I was reading this story by Rafe Needleman on CNET about how Google’s new checkout service is a huge threat to Amazon:

The biggest thing the online superstore has going for it is convenience. Once you buy an item on Amazon, buying the next one is a one-click affair. But go to another store, and you’ve got to enter your credit card info all over again. Amazon wins for convenience…

Really? I’m no analyst but I have to disagree. The biggest thing Amazon has going for it is its customer service. I’ve ordered books from many of its competitors and the reason I keep going back to Amazon is that the books/cds/other stuff arrive consistently in line with my expectations. That’s it. If they had screwed up one of my first purchases, they wouldn’t have my business today.

This ease of checkout stuff is way down on my list. I’ve never used 1-Click and I don’t intend to start either. The reason I don’t use 1-Click is because I like filling out the payment details each and every time. I’ve got a number of different addresses, a couple credit cards and sometimes (although rarely) I send gifts. Since I would have to go through and check these things over anyway, I might as well just start from scratch.

Google will do pretty well with Checkout. But Amazon killer? I just don’t believe it.

Technorati Tags: googlecheckout, amazon, e-commerce

The whole Second Life phenomenon is just too weird. For those of you who don’t know, it’s an online society where you live out a second life. What makes Second Life different is that you can buy (with first life money) everything you need to live a great second life.

Take Anshe Chung’s Second Life land development business:

Second Life participants pay “Linden dollars,” the game’s currency, to rent or buy virtual homesteads from Chung so they have a place to build and show off their creations. But players can convert that play money into U.S. dollars, at about 300 to the real dollar, by using their credit card at online currency exchanges. Chung’s firm now has virtual land and currency holdings worth about $250,000 in real U.S. greenbacks.

Now American Apparel is opening the first Second Life store where you can buy clothes for your avatar for $1. What?

I guess this is the first sign that I’m slowing heading over that hill. What the heck is going on? I remember, in my day, we didn’t have second lives…

Technorati Tags: secondlife, e-commerce

This article is great – it lists some must have Firefox extensions. Anyone who has been developing websites for any amount of time will really love these nifty widgets.

eCommerce is a great business. In theory, you just have to watch orders come in, send them to your fulfillment center and watch your profits grow. Of course it’s much more complicated than that. Launching an online store doesn’t guarantee you visitors, having visitors doesn’t guarantee you orders, and having orders doesn’t guarantee you profitability. You probably know most of this. That said, if you want to get involved in the eCommerce boom, here are some product considerations for you. I think the following are good characteristics for products you might want to sell online:

When people can’t get it elsewhere

About 20% of US citizens live in a rural or non-metro area. Despite local merchants best efforts, you simply can’t get everything out in the country. (I know, I lived there.) The local video store hasn’t got Criteron’s Sid and Nancy for sale. Nor does it have Withnail and I. But DVDs aren’t the only things that small towns don’t have. Residents also often don’t have access to: fancy lingerie, high end chocolates, kilts, John Kruk rookie cards and organic teas.

It’s not just country folk who can’t buy everything that they want. One of a kind, novel products are typically only available in one part of the country and are also perfect for Internet retail. Do you happen to make the world’s best rhubarb jam? What about your artwork? If it’s a high quality unique item, you’re in business.

When people are embarrassed about buying it

The Internet is an anonymous shopping experience allowing visitors to buy things they just otherwise wouldn’t. That’s one big reason why sex and the Internet go so well together. Sexual products aside, you have an opportunity to market anything that people are embarrassed about buying. Solving relationship problems is one area that comes to mind. Solving financial worries is another.

When it’s cheaper

A couple businessmen I met run a very profitable online operation selling… well selling all kinds of things. People love a bargain. If you’re running your business properly, you should have a cost advantage on the brick and mortars. If you’re able to pass that savings on, you can be a winner.

When buying online is more convenient

When I was running my business, I used to send vendors a gift during the holidays. For me it was easier to go and find something online and have it sent to them. Wine.com and Red Envelope were my choices. Perhaps there’s a business specializing in B2B gift giving?

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An eCommerce store is inexpensive to start and operate. Most of your marketing can be done with grassroots efforts posting (not spamming) on relevant messageboards, working on search engine optimization, purchasing Google Adwords and sending out a few local press releases for good measure. Fulfillment can start as a bidaily trip to the Post Office. Your accounting can start as a notepad. It takes a just a few hours a day to create a source of cash flow. It can be fulfilling and fun too.

Technorati Tags: internetretail, ecommerce, ideas

Your goal as a creator of websites should be to make things as easy as possible for your visitors. Ease of use is a tricky thing to measure especially if you don’t have the money for qualitative research. Thankfully there are plenty of big players out there giving you free lessons.

Default, default, default

I don’t know if you’ve noticed but four of the biggest Internet properties Yahoo, Ebay Google and Amazon all use the default link color. Do you want to know why? It’s because it’s the color people are familiar with. Use the default colors for everything you can. Heck, while you’re at it, don’t pretty up those form elements either. People are familiar with the ugly gray “Submit” box. Give them what they know. Minimize the learning curve.

Whitespace is your friend

When you’re creating a layout it never hurts to have a little too much whitespace. Whitespace makes it easy for your visitor to scan elements of the page. A good amount of whitespace looks professional and also helps make your text easier to read.

Readable

It drives me nuts when text is either too small or in a barely visible color. My laptop has a display which is a little too bright. I’ve tried fixing it on numerous occasions and nothing seems to work. When I visit Signal vs. Noise I can barely see the date next to the author’s name. Sometimes you’ll get bogged down in the design process of making things look pretty and forget to make things look readable. Don’t let it happen to you.

Show your users where they are and where they’ve been

A breadcrumb trail is an absolute must for navigation but it’s not enough. A breadcrumb is too linear and fails to keep track of the individual pages a user has visited. I was on the Price Waterhouse Coopers website last night and noticed that they have this great feature that shows you the last few pages you’ve visited. I’m not sure if it was modelled on Amazon’s ‘recently viewed items’ or not but I found it very useful. I didn’t have to stress about finding that page a visited awhile back because the site was keeping track for me.

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It takes effort to make your site easy to use. Sometimes you’ll have to bicker with your designer to get it. I think it’s worth fighting for. Observe how the best in the business do it and then follow their lead. If you want to read more on this stuff Jakob Nielsen’s Top Ten Mistakes in Web Design is a great place to start.

Technorati Tags: usability, design, ui, web

First of all, I would like to thank Kareem at Reemer.com for saying some kind words about this site and subjecting his readers to the writings of yours truly. Kareem is an awesome guy who has genuine enthusiasm for all things tech, knows how to recommend a great book and did I mention, most of the coolest women I’ve met, I’ve met through him. So check out his blog at Reemer.com. Now let’s get on with the program.

Today’s thoughts are on search engines and the fuzzy science of search engine optimization. I’ve spent countless hours working with Web Position and reading in an attempt to optimize our sites - here’s what I’ve learned:

Link Popularity

Link popularity is a measure of how many sites link to yours. Google smartly employs this metric because it is very hard to fake. If you’re curious about your link popularity, you can check out Market Leap. With Market Leap you can look at your link popularity in relation to your chief competitors.

Creating link popularity is tough and takes a lot of time. One strategy for creating link popularity is to tailor your content to popular portals that service your industry. Do you have the expertise to write an article that others will find useful? Write one. Then send an email or better yet call one of the authors at the portal and mention your article. Even if you don’t get a link, you still have an opportunity to create a friendship with someone in the industry.

One of the oldest tactics for increasing traffic and link popularity is the link exchange. A link exchange is when you send an email to another site owner asking that the two of you exchange links. Quite frankly, I don’t think this is very effective. When a tiny site would email me and ask for a link, I couldn’t help but think: What’s in it for us? Furthermore, what is this link going to look like? Is it just going to be a little bit of text in a long list of other links? That’s not going to help us at all.

You could overcome this problem by creating meaningful links on your site. By meaningful I’m referring to a link that has actual content associated with it. Perhaps you could write a little synopsis of why you like a site and actually suggest that readers visit. Then an email to the site owner would have some weight behind it. What business owner wouldn’t want to receive an email that said “We wrote an article about your site that I think you would be interested in.”

Doorway or Entry Pages

Another old tactic is the creation of doorway pages. These are brief pages dedicated to one particular topic. You then use a doorway page to link to your main site. The reasoning is that when these are indexed on the search engines, they will be highly ranked because they’re dealing with one particular topic. If you can spend three or four days generating thousands of entry pages then I think it’s worth it. They just sit on your server and could generate leads for years to come. The most effective entry pages will be those focusing on search terms that most of your big competitors ignore.

Meta Tags

Meta tags are lines of code that go in the header information of your HTML. They provide keywords and a description for your site. If you want to learn more about them check out this useful article. It’s true, they don’t provide a magic solution to search engine optimization but in my opinion they’re still useful. First of all, there’s probably a couple engines out there that still use them. Second, it’s always good to have words in your HTML that describe the page. Until all of the search engines release a statement that meta tags are indeed useless, I think it’s worth the 20 seconds to generate them. (While you’re at it, make sure your title tag reflects the content of the page.)

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While this is alll very good and interesting, it is useless without useful, unique content. Search engine optimization is worth learning because as you’re creating new pages for your site, you can keep the rules of the game in mind. This saves you time in the long run. This is no substitute for great content. Just take the example of MySpace.com (thanks again Kareem). They built up 47 million users in a little over two years with no advertising. The lesson: your time is best spent creating a site that your users love.

Technorati Tags: searchengines, link, marketing, doorway, metatags

My stepfather is a pretty simple man. Whenever it’s time to buy any of us kids (I’m 31 now) a gift, he asks simply “Where do you want your gift certificate from?” I like this trait because I’m a pretty simple man myself. This year I suggested Amazon.ca.

There’s one problem - I thought to myself - my stepfather is going to have trouble ordering this thing online. He has a computer and likes to manage his stocks online - but that’s where his online experience ends. When talking to him he sounded a little intimidated but I told him he could always call me if he was having trouble.

I was amazed when I received his email gift certificate and a note that said… “Hope you get this… boy that was easy.” Easy! Did he say easy? I think this is how we want our customers to feel whenever they’re trying to spend a little money. My goal is always to design with ease of use as priority number one. Amazon can teach us a little in that regard.

Check out their gift certificate form - by clicking here. Here’s what I love about it:

No clutter

Amazon have replaced their extensively linked header with just an image of their logo. If you look closely, it’s actually pretty hard to navigate away from this page. This reduces the visual clutter and focuses the user on the form. Now is not the time to suggest a great new book or video - when someone is ready to buy - let them buy. Design the form to encourage the purchase decision.

Clear Instructions

Over each form element there are explicit instructions on how to complete it. My guess is that some of us probably think this is a bit of overkill. I think it is unwise to fall into that trap. Whenever I’m designing, I try to think how each phrase could be misconstrued. If there’s a chance your phrase can be misunderstood - reword it. If there’s a form element that could use an explanation - provide one. Think of the most easily confused person you’ve ever met - and design with them in mind.

Number Your Steps

Your user is never going to ask “Did I miss something?” if you number your form elements. It’s simple but crucial because it helps to relax the user by providing a clear roadmap to follow.

Directed Navigation

Amazon doesn’t give the user a “Back” or a “Cancel” button. Instead the user is only prompted to “Continue”. This guides the user through the process. The user is reassured that she can cancel the order in the future. Amazon moves the user through the process - and doesn’t give them a choice.

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What’s amazing about this page is just how simple it is. I’m sure there are a lot of companies out there who wouldn’t dare put a page with so little polish (graphics) on their site. I can hear the graphic designers talking about how ugly it is. Nonetheless, this is a great example of interface design because it is focused squarely on the user. It’s almost impossible, even for my stepfather, to screw up.

For a more general look at how to design forms, check out this great article from the good folks at A List Apart.

Technorati Tags: usability, customerexperience, marketing, amazon, interfacedesign