greg smart

I recently came across an article by Erin Kissane, Writing Content that Works for a Living that was worth mentioning. While getting content out of a customer is always a challenge, getting/developing good content can seem all but impossible. Erin lays out some guidelines to help streamline and simplify this portion of the development process:

1. Who is the product for?
   Ask yourself: Can the target audience tell from this copy that we’re speaking to them? Can other people outside our audience tell that we’re NOT speaking to them?
2. What is the product?
   Ask yourself: Have we spelled out, clearly and in simple language, what the product is? Are the nouns as concrete as we can make them?
3. What does the product do for its target user?
   Ask yourself: Have we laid out the product’s primary features and benefits in a clear, concrete way?
4. Why is the product better than the available alternatives?
   Ask yourself: What evidence do we have for those claims? Are we presenting that evidence clearly and without fluffy, empty language that makes us look like we’re boasting?

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I was recently asked to write a statement explaining our retainer agreements at Pleth, LLC. This is agreement is not designed for every customer, but is intended for our customer’s that require steady hourly work. We have found that there can be quite a bit of confusion as to the nature of these agreements. Perhaps this will help.

Our retainer agreements are intended to benefit the nature of our customer relationships and helps open the lines of communication with our priority customers. We have found that these agreements can smooth fluctuations in charges and often alleviates some of the hesitancy customers may feel when unsure about incurring hourly charges. A retainer will cover any content updates to the website as well as general consultations. This allows for updates to be posted in a more expeditious manner, can help maintain consistency of site design with content presentation, and ensures that the website will remain consistent with other marketing activities. It has been our experience that customers with this agreement tend to feel much more at ease in calling for overall site support, brainstorming sessions, and quality control issues.

This agreement does not include any site structure changes, graphic design changes, or increases in functionality. We will do our best to try to cover these unanticipated costs under this retainer agreement. Should a request be made that is deemed outside the scope of this agreement we will notify you and actively consult with you to explore your options. If necessary we will work to develop a quote at that time. This will occur prior to any additional site changes being made and any additional costs being incurred.

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One of the more frustrating development topics I regularly encounter is ecommerce, specifically when and for whom it’s an appropriate venture.

Let me start by saying that given the right set of factors an ecommerce solution can undeniably reap benefits for a business. Over the past few years I have seen some online ecommerce businesses thrive and have seen quite a number fail. There are definitely commonalities for each scenario.

The Good

Most successful ecommerce ventures, that we have dealt with at Pleth, LLC, are businesses that either manufacture their own products, have their products manufactured specifically for them, or are able to rely on a keystone markup for the bulk of their product lines. Essentially what these businesses are able to create is a margin great enough to overcome the costs of delivering their products. For an ecommerce business these costs include:

• the actual cost of site hosting and maintenance
• shipping charges (on both sides of the transaction)
• marketing costs (such as traditional media, pay per clicks, paid inclusions, etc…)
• credit card processing fees (including chargebacks and fraud).

Another positive ingredient in this ecommerce stew is a site that exists as a compliment to an existing business. I see this as an especially important point since this allows a client to devote the extra time and resources that are necessary for a site to mature alongside the internal logistical components required to support a healthy ecommerce site. In this type of situation the site is not asked to generate an unrealistic revenue stream immediately in an effort to support the client’s external financial needs.

The Bad

When I begin a conversation with a perspecitve ecommerce client I often find myself monitoring the dialogue for these ecommerce red flags:

• the client is in a reseller situation (typically 20-30% margin before any product is sold, shipped, or marketed)
• the client is paying full shipping on individual products on each end of the transaction
• an integrated credit card processor is not desired (usually to control costs)
• outside marketing efforts are deemed unnecessary or too costly

Although none of these characteristics will leave me fleeing a meeting, none of these exist in a vacuum either. They usually come bundled together and tend to leave us a little hesitant about initiating a project when these flags are thrown.

The Ugly

As I mentioned above, we often find ourselves in situations where our comfort levels begin to go south. Then there are projects that cause us to start looking for the nearest exit. These tend to posess the following:

• expectations for revenue generation are unrealistic, especially in the short-term
• unrealistic about the amount of client-side work and logistics necessary to support an ecommerce project
• urgency at any project phase (this is a big one)
• multiple failed project attempts (often with subsequent data migration from those failed attempts)

Anyone who comes to us expecting to get rich quick with little to no effort is in for the long hard fall back to reality. It simply doesn’t happen.

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