Archive for product marketing

Oracle.com & HP.com marketing content | It’s all about me

By Kenna Dian · Comments (1)
Wednesday, March 2nd, 2011

Why Oracle.com and HP.com have a tough road ahead in the age of visitor-focused content

Oracle.com ContentI don’t talk about Oracle.com much. In fact, I speak about them so little that one would be lead to believe that I hold a grudge against them. Sure, they unceremoniously erased one of the best enterprise systems sites from the Internet–Sun.com. But, I won’t hold that against them. No, I don’t write about them much for one reason:

My Mother taught me if you don’t have something nice to say about someone, don’t say anything at all.

There’s a litany of issues I have with Oracle.com ranging from design to innovation (or rather a lack thereof). But today, my rant is about Oracle.com’s content. Read More→

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Categories : Design, Marketing, POV (point of view), Social Media & Social Networks, Strategy
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How Twitter Can Ruin a Marketing Campaign

By Kenna Dian · Comments (8)
Tuesday, September 7th, 2010

HP.com brings a knife to a gunfight

When social networking sites hit the Internet, companies spent many, many months watching it with a wary eye. But once leading IT companies (such as Sun, Dell, and Cisco) took the leap, the race to integrate social media into a company’s marketing mix was on. This has led almost every company to declare social media as a major influence—if not the cornerstone—of its future marketing strategies.

Bold pronouncements aside, the reality is this: most companies are scared silly because they don’t have the faintest idea about how and when to use social media to their advantage.

They should be scared.

As a case in point, let’s consider how HP.com’s new “Change the rules of networking” campaign and associated Web page goes off the rails. This page launches the new face of HP Networking using the perfect combination of “hip & happenin’” content. Lightbox videos. Web 2.0 behaviors. Twitter. You name it.  With all these cool new ingredients, where could HP.com possibly go wrong?

Let us count the ways.

Read More→

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Categories : Branding, Marketing, Social Media & Social Networks, Strategy
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Lead generation. How to build a better mouse trap.

By Marty Gruhn · Comments (0)
Monday, August 30th, 2010

Most companies need to rethink their online price & lead generation strategies. Ignoring the sales force is the first step.

I can’t quite figure out why so many companies avoid putting prices on their Website. Actually, I do know. The company’s sales force wants to embargo product prices to force Web visitors to fill out that pesky contact form or engage in an online sales chat. This, they say, allows them to sell the product’s value and benefits, and work around the product’s price.

This is a big mistake. Here’s three reasons why.

Read More→

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Categories : eSelling, Marketing, POV (point of view), Strategy
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What Juniper.net knows that everyone else is missing

By Marty Gruhn · Comments (6)
Wednesday, March 10th, 2010

Juniper.net is pursuing an interesting strategy which I suspect most companies have missed. Last year, it did two things.

It launched a completely new Website in February.

Then it executed a wholesale update in October.

That wouldn’t be important, except for one thing. The October refresh was executed across the entire Website. From top to bottom. From stem to stern.

This, as it turns out, introduces a new design strategy into the mix. Until now, most Website teams have taken an incremental improvement approach, limiting updates and innovations to certain areas of their sites. A new home page; revamped product marketing zones; or a new look and feel for the top three layers of a site. The net result is that users have to re-learn the site every time they move between zones.

In contrast, Juniper.net’s approach is iterative. It’s not interested in hitting solid singles. It goes for the home run.

There are a couple of things to remember here. Read More→

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Categories : Design, Strategy, Usability
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Why Tech?

By Marty Gruhn · Comments (1)
Saturday, March 6th, 2010

A lot of people ask me why we focus on technology sites. Their reasoning is simple. There’s plenty of other interesting Websites out there with cooler designs and more doodads.

They’re probably right.

On the other hand, good (and even great) IT industry Websites have something to teach everyone.

They market and sell a complex range of products and software – plus the services that make them work. HP.com, for example, has over 10,000 SKUs. A small tech site can have upwards of 10,000 pages under management.

They reach and woo huge, diverse and demanding audiences.  Consumers who are shopping. CIO’s who are bonding. Project managers who are planning. Tech heads who are developing. Investors and journalists who influence the market’s pace. These sites will easily serve over 14 million visitors a month. When you have that many people knocking on your door, there’s not much time to make mistakes.

And that’s just for starters. Once the deal is done, tech sites must deliver mountains of product support information to cranky users 24/7. Meanwhile, behind the scenes, entitled extranets maintain relationships with huge global customers, and distributors and partners selling the company’s wares.

All things considered, tech sites have more moving parts and business strategies than anyone else on the Web. Amazon.com might have “fall off a log” e-commerce, but it doesn’t have to fix my egg cooker when the cord falls out.  My banking site does a great job of displaying my accounts in real time and letting me pay the bills, but it doesn’t have to deliver a gazillion software downloads a day, or contend with millions of developers who are fiddling with the product.

That’s why we focus on technology sites — and why you should too.

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Categories : POV (point of view), Strategy
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Why Oracle.com has its hands full

By Marty Gruhn · Comments (2)
Wednesday, July 29th, 2009

OK, it’s official. Oracle will acquire Sun Microsystems by the end of the summer. Although I have to give Oracle kudos for a brilliant strategic acquisition (and tweaking IBM’s nose for good measure), flipping the Sun.com site into the Oracle paradigm won’t be as easy as its other acquisitions.

I’ve watched Oracle for about 30 years as an industry analyst — which means I’ve had a front row seat for all of Oracle’s growth, and most of its acquisitions.

When acquisitions are the issue, the script has always been pretty much the same. Oracle announces its intent to purchase an IT industry firm, engages in various firefights with a bevy of aggrieved CEOs and shareholders, occasionally spends some quality time with the SEC, finally closes the deal — and then takes the acquired company’s Website off the airwaves about two nanoseconds after the ink on the deal dries.

Generally, the first iteration of this process is a bit ham handed. Forget preserving the acquired company’s Web prowess & knowledge, brand, share of mind, or easing customers into a new parent organization. The acquired company’s URL is instantly directed to a landing page deep inside Oracle.com that announces the acquisition, positions the company’s products within Oracle’s strategic roster, points visitors to support, and  Read More→

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Categories : Design, Marketing, POV (point of view), Strategy
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Intel.com delivers a stunning new product marketing best practice

By Marty Gruhn · Comments (0)
Thursday, May 22nd, 2008

If you haven’t already noticed, the past two months have been notable for sites upping the community and audiencing antes—and finding new and innovative ways to communicate with users. We’re speaking, of course, about HP.com’s new home page which launched last month.  Now you can add Intel.com to the list.

The new Intel.com allows visitors to navigate into the site using task-based Work and Play metaphors.

The new Intel.com allows visitors to navigate into the site using task-based Work and Play metaphors.

The new Intel.com allows visitors to navigate into the site using task-based Work and Play metaphors. Like HP.com, it’s pretty hard to miss the new Intel.com. The changes start with a brand new global page that brings a couple of new wrinkles to the party. Unlike other global home pages that provide a list of country links, Intel.com allows visitors to select their country location and instantly navigate into different parts of the Intel site. Here, Intel.com uses a combined task & audiencing metaphor: Work (read: business), Play (read: consumer and gamers) and About Intel (read: corporate info). Interactive fly-outs provide snippets about what’s in each zone. Add the classic links at the bottom of the page, plus a few others (jobs, RSS, investor relations, press), and you have a simple & easy to use global front door.

The Play Zone Delivers a Marketing Tour de Force

Once inside the site, it’s pretty obvious that the centerpiece of this update is Intel.com’s new “Play” zone, which is optimized for consumers. Read More→

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Categories : Design
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Support forums | Why silence speaks louder than words

By Kenna Dian · Comments (0)
Monday, May 12th, 2008

Today I reviewed the most recent siteIQ Enterprise Software evaluations and was surprised to see that CA.com didn’t receive a score for online support forums. Since virtually every IT Website we track on the siteIQ eBusiness Index that delivers public online support resources includes a publicly available online support forum, this omission seemed particularly odd. Intrigued, I had to find out the reason behind what appeared to be a glaring oversight.

What I found is that CA.com’s new support site does, indeed, have online support forums, and they are fairly well marked. The reason it didn’t receive a score from our evaluators was because customers must provide their email and a password not only participate in CA.com’s support forums (which is SOP for all forums) — but to view them as well. This, of course, leads one (or at least me) to ponder why a company would hide its forums behind the proverbial firewall when the industry convention is to allow visitors to freely peruse support forum entries.

One potential reason is obvious. Read More→

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Categories : Support
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Is your support zone costing you customers?

By Marty Gruhn · Comments (1)
Tuesday, April 15th, 2008

Most IT vendors operate their online support zones as cost avoidance vehicles. Here, the theory is simple. If the company can get customers to find their own answers online, they can eliminate expensive support calls. In the companies we track at siteIQ, that can translate into boatloads of money.

This tale of woe has an important message that IT vendors should not miss. I did not want a new printer. I wanted my current printer to work.

With this as the impetus, it’s no wonder that most support zones in the IT business range from inadequate to inept to a complete mess. Most vendors think that providing second-rate online support saves them money. What they don’t realize is that it is just as likely to drive otherwise loyal customers to a competitive brand.

To see how, consider a recent experience here at siteIQ. Read More→

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Categories : Support
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Web 2.0 | Where Oracle takes the lead

By Kenna Dian · Comments (0)
Wednesday, March 12th, 2008

Our ongoing analysis shows that enterprise software sites are slower to adopt Web 2.0 elements than other industry segments tracked on the siteIQ eBusiness Index (the network systems industry is the current front-runner). This is unfortunate because these capabilities are emerging as a competitive requirement across all industries on the IT Web.

Oracle.com's innovative 'one clisk' inline video keeps visitors on the source page, where they can easily continue their discovery and research processes

Oracle.com's innovative 'one click' inline video design keeps visitors on the source page, where they can easily continue their discovery and research processes

Based on our analysis, Oracle.com is the enterprise software segment Web 2.0 front-runner, largely based on its impressive use of animation & video on the site. To be clear, what sets Oracle.com apart from enterprise software competitors isn’t the fact that it readily delivers online video. Other sites in the segment,  including CA.com, also use video extensively. What sets Oracle.com apart from competitors is the consistent visibility of video clips on site pages and “one-click” initiation capability.

More important, Oracle.com provides visitors with several video clips to choose from, which are presented using an interactive, accordion-style menu. Once the desired video is selected, the visitor has only to click a single button to start the video.

What’s better, videos run inline, which means visitors are never redirected away from the originating page. This approach ingeniously allows visitors to continue their discovery & research process when the video is done playing without having to backtrack in the click stream.

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Categories : Web 2.0
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