Cheap leads

I had a call from a very nice lady who offered me a trial subscription to a lead-generation service called first rate directory. The price for a lead is low - less than a tenner.I checked it out and the site is a nice piece of work. Looks good, works well and lots of leads.However here is a typical lead:

Lead runs a garage repair business and would like to start selling car parts. He would require the user to search by Type of car then by the type of car part e.g. wiper blades, gear nobs etc then by manufacturer then by part no./type. Then through to the checkout to buy product. He would want to add products himself (but will need some instruction. Will also need hosting and a domain name. Is willing to work with anyone in the UK and has a budget of £1000.

I emphasise that this is typical. Two people have already purchased this lead and they have had 9 leads in the last two days in the category Web Site Development.

Is there some parallel universe out there where people are getting major e-commerce websites developed for £1,000? Is there a bug in their system and all the budgets are missing a decimal point?

The technology for marketing exhibition

I went to the technology for marketing exhibition at Olympia yesterday. Reactions:

1. The subheading was technology for sales, and in fact we were looking for sales force automation tools. Couldn't find one - except goldmine. This is despite there being 30+ listed in the exhibition index. Tick-all-the-box-itis strikes again.
   
2. There were however a lot of CRM solutions, email marketing solutions and web analytics.
   
3. I don't quite understand what a web analytics tool costing ten grand a year does that the free Google analytics product doesn't. I asked several to explain but never really got to the bottom of it. Throw-aways like 'oh - the google product is just a lightweight system' doesn't cut the mustard - I want features and benefits and I didn't get em.
   
4. Great card trickster on one of the stands - but which company? I have no idea. He left me a playing card as a momento. What a chance missed that the company details were not printed on the back.
   
5. Some of the people on the stands were not really up to the job. Too many didn't understand their product or if they did were incapable of explaining what it did. We walked away from several stands bemused and wondering what the product did.
   
6. Overall marginally interesting. But I am still wanting to find out about web based sales force automation tools other than salesforce.com

bob

http://www.textor.com

Eye tracking

Eye tracking is fascinating. They sit users down as a computer screen and measure the bits of the web page that they look at, and how long they look at it. The company who specialise in this is at http://www.e-consultancy.com/out.asp?source=blog&com=global&url=http%3a%2f%2fwww.eyetools.com and the company has a new blog at http://www.e-consultancy.com/out.asp?source=blog&com=global&url=http%3a%2f%2fblog.eyetools.net%2f .

Before and after studies on web sites show the effect of different design styles. Every designer should get up to speed on this. A really good example is in the middle of other fascinating data in the teaser slides for the marketingsherpa benchmark study. http://www.e-consultancy.com/out.asp?source=blog&com=global&url=http%3a%2f%2fwww.marketingsherpa.com%2ftele%2fEMBG1_24.pdf Spin down to page 12 and see how a change in design dramatically increases the impact of the copy.

Bob
http://www.textor.com

Using forums

My direct experience is with setting up a closed forum for a large (3,000+) community. The communioty were building contractors and we envisaged the site being used to help them sort out subcontracts. find staff, and other business benefits as well as just discussing issues of the day.Result: nothing, nada, zilch. The forum wasn't used - at all - for two years until it was closed.

What was missing?

IMNSHO what was missing was a core of enthusiasts who drive the forum on a day to day basis, raising issues and resonding to posts. Nobody wants to be the first poster. We have been discussing a forum for a medical charity last week. Again multiple real benefits of such a tool. However my advice was not to think about it unless the client was willing to put in the time to raise awarenes and most of all - keep it busy.

bob
http://www.textor.com