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Marketing Lessons
Learned From
The "Nightmare Freezer
In Our Garage"
by Ron Knowlton
It was early Saturday
morning when I scrambled out to the
garage to try and find the strawberries that I'd bagged
up in
the summer and put away into the "deep
freeze".
When I opened the freezer door, there was a
three-inch-thick
band of ice around the rim of our "frost-free"
freezer,
preventing the door from sealing properly.
Inside were jumbled bags of corn on the cob, zip-lock
bags
containing cheddar cheese, aluminum-foil-wrapped blocks
of
hamburger, and ice cream bars scattered from end to
end.
I dug through the glob of stuff, hoping to find the
strawberries quickly.
But it was almost like digging a tunnel to China. As I
dug
through one pile of stuff, I descended into the next
pile. Some
of the stuff was left over from when we purchased the
freezer -
I was sure.
No one had bothered to clean it out or to organize and
straighten it!
After 45 minutes to an hour of moving stuff around, I
finally
found the bag of frozen strawberries - but spent the next
15-20
minutes putting all the stuff back into the freezer.
And by then, my fingers were almost numb from the
cold.
It was definitely an experience I did not want to repeat
right
away!!!
MARKETING LESSONS LEARNED FROM A FREEZER?
I actually learned a valuable lesson or two from this
experience!
So, here goes - lessons learned from the "nightmare
freezer" in
our garage:
1) If you can't find it, you can't have it!
From a disorganized freezer - if it's really hard to find
stuff
- you probably won't!
Afterall, who wants to spend 45 minutes to an hour
digging
through stuff to get what you want?
Most people will lose interest and leave.
That's why your sales copy needs to be interesting right
from
the start. And don't make it sooooooo long that your
customer
slogs through the whole thing to get to the meat.
Because he or she probably won't stick around that long.
Your
customer has better things to do with his or her
time!
2) If you have a disorganized freezer - or in this
case a web
site - you're setting yourself up for failure.
Why? Because if it's really hard to find the important
stuff -
forget it! Who's going to spend the time?
Make sure your web site is:
Well organized!
Do you have a lot of web pages that a visitor would need
to
spend hours to discover and explore - that really lead
nowhere
and do not produce a desired result from your customer
(such as
a sale or a subscription to your newsletter)?
If you're selling a product or service, you want each
page to
lead toward your order page - with no detours or
distractions!
If yours is a content site - then you want a
well-organized
site map - or similar method - so your visitor can easily
find
relevant pages ... which leads to ...
3) Make sure you have a method where site visitors can
quickly find your most important pages.
"Get the ice off the rim". Make sure everything
functions
properly!
Like a door that seals properly is important to a
freezer
functioning properly - a properly functioning order page
is just
as important to your web site!
You don't want your customer entering credit card
information
only to get an error page!
Your website and/or your sales process should be simple
and
easy to understand. Otherwise your customer will leave
in
frustration!
4) Remove or update old web pages.
If there is a three-inch thick ice ring around the rim of
the
freezer, obviously some maintenance is needed - the ice
needs to
be removed so that the freezer will function
properly!
If you have a build-up of old web pages that you haven't
checked or viewed recently - you should perform this task
soon -
removing old files from your web site - that perhaps are
no
longer used - or where the links are no longer relevant
and not
even functioning properly! When is the last time you
checked
those three year old files (or even the six-month old
files)?
5) Check your links!
Imagine a visitor coming to your site and then clicking
on
links that come up with a "page not found"
notice. How
impressive is that?
Visitors may leave thinking that the site is no longer
active
or that the information posted is no longer relevant.
They may even think the webmaster has gone AWOL! (In
other
words - abandoned the site.)
Not the impression you want to create!!!
6) Organize everything. Sift and sort and place into
the proper
folders.
If you can't find it, do you really think your site
visitors
will be able to find it.
Sift and sort and place things where you (and web site
visitors) can easily find things!
To make sure I would not repeat the freezer experience
again, I
grabbed a blow dryer and a metal scraper and worked at
the 3-
inch ice rim around the freezer, until it was all
removed.
Then I found some large plastic bags and sorted items
and
placed them into the bags. I had one bag reserved for
meat. In
there, I put the zip-lock bags of chicken, the
aluminum-foil-
wrapped hamburger, and the zip-lock bags of cheddar
cheese.
In another large bag I placed all the plastic bags of
fruit we
had set aside in the summer - so we could enjoy them in
the
winter.
And yet in another large bag I placed the half loaves of
bread
we had frozen - because we knew we wouldn't use them up
fast
enough before the bread would go bad. This way we had a
ready
supply of bread.
It took me all of about two hours to do all of this.
And with that, our nightmare freezer problem was
solved!
And ... come to think of it ... the "nightmare web
site"
problem as well!!!
_________________________________________
Ron Knowlton is a
former
journalist
and the founding editor at: <http://www.soaringprofits.c
om/>
"Articles To Boost Your Success Online!"
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