Jim Sterne Articles

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6/99 Doing What Matters On The Home Page
Designing a fabulous home page is incredibly simple. So how come hardly anybody does it well? What you must give users is, at minimum, what they have come to expect from other Web sites.

8/98 Tune Up Time
You know when your server is serving pages, but do you know if your Web site is serving the company? If not, it's time to find out. The first question to ask is: Are your Web projects as good for your customers as they are for management?

10/97 Customer-Colored Glasses
As the Web moves from something to be mastered to something with real business value, we revisit some fundamentals. Getting somebody's attention on the Internet is harder than getting it just about anywhere else.

5/97 Customer Interface: Losers Weepers
If your visitors can't find it, they may decide they don't really want it. What you can learn from companies who blew it and from those who are doing it well.

2/97 Help Me If You Can
Gathering, analyzing and acting on customer information is an enormous task. There are no classes you can take on how to build a 21st century marketing powerhouse. Fortunately, you don't have to do it alone.

9/96 It Ain't TV
How to build a Web site that will hold their attention. The marketing model on the Web is 180 degrees away from the broadcast norm. It is a pull medium, not a push medium.

2/96 Are You playing to a Full House?
Internet surveys show one big, happy audience, but here's what you really need to know about 'Net demographics before bringing the curtain up on your Web site.

9/95 Web Marketing Tips from Target Marketing
Jim Sterne answers the question: Is there stupid ... dumb ... bad marketing on the Web? How can you avoid the two most common mistakes made?

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Bad Web Sites

12/00 Trying To Buy A Rose Can Be Trying
A rose by any name should still be easy to buy. A few florist sites get taken for a test drive.

12/00 Coke, No Pepsi
Blending online and offline marketing is a great way to reach customers. But beware of typos! And your winners better win something! When online and offline marketing blending goes bad, it tastes awful.

11/00 CompUSA Site Review
It looks like a retail site, and quacks like a retail site, but it doesn't waddle worth a damn. Poor navigation makes CompUSA's Web site a frustrating experience.

10/98 Flash is Trash
Forget the spinning logos and blinking links. Real people want real information and fast. Have you looked at the Yahoo home page? It was gray. Why would the world's busiest Web site have a boring gray background?

4/98 Multidimensional Marketing
Do Web-based 3-D tools have a place in the marketing department? It will be interesting to see whether these new tools increase sales or merely entertain the crowd around a booth at trade shows.

7/96 Drag Net
Big Brother Bank is watching--but needs a new prescription. Their approach to the World Wide Web is missing one critical element: They're not taking it seriously.

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6/00 Brand Central Station:What Makes A Winning Brand?
What's the most important brand attribute? Speed? Flexibility? Friendliness? Try trust. It feels as if there are two primary emotions driving the Internet Zeitgeist. Fear, and impatience.

6/00 In Praise of E-Mail
The Internet's simplest app is also its most effective. OK, so how do you get several thousand people to agree to receive your message? And then get them to open it?

5/00 Brand Central Station: Micro Branding - Multiple Personalities
You'll need a different site for each brand. The question is: do you need a new site for every mood? When are multiple home pages necessary and when have you gone too far?

3/00 Brand Central Station: Expressing Your Brand Through E-Mail
Be careful how you use your e-mail. It speaks volumes about you and your company. Chose a communication style that best suits your company and stick with it.

1/00 Brand Central Station: Home Page is Where the Heart Is
Your homepage is your brand and usability testing reveals what you're saying about yourself. First impressions are extremely important, make sure the message you want to convey is present.

1/00 Brand Central Station: What is a Brand?
Every time a customer talks to you, buys from you, or even thinks about you.... branding happens. And on the Web your competitors are only a click away.

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Everybody Wants To Get Into The Act
In the days before cable Internet access, a plea to the cable companies to Get It. Thinking that the Internet and the television can be merged is like thinking that the radio and the telephone should be a single unit.

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9/00 People Who Need People
The internet experience doesn't have to be soulless. Customers can still get that human touch. Online customer service benefits from live people manning the site.

7/00 Customer Centric Company
Your web site should be about your customer not about your company. People coming to your home page should be able to tell at a glance what button they want to click on, because all of the buttons are about your customers.

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9/04 Web Sites That Actually Understand Customers
I've been surfing the web since before the term was coined. I have a list of expectations of what services well-bred organizations might and should provide online.

5/98 Minding the Mail
Overwhelmed by incoming e-mail messages? Learn how to manage the deluge with a combination of tools and techniques. The roads to overcoming e-mail stage fright are fairly straightforward: filter, rank, capture, answer and, if you can, keep the human touch.

2/97 Help Me If You Can
Gathering, analyzing and acting on customer information is an enormous task. There are no classes you can take on how to build a 21st century marketing powerhouse. Fortunately, you don't have to do it alone.

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9/00 Come In. I've Been Expecting You
Cheap personalization tools make every site visitor feel like an audience of one. The trick is to approach your customers as segments: ones small enough to suggest customization but not so minuscule that you need a bunch of software to manage them.

9/00 People Who Need People
The internet experience doesn't have to be soulless. Customers can still get that human touch. Online customer service benefits from live people manning the site.

7/00 Customer Centric Company
Your web site should be about your customer not about your company. People coming to your home page should be able to tell at a glance what button they want to click on, because all of the buttons are about your customers.

11/99 A Fine and Private Page
You don't need to book an expensive extranet to give site visitors rooms of their own. Instead, create Web pages with addresses given only to those who need to know.

11/98 Go Long
The pace of technological change makes planning for the long term more difficult - and more important. Only when a company knows what business it's in can its executives look down the road and form a coherent strategic plan.

10/98 Flash is Trash
Forget the spinning logos and blinking links. Real people want real information and fast. Have you looked at the Yahoo home page? It was gray. Why would the world's busiest Web site have a boring gray background?

4/98 Multidimensional Marketing
Do Web-based 3-D tools have a place in the marketing department? It will be interesting to see whether these new tools increase sales or merely entertain the crowd around a booth at trade shows.

11/97 Professional Group Chat: An Oxymoron
Besides the ability to promote the event, Internet chat is an awkward tool for business. For the serious, timely, efficient communication of professional information, it belongs in the same bag of tricks as chain letters, pneumatic tubes and walkie-talkies where you have to end each communiquè with, "Over!"

Customer Interface: Velvet Glove
How to convince distributed developers that the only limit is not their imaginations. Web Visitors are relying on certain conventions to understand your site and your brand.

5/97 Customer Interface: Losers Weepers
If your visitors can't find it, they may decide they don't really want it. What you can learn from companies who blew it and from those who are doing it well.

9/96 It Ain't TV
How to build a Web site that will hold their attention. The marketing model on the Web is 180 degrees away from the broadcast norm. It is a pull medium, not a push medium.

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12/97 Stacking the Deck
As Web searching grows ever-more complicated, winning the search-engine game requires keeping a few tricks up your sleeve

11/97 The Right Impression
Advertising online is a lot like advertising elsewhere: It's easy to do poorly and hard to do well. A few tips on the latter. The first question any competent advertising or marketing executive asks when looking at the Internet is, Who is looking back?

7/97 Customer Interface: Smart Ads
Infoseek's cutting-edge technology delivers ads to the most receptive eyeballs. Giving users an ad that people similar to them have clicked on dramatically improves the chance that they will click on it too.

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6/00 In Praise of E-Mail
The Internet's simplest app is also its most effective. OK, so how do you get several thousand people to agree to receive your message? And then get them to open it?

3/00 Brand Central Station: Expressing Your Brand Through E-Mail
Be careful how you use your e-mail. It speaks volumes about you and your company. Chose a communication style that best suits your company and stick with it.

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10/00 Getting Emotional Online
You can learn something from a Chatterbot. Online customer service gets a boost from these social interface programs that communicate data and emotions.

10/00 I am Marketing Guy
My background is in marketing. On the Web, that means after the click. Once your advertising has brought them in, how do you take your business goals a step further?

3/97 The Rules Have Changed for the Software Industry
Advertising, Marketing, Sales, Customer Support: they're all different now. The question is not if the rules have changed, but how far and how fast? For the software industry, the answers are very, and very.

11/95 Venture Link Magazine (Japanese)
For those who read Japanese, a story from the beginnings of Internet marketing.

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5/97 Customer Interface: Losers Weepers
If your visitors can't find it, they may decide they don't really want it. What you can learn from companies who blew it and from those who are doing it well.

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9/00 Come In. I've Been Expecting You
Cheap personalization tools make every site visitor feel like an audience of one. The trick is to approach your customers as segments: ones small enough to suggest customization but not so minuscule that you need a bunch of software to manage them.

11/99 A Fine and Private Page
You don't need to book an expensive extranet to give site visitors rooms of their own. Instead, create Web pages with addresses given only to those who need to know.

4/97 Customer Interface: Do You Know Me?
Your visitors want to feel that you're guiding them, not stalking them. How much information do you let them know you know? The first rule of Etrust is disclosing what information you are gathering and how you are going to use it.

5/96 Getting Personal
If you're really after loyalty, you'll make your Web site over-- one customer at a time. Using cookies to recognize your visitors can bring that personal touch and added value.

5/99 Personalization and Privacy in Perspective
Worried about privacy? You should be. Worried about how to use personalization? No problem: Respect the customer. The fact is, if you treat people with respect, you can sell them more stuff.

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11/98 Go Long
The pace of technological change makes planning for the long term more difficult - and more important. Only when a company knows what business it's in can its executives look down the road and form a coherent strategic plan.

6/98 Building Bridges
The marketing department and the information services department need to bury the hatchet to work together on the Web. It starts with common goals and a willingness for each group to imagine themselves in the other's shoes.

12/96 Getting Web Funding
Just because it makes sense, doesn't mean you'll get the resources. Gather the deep thinkers at your company together with the upper echelon and have them chat about the shift in global communications. Have them consider the what-ifs instead of the why-nots.

3/96 Customer Interface: Easy Doesn't It
Sure, you can take it slow when it comes to the Web. But the only thing coming to those who wait is likely to be anonymity. The absorbing question is whether it is better to be first or best.

9/95 Hold Onto That Turf
The battle for control of the company's Web site has begun, and information services organizations that don't make themselves indispensable fast, risk being pushed to the sidelines. Here's how you can actually help the marauding marketing mob and earn their gratitude, their affection and their budget.

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5/96 Getting Personal
If you're really after loyalty, you'll make your Web site over-- one customer at a time. Using cookies to recognize your visitors can bring that personal touch and added value.

5/99 Personalization and Privacy in Perspective
Worried about privacy? You should be. Worried about how to use personalization? No problem: Respect the customer. The fact is, if you treat people with respect, you can sell them more stuff.

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9/98 Virtual Press Box
Want coverage? Reserve a section of your site for information journalists need. Online press areas need to cater to the various constituencies by providing relevant information to journalists of all stripes.

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12/00 What Makes People Click? - Targeting!
Chatting with Jim Sterne, author of "What Makes People Click - Advertising on the Web", a leading expert on Internet marketing. Wanda Loskot asks Jim Sterne: Do you have a formula for successful targeting? What is the best way to get started?

11/00 At Your Service
Service companies need a touch of ingenuity to make the Web work for them. It may be more difficult to sell services than content online, but the Web can be used to develop an impressive public face.

11/99 A Fine and Private Page
You don't need to book an expensive extranet to give site visitors rooms of their own. Instead, create Web pages with addresses given only to those who need to know.

6/99 Doing What Matters On The Home Page
Designing a fabulous home page is incredibly simple. So how come hardly anybody does it well? What you must give users is, at minimum, what they have come to expect from other Web sites.

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8/97 Customer Interface: Marketing Lessons From Award Winners
Some of Webmaster's 50/50 Award winners can teach us a few things about marketing. The people who built these Web sites all share one thing in common: They had a clear picture in mind of what they wanted to get out of it.

9/95 Missing The Point
Interactivity is the new magic the World Wide Web brings to the marketing mix. It's a crime to ignore the possibilities. Think about using the Web as an information gathering tool. Start by watching the people who took the time to do it well.

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9/00 People Who Need People
The internet experience doesn't have to be soulless. Customers can still get that human touch. Online customer service benefits from live people manning the site.

11/96 The Internet Gift Culture
To give is to receive ... business. So what have you got that might be of interest to the Internet at large?

9/96 Brother, Can You Sparadigm?
One word of advice about where your competition will come from: Everywhere. What we haven't gotten used to is the idea that we need to step outside our industries from time to time and look for innovations all over the map.

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10/96 How The Web Was Won The End of an Era
An historical perspective on the demise of The Internet Marketing Discussion List, moderated for two years by Glenn Fleishman. This list saw the birth of an industry and did more than just discuss the industry, it helped shape it.

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Expos Exposed
A trade-show veteran's frustrating search for the greatest show on-line. Feel like networking? Rubbing elbows with your peers? Getting a feel for the industry? The benefits of trade shows have not been replicated online.

11/97 Professional Group Chat: An Oxymoron
Besides the ability to promote the event, Internet chat is an awkward tool for business. For the serious, timely, efficient communication of professional information, it belongs in the same bag of tricks as chain letters, pneumatic tubes and walkie-talkies where you have to end each communiquè with, "Over!"

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