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Looking through our traffic analytics, there’s no denying the sheer amount of traffic that StumbleUpon can bring to a site. But there’s one thing that’s stood out about Stumblers over other sources: their lack of return visits.

StumbleUpon visitors seem to be a lot like those heading out for a pub crawl. They’ll visit a few bars, have a few drinks (posts), maybe talk with friends, and have a good time. But by the end of the night (day), several sites later, they’re stumbling around, probably with little clue as to where they are. The details of the last few bars are hazy; but you’re having a good time.

Read more »

I was at a local breakfast chain (Chez Cora’s) over the weekend and there was a table with two children literally hanging off the wall and climbing anything they could, as children are apt to do. It was apparent that, aside from the food (and the colouring pages), there wasn’t much of anything for the kids to do but climb around their seat. For some reason this made me think that if only there was something that would capture their attention and keep them seated, if only long enough for their parents to relax a little and have a nice breakfast.

Then it came to me. Themed booster seats! Read more »

I was reading up on some of the VizThink 2008 session summaries that people have been blogging about, and there was one bit from Jim Haudan’s Drawing the Big Picture: Strategy Alignment and Deployment Using Visualization session that sort of stuck out at me:

“Gallup polls indicate that 300 billion is lost in productivity as 25% of a typical organization is disengaged, 50% is ambivalent, and only 25% are agents of change. This lack of engagement results in the fact that 66-90% of strategies that are developed don’t get executed.”

An interesting stat in and of itself, but what happens if we think of this not in terms of productivity within an organization, but rather, from the perspective of a company and its customers:

“…$300 billion is lost in revenue as 25% of a typical organization’s customers are disengaged (buy the product service, but are not satisfied with the level of service or quality), 50% are ambivalent, and only 25% are agents of change (excited about your company/product, and tell their friends). This lack of customer engagement results in the fact that 66-90% of customer service efforts targeted at your customers, don’t succeed.”

Now the numbers in my scenario are completely made up, but if that were the reality - and certainly, it could be in a crowdsourced model where your customers are your employees; what would you need to do differently in your customer service strategy?

…And the best thing about getting engaged with your customers, is that it doesn’t cost you 3 months salary!

(photo credit: rmrayner)