Talk I'm Doing at SLA Seattle in June
Apr 24, 03:14 PMShopping 2.0 - A New-Old Model for Optimizing Library Web Portals
By Dan Klyn*
Information Architect, Flannel
Lecturer, Univ. of Mich. School of Information
Probably you’ve heard a colleague or a patron remark that the library should be more like Amazon.com. Or that a new public library branch is really great because they have a coffee shop and colorful end-cap displays of new and featured titles just like they do at Barnes & Noble. The extension of ideas and tactics from retail worlds into the setting of the library is nothing new. And in some ways the work of applying retail and merchandising concepts to the library has been made easier by the fact that the biggest retailer on the planet started out as a bookseller. The metaphors and models line up so nicely when we’re talking primarily about books and CDs and DVDs. Just add to cart...
From my perspective as an e-commerce information architect with a background in librarianship, I’m concerned that these tidy comparisons between bookselling and booklending have had the unintended consequence of narrowing and prefiguring our perspectives on what we might or could or should do to optimize library web portals. Instead of asking “what does Amazon.com do” when we plan our online strategy, what if we asked “what does Etsy.com do?”
In this session we’ll examine website navigation and product findability concepts from some of the most innovative and effective online retailers. Attendees will see how special libraries can look beyond the 800lb gorilla that is Amazon.com and find inspiration, ideas, features and functionality from online retailers whose tactics and techniques aren’t confined to or built primarily around books and music and films.
*Dan Klyn is an ALA-certified librarian who’s never worked in a library
Meijer Twitter Marketing FTL
Apr 15, 02:19 PMYesterday I reported a surprisingly OK moment of being marketed to in Twitterland, and Laura Fisher talked about how we should maybe not overreact to what's emerging with marketers in Twitter (agree!) but at the same time ... man, this could get really sucky:
"At some point it will become tiresome, and then I’ll turn off notifications and I’ll miss following back some cool, innocent and interesting people. Which will be a shame, and will definitely diminish the delightfulness of Twitter."Today, I got a notification from Twitter saying that Meijer is following me on Twitter:
Based on what I was talking about yesterday in terms of Relevance and Value, I went ahead and clicked thru from the email:
See the offer there for $100 off a "funky" outdoor storage box thinger? I opened a different browser and went to the homepage of Meijer.com:
See how that same product is being offered to any old whoever might visit Meijer.com for the same discount? This is exactly the opposite of how you do marketing in a space like Twitter. I'm so not gonna follow you back if there's nothing relevant or valuable to me for having done so.
I Just Got Tweeted By A Marketer...
Apr 14, 07:44 AMI'm not sure how I feel about what happened to me just now. For some time now I've had this policy of following anybody who follows me on Twitter. Oftentimes I'll un-follow in short order, but my "default setting" for stuff like this is to embrace serendipity and give it a chance.
I think today is the day to change that policy. Moments ago, I clicked thru from the Twitter email that notifies you when somebody has signed up to follow you... and in the 2 seconds inbetween the time that the page finished loading and the time that I can move my mouse pointer to the "follow" button, I took pause. Noting that this user's Twitter handle was " fatresistance", I scanned the rest of the info on the profile page and it becomes clear that this user is selling a diet book. For the first time .. at least that I've noticed ... this thing that I enjoyed using to communicate with my friends and some random strangers is tainted by marketing, and what's weird and a little unsettling to me is that I'm mostly ok with it, and the reason why is relevance and value.
Looking at the tweetstream from this user named "fatresistance" ... what appears to be happening here is that the people who're hawking this book are trading valuable bits of their content in exchange for valuable bits of my attention. Check out this smattering of tweets - there's stuff in here that I find to be worth noticing:
Tea is loaded with powerful antioxidants that help to promote weight loss, and support overall health.
09:17 PM April 12, 2008
The powerful benefits of blueberries come from the dark blue color of the berries, which is high in flavonoids. Put a handful on your b ...
05:17 AM April 12, 2008
Arugula contains as much calcium as milk and the calcium in arugula is readily absorbed. It’s also a great source of bioflavonoids.
01:05 AM April 10, 2008
Apples contain vitamin C, fiber, and quercitin, which supports the body's detoxification.
05:40 PM April 09, 2008
This is stuff I'm glad to become aware of, and which might make a positive impact on what I order for lunch if I'm checking Twitter on my handheld before the waitperson arrives. Heck, the tweets are so compact and grockable ... I might even remember some of this stuff when I'm offline.
Unanswered question: did fatresistance start following me because they think I'm fat? And more ponderous than that: what's going to happen when some marketer who's not giving away value and being relevant starts following me on Twitter and I click thru to their page and find marketing junk? I predict Twitter will either become bigger than email in the next 12 months or it will cease to exist, the determining factor being how the swelling ranks of marketers will behave themselves in the Twittervers.
UPDATE: a person I know in Ann Arbor is blogging about this very issue, and doing it better than me :) Yay Mitten!
Video Merchandising for eCommerce
Apr 11, 12:35 PMWow. This looks pretty sweet:
Shopflick is a new social experience where you can connect with your favorite sellers and products at their online stores, share their videos with your friends and embed them in your social networks and blogs.Take note that they're describing this as a social experience... where some of us might call it shopping. But with everything we know from Paco Underhill about higher average order values and probabilities-for-purchasing being so strongly correlated with social activities during the shopping experience... this ShopFlick thing is looking smarter and smarter to me the more I poke around inside of the private beta.
iTunes Video Rentals: From Poofware to Nagware?
Jan 29, 08:02 PMI did my first-ever iTunes video rental a day or two after the announcement at Macworld. My initial reaction to video rentals? The selection was crappy ( I ended up choosing War Games ), but the image quality and user experience was awesome. As promised in Steve Jobs' keynote speech, the rental went "poof" on at the stroke of 24-hours-plus-whenever-it-was-that-i-started-watching this movie. Poofware, as it were. Then a day or two later I read that some users were getting prompted by iTunes at the stroke of 24-hours-plus-whenever-it-was-that-they-started-watching this movie, but then the prompt provided an option to finish viewing right now. Nagware. I like the nagware and 2nd chance approach better, but there's actually no other movies for rent on iTunes that I wanna watch, else I'd test this again. Anybody else out there have the nagware experience instead of the poofware one? Email me if you have...(dan dot klyn at geemail dot com).
Facebook Beacon - Whoah
Nov 20, 11:57 AM
Let's say you're shopping at one of your favorite online retailers. You add an item to your cart, work your way thru checkout, and then as you're completing your transaction ... up comes a little javascript prompt from.... FACEBOOK? Since all your FB friends are already following every little thing you're doing in Facebookland, why not publish a story to your mini-feed about what you just bought at Good Vibrations your favorite online shopping destinations?
This is now possible, compliments of Facebook Beacon. Amazing. I'm not sure many retailers would take a chance on throwing this bit of whizbangery into their checkout process but I do believe I'mma do some testing of this hottness.
Best eCommerce Homepage Evar
Nov 6, 09:52 PMDutch eCommerce is so much moar funs than ours
Shopping: The Last Taboo
Oct 28, 01:35 PM
Today thanks to MeFi I'm OD'ing on The Smart Set. If you knew about this site before the MeFi linkage and neglected to share it with me, shame on you! And if like me you're kindof obsessed with online shopping... go read this column by Paula Marantz Cohen about The Last Taboo and take heart!
The snobbism that scorns shopping is, like all snobbism, hypocritical and selective. It makes exceptions for high-end kitchenware, first editions, sushi-grade tuna, and Rosewood pottery. Trips to Tuscany for leather goods and Paris for Louboutin shoes are permissible. But trolling for a tank top in The Limited or rifling through the racks of Ross Dress for Less are as verboten as reading a Jackie Collins novel or eating iceberg lettuce.
My intention is to blow the cover on this sort of thinking. Shopping is shopping. There are cut-rate treasures to be found in the strip malls of New Jersey, and charming bric-a-brac mixed with conventional housewares in the aisles of Pier One. If you want local color, you’ll see as much in the communal dressing rooms of Loehmann’s as on the beaches of St. Tropez.
Go read the full article here. Turns out Ms. Marantz Cohen has a regular column about shopping called On Shopping. Column roundup available here
Borders eBlast Strategy: Go Long!
Oct 25, 08:39 AM
With such a tight and cunning subject line, there was no way I was going to leave yesterday's email blast from Borders unopened. Rather, I mentally flagged it as bacn, and when I finally got around to opening it I was amazed. While covering all or most of the email marketing best practices (html links to site sections at the very top, plus a link to a webpage version of the blast and clear unsubscribe actionables down below), Borders showed some bravado here by annihilating every received notion about users not liking to scroll and about how "good manners" in email requires brevity. I've created a PDF of the email as rendered by Gmail if you're curious to see just how long of a scroll Borders seems to be getting away with here. I think the seeminly simple design device of numbering the various sections of the layout works really well.
So... there you have it. A best-practices-ey email marketing piece from Borders that breaks some longstanding rules and to my mind, totally gets away with it.
BTW, Carl Collins is a generous and helpful person - he deserves a karmic reward, so if you see him give him a hi-five or a hug
Online Customer Service - This Is How You Own It
Oct 16, 02:37 PMMy friend René just send me a link to a story about Zappos customer service that has me stunned and in total awe. Check it out. And then go try and be like that...
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My name is Dan Klyn, and I'm an information architect.
I work with amazing people at a nonprofit company called Flannel in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
I also teach IA in the library science programs at the University of Michigan and at Wayne State University.
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