eCommerce and

A while back I was perusing through a brick-and-mortar Staples and I saw this.  The "Beauty Bamboo Ceramic" priced at $9.99.

What caught my eye wasn't the beautiful foliage or the simple ceramic pot.  What turned my head was the "FOR SALE" sign in ALL CAPS affixed to the plants branch.

Even though the plant was in the middle of Staples (the largest office supplies retailer on the planet), on a rack chock full of fake plants, in the middle of the furniture section, and product names and prices were clearly posted in association with the plants, someone (maybe the manufacturer?) saw fit to make sure everyone knew that these plants were "FOR SALE".

I wonder how many people are walking through Staples and notice this plant thinking "Man, this is such a great fake plant on this entire rack full of fake plants in the middle of the furniture section with all these price signs everywhere.  I sure wish it was for sale, instead of just decorating Staples.  OH CRAP!  Look at that sign.  It is FOR SALE!  EUREKA!".

What if we had to do this in eCommerce?  What if on product detail pages we had to display a banner shouting "FOR SALE" in order to make sure customers understood that our products were, indeed, for sale.  Shoot, do we?

One would hope that any sophisticated internet retailer presents itself in such a manner so that customers understand when they are looking at a product that happens to be... FOR SALE.

I’m a huge fan of web applications.  Moreover, I’m a huge fan of Google’s web applications.  The less dependent we are on applications tethered to computers, operating systems, licenses, and updates, the better.   The more we can share, network and collaborate, the better.  And of course, the free-er, the better.

At the Gordian Project, we’ve been taking interesting steps recently in an effort to capitalize on the value associated with web applications, especially Google’s web applications.  One product that we continue to integrate more and more into our environment, is Google Docs and Spreadsheets.  Google Docs and Spreadsheets is a great web based application for small and medium sized business.

Google Docs is Great, Great, Great

The features and functionality of Google Docs are great: Create new documents, upload existing documents, familiar desktop feel, easy editing, sharing tools, choose who can edit or view files, everyone sees the most updated version of your file, a record of who added and deleted what and when, all you need is a web browser, secure online storage, save a copy to your computer to work on documents offline or distribute them as attachments, invite people to your documents, make changes together at the same time, sharing tools are integrated with your Gmail contact list, and, last but not least, the Coup de grâce… its free!

Great, great, great.  Google Docs is great.

This assumes, of course, that Google docs is up, working and isn’t holding my documents hostage.

If I can’t access Google Docs, then I can’t receive any of those great benefits.  Even worse, if I can’t get to any of the documents I’ve already created in Google Docs, then I can’t get any value out of those documents, until they release the hostages.  Although Google gives me the ability to save my documents offline, saving my documents offline as a defense to Google going down defeats most of the reasons one would use Google Docs in the first place.

Um, Google Docs is Down, No Longer Great 

Yesterday, Google Docs & Spreadsheets appeared to be down.  I needed to work on a document that I created in Google Docs and that my team was collaborating on.  I went to the Google Apps Start Page and clicked Google Docs & Spreadsheets under the Google Apps Links section. 

Here is a screenshot of the error I received:
 

Then, I went to the Google Docs home page, to try my luck there.

Here is a screenshot of the next error I received.

Hmmm.  That’s not good.  Now I can’t work on the project I started in Google Docs.  Neither can my team.  We don’t have the document saved on anyone’s system, since, again, that would defeat the purpose of using Google Docs in the first place.  Now that I’m stuck, frustrated, and wondering when Docs will be back up, I’m wishing I hadn’t used Google Docs at all for this project.

Now what? 

I know!  I’ll blog about the negative consequences associated with becoming dependent on free web applications supported by third party vendors.  Oh crap.  I usually write blogs in Google Docs so that I can receive all the benefits enumerated above.  Now I have to use Microsoft Word.  No collaboration!  No sharing!  No web browser access!  No secure online storage!  Well, at least Word isn’t down. 

A Dependency on Web Applications and the Cost Benefit Analysis

So what’s the lesson here?  Earlier, I ranted and raved about web applications by implying that the less dependent we are on non web based applications, the better.  However, today’s circumstances exemplified the other side of the coin.  The more dependent you become on third parties and web based applications, the more opportunity for failure you introduce, such as having documents taken hostage.  The more critical the area is that you outsource, the more painful the consequences are when they arise.  The free-er the product, the less support you’ll receive at all, let alone in an emergency.

• What if your business utilizes Google Apps for email and Gmail goes down?
• What if your eCommerce site uses Google Checkout as its payment method and Checkout goes down?
• What if your Search Engine Marketing ROI is calculated based on data pulled from Google Analytics and Analytics goes down?
• What if your videos are hosted on YouTube and YouTube goes down?

As sophisticated businesses continue to charge down the path of web applications, Software-as-a-service, cloud computing, outsourcing almost all features and functionality to third party vendors, and free everything (sans AdWords), we must understand the consequences associated our decisions every step of the way.  The Google Docs web application has a plethora of benefits that are absent from Microsoft Word.  For those reasons, I use Docs every chance I get.  However, the costs associated with the worst case scenario, when and if that scenario plays out, are high, very high (think disappearing documents, not just temporarily inaccessible).  As businesses charging forward, and making strategic decisions associated with the web and the future of our companies, a cost benefit analysis is critical every step of the way.  Every decision that introduces a benefit while introducing a dependency must be made with that dichotomy in mind: buy v. build, outsource v. inhouse, web application v. stand alone, SaaS v. hosted.  Google Docs isn't really free, it's costs are just difficult, if not impossible, to quantify.  However, if you understand that this cost exists, you know that the cost benefit analysis equation isn't one sided, which means your headed toward a good decision.

Hey, Google Docs is back up!  Web App Hostage Negotiators = 1, Google Docs = 0…

Now, I’m going to import this blog post to Google Docs, so that I can share it with a colleague, who can collaborate online using only a Web browser, edit it quickly at the same time, and make sure it’s stored securely online!!!  Hmmm, I’m having Déjà vu.

To give you an idea of where I currently am on the cost benefit analysis, I’m not going to back up the original before I import.  Let’s see if I regret my decision…
 

Zappos.com has been all over the blogging world lately, mostly due to DSW's lawsuit.  Considering a lot of people in the eCommerce community are speculating that this is a linkbait ploy on DSW's part, Zappos may be benefiting from the links as well.  Zappos.com is also trying some traditional marketing campaigns that may surprise you.

A few weeks ago I had the "pleasure" of passing through security at Ontario International Airport. On this trip, I took a drastic tack from my classic approach. I packed light. Really light.  I'm talking one bag that satisfies as a carry on for a trip almost a week long. Although this is old school to many, this is a monumental feat for me. In the past, my philosophy was to toss it all in, and be quite certain I packed any options I'd want, than to spend any time at all figuring out what I actually needed. However, now that getting in and out of an airport, plowing through TSA security, and flying in general, has become the second most inefficient process on earth (second only to the continental plates shifting to create new land masses) I've had to evolve.

Quest Through Security

So I checked in, showed ID, showed luggage, got our boarding passes, showed ID again, and headed to the Field-O-Metal-Detectors.

The family goes through the metal detectors first, without any hiccups, then I send the stuff through the machines for them to retrieve on the other side.  Now, it's my turn.

I take my laptop out of it's bag and stick it in the bucket.  I empty my pockets.  Out goes the iPhone, the keys, the wallet, all into the bucket.  Let's see if I can make it through the metal detector...

Beeeeep.  Nope.

The TSA lady points at my face, but she's really trying to point behind me.  "Go back through the metal detector!", she admonishes.

While trying to figure out what I should ditch next, she yells, "Take off your belt!"  Belt ditched; in the bucket.  Back through the metal detector...

Beeeeep.  Nope.

"Back through!", she scolds.

"Take off your watch!"  Watch ditched; in the bucket.  Back through...

Beeeeep.  Nope.

The line behind me is gaining in length, and losing in patience.

"What else do you have?", she chides.  "Nothing", I retort, while slapping my pockets.

No ones happy.  Not me, her, the crowd behind me.  Actually, everyone's getting frustrated.

She has an epiphany and looks down.  I follow her eyes.  Crap, my sandals are still on.  I'm not sure why I didn't ditch them yet.  Maybe I forgot.  Maybe I thought since they were small, light, and open toe, they wouldn't matter.

"TAKE OFF YOUR SHOES!!!!", she cries.  Like I'm an idiot.  Like I want to go through the freakin' metal detector four freaking times.  Like I want my family to have to wait for me with all our stuff on the other side.  Like I want the whole damn airport hung up.

Frustratingly, very frustratingly, shoes ditched; in the bucket.  Right now, I pretty much hate the airport, hate TSA, hate metal detectors, and hate, well, shoes...

But, this time, before I go back through, I notice a familiar face in the bottom of the bucket.  It's Zappos.com.  Here is what I saw.

The Zappos X-Ray Bucket Advertisement

The ad says...

IT'S MAGIC!
KIND OF LIKE THE X-RAY MACHINE.
Zappos.com
POWERED by SERVICE
PUT A LITTLE ZAPPOS IN YOUR DAY
MILLIONS OF SHOES, CLOTHES and BAGS.

How ironic.  Zappos.com reminds me they sell shoes, just when I hate shoes. (As an aside, they also reminded me of those advertisements on grocery store carts in that section of the cart where a baby rides.  Those ads always have pictures of people that look really shady.)

What is Zappos trying to do?

Recently, Zappos dumped their free overnight shipping and their 110% Price Match Guarantee.  Since then, I've noticed a decent amount of Zappos marketing directed at branding and other marketing campaigns that has difficult to measure ROI, such as these x-ray buckets. So with this campaign, is there more than meets the eye?  Are they trying to do more than create brand awareness?

Maybe Zappos is hoping that I'll be thinking about Shoes and Zappos simultaneously so that the next time I think about shoes, I'll think of Zappos?  Now, that would be great, as long as I also don't think about how absolutely freaking ticked I was and attribute that attitude to Zappos.

Maybe they are targeting the customer that is thinking about how they wish they would have worn an easier pair of shoes to slip on and off?  In the moment people might think like that, but in the morning, on the way to the airport, do people decide what shoes they'll wear and take with them on a trip, based on which pair will be most easily removed at security?

Maybe Zappos is thinking that people are getting to the airport earlier and earlier due to airport security, delays, etc., and that they can influence them to pass the time doing some online shopping?  I spent all my time going back and forth through the metal detector so that didn't work for me.
Maybe the idea is to get people to start thinking about shopping at online stores even when they aren’t online.  This is especially important since shoes are traditionally something that people like to try on before they buy.  Hence, Zappos' absent restock fee and free returns shipping.

Good Idea?

So is it a good idea for Zappos.com to remind me that they sell shoes, just when I hate shoes.  Good question.  I don't know the answer.  I know they convinced me to write a blog post about them.  AHA!  THAT'S IT!  It's a viral marketing campaign secretly targeting eCommerce bloggers who Zappos knows will question the value of their campaign.  Genius.  Just Genius.

By the way, once I ditched the shoes, it was smooth sailing through the metal detector.  Dang steel toe sandals... 

On the heels of Google Docs giving me a 404 Error that doesn't follow Google's own guidelines and Amazon going down to the tune of a $2.3 million, the largest alternative payment method provider couldn't just sit on the sidelines.  PayPal, not to be outdone by Google and Amazon, has now joined the ranks of mega sites dealing with recent errors and outages.

This last Wednesday, I went to PayPal's homepage, paypal.com, by typing the URL directly into my browser.  The page only partially loaded, showing lots of empty whitespace, noticeably absent formatting, and little navigation.  A big, almost empty, rectangle included two links in the lower left.  The first link read "Click here to retry".  The second link ironically read "Return to the homepage".  The title of the page read "Page Not Found - PayPal".  Several refreshes didn't clear up the issue.  Neither did clearing my cookies, cache and temporary files, restarting my browser, and retyping the URL.  Several minutes later, PayPal.com loaded fine.

Here is a screen shot of PayPal's home page give me the Page Not Found error.

Man, what's in the internet water and who will drink it next?

Last night (late last night) we temporarily (very temporarily) took our eCommerce properties down for maintenance. The downtime lasted about two minutes. Since not being down is, obviously, absolutely necessary for a pure play Internet retailer to function at all, staying up is of the utmost importance to success.  In order to gain some perspective as to the cost associated with downtime, this morning we performed an exercise to calculate how much revenue we lose a minute while we're down.  Although that number makes me sick to think about, we had no idea what we were in for today, or how timely our exercise really was.

Amazon.com Goes Down

This morning, while I was researching our competition on Amazon, I was shocked to see that none of the links were working.  I tried best sellers, a different category and then finally the homepage.  It was such a surprise to me that Amazon was down that my first instinct was to think that it was my connection, my computer, or something I typed wrong in the url.  So I asked a colleague to try to connect to Amazon.  Unexpectedly it wasn't me, my connection, or my computer, it really was that Amazon was down.  I can't yet tell how long they went down, however this article was published at 11:02 AM Pacific Standard Time and our team saw that they were back up by 12:11 PM Pacific Standard Time, so maybe an hour or so. 

Om reports that it was two hours:

"A word from Amazon’s spokesperson: 

The Amazon retail site was down for approximately 2 hours earlier today (beginning around 10:25) - and we’re bringing the site back up.

Amazon’s systems are very complex and on rare occasions, despite our best efforts, they may experience problems. We work to minimize any disruption and to get the site back as quickly as possible.

Amazon’s web services were not affected nor were our international sites."

An Unfriendly Error Message

Currently I get a Http/1.1 Service Unavailable which is a fairly generic and unhelpful error when visiting one of the largest ecommerce properties on the Internet. It seems that nothing is being done to update users of the issue or note when the site will be back up. Even though we have two Amazon accounts we sell through, no e-mails or contact has been made mentioning the outages.

Here is a screen shot of the error page.

We wanted to make sure the issues was not location based or an issue on our end so we tested Amazon utilizing a proxy service.  Here is a screen shot of the error page through the proxy service.

Every Minute Amazon Loses $37,947.78 

Since it's infancy, Amazon.com has had it's share of tough times.  The weathering of the dot-com-bomb, perpetual uber lean margins, massive growing competition, an ever growing infrastructure, and now a softening economy, In order to survive, Amazon has been forced to innovate in a myriad of ways.  Everything from longstanding and aggressive free shipping promotions to the Amazon Seller Central Marketplace to Amazon Web Services have helped the retailing giant push forward.  Interestingly, recent metrics have hinted that the mega retailer has swung the pendulum.  Amazon's first quarter results were stronger than expected, thanks in part to strong sales in electronics and general merchandise.  Moreover, Amazon issued a forecast for the current quarter and year that indicates a stronger outlook than Wall Street's current estimates.  During the first quarter, revenues increased 37 percent to $4.13 billion, verses the same period last year.

Jeff Bezos, Amazon.com's CEO, stated that "Our sales growth this quarter was driven by low prices and millions of in-stock items available for immediate shipment."  He added "We're grateful to our customers."

I wonder if what Bezos really meant say was, "Our sales growth this quarter was driven by NOT BEING DOWN.  We're grateful that we AREN'T DOWN."

Let's do some rough math see what Amazon.com might be losing during every minute of downtime.  Amazon expects to generate between $19.1 billion and $20 billion in revenue this year.  Wall Street's projections are on the lower end of that spectrum, at $19.3 billion.  Let's go the optimistic route and say that Bezos will figure out how to reach $20 billion.

($20,000,000,000 projected annual revenue / 366 days in a leap year) / 1,440 minutes in a day = $37,947.7838 Amazon loses every minute of down time

My stomach just fell out of my stomach.

Now, of course, this math is a bit dirty.  They might not reach their projected revenue high.  They obviously sell more during certain times of the day, week, month, and year.  They generate a significant portion of their revenue during the run up to the holidays.  Their international sites may not have been affected.  They generate revenue via other channels, such as Amazon Web Services, that might not have gone down.  Many, many unknown variables could affect this math.  However, we do know this, the number is big.

Let's see how much they lost, assuming they were down for only one hour (Om's post indicates two hours) using the math above.

$37,947.78 Amazon loses every minute of down time x 60 minutes in an hour = $2,276,866.80 lost due to this morning's downtime

Holy freaking crap!  My stomach already fell out.  Nothing is left to fall out.

Let's say it was only half of that.  It's still seven figures.  Wow.  In the word's of Tommy Boy, "[Tommy running into a glass wall] Ow, That's gonna leave a mark."

I don't know what takes Amazon.com down for an hour, but I hope it was something big and something new.  I think our downtimes are inexcusable and our revenue per minute pales in comparison to Amazon's.  Around the Gordian Project we're always talking about scalability.  One of the issues we think about is as pertains to scaling is, if we find a hole, a bleeder, an inefficiency, and we don't plug, bandage, or efficient-ize it, and then we grow, how does that issue or problem scale with the company.  If the hole grows at least linearly with the growth of the company, then we could be in trouble, depending on the size of the issue, relative to the size of the company.

For whatever reason Amazon.com went down today, I wonder if they went down for the same reason when they were just a "tributary".  If so, maybe back then, when the company was smaller, the dollars lost didn't seem so extraordinary, and as such, the issue one that didn't make the top of the "plug, bandage, or efficient-ize" list.  Now that the company has grown up, the issues relative size, although maybe not bigger as a percentage of the size of the company, means that the dollars lost have much more of an impact.

Maybe Wall Streets more conservative revenue estimates had issues like this built into them.

As Goes Amazon, So Goes Ecommerce... 

Retailers can and do use Amazon's marketplace as their sole internet sales channel or as an additional sales channel to their own website. Amazon's brand and traffic drive sales for the less known retailers and in return Amazon takes a commission of the sale.  Obviously sales were not coming in like they normally do via our Amazon marketplaces.  I would hate to think what we would do if Amazon was our one and only way of selling products on the internet.  Not only did this issue cause Amazon to lose money but it also caused tons of other retailers to lose money, including us.

Alas, the company, "remains the leader among e-tailers" according to the American Customer Satisfaction Index's fourth-quarter 2007 survey.  This shouldn't surprise anyone considering the numbers referenced above.  I guess the bigger they are, the harder they fall.  Not that we would mind having the problem of generating $37,947.78 per minute...

Sometimes Google creates guidelines for webmasters that Google doesn't follow itself.  Let me elaborate.  Last night, I went to Google Docs and was pleasantly surprised with a 404 error.  It was only pleasant because it's nice to know that even Google can't always satisfy Google standards, so I'm in good company.

For our non-nerds, in general, a 404 error is what users receive when they attempt to access a non existent page on a website.  This can happen for several reasons: the user may have incorrectly typed a URL, the page may no longer exist because it has been deleted, the page may have been moved to another location, the page may have been renamed, the link they followed may be broken or outdated, or a URL redirect, such as a 301 or 302, may have problems.

Google's 404 Error Page

I triggered the error by typing in the URL www.google.com/docs which redirected to http://docs.google.com/.  By the way, don't worry mankind, one browser refresh lead me to a working Google Docs home page.  Earth's productivity as we know it will have to halt another day.

Here is a screen shot of Google's 404 error, as presented to me:

Now, although I was surprised to have seen a 404 error from Google at all, this isn't what really surprised me.  Even Google's army of data centers can't get it right all of the time.  Also, I don't know of any uptime guarantees that come with Google Docs or any of Google's free services for that matter.  Some of Google's paid products or services do offer uptime guarantees, such as Google Apps Premier Edition, which includes a 99.9% uptime guarantee for Gmail.

What really surprised me, what really "pleasantly" surprised me, was the 404 error's presentation.

The text on the error page was extraordinarily simple, stating "Not Found Error 404".  The text was black on a white background.  Similarly, the title tag read "Not Found".  Also, the Google Docs favicon appeared in the FireFox browser tab.

However, Google's 404 page was not customized to provide help to Google's users.  Now, a non helpful 404 page is no epiphany.  Plenty of sites have 404 error pages as unwelcoming and unhelpful as Google's and plenty of great, free custom 404 error page recommendations are out there just waiting to be implemented.

Based on Google's definition of a "good custom 404 page", Google does not have a good custom 404 page

The irony in this example is that Google Webmaster Help Center provides Guidelines for creating useful custom 404 pages which recommends that webmasters create a custom 404 page.  The guidelines state "If you have access to your server, we recommend that you create a custom 404 page. A good custom 404 page will help people find the information they're looking for, as well as providing other helpful content and encouraging them to explore your site further."
Google's 404 page didn't do any of these things.  It didn't help people find the information they were looking for (Google Docs), was not customized to provide other helpful content (no other content was provided) and did not encourage them to explore their site further (no exploration opportunities existed).

So, based on Google's definition of a "good custom 404 page", Google does not have a good custom 404 page.

Based on Google's definition of an "effective 404 page", Google does not have an effective 404 page

Google's guidelines go on to describe how to create an "effective 404 page".  The guidelines state:

"Because a 404 page can also be a standard HTML page, you can customize it any way you want. Here are some suggestions for creating an effective 404 page that can help keep visitors on your site and help them find the information they're looking for:"

Then, the guidelines provide a bulleted list of suggestions.  Let's see how well Google does, in implementing their suggestions:

• Tell visitors clearly that the page they're looking for can't be found. Use language that is friendly and inviting.

Well, although the text doesn't say "what" isn't found, the page certainly presents the text "Not Found" loud and clear.  Obviously, the text "Not Found Error 404" is neither friendly nor inviting.

• Make sure your 404 page uses the same look and feel (including navigation) as the rest of your site.
  

Google's 404 page doesn't use any look and feel, or navigation, let alone a look and feel that is the same as the rest of Google.

• Consider adding links to your most popular articles or posts, as well as a link to your site's home page.
  

Google's 404 page doesn't contain any links to anywhere.

• Think about providing a way for users to report a broken link.

Google's 404 page doesn't provide a way for users to report anything.

• No matter how beautiful and useful your custom 404 page, you probably don't want it to appear in Google search results. In order to prevent 404 pages from being indexed by Google and other search engines, make sure that your webserver returns an actual 404 HTTP status code when a missing page is requested."

I didn't check the HTTP status code on Google's 404 page to see if Google's webserver returned an actual 404 or not.  Currently, it doesn't look like the 404 page appears in Google search results.

So, based on Google's definition of an "effective 404 page", Google does not have an effective 404 page.

Is Google a Google-friendly site?

What's really funny, is that Google's "Guidelines for creating useful custom 404 pages" are found under Googles' "Creating a Google-friendly site", which naturally begs the (very long) question:

If Google does not have a "good custom 404" page based on Google's definition of a good custom 404 page, and if Google does not have an "effective 404 page" based on Google's definition of an effective 404 page, which means that Google does not have a "useful custom 404 page" based on Google's "Guidelines for creating useful custom 404 page", and these guidelines are an element of "Creating a Google-friendly site" then...

Is Google a Google-friendly site?

This week, "The Official Google Analytics Blog" posted an article dedicated to website optimization.  The article, authored by Laura Melahn from the Google Analytics Team and Jon Stona from the Website Optimizer Team, focuses on optimizing websites for conversion utilizing Google Website Optimizer and Google Analytics.

Early on in the post, the authors clarify the difference between website optimization and search-engine optimization by defining both terms.  In this clarification, Google defines search engine optimization as the following:

• Search-engine optimization means adjusting the content of your site so it ranks higher in the list of search results for a particular keyword or keyword phrase.

Now, it's no epiphany that Google's definition of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) focuses heavily on site content, since the user experience exiting Google is at the top of their priority list.  However, the noticeably absent elements of raw link juice, anchor text weight and domain authority is interesting.  In general, when site owners think about Search Engine Optimization, as Google mentions, their primary objective is to be sure that their site "ranks higher in the list of search results for a particular keyword or keyword phrase".  However, for the most part, the term Search Engine Optimization is utilized in association with this goal, namely ranking higher, versus in association to an attribute that contributes to this goal, such as adjusting content.  This goal can be reached by improving a healthy amount of arenas, only one of which is site content.  Although Google's definition is likely accurate from a historical perspective, if Search Engine Optimization has become more synonymous with ranking higher than with adjusting content, and ranking higher is influenced by a slew factors, some of which arguably have more or less influence than content, maybe the definition of Search Engine Optimization should be something like the following:

• Search-engine optimization means adjusting the content of doing things like W, X, Y, and  Z to your site so it ranks higher in the list of search results for a particular keyword or keyword phrase. 

Where W might be "adjusting content", X might be "building inbound links", Y might be "earning domain trust", Z might be "creating new content" and so forth.

This definition focuses on the goal and includes some of the attributes that contribute toward reaching that goal.  This approach would certainly align with industry practice.  Companies that provide Search Engine Optimization services typically provide a laundry list of ways for you to spend money.  Many firms who tout themselves as Search Engine Optimization companies provide a slew of services, including "adjusting the content of your site".  However, few firms run around touting themselves as, say,  a Link Building company, and provide search engine optimization (content adjustment) services as well.

Maybe it's just semantics...

At the end of my senior year of high school I was awarded "Scholar Athlete", which came with a certificate published on an ink jet printer and something like $500 bucks.  Now, even though this was pre-steroid scandal, the award is pretty deceiving.  I'm way more scholar than I am athlete.  All the real jocks were, how do I put this lightly, academically challenged.  I think the athletics department just picked the student with the highest GPA, as long as he or she played any sport.  I played on the golf and tennis teams.  Well, actually, I "used" the golf team.  If you joined the golf team, you got to play at all the great local courses, for free, as often as you liked and use the driving range, for free, until they shut off the lights.  I didn't care as much about our team, which wasn't that great anyway, as I did about free golf.

Hang with me, eCommerce-ville just ahead.

The scholar athlete award is so deceiving that heading to college, I couldn't have cared less about sports.  However, once I stepped foot on USC's campus and started mainlining the Koolaid, my metamorphosis into a college football feen went full throttle.  Long story short, now I'm a massive USC football fan.  This addiction has led me to become a huge college football fan.  Being a college football fan means I hang out with people who like pro football; which means I end up watching the Super Bowl.  Inevitably, I annually find myself inhaling a carb-infused feast known as pizza.  It's a natural downward spiral.

Hooray, entering eCommerce-ville!  Population: Many hungry sports fans.

Integrating Offline Advertising with Search Engine Marketing

Following the Super Bowl earlier this month, there's been some interesting chit chat in the blogoshphere discussing how well companies integrated their Super Bowl television commercials with their online presence.  With cost estimates for 30 second spots swirling up to $3 million, it seems critical for advertisers to take full advantage of their commercial exposure by intimately assimilating their online arenas.  After the game, Reprise Media published their 4th annual Search Marketing Scorecard (SMS) which ranks companies who buy Super Bowl commercials by their ability to integrate those commercials with their online presence in order to metric how prepared each company is to capitalize on online interest.  A healthy portion of the conversation has been centered around how the Super Bowl advertisers fared from a website visibility perspective.  More specifically, this conversation has analyzed URL visibility in the commercials, mentioning the URL, displaying or calling out the URL prominently, showing website screenshots and the advertiser's ability to drive traffic to their website.  Another notable portion of the conversation has centered around a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) perspective.  The SEO conversation has analyzed whether advertiser's sites appear in search engine results for branded and non branded phrases associated with the campaign.  For anyone that did not catch the Super Bowl advertisements, Fox created a MySpace page housing all of the advertisements.  Although Fox and MySpace are siblings, both parented by News Corp., the general consensus seems to be that a more strategic SEO move would have been for Fox to host the commercial content on their own domain.  MySpace seems to be doing just fine on the traffic front.

Wait, isn't this post supposed to be about Pizza Hut and email advertising?  Why are we still talking about the Super Bowl?  Hold your horses!  eCommerce-ville has needs.  You can't just rush in.  Where's the foreplay?

Order Online: A Call to Action

All this "Which Super Bowl advertisers ruled and which ones sucked?" conversation reminded me why I'm glad that I'm a college football fan.  Not only do I think college football is superior (trigger flood of hate mail), but, in general, many of the sponsors' advertising campaigns are better as well.  Case in point: Papa John's.  Papa John's sponsored the Bowl Championship Series (BCS) game between the Cincinnati Bearcats and the Southern Miss Golden Eagles, aptly titled the 2007 PapaJohns.com Bowl.  Not only did Papa John's plaster their URL (not just their name) on just about every single piece of marketing that made reference to the game, from the BCS' website to the banner across the televised broadcast, but plenty of the marketing included the call-to-action "Order Online" underneath the Bowl's title.  Even the giant Papa John's logos all over the field were stamped with the instruction to "Order Online".

Now, it doesn't take a marketing research guru to figure out that Papa John's may have had a spike in sales during the Papa John's Bowl due to their sponsorship.  However, the higher level long term branding initiatives are a much more interesting discussion.  It's well known that using a strong call-to-action in Search Engine Marketing (SEM) campaigns is an optimization strategy that, in general, improves the quality and performance of advertising campaigns, without raising costs.  Not only is Papa John's use of a call-to-action capitalizing on this strategy, their implementation in an offline channel generates online traffic while lowering overhead conversion costs.  The costs associated with executing an online transaction are likely markedly less than transactions performed over the phone.  Moreover, every order placed online provides an opportunity for Papa John's to build their email marketing list, up sell and cross sell in an automated fashion, and generate increased loyalty with those who have a positive customer experience.  As such, the "Order Online" mantra may be less about customer acquisition and more about customer retention and market share growth.

Their SEO efforts seem to be in tune as well.  For the searches order pizza online and pizza order online, Papa John's ranks first.  Along with the bowl game sponsorship,  Papa John's created an entire site, papajohnsbowl.com, dedicated to the game and chock full of content.

Eureka!  Our destination!  A conversation about Pizza Hut!  The title of this post does apply!!!

No Opt-In, No Pizza For You

Don't you hate it when you're creating an account on a website so that you can place an order and right before you check "I Agree" to the Terms of Use, you have to UNCHECK, "I Agree" for you to send me a bunch of crap.  Well, Pizza Hut took that annoyance to a whole new level.

The week before the super bowl, my wife mentioned that we had a couple unused Pizza Hut gift cards that had been magneted to our refrigerator for over a year.  She was under the impression that the card's value begins to depreciate one year after purchase (If true, don't even get me started on this issue!).  Perfect!  We had a super bowl party to attend, so we decided to donate to the cause.  Since Super Bowl Sunday is like the biggest pizza ordering day, I dropped the gift cards off at my friends house the night before the game so we could get our order in before the frenzy.  We grab the mac book, find the codes on the gift cards, and head to pizzahut.com.  After spending time starring at the coupons, figuring out the promotions, figuring out how many bodies we need to feed and filling up our shopping cart, we end up at that account creation page.  After filling out a bunch of data, we get to the bottom of the form and see this:

WHAT?!?!  Are you serious?  Really Pizza Hut?  Really?  You can't be.  This can't be right.  I really can't buy your product online unless I agree to receive your junk mail?  There's no check to opt-in, LET ALONE AN UNCHECK TO OPT-OUT?

Let me get this right.  In order to order pizza online from pizzahut.com I MUST "agree to receive information about Pizza Hut®/WingStreet® coupons, promotions, announcements, events and specials".  Are you freaking kidding me?  Refresh!  This must be a mistake.  No, even better, they must have been hacked by a competitor.  Dominoes... you sneaky, sneaky, guys (KIDDING, no calls from lawyers).  I was absolutely floored.  Now, I have no idea how easy it is to opt-out of the "information", once the "coupons, promotions, announcements, events and specials" start flooding in since my buddy refused to create an account.  I'm imagining the subject of an email right now: "WingStreet Wings: So Damn Good, You'll Never Unsubscribe, So Why Give You the Option?".

In scanning the policies, I couldn't quite figure out how they were going to advertise to me.  Is it email, snail mail, text, pizza delivery boy stopping by, blimp, tattoo?  Also, I don't know why there is a "Pizza Hut Terms of Use and Privacy Policy" and a "WingStreet® Terms of Use and Privacy Policy".  Both of the Terms of Use links land on the same page (http://www.pizzahut.com/TermsOfUse.aspx) and both of the Privacy Policy links land on the same page (http://www.pizzahut.com/PrivacyPolicy.aspx).  Neither of the documents make it clear whether they are the "Pizza Hut" docs or the "WingStreet" docs.  The account creation form requires several pieces of information, including: email address, street address and phone number.  Other types of information are optional, like a cell phone number.  While I was wondering what channels and mediums this "information" would come via, I came across some great content in the Privacy Policy.  My favorite part of the policy is reproduced below:

Hilarious!  I love it.  They say "For those who initially opted-in to receive future offers or promotional materials or to allow the sharing of Personal Information with third parties may subsequently opt-out as follows".  Ummm, by "For those who" do you mean "everyone who bought online" since it's impossible to not "initially" opt-in?  Underneath that, the policy provides instructions on how to opt-out of email and text message communications, which implies they advertise via both of these mediums assuming you cough up your cell phone number.  I'm guessing they advertise to the street address as well.  For perspective, it looks like Papa John's let's you opt-out of both email advertising (by unchecking) and text message advertising (by not checking).

Since we thought this was a terrible policy, didn't want to end up on their advertising lists, didn't want to have to figure out opting out later and didn't want to deal with a bunch of junk mail until we could get off their lists, we closed our browser and called our order in over the phone.  We would have gone to a competitor if we didn't already have the gift cards.


This experience raises at least two serious concerns.  First, it completely eliminated all of the value mentioned above that could have been created by an online order.  Since we called in, conversion costs increased, Pizza Hut will never have the opportunity to add our email address to their marketing lists (via a check or a non-uncheck), they will never have the chance to up sell or cross sell to us in an automated fashion, they have completely obliterated any loyalty we had and they provided an utterly terrible customer experience.  Moreover, their customer retention and market share numbers just dwindled by a body count of two (my friend and I).  Second, the strategy that Pizza Hut is utilizing makes me wonder if most users don't notice what they're getting themselves into and if this is what Pizza Hut is shooting for.  Well known practice in eCommerce is to force a customer to agree to a sites general terms of use in order to transact on that site.  Sometimes, at the same time a user is agreeing to the Terms of Use, a second, optional, opportunity is provided that allows the the customer to opt-in to advertising.  If only one option is given, it is by and large a Terms of Use agreement.  Therefore, if a customer only sees one option, and doesn't read the details, they assume that they are agreeing to a sites Terms of Use, and that no option to opt-in to advertising exists, let alone that they are opting in if they agree to the Terms of Use.

By the way, in the past, I've been a big fan of Pizza Hut's crust.  This time, we went for the Pizza Mia's.  I have to say, I was definitely disappointed.  Icing on the cake...

Well, so long for today eCommerce-ville.  The sun is setting on you once again.  It's been a good visit.  A long one, but a good one.  Next fall during football season (college or pro) when I order pizza online, it's Papa John's all the way.