This Time, It's Political - Well...

As a Libra, I feel very strongly both ways on everything.  So, it's tough in the voting booth.  I'm troubled by the image of my mother-in-law going over a cliff in my new Benz.  And Shrodinger's cat gives me fits.

 

Aside:  Heisenberg and Shrodinger are driving down a road and a policeman pull them over.

 

"Do you know how fast you were going?" asked the cop of Heisenberg.

 

"No, but I can tell you where I've been and where I'm headed."

 

The cop noses around a bit and asks Heisenberg to pop the trunk.  The cop opens a box in the back.  "Hey, do you know you got a dead cat in here?"

 

And Shrodinger responds, "Well, I do NOW!."

 

OK, put that away.  I want to talk about politicians' websites.  I'll start with a simple question to the pols:  "What's the matter with you?"

 

This time the shoe's on the other foot.  People are lying to you!  Those fine men and women in your communications department are telling you that the Internet and social media are mass media. 

 

My fellow Americans, they aren't.  And the fact that you think they are shows your A) gullibility, B) arrogance, C) lack of attention, and/or D) usual willingness to take the easy way out.*

 

Listen up.  New media are one-to-one (1:1) that's you-to-him or you-to-her media.  Ya got that, McFly?  What a phenomenal opportunity to you to talk to someone and let them know that you hear him or her (I refuse to use the plural pronoun, it's one-to-one!) and to communicate with them at that level.

 

Wow!  I see the wheels turning in those narrow minds..."Hey, I can give a different answer to each correspondent." 

 

No you can't!  Well, you can but we constituents aren't quite as stupid as you think.  And we do talk to one another.  But that's not what I'm talking about.

 

Responding to a constituent's email or a post on Facebook is as personal as a handshake or a smile with eye contact.  It's a chance to connect.  And what do you do?  You have an aid or lackey select one of your prepared responses (based on the subject you force someone to pick) and send it in return, often days or weeks later.

 

How do I know?  I've checked out so many pols' sites that I'm nearly cross-eyed.  I've either submitted comments or questions or asked someone in their state/district to do so (for all those office holders who obviously plan to go no higher in politics so don't want to hear from - or respond to - anyone but their constituents.)

Courtesy Majix

Think about email.  Someone took the time to write to you individually.  To ask you a question or tell you how he or she feels about something.  It's tantamount to someone calling you by name and you saying, "Hi there."  What makes it really bad is that you choose to do that.

.

Now ask, how would someone feel if they got a note back that said, "Bill (Jeannie, Tom, Cucuzza, whatever), thanks for your note on the issue with the Department of Education."  Then make a specific reference and respond to his/her question with an answer.  No soft shoe, an answer.  And keep this in mind:  If, as they say, all politics is local, how can you localize your response for that particular person.

 

It might get you another vote.  With regard to that, I'm sure someone in your campaign has calculated the cost of a vote.  Simplest way?  How much did you spend and how many votes did you get.  You know that. Now do the math on the cost of responding.  Cheap, isn't it.  So, will you do it?  Think about it?  Yeah, I doubt it too.  Then again, if your opponent does..."

 

As for Facebook, if you want to be a propaganda machine, go ahead.  People will see it as that.  Can you afford to allow negative posts on your page?  Take a real look in that narcissistic reflecting pool and ask yourself why you shouldn't.  Are you a bad representative?  Bad legislator?  Wrong end of an idea because it serves you personally?  Is it really all about you?   Unfortunately, I know the answer to that one.

 

Twitter:  There is no better way to step in it than Twitter. Quips will be taken out of context. There is no context except with other sources.  There.  Did it in under 140 characters.

   

Now, on to your websites.  A couple of you have at least figured that part out. 

 

Visitors care less about your self aggrandizement and more about what affects them.  Pix of you at a bill signing?  Hint:  It's about the bill. On that very first page, give people information.  Give 'em a choice of finding out more about a number of things that might interest them.  Hey, if some of them link to a page where you are explaining the bill/movement/concern/expense/tax, that'd be great.  But many of those I've seen fall short.  Not because they have bad information but for two other reasons.  The first is the I, I, I POV that, like a lot of pix, makes it more about you than the topic. 

 

The second (Gonna get a little McLuhanish on you here) is production.  I see too many where you think you're giving a speech. Remember that 1:1 thing?  You're sitting just across the table or desk or kitchen counter with the viewer.  And he/she has lots to do. 

Get their attention, make the eye (lens) contact, and speak conversationally.  It is exactly that.  A conversation.  You do all the talking without listening; nothing new about that. (Couldn't resist)

 

Also in the production realm, I see a lot of shots that seem set up with the camera at a distance and zoomed in.  Maybe that's to keep from exposing too much of the background.  But that perspective puts distance between you and the viewer.  It's colder and if you're speaking conversationally, it fights with that aural perspective.  It's that inscrutable psychological stuff.

 

I have the feeling that none of this will be heeded since you're all a lot smarter than any of your voters.  But, what the heck. I learned a lot researching and had fun writing it.

 

"If I'm wrong, nothing happens! We go to jail - peacefully, quietly. We'll enjoy it! But if I'm right, and we can stop this thing... Lenny, you will have saved the lives of millions of registered voters." - Dr. Peter Venkman (Bill Murray), Ghostbusters

 

*Many of you ingrates fall into all four categories.

If You Want Visitors, You Have to Prep for Them

Seriously.  If you had a restaurant with a faulty front door that made it hard for diners to enter, would you not have it fixed immediately?  Or if the phone went out and you couldn’t book reservations or take carry out orders?  You wouldn't be standing on the desk of your telephone service provider?

 

And yet, multiple points in your site can have the same deleterious effect on the bottom line.  I once again repeat my cry, “Don’t take the word of your web marketing or IT person.  Check out your site in depth.  Place orders.  Contact the 'contacts.'"  Even look at the products or models that are featured.  You may be surprised.

Here’s what I see on a pretty regular basis: 

·     404 errors.  When someone gets a “Page not found.” it stops them in their tracks.  “Negative brand contact,” we would call it back in the 1400’s.  Today that often is enough to send the visitor off to another site

·         Forms that don’t work

o   “Cute” departures from name, address, etc. that force people out of the expected for no apparent reason

o   Forms that delete on linking…someone fills out a form and clicks “next” and you tell them they forgot to X and send them back to a now-empty page that they spent time completing

o   Asking for unnecessary information.  I will take it this far:   if you ask for a zip code before you ask for city, A) you’ve departed from the norm (see bullet 1, above) and B) if you have their zip, you know their city – it applies to a lot of those boxes

·    Scripts:  Seems everyone takes high speed Internet for granted.  Page weight apparently went the way of the buggy whip.  So designers dump all sorts of scripts – java and other – onto a page.  Most users, especially mobile ones, don’t have browsers set to map videos, images or scripts.  So the page takes forever and continually hops around the screen.  Amateurish and annoying.  Too often I get the dialog box that says, “A long-running script is preventing page from loading.”  Are you kidding?  Why don’t you post someone at the front door who holds up their hand preventing shoppers from entering.  Same result. 

·     Login confirmations:  You have someone log in.  They don’t remember that they’ve been to your site before.  They try to register and are told that that user name or email address is already registered.  You send them to a “forgot whatever” page.  Then, you make them re-enter the information they already entered.  (Not smart) and then you tell them an email has been sent to that address, and it doesn’t get sent.   (Happened to me yesterday.  Tried 3 times.  Never got an email.  Probably not going back.

·    Contacts:  If you’re taking the cheesy way out, that is, your database folks convinced you that “Contacts” is a great place to grow your database, change that thinking.  Sure, you’ll grow your database, but don’t make that the goal.  Make helping the customer the goal.  Don’t:

o   Force them into categories (silos for you MBA folks) with dropdowns on topic

o   Make them give you their life history.  If you’re selling the product they want, you’ll get that down the line

o   Offer only a form.  Give them an email opportunity

o   Tell them you usually respond within 24 hours and then take 3 days or, worse, not respond

o   I’ll reiterate – dump the form information if they have to return to it because they didn’t do things in the order you want 

Not worth your time to load Xenu or a similar link tracker and check out the site?  Would it be worth $50,000?  If that’s what you’re paying someone to tell you it’s right when it isn’t, it could be what it’s costing you – not to mention the lost revenue.  So do it.  Get an independent review or, better yet, do it yourself.  Check out the site on different browsers, a desktop, laptop, a couple of tablets and a lot of different phones.  If you see something you don’t like, remind yourself that thousands, maybe millions, of folks would use these very devices to visit you.

 

If your site is your business, it’s not micromanaging to check it out – to see how you as a customer experience it.  If you don’t like it, fix it.  No, you don't want to find out any of this, right?  Open an ostrich farm.

[Addendum:  after posting I received a great email from a friend.  Here's a suggestion to try, if you're ready to see the responses...add a dialog box at checkout that asks, simply, "What could have done to make your shopping (ordering, whatever you do) easier?"  Dare you do to it, and to read the responses.]

 

Let me change the title.  If you want visitors, you have to do some of their work for them.  Don’t want to hear that either?  Lock the door.

Being Smart with Databasing: Less Really IS More

Ya’ know, I want this blog to be positive – to be helpful. There is no intent to convey anger. But…(there it is!) Yep. This one’s for the idiots managing web databases, the ones charged with gathering too much information about all of us, no matter what.

With plenty of experience in databasing, please let me give you a thought: You don’t need to know everything about me – nor do you deserve to – unless the quid of your quid pro quo is substantial!

I know you’ve convinced your management that you can squeeze the number and location of all birthmarks from site visitors but you’re doing your company no favors. And if your CEO ever gets hold of stats from competitors who aren’t hounding users for data, and he realizes how you’re actually damaging the corporate image, you may well be gone. But, meantime, you’ll continue your harm.

Case in point. (This is just one. It happens all the time but this is the latest). Pantone. They generate color products and services. In fact, just about everyone is familiar with “Pantone 100 C” description. Cool company. In fact, it is the standard for colorimetry.

I happen to own one of their Huey products. It’s used to calibrate monitors so that you know what you’re really getting. And, not to overuse “cool”, but that’s what the device is. It works flawlessly on XP Professional and on Macs.

And then, I upgraded to Windows 7. Aha. Needed a new driver. Loaded the disc that came with the Huey and, of course, nothing there. So I made my way to the manufacturer website. There the milking started. Seems some database guy/girl there is convinced they need to know everything about me in order to give me the driver. And he/she did his/her doggoned best to make sure they got it, with every data box asterisked as a required field.

First: I paid for the doggoned thing. That’s enough.

Second: You don’t need to know everything about me in order to support your product. More importantly, I don’t need nor do I want to join your “club”. I don’t want your emails, I really don’t need your forums. I just need the device to work.

Third: If you do manage to pull the wool over your CEO’s eyes and convince him/her that you’re entitled to all that information, at least do a decent web design so that the page functionality doesn’t make me repeatedly complete the page, e.g., if you have to have (a good page doesn’t, but…) a phone number in a particular format, tell me it’s “xxx-xxx-xxxx” instead of returning the page with a “violation” and, at the same time, wiping other info you forced me to enter. Guys, that’s just insulting. But again, apparently you’ve been able to buffalo your top management.

I did finally get the driver and that cute Huey stepped up and recalibrated the video card in the new 7 machine in about a minute, but now I feel I’m on intimate terms with their website – all for their enabling a device they sold me to continue working.

Now one of my big issues is people who complain without offering solutions. So, here you go.

• Weigh what you’re offering against what you’re asking for

• Ask if you really need those data or if it’s just so you can puff out your chest or, worse, sell it

• Consider incremental databasing. Don’t know what that is? Then you probably shouldn’t be in your job. But when a person comes to your site the first time, you can ask for a bit of info. On return, you might ask a bit more. One more return and maybe some more. And, of course, if you sell them something, you’ll be able to gather additional transactional information. Don’t think it’ll work? I’ve seen it and done it.

Again, the point here is the positive aspects – if you’re running a database, think about what you’re asking for. If you’re entitled to it, go for it. If not, leave it out. Hey! It may actually improve business.