Ditch the Click: Study Says Clicks Don't Correlate to Conversions

It’s time to rethink the click. Click-to-conversion rates are much lower than previously thought, according to a report from Pretarget and comScore. Further, many display ads are placed in locations where they aren’t seen by site visitors or where they can harm the brand image.

Read the rest on my CMO Site blog: Ditch the Click: Study Says Clicks Don't Correlate to Conversions

Global Study: Banks Are Trying Too Hard

Banks are trying to do it all, and it's hurting both the customer experience and their own ability to innovate, according to a major industry study.

Read the rest on my Better Bank Systems blog post, Global Study: Banks Are Trying Too Hard

Predictions about the future of the news business

We just finished our WISE course on the future of the news business. For the last class, I made four predictions and told the class that we'd review them in April of next year.
Here they are:

• CNN is toast.


• One or more major magazines will cease print operations because of postal rate hikes. (Newsweek).


• One or more major daily newspapers in the Northeast will cease printing on one or more days per week.


• Worcester will have no local radio news and no one will notice.

More on mobile apps

I got an email this morning that informed me of the new Rite Aid app. The email had a QR code that let me easily install the app on my phone. Well, almost easily.

I couldn't remember my registration or if I'd even registered. So, I had to navigate the Rite-Aid web site on my phone to check a few things. The Rite Aid web site does not scale to the size of a phone's display.

[caption id="attachment_3447" align="aligncenter" width="168" caption="Click to enbiggen"][/caption]
I've uninstalled the app.

Don't eat lunch alone

Last night I attended a gathering of our local chamber of commerce.  I like these folks. Most of the people there are trying to build small businesses that let's them do things they're good at. For some people, it's banking or real estate. For others, it can be a store or a services business or goodness knows what.

We talked very little about doing business in the sense of trying to work out a deal. We talked about how we helped other people solve problems. I talked as much about my grandkids as I did about WordPress, Cat5 vs Cat5e vs Cat6 cabling, or state and federal trademark law. I talked with a nursing home administrator about the discussions she'd been having with an about-to-be college graduate, with a bank branch manager about how electronic banking was  giving him and his staff more time to spend on customer service, with a realtor about finding a volunteer opportunity for her teen-aged son. I had a good chat with a guy who called me Gary about the effect that the warm winter had on local businesses.

Toward the latter part of the gathering, I saw John DiPietro. John and I will be giving a LinkedIn workshop for the chamber in a couple of weeks. After talking about the workshop for a bit, John mentioned the interesting results he was getting from posting questions on LinkedIn. His most recent question, Going out for lunch vs eating at your desk, was bringing comments from around the world.

He then noted that, if you're eating lunch at your desk, three bad things may happen: 1) you might spill food on your computer, 2) you'll miss a chance for some exercise, and 3) you'll miss a chance to talk with some. "Go out. Have a cup of soup. See what happens."

In this world of virtual work, it's easy to overlook the opportunities for face-to-face contact. Even if the people around town aren't working on the same things that you are, they're working on something interesting and living lives that offer something important.

I stayed for a while longer, talking with a web designer about developing sites for multiple platforms, particularly for the smaller screens on mobile devices.

When it was time to leave, I waved to the guy I'd seen earlier.

"Bye, Gary," he said. "Thanks for coming."

Long-distance power

Ars Technica is reporting on a plan to run a very high-voltage cable from Iceland to the UK or mainland Europe. The plan would deliver 5B kilowatt-hours per year from Iceland's geothermal generating systems to a Europe that is seeking safer and more sustainable sources of energy. (Germany, in response to last year's nuclear catastrophe, is closing down its nuclear reactors.)



Other long-distance power connections have been in place in Europe for a while, but this would be the world's longest by far. Additional power transmission are envisioned, bringing solar power from North Africa to Europe.

The final construction schedule or costs haven't been published yet. The feasibility study, the article notes, found no major issues. One concern that may have been overlooked, however, one that could cause problems for the UK's bid to be the terminus of the Iceland cable.

This is the standard Iceland plug:

 

 This is the standard UK socket:

 

More on kid safety

Victor Infante's wrote poignantly in his Friday Pop Culture Notebook<^[1] about Jeff Barnard. Jeff, as many of you remember, died a year-and-a-half ago, leaving not only silence where his voice had been, but also a drought of energy from the rest of us. Jeff worked hard and, in the process, got the rest of us to work hard.

It wasn't about competition, but about conversation. You know how it is: a gathering of friends brings out the best of everyone. One good idea sparks a half-dozen more. Further, if someone provides an insight, you cannot not see it afterwards. The world has a lot of great people who can fill our lives with magic and a lot of others who seek to fill our lives with fear.

Among marketing types, there's a hot trend with QR codes. These squared ink blots, Quick Response codes, provide your smartphone with detailed information about a website, contact information, or other something else of questionable utility. I have one on my business card, mostly as a conversation starter. It contains my contact information.

It was inevitable that someone would combine this marketing device with our fears. Toward that end, we now have SafetyTat. As we learn, if we turn our backs for even a moment, we can lose our kid, but a tattooed QR code can

These folks have not only registered their trademark with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, but they have a patent on it, too.

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n.b. Update: Victor send me a link to the article.  Here's a clip of it from the Telegram's Friday e-Edition.

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More on the world around us

Victor Infante's wrote poignantly in his Friday Pop Culture Notebook about Jeff Barnard. Jeff, as many of you remember, died a year-and-a-half ago, leaving not only silence where his voice had been, but also a drought of energy from the rest of us. Jeff worked hard and, in the process, got the rest of us to work hard.

It wasn't about competition, but about conversation. You know how it is: a gathering of friends brings out the best of everyone. One good idea sparks a half-dozen more. Further, if someone provides an insight, you cannot not see it afterwards. The world has a lot of great people who can fill our lives with magic and a lot of others who seek to fill our lives with fear.

Among marketing types, there's a hot trend with QR codes. These squared ink blots provide your smartphone with detailed information about a website, contact information, or other something else of questionable utility. I have one on my business card, mostly as a conversation starter. It contains my contact information.

It was inevitable that someone would combine this marketing device with our fears. Toward that end, we now have SafetyTat. As we learn, if we turn our backs for even a moment, we can lose our kid, but a tattooed QR code can

These folks have not only registered their trademark with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, but they have a patent on it, too.