In the last two days, something stuck.  In a big way.  I would have to call this the most successful traffic and lead-generation campaign I’ve ever experienced.

So we have this new product we’re ramping up a TV campaign for, SnoreRx, an aromatherapy pillow liner that helps open up your air passages so you can breathe easier while you sleep.  Snoring affects millions of people – not just the snorer, but the person sleeping next to them too.  Because it’s such a common problem, the “stop snoring market” is saturated with all of these ridiculous nasal sprays and mouth pieces, even complex surgical procedures.  So for something as simple as an aromatherapy pillow liner to be able to make the claim that it will have any affect on snoring, much less actually solve the problem, you have to admit the masses would be skeptical.

I know, I know… this article is starting to sound like a Snore Rx plug but stay with me, I’m getting to the point.  We decided to do a free trial, but not the typical “free” (note the quotation marks) you see on the web where they say the product is $0.00 and then charge shipping and handling.  I mean a truly 100% free, where you give us your address and we send the sample without even charging for shipping.  We weren’t sure how many people would take us up on the offer, to be honest it was more of an SEO play for me.  There are a bunch of “free stuff” sites all over the Internet that do nothing but link people to product samples and giveaways, and I thought it would be some good exposure for the product and help us build up a little awareness and a few back-links so when the commercial goes on-air and people Google the product they’ll be able to find us in the top results.  It was a pretty solid plan, everyone here knows I’m opposed to “spamming” the search engines with junk content, but we had a legitimate offer here on a product I’ve personally used and can attest to, so I figured what could it hurt?  I submitted the product to five of the more reputable free stuff sites and went home.

The next morning, we were surprised to see 1,750 orders.  Two days later, we’re over 30,000 and as I write this they’re still coming in.  In less than 24 hours, the offer had been syndicated to hundreds of websites, Facebook posts, mommy blogs, etc.  All from five simple submissions.

None of us had any idea that the response would be this dramatic, and fortunately we’re a well-capitalized company and won’t have any problem fulfilling all of those requests.  Truth be told, to buy this kind of exposure would have been far more expensive – remember, this was just sort of a “let’s see what we get out of it” SEO play.  In this case, the “side benefits” actually outweighed the value of any “link juice” we might get out of the deal.  I mean, we just put a 3 day sample of our product in the hands of 50,000 people.  Here’s the rollup:

• Hundreds of sites talking about our product, and all of the links that come with it.
• People like companies that are willing to put their money where their mouth is and let people try it without tricking them into an auto-subscription.
• Long-term revenue potential (remember, it’s only a 3 day sample – if they like it, they’ll be back).
• More testimonials than I even want to deal with.
• Huge boost in social followers

And all of this happened in two days.  By the time we finally cut it off, we had reached 50,000.

Yes my friends, free is good.  And now that you know what kind of results you can potentially get out of it, if it’s a fit for your business and you can afford to fulfill the requests, I highly recommend it.  We’re already seeing positive feedback on the SnoreRx Facebook page, I’ll post an update once I have some data on conversion rates as a result of this offer.

I tell them all the same thing: You probably never will.

Yes, I know it’s a bold statement.  And I know it will cause a bit of uproar among those who make their living selling people on the effectiveness of social media marketing.  A Google search for “monetize social media” will likely reveal thousands of articles from so-called “experts”, standing by ready to sell you a marketing package.  And I’m not going to go so far as to say that it never happens – certain trendy products lend themselves to a social following and they’re likely to have success selling in that arena.  But the vast majority of businesses and brands will never be able to monetize their social fans and followers, because there’s nothing ‘cool’ about them.  Lets say you’re an accounting firm… how many times can you post “I’ll help you save money on your taxes” before people get tired of hearing it?  I touched on this earlier this year in an article about planning a social media campaign, but the basic point is this: People don’t go to social sites to shop, they go there to socialize.  If you’re that guy who never posts anything but sales pitches and coupons, people will lose interest and tune you out fast.

So, for the moment, lets just take “selling product” off the table as one of the objectives of your social strategy and consider the real benefit of social media: consumer engagement. Follower counts are the “social currency” of the Internet – a product or brand with a high number of followers will instantly appear more credible than a competing product without.  Think about it: You’re comparing two similar products, looking at both of the websites, and they both have that familiar Facebook “Like” button.  One says “11 people like this” and the other says “20,000 people like this“.  Which one are you more likely to buy from?  The fact that your page has a lot of followers translates into consumer validation that you’re legit.

So how do you get those followers?  By giving the social community something of value.  Back in July 2011 when we re-launched the site for the DUALSAW, the brand had no social presence at all and it wasn’t anyone’s job within the company to handle it.  No one really had any ideas on how to effectively present the brand, so I came up with a plan and pitched it to the other executives in the company.  The meeting went something like this:

Me: “Ok, I want to make a Facebook page for the brand but the content is going to have nothing to do with the brand.  I’m pretty much just going to post dumb crap, my opinions on dumb crap other people post, witty one-liners, and once in a while I’ll give away a saw.  Oh, and I want to make fun of our customers.”

Them: <blank stares and rolling eyes>

Surprisingly, I got the green light to move forward with the plan.  I still don’t know if it’s because they actually believed I knew what I was doing, or if they just didn’t have any other ideas, but either way we were about to see if this concept would work.  I knew that Facebook would never be an effective place to sell circular saws, but there is a certain “cool factor” about power tools and I know the “tool guy” stereotype all too well.  My only goal was to keep the brand relevant – that instead of trying to sell someone a saw, I would build a brand that people would remember so when they or someone they knew needed a saw they would remember us.

After creating the page and posting a little bit of amusing content, I sent an e-mail to everyone who had bought a saw in the last few months inviting them to join us on Facebook – this “seeding” process gave us some initial followers so we weren’t stepping out into the world with zero.  We were finally ready to jump in.

Every day I would make one post in the morning, either a funny observation from my day or a ridiculous picture or quote.  After a while, those posts started getting more and more Likes, more comments, and more people re-posting them to their own walls.  The number of people following the page was increasing steadily, but it wasn’t anything to brag about.  I decided to use Facebook’s advertising system to promote the page, so I would create ads like “DUALSAW cuts through wood, plastic, zombies, whatever.” or “The only saw that can cut Chuck Norris” and target them to people with those interests.  And that’s when things started to take off.

Spending a very small amount of money we were able to grow from zero to over 5,000 followers in 3 months with a very low drop-off rate, and it continues to increase steadily.  And because I’ve been targeting like-minded individuals, they’re regularly posting content themselves.  We’ve even had fans make their own videos and send in pictures of themselves with “I love DUALSAW” written on their bodies, so it’s become a pretty fun experience for those following the brand.  Jump in yourself at facebook.com/dualsaw.

Anyway, the point is that while we’re building a community without pushing the sale, at the same time we’re also building trust.  Even though we’re a multi-national public company, we’re showing our fun side and reaching consumers in the same way as a small local business would.  And as that fan count increases, the growing number displayed on the DUALSAW brand website reassures buyers that we’re here, we’re easily accessible, and gosh darn it people like us.  Plus I have to admit, I love our fans – these guys and girls make great contributions to our page, making me laugh and making the mundane details of my day stuck at a desk less miserable.

So before you try to figure out how you’re going to sell to the audience you plan on building on Facebook, consider this alternative – maybe you don’t need to sell them anything.

It sounds great in theory, and I won’t lie, you will likely get sales from it. But the potential to LOSE sales, damage the reputation of your brand, hurt your position in the search engines, expose yourself to fraud, and make your PPC marketing more expensive is just as likely. It’s important to examine and weigh out your options.

Fraud
Let’s face it, by design affiliate programs will bring out the ‘fraudsters’, and the higher your commissions, the greater your risk.  In a past venture, we were using ShareASale and offering a $40 commission per conversion.  The problem was that affiliates were “buying” products using stolen credit cards, and most of the time we had already shipped the merchandise and paid the commission by the time the actual card owner reported the theft.  Managed affiliate programs like CommissionJunction and ShareASale are usually easy to work with to report fraud, and sometimes we were able to get that referral fee back, but we were still out the merchandise and in some cases a $25 charge-back fee on top of it.

Brand Equity
This is something that, unfortunately, most companies don’t think about until it’s too late.  The problem with having an “unaccountable sales force” is that they’re likely to say anything to make a sale.  They’ll create their own web pages, make whatever claims they want to make about the product, and send people to your shopping cart through their affiliate link.  Sometimes buyers will never see your own product page, so the information that lead to their decision to buy came entirely from the affiliate.  If the affiliate is doing this through a blog-style website, complaints about your product can end up there – and you have no control over the site to address or delete them.  Affiliates are also notorious for sending out SPAM, which can hurt your brand’s reputation and get your mail servers blacklisted.

The Search Engine Problem
Search engines strive to provide relevant, original content.  Many affiliates will simply copy/paste your own product descriptions and other written content from your website, making both less valuable to the search engine.  Many of the affiliates out there are either SEO experts, or at least have a good working knowledge of how search engines think, and are able to climb their way to the top of the results – sometimes above you.  And affiliates rarely limit themselves to one product – the page about your product will be littered with advertisements for similar products as well.  The affiliate doesn’t care which brand you buy, they’re getting paid either way.  So now a page about your product, ranking well for your branded terms, is potentially sending business to a competing product.

Rising Pay-Per-Click Costs
If you’re offering a healthy commission, it may be in your affiliate’s interest to purchase pay-per-click advertisements like Google AdWords, with their affiliate link being the destination of the click.  If you aren’t doing PPC (why aren’t you?), enjoy the free traffic – but if you are, they’re making your marketing costs more expensive.  Think about it… you and your affiliates are all bidding on the same terms, driving up each other’s costs per click.

The Good
The good thing about affiliate programs are that you’re only paying a fee when someone actually buys something, and since you can set the price you’re paying it’s a low barrier to entry and virtually effortless on your part.  That’s an attractive proposition for a lot of online store owners, just consider all of the above before you jump in.  Generally speaking, you get what you pay for… there is value in controlling your brand vs. letting others run wild with it, and it might just outweigh the benefits of affiliate-driven sales.

So I went through the usual steps to increase traffic… redesigning sites to speak to a wider audience, organic optimization, PPC, Social Media, etc. You know the drill by now. They’re all effective techniques, and they all worked.  But the one thing that’s been the most effective is to simply ask those who abandoned their carts why they didn’t finish their order.

When I first built the Cartooga E-Commerce platform, one of the things I did was make it so the “order” was created when they pressed the CHECKOUT button, not when their payment was approved like most carts.  When they click Checkout, the next page asks them for their first name, last name, and e-mail address.  Then they see the final “order page” where they see the shipping rates and enter their address.

Armed with their e-mail address, if the customer doesn’t finish their order I send them a personal e-mail.  Not an automated nagging “noreply” reminder that their order is incomplete, but a genuine message from me that they can reply to.  In the message I simply state that I noticed they had tried to checkout, but didn’t finish and wanted to make sure they weren’t having a problem with the site – if something isn’t working right in every browser, I want to fix it.  I always include a link right back to the checkout page, with their Order ID embedded so they can pick up where they left off.  I try to do this within an hour or two of their order attempt.

And you know what?  Most of them reply.  Sometimes they did something wrong, and the link I sent them gets them back on track and they finish their purchase and check out.  The rest of the time I learn why they didn’t:

1. The shipping was too high.
2. It didn’t “feel expensive” until I had all of the products I wanted in the cart.
3. I found it cheaper on another site.
4. I was just looking because a <insert significant other>’s birthday is coming up and was thinking about getting them this a month from now.
5. You don’t ship to my country.

These are the five most popular responses I’ve received, and four of them created an opportunity to “save the sale” by giving them a coupon code.  In examples 1 and 2 it could close the sale right there.  In example 3, if they already bought from someone else give it to them anyway and they might just think about you next time, or give it to a friend who will use it.  In example 4, they have incentive to buy now, or remember you when they’re ready.  And in example 5, a quick Amazon search is likely to find the same or similar product that can be shipped to them.  Send them the link and wish them luck – with the popularity of social networks, most of us have “friends” in other countries and you never know who they might tell about how nice you were to help them find what they were looking for.

In all cases, even the ones that didn’t convert, customers appreciate the follow-up from a real human being.  Whether they buy or not, you’re helping your site’s reputation.

What’s interesting is that 30% of all mCommerce for 2010 happened through Amazon.com.  An e-Tailing Whitepaper (PDF) from March 2011 provides a little bit of insight as to why and the reasons mobile sites aren’t doing so well in the grand scheme of ecommerce are all of the reasons you would expect.

But back to Amazon for a minute, most of us have bought something from them at one point or another and have saved our credit card information, making it easier to check out on their site for future purposes.  One of the problems with mCommerce is that entering credit card numbers, passwords, and other lengthy information is cumbersome over a phone.  Amazon overcomes this by making their mobile checkout just as easy as their regular site checkout, but there’s one slight problem: you aren’t Amazon.

So what can you do?  Try these steps:

1. Look at your mobile site on a variety of devices.  Pretend you’re your customer and rate your experience.  Are you showing enough information about your products?  Is your site easy to navigate?  Remember hovering is tricky on touch-input devices, so that cool mouseover drop nav on your website isn’t doing you any favors with the mobile crowd.
2. Send only what you need.  Don’t skimp on the product information and product photos, but the rest of the fluff is unnecessary.  As a 4G user I can honestly say it isn’t much different than 3G, the web is still slower on mobile devices than on a desktop with FiOS.  If your page takes too long to load, I’m out.
3. Store Credit Card Information!  I know there are PCI compliance issues with this, so make sure you’re using a shopping cart that lets you store your customers credit card info.  It will make it easy for them to buy online… you’re far more likely to get a mobile sale from an existing customer than a new one, so make it easy for them to complete the sale on those impulse buys.
4. Add an “E-Mail me this” button on every product page!  Not all mobile shoppers are going to want to buy immediately from their phone, so make it easy for them to send themselves a reminder to return when they’re on a PC.
5. Don’t make users download an app.  I’m not going to install a program on my phone to buy from you.  You need a mobile website for online shopping, not an app, or the majority will never bother.

Last but not least, check out this great article from Design Shack, Quick Tips for Creating a Mobile Optimized Site, and you’ll be on your way to increasing your odds of success.

Anyway, I’ve been studying the subject of eye tracking with great fascination lately.  There are a couple of research companies doing this now, but basically what they’re doing is using the camera attached to participants PC’s to record their eye motion as they surf the web.  Using this data, combined with data on the browser size & screen resolution, they can pinpoint where people are looking on the web pages they view and aggregate this data across dozens or hundreds of users, and overlay a heat-style graph on top of the page they were looking at.  The end result is a graphic that looks something like this, with the “hot spots” indicating the most looked-at areas, and the “cool spots” representing the least:

When you’re done reading, take a look at this article from Eyetrack III about a recent study.  In it, they confirmed one of the important things I’m always about text sizes, along with some other key points identified below:

1. Smaller text encourages reading.
   As I mentioned back in December in 11 E-Commerce Tips for 2011, small text keeps the user focused.
2. Most people don’t read the full headline or blurb.
   A headline gets less than one second of a visitors attention.  Make it count!
3. Underlining a headline discourages reading the blurb below it.
   I found this interesting, that something as simple as underlining a headline created a barrier between the headline and the blurb below.  According to the study, the blurb was more often skipped on articles where the headline was underlined than articles where it wasn’t.
4. Your visitors are going to skim.
   No matter what you do, you can’t expect everyone to read every word.  In fact, odds are you probably aren’t even reading this right now.    Keep your paragraphs short, as your words are more likely to be seen when they aren’t buried in the middle of a huge paragraph.
5. The top and left side of pages get the most visibility.
   This is where everyone looks.  If your site gets its revenue from advertisements, this would be a good place to put them… Interestingly, the study also noted that people see text ads more than graphical ones.
6. Visitors were more likely to remember facts presented as text than as images.
   Another interesting observation – the comprehension required to read something vs. see something helps it stick.  In other words, if I tell you that the DUALSAW can cut through aluminum diamond plate, you’re more likely to remember that than if I just show you a video of it.

For the rest of the study, check out the original article and if you have some time Google this topic and feel free to post comments.  As far as I’m aware no one has yet done a study with a large group (several thousand at once), but there is still a lot we can all learn from studies like this and the topic in general.

Here were the reasons why (sorted by popularity):

• Lack of in-house skills
• Too time-consuming
• Lack of in-house tools and technology
• More economical to outsource
• Hard to stay abreast of best practices
• Too complicated to track and measure in-house
• Service providers have good industry contacts

I want to focus more on the cost factor, because I think this is often over-looked by companies on the fence of the “outsourced vs. in-house” debate.  I also think that all of the other problems are easily resolved by hiring the right person – there is no reason you can’t have the skills, time, tools, updates, contacts, and analytics if you hire the right person for the job.  But then there’s those pesky salaries…  The odds of finding someone who is proficient in PPC, SEO, Social Media, and has the graphical and HTML skills required to do the work is pretty slim – if you want your campaign handled by experts instead of a “jack of all trades, master of none” type, your dollars are better spent outsourcing.

Very few people can claim to be experts in PPC, SEO, and understanding the metrics so the odds are you would have to hire two or three people, not just one.  And social media usually isn’t worthy of a full time salary, but it takes up enough time to be a nuisance to anyone already on the payroll trying to work it in.  When you outsource this to a company, you get the benefit of a complete marketing team instead of just one person, and usually at a price lower than one person’s salary.  Without question it’s the way to go, but you do need to make sure of a few things before you hire a firm to manage this for you:

1. Some companies roll the amount spent on advertisements and their management fee into a single charge.  This simplifies the billing (makes it easier for you so it’s just one monthly charge for everything), but it can be difficult to determine how much is the management fee vs. how much is spent on advertising directly.  Make sure the company you select is up front about this.
2. Remember that it does take more time to manage a $20,000 ad campaign than a $2,000 ad campaign, therefore the management fee will usually be proportional to how much you’re spending – but that doesn’t mean the $2,000 campaign is simple.  Setting things up correctly takes time whether you’re spending a little or a lot, so make sure your ad budget justifies the cost of having it managed for you.  If you have a few thousand dollars to spend, you’ll probably be OK.  If you only have $500 to spend, there isn’t any room in the budget for the company to cover their costs and get a return for you.
3. PPC, SEO, and Social Media take time to perfect.  Ask them about prior campaigns and how long it took for those campaigns to become profitable.  It’s not uncommon for you not to see any measurable ROI for your first month or two.  Commit to at least 90 days as a test – if you don’t see things going in the direction by then, the marketing plan might not make sense for your business.
4. Many companies already have accounts with Google AdWords, Yahoo, Microsoft, and other advertising platforms – if they set up your campaign under their own account, you may not be able to get access to it if you ever decide to stop using that company.  Many companies consider the campaign setup proprietary knowledge, and there is nothing wrong with that as it protects their investment of the time it took to set up your campaign.  Just make sure this is disclosed before you pay them.
5. Make sure the company you select has full access to your analytics – without it, they won’t be able to see which ads are performing and adjust the campaign to maximize your conversions.
6. Know your margins on everything you sell before you start.  I’ve met clients who focused only on how much they were spending on ads and gross sales figures – it might have looked like they were making money, but when they calculated their costs at the end of the quarter they were actually losing money.  Communicating your margins to the person handling your PPC account will let them factor that into the campaign they design to help you come out ahead.

Above all, don’t freak out if things don’t go well the first week or two.  Knowing where to best spend your advertising dollars isn’t an exact science, it requires a balance of testing and watching the analytics like a hawk.  Every product and technology is different and even the best marketing firms need a little time to get it properly dialed in, but you’ll know within 90 days if things are progressing the way they should.

July 12, 2011 Update: I’ve developed a useful little utility, the PPC Revenue Estimator. This tool lets you put in your product price, cost of goods, marketing budget, cost per click range, and estimated conversion rate and tells you how much money you’ll make – or lose. Use it as a guide before spending your cash to make sure PPC is right for you!

1. My Inbox is fullest first thing in the morning.
2. It’s mostly newsletters and marketing stuff that came in after midnight.
3. I don’t read any of it.

Sound anything like your morning mailbox?  The answer is most likely yes, proving once again that most e-mail marketers still aren’t hitting the mark with their newsletters.  With automation tools for consumer engagement, a lot of companies have taken a hands-off approach, leaving the delivery process to systems that automatically send out messages some time between midnight and 6:00 AM.  As a result, their newsletters are being ignored by the vast majority of their subscribers.

What most marketers forget is that their newsletter is just one of many that their subscribers receive.  Marketers who think that sending out the newsletter at midnight makes sense because it will be the first thing their subscribers see when they wake up are losing out because their messages are getting buried among everyone else’s.  The more mail that’s in the subscriber’s Inbox at the time your newsletter comes in, the less likely they are to read it.  When I tell marketers this, they never believe me… until I ask them “Of all the marketing and newsletters you get, how many of them do you read?”.  Then it sinks in.

Every e-mail marketing expert will tell you that the subject has to be captivating and thought provoking if you want your newsletter to be read, and that’s true – but what they never tell you is that the time you send out your newsletter is just as important as the subject.  There is no magic time of day, it’s different for everyone, but there is one easy way to figure out yours…

Look at your analytics.

Specifically, look at your site’s traffic by the hour and figure out (1) What time of day are the most people visiting your site, and (2) What time of day are the most people BUYING things off your site.  Get at least a full 30 days worth of data together for an accurate assumption, and if your weekend traffic is significantly lower than your weekday traffic (usually the case for B2B products) then filter out the weekends.

These numbers will tell you when people are thinking about the types of products you sell.  If you’re getting the majority of your traffic at 4:00 PM, then your newsletter should be going out shortly before that.  If your peak traffic and peak conversion hours are different, test both.  And this strategy isn’t limited just to daily newsletters, apply the same rules to weekly and monthly – figure out what day of the week you’re getting the most traffic and set your newsletter to go out on that day.

With a little patience and some testing, you’ll be able to find the optimal time of day to send out your newsletter and give your e-mail marketing campaigns the boost they’ve been missing.

For those who haven’t read the first article (linked above) I suggest you read it now, but I’ll give you the short version here: Just about everything I do is browser-based, and Firefox was already my browser of choice.  I’m a minimalist when it comes to software – I really don’t install anything unless I have to.  I prefer Google Docs over MS Office, and absolutely hate client-based email like Outlook – I’d much rather work from a web browser.  So for me, the Atrix seemed like a great way to ditch the laptop in my quest toward device unification.

I wanted to like tablets, but I just have absolutely no use for them.  I need a real keyboard, and the web isn’t (and may never be) truly touch-ready, so when the Atrix came out I knew that was the direction I wanted to go and my existing cloud-based lifestyle would make the transition easy.  And it was… until life threw me a curveball, like it always does.

About a week ago I was offered a VP position with Infusion Brands which, in spite of the fact that I was just getting Primordium off the ground, was too good of an opportunity to pass up.  I’ve been a shareholder of the company and actively involved with them since 2008, so the move made sense for a lot of reasons but there was just one problem: they use MS Office.  They use Acrobat.  They use Outlook.  I cried a little inside.

The “outlook web access” works great if you’re using Internet Explorer, but Microsoft – I assume deliberately – made the experience really crappy for people using any other browser.  Maybe this will change in a future version of Exchange, but it is what it is right now.  So my options were (a) Have them redo their entire internal infrastructure to be based on Citrix, so I can use my Atrix in Virtual Desktop mode via the Citrix Receiver, or (b) Let go of the dream.

So I sit here typing away on the new Lenovo Ideapad I picked up last night at CompUSA (which I have to admit, I do love this little notebook).  Every once in a while I glance over to my right and see the Atrix dock, reduced to nothing but a really expensive charger, lonely and unused.  I didn’t even take the lapdock out of the sleeve today.

It would seem, for now at least, that my experiment in making the Motorola Atrix my full time PC has come to an end – or at least taking a break.  It was a good run, and those who live in the cloud are likely to have great success with it as I did.  Perhaps one day Office Web Apps will work well in browsers other than Internet Explorer, but if you’re stuck using desktop apps in the meantime then the Atrix just won’t cut it as a full time replacement.  It’s still my first choice for light traveling when I know I’m not going to need a full PC, but until I can get some kind of Citrix environment in place at the office I’m going to have to toggle between it and a traditional desktop.  Bummer.

As for the phone itself, it’s still the best and fastest phone I’ve ever owned and I highly recommend it.

They’re called QR codes, and they look like this:

QR is short for Quick Response – they can be used to embed all kinds of information, but are most commonly used to embed a URL that can be read by cell phones – and that’s exactly what we’re working on right now with Infusion Brands‘ flagship product, the DualSaw.  If you haven’t seen it yet, the Dualsaw is a pretty amazing circular saw that can cut through just about anything.  It has a special twin-blade setup, where two blades rotate next to each other in opposite directions simultaneously, and that’s what gives it its cutting power.  Trouble is, where do you go when you want new blades?

I don’t know about you, but I have a garage full of power tools and I don’t have the boxes or manuals for any of them.  If I need accessories or replacement parts, I usually do one of two things: search the model number on the Internet for parts, or write it down and go to Home Depot and see if they have it in stock.  For the DualSaw, we’re taking it a step further and putting a QR code right on the saw!  Customers will be able to scan the code with their phones and be taken instantly to a micro-site that lets them register their product, read the manual, order replacement blades and accessories, or even talk to customer service if they’re having a problem.  And since each model will have its own unique QR code, customers will only see the accessories and documentation pertaining to that specific product.

Time will tell how this affects e-commerce sales, but one thing is certain: companies with something to sell are always looking for clever ways to spam engage their customers, and this is just the beginning.  I expect we’ll start seeing QR codes on billboards, restaurant menus to show nutritional info, etc.  Retail giant Best Buy is using them to let customers get more information about products on the shelf and supposedly something similar is in the works for Target and Macy’s.  I remember reading an eConsultancy article suggesting QR codes might be placed on the back of headrests on buses and airplanes, letting curious customers scan them just to see where they go – the beauty of a system like this is that the destination URL can always be changed without changing the code.  I’m not going to take the leap to say that QR codes will revolutionize retail, but it’s certainly a way of engaging the technology-conscious consumer.