Love Your User #1: Keep Friction Low

I twittered on this earlier today, and thought it good enough for a blog post to share with the rest of you.

I saw a cool campaign for some pretty valuable B2B information - sounds snore-o-riffic, but it was some pretty cool stuff for business nerds.

However, when I got the link from a friend, I got a note that “the form was too long and they want too much information, but it sounds interesting.”  Well, I went over there - and lo and behold, 20 fields of information that they need.  Obviously, they are qualifying people for follow-up; however, don’t you just basically need a name, an email and (maybe) a phone number?  After all, there is nothing stopping someone from entering 20 fake fields of information instead of just say 4 or 5.  The term in the industry is to aim to have “low friction.”

The lead-generation CRM nerds might dislike me for this - but we’ve seen consistently that more fields = less participation = less reach.

One of the reasons I like to “put things out there” and make sure podcasts are in big directories like iTunes and the blog that’s attached to the podcast is in Technorati and other high-profile places is that you want content to be sharable for this whole “viral” thing to work.  Yes, metrics suffers a little, I know - but the goal is to sell stuff, or influence minds, isn’t it?

Why (Some, Mostly Big) Businesses Don’t Get New Media

Saw a report today from the USC School of Business around social media and online initiatives - and the information was great.

All in all, the biggest reason why there isn’t an embrace of new media yet is that they don’t understand it… not to mention new media is still levels the playing field because the level of adoption of companies under 100 employees is higher than any other segment.

Following those reasons, we also see cost/staff issues (funny, as it’s usually cheaper and there are some great vendors out there to make it happen) as well as network security (seems like not a well-asked question; is it a concern of leaks or a technical concern?).

Big business in general didn’t always correlate new media to a competitive advantage; this tells me that this is the greatest opportunity for the small (Tier 5, Tier 4, etc) companies to use new media to establish beachheads and superiority in the online space before the big guys catch on.

That said, the three things that they saw most useful across the board was online video, RSS, and podcasting. (Editor’s note: glad we picked those areas to focus on) and blogs were near the bottom of perceived usefulness (Editor’s note: can’t pick’em all).

I’m sure, since it’s lack of understanding as the lead cause, since these decision makers don’t always use these tools themselves they fail to see how their employees and customers can benefit.  This USC information basically backs up what a pseudo-competitor (and overall good guy) said:

“They either get it or they don’t.”

My take is that those who don’t see it need to get on the clue train at the next station as it’s already left this one, if they want to be relevant and make money in the future.

The reality is that this is the way a whole generation of people connect; the playing field has changed.  From here on out, there is a line in the sand; a top-down approach as the past has been is less and less effective.  Of course, it still blows my mind that in 2008 over 15% of businesses we talk to over 10 people don’t have a website yet and close to 70% haven’t updated theirs in the last year.  It’s just not seen as a vehicle; it’s many times seen as a static brochure… and then they wonder why they don’t get any results.

I remember vividly a meeting a couple years ago where the potential client (this is more of a Web 1.0 story, but applicable) who was convinced nothing was wrong with their e-commerce store, even though they were only getting a couple hundred dollars a month on their $100,000 investment (obviously denial is not just a river in Egypt).

Their premise was that since no one told them their store was bad (it was atrocious - no product descriptions, no pictures, no search) that it’s not the problem.  Of course, online customers don’t always tell you it’s bad - most times they just leave and tell their friends.

They had no statistics or tracking package, no way to see where people abandoned their carts, what people did.. but it was still fine.  They did it their way with no input from their vendor; they did the graphics, the text, everything themselves because they knew what customers wanted.

Suffice it to say, they’re still failing in ignorant bliss.  Sad to see, but it’s their choice.  Go take their business from them, as the great equalization is still in effect.