37Signals had an interesting post about phantom buyers (you know the kind; they say, “I’ll buy it if …”). I think it’s a smart strategy to pre-plan your product roadmap carefully enough that you can respond quickly to these people with your own conditional offer: IF you’ll buy it, I will commit to adding feature X in timeframe Y. Of course, the difference is that your offer actually binds you to something if they PayPal you the funds, whereas their “offer” doesn’t commit them to anything. Nevertheless, I have found that this strategy is often successful, and takes me in a direction I wanted to go anyhow, sooner or later.
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
WalMart to customers: hold all calls
One of the most common problems I see on SMB carts is a lack of comfort food – and I don’t mean macaroni and cheese. Is it obvious to your customers how they can contact you? Are email, fax and phone information clearly posted at each step of your checkout process? This is a major trust-building step you can easily take.
WalMart can afford to have this attitude. You can’t.
ShopNBC.com reports web video increases conversion rate
Stories like this always astonish me because I find web video annoying. I would love to get a demographic breakdown of who’s watching web marketing material – is it only young people?
