Tag Archive - Bad Business

Real Life Spam

July 22, 2005 in Uncategorized with 0 Comments

We have all seen the AOL ads and the Dave Chapelle Internet skit, depicting what real life spam would be like. It typically takes shape as somewhat chubby white male, in a bad suit, yelling at passers by. Last night, while walking around the local shopping mall, I witnessed real life spam. To be fair, I have witnessed it many times before, but last night I finally came to the realization that it was in fact real life spam. True interruption marketing at its finest.

I am talking about the cell phone kiosks that run down the center of most malls. They are laid out from one end of the mall to the next, all about twenty feet apart, and each is staffed by college aged employees whose entire job (so it seems) is to yell at customers that happen to walk by.

“Sir! Sir! Can I talk to you about your cell phone?! Sir! Wait! We have a great deal on…”

Um, no. In fact, please return to your little cell phone corral and go back to chatting up the girls from Cinnabon. I am all set. In fact, my guess is that 99.889% of the people that walk by are all set with the cell phones that they are carrying on them, and may actually pull them out to call 911 if you get any closer.

Is this the best that they have? Gen Y hacks attacking and yelling at horrified shoppers in suburban malls? Can this possibly work for the cell phone companies? Does anyone last at this job for more than a week? The only people that this tactic can possibly benefit, are the JC Penny workers. Because every time I go to the Solomon Pond Mall, I need to cut through JC Penny simply to avoid these people. JC Penny…real life spam blockers.

The Wal-Mart Affiliate Program [DENIED]

February 25, 2005 in Uncategorized with 3 Comments

In an effort to make some cash to pay for hosting and what-not, I belong to some affiliate programs that allow me to place ads on this site and hopefully make some spare change here and there. Recently, I applied to run some Wal-Mart ads on the site. I mean, who doesn’t love Wal-Mart right? Upon applying, I was told that my site would be reviewed and that I would be notified of my acceptance or rejection shortly. Standard procedure.

Twenty-four hours later I was denied. And received the following note:

Dear Andrew Teman,

Thank you for submitting your application to the Wal-Mart.com Affiliate Program. We appreciate your interest in our program.

Wal-Mart.com carefully reviews each application to our program. Unfortunately, we do not feel that your Web site meets the criteria we have established for acceptance. At this time Wal-Mart.com is looking for affiliates with high traffic sites that have the potential for high sales volume. In addition, Wal-Mart.com will not accept into its affiliate program sites that fit the following descriptions:

*Promote sexually explicit material
*Promote violence or hate toward any persons or groups
*Promote illegal activities
*Promote alcohol, tobacco, gambling/lottery in any way
*Promote the use of pyramid or similar investment schemes
*Include “walmart”, “wal-mart” or variations or misspellings thereof in their domain names
*Violate intellectual property rights of Wal-Mart.com, Wal-Mart Stores
*Disparage Walmart.com, Wal-Mart Stores or their suppliers
*Are under construction or not live at the time of application
*Require a username and password to access
*Are non-US based or are sites that primarily serve a non-US based audience
*Any other reason based on Wal-Mart’s sole judgment.

Sincerely,
The Wal-Mart.com Affiliate Team

Aside from being horribly disappointed, I was confused as to why Wal-Mart didn’t want my site in it’s network. As I read down the list, I seemed to not be in violation of what usually gets one rejected (sexual content, site down, illegal content, etc). Then it struck me. Disparage Walmart.com, Wal-Mart Stores or their suppliers. That’s the one. That’s the deal killer. Apparently they had actually visited the site and did not appreciate my appreciation for their “No Diggity” ad. Shame on them for not seeing past the sarcasm and realizing that it is actually one of my favorite ads. Hell, that was the ad that pushed me to pay for the download at Ad-Rag.

Oh well, at least Target took me…maybe because of the same posting.

Why Don’t Cable Companies Care?

January 6, 2005 in Miscellaneous with 3 Comments

MainbannerI recently relocated from Grafton, Mass out to Waltham, Mass to be closer to my office and to the Boston area in general. The move was what I expected it would be – long and tiring, but I am rewarded daily with a brilliant 2 mile commute (down from the previous distance of 33 miles each way). As per the normal routine when moving, I had to hook up my utilities before I headed east. NStar for electric was a snap, Keyspan for gas was simple and then came (queue screeching brake, skipping record player, breaking glass sounds…etc) the cable hookup. Unlike in Grafton where Charter was the only choice, Waltham offered a choice between the giant company with a horrible reputation (Comcast) and the slightly less giant company with the slightly less horrible reputation and slightly better prices (RCN). For these reasons I chose RCN.

Let me just say that assuming that what I have heard about Comcast is true, that it is the worst out there, I really feel awful for Comcast customers. I really can’t imagine anyone being worse than RCN. They are just deplorable.

I have lived long enough and moved enough to know that the standards by which one judges cable company customer service are completely different than that by which you judge say, the electric company. Let’s say that you receive a level of service from the electric company that might make you want to sue said electric company and vow to move to a water wheel powered home. This same level of service coming from your local cable provider would generally be looked at as relatively decent. You would probably leave feeling ok. A friend of mine likened dealing with the cable companies to being date raped. His point was, that although it is totally dirty and wrong, you somewhat feel responsible for inviting them into your home to begin with and quite often you just deal with it and move on. A harsh analogy I know, but it fits surprisingly well here.

Without going into all of the boring details of why RCN sucks so badly, my point is as follows. We need far more competition in the cable industry. And we as customers need to fight back where and when we can, and choose alternatives in hopes that these companies will improve their service if they begin to lose customers. Companies like RCN don’t need to provide good service, they just need to be slightly less shitty than the other guy (when there is another guy). The cable companies can mistreat you because they know your options to go elsewhere are limited, and in some cases don’t even exist. Exercise the other options when they are out there. Don’t sit and deal with bad service.

Why Do You Hate PayPal?

September 24, 2004 in Uncategorized with 10 Comments

And you do. On some level. You may use it, but my guess is you don’t like it. I knew deep down that I didn’t like it and I thought about why…

I am helping to organize a Madden Playstation tournament where the fee is five bucks. I am accepting payment online, using PayPal, and I have more complaints about PayPal than I have signups. This frustrated me a bit, as I didn’t perceive paying via PayPal as being such a pain in the ass. I got mad at the people who didn’t want to use PayPal. It’s convenient, it’ easy, anyone can do it….what the hell?

Once the anger settled, I thought about usability and the cornerstone of designing something that is usable. First you need to think of the lowest common denominator – the person going on the web for the very first time. Then you need to put your preconceived notions of what you think works aside, and listen to what the majority thinks, does, and says. If you curse out your users for being dumb when they can’t figure out your site, and refuse to change because you think that your system is fine the way it is, you are dead in the water. Pack up and go home now, because it is over. I often have a hard time coming to this point – but this time around I did and I learned as a result. I think PayPal is fine. Others clearly do not. But why?

I dug some more, and I asked around. I went through the angry anti-PayPal emails from purchasers and I realized that it really has less to do with the actual product, but more to do with the perception of the product – the brand and how people identify it. Changing the whole brand identity is no small task, so I thought about how some small layout changes might help people get past what seem to be the typical roadblocks and abandonment points.

The biggest detractor on the purchaser side seems to be the misconception that you need a PayPal account in order to pay someone who is collecting via PayPal. I am not sure why people think that, as when you click through on a “pay by PayPal” link, you are given the option to login and pay from your existing PayPal account, or you can skip right by and just enter your credit card and billing information and be done. Although this seems painfully clear to me on the landing page, for some reason countless people seem to abandon at this point. Most likely because the ability to just pay using a credit card and no PayPal account is not made clear enough to the user. A simple change to the layout here may help this confusion. Perhaps PayPal should make the landing page be a single page with the billing and credit card information on one form. For those that may already have a PayPal account, a small link outside of the form prompting a login would suffice. If you are a PayPal user you more than likely know your way around by now and can deal with the smaller link for login. This change, in my opinion, would improve usability from the purchaser side dramatically. Users would hit that page and see instantly that they could enter CC and billing info into a single form on a single page and submit. Transaction over.

Paypal_1

As it sits now, you enter personal information (shipping/billing info) on one page, and then credit card info on a following page. It isn’t clear (or as clear as it could be) that this page is the same as any normal online credit card payment page and not part of the signup process for a PayPal account. It seems that for the most part, people do not want to get sidetracked and sign up for a payment system they have no interest in on the way to purchasing something. More than likely, they have already signed up somewhere else when shopping for the item they are about to purchase, and asking them to signup for something else just to pay for it doesn’t sit well. Again, I understand that this is not what is happening, I am merely pointing out that at quick glance people seem to think that this is what is happening and abandon purchases at this point far more than they should.

To wrap…keep it simple, keep it clear, keep it on one page. And make it obvious that you don’t need a PayPal account to pay someone who is collecting via PayPal. I don’t want to give up on this product, but at the same time I also don’t want to continue to lose sales because of it.

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