Branding Trivia
Monday, May 07, 2007
We don't have extra time, but we'll always make some for branding trivia...
•Coca-Cola was originally green.
•Iceland consumes more Coca-Cola per capita than any other nation.
•A can of Diet Coke will float in water while a can of regular Coke sinks.
•7% of Americans eat McDonalds each day.
•Colgate faced a significant obstacle marketing toothpaste in Spanish speaking countries. Colgate translates into the command "go hang yourself."
•All hospitals in Singapore use Pampers diapers.
•Levi Strauss first intended to sell his denim material to the miners who were searching for gold in 1850, in order to make tents and covers for their wagons.
•The wristwatch was invented in 1904 by Louis Cartier
•Ben and Jerry's send the waste from making ice cream to local pig farmers to use as feed. Pigs love the stuff, except for one flavor: Mint Oreo.
•The Ramses brand condom is named after the great pharaoh Ramses II who fathered over 160 children.
•American Airlines saved $40,000 in 1987 by eliminating one olive from each
salad served in first-class.
•When KFC first translated its advertising slogan "finger lickin' good" into Chinese, it came out as "eat your fingers off."
•In 1921 advertising manager Sam Gale of General Mills created fictional spokeswoman Betty Crocker so that correspondence to housewives could be sent with her signature.
•Pepsi spent a lot of money on an advertising campaign in China with the slogan “Pepsi gives you life” – unfortunately, it was translated as “Pepsi brings your ancestors back from the grave.”
•Over 275 different PEZ heads have been designed, with some 48 models on the market at any one time. The most popular dispensers of all-time are the Mickey Mouse and Santa Claus models.
•Inventor Joshua L. Cowen, created the first battery, which spawned American Eveready. He also created Lionel trains.
Branding: Differentiate or Die
Friday, April 20, 2007
What has changed in business over recent decades is the amazing proliferation of product choices in just about every category.
It's been estimated that there are 1,000,000 SKU’s (Standard Stocking Units) out there in America. An average supermarket has 40,000 SKU’s. Now for the stunner: An average family gets 80% to 85% of their needs from 150 SKU’s. That means there's a good chance they'll ignore 39,850 items in that store.
The dictionary defines "tyranny" as absolute power that often is harsh or cruel. So it is with choice. With the enormous competition, markets today are driven by choice. The customer has so many good alternatives that you pay dearly for your mistakes. Your competitors get your business, and you don't get it back very easily. Companies that don't understand this will not survive. (Now that's cruel.)
Just look at some of the names on the headstones in the brand graveyard: American Motors, Burger Chef, Carte Blanc, Eastern Airlines, Gainesburgers, Gimbels, Hathaway Shirts, Horn & Hardart, Mr. Salty Pretzels, Philco, Trump Shuttle, VisiCalc, Woolworth's.
And this is only a short list of names that are no longer with us.
In this global killer economy you have to find a way to differentiate yourself--or have very low prices. To do this, here are the steps you must follow:
Step One: The Context
Arguments are never made in a vacuum. There are always surrounding competitors trying to make arguments of their own. Your message has to make sense in the context of the category. It has to start with what the marketplace has heard and registered from your competition.
The context also includes what's happening in the market. Is the timing for your idea right?
Nordstrom's differentiating idea of "better service" played perfectly into the context of a department store world that was reducing its people and service as a way to cut costs.
Lotus launched the first successful network on "groupware software" called Notes just as corporate America was networking its PC's. IBM ended up buying Lotus and Notes for $3.5 billion.
It's like riding a wave. If you're too early or late, you'll go nowhere. Catch it just right and you’ll get a long and profitable ride for your difference.
Step Two: The Differentiating Idea
To be different is to be not the same. To be unique is to be one of a kind.
So you're looking for something that separates you from your competitors. The secret is understanding that your different-ness does not have to be product related.
Consider a horse. Yes, horses are quickly differentiated by their type. There are race horses, jumpers, ranch horses, wild horses and on and on. But in racehorses, you can differentiate them by breeding, by performance, by stable, by trainer and on and on.
A product or service can be differentiated by feature, leadership, preference, heritage, specialty, how it's made and on and on. (I wrote a book on this subject if you want more ways to differentiate your brand.)
Step Three: The Credentials
To build a logical argument for your difference, you must have the credentials to support your differentiating idea. This will make it real and believable.
If you have a product difference, then you should be able to demonstrate that difference. The demonstration, in turn, becomes your credentials. If you have a leak-proof valve, then you should be able to have a direct comparison with valves that can leak.
Claims of difference without proof are really just claims. For example, a "wide-track" General Motors' Pontiac must be wider than other cars. British Air as the "world's favorite airline” should fly more people than any other airline. Coca-Cola as the "real thing" has to have invented colas. When it's "Hertz and not exactly," there should be some unique services that the others don't offer.
You can't differentiate with smoke and mirrors. Consumers are skeptical. They're thinking, "Oh yeah, Mr. Advertiser? Prove it!" You must be able to support your argument.
Step Four: Communicate Your Difference
Just as you can't keep your light under a basket, you can't keep your difference under wraps.
If you build a differentiated product, the world will not automatically beat a path to your door. Better products don't win. Better perceptions tend to be the winners. Truth will not win out unless it has some help along the way.
Every aspect of your communications should reflect your difference. Your advertising. Your brochures. Your Web site. Your sales presentations.
In marketing, the rich often get richer because they have the resources to drive their ideas into the mind. Their problem is separating the good ideas from the bad ones, and avoiding spending money on too many products and too many programs.
Unfortunately, without the proper resources, even the best differentiating idea won't get off the ground. Look what happened to AT&T in recent years. They failed to differentiate themselves from Sprint Nextel and MCI. The result: A price war that ended in the ignomy of being bought by a Baby Bell.
As I said, differentiate or die.
Internal Brand Building: Living the Brand
Thursday, April 12, 2007
Increasingly, organizations are finding it critical to gain their employee’s understanding and enthusiastic support of their brand’s essence, promise and personality. They know that they must achieve integrity between what the brand says about itself and how it actually behaves. The bottom line: they understand that consistently delivering the brand promise at each and every point of customer contact is critical to their success.
Organizational Support Critical to Brand Strategy Success
In 1998, The Conference Board conducted a study on “Managing the Corporate Brand.” In that study, they discovered four organizational support factors were critical to brand strategy success.
They are:
•CEO leadership and support
•A distinctive corporate culture that serves as a platform for the brand promise
•The ability to obtain support from a broad spectrum of employees
•The alignment of brand messages across functions
These factors are clearly more dependent upon the human resource function than the marketing function.
The Importance of Front Line Employees
At the Institute for International Research’s December 1999 Brand Masters Conference in Palm Beach, Florida, Sixtus Oechsle, Manager, Corporate Communications & Advertising, Shell Oil Company, indicated that in a study of sources of brand favorability, Shell Oil found that interaction with company employees had the greatest impact (much greater than brand ads or news) on brand favorability. Indeed, most organizations have discovered that the ‘moment of truth’ in the delivery of the brand promise almost always occurs in customers’ interactions with front-line employees.
At the Institute for International Research’s The Branding Trilogy conference in Santa Barbara, California, Kristine Shattuck, Los Angeles Area Marketing Manager, Southwest Airlines put it well when she said, “Enthusiastic employees spread enthusiasm to customers. Market to your employees as much as your customers. If your employees don’t ‘get it,’ neither will your customers.” This can only happen if top management aligns all of its organization’s processes and systems in support of its brand’s promise.
The 10 New Rules of Branding
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
1) Brands that influence culture sell more; culture is the new catalyst for growth.
Look at Google. They are changing the way we behave online. Nike is a brand that has become a part of all culture. If you get into that split screen, you become part of the lexicon of life.
2) A brand with no point of view has no point; full-flavor branding is in, vanilla is out.
Love or hate Fox News, you know where it stands on issues. And Ben & Jerry's is more than just ice cream; it's a company that stands for a cause. Younger consumers have grown up in a consumer world. They're flexing their muscle, and they want their brands to stand for something.
3) Today's consumer is leading from the front; this is the smartest generation to have ever walked the planet.
Today's consumers are more discriminating and more experimental. They have very strong opinions on brands, and a lot of brands are getting consumers involved. Take Converse and the Converse Gallery, where consumers can make a 24-second film that will run on their site. It's consumer-generated creativity and a natural savviness.
4) Customize wherever and whenever you can; customization is tomorrow's killer whale.
The second advent of the Internet has consumers wanting something all their own. Consumers say, 'I need something that is mine, not mass-produced for everybody.' The best example is Apple's iTunes Website. Instead of buying a CD, consumers are buying the tracks they want and putting them on their iPods. Look at Starbucks, which creates whatever beverage a consumer wants, and Nike, which allows you to design a shoe online.
5) Forget the transaction, just give me an experience; the mandate is simple: Wow them every day, every way.
Apple and Coach found that the best way to give consumers a brand experience wasn't just to sell product in store but to control the entire experience. This is why they build stores in major cities. Looking for the other brands to soon be involved in the ‘experience.’
6) Deliver clarity at point of purchase; be obsessive about presentation.
There's an "option overload" in the supermarket aisles, and anything that simplifies that for consumers is welcome. If I'm a consumer and I stand in front of a shelf, I see a wall of product. Brands are beginning to recognize that you have to be clear about what they are selling at the point of purchase.
7) You are only as good as your weakest link; do you know where you're vulnerable?
Today's younger consumers show zero tolerance when a brand makes a mistake. If a Website isn't good enough, they will ignore your brand, and if you get negative PR about something, it will stick no matter what you do to rectify it. Brands like Wal-Mart and Nike are still connected to negative PR about alleged abuse of foreign workers.
8) Social responsibility is no longer an option; what's your cause, what's your contribution?
Consumers now expect corporations to get involved in cause marketing. Businesses are doing a better job at getting behind causes, for example, Timberland (“Take a stand against genocide”), Target (“Every day Target gives back to the community”), eBay (its Giving Works program, for starters), and GE (which this year launched its Citizenship Report, an annual report of sorts regarding the company’s environmental and safety initiatives). Not all businesses promote these efforts, however, because they're worried their efforts will be seen as commercial.
9) Pulse, pace, and passion really make a difference; had your heartbeat checked recently?
We're in a crazy world. We keep piling more devices upon us. The more you have, the more you need. If your business does not have a high metabolic rate, you're not going to survive. Companies like Google move fast, and that means the older, slower companies are doomed.
10) Innovation is the new boardroom favorite.
Brands are inspired by Apple more than anyone else. They transformed the music business, and people are taking what they did seriously. Procter & Gamble and GE are driving this and have made innovation the core of their corporate strategy.
Overcoming Common Brand Problems - 28
Monday, March 26, 2007
As we make our way to 40 an old problem claims number 28 on our list...
Overcoming Common Brand Problem Number 28: Defining your target consumer too broadly (for instance, women ages 18-65)
Analysis: A brand promises relevant differentiated benefits to a target consumer. By definition, a brand cannot be all things to all people. Increasingly, companies are focusing on brand usage over penetration—winning a larger portion of a smaller group’s business by offering more products and services that deliver against the brand promise. This helps to build loyalty and is in lieu of trying to attract additional consumers to the brand.
Key Point: It is a well-known fact that it costs seven times more to gain a new consumer that it does to get a current consumer to make an incremental purchase. Corporate parent brands can achieve increased targeting through well-targeted sub-brands.
Building Winning Brands - 6 of 16
Thursday, March 15, 2007
The sixth most important thing to know about building winning brands is that relevant differentiation is the defining aspect of a brand.
It is the most important thing a brand can deliver. Numerous studies have shown that relevant differentiation today is a leading-edge indicator of profitability and market share tomorrow. Does your brand own consumer-relevant, consumer-compelling benefits that are unique and believable?
Price is the worst differentiator because it is easily copied, reduces profits and dilutes brand equity. Product functions and features are also poor differentiators because they also can be easily copied. The most powerful differentiators tend to be one of the following:
•Emotional, experiential and self-expressive benefits
•Other non-rational benefits
•Customer service elements that are invisible to competitors (such as rigorous customer service training followed by customer service employee empowerment)
•The carefully engineered “total brand experience”
Relevant differentiation, a key brand insistence driver.
Case Study: Brand Equity in the Insurance Industry
Friday, March 09, 2007
The findings from our comprehensive brand equity study of the insurance industry has implications for many industries. Here is what we found:
•While there are over 100 insurance brands whose names people have heard of, few achieve widespread top-of-mind awareness (first recall).
•The insurance industry is highly fragmented with a low dominance of usage and preference by a few brands.
•Very few companies are aggressively claiming relevant differentiating benefits in consumer communication. The few that are, are rapidly gaining market share (witness GEICO which is claiming price/value leadership in auto insurance with substantial advertising support).
•Prices/rates are cited as one of the top differentiating benefits, suggesting that the category is commodity-like for many consumers.
•While behavioral loyalty is high, attitudinal loyalty is much lower, indicating a consumer's propensity to switch companies when the switching becomes easier (something the Internet might facilitate).
•Emotional connection to insurance brands is very low. Less than one in five consumers say that their insurance brand has never disappointed them. (The top brand on this measure disappointed two thirds of its customers at some time. All brands below the top eight on this measure disappointed over 90% of their customers.)
•Our analysis of the most powerful differentiating benefits indicate that many of them lie with the way in which insurance agents/representatives and the claims adjusters interact with customers.
•Our data would indicate that the industry is ripe for consolidation or strong niche marketing.
Three opportunity areas emerged for insurance companies:
1.Reinventing the process by which they interact with their consumers.
2.Claiming a highly relevant, unique point of difference (focusing on a product category, a consumer benefit or both).
3.Increasing emotional connection with their consumers.
The study provides the following lessons that are applicable to other industries:
•Strong, recognizable brand names and logos are important, but the brands behind those trademarks must stand for something unique and important in consumer's eyes. What does your brand stand for?
•When price becomes the major point of difference in an industry, consolidation will occur. The companies that are most likely to succeed in this environment (other than the acquirers) are those that aggressively take ownership of relevant points of difference and redesign themselves to consistently deliver against those points of difference.
•The importance of the customer points of contact to strong brands can not be underestimated. Aligning these with your brand's promise is critical. This may require redesign of your hiring, training, performance management, recognition and rewards and other HR practices. It may also require a redesign of your customer service processes.
•Companies that are market driven, truly caring about their consumers and constantly changing their products and services to meet changing consumer needs, will succeed at the expense of companies that are purely sales driven.
Branding: The Power of Word of Mouth
Tuesday, March 06, 2007
By Derrick Daye on Hallmark
In his book, Eating the Big Fish: How Challenger Brands Can Compete Against Brand Leaders, Adam Morgan indicates that people enthusiastically share information for one of four reasons: (1) bragging rights, (2) product enthusiasm, (3) aspirational identification or (4) news value.
Stories and anecdotes make a point real to people and imbed it in their memories. Brand stories and anecdotes can become legends. As they are told and retold, they can raise the brand to a mythological level. Stories are often told about consumer experiences that far exceed expectations. This could be the result of extraordinary customer service or some other incredible experience with the brand. Going out of your way as an organization to create these experiences will pay huge dividends – word-of-mouth marketing can not be underestimated. Ideally, you create experiences that reinforce your brand's point of difference.
For instance, a Hallmark card shop owner cared so much for one of her customers that when the customer could not find what she was looking for in the store, the owner drove several miles away to a few other Hallmark stores until she found what the customer was looking for. She hand delivered it to the customer's house that evening, at no charge, reinforcing Hallmark's essence of “caring shared.” Now that is the stuff of legends. Delivering this type of service, even occasionally, generates significant word-of-mouth brand advocacy.
Building Winning Brands - 4 of 16
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
The fourth most important thing to know about building winning brands is that the brand and its products and services must exceed customer expectations.
No amount of customer communication and relationship building can compensate for inferior or even parity products and services. New brands win in the marketplace because they meet customer needs in superior ways.
Amazon.com introduced a new, much easier way for people to find and purchase books on specific topics (through its sophisticated search and browse techniques and its 24x7 store hours).
Starbucks turned coffee drinking into a pampering, indulgent experience.
Chrysler’s PT Crusier and the new Volkswagon “bug” sold so well because of their superior design aesthetics.
Midwest Express delivers a superior level of airline service throughout the cabin with its “best care in the air” promise.
Think of the brands that have exceeded your expectations. They are likely to be “tops” in your consideration sets for the products and services that they provide.
The “legendary service” movement in the eighties is as important today as it was then. That movement encourages brands to deliver legendary service so that people feel compelled to tell others about the incredibly positive brand experience. For example, Saturn created a television commercial spreading the news about one of its dealers flying to Alaska on a rented plane to replace a part on a recalled car in the customer’s own garage.
In their tremendously popular Harvard Business Review article, “Breaking Consumer Compromises,” George Salk, Jr., David K. Pecault and Benjamin Burnett state that the best way to create breakaway business growth is to identify all the ways in which a business has made compromises with the consumer and then break them all so that that consumer gets exactly what he needs and wants. Brands exist because they meet important customer needs in compelling ways. They thrive because they exceed customer expectations.
Through rigorous brand equity research, The Blake Project has discovered that five factors drive customer brand insistence: awareness, accessibility, value, relevant differentiation and emotional connection. Three of these brand insistence drivers make my top 16 list: awareness, relevant differentiation and emotional connection.
Straight Talk on Branding III
Monday, February 19, 2007
This week I want to share my third installment, and maybe a fourth on developing a brand building organization. My last installment is here.
There are four organizational support factors that are critical to brand strategy success. They are:
•CEO leadership and support
•A distinctive corporate culture that serves as a platform for the brand promise
•The ability to obtain support from a broad spectrum of employees
•The alignment of brand messages across functions
For many, developing a brand building organization requires dramatic change. Here are some of the most common problems that organizations encounter when trying to implement new brand management programs:
•Senior management is not focused on the brand
•Senior management has a short attention span and fails to provide the support and resources necessary for the branding to occur
•Some senior leaders do not seem to buy into the brand management concept at all
•The organization is highly fragmented and resistant to change
•The organization is internally focused
•Difficulties in shifting people’s focus from their functional “silos” to cross-functional ownership of the brand
•The organization’s culture does not reinforce the brand
•The organization’s operations and systems do not support the brand
•The brand message is just one of many among a myriad of corporate messages
To create the change required to establish a brand building organization I firmly believe all of the following questions must be addressed:
•Is the corporate mission and vision congruent with the brand essence and promise?
•Is the business planning process linked to the brand planning process?
•Do the corporate culture, values and behavior support the brand essence, promise and personality?
•Are you recruiting the kinds of people who can deliver against the brand promise?
•Are you using internal communications vehicles to communicate brand positioning, strategies and priorities?
•Are you using training and development to increase understanding of brand positioning, strategies and priorities?
•Do performance objectives (especially common objectives) include brand objectives?
•Do you provide feedback on performance appraisals on how well individuals and groups are delivering against the brand promise?
•Do you reward and recognize people who have furthered important brand goals?
•Do you compensate people for achieving brand objectives?
•Do your products and services deliver against the brand promise?
•Do your operations, systems and logistics support delivery of the brand promise?
Brand marketing won’t work (at least to its fullest potential) if it is confined to an advertising agency, public affairs department, or even a brand management function. This is especially true if the brand in question is the corporate brand. The CEO must be the ultimate brand manager, and everyone throughout the organization must be a brand champion (which implies they all know the brand essence, promise and personality). Indeed, the company should be organized to optimally deliver the brand promise, and the corporate culture must support the brand’s promise and personality.
How can consumers know what your brand stands for if people in your own organization don’t? Does the person answering your 1-800 number know what the brand stands for? How about the in-store sales associate? The copywriter for your brand catalog? The person developing your brand promotion? How about the people who design the brand’s products?
Exploring Brand Equity Measurement
Thursday, February 08, 2007
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"You can’t manage what you don’t measure.”
This is especially true of a brand and its equity. A robust brand equity measurement system will accomplish the following objectives:
•Measure the brand’s equity across a variety of dimensions at different points in time over time
•Provide diagnostic information on the reasons for the changes in brand equity
•Gauge and evaluate the brand’s progress against goals
•Provide direction on how to improve brand equity
•Provide insight into the brand’s positioning vis-à-vis its major competitors including its strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats
•Provide direction on how to reposition the brand for maximum effect
The Blake Project has identified the following five attributes that drive customers to insist upon specific brands: awareness, relevant differentiation, value, accessibility and emotional connection.
These brand insistence drivers work together to move customers from being aware of your brand and preferring your brand to purchasing your brand and being loyal to your brand. Our chart demonstrates how this works...
(click on the image for a larger view)
We recommend that brand equity measurement studies:
•Focus on the key drivers of customer brand insistence
•Measure changes in brand equity over time
•Diagnose reasons for changes in brand equity
•Provide insight into the current brand positioning, including strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats
•Provide direction on how to increase customer brand insistence
Brand equity studies should measure the following for your brand and each of its competitors, with responses reported separately for different user segments:
•Awareness
•Convenience/accessibility
•Perceived value (including quality and price sensitivity)
•Rank in consideration set
•Preference
•Usage
•Relevance
•Differentiation
•Vitality
•Emotional connection
•Loyalty
•Multiple personality attributes and
other brand associations.
What do successful brands do?
Monday, February 05, 2007
By Derrick Daye on Successful Brands
What do successful brands do?
Successful brands:
•Stand for something
•Are trustworthy
•Treat people well
•Are different in relevant and meaningful ways
•Evolve with their customer’s needs and desires
Examples of successful brands
Starbucks
Starbucks was created as a ‘coffee experience that enriches people’s lives.’ Starbucks management views the Starbucks brand as combination of its product, its people and its in-store experience. Involvement and personal interaction are key to the Starbucks experience. Starbucks strives to be authentic and stand for something through passionate and committed employees. It promotes treating people with respect and dignity. For instance, its store employees are trained to treat Starbucks customers as if they were friends. So seldom will you be greeted with the words ‘Can I help you?’ or ‘What do you want?’ in a Starbucks store.
Harley Davidson
Harely Davidson is not about motorcycles. It is about an idea and a feeling. It is about ‘freedom of the road’ and ‘comradeship of kindred spirits.’ It reinforces this through its Harley Owners Group (HOG) and its activities. Clearly the Harley Davidson brand is meaningful to its customers. Why else would so many of them tattoo its logo on their bodies?
Midwest Airlines
Formally known as Midwest Express Airlines, Midwest promises ‘the best care in the air.’ And it must be doing something right because it has consistently earned the #1 US Airline designation and other awards from organizations such as Zagat, Conde Nast Traveler, Travel & Leisure, Air Transport World and other consumer reports since 1995.
Overcoming Common Brand Problems - 23
Monday, January 29, 2007
You're only a newspaper ad away from finding this very common brand problem...
Common Brand Problem Number 23: Trying to make too many points in your brand communication rather than focusing on the one or two most compelling points of difference
Analysis: The effectiveness of brand communication diminishes in direct proportion to the number of points you attempt to make in your communication. More is not better. This problem arises most often in companies with a junior marketing staff or where marketing is practiced by non-marketers (engineers, doctors, lawyers, etc.).
Key Point: Ask these questions of each marketing piece you produce: Does it quickly and clearly communicate the most compelling reasons to choose our brand over the competitive alternatives? Is it convincing?
NOTE: this was copied from Branding Strategy Insider
The Top Ten Stupid Ways to Hinder Market Adoption
Here’s a compilation of silly and stupid ways companies are hindering adoption of their products and services. I must admit, some of the companies that I’ve invested in have made these mistakes—in fact, that’s why I know these mistakes are (a) silly; (b) stupid; and (c) hinder adoption.
Enforced immediate registration. Requiring a new user to register and provide a modicum of information is a reasonable request—I just think you should do it after you’ve sucked the person in. Most sites require that registration is the first step, and this puts a barrier in front of adoption. At the very least, companies could ask for name and email address but not require it until a later time.
A good example of a site that does the right thing is Netvibes. It allows you to do a high level of customization without registering. (Thanks to Glenn Kelman)
The long URL. When you want to send people an URL the site generates an URL that’s seventy characters long—or more! When you copy, paste, and email this URL, a line break is added, so people cannot click on it to go to the intended location.
Here’s an URL for a billiard table copied and pasted from the CostCo site. Just how many billiard-table models could CostCo be selling?
http://www.costco.com/Browse/Product.aspx?Prodid=11197553&search=billiard%20table&Sp=S&Mo=8&cm_re=1-_-Top_Left_Nav-_-Top_search&Nr=P_CatalogName:BC&Ns=P_Price|1||P_SignDesc1&N=0&whse=BC&Dx=mode+matchallpartial&Ntk=All&Dr=P_CatalogName:BC&Ne=4000000&D=billiard%20table&Ntt=billiard%20table&No=0&Ntx=mode+matchallpartial&Nty=1&topnav=&s=1
The justification often goes like this: “We create a long URL because people with Crays might break our code and see private pages. Seventy characters that can be twenty-six lower case letters, twenty-six upper case letters, or ten numbers ensures that no one can break our code since the possible combinations outnumber the quantity of atoms in the universe.” This is what keeps sites like TinyUrl and SnipURL in business.
Also, speaking of URLs, it’s good to have an easy naming convention for URLs. MySpace, for example, creates easy-to-remember URLs like http://www.myspace.com/guykawasaki.
Windows that don’t generate URLs. Have you ever wanted to point people to a page, but the page has no URL? You’ve got a window open that you want to tell someone about, but you’d have to write an essay to explain how to get that window open again. Did someone at the company decide that it didn’t want referrals, links, and additional traffic? This is the best argument I can think of for not using frames.
The unsearchable web site. Some sites that don’t allow people to search. This is okay for simple sites where a site map suffices, but that’s seldom the case. If your site has a site map that goes deeper than one level, it probably needs a search box.
Sites without Digg, del.icio.us, and Fark bookmarks. There’s no logic that I can think of why a company would not want its fans to bookmark its pages. And yet many companies don’t make this possible. When my blog hits the front page of Digg, page views typically increase by a factor of six or seven times. It’s true that the Digg effect wears off quickly, but some new readers stick around and that’s a good thing.
Limiting contact to email. Don’t get me wrong: I love email. I live and die by email, but there are times I want to call the company. Or maybe even snail mail something to it. I’ve found many companies only allow you to send an email via a web form in the “Contact Us” page. Why don’t companies call this page “Don’t Contact Us” and at least be honest?
Lack of feeds and email lists. When people are interested in your company, they will want to receive information about your products and services. This should be as easy as possible—meaning that you provide both email and RSS feeds for content and PR newsletters.
Requirement to re-type email addresses. How about the patent-pending, curve-jumping, VC-funded Web 2.0 company that wants to you to share content but requires you to re-type the email addresses of your friends?
I have 7,703 email addresses in Entourage. I am not going to re-type them into the piece-of-shiitake, done-as-an-afterthought address book that companies build into their products. If nothing else, companies can use this cool tool from Plaxo or allow text imports into the aforementioned crappy address book. When do you suppose a standard format will emerge for transferring contacts?
User names cannot contain the “@” character. In other words, a user name cannot be your email address. I am a member of hundreds of sites. I can’t remember if my user name is kawasaki, gkawasaki, guykawasaki, or kawasaki3487. I do know what my email address is, so just let me use that as my user name.
Case sensitive user names and passwords. I know: user names and passwords that are case sensitive are more secure, but I’m more likely to type in my user name and password incorrectly. One of the funniest moments of a demo is when a company’s CEO can’t sign into her own account because she didn’t put in the proper case of her user name or password. I’ve seen it happen.
Friction-full commenting. “Moderated comments” is an oxymoron. If your company is trying to be a hip, myth-busting, hypocrisy-outing joint, then it should let anyone comment. Here’s an example of one such policy:
Q. Who can leave comments on GullyHag
A. Anyone who has been invited, either by us or by a friend. The invite system works like Gmail. We’ve invited a bunch of our favorite execs, bloggers, and friends to comment, then given them invitations to share with their friends and colleagues. That way, the burden of inclusion, and exclusion, is shared.
The concept that people have to be invited to post comments is pathetic—if you hold yourself out as a big cojones company, then act like it. Even the concept that one has to register to post a comment is lousy. There have been many times that I started to leave a comment on a blog but stopped when I realized that I’d have to register.
Unreadable confirmation codes. Don’t get me wrong: I don’t support spam or robots creating accounts. A visual confirmation graphic system is a good thing, but many are too difficult to read. For example, this is what I got when trying to create a Yahoo! account. Is that an uppercase “X”? Is the last character an “s,” “5,” or “S”? Maybe this only affects old people like me, but it seems that all one merely has to prove is that you’re not a robot so a little bit of fuzziness should be good enough. For example, if the code is “ghj1lK” and someone who enters “ghj11K” is close enough.
Emails without signatures. There have been many times that I wanted to immediately call the sender or send him something, but there’s no signature. Also, when I book an appointment with a person, I like to put in his contact information in case I need to change it. Communication would be so much easier if everyone put a complete signature in their email that contains their name, company, address, phone, and email address.
On a corporate level, communication would be so much easier if companies stop sending emails with a warning not to respond because the sender’s address is not monitored. I don’t mean they should not include the warning. I mean they should monitor the address.
Supporting only Windows Internet Explorer. Actually, I’m not nearly as vehement about this as you might think. Supporting Macintosh, Safari, and other Windows browsers is a lot of work, so this is your call. If you define your market as only the people who use Windows Internet Explorer, so be it. You may have to really invest some effort into this one, but all the other items in this list are stupidly simple.
Test: Can people communicate your site’s URLs to others over the phone?
Extra credit: People using Verizon and can do this despite its coverage.
