I came across this fascinating video titled Are we in control of our own decisions? by Dan Ariely who is a Behavioral economist. In the video he was talking about research findings to show how we’re not as rational as we think when we make decisions – meaning, most of the times, we think we make the decisions, but we actually don’t. We are primed / oriented to behave in a particular manner. I thought we can draw a lot of inferences and lessons for our conversion activities and user experience / website design / graphics efforts.

Microsoft’s Bing search engine maintained momentum in July and gained a bit on both Google and Yahoo.

According to comScore data (Techmeme), as relayed by Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster, Google wound up with July search share of 64.7 percent, down from 65 percent in June. Microsoft was up to 8.9 percent in July, up from 8.4 percent in June.

Now these incremental gains don’t signal a huge trend or anything, but they could add up over time. The more important item may be overall search trend growth. Here’s what Munster said:

Bottom line is we view yesterday’s comScore data to represent a potential headwind to Google’s Q3, but note that paid click data will give a more accurate representation of the search marketplace. Google’s total U.S. queries were down 4% m/m and up 21% y/y in July, which is the slowest y/y increase in queries reported by comScore data since 2005. We note that Google’s monthly U.S. query total, as well as the overall U.S. query volume, has trended down m/m for the past three months following all time highs in April.

If Bing continues to gain share it will present an interesting wrinkle to the Microsoft-Yahoo search pact. Consider the following:

• Microsoft continues to gain share on Yahoo;
• The Microsoft-Yahoo pact takes two-years to implement and perhaps longer if regulators have problems with the deal;
• Advertisers migrate to Microsoft today (from Yahoo) since it will have the ad platform going forward;
• Regulators can the Microsoft-Yahoo deal;
• Microsoft wins anyway.

Simply put, the paid click data later this month is more important. Nice start for Bing though.

Regards,

Syed Raheem Quadri-SEM

Since Monday’s launch of the Google Caffeine sandbox, there have been numerous articles and posts offering ideas on what’s different between “regular Google” and the new results in Caffeine. But good luck finding any consensus at this point.

Since few seem to agree yet on what’s changing and how dramatic the changes might be, why not do your own comparisons? Though it’s only been two days since the Caffeine sandbox opened up, there is already a tool that make it easier to test the results yourself.

Facesaerch Caffeine Compare

This new tool from the makers of the facesaerch image search engine shows both “old Google” results and Caffeine results side-by-side in frames.

Regards

Syed Raheem Quadri-SEM

By Brendan ReganAugust 11th, 2009

I’m not gonna lie…what you’re about to read was inspired by a real-life online shopping experience. I won’t mention the guilty site, but I’ll say they sell clothing and jewelry to young urbanites.

As I relate the following three eCommerce mishaps, be thinking about whether you can eradicate all of them from your business by the time the “Holiday Rush” hits. ALL are preventable, if you start today and take one item at a time.

Let’s start at the “precipitating event;” the spark that lit my desire to shop online…

1. An email with a promo code arrived. w00t! They paid attention to past purchases, and sent me a great promotion: 10% off a brand I’ve purchased before, and free shipping if the order exceeds a certain amount.

How They’re Losing Sales: Despite not mentioning an expiration date for the promo code, it was expired by the time I reached checkout. I’m notoriously slow for opening emails from online retailers, but I bet I’m not alone. Creating a sense of urgency with an expiration date is fine, but remember that shoppers sometimes go weeks without going through their personal email accounts to read your promo codes.

And now it’s Customer Service’s turn…

2. When the promo code came up as expired, I was understandably disappointed. I’d just spent a fair amount of my weekend building up enough value in my shopping cart to qualify for the free shipping (Yes, I’m cheap.) My credit card was out of my wallet. So, I clicked the live chat in the cart to see if they’d extend the promo code, or give me an equivalent one.

How They’re Losing Sales: The live chat agent, while polite and earnest, was not able to do anything to help me (be a cheapskate). They weren’t empowered by their employer to get creative and save me from abandoning my cart. They suggested I call the “real” Customer Service during regular M-F business hours. So my guess is that the live chat is being outsourced, which is fine, but if they aren’t empowered to save sales, they’re probably not giving good ROI.

Now stepping up to the plate, Technology…

3. I came back the next day with the intention of calling the retailer and trying to get them to extend the promo code or give me the equivalent deal. So, I returned to the site and clicked “My Cart” to review what I’d put in there, and have it on-screen when I called.

How They’re Losing Sales: They didn’t save my cart! So many sites are saving cart items via cookie that I assumed my items would be there the following day or week. So now I’m definitely not going to re-build my cart AND call them to try and negotiate the promo code. I’m going to just repress the whole memory…maybe I’ll even forget the retailer’s brand in the process!

These 3 blunders may seem unconnected from a business perspective, but from a buyer perspective, they were all part of a persuasion scenario that broke down and turned a VERY motivated shopper into a lost sale.

I do like the site, and hope they can address these issues and stay in business. But they and others will have a very painful holiday sales season if they don’t treat the disparate parts as a unified buying experience that must be nearly flawless to be profitable.