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Basic Product Information

Thursday, August 23rd, 2007 at 10:10 AM Category: Business, Customer Service, Links, Marketing, Meryl's Notes Blog, Writing No comments

Marcia Yudkin’s Marketing Minute newsletter references Jakob Nielsen’s research that says shoppers leave 10 percent of the time because the site didn’t provide enough information. She discusses how some sites don’t make it clear whether the product is a CD, book or download.

Funny thing is that I experienced this recently. I was looking up Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter on several ecommerce sites — and it took way too much digging to find out whether I was looking at the books, DVDs or something else. This should be instantly obvious without any clicking.

This advice applies to product type, colors, sizes, and so on. This mistake can make a difference of a sale. Like Yudkin says — make a list of what people would want to know about a product and compare that to your description. Let’s say you’re selling watches… think about your own experience in looking for a watch. What did you want to know? Ask family and friends what they look for when shopping for a watch. This can be your list of things to include for every watch.

Tags: products, web sites

Stupid Product Names

Friday, November 17th, 2006 at 8:10 AM Category: Meryl's Notes Blog 2 comments

How do you pronounce “Casio’s G’zOne?” That’s what Strategic Name Development asks. Just the other day when I volunteered at my kid’s school book fair, a few of us were talking about Mo Willem’s Knuffle Bunny because we all love the Pigeon books. I thought it was pronounced “nuffle bunny” like “know.” The librarian thought “K-nuffle” where you pronounce the “K” followed by “nuffle.” Either way, it’s a cute book and she was telling us that the pigeon is in that book. It took kindergartners to point it out before she learned that secret.

Thanks to Bad Language for the pointer and for sharing more troublesome names. He had me thinking about boring plane names. He’s right. Southwest is a fun airline and even doesn’t have an exciting name. Just a direction. JetBlue probably has the most exciting name and I wouldn’t even call it a cool name.

Paul and I were watching the news last night where they reported people had lined up for the PS3 since Tuesday and it was windy as heck here in Dallas on Wednesday. One woman wasn’t interested in the PS3 — she just wanted to auction one on eBay where they’re going for over $5K! Then I asked Paul, “What’s the w-i-i? How do you even pronounce it? What makes it so different from Nintendo’s previous generation, the Gamecube?”

When Verizon’s new name came about… we wondered if it was “very-zone” or “very-zon” or like “horizon.” Now we know.

I’ve been stuck with my name since birth and it’s also my company name. Still can’t get people to pronounce my name right after all these years. Meryl, two-syllables-not-one-and- rhymes-with-Cheryl-Barrel-and-peril-not-pearl.” I’ve never heard anyone say “Cherle” instead of “Cheryl.” And with Meryl Streep… that doesn’t help either except when I introduce myself. I have trouble saying words with the letter “r” in it. Well, dang I’m lucky to get a name with an “r” smack dab in the middle of it. So I introduce myself as “Meryl Evans like Meryl Streep” and that usually does the trick. No, I’m not named after her as I was born before Kramer vs. Kramer.