The internet is full of niche markets. I'm not talking about all the different things being sold, i'm talking about all the b2b people and services who power everything being sold. Many sites hire 'experts' and 'strategists' who are as specialized as an F-16 pilot. In reality, most of these guys are making a boat load of money by being out-going and knowing just a little bit about something you know nothing about. To tell the truth, chances are your 12 year old daughter probably knows more about Facebook than half these 'experts'.

 These guys go from market to market as the fads change. Last week it was myspace and digg, this week Facebook and Twitter. I'd be willing to guess tomorrow will still be Facebook, but twitter will be as dead as the steak i had for dinner and something new and fresh and innovative will be around. 

These guys are fad-chasers. Just like ambulance chasers, they ride the wave until it's gone, then hop on the next one. Today they preach the joys of Facebook, tomorrow social shopping. 

The tough guys to find are the steady guys. The guys like myself who pride themselves on being versatile and full of a wide range of knowledge. I manage Adwords campaigns with 7% CTRs, a Facebook page with a post quality score of 18.5% (whatever that means though i'm seeing people online proud of 5%) and an e-commerce site that makes more than yours. I manage SEO campaigns, usability studies, and customer feedback surveys. I design system platforms and backend user interfaces to streamline business functions. All of this, I do better than the guy who can be hired in a niche market to teach you nothing but that one thing.

The secret to my success? Simple. My overview of the entire landscape makes me the general on the battlefield. However I'm no ordinary general. I've spent time in every area of combat possible. I've been in the trenches, I've flown the fighters and bombers, I've gone on the black ops, and I've driven the tanks. I've done it all and done it all well. 

This makes myself, and guys like myself, the threat your competition is scared you'll hire. It also makes me more valueable than any one guy because i don't focus on a little portion of your plan, i write your plan and focus on the entire thing. This is the secret to successful e-commerce, not one silver bullet, but an large plan that uses every avenue possible.

I am!

Well, besides from that, a usability expert fills a very important role. In simple terms, a usability expert is an architect of web sites. Let's start with some background....

History
A little over 10 years ago, back in the age of the internet myself and some other old schoolers come from, you had your internet "guy". He did it all. He build your site, he designed your site, he setup the servers, he got you high search engine rankings on Lycos, he setup your e-commerce, and he made all the decisions because you didn't know what to do or what was possible. He was your 1 stop shop for your website needs. From design to server, he did it all..... I miss those days.

Well, now that everyone knows it all, no one really knows it all. That guyis now not even 10 different guys so much as 10 different departments. You have your SEO specialists, your copywriters, your designers, your IT department, the business unit in charge, internet marketing unit, affiliate marketing unit, front end developers, back end developers, etc... and finally your usability specialist.

Explanation
So what is a usability specialist again and why are they important? Back to the construction analogy. If your website is a home, your business users are the home owners and the project manager is the, well, project manager. Your designers are you interior designers and you marketing people are your real estate agents. Then, depending on how you have it setup, either your lead front or backend developer is your contractor with your back end folks the sole sub-contractor.

Your usability guy? That guy is your architect. He won't do the labor. He won't lay pipe, run wires, do the frame, pour the foundation, install the toilets, or paint the walls. But what he will do is design the house. He'll tell you how big the rooms will be. He'll tell you how many outlets will go in a room and how big the windows will be. He'll design your staircase and he'll make sure all your bathrooms have enough fixtures. He is the guy in charge of your house's design.

So where do normal graphic designers fall into place? Easy! The usability guy will deign your house, your graphic designer is like your interior designer. They will pick your brick color, your counter-tops, your carpet type and style or it's its hardwood or tile. They will pick your toilet fixtures and the drapes on your wall. They even pick all the furniture. But would you ever let your interior designer  actually design your house?

How We Work
Usability designers use process to accomplish their goal. We start with taking requirements from the business users. Then we make wire frames (blue print) and a list of features. We design a system much like you design a house.

Then, we hand off the project for approval. Once approved, we get the graphic designers involved to make it look pretty based on our layout. Then we go to our front-end team who actually develops the system with the back end team. All the while, we are making sure it gets done write, making last minute adjustments, and writing surveys. We then manage the launch and get feedback to see how it went. We then enter stage two to fix any little things we may have missed or didn't go over so well. And that's how it works!

Done
So, if you are wondering what a usability designer is, it's that. It's a mix between everything because you need design skills, and a skill set from all the other organizations to make sure it all goes together smoothly. That's why an old school dude like me works so well. We know what it takes to make a web site work.

The Friday after Thanksgiving, Americans partake in a ritual that involves death and destruction in the name of cheap specials. It's Black Friday, and it's the time of year to get gifts at cheap for you and yours.

The following Monday, online retailers gear up for the follow up to Black Friday; Cyber Monday.

Cyber Monday is billed as the busiest online shopping day of the year. However, as many of others in the industry know, it's far from it. The actual busiest day of the year comes the Monday of the last full week before Christmas; which is in about three weeks. 

Cyber Monday is still very inoportanrt. Sure, it may not be the busiest day of the year, but it does kick off the busiest season of the year. From now until around early March, sales will be the largest of the year. This is obviously because of Christmas and the the follow-up returns, gift card cash ins, and fixing broken items. Cyber Monday is the D-Day of online retailers.

 E-mails with specials will be sent out. Catelogs will be hitting mailboxes, mailing lists will be bought, invetory will get low, and the money will role in. You've gotta love the holidays.

With this unstable economy, the shops with the better sales are the ones who charge a bit less. Free shipping helps and a strong brand image couldn't hurt either. Remember, while Christmas is normally a time of giving, budgets are tight and people aren't giving all they used to. Make sure consumers find the best deals on the best products, and make sure they find them with you.

Time to hit the office and run some more numbers. Catch you on the flip side.

-Jeff

 Everyone is familiar with the old phrase "shot yourself in the foot." This is all too common in business today whether we are talking about a web site or an airline.

The foot shot, as I like to call it, usually comes from good intentions. However, those intentions are usually internal. They are one of those things where you think something you do is for the good of the company when in the end, it turns out to be a PR mess and might involve a lot of lawyers. Eww.

A classic example of the foot shot was done by American Airlines. They have shot themselves in the foot by over-protecting their trademark. A few years ago, Americantook issue with flight simulators. Not the games themselvs, but the community that supports them. For all of you not crazy about Flight Simulator, planes can be added to the game. To do this, developers (who are usually guys in their basement in their spare time), create the own planes on the computer and then upload them to various web sites for people to download for free or for a little money. Part of this process involves  making a paint scheme or "Livery" for the aircraft. In the hunt for realism, people paint the planes like actual planes such as American Airlines paint scheme or United's paint scheme.

Well, despite the fact that people were just replicating planes for personal amusement, AA was not to happy. They sent cease and desist letters to developers and sites all over the net.  Eventually, all AA planes were no where to be found on the net. What this cause was a backlash in  the flight sim community. It also created less brand awareness. After all, flight sim guys need to take trips on commercial jets too. 

Next thing you know, when you go hunt for that 747 for flight sim, you can get in as United, TWA, all the others, buyt not AA. Suddenly, AA realized that they made a big mistake now allow developers to make their planes with certain guidelines. 

 The second strike against AA was the lawsuit against Google. It was over the use of Google Adwords and the fact that Google would allow people to buy "American Airlines" as a keyword for ads. AA didn't like this and sued. They settled out of court and the settlement is confidential, but I can tell you, try a search for American Airlines on Google, no ads on the side. 

Where this hurt AA is with brand awareness and sales. You do a search for AA you get AA, you do a search for United, you get United and a bunch of places offering cheap fares on United. Same with AirTran and any other carrier. AA made the mistake of forcing outlets of theirs from advertising on them thus lowering ticket sales. They have shot themselves in the foot.

  In E-commerce and other sites, many things done intentially have adverse affects. Not the least of which is a long and obtrusive checkout process. A study recently publishedshows that 87% of people have had bad online ordering experiences. Forcing a login, not tracking transactions, making it confusing, not displaying the rules, are all things that shoot you in the foot. Maybe the site looks better, but at what expense? Maybe the site collects better data, but at what expense?

 Other shots in the foot include allowing for a lower quality of service onlne because you can't get internal processes figured out. It's lowering user experience in exchange for more cross-selling, and it's never having stock because you never get enough to fulfill orders. There are hundreds of things you can do to get a nice foot shot. Remember, in the end it all comes down to doing what benifits the consumer, not your company.

I went to convient care. It's like an ER except without the ER part. A good place to go for head colds, muscle aches, or sports physicals. All those things you would normally go to see your family doctor for, but don't want to wait to get in. Anyway, they told me to get some pills from the pharmacy conviently located in the building.

So, after feeling sick, walking into a convient care office, seeing a convient doctor, getting pissl from the conviently located pharmacy, I went home. Then I realized something often over looked; convience.

Most people know that convience is good. However, what most fail to see is what is convient and what isn't convient. Sometimes, you will do things in your custoemrs best interest thinking it's very convient for them. Other times, you will do things to better your busines because it's convient for you.

A perfect example of this is requiring registration to checkout. You may do this so you can collect email addresses, track user history, etc... But what advantage does it really offer the consumer? Can they track their history? Normally. Can they see what on the site they have purchased live? Maybe. Can they be asked to give reviews on products they purchase? Hopefully.

A good example of someything you might think is convient is a recomendation engine. Normally, these can be very affective. Whats not affective is their placement. Looking at Newegg, they are located off to the right. Out of the way, but still noticable. Placement is everything.

Remember, with convience, placement is really the key. The pharmacy was conviently located in the clinic. The care facility was conviently located in my neighborhood and not downtown. Convience is all about placement and ease of use. Make sure you don't make your customers jump through too many hoops to make a purpose. It's just no to convient.

Trust is a funny thing. It's somewhat easy to gain the first time, but really hard (if not impossible) to get back if you lose it.

On the internet, trust is what makes someone purchase with you the first time. If you do everything correctly that first time, it's really hard to lose that trust. Simply put, they place an order, you communicate a lot through emails about that order, ship it promptly, it arrives well packed and as the customer expects.You have now gained a customer.

The thing about trust on the internet is that it does not rest in actively "trust" related things.  These active things are showing the online BBB logo, the SSL logo, HackerSafe, etc. Most savvy shoppers don't put to much stock in these items. They are all easy to get with a small fee. In fact, the only one i feel is worth while is the HackerSafe logo. This is because HackerSafe implies in it's title "we're safe from hackers." The fact of the matter is they are just PCI certified which all sites that accept credits cards on the internet are required to be.This is just really good marketing.

The main thing people use to trust you is the look and feel of your site. It also comes down to the small features you offer such as order tracking, showing order status online, and regular emails such as; when the order has been confirmed, when your credit card has been charged, and when the order has shipped.

But those items are fairly standard in even open-source ecommerce platforms. Let's talk about design and layout. Below, I have three competing web sites. I have personally purchased from all three. They sell disc jockey equipment which is a hobby of mine if you couldn't already tell.

1. http://www.123dj.com/
2. http://www.cheaplights.com/
3. http://www.pssl.com/

As you can see, the first two are very amateur looking. However, due to cheap prices, i purchased from both of them. I had good ordering experience so I will order again. However, the third one, the one that looks the best, I ordered from first. Only price and selection drove me to the other two otherwise it would be PSSL all the way. The look and professional feel got me to pay more for the security to know i wasn't being screwed. The item i ordered was in stock, and shipped quickly. The other ones it was like rolling the dice.

So here are my rules for being trustworthy the first time:

1. Good Looking Design
2. Plenty of product information
3. Great account section tied in closely with your ERP and warehouse system for easy order tracking.
4. Useful and professional looking features.
5. Ample ways for the customer to contact you
6. Quick response times on all emails
7. Sales staff knowledgeable of the web site and all company policies(after all, they are the first line of defense)
8. Professionalism
   

Simply put, caring about your customer and their experience more than the company bottom line and the rest will fall into place. The more you care, the more they buy. The more transparent and accessible you are, the more they trust you. Lose that trust, good luck getting them back.

As many top 500 e-comm site operators know, a web site is only as good as it's features. Last time, I talked about the small things that make e-comm sites popular. Today, I want to talk about those who help you get there and what to do when the budget isn't there.

Most e-comm sites don't go it alone. You have a cart solution provider, a payment transaction provider, analytics provider, hosting provider, a search provider, a channel provider, an affiliate provider, SEO / SEM campaign, user recommendation provider, review provider, etc... You get the point. The fact of the matter is that all of these solution can be done in-house by your IT department. They can make anything themselves if given the time and enough developers. So why are so many companies contracting out?

The answer is simple and two-fold; Lack of knowledge of the solution, and external development. The fact is, if you have a search solution, you call the search provider to make changes to it. It's all they do and they do it very well. If your IT department did it, it would be one of a few things they did and one guy would probably be the expert. When that one guy leaves, your expert is gone and you are back at square one. Someone in IT needs to learn the code before making changes or fixes and then things get lost or forgotten. Not the best scenario.

On the other hand, good documentation, code comments, and using basic and widely accepted processes can help anyone pick up where someone else left off. Doing it yourself can also save money because contracting it out can be expensive. A normal e-comm operation with integration partners can cost a few million in start up costs dependent on size, along with $50,000+ a month in "service fees" to the solution provider. Think of it as a retainer so they do whatever changes whenever, unless it's big. Then they charge you more to spend time on it. 

I personally have been a fan of doing it yourself. You can get exactly what you want and customize the solution 100%. It's your branding and works your way. No comprosimise. However, to do this documentation is key as well as very knowledgable programmers. It's a good money saving tactic and can prove benificial in the long run.

On unlimited budgets, of course i would fimd 3rd party solutions 100% of the time, but if money is not there, I don't let that stop me. That's what it comes down too. You have to figure out what you want, then figure out how to get there. Remember, nothing is ever a brick wall, just a bigger hurtle. 

I tend to not jump on bandwagons. I see opportunities, evaluate them, then decide whether they are worth the web space they are printed on. Others however are not so keen to this way of thinking.

10 years ago, there was an internet bubble, it burst, and the economy tanked. Today, we are at the exact same point we were then, except with web 2.0. Everybody who thought that web 1.0 would allow sites as milktherabbit.com to succeed are now of the thought that another social network or video site will succeed. Everyday I see that some no name company just recieved $50 million or so in "this" round of funding.... which says it's not the only round. People feel enough capital and enough MBA's in the room can create the best web site on earth. It's simple foolish. A room full of MBA's, PHD, and CEO's is twice as inept as the 20 year old who created Facebook or the 27 year old who created Myspace, or the 23 year olds who invented Google, or about the 21 year old who founded Microsoft. Why? Because the MBA's lack vision, passion, and determiniation. They only see $$$.

 It makes me laugh that people didn't learn the first time. What's Ironic is that the ideas are the exact same. Monenize something that's free because it's been proven to work with advertising. It was proven to work in the first bubble, just not for everyone. We had 5 years of smarts before today, now we have reverted to the past.

Most people who were around 10 years ago say we have come full circle. We are at the same point we were before the bubble burst last time. I don't see why the result should be any different. My dad once said to me "The definition of a crazy man is someone who does the exact same thing over and over again expecting a different result." I'm pretty sure venture capitalists have all gone crazy.