Meryl K. Evans

Too many choices cause headaches rather than satisfaction. I admit one of my weaker areas is the inability to make decisions. Do I want to do this or that? Do I want this or that? Should I go to this? Should I get this or that?
Visit any restaurant and the menu typically contains too many [...]

In the last few companies I worked with before becoming a full-time content maven, we knew and heard about colleagues who work over 12-hour days on a regular basis. I’ve put in a couple of long hours over my career, but never on a daily basis. Based on experience, it doesn’t make sense why companies [...]

I shopped on a site because I saw a few items on sale in the store’s ad that came with the Sunday paper. According to the ad, the sale applied to the online store. The store’s site marked ALL blankets at 40-50% off. In looking for the blankets, I noticed they were not marked down, [...]

“Forgot password?” should be instant. The site should simply request the user to enter the email address and immediately let the user know if the email address is in the system or not. Otherwise, you could lose out on ordering opportunities.
We tried to order dinner online and Paul (SO) forgot his password. He entered [...]

I was unsubscribing to emails and notifications from an email account I no longer use. One of the Web sites used “Cancel” to mean unsubscribe. This could confuse the visitor because it could be mistaken for cancel the whole process and leave things as it is. “Unsubscribe” or “Remove” do the job.
Another newsletter that I [...]

Recently, a client who supported Web standards worked to design her newsletters to use cascading style sheets (CSS) for layouts instead of tables. Designers cheered. Readers jeered. One problem with this approach: email clients.
Outlook may dominate, but how many of us have second or third email accounts with Web-based email clients like Yahoo!, Hotmail, Gmail, [...]

While earning my degree in education, I learned about the Fog Index, Flesch-Kincade, and other ways to measure comprehensibility. This helped us understand how to measure content to determine its reading level.
Along the same lines, Denny Hatch [Link from Cincom Expert Access] introduces colleague Bob Scott. Scott uses Robert Gunning’s Fog formula to make writing [...]

Have you received a request from a newsletter or a blogger asking for your vote in a favorite, best, or some other contest? How about a request to “Forward This” newsletter in the subject line or at the top of the newsletter before you get to the goods?
Does it bother you? Or am I reading [...]

It’s no surprise that blogs are catching on with B2Bs (business-to-business). BtoBOnline confirms it by referencing a Knowledgestorm and Universal McCann survey.
“Blogs are the perfect forum for business and IT professionals — readers want to hear about a company or a product from ’someone like them,’” says Matt Lohman, director of market research, KnowledgeStorm. “And [...]

Yesterday, I received an email from a company looking to do work for me. Items in quotes are directly from the email. Non-quoted items are my comments.
I apologize for intruding into your busy schedule. Please allow me to introduce ourselves.
Polite, but already off to a negative start. Says he is intruding. It might be better [...]

More and more businesses are adding tech support reporting features, knowledgebases and expanding frequently asked questions — including businesses whose core business doesn’t include technology. Michael Port, author of Book Yourself Solid, has a tech support-like reporting tool — the kind of tool you expect to find on web server hosts and software development companies.
Michael [...]

I’ve met all of my clients through online resources and networking. I had one local client in the past who found me online and we never met face-to-face (f2f). However, I recently landed a client and we’ve already had one f2f meeting, but I don’t anticipate another as it was to discuss the business overview.
Thank [...]

Making Online and Offline Connections looks at how the virtual world changed how we connect to others. In it, I state that the online world made it possible for me to become a full-time freelancer. It got me thinking how I met people in this virtual world.
I met a few through blogs, especially in earlier [...]

Starbucks originally served whole milk and didn’t offer other milk options until after receiving customer feedback rather than making the decision without customer influence due to dietary trends. Paul of Idea Sandbox patronized a local coffee shop that serves only whole milk and won’t change.
But that local coffee shop doesn’t have the disadvantage of having [...]

Marketing efforts should involve blogs as word of mouth (mouse) can spread fast when the right blog mentions a product or service and the right people read the blog. Bloggers tell it like it is, an advantage over traditional media. If a product or service is blogged by the right blogger with a large (or [...]

How to Ruin Web Design — The Design Curve is a simple and accurate view of what happens to a design when more people get involved in providing feedback and the time spent in changing the design. [Link from Web 2.0 Blog]
If you don’t read the rest of this entry — this picture tells all [...]

Customers drive marketing, not the other way around. No longer do customers accept products as designed. They expect and demand products to be molded to their needs. Just like you can’t turn a cat into a dog; marketers can’t turn a customer into a buyer by convincing them that they need product or service [...]

I read a book about Google AdWords (I was not planning a campaign — it was for an abstract I wrote), which called the ads “haikus” and I just read about “the haiku of branding” in reference to tourism slogans. Neither use the 5-7-5 syllables haiku rule unless a Google ad just lucks out with [...]

Guy Kawasaki discusses The Art of Customer Service. He offers ten tips for successful customer service. Unfortunately, all culture changes must have buy-in from the C-level executives and direct reports. And this doesn’t mean getting buy-in for earning a piece of paper that says you’re Six Sigma or CMM certified. It means living and breathing [...]

Outsourcing is here to stay, regardless of how employees feel about it since businesses continue to save money as a result. It is, however, evolving into something less threatening to employees as companies discover savings — by using other companies to manage a part of the business that’s not considered one of their core processes. [...]