a Double Opt In Process

• MySpace.com
• Twitter.com
• LinkedIn.com (they do get you to confirm your email address via an email, but still let you use the site in the meantime – clever blend)
• Seek.com.au

Alternatives to Double Opt In
So are there any alternatives to double opt in? I personally would look at other methods to verify a person’s email address rather than putting this speed bump in so early in the process. Here are a few options to consider:

• Verify the membership request using Captcha text (to check it is a person not a machine completing the form).
• Ask users to enter their email address twice (and verify these match) to limit typing error issues.
• Send an email to the new user confirming their membership and providing a link to advise if they did not request the membership (effectively an opt out process). This can also include membership details.

What Do You Think?
Have an opinion different to mine? Let us know by leaving a comment.

If you work in digital media, you may be interested in entering the AIMIA awards which are now accepting entries. These annual awards now have a broad range of 23 different categories including Best Word-of-Mouth, Best Mobile Product or Services and Best Use of Social Media (plus heaps more).

If you have been involved in a great campaign or interactive project recently, why not enter it – you have to be in it to win it!

The judging criteria looks fairly straight forward and includes all the expected items…

• Fitness for purpose
• Design innovation
• Visual impact and aesthetics
• Technical expertise
• Conformance to W3C standards
• Useability and accessibility
• Special characteristics

Only AIMIA members can enter, however that process is pretty easy so I encourage you to check it out, especially the Queenslanders – let’s showcase our stuff too!

Entries can be submitted until Tuesday 4th November which only gives you a few weeks to get your entry sorted. Find out more on the AIMIA website.

I was reading one of my favourite “web updates” emails by TechCrunch and saw them talking about a new ad by Nintendo on YouTube.

It’s worth a look and is something different in terms of a “video” leveraging its on screen environment. It also pushes some of the boundaries technically from what we often allow ourselves to think is possible.

Worth checking out the TechCruch article and also the YouTube site.

This week Interactive Minds ran their first networking and education event for digital and interactive professionals in Brisbane. We had Louis Moore from REA Group as well as David Jordine from Omniture presenting about how they measure online success.

Some of the interesting things I learnt from the presentations were as follows:

• RealEstate.com.au (and the REA Group) is such a big empire. They think of their success measures in terms of Customers, Agents and Vendors & Advertisers.
• Unique visitor and unique browser measures are still really important to companies and one of the first metrics looked at (regardless of how successful the site is).
• Email is leveraged by REA across all audience groups as a way of maintaining relevance and engagement.
• REA use a beta site (property.com.au) to test new methods before they are rolled out across the main sites.
• There are 4 key categories of why companies have a website presence: (1) eCommerce (2) Lead Generation (3) Content/Subscription (4) Service/Support
• Omniture look at 3 types of optimisation for success: Campaign Optimisation, Site Optimisation and Customer Optimisation
• Omniture have some good reporting for drop off positioning on conversion funnels
• Ways to measure success online include the expected UB’s, session duration, conversions, revenue as well as things like cost per acquisition, response rates to ads, interaction metrics (content related) with customers, referrals, repeat traffic and lots more! More and more companies are starting to track and leverage this information which is great.

The turnout for the event was great with almost 70 people attending, a great effort everyone!
Thanks to everyone who came along and for those who weren’t able to make it, I hope to meet you at one of our next events!

We have all heard of the high failure rates of new businesses and in my opinion online businesses are even more at risk of failure than many traditional ones.

There seem to be plenty of articles  talking about why new businesses fail so I have made this article about what new online businesses need to do in order to succeed. I have formed these views after being involved in strategies and online marketing activities for a number of start-up businesses, a bit of a passion of mine.

1. Have a Differentiated Offering
With a staggering amount of websites and online businesses out there, your business needs to be supported by a strong idea that hasn’t been implemented in exactly the same way before. Unfortunately too many people want to create something too similar to what already exists (and often without the funding and support that their competitor has). Make sure that your business idea is either unique, or has some clear, easy to communicate competitive advantage.

2. Be Clear On How You Will Make Money
It is very tempting with the opportunities provided by the internet to implement a great idea that has loads of target audience value, but no defined revenue stream. Make sure that you know from the get go how you will charge for your services and ensure that this revenue is ultimately enough to support your anticipated costs.

3. Understand the Real Costs
I have met many business owners who have budgeted for a website to support their new business but have only allowed a nominal amount to promote their site. Do some research and be realistic about what it will cost you to get a regular, repeat audience to your website and to have your brand known and respected. Often you will need to use a number of tactics and ideally should look at having a professional put together a plan for you to have implemented.

4. Have A Business Plan
This is super logical, but make sure you document how your business will work, what your expenses and revenue will be and how you will make your money. Make sure you research your competitors, understand the best approach for your business and think about strategic partners who can help you to get some traction. Needless to say, with an online business your business plan should include how to leverage all the opportunities that online provides.

5.  Get Expertise
Running a business is going to b a whole of a lot easier for you if you have strong expertise in either the sector that you are targeting or the leveraging online medium. Going into an online business without either will be a lot harder so make sure you have support and expertise around you which you can draw on.

6. Be Flexible
One of the great things about the online space is the measurability and accountability that is available, however these things are useless to you unless your business is flexible enough to be able to adjust and optimise activity based on this information. Make sure your business is built on a flexible platform. Ideally you should have access to change your website, switch between tactics and even tweak your product/service offering depending on the feedback and success that you have.

7. Don’t Try To be Everything to Everybody
This one is a hard one and you need to find the right balance between being too niche and being too broad with your offering. Often being niche will allow you to grow your offering without setting expectations too high. On the other hand, being too niche may present some issues with promoting and getting traction with your product. Do the research, look at the market situation and pick a starting point that makes sense to your business whilst allowing expansion when the time is right.

8. Be Realistic About Response Rates

Whilst online response rates are often a lot higher than offline mediums, it will still take a lot of work, time and effort in order for a website to have the engaged visitors it will require. Be realistic about what type of response rates you can expect for various activity. Don’t assume because you are contacting 10,000 people that you will have a 100% response rate. Get across the industry standards and factor in a unknown brand and new product.

Whilst this isn’t a definitive list, I hope that you find this helpful. Follow these steps and you will have a better chance than many at running a successful online business.

When I was researching for this article, I found that there are many, many blog authors stating their beliefs in reasons for business failure. Interestingly enough, after reading these blogs very few had a list that matched mine. Therefore, do read far and wide, there is a lot of information out there which will help you if you are considering a new online business.