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| Clicked Off! |
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Some time back, I hitched a ride on the Tourbus — a cybertour of the Internet that alerts surfers to new and useful sites on the Net via e-mail. After a while, the tour paled, as tours do, and I decided it was time to bid farewell. But my repeated attempts at disembarking have been met by one of the banes of cyberspace — an auto-responder that refuses to acknowledge my right to unsubscribe. According to this lengthy, code-peppered, unfeeling bit of cyber-speak, my address doesn't exist.
So how come they keep delivering my mail?
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I'm beginning to think that they're forgetting a basic principle here: the people principle. It goes like this — and it's obvious to just about everyone except the bus driver — in our quest to build a brave new e-world, let us not forget that behind the bits and bytes are people — people who daily navigate the fantastical, boring, educational, perverse, wonderful stuff on the Web. The company of Net users is populated by bikers, grandmothers, cat lovers, vegans, secretaries, butchers, bakers, and, yes, candlestick makers. Try sorting that lot into marketing segments and stuffing their virtual stockings with appropriate e-marketing goodies. It's enough to make Santa's head spin.
So here's the thing: somebody invented this annoying auto-responder for the Tourbus. A universal cure-all to dealing with tons of e-mail traffic. A wonder of automation. It saves time and I guess, 99.9% of the time, does the job. But, ahem, what if 0.1% of the time it just doesn't work? What if the site visitors are having a problem and they need some real-time troubleshooting? What if they really don't want an automatically generated I-know-what-you-want reply that comes back at you, ready or not? What if the person on the other end wants an answer to a specific question that doesn't appear on your site? Does the system know how to cope with the possibility that (gulp) somebody out there wants more than your neat little auto-responder, or a canned answer generated for Mr. Joe Public? Probably not. And my recent run-in with the Zaplets proves my case.
Zaplet is a neat little tool that allows you to send an e-mail and form a mini, personal discussion group. Intrigued by this toy, one of our founding fathers and a fan of all things Internet asked me to figure out how we could put it on the Trendlines site. Having fruitlessly cruised the site, I contacted "Support." Guess what. They failed to answer the question directly, but referred me to a URL on their site. I clicked. It gave me a "page not found" message. I wrote and told them. A real person wrote a one-line apology and referred me to another page on the site. I clicked. It took me to a page that I'd read before, that didn't answer the question.
Enraged, I wrote back. I'll spare you the details but it went something like: I want a real answer from a real person and not an auto-response that doesn't answer the question. Is that too much to ask?
Evidently it was. The Zaplets zapped off. I heard nothing. Nada. Zip. Annoyed at being ignored (is there anything worse?), and more than a little clicked off, I figured that I'd feature the Zaplet crew in an as yet to be written Internet 101 course: 10 ways to tick off your visitors. Zaplets would play a starring role in my rogues's gallery of how not to treat your interested prospects.
Some three weeks later, I was astounded to hear a lengthy telephone message from a bonafide Zaplet in the States, who explained that they were still in beta, thanked me for my interest, and explained that my quest to zaplet our site was somewhat premature. Somewhat mollified, I held my fire. Until now.
I'm tired of sites that fail to ask the basic questions: What do my users want? How can I make the information they need accessible and easy to find? What more can I do to make their surfing experience a pleasant one? Is it easy to make contact with the real world in real time and get real answers?
As the Net grows ever more cluttered, it's going to become harder and harder to navigate. Most of us will fail to take the road less traveled, opting instead for the safety of the known. If you're hoping to get sizeable amounts of Net traffic through your site, remember this basic dictum: the entity holding the mouse is an interested, flesh and blood visitor. Slice 'em, segment 'em, categorize 'em, but above all, remember that they are unique individuals who paid you the courtesy of visiting your site. Yes, you can track their movements. Sure, you can drop them cookies. But people, in their infinite variety, aren't as predictable as we'd like to believe.
They like when you remember their name, they like that you've made it easy for them to do business, they get riled when you needlessly invade their privacy. They like relevancy. They like marketers to be responsive to their individual needs. Most of all, they like to be treated like, well, people. The Internet provides real opportunities to get to know your customers and open dialogs with them. Make sure that the dialog is a fruitful one. Treat them right.
Now, can somebody please tell me how to stop the bus?
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