If you own a successful brick-and-mortar store, you’ve built it by providing high-quality products or services to your customers. You’ve earned their trust for a variety of reasons: they found what they needed, they like your prices, their friends shop with you, you’ve been around for years…and so on. So how do you build the same trust and confidence with an online store?

Trust can be lost quickly, especially online. We ask a lot from online customers, and their suspicions are already on high alert for fraud, identity theft, hacking, spam and other risks. Not only do we want them to buy our product, but we also require their email, street address, credit card and any other info we can squeeze out of them – which is very different than walking into a store, dropping a few bills and leaving. So here are a few best practices that will put your online shoppers at ease, build customer loyalty and, most importantly, increase conversion rates.

Define your brand

Customers want to interact with distinctive and professional brands that they can believe in and be proud to shop.  Having a strong store name and domain is a great start. Try to avoid hyphens and cute misspellings when choosing a domain name – those can work well for content-driven or social media sites, but can be negative factors for selling products.

Your store’s visual design should be unique, and your messaging needs to be well written. Users can smell a purchased design template from a mile away and will suspect something fishy if they’ve seen stores similar to yours. Your store should be clean but not sterile, so look for ways to infuse your brand personality into your design and copywriting.

Seamless user experience

Your user interface design shouldn’t stray from what consumers have learned to expect from online shopping. As e-commerce has matured over the last decade, it’s established standards that shoppers rely on and demand. Don’t create funky new ways of browsing for products or checking out – continue to build trust with an experience that feels familiar and natural to your customers. There’s nothing wrong with taking cues from the best online stores and emulating their shopping process.

Pay close attention to every point where visitors interact with you. From product browsing through checkout, to email communications, packaging, reliable delivery and confirmation – consistency is essential for building trust. Detail the steps for completing a purchase and aim to under-promise and over-deliver.

That’s what they said

Spotlight your awards, success stories and security measures. Testimonials are great, but people are often suspicious of praise from unknown customers with no last name, so establish your success and reliability in other ways as well. Don’t be afraid to publicize your increase in sales, registered members or traffic. Back up your stats by linking them to reports provided by third-party tools like Alexa or Compete.com. Tout your privacy policies, seals of approval and security certificates.  All of this will help allay customers’ concerns, make them comfortable, and help them feel more secure about your business.

Doing press releases, thought leadership pieces and blogging can position your store as authoritative and sophisticated. You’d be surprised how many shoppers want to get the backstory on your store before they’re willing to enter their digits.

Community

Depending on your store and demographic, building Facebook, Twitter and other social media communities can ease doubt and enable customers to share stories about your shop and products. Be careful to keep a close eye on these communities and monitor the conversations. It’s likely you’ll get some negative comments that you’ll want to respond to quickly. You should always be open to criticism, fess up to your mistakes and explain what steps you’re taking to address them, and inform your customers about your plans for improvement.

Convey, build, and keep trust with your consumers, and they’ll return to your store again and again.

There seems to be another scammy trend brewing in email marketing. Recently I’ve been receiving email promotions from brands with subject lines apologizing for a mistake or retracting a misstatement. I like to forgive and forget as much as the next guy, but when the apology requested is nothing more than a trick to get me to open an email, I’m opting out.

Okay, I admit it, I’ve fallen for the trick a few times. Most such emails are from smaller companies hurting for revenue, but some are from brands that are well established and trusted. Just recently I received an email apology from TripAdvisor (a site I always use when planning a trip, by the way).

TripAdvisor’s subject line was: “Oops we had a glitch.” Inside was a copy of an email I had received the day before about its Travelers’ Choice 2010 Awards, which I had clicked through earlier without a glitch. The message said:

“Our Travelers’ Choice announcement was so popular this week, many readers couldn’t access the results. They’re available now.

Apologies and many thanks,
TripAdvisor.”

It’s hard to believe that TripAdvisor’s sophisticated servers crashed due to the high volume of visitors from this email campaign, but let’s give it the benefit of the doubt. Maybe the company really had a “glitch” and should apologize. Was there a better way to handle this?

My first recommendation would be to make the subject line less ambiguous–and, in fact, less intriguing. If it’s really an apology, save me time and let me know directly in the subject line that there was a problem with the Travelers’ Choice 2010 Awards. Brands should be honest and accountable for their mistakes—but if this is a tactic to improve open rates disguised as an apology, it will ultimately diminish the site’s credibility.

TripAdvisor could easily have promoted its awards within another value-added email promotion, by using search marketing, on its website, or through other avenues. Brand loyalty must be earned over time, but it can be destroyed quickly through overzealous marketing.

Customers form their opinions of you based on your value and how you treat them. Treat them with respect and they’ll be loyal forever.

When I was a creative director at HomePC magazine back in the early ’90s, there were lots of articles making predictions about the convergence of PCs, TV, and telecom. Along came WebTV in ’96, a big box with a wired keyboard that made your TV into a monitor for accessing the Internet. Microsoft bought WebTV, but it never took off; it was very clumsy, with a bad browser among other shortcomings (not surprising). Now here we are in 2010, and you can plug your ethernet cable or wi-fi into your TV. Presto, you’re on the Web—sort of.

I don’t claim to be an expert on the television/Internet space, but I can assure you that something’s very wrong with this picture. I’ve been doing a little research and I’ve looked closely at Web-enabled Sony, LG, and Panasonic TVs. These sets do not offer the big, open Internet we know and love; instead, they provide widgets and content channels chosen for us based on licensing deals between TV manufacturers and content providers such as Google, Yahoo, Netflix, and Time Warner.

This may seem to be a huge improvement for consumers. We can get movies instantly from Netflix and YouTube and great content from some of the best media companies in the world. In return, the media companies expand their audience, which will help them weather the recession and diminish their advertising woes. This is great for Sony and Google. But it’s bad for us. As Dan Frommer from Business Insider puts it, “We want a TV with a real Web browser that offers full access to the entire Web via wi-fi/broadband—not some crippled gimmick.”

As a marketer and consumer I have serious concerns with the direction the new Web-enabled TV movement is taking. I’m reminded of the AOL days, with closed proprietary systems where content was pushed and interactivity was limited. The only true convergence happening here is the merging of services provided by ISPs, telecoms, and TV manufacturers.

My exploration into the world of Web-enabled TVs has renewed my appreciation for the current Web—the Web that is free, open, and innovative. We need to remind ourselves that we have a wonderful and fragile resource that needs to be fought for and defended. I hope we haven’t lost the battle when it comes to Web TV, and that it will evolve based on user demand and not on corporate enrichment. Content providers, telecoms, and manufacturers need to realize that with an open Web they’ll have their biggest audiences and happiest sponsors.

If you’re interested in the fight for the open Web and Internet neutrality, please visit these sites:

http://www.savetheinternet.com/

http://www.freepress.net/

http://www.wearetheweb.org/

http://www.openinternetcoalition.com/

http://stopbigmedia.com/

Earlier this month I attended the Society of Digital Agencies (SoDA) conference in New York. The mission of SoDA is to advance the profession of digital marketing through education, discussions of best practices, and advocacy. The conference was billed as an “un”conference, which made the event conversational, collaborative—and at times a little too “un”structured. Still, it was a good experience.

We broke up into groups to discuss hot topics: Challenges of the Modern Agency, Metrics for Success, Engaging Social Media. I had hoped to gain insight into how large companies and agencies are managing their brands within their social-media initiatives. It’s clear that social media should be part of a brand’s marketing strategy, but how are companies controlling their brands’ voices? To my surprise, other attendees from top agencies and brands had similar questions—but few answers.

Some sound ideas popped up, such as the development of branding guidelines for social media, and the hiring of brand editors who can provide a checkpoint before tweets, blogs, and comments are published. These two methods can work fine for blogs themselves, but they can kill the spontaneity and immediacy of a tweet or a comment on a blog. Moreover, what do you do if your entire company is enthusiastic about speaking out and joining in on all the conversations?

If it’s your company’s policy to allow many social-media voices, it’s imperative to set up rules and guidelines and hold your employees accountable. Amber Naslund of the blog Altitude provides great examples of blogging policies from large corporations that can be used as an excellent starting point for developing your company’s guidelines.

If your social-media voice is monitored by a specifically designated department or by an outside agency, it’s easier to stay in control and keep your brand’s message inline. Your social-media captains should plan how they will uphold your brand’s promise in their conversations with customers, employees, and partners. They should meet weekly or monthly with the marketing or brand teams to ensure that all efforts are aligned with your brand’s strategy and corporate culture.

For a Twitter campaign for one of our clients, we create a monthly bag of “evergreen” tweets that are mixed in with spontaneous ones. That client is accustomed to having its copy and creative approved by its legal department and brand managers, which is not an ideal situation for quick tweets about what’s going on at the moment. To overcome this we develop 20 tweets that can be preapproved, and then mix those in with 10 spontaneous tweets that follow our defined social-media strategy. With this method and ongoing monitoring we’re able to lower the risks of tainting the brand, while still appearing spontaneous and continuing to build one-to-one relationships with the company’s customers.

This is new territory, and the best tactics have yet to be determined.  We encourage you to share your experiences and thoughts on how you manage brand continuity in social media for your company and your clients.

I recently gave a lecture to the advanced web design class at Farmingdale College. When I met up with professor Jack Harris, he informed me that the kids, mostly juniors and seniors,  saw Loewy Design’s page in the Flash/Dreamweaver Genius Guide, and they were looking forward to meeting with me. A bit embarrassed and very flattered, I asked Jack what book was he talking about and where could I get one.

I later found out that the book is published by Imagine Publishing and promises to be the essential guide to dynamic design and development. We were recognized for our website’s approach to animation and design using purely CSS and Javascript, a technological accomplishment but not exactly what I wanted to talk about in my little seminar. My talk was about the real world lessons that you can’t get from a textbook. I wanted to focus on the process of solving business and branding problems with the online medium.

I tried to push their tech questions aside but they kept coming. I eventually got my point across that the technology we’re using today will be completely different when the students immerse themselves in the job market. They’ll need to educate themselves on the latest versions of Flash and Dreamweaver and keep up with always evolving programming languages throughout their careers.

The most valuable information I could share with them was to describe our thought processes, not only about making a website look great but about creating one that will actually help your clients solve their business challenges. I gave them our secret sauce on how we deliver positive results to our clients and improve their bottom lines.  As a take-away, I provided them, and now you, with a list of reference tools organized by each phase of our process.

By no means is this the complete list, since it too is always evolving, but it could serve as a nice resource and good starting point for students, clients and peers.

Recently a client asked us for our opinion on a Digimag (or whatever-you-call-it) service called Ceros. I’ve seen this technology grow in popularity over the years, and I have to admit Ceros has taken it to a higher plane. Their product and experience is rich with video, animation and interactivity – but so what.

I can see how print publishers would really love for this page-flipping technology to take off. Their print advertising windows are closing quickly, yet their online advertising windows are not opening fast enough. With Digimags, they are offering an online add-on, attempting to close the deal with the advertiser on that expensive print inside cover or center spread.  In my opinion, this is just another way of putting off the inevitable transition from print to true online publishing – publishing that is centered around knowledge exchange, content that takes place on a variety of platforms and advertising programs based on audience relevance and brand engagement.

Furthermore, is there really a mass audience for Digimags? Nxtbook Media, another digital magazine service, has an interesting real-time map illustrating how often Digimags are read across the globe.  While this is a cool use of Google’s API, showing a reader or two per second – this map is an insult to a publisher’s intelligence.  According to their site, 1.3 million people read a Digimag per month.  That sounds like a lot – but it pales in comparison to the number of people who read online magazines every day.

Digimags are not the panacea for publishers’ woes.  They sacrifice the standards and best practices of web publishing. The content has poor search visibility; there is no room for user-generated content; you need to click and enlarge to read; and you have to drag your electronic paper around to navigate.  Perhaps their future is better suited to a different device, such as the Kindle, as stated in this article.

Finally, producing an issue of a Digimag can cost as much as $100 per page.  Why not put that towards building a sustainable online magazine for your audience and your advertisers?

If you’re running a small business, at some point you probably thought: “there’s got to be a better way.”  As small businesses become larger ones, systems and processes tend to get more complex.  Yet sometimes the best solutions have fewer bells and whistles but fit better with the culture and operation of the company.

Case in point:

Years ago, as an independent contractor in a home office, things were relatively simple. I did it my way, flying by the seat of my pants with my own systems and processes, which mostly meant a good memory and lots of post-its. Thankfully, the business has grown and I’m now managing seven people, freelancers, a full office, accounting systems, networks, and an upcoming office expansion. With growth comes complexity, so my staff and I are constantly evaluating tools to make our lives easier and our work better.

What we’ve found is that the newest and most elaborate products are not always the best for us.  Our company and culture is unique, so this year’s “Top 10 Solutions” may not necessarily work for us.   The tools and technologies that we use to run our business have to match our group’s abilities and their willingness to embrace them.

Our time-keeping software, for example, is a simple application that has become our most important tool.  While my staff finds it a pain to account for every minute of their time, they appreciate that the system helps us estimate costs and profitability (right guys ).  Without these metrics, we would be unable to measure our success.

We use a system called TimeFox.  As a group we went through demos, free trials and testing before we committed to it. We listed our needs and sought a system that was easy to use and quick to put in place, bypassing software that included more features but was more cumbersome to use.

Another tool that needs careful evaluation is our project management software because it is used by clients who have different levels of expertise. Basecamp is a tool we often use if clients are web savvy and detailed oriented. For clients who need a simpler solution we’ll use Backpack, which is an easy to use intranet storing and sharing information with a virtual team.

Now that we are moving to a larger office, we are researching phone systems.  I think we’re close but I’ll let you know (any good ideas out there?). One thing is already clear: we’ll be guided by our experiences and won’t feel compelled to acquire a system with a lot of extraneous features that aren’t right for us.

Recently a client asked us how to measure the success of social media campaigns.   This client is in the early stages of planning Facebook pages, Twitter, blogs and forums initiatives.

There’s a great quote about measuring social media from Avinash Kaushik of Google Analytics…

“Social media is like teen sex. Everyone wants to do it. Nobody knows how. When it’s finally done there is surprise it’s not better.”

Social Media is in its adolescence.  Fortunately, we are all moving beyond explaining what it is to examining how it can deliver on its promise.  If you pay attention and have the right tools, you can track, report and analyze your brand’s perception on twitter, facebook, blogs etc.

Every marketer wants a measurable return on their marketing investment. Yes we want profits, sales and leads but one should remember that it’s the combination of the little marketing pieces that will get you there.  So before we start thinking about “how” to measure we should first determine “what” to measure.

Keep it simple, start with just a few of your company’s inadequacies that if improved, would have a positive effect on your bottom line. Perhaps it’s reducing customer support calls, building customer loyalty, or employee retention. Once you’ve defined the metrics, work with your interactive agency to create campaigns that, if successful, will achieve your goals. Insist on A/B testing and frequent reporting especially in the early stages of your campaign. Be prepared to stay flexible, move with the conversations – contribute to them and adjust your metrics if your customers are screaming about the unexpected.

In a recession, we are all under pressure to produce results so lets get back to the question, “how do we measure…?” The good news is there are an enormous number of tools out there and plenty of lists linking to them. It reminds me of the early days of the internet when there was an overabundance of web analytics tools until Google acquired Urchin in 2005 and the entire sector consolidated.

Here are a few free tools that you should start with:  

Facebook Lexicon (track your Facebook presence)
Google Alerts (find out when you are in the news)
Compete (compare website traffic with your competitors)
Alexa (similar to Compete)
Virtue (compare your brands social media activity to others)
SearchTwitter (search all mentions of you on Twitter)
Tweetbeep (similar to Google Alerts but with Twitter)
TweetGrid (Real-time Twitter dashboard for following topics)
Backtype (share and follow yourself )
Boardtracker (track your brand on forums and bulletin boards)
Trendrr (social and digital media tracking)
Social Mention (search yourself across all media)

There are tons of paid and professional tools out there too, so please share your best tools or social media experiences with us. Here are a couple bloggers that have generated nice lists:

Socialize Mobilize
Take me to your leader

If you haven’t seen it yet, Worth recently redesigned their website. Back in my magazine publishing days, I was a big fan of Worth from a design and editorial point of view. They consistently produced provocative covers and nicely designed features, and used innovative illustration. The new online version is a bit of a disappointment, especially in the innovation department.

I would give the new site a passing grade for design and branding, but an Incomplete for its business model and user experience. Some minor issues, starting from the top: the global navigation labels are a bit cryptic. When it comes to global navigation, say it like it is. Section titles that have double meanings, like “Live” (“Live long and prosper” or “Live, it’s Saturday Night”) and “Make” (I won’t get into the ambiguous meanings of that one) are too conceptual and not descriptive enough. Your audience wants to navigate quickly, so don’t make your road signs confusing.

Another mystery is why designate so much prime real estate to a stock market ticker in the top right corner? This affluent community is checking their live market reports through other sources, so I would use this space more wisely.

My biggest question relates to the sustainability of this model in today’s online marketplace. If you are going through a redesign, you need to think far beyond advertising as your only revenue stream. Worth has a nice advisor section which could require paid listings but where’s the community aspect to this site? Worth needs to make users their partners in their online operations.

For example, there’s no way a user can comment on a story, contribute to a blog, subscribe to an RSS feed or even an email newsletter.  Are they not building a database?  Where are the plans for bringing this audience of high-worth individuals together with forums, groups and mobile? Once you’ve got them together you can start monetizing and building different revenue streams.  Perhaps charging for listings in a vendor marketplace; posting jobs; offering premium research (leads) or tools; charging for whitepapers and reports; building affiliate programs…the list goes on. There are many different revenue opportunities for a site like this that should be tested.  Without the community tools and infrastructure in place, there’s nowhere to start.

The community aspect might be in future plans and can always be integrated later — but at this point in time, I don’t think this redesign was really Worth it.

Welcome to our venue for getting personal.  This is where we’ll share our know-how and stay in touch with our professional community. It’s also a platform for others to speak out on trends, best practices and their own insights. It’s a space to open up about our experience and our experiences, and process our processes…and I’ll start off with our thinking about this very blog.

So how do we –or you– know if it’s right to launch a blog? Or the right time? When it seems like everyone’s already blogging, why should anyone start something new?

In our case, we’ve been recommending blogs and social media for clients for sometime now, as part of a robust integrated marketing strategy including other initiatives like email campaigns, search marketing, PR, speaking at conferences, etc. We set our own marketing priorities just as we would advise our clients. First we redesigned our website so that it effectively presents our experience, services and brand personality, and rigged it so it brings in leads and subscribers to our newsletter. Second, we swore to doing our monthly newsletter, Loewy’s Latest, with no excuses, once a month. Now is the blog, and next up is our Facebook Page, Twitter…all the social media we provide the strategy, design and technology for to our clients.

Basically, before starting to roll out social media for our own company, we spent time generating a sort of critical mass through other outlets: optimizing our website to build more traffic, creating a larger pool of contacts through our email newsletter. Now that we’ve achieved that critical mass, it’s time for us to take it further – expand our network and allow the conversations to become less one-way.

A blog is an appropriate choice for us because it’s a good fit with our brand: conversational, friendly, smart, and collaborative.  It’s also a good fit with our goals. We have a lot of experience to communicate but we’re also are always looking for ways to improve and stay on top of emerging trends. Our blog will let us do both.

So how’s your website doing? Does your online identity fit your branding strategy? Does your website’s overall experience match the quality of your products and services?  Are you getting leads, selling products, building awareness or even getting traffic?  If the answer is yes, then maybe you’re ready to do a blog – because you have an audience, a tone of voice and a network. You’re ready to be a thought leader in your industry or at least have an opinion. Of course you can have a blog without a corporate website, and you can even make money at it.   But if you’re like us, and most of our clients and peers, your website is critical for doing business online, disseminating information, and creating the first point of contact for all potential customers.

Let’s say you’ve got it all together and you’re ready get started.  Keep your blog focused, stay in tune with what you know and be relevant to your game.  Yes, there are many blogs in your industry, but any niche or network can use fresh thinking, so don’t be apprehensive. Like any tool, if it is available and right for you, then use it.  Make sure it doesn’t duplicate what your site is already doing for you and your audience – consider it an avenue for a different kind of messaging and communication.

For us, we understand that our audience is an intimate group of professionals looking to share best practices for doing business online. In upcoming posts we’ll be engaging our network and sharing our points of view on what we do best: providing the strategy, design and technology to companies that value the power of the internet. We’re kicking off the dialogue with several topics each month, coming from senior Loewy staffers with different areas of expertise.

Here’s to getting social. We’ve opened the floor, now we invite you to join the conversation…and if commenting is not your thing, just stop by and say Helloewy.