Erin Richey is a Robot

Just for fun, I’ve been roboticized. While I doubt I’d end up looking like this if I were to become an android, it beats looking like an intelligent Shop-Vac hands down.  I thought the original picture for this robot portrait would be fun because with the hair it’s a bit like Rachael from Blade Runner.

Other computationally intelligent (or at least semi-talented) things I like include Roombas (I probably anthropomorphize this too much), Kismet, and HAL.

The robot making process.

There are a lot of discussions on businesses participating in social media and how they can appropriately measure their efforts and document their successes (or failures).  How do you measure social media ROI?  Does ROI even exist for social media?  Those just stepping into the social sphere have a lot to consider.

However, regardless of whether you’re tracking retweets, followers, or video views, successful online efforts can influence people who are essentially off your radar.  Businesses who engage online have the opportunity to influence an outer layer of individuals who may be unmeasurable by any social media metrics.

The Roger Smith Hotel is a boutique hotel in New York City that engages in social media.  However, I’m not one of their Twitter followers, I’ve never seen their Flickr photos, and I have no idea if they have a Facebook page.  I’ve also never visited their hotel, and I hadn’t heard of their brand until a few months ago.  It wouldn’t matter how they measured their online reach – I’ve had little to no interaction with their online channels and I don’t represent any clicks, tweets, links, or mentions (until now).

However, they’ve reached a point online where their branding has stretched beyond their immediate control and their hotel evangelists have begun doing their marketing for them.  I know about the Roger Smith Hotel, and I found out about them online.

The Wisdom of Word of Mouth

I follow a pretty small group of people on Twitter right now, but I read what they post.  I look at their TwitPics, and I click on their links.  Even though the group is small, I would guess that half of the knowledge and new information I acquire each day can be attributed to something that I saw on Twitter.

I’ve seen the Roger Smith Hotel mentioned a couple of times in the past few months – and I saw it mentioned by different people.  I’ve read their updates, and I’ve clicked their links to the Roger Smith Life blog.  None of this came directly from the Roger Smith team.

To be fair, the Roger Smith Hotel has very little reason to seek me out or know I exist.  I live on the West Coast, so I won’t be attending any of their events in the near future; I don’t have any immediate plans in New York, so I’m not searching for hotels in the city right now.  In fact, normally if I was hunting down hotels in NYC, the Roger Smith won’t make it onto my list.  The prices are probably beyond any budget-traveler limits I’d have set, and it’s not a national chain, so it’d be easy to not notice.

However, via the powers of the Roger Smith online community, their brand has found me.  I’ve seen pictures where I recognized the Roger Smith sign, and I’ve read posts where people have mentioned meeting up with friends at Roger Smith.  It sounds like fun.

A Human Face for a Business Brand

I visited their blog and was confused.  At first, I wondered if it was really a hotel.  Where were all the articles pimping room specials and announcing how great the service is?  They’re not there.  Instead they have real pictures and real video accompanying real stories about real people.  In short, they have useful and interesting content.    And it’s not there just to get high search engine rankings or to generate links back to their website.  It’s there to humanize their company and put a personal face on their brand.

Since I’m now intrigued by their content and their persona, I begin visiting other pages and looking at their website further.  The Roger Smith Hotel doesn’t know that because I’m a dancer and choreographer, I have an interest in performance art.  But I do, so their information on the installation art space, The Lab, immediately gets my interest.  As I browse the artists and performances featured on The Lab site, the Roger Smith Hotel has not only presented me with a possible place to stay the next time I’m in NYC, but now they’ve given me another reason to want to plan a trip.

If the Roger Smith marketing team does measure social media ROI, and if I do book a room at their hotel when I’m next in NYC, there’s a good chance they won’t be able to attribute that booking directly to a social media campaign.  Maybe sometime I’ll sign up for their email or maybe I’ll check visit them on Twitter and click on a few links.  But if I don’t, have their efforts been any less of a success?  Is their use of social media unjustified?

No.  They’ve created a persona strong enough to reach people beyond the immediate scope of their own online community.  Even when it’s unmeasurable, the influence is there.

I love real books, and although some people have speculated that the age of the paperbound book has come to an end, I don’t believe physical books will become extinct anytime soon. However, I’m excited and optimistic about all the ereaders that could be hitting the market soon. Amazon’s Kindle surprised me when it was released, but it appeared too expensive and clunky for me to rush out and buy one. What got my attention was the growing collection of Amazon ebooks.

With shelves now stocked with thousands of popular books in digitalized form, suddenly with just one click I can get instant access to most of the books I browse through. The creation of Kindle ereader software for iPod Touches and iPhones means that I can start reading the book on my screen in a matter of seconds. I now constantly struggle to not buy a version of each book I add to my wishlist.

That’s why I can’t wait for the development of a quality ebook library or subscription service. One of the problems with owning so many books is that they’re extremely difficult (heavy) to move. Books take up space. They also cost money. Sometimes a lot of money. I’m sure that’s why libraries were invented. However, where I live the library is rarely open during the hours when I could get to it, and many times they don’t have the books I’m looking for. I also just find it incredibly convenient to push a button and get what I want instantly. (Others must also find instant access convenient as well, or services like Hulu and streaming Netflix wouldn’t have done so well).

I am convinced that having instant access to thousands (hundreds of thousands) of digital books would be beneficial to my life. I would happily pay a (reasonable) fee to become an ebook library member or to join an ebook subscription service. Over the summer, I tried a Netflix-style book rental service, but nothing beats a two-week wait like an instant download (and the book rental subsequently went out of business).

Ebook Libraries Now

Libraries like the New York City public library, the Chicago public library, and many others across the nation already offer ebook lending services, but you have to be a card holder. This typically isn’t possible unless you live in that state or county. There are several global ebook lending services out there, but they’re not at all what I’d consider an “ideal” alternative. At this point in time, the companies who are best equipped to start a lending service are the companies who have already have relationships with publishers and who have already amassed catalogs of digital material – the likes of Amazon, Barnes & Nobles, and Google.

The influx of ereaders and tablets set to hit the market this year will be nothing without content. Amazon and Barnes & Noble have stocked their virtual shelves with the digital version of the latest top sellers, and they’re adding new ebooks each week to satisfy Kindle and Nook users. Initially, I believe things will be shaky as tablets and ereaders quickly become more common and users, retailers, and publishers alike struggle to deal with issues like digital rights and cross-compatibility.

Simple and Functional

Ultimately, in order to remain competitive and to truly reach the masses, retailers will have to deliver their digital media in a format that works on all devices. Trying to determine the differences between mobi and epub and pdf is too confusing for the mass population. Either the digital book will work with your device, or it won’t. If it won’t, the distributor is losing out on market share.

Along with the greater adoption of ereaders will come a uptick in digital media sales, some of which might help floundering old media publications, but only if they embrace the technology creatively and with open arms.

A good ebook library or lending service would need to function like a cross between Netflix and Amazon. With ebook revenue projected to top $500 million in 2010, now is an excellent time to get such a service going. The current services leave a lot of room to improve the usefullness and functionality of ebook lending.

An Open Market for Ebook Lending

Ebook readers want access to anything, anywhere. Project Gutenberg won’t ever fill the desire for current popular fiction and nonfiction. The service should offer a see-inside-the-book option, much like Amazon currently allows you to download a sample to read from your Kindle or Kindle-device. This is a great way to get someone hooked, or to convince him that this isn’t the book he was looking for. Readers also want simple and easy access; they locate a book, click download, and in seconds they can begin to read. The best services will allow users to read books on any of their devices: smart phones, ereaders, and computer. A bonus service would also allow readers to synchronize their places and bookmarks across devices, similar to the Kindle Whisper.

What would really distinguish a library or lending service is a strong set of community features. Users should be able to create Amazon-style wishlists and recommendation lists, there should be a robust community of users writing reviews, and they should be encouraged to share in book clubs or discussion groups. The library should show smart reading recommendations based on the user’s favorites and rental history, à la Netflix. Without these services in place, many will abandon for another site like Amazon.

Navigation could be a potential issue. As the Apple App store has shown, you can still be a successful company and do a terrible job of making your products known. With potentially hundreds of thousands of books, catalog navigation and search need to be topnotch.

Students Could Be The Earliest Adopters

Students could make the ereader market, but currently they can’t get what they need to read. Right now in the etextbook market, publishers are tentative. While ebooks could mean that authors and publishers end up with a higher percentage of the textbook revenue, no mass wave of publishers have begun digitalizing their material. Coursesmart offers a textbook subscription service to students, but it’s only available for iPhones. I have used my phone to read small amounts of material, I can’t imagine ploughing through an entire semester’s courseload on such a tiny screen. The proprietary format and DRM currently used in etexts makes them incompatible with textbook-optimized ereaders.

I think the final service that could heighten the usefullness of an ebook library or lending service, is the ability to take notes. While Kindle owners can currently highlight passages, bookmark pages, lookup words, and take notes, it seems likely that features such as these wouldn’t survive a lending service. But they should. Ideally, users would be able to take notes, export the notes from their device, maintain whatever they’ve notated even after they’ve “returned” the lent book, and synchronize the notes with text if they were to check it out again at a later date. These features would truly put a world of information at the fingertips of many.

Illustration by kandinski.

True story.  More or less.

Of course it’s usually not quite that simple either.  You probably have to consider a few other things like overhead, the cost of customer service, and the cost of putting together and managing each campaign (you might be able to assume those are constants, but you might not).  The average lifetime value of the customer could be a factor, and you might want to do a little bit of ROI predicting as well: how do things look two months from now if everything stays the same versus if your conversion rate increases?  Or decreases?

Calculating monthly costs might be more hairy at times as well too;  say, a fixed monthly cost plus an additional cost that’s a percentage of sales, and then every few months there’s a “one time” fee.

But really, who’s paying attention to any of that stuff?

(Photo by Motleypixel)

Seth Godin on Why You Should Become an Artist

“The lizard hates it when you read books like this one.”

While I hope no one finishes Seth Godin’s Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? thinking she has the cortex of a gilla monster floating around inside her skull, Mr Godin wants you to gain the courage to overcome the “lizard brain” within.

The primitive brain in reference is the part of us that controls our basic involuntary behaviors, our rage, and our survival skills.  Obeying the needs of the lizard brain is what keeps so many workers in mindless assembly line-style jobs.  Even if your occupation has never required you to put parts and pieces together on a routine basis, chances are great that you’ve held a position where you clocked in each morning, clocked out each night, and spent your day pushing papers, crunching numbers, and waiting for instructions from your boss – all in anticipation of your next pay check.

But you could be a linchpin.  A linchpin doesn’t wait for orders, she makes things happen on her own.  She is a leader, an organizer, and a doer.  Most importantly, a linchpin is an artist.

Linchpins are indispensable in the workplace.  They are so deeply ingrained in the success of your company that your boss is afraid of what might happen to the business if the linchpins leave.  A cog, on the other hand, can be replaced. In fact, a cog can probably be replaced by another cog willing to work for less.

In the current economic situation, it’s good to be a linchpin.  “I couldn’t have written this book ten years ago, because ten years ago, our economy wanted you to fit in, it paid you well to fit in, and it took care of you if you fit in,” Mr Godin writes.  Now is the perfect opportunity to begin sculpting businesses based on the passion of linchpins.  The age of outfitting your company with minimally skilled, minimally paid, easily replaceable workers is over.  While successful essential companies ride the roughest economic waves and come out ahead through the merits of their linchpin employees, businesses that hirer cheap easily replaceable labor race to the bottom of the competitive market as others easily copy their method.

But this book isn’t about failing businesses.  It’s about encouraging every reader – who currently sits complacently at his desk, doing just what’s necessary to keep from being fired – to speak up, step up, and give more.  It’s about ignoring your urge to just survive and embracing your ability to create art.  Artists create something extra, something that doesn’t easily fit within the mold of “a day’s work for a day’s pay.”  Artists have passion, they have ideas, and they do more with their skills.

Even if you’ve never painted a picture in your entire life, you hold the abilities to become a great artist.  There is something that you’re great at, and it’s something that you love doing.  Mr Godin says that there are plenty of people who can play the flute just as well as you can or program in Python even better than you.  The linchpin though, is the skilled person who is able to process and synthesize many different ideas and elements, putting together unique combinations and drawing connections where other people couldn’t.

And linchpins have passion.  Their passion isn’t project-specific, it’s people-specific.  He suggests that if the internet wasn’t around for a linchpin like Jeff Bezos to start a company like Amazon, you wouldn’t find him just sitting around being a nothing, a nonpassionate lump.  His passion would compel him to create greatness elsewhere.

Linchpin is a book filled with microparables and mini case studies for the modern worker.  I suspect that any random person could flip to any random page, grab a paragraph, and glean some daily inspiration.  However, just to see what kind of poignant wisdom I could grab through chance, I shuffled through the book, stopped on a page, and plopped my finger down.  Here is that passage:

Fear of Art
How powerful is the art you are able to create? Do genes and upbringing and cultural imperatives force you to surrender in your quest to deliver art that matters?
Was Harper Lee born to write To Kill a Mockingbird?  Is there some combination of genetic gifts and parental nudging that created the perfect opportunity for her to generate such a monumental piece of art?
Let’s go back to the beginning of this book.
Everyone, every single person, has been a genius at least once.  Everyone has winged it, invented, and created their way out of a jam at least once.
If you can do it once, you can do it again.

We are all artists.

Like a preacher for the modern work-weary, Seth Godin is rousing and is here to coax greatness from his followers.  He wants each and every person to become a linchpin in his own position.  However, if you’re looking for Linchpin: The How-To Manual, this isn’t it.  Linchpins don’t use maps; Mr Godin doesn’t offer step-by-step instructions for becoming a superstar at work.  Yet you can expect to find inspiration, rationale, and gentle directions leading you to the path of artistry.

What may not have been stressed enough in this book is that a portion of the workforce already acts with a linchpin mentality, and they’re growing every day.  While you were sitting around contemplating how your life might be different if you were more assertive in boardroom meetings, a linchpin just took your job.

The factory mentality that’s developed over the years is falling, but it’s falling faster within a young generation of workers who have yet to spend half of their adult lives in a cubicle building up their 401k.  Upon graduating from college, many within the most recent wave of workers weren’t handed that just-comfortable-enough job.  So they got creative.  They don’t have a retirement fund to protect, and they don’t have a tenure around the corner.  Many don’t understand how we arrived at a place where there is just enough work for everyone to spend 40 hours in the office each week.  How did we get to a place where my time is worth exactly $10 an hour, $20 an hour, or $30 an hour?

Linchpins aren’t afraid to assert their ideas and take action.  If the worst were to happen, they are confident they can find another job.  Many may not be as motivated by money as your typical cubicle cog, but most will work for meaning.

I think that Linchpin compliments Tim Ferriss’ The Four Hour Work Week and Gary Vaynerchuck’s Crush It! though the three authors have different styles and are approaching slightly different aspects of work.  However, the three books together will encourage you toward success by driving you away from the cubicle and onward to greater passions.

For linchpins, this means giving away what you do best.  If what you create is an art, what you gain from sharing your art (what you know and do best) is a more fulfilling and passionate career.  “Everyday, successful people race to give away their expertise and to spread their ideas.”  These people are linchpins.

Mr Godin’s Linchpin is appropriate for people of all types and in all stages of their careers.  No doubt, fans of his previous books on marketing, work, and life will be the first to pick it up, but I think it will best speak to those workers who have already started questioning their current positions and who have already begun asserting themselves.  After all, it’s easier to make the jump if you’re standing on a diving board.  Linchpin might just be the push they need.

When done well, blogging can be a great way to develop a stronger rapport with your customers. Many retailers also start blogging with intentions to bolster their search engine rankings and gather links from other blogs or websites. Good blogs will lure readers back again and again with worthy content and may turn a browser into a buyer or a one-time customer into a lifetime fan.

I recently spent a little time checking out the blogging efforts of some of the largest online retailers to see how they approached the design and layout of their company’s blog (or network of blogs). While blogging can help build a company’s credibility and might spread information about products to a wider audience, blogging isn’t for everyone and some of the biggest ecommerce businesses don’t run their own blogs. This is a look at a few of the blogs from those who do.

Amazon Inc.

(Internet Retailer Rank of 1 for 2009)

Omnivoracious’ Amazon Blog

Omnivoracious is a blog about books written by a handful of people who love to read.

Platform: Custom / Typepad (blogs on separate domain are Typepad, blogs within Amazon are not)
Domain: Separate Domain and a duplicate copy sits within the Amazon domain.
First Post: 2007
Columns: 2
Layout: Content in the middle, information on the right
Features: The right column includes a link to the RSS feed, an “about” section, a blog roll, and a looong list of topics covered in the blog. Confusingly, the blog exists in two locations (at omnivoracious.com and at amazon.com) with slightly different information in the right hand column between the two. The version within the main Amazon site is more difficult to navigate through archives.

Amazon Daily

Amazon Daily aggregates the other Amazon blogs. It sits within the Amazon domain.

Platform: Custom
Columns: 2
Layout: Content in the middle, information on the right
Features: The right column includes a link to the RSS feed, a link to sign in, a calendar of posts by date, and a list of topics.  Missing is a search of blog articles.

Amazon also maintains a number of other blogs following the above formats.  Blogs on separate domains include Chordstrike, Al Dente Blog, Car Lust Blog, End User Blog, Armchair Commentary, Wag Reflex, and Toy Whimsey.  Blogs within the Amazon main domain include Baby Babble Blog, Green Scene, and Amazon Game Room.

Dell Inc.

(Internet Retailer Rank 3 for 2009)

Direct2Dell – Dell Community

The community of Dell blogs pulls together articles and posts about Dell products, technology, and aspects of Dell as a company.

Platform: CommunityServer 2008.5 SP2
Domain: Subdomain
First Post: July 2006
Columns: 3
Layout: Unlike most of the blogs seen here, this design places the components and blog features in a left column with the main article content in the middle.
Features: List of blogs, languages, and post categories in the left column.  RSS and email notifications, blog roll, and archives are in the right column.

Apple Inc.

(Internet Retailer Rank 5 for 2009)

Apple Hot News

Though hard to call a real blog, the Apple Hot News page aggregates articles and recent pages, and offers subscription via RSS.

Platform: Custom
Domain: Within main site
Columns: 2
Layout: Content in the middle, components in the right column.
Features: The page holds the typical Apple store top nav, presents snippets of content articles down the middle, and offers links to top TV shows, tunes, trailers, widgets, and more down the right.

Sears Holdings Corp.

(Internet Retailer Rank 7 for 2009)

My Sears Blogs

The blog posts about all things Sears: corporate news, local store events, and the latest sales and specials.

Platform: Typepad
Domain: Subdomain
First Post: March 2009
Columns: 2
Layout: Content in the middles, information on the right.
Features: Among the blog features of the right column are categories, archives, polls, and a Twitter stream. Links to reviews and community discussions are also present at the top.

Newegg Inc.

(Internet Retailer Rank 7 for 2009)

EggXpert Community Blogs

The EggXpert community blog space brings together blog posts related to technology, gadgets, deals, and topics of interest to the Newegg family of sites.

Platform: CommunityServer 2.1 SP2
Domain: Separate Domain
First Post: April 2007
Columns: 2
Layout: Article content fills the middle, information is on the right.
Features: The right hand column includes links to FAQs, forums, shopping sites, social media sites, most viewed content, most comments, and RSS syndication.  Missing is an easy archive or category breakdown, although the content has sorting options.

Best Buy Co.

(Internet Retailer Rank of 10 for 2009)

Geeksquad Intelligence Geek Blog

The Geeksquad blog focuses on geeky news and tech information.

Platform: WordPress
Domain: Within Main Site (geeksquad.com)
First Post: January 2009
Columns: 2
Layout: Content in the middle, information on the right.
Layout: The sharp looking GeekSquad blog includes categories, a blog roll, archives, recent posts, and a tag cloud in the right column.  The top navigation includes a site search, social media links, and links to other BestBuy/GeekSquad pages.

QVC Inc.

(Internet Retailer Rank 11 for 2009)

Blogs in QVC Community

The QVC blog community brings together a whole network of blogs from various QVC employees.

Platform: Custom/LiveWorld
Domain: Subdomain
First Post: April 2009
Columns: 2 (primarily)
Layout: Main blog information is in the middle.
Features: The somewhat feature-sparse layout has several links on the left for navigating back to forums and the blog community main page.

SonyStyle.com

(Internet Retailer Rank 12 for 2009)

Sony Electronics Blog

The Sony electronics blog brings updates on Sony technology and new happenings from the digital world.

Platform: Custom
Domain: Separate Domain
First Post: April 2009
Columns: 2
Layout: Blog content in the middle, information on the right.
Features: The electronics blog is easy to navigate and has links to comments and social bookmarking tools below posts. The right column includes links to the RSS of the blog, an about section, and ways to subscribe, along with an archive, links to other social networking pages, featured posts, recent posts, recent comments, and podcasts.

SonyStyle USA Blog

Even more news and info from Sony.

Platform: Custom
Domain: Subdomain
First Post: May 2009
Columns: 2
Layout: Blog content in the middle, information on the right.
Features: While I’m confused by Sony’s need for two separate blogs, this blog is similarly organized: some links are at the top of the right column, and the right also displays the archive, popular posts, categories, favorites, and links to other Sony sites.

WalMart

(Internet Retailer Rank 13 for 2009)

CheckOut Blog

A blog about written by the “team of experts at Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club who have really cool jobs working with gadgets, games, sustainability and more.”

Platform: Custom
Domain: Separate Domain
First Post: August 2007
Columns: 3
Layout: Main content in the middle; two split columns on the right.
Features: Blog articles fill the left-center section of the layout, while the first right column includes categories, the blog roll, a brief “about” blurb, and links to Flickr and YouTube feeds.  The second right column includes an RSS subscription, a blog search, a Twitter link, and recent posts, most commented posts, archives, and an author list.

HP Home & Home Office Store

(Internet Retailer Rank 16 for 2009)

HP Blogs

A large collection of blogs from the HP community.

Platform: CommunityServer 2008.5 SP1
Domain: Subdomain
Columns: 2
Layout: Content in the middle, information on the right.
Features: The blogging community uses a layout with blog content in the center and a right column navigation that includes a search, syndication links, blog tags, and blog categories.

Netflix Inc.

(Internet Retailer Rank 18 for 2009)

The Official Netflix Blog

Blogging about Netflix and the movie experience.

Platform: Blogger
Domain: Subdomain
First Post: May 2007
Columns: 2
Layout: Blog content in the middle, information on the right.
Features: On the right are relevant Netflix links, information about the blog, an archive, labels, and a Ning community badge.

Gap Inc.

(Internet Retailer Rank 25 for 2009)

Athleta Chi

Th blog of the Athleta brand brings together inspiring stories of female athletes and informative sports articles.

Platform: WordPress
Domain: Separate Domain
Columns: 2
Layout: Article content in the middle, blog information on the right.
Layout: On the right, the Chi blog includes options to subscribe via email and RSS, new articles, featured articles, recent comments, events, a blog search, and a link to article archives.

HSN Inc.

(Internet Retailer Rank 26 for 2009)

HSN Blogs

Industry experts offer advice to the HSN community.

Platform: Custom
Domain: On Main Site
Columns: 2
Layout: Main blog information in the middle.
Layout: Actual blog pages are mainly comprised of article content with links to other blog articles by the same author on the left.  The main blog page includes a blog roll on the left and an aggregate of recent posts in the center of the page.

Zappos.com Inc.

(Internet Retailer Rank 27 for 2009)

Zappos Blogs

The Zappos blog is actually a collection of frequently cited blogs focusing on various aspects of Zappos culture.

Platform: Custom
Domain: Subdomain
Columns: 2/3
Layout: Blog content in the middle, information on the right.
Layout: The main article content is in the middle, links to other Zappos blogs fill the top nav, and the right column is divided into two columns in places.  The right space houses an RSS link, popular posts, active blogs, and blog tags.

Blog Design Tips to Remember

If you’re setting up your own blog or re-evaluating your existing blogging efforts, you may want to take note of these recommendations: Include a link to your blog’s RSS subscription and/or email subscription in the upper right portion of the page.  You should also include a search for your blog, but don’t default to using your product catalog search field from the ecommerce portion of your site.  The search should pull up articles from the blog itself. If you have an email signup and a search bar at the top of your page, make sure to clearly indicate which is which.  Customers won’t be amused if they enter their search terms into your email box because they couldn’t determine the function of the text field.

If you’ve gathered more than a handful of posts, include an easy way for visitors to browse through your blog’s history, whether it’s a calendar, an archive, or a list by month.  Few will spend the time hitting your posts’ “more” links looking for that article they saw two months ago.

Use some of the right column space to highlight featured posts that may interest new readers.  This could be a section of links to the most popular posts, the most commented on posts, or just the stories that you believe were special.

For a look at more on blogs from ecommerce companies, check out a list of blogs from the top 100 online retailers, a slightly older post from Get Elastic on the same subject, and some recommendations on doing blogging right.

With the holiday shopping season in full swing, many people are taking to the web in search of the perfect SLR camera, GPS navigator, or pair of shearling boots. Driven by large product catalogs filled with feature-rich SKUs some online retailers have tackled the presentation of their products head on. And rightly so. Whether most ecommerce sites are aware of it or not, the design and layout of category browse pages and search results pages plays an important role in the buyer decision making process.

When shopping online, consumers evaluate products based on what they see – usually making quick judgments in a matter of seconds. In their quest to find the perfect product, their buying decisions may be influenced by the information presented on the web page. Designers, developers, and online merchandisers can sway the buying process in certain directions by directly manipulating the sort order of products on these overview pages.

Interface Design Influences Buying Decisions

Web interface design can play a critical role in the consumer decision making process for online shoppers.  As consumers evaluate products and navigate through categories of items, they often quickly narrow their preference list based on the product information presented on the initial search results or category pages.  Just the right amount of appropriately placed product information can turn a browser into a buyer.

Many marketers and merchandisers are aware of the importance of creating a detailed product page, making sure to include relevant information like technical specifications, size, material, color, and compatibility that will influence consumers’ decisions. However, they may be less aware of how sort order and merchandising characteristics on category and search results pages can play a role in sales.

Most ecommerce sites with more than a handful of products have category pages and/or search results pages where visitors browse through multiple products while narrowing down their search. These lists of products are usually defined by a common search term or a shared product category and are usually organized in a default manner – sometimes just as an alphabetical listing of products, as a list based on when the product was added to the database, or by the prevalence of the searched term within the product description. A lot of platforms have a default rule for product display order, but most also enable you to change the default in your backend to something like sort by newness, sort by price, sort alphabetically, etc. Most platforms also give advanced merchandisers the ability to manually arrange products into any order within a category.

Put Your Important Products First

It may seem obvious, but consumers aren’t likely to buy things they never saw. They’re prone to remember the things they came across first. The position of a product within a list of other items on a category page can influence the consumer’s shopping behavior. Let’s say your electronics store has a category page covering 20 external hard drives, but you’re most keen to sell three specific hard drives. Maybe the margin on these products is better or they’ve gotten good reviews.

From cognitive psychology, we know that humans in general have a limited attention span when it comes to long lists of information, and multitasking shopaholics are no exception. The larger your product category, the greater the level of fatigue your shoppers might experience when browsing through the products. Consumers also tend to scan product category pages sequentially and may not continue down through a long list of items. Use your platform’s merchandising capabilities to bump featured products to the top of category pages or search results. If your categories are large, consider refining them into smaller sub-categories based on certain attributes so that products don’t get lost in the long list.

Sort By Quality of the Product

In one study of the effects of sort order on consumer choice, a group of researchers found that in a test involving the ordering of various feature-rich digital cameras on an electronics site, sorting by product quality influenced buyers’ decisions. When category pages were sorted in descending order by quality (digital cameras with the most features and best attributes on top), the quality of the product became more important to the shopper in the decision making process. The importance of price did not increase. However, when products were sorted in ascending order by quality, quality became less important and price grew in importance during the decision making process.

By highlighting the attractive attributes like features and higher quality at the top of the page, the retailer made these characteristics easier to compare between products. When products are presented in an order based on some characteristic of quality, they may be more likely judged based on that quality than if they were presented randomly.

Products displayed on category browse or search results pages can be sorted in a variety of ways. Online retailers have the advantage of manipulating the sort order of various groupings of products to influence consumer decision making. Based on the theory of loss aversion, consumers may place more importance on product configuration if the products are sorted in a descending order rather than an ascending order. With loss aversion, consumers would prefer avoiding loss (in this case, the loss of features and functionality) to acquiring gains. By showing the highest quality products first, each additional product represents a loss in features.

Merchants selling high-end products, take note: Merchandising your categories and search results pages so that the highest quality or most feature-rich products are displayed first may be beneficial. Sorting items in descending order by quality could make consumers more quality sensitive and take away the focus on price. However, offering products randomly based on features may influence shoppers to put more weight on price. If you want to offer higher price and higher quality items, experiment with placing products in descending order by quality.

Learn more by checking out “Order Effects on Consumer Product Choices in Online Retailing,” from researchers at the National University of Singapore.

What is Whitespace?

Whitespace, also known as negative space, is a term often heard in the art and design world. In web design, whitespace is the empty space (whether it is white or colored) that surrounds the components on a webpage. It is the empty space in between the text, titles, graphics, and logos on your site.

Within the various elements of a webpage, macro whitespace is the negative space surrounding the larger elements of the site, the space between the header menu and main body text, for example. Micro whitespace refers to the more easily overlooked miniscule space between lines, images and descriptions, and other small page details.

Whitespace is an important element in web design, as it can be used to separate and highlight items, provide visual relief, and alleviate perceptions of clutter or constraint. However, it’s not uncommon for web designers to try to utilize all the space provided by filling it with many elements.

More Stuff, Less Space

More product, more content, more callouts – all these can lead to more purchases and more traffic, so it’s easy to see why “more” could be understood as “better.” Many times whitespace might seem like wasted real estate. What’s often forgotten is that whitespace can be artfully used to direct the viewer’s attention to more important elements. It can also lend to a sense of balance and elegance through simplicity in the page design.

Whitespace offsets the visual weight of content and is essential for a website to appear simple, comfortable, and concise. Too much content and too little negative space may leave a page looking messy, crammed, or unprofessional. With no visual breathing room for the viewer’s eye, the visitor might experience feelings of constriction or confinement. You wouldn’t find it easy to read a book if all the lines and paragraphs ran together, so why hint at that in your web content?

Will Whitespace Make Your Content Better?

While leaving a page crammed with text and content may frustrate readers as they try to scan a site for essential information, leaving gross amounts of whitespace in between all elements may lead to needless scrolling as users have to navigate down the page while the take in the information. Is there a perfect balance between whitespace and content? Several studies performed by the software usability research lab at Wichita State University sought to answer questions surrounding whitespace and reading online content.

Finding Content on a Page

In one experiment, three versions of an online travel website were created. The content was identical on all three, but the information was spaced differently across the pages. In the low whitespace condition, much of the content on travel information was crammed together in three columns with little room to separate categories or paragraphs. In a medium whitespace condition, the columns and content categories were spaced enough to provide clear distinctions between groups. In the high whitespace condition, a large amount of whitespace was provided around each section of content, giving it an empty look.

During the study, participants were asked questions that required that they locate information throughout the pages. In the end, the amount of time it took the users to find links within the page content didn’t differ based on the design. However, participants rated a higher level of satisfaction with the medium whitespace design, and rated this layout as preferred.

Readability and Margins

In another study, reading speed and comprehension were examined with regards to whitespace and content layout. Four content layouts were created for mock webpages. In the designs, the line height between the paragraphs was varied between standard (5mm of space between lines) and sub-optimal (4mm of space between lines). Margins were also varied between 10mm of whitespace surrounding the text or 2mm of whitespace surrounding the text. Altogether, four conditions were created with these variables.

Text with Margins and Standard Line Spacing	Text with No Margins and Standard Line Spacing
Text with Margins and Sub-Optimal Line Height	Text with No Margins and Sub-Optimal Line Heigh

Participants were asked to read the text at their own speed and answer comprehension questions about the paragraphs. In the end, words per minute reading speed was higher for the conditions where there were no margins, but reading comprehension suffered. The higher reading comprehension scores were for those conditions with larger margins. Participants also reported lower levels of fatigue and eyestrain when margins were involved, and an analysis showed that the element design that include 10mm margins and standard line spacing of 5mm was the preferred format.

Best Practices for Using Whitespace

If content and reading comprehension are important to your site, take the middle road with whitespace – not too much, not too little. The amount of whitespace between lines, paragraphs, and content sections does influence your user’s ability to read, scan, and understand the information. News, media, and elearning sites should all note that pushing information too closely together makes it more tasking to scan and extract information from. Likewise, if exaggerated spacing is used, the words will seem isolated and the relevance of the information may be disconnected.

When used properly, whitespace focuses attention on specific elements, can increase findability, and will draw the eye to certain places on the page. Effective whitespace also offers the illusion of simplicity and professionalism.

As a new era of food sensibility grows, the intersection of technology and sustainable farming is spurring the development of a variety of tools to better connect the conscious consumer with locally grown foods.  Guided by the ideal of local living in a global economy, a wave of shoppers are setting out to participate in the Eat Local Challenge or create their own 100 mile diet.

Others just want to bring more sustainable, organically grown food into their diets or are choosing to use their dollars to support local food networks.  Finding this local food has gotten a lot easier, thanks in part to numerous online resources that are bringing together maps, food data, and farm databases so that locavores can easily access their eats, no matter where they live.

Eat Well Guide

The Eat Well Guide is a comprehensive source for finding locally grown food anywhere in the United States and Canada.  Search by keyword, zip code, or region and get a list of CSAs , restaurants, farms, retailers, and more.  Their sustainable food travel guide let’s you input the starting location and final destination for your next trip, then returns your route pinned with a handy list of food resources along the way.  Print out your guide to take with you, or choose one of their other downloadable guides on the regional food in your area.

Local Harvest

Local Harvest offers another comprehensive resource for finding farms, markets, restaurants, and more.  Choose your location on the map and then browse through the extensive list of CSAs , farmer’s markets, restaurants, farms, ranches, and others – all offering local fare in your area. Find event details, read local reviews, or search through descriptions of providers in your region.

Farms Reach

At Farms Reach, the “web hub for local grub,” food buyers and food producers can create accounts and coordinate the logistics around getting locally grown food from the farm to the table.  Still in the beta version, the tools aren’t available in all areas.  In those regions where it is available (such as San Francisco), buyers can create an account, search by specific types of food and within a certain radius, and then workout the delivery details with the food producer.

Eat Wild

In search of grass-fed beef and free range chickens in your area?  Eat Wild brings together comprehensive information for the omnivore in search of a more sustainable meal.  The destination for information on grass-fed beef, bison, lamb, pork, poultry, and more Eat Wild offers a farm directory that is a great resource for finding farmers and ranchers in your community who support sustainable practices.  Choose your state from their directory of pasture-based farms, browse farm descriptions, and check out the Google Maps mashup to find offerings closest to your area.  Their state-by-state “Beyond the Farm” pages offer more information on buyer’s clubs, farmer’s markets and retailers, and restaurants in your area that offer grass-fed meat.

Hyperlocavore

Gardeners unite.  Hyperlocavore brings together the familiar concepts of CSAs and edible estates in the form of yardshares.  Similar to a community garden, hyperlocavores get together to share land, skills, and time, all in the name of growing more food.  On the Hyperlocavore website, yardsharers can create profiles, connect with like-minded locals, get resources on gardening, and share inspiration.

VeggieTrader

VeggieTrader is trying to solve the problem of backyard overabundance.  By joining the community, you can post listings of your own garden excess and search your neighbors to see what others are offering.  The idea is simple, a lot of homegrown food goes to waste because one family simply cannot handle it all.  With VeggieTrader, you can swap your tomatoes for apples.  Or squash.  Or lettuce.

ForageSF (San Francisco Area)

Those in the Bay Area can get involved in ForageSF, a wild foods community.  By joining the CSF (like a CSA but a “community supported forage”), members receive a box of wild foraged foods.  Items included may include wild mushrooms, nettles, miner’s lettuce, cattails, fresh fruit, and sea food.  Items are collected by intrepid foragers from local forest areas and the ocean.

Urban Edibles (Portland Area)

Further north, Urban Edibles connects Portlanders to wild food scattered throughout Stumptown.  The community database notates and maps edible food sources that fall on public land.  Nut trees, berry patches, dandelion roots, and others all have a place on the map if they’re growing on public land, sidewalk spots, or abandoned lots.

There’s an App for That

Keep local food at your fingertips where ever you are with apps for the iPhone and iPod Touch.

Locavore

The Locavore app has held a top spot in the iTunes app store.  Now with version 2.0, you can check which food is in season for your region, search markets in your area (using data pulled in from Local Harvest), and connect to Facebook to post your food finds.  The app automatically detects your location, provides you with list of foods that are in season, coming into season, or on their way out, and gives you access to Wikipedia articles and Epicurious recipes for specific eats.  Iphone-less peeps can checkout the Facebook app version.

iLocavore

The iLocavore app from Locallectual is for more than just food.  The app detects your location and then brings you a list of locally grown foods and locally made products for you to browse.  The app offers information on CSAs , farmer’s markets, and independent grocers, although more offerings and better refinement criteria would increase the effectiveness of the app.

Buy buttons may be the one thing no ecommerce website should be without.  A lot of people have expressed thoughts on what makes a buy button better – be it brighter colors, bolder graphics, or a bigger size.  It makes sense to want to optimize your add to cart button, as the ultimate goal of any product page is to get that product into the shopping cart.  It’s common to hear that vibrantly colored flashy buttons attract our attention, subliminally compelling the shopper to click.  But if a big red button offered guaranteed clickability, surely every online store’s product pages would sport the same.  So how do the nation’s largest etailers treat the essential add-to-cart?  I grabbed a list of buy buttons from the top 50 ecommerce companies in 2008 to see how the buttons really did compare.

As you can see, they are not all big, bad, and red.  In fact, this collection of buttons resembles a bag of mixed-colored candy more than anything.  So how did the attributes break down?

Buy Button Color

Green  13 (26%)
Red  10 (20%)
Orange  10 (20%)
Blue  6 (12%)
Grey  4 (8%)
Yellow  3 (6%)
Pink  2 (4%)
Purple  1 (2%)
Black  1 (2%)

Buy Button Color Tone

Warm  25 (50%)  – That’s red, yellow, orange, and pink.
Cool  20 (40%) – That’s green, blue, and purple.
Neutral  5 (10%) – That’s black and grey.

Apparently brown just isn’t a hot button color in anyone’s book.

Add to Cart Call to Action

“Add to Cart” – 28 (56%)
“Add to Bag” – 10 (20%)
“Add to Shopping Cart” – 2 (4%)
“Add Items to Bag” – 1 (2%)
“Add” – 1 (2%)
“Add to Basket” – 1 (2%)
“Select Delivery Date” – 1 (2%)
“Add to Shopping Bag” – 1 (2%)
“Next” – 1 (2%)
“Order Now” – 1 (2%)

I guess the needy plea, “Buy Me Now, Please!” didn’t make the cut.  In terms of the use of “bag” versus “cart,” in general the retailers employing the “bag” are more likely to be associated with bags in their physical counterparts, like apparel retailers.  (When was the last time you pushed a shopping cart through Nordstrom?)

Extra Add to Cart Button Graphics

None  28 (56%)
Arrow  8 (16%)
Cart  6 (12%)
Plus Sign  3 (6%)
Bag  2 (4%)

Button Size

Does size matter?  Circuit City and the Systemax family of sites seem to think so.  Each of their sites uses a strikingly large green bar as their add-to-cart.  Never mind if green isn’t associated with the brand.  On the smaller side, Gap has chosen a barely-there concept.  The petite pale grey design certainly doesn’t stand out on their many-shades-of-grey site. Gap’s sister brands Banana Republic, Old Navy, Athleta, and Piperlime also appear to be taking the less-is-more approach.  I didn’t measure each button, but most fall within the realm of 1 to 1.5 inches.

Findability Still Matters

In the end, it doesn’t matter how fantastic your button looks, if it’s hard to find on the page.  (This is one argument for vibrant contrasting colors; the more attention it attracts, the easier it will be to quickly spot.)  Online shoppers are accustomed to quickly scanning pages to pull out relevant information.  A button that jumps off the page eases this process.  Most retailers stuck with common usability conventions and set their buttons in a sans serif font – although L.L. Bean seems to have missed the memo on this one.  Twenty-five of the buttons capitalized the first letter of each word, 20 put the whole call to action in caps, and 5 chose all lower-case.

The Gap and Target’s use of white on light grey is probably better avoided; some old printing conventions still hold true online, and high contrast between text and background is one of them.  As comparison, Musician’s Friend black text on lighter yellow background quickly jumps out and is easy to read.  All in all, many of the buttons are not readily identifiable out of context.  For me, Amazon, Victoria’s Secret, and Toys R Us maintain the company branding and are familiar enough to be identified, even without the corresponding site.  There doesn’t seem to be a clear set of guidelines that even the best-performingetailers use when crafting their buttons.  The best recommendations may still be to ensure that the button is clearly visible and stands out on the page, regardless of color or size.  For an older look at shopping cart buttons, Get Elastic rounded up a list of over 100 buttons in 2007.

The Websites:

1. Amazon.com
2. Staples.com
3. Dell.com
4. OfficeDepot.com
5. Apple.com
6. OfficeMax.com
7. Sears.com
8. CDW.com
9. Newegg.com
10. BestBuy.com
11. QVC.com
12. SonyStyle.com
13. Walmart.com
14. Costco.com
15. JCPenney.com
16. shopping.HP.com
17. CircuitCity.com (CircuitCity is now owned by Systemex Inc, which fell at #21 on the Internet Retailer list for 2008. Systemex also owns TigerDirect and CompUSA.  They all have the save Buy Button).
18. Netflix.com
19. VictoriasSecret.com
20. Target.com
21. LLBean.com
22. Macys.com
23. Williams-Sonoma.com
24. Gap.com
25. HSN.com
26. Zappos.com
27. Amway.com
28. Overstock.com
29. Avon.com
30. 1800Flowers.com
31. Nordstrom.com
32. Buy.com
33. SportsmansGuide.com (As owned by Redcats Group, who also have a lot of other websites I could have chosen from, but I didn’t).
34. NeimanMarcus.com
35. MusiciansFriend.com
36. Blockbuster.com
37. PCConnection.com
38. ToysRUs.com
39. Cabelas.com
40. BarnesandNoble.com
41. Scholastic.com
42. HomeDepot.com
43. VistaPrint.com
44. SaksFifthAvenue.com
45. Nutrisystem.com
46. Drugstore.com
47. Nike.com
48. Kohls.com
49. JCrew.com
50. OrientalTrading.com

This list of sites was compiled from Internet Retailer’s list of top 500 ecommerce businesses for 2008.  Omitted from the list is Peapod Inc, which is a login for current customers only site.