Do You Palau?

Whenever I register as a website user or make a purchase online I encounter a form that invariably has a field called "state" and a pick list of choices. Since I live in Pennsylvania, to speed my way through this field, I type the letter "P" to move myself to the correct position in the pick list. I always expect to get to "Pennsylvania" because both alphabetically and by postal abbreviation, it is the first U.S. state starting with "P."

At least 40% of the time, however, instead of getting "Pennsylvania" as a result, I get "Palau," a nation in the Pacific Ocean with a total population of about 20,000. This means I have to spend extra time fumbling with the pick list to correctly enter "Pennsylvania" in the state field.

Who cares? Well first of all, Palau isn't a U.S. state. It hasn't even been a U.S. Trust Territory since 1978. But worse than engaging in geopolitical incorrectness, sites that include Palau in their pick list of state choices are making me work that much harder on the inherently annoying task of registering, i.e. providing the same information over and over again. On top of that, these companies are polluting their own databases, complicating all their internal data processing activities.

So why does Palau appear so often on state pick lists? Because marketers and product managers continue to cede too much of the website design to programmers. And one thing I can assure you of about programmers: data entry of any kind is anathema to them. That means that every time they are faced with typing a list, they'll opt to grab it from another site, copying and pasting for speed and convenience, and propagating errors like this as they go. But the blame can't be placed entirely on the programmers. These errors persist because nobody is checking their work.

It's a small error in the greater scheme of things to be sure. But it's also a small amount of work to make sure that errors like this don't occur. It is the job of programmers to develop applications and make certain they work. It is the job of marketers to make sure the applications work well. And this is just one mildly amusing bit of proof that attention to detail is still lacking. And considering that our collective futures are online, that's not good. So mind your P's and Q's.

Labels: ecommerce, palau, picklist, site design, site registration

Onvia Poised to Become Stronger Player in Construction Information Market

Sales intelligence provider Onvia this week announced that it has expanded its offerings in the construction industry to include hard-to-find information about emerging commercial and residential projects nationwide.

According to Onvia, this new service will eliminate the need for customers to manually search public records for potential projects. The service is geared toward architects, engineers, contractors and suppliers and it will notify them about early-stage projects.

Onvia also offers information about government purchasing activity, but notes that these commercial and residential projects are not highly publicized when they begin.

It sounds like Onvia is going to use an automated system to collect the information for the new service (by scanning permit filings, etc.). But regardless of the company's approach, this could really provide some serious competition for Hanley Wood Market Intelligence, which provides real estate research and analysis for the residential market. It could even give data providers like Reed Construction Data and F.W. Dodge (McGraw-Hill Construction) something to worry about.

One difference is that these companies actually have people in the field conducting the research. But how much of a difference that will make in the long run is in the hands of the customers. If Onvia can present the information in a more efficient manner, which is so crucial in the dissemination of this type of data, the company will most certainly earn a top spot in the marketplace.

LinkedIn Moving into Expert Advice Space

LinkedIn is expanding its offerings with a research service that will connect users with experts in the financial services field. According to LinkedIn, the new service will help hedge fund managers and investment banks find experts who can advise them.

LinkedIn will be able to connect these financial services professionals with people who are connected to companies they are interested in investing in, just as it currently connects individuals who wish to communicate for various business and personal reasons. The new service is slated to launch during the first half of the year. It will be available by subscription, but those fees have not yet been announced.

This isn't a revolutionary idea, however. Such services are already available from Yahoo Answers and the Gerson Lehrman Group, which boasts a network of more than 175,000 on its website, is certainly a formidable player in this space. However, it's a very interesting idea. The fact that the Gerson Lehrman Group has been very successful in this space is solid proof that there is a need and a market for such an offering. In fact, this could potentially yield some tough competition for Gerson Lehrman in the near future.

Is Brown the New Yellow?

I have been saying for many years now that the continuing financial success of the yellow pages industry is due more to inertia than innovation. The only reason the industry hasn't followed the rapid downward spiral of the newspaper industry is its huge market momentum and unusual business model which provides strong competitive defenses. But as we all well know, the Internet has a funny habit of trashing old business models while simultaneously leveling the competitive playing field.

The sublime magic of yellow pages has always been that the advertising is the content. The layer of free content that yellow pages provide is a thin one indeed. Once a yellow pages directory reaches a critical mass of advertising, there's enough content to make it useful to consumers, spurring rapid user adoption. And with rapid user adoption, there is the opportunity to charge a lot more for advertising, something yellow pages publishers do with gusto.

As I said: an incredible business model. But it's not a model you can expand too quickly on a geographic basis, because as you scale, getting a critical mass of advertising becomes harder. At the same time, adding high value content or social networking features isn't a simple alternative. That's because as you add more information about businesses, you decrease their interest in advertising. And advertisers paying thousands of dollars a year haven't shown much interest in ratings or customer comments that they can't control.

Some publishers, such as Zagat and Angie's List, have attempted to flip the model by charging consumers for access to deep and unbiased information on businesses generated by consumers. It's a viable model, but such products are hard to build and grow slowly.

That's why I was intrigued to read the launch announcement for a UK-based online yellow pages called The Brownbook. It's a wiki- based yellow pages. Brownbook supplies the same thin content layer found in all yellow pages (business name, address, phone, business category), then encourages users to add comments and reviews to business listings. Businesses are encouraged to maintain their own listings, and can add a wealth of supplemental information for a modest fee. To get around advertiser's traditional distaste for user comments and ratings, Brownbook neatly addresses the issue by turning it into a marketing opportunity for businesses: burnish your image by resolving negative comments and other issues right on the site, proof of your concern and responsiveness. It's an innovative approach Brownbook can afford to take as a start-up.

Scaling issues still exist (Brownbook offers national coverage), but they are less daunting than for a traditional yellow pages.

Brownbook has a tremendous amount of work in front of it to simultaneously build audience and a base of advertisers. That said, the business model is fresh, interesting and well executed. I might go so far as to say it's exciting -- a word rarely used in the same sentence as yellow pages.

Labels: angie's list, brownbook, thebrownbook, yellow pages, zagat

Polk, OnWheels Collaborate On Automotive Studies

Automotive information and marketing solutions provider R.L. Polk & Co. and On Wheels Inc., a multicultural multimedia company, announced last month that they will jointly publish findings from Polk's automotive studies that highlight the dynamics within multicultural markets. The findings will highlight multicultural issues for the automotive industry and its consumers.

Polk and On Wheels will spend the next year researching and communicating the buying trends, purchase behaviors, loyalty patterns and attitudes of automotive buyers in multicultural communities.

On Wheels publishes a stable of magazines that includes African Americans On Wheels, Asians On Wheels and Latinos On Wheels. It also publishes digital editions of African Americans On Wheels and Latinos On Wheels and maintains two web sites: www.onwheelsinc.com and www.AsiansOnWheels.com.

This is a very clever partnership between a data provider (that possesses the statistical insight) and a media company (that has the market insight). Combined, they have the potential to create some very powerful and valuable information for the marketplace--information that automotive industry players most likely do not have access to from other sources. It's also information that neither Polk nor On Wheels could offer on their own. Joining forces on such an initiative makes perfect sense and the industry will certainly benefit from the unique data that is collected. The directory and database industry will undoubtedly see similar collaborations of this nature going forward. They're really a win-win for everyone involved.