www.tamomer.com

When we buy physical items on line, there is obviously the need to wait for delivery. Make it as fast as possible, surely no problem in a world where things have to “absolutely, positively, get there overnight.”

And forget those shipping charges and express delivery upgrades. Are you aware that the biggest discouragement to online buying is shipping costs? Increase the price of every item by a dollar and make shipping and handling free. I’m not going to not order something because it’s a dollar or so higher in price and the lack of hassle on shipping will make me purr with satisfaction.

Even on an item that must be shipped, give me something immediate. Not just an e-mail that my order has been received but some information about what I’m getting, how smart was my decision to order, and where I can get additional information about related items that might interest me.

If I’m buying a product that doesn’t need to be shipped, such as a report or book, give it to me now. As soon as I’ve paid, or taken you up on a free offer, I want to right click, download, and read. I don’t want to have to go into my inbox and click to activate something.

If I receive a zip file that opens up to show a bewildering array of mysteriously labeled icons, I want clearly labeled instructions so I can go there first and learn what all the other stuff is. If it’s “so easy to use a child could do it” software, don’t make me feel stupid because I can’t figure out what to do next and the instructions are vague or non-existent.

If it’s a marketing report, I want to be able to read it first and decide whether I like it, not be immediately confronted with a page urging me to brand the book so I can resell it - how do I know I want to be associated with it before I’ve completely read it?

If you’re giving me a mini-course over a period of days, make sure each lesson is totally self-contained or indulge my impatience by allowing me to click onto the next chapter. If I’m interested, I want to read it now. By tomorrow morning, I may have forgotten that I ordered it, no matter being able to recall what was in part one.

There is real joy in reading something and feeling an immediate internal reaction: “I like that.” Those are the books we print out and pore over with our yellow highlighter. We take notes and write between the paragraphs, interacting with the material and thereby making it our own.

Give me something so engrossing that I can’t stop until I’ve devoured all of it. If I get to page 3 and decide to exit thinking that “I’ll read it later when I have the time,” you’ve already lost me. I may occasionally open it up again but if I couldn’t get into it at first read, I doubt that I ever will.

Mark it up to experience but it leaves a bad taste about the author who probably shouldn’t count on my continued patronage.

Dr. Bola, a clinical psychologist, sometime marketer, and
consistent consumer is offering complimentary copies of her
book “Seven Super Simple Tips: I Am Your Customer” from which
this article is taken. Feel free to download at:
http://www.dietwithanattitude.com/SuperSimpleTipsCustomer.html

Share This

There have always been writers, through the ages, who complain that the best books have already been written. There are others who exclaim that every worthwhile story has already been told. Movie producers stick with remakes of old standards rather than risk untried directions. The world of art, literature, and music has become a vacuum filled with the merely derivative.

What makes great reading is not whether the story is new or not, but how the author approaches even familiar material with a new eye, a novel twist, or an unexpected perspective. We seldom read literature on the Web, the scrolling becomes too tedious when prolonged for more than a few minutes at a time. I would venture that not even the brave soul who would voluntarily risk blindness and carpal tunnel syndrome could really consume the entirety of War and Peace on a 16 inch monitor.

We generally read much smaller chunks of words on line. We read site descriptions and informational paragraphs. We read relatively short articles and brief newsletters. We read news stories and opinion pieces that rarely exceed two pages. We read e-books and exe.files and brief highlights on the arts, politics, and music.

Even with the limits imposed by the medium itself, can’t we have the same expectations as when we open a wonderful book?

If you are writing something you would like me to read, all I ask is that you do a good job. Show me what is unique about you and what you’re saying. Lead me in a direction that fills me with satisfaction and appreciation. Because your essay is only a few paragraphs long, doesn’t mean that it has to be unoriginal or stale. Haiku poems are five lines long yet contain limitless potential. The fables of Aesop are primarily two or three paragraphs long yet speak volumes about the foibles of human nature.

Give me freshness, variety, and a taste of greatness. I am totally frustrated by the lack of vitality found in the majority of websites. I am amazed and appalled at the energy that is expended to sell me something without concern for the totality of me beyond my trusty credit card.

There is so much missing from the Net. There is so much that could be added to broaden and deepen our browsing experience. Yet the concept of “niche” sites has deteriorated into just another marketing campaign to generate as much income as the traffic will bear.

Where, on the Web, is fantasy, so beloved and popular in literature? Where are the deeply considered and finely honed political and philosophical issues of the day? Where is the poetry whose magic can transform the direction of our lives? Where is the biting satire and eloquent comment on our leaders and social mores that re-orients our political and cultural decisions? Where are the nuggets of wisdom and insight that can help us face life with a more positive attitude? Where is the simple faith that can bind our wounds and succor our spirits?

Give me your best. Lay out the personal values you espouse and make me privy to your inner landscape. Show me the dawn of a new morning through fresh eyes and your own personal filter. Share who you are and what you are and invite my participation.

Ten people can write about the same subject yet every piece is unique because of the individual world view it represents. Don’t try to mislead me by palming off those odious “content site” articles to which you, and several hundred other people, have the “right” to claim authorship. If you have no point of view of your own, and cannot finely craft a unique work, then find yourself another line of business and let the repetitive, poor quality, endlessly replicated web pages of the phony articles shrivel and die, as they deserve, on the already overly congested information superhighway.

Dr. Bola, a clinical psychologist, sometime marketer, and
consistent consumer is offering complimentary copies of her
book “Seven Super Simple Tips: I Am Your Customer” from which
this article is taken. Feel free to download at:
http://www.dietwithanattitude.com/SuperSimpleTipsCustomer.html

Share This

Those of us who spend our spare time on the Internet are exposed to unrelenting sales pitches for everything from clothes to books to health supplements to stock trades. Rather than the information, education, and entertainment we initially sought, we find we have entered an apparently unlimited yellow pages with colored, flashing ads exhorting us to pull out our credit cards and “Click Here.”

Nowhere is this more rampant than in the field of Internet marketing itself. At the bleary-eyed end of a day on the computer, it sometimes seems as if everyone alive is trying to make a living online. If you still have doubts about the extent of the issue, get yourself a throwaway email address on Yahoo! or Hotmail. Then join a couple of safe list mailers. Your bulk folder will soon be stuffed with hundreds of e-mails, all trying to sell something and all guaranteeing that their product will absolutely solve your problems, make you rich, grant you the good life you have always wanted and all without breaking a sweat.

Who are all these people? They are your neighbor down the street, your uncle Jim, your daughter’s fifth grade teacher, the store clerk who sold you a new suit, and the pleasant lady who delivers your mail. They are you and me and everyone we know. They are from all walks of life and all corners of the globe.

The Internet is truly democratic, catering to children playing with their parents’ computer, to the poor reaching out through flickering dial-up or hunched over public computers, to adolescents blogging their inner turmoil, to business moguls amassing greater wealth through their imposing websites, to porn kings spreading their message of filth, and terrorists communicating their deadly plots.

In this mishmash of dreamers and schemers, how do we all fit in? Surrounded by purveyors of everything that exists, we are the buyers and the targets. We are the innocent victims of the unstoppable letters from Nigerian widows and their British barristers. We are the suckers who receive yet another notification of our enormous winnings in some non-existent lottery drawing. Our little in-boxes provide a conduit to the world and stuff - good, helpful, ugly, or sick - comes pouring in.

There must, literally, be a hundred thousand e-books in the vastness of cyberspace, training people how to market products, their own or somebody else’s. A substantial fortune could be blown in only a few days by acquiring books, reports, videos, and software all promising a fast and effortless journey to easy street.

I’m not going to teach you to sell, or market, or promote yourself. As noted above, there are millions of resources on that already out there. So what will this book tell you? It will tell the slick sales reps and the marketing mavens and the irrepressible admen what the rest of us are looking for, what we want, what we like, and what we are going to demand.

Listen up, gurus. We’re mad as hell and we’re not going to take it anymore!

Dr. Bola, a clinical psychologist, sometime marketer, and
consistent consumer is offering complimentary copies of her
book “Seven Super Simple Tips: I Am Your Customer” from which
this article is taken. Feel free to download at:
http://www.dietwithanattitude.com/SuperSimpleTipsCustomer.html

Share This