QR Codes: Best. Practice. Ever.

January 12, 2012

QR Codes work well, except when they don’t –  but they can!  Following my 2012 New Year’s Resolution to stop doing dumb things (wish me luck), and coming on the heels of multiple successes in which QR codes have helped me make money by helping my clients win new customers, I offer herewith my take on the value of QR codes.

 

What’s Cool

I love QR Codes and all 2-dimensional (“2D”) codes for two reasons.   First, they help to combine the best of the physical world with the best of the digital world.  Second, they make life easier by eliminating the need to memorize, type, or otherwise manually translate a URL in order to render content digitally.  The highest use of 2D codes is to bridge an excellent real world experience to an excellent online experience.

As of this writing, however, we are in a place where their use is not widespread, so be aware of situations in which your printed content and your online content probably should not substitute and, rather, might need to be a bit redundant.   Each version must still stand on its own, since the vast majority of people are not yet acclimated.

Marketers love QR codes because they make interaction with the physical world clickable and, therefore, measurable.  I get to do more of what I love, too: obsess about large CRM data sets, mining and combining it to detect the faint signals of user behavior that will help satisfy more people.  Everybody wins!

What’s Broken – Why QR Codes Disappoint

According to Forrester Research, however, those who do click on QR codes – primarily young, affluent males – generally hate them.  This is mainly due to the bumbling mis-steps of marketers.

Firstly, QR codes are ugly – - although plenty of people have found ways to fix that (read on).

Secondly, many people are confused about how to scan them.  This is exacerbated by the walled gardens created by competing companies.  Microsoft (just one example) has its own unique 2D code technology, which requires its own unique reader app.  How lovely.

Third: the various free downloadable apps required to read QR codes don’t all function the same way.

Last and worst: user disappointment.  Simply being redirected to the same byzantine website available via large screen device is uninspiring, to say the least.  People typically avoid browsing websites on a small phone screen, so why use a QR code to force them?  Effective QR codes don’t link to ordinary websites.  Instead, they link to an instantly satisfying, sharable experience – on a par with music, photos and email, or content that is uniquely useful wherever the QR code is displayed.

Try thinking of a QR code as new type of “share this” button, a way to augment enjoyment of the real world, and a delightful sharable experience.  That thinking alone should keep you out of the weeds, but to be thorough, here is a list of best practices.

How to Fix It – Turn QR Codes into a Viral Experience

Here are some basic items to consider when contemplating use of 2D and QR codes.

1. Audience awareness.  Again, most people are not acclimated.  Do the obvious: include instructions to help new users engage.  Even savvy users need to be informed on what rewards to expect.  For some examples, see the last page of this QR Code usage guide I created for a print / QR code campaign promoting an iPhone app.

2. Usage patterns.  If you plan to use QR codes multiple times for multiple campaigns, treat each as its own campaign – complete with strategy, goals, success measures, etc. Then, for each instance, caption each code with the URL, app instructions, Call to Action and reward info. Set the stage for fulfillment by setting user expectations before they scan your code. See the example linked in section 1 above.

3. Size and placement.  Your 2D code must be of sufficient size, placement and proximity to be easily scanned. This excludes TV (too fleeting), subway (no wireless signal means no way to access the online content) and Billboard (too distant; depending on which reader software you use, your own pulse may cause your handheld phone/camera to shake too much to reliably scan the code).  Ideal: printed material or flat surface, within arm’s reach. Up close and personal.

4. Visual Appeal.   You can beautify a QR code, either through free experimentation, or for a price using a reputable designer.  It’s not just a nice touch, it’s also a branding opportunity, so we can expect this beautification trend to increase.  Whereas the lowly barcode has faded like a footnote into the borders of package labels, the comparatively prominent physical placement of a QR code could harm the beauty of your content or its location – a slippery slope, indeed.  Who wants a future where a physical, beautiful world is obscured by electromechanical codes?  Fine for robots, not for me.  Moral: beautifying your QR code makes it buzzworthy and increases sharing.

5. Mobile-optimized.    Create an experience that is based on portability, location, SMS, sharing, or instant fulfillment and feedback – anything but an ordinary website.

6. Convenience.  Think: Is a 2D code the fastest, easiest and/or only way to access the content, share it, and/or fulfill some need?  If so, great; go for it.  If not, think about other ways to deliver content more effectively.  Again, an ordinary website, not mobile-optimized, is not a value-add experience and not a fulfilling one.

7. Engagement.   Make it memorable.  Reward users, rather than disappoint them. Make your destination content instantly useful and satisfying.  Include share buttons so your audience can tweet, email, post and rave about the cool experience you provide.  Want viral?  Do that!

My take on QR codes: end of a fad!  They are here to stay.  QR codes and 2D codes can help you create a satisfying customer experience and, done well, convert sales.

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Posted by Ed

The New Consumer Demand: I Want My MDV *

December 2, 2011

*MDV (def.) Massive Data Visualization

It’s my data.  Give it to me.  Oh, and help me leverage it, too.

This demand is customary in the business world, but increasingly it comes from the mouths of consumers.

How Did We Get Here?One way: be your own landing page link!

The consumerization of data analysis is not new. You could put your finger on any point in the timeline of humanity, as far back as the invention of the printing press.

A key inflection point in the 1980′s occurred when the mass distribution of personal computers made it possible for us to create  documents and spreadsheets and share them via email.  It continued in the 90′s with distributed networks and the advent of the Worldwide Web for searching and sifting, managing virtual folders, bookmarking, saving, copying, sharing etc.  In recent decade,  we built a habit of  tapping data stores for making decisions – in online shopping with its price comparison engines.  For most of us, it is now our first resort.

Today our social media tools help us to sort and manage our relationships, connections, conversations, and the statistics about those sorting processes, into visual and mental maps about our lives.   Is your organization generating customer data that’s worth sharing with your customers?

As Clay Shirky remarked in his book “Here Comes Everybody“, the problem is “not information overload, it’s filter failure”. We really can only care about the most meaningful data.  Which data is that? How do we decide? What tools are available?  I mention a few cool ones below.

The Tyranny of Time

That issue is inflated by the tyranny of time, in that we each only have so many waking hours in each day. Note to self: I booked a couple of hours this Saturday afternoon for some spontaneity, but I may have to time shift it to Sunday. Hmm, I’ll just mark it as Tentative on both days. We’ll see.

We have taught ourselves to prefer to depend on data.  Tainted by the fallacy of following a HIPPO (Highest Paid Person’s Opinion), as their instincts born of experience led us off various cliffs, soaring on the wings of faith, only to find that we left our data back at the cliff and are now flying blind, and just might be losing altitude, we are now looking over our shoulders and wondering if we could use that data right about now.   Meanwhile, back at the cliff, people are gathering more data to decide whether or when to jump and, if so, in what direction.  If you have used your smartphone to scan the merchandise QR code and compare prices, you get the value of massive data visualization on a small scale.

Who’s Doing It?

The new mantra is: Give me my data, in a way that helps me use it to make decisions faster.

One problem:  detecting the useful faint signals in all that data is still a daunting task, but usually is accompanied by a few “Aha!” moments, whether you are a consumer, producer or business.  A few people are making progress in this area, like Coloci and InMaps.  In the enterprise space, new entrants like Qliktech are invigorating the space long dominated by established players linke IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, and Microstrategy.  Have you tried them?  Have you found others you’d recommend?

What are you doing to give people transparent access to their data?  Whatever you decide to to, it just might make you their hero.

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Posted by Ed

Why We Buy: the Science and Gamification of Loyalty

July 11, 2011
Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. Resized, renamed,...

Image via Wikipedia

Gamification is not just playing games online.  It involves an understanding how the science of game mechanics can motivate us to achieve our goals.

Being a Fan Foundry involves applying principles of human motivation.   Maslow’s ”Hierarchy of Need” suggests that once our basic food, clothing and shelter needs are met, we are free to satisfy higher level needs like belonging, learning and self-actualization.  We humans are a constantly striving bunch.

Sales and Marketing professionals have long studied Maslow, B. F. Skinner and others to learn how to recognize and interpret “buy” signals, improve the buyer experience, increase qualified leads and convert more sales.   Whether you are in retail, e-commerce, enterprise sales, education, politics, contract negotiation or consulting, a review of some basic principles might help you discover ways to  improve your results.

In this upcoming series of “Why We Buy” articles, we examine the science and review real world examples of their application, so you can consider how they may fit your own business challenges.

Use the “Keep in Touch” button (right sidebar, top) to receive monthly notices of upcoming installments in this series.

“Why We Buy” Topics (click live titles to visit articles; more to come)

  • Default (path of least resistance or effort)
  • Sunken Cost (good money after bad)
  • Aspiration (status seeking)
  • Achievement
  • Challenge
  • Reward
  • Progress tracking
  • Competition
  • Pride (emotional investment)
  • Reciprocity (tit for tat)
  • Status – (gain/loss)
  • Gratification (delayed or immediate)
  • Reinforcement (thanks, BF Skinner)
  • Resource Slack (tomorrow never comes)

More to come!

Related Articles:

Gamification: How Competition is Reinventing Business, Marketing and Everyday Life (Mashable)

Engaging Patients with “Gamified” Mobile Care (Healthcare IT Solutions / Perficient)

Gamification is Bullshit (Persuasive Games)

Persuasive Games:  Exploitationware (Ian Bogost on Gamasutra)

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Posted by Ed

Default: Path of least resistance or effort

July 11, 2011

from the Fan Foundry “Why We Buy” series  

Like water flowing downhill, human tendency is to take the easy way and the familiar way.   This has implications for website design, e-commerce, sales negotiations, marketing automation, training and fostering loyalty.

Design

In Web design, Recursive (repetitive pattern) Web navigation follows this principle.  It’s all about consistency and reliability.  Early Web designers borrowed print publishing navigation techniques, and today still use these familiar layout patterns to ease the user experience.  We expect websites to offer a top of page menu bar that persists as we navigate the site’s pages.  Minor clues such as changes to the menu bar’s colors or other features help us trace our journey of discovery through the site, so we can confidently concentrate on consuming content without losing place.  Some designers call it “breadcrumbing” after the children’s fairy tale of Hansel and Gretel, in which the two lost children found their way out of the woods by retracing their trail of bread crumbs.

The usability motto seems to be: “Don’t make me think.  Reassure me.  Keep it simple, familiar and intuitive.  Don’t make me work more than absolutely necessary.  I prefer the path of least resistance and effort”.  Let’s not mistake this for laziness; rather it is an indicator of the fleeting nature of human attention, especially online, especially these days.

Captivate

While directing sales and marketing for Piehead Productions, I visited the Usability lab at Fidelity Investments, where every day millions of dollars in customer revenue are dependent on a pleasing, authoritative visual site navigation experience.  This dependency exists at every touchpoint in the customer experience – not just the website, but also in back-end fulfillment systems, brick-and-mortar locations, phone and email communications, etc.

Visual navigation science research at Fidelity tells us that the most important fields of information on any screen are – in exact order: (a) the top left, (b) the top center of the page (“hotspot”) just below the top navigation bar, and (c) the right column horizontally to the right of that center hotspot. Our eyes tend to focus our vision on these three fields, in sequence, when we first arrive at a website, seeking validation.   Of course, you could short-circuit this process by inserting a huge blinking headline somewhere, but then the site would be perceived as “busy” or “annoying.

According to Marketing Experiments, site visitors typically take no more than 8 seconds at those 3 fields to get  validation by answering the following questions:

  • Why am I here?
  • Did I get what I expected?
  • What else can I do here?

If your site content can promptly answer those 3 questions, people will likely spend more time on your site, value its content, and visit again. Conversely, if your site is confusing and cannot satisfactorily answer your visitor’s questions, then sadly the Back button often becomes the path of least resistance.

Design is part of Content.  Good content, supported by good design, including visual layout that supports visual navigation, convinces people to validate you as a worthy place to confidently transact business.

Convert

How does the Default principle influence and motivate transactions?  Landing page forms, Profiling and Configurator pages are a few useful examples.

Landing Pages. When preparing a landing page, conversation or other transaction setting, use Defaults to speed the transaction and improve convenience.  A website registration page, for example, might be default-set by you with the “I wish to receive email from you” box pre-checked.  The visitor would have to uncheck that box if they wish to opt out.  This might be perceived as tricky or manipulative – until you read the following true story.

Real World Example - Here is an actual current example.   At QVew, I performed an A/B test to determine an optimal approach to build an email list for a particular campaign.   I first configured the landing page form with the “keep me informed” box unchecked.  Very few visitors checked the box.  Later, I revised the form so that the checkbox was, by default, pre-checked, meaning any such visitor form submissions would result in those visitors being added to the email list.  Instantly we began receiving completed landing page forms with the “keep me informed” box checked – almost unanimously.  Visitors had overwhelmingly decided to do nothing and leave the box checked.  Fortunately, email recipient opt-outs are also low, thanks to some attentive follow-up marketing.

In the A/B test above, overwhelmingly people left the checkbox alone.  Checked or un-checked, it didn’t matter.   They followed the path of least effort.  Our subsequent marketing email “open” rates experienced a dip due to the abundance of new “sleepers”, but at least we earned the opportunity to cultivate a relevant relationship, and we subsequently converted some sales and are cultivating new relationships.

Profiles.  Just ask Amazon.  By enabling people to create an account and store a profile and credit card information, you greatly simplify the checkout process and increase the likelihood they will transact with you again.  Amazon, Expedia, Netflix and other large commerce systems “remember” you when your return.  Their Recommendation Engines “flag” you via email with notices about merchandise that match your stated preferences and past buying behavior.

Configurators.  Cell phone and computer sales sites enable people to sort and select product options like size, color, price and other features  options to determine availability of solutions that match their preferences and requirements.  Once done, it’s a simple matter to place your order.

Valuing the Investment of Time and Effort

Here is the important part – and it’s also a glimpse at a couple of additional ”Why We Buy” articles that deal with phenoma known as “sunken cost” and “time value”.  Once we have completed a configurator experience, we value that investment of time and effort by saving the page settings and any passwords, and bookmarking the page for quick retrieval.  In the few scant seconds it takes to make a buying decision, we are more likely to re-use a stored configurator page than to re-type our information into a new system.  Following user instincts gives you the opportunity to build loyalty by making people’s lives easier.

For more topics from the “Why We Buy” series,  click here.  Use the “email updates” button (right sidebar) to automatically receive monthly updates.

How are you applying knowledge of the human tendency to follow the Path of Least Effort/Resistance, or Default, to improve your audience experience?

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Posted by Ed

Mobile Internet: Does Apple Have it Wrong?

June 6, 2011

Update: Since posting this article in June 2011,  I have met some analysts who strongly argue against the scenario I predicted, in part because of HTML5 – most notably venture capitalist and Facebook investor Roger McNamee.   You decide.  ~Ed

~

Original post

Let me start by saying I admire Apple. I am in awe of their fanatical focus and gorgeous customer experience.  They find ways to improve on existing concepts better than anyone previously imagined. And yes, it’s hard to argue with their revenue, but will Apple’s “walled garden” approach to owning the app ecosystem create an opening for Google, Microsoft and others to overtake? I predict “yes”, and several analysts agree, although they express it differently.

The Garden Wall will Tumble Again

The Apple love fest may soon be over, for a variety of reasons, but one particular reason that I and many people can’t stand is the ”Walled Garden” phenomenon: you must subscribe to the right phone service, purchase a specialized device, and endlessly search, discover and download app after app, which is then trapped on your device, and then you must access content available exclusively via curated channels. Of course, that world is expanding (100 million Apple device sales and counting, for example), and certainly, controlling the channel enables them to control the quality and the attendant revenue.

Good for Apple and their customers.  But there comes a point at which the profit motive, the curated experience and security issues come up against real world practicalities, such as need and desire of users to access and freely (or securely) share information without having to care about what device they’re holding.  It should just work…kind of like a Web browsing experience, eh?

Just as the Walled Gardens tumbled 15 years ago (who remembers GeoCities? Excite? Magellan? CompuServe?), so too will today’s Splinternet factions (app wars) be reunited, simply because (a) people prefer choice and access, and (b) reliable alternatives exist, (c) they aren’t scarce or expensive, and (d) the value of the experience must outweight the pain and inconvenience of its use – not presently the case with most apps.

Think of it: with an Internet account, you can go just about anywhere you want on the Worldwide Web. You can share information with others, and the only thing your buddies need is an Internet account – ANY Internet account. Even web based email works reliably, mainly because it complies with W3C standards (“Web standards”).

Today’s mobile app providers have built gorgeous, shiny front-ends that distract us temporarily from the restricted-access conditions of their “app” use.   Apps have to be promoted and downloaded, sometimes for a fee, and they only live on your device. Your buddy has to have the exact same app to share the experience with you. This is like re-starting the Web all over again, except you make the App provider or the app store provider rich on toll fees while they restrict your access.  (Cue dorky announcer voice: “Now how much would you pay?!”)

Don’t Mistake Shiny for Better

Let’s not let the gorgeous experience and the shiny new toy hype blind us to the restricted access and curated content phenomena. Take a look at what companies like QVew and Nexaweb are doing.  Upstart QVew makes a write-once, run-everywhere content platform that lets account holders launch mobile-ready mini-apps, hypercharged landing pages, etc. – as many as you can imagine – all for one price, and they work everywhere. Or, if you are an enterprise and need large scale heavy lifting on large databases, Nexaweb helps your enterprise modernize its legacy applications so that real-time, fast changing data can be accessed remotely via any Web-connected device, large or small.

When will we collectively come to our senses and realize that the great Kool Aid that Apple, Google, Microsoft et. al. have been peddling won’t quench our real need for on-demand, anywhere-access to our preferred data, or just-in-time support for our real-world experience?

The June 2011 report from Flurry that indicates App usage has now exceeded PC deceptively compares two different data sets (app usage and Web usage) as if they correlate somehow.  According to the report, 79% of App usage time is spent on games and social media sites.   Most PC  and phone-based Web browsing is done for business purposes.  All this does is reinforce my point that most activity inside today’s Walled Gardens is comparatively frivolous, not serious computing, and after we get over the “shiny new toy” hype, we should again insist on what works – Open Standards - and take back the Web.  I predict it’s just a matter of time.

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Posted by Ed

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