Couple of stable datums from our laboratory where we still have Frankenstein hanging out with us..

1. Visiting a dealership’s website that contemplates a major decision is subconsciously re- stimulating to the prospects last experience at a dealership or their predisposition to what a dealership or industry represents i.e. car sales etc.

2. This results in an underlining stressful experience as they contemplate their next move of crossing the threshold via phone or in person.

3. At this point flash or anything that causes movement creates a slight sea sickness.

4. Secondary to nausea is the fact that one must “set” their eye trail and determine how their eye will scan the page and navigate the site. Video and movement typically interrupt the “handshake” between you and the website.

5. Starting a video can be successful under three conditions.

a. It’s more than 18 seconds long and less than 27

b. It communicates and shapes the “purpose” of the prospect’s visit to the site (another rabbit hole).

c. It matches the average prospects chronic emotional condition of existence, which can is determined by a few different models of which the most important is the product.

d. The video starts playing either in the dead center of the page or upper left exactly 40 pixels off the left and off the top.

e. Bonus Idea.. There is a gentle form attached to the video. We called this VideoForm™ back when we created the concept for ourselves in 2001 although we rarely use it today.

f. The entire video theme is no larger on screen that the size of the prospects palms.

6. Extra Credit Think: What dealers, businesses and we close to the industry think is cool is wildly different that what the customer thinks is cool or more importantly what works. What customers survey as cool and rate well is usually false data because they are either being asked in a state of non-stress or after the purchase, which doesn’t count. “Stress is a force that distorts a things true shape of form.” That’s why the key is to test things in a space where the individual is under the most amount of stress possible. If it works there, it works anywhere. So in the end what we think is cool in the forums and what creates the willingness in a stress filled prospect to cross the threshold and make contact is not typically what we think it is.

Great subject and a greater conversation… Starbucks?

Eddie Coleman

Leadership: Fact vs. Fiction

To truly understand what leadership is we must first define it.

Leadership i.e. To Lead, to go before or with to show the way; conduct or escort; to conduct by holding and guiding; to influence or induce; cause; to command or direct; to go at the head of or in advance of; to be superior to; have the advantage over; to have top position or first place in.

Leaders rally others to a better place. That is the only goal of a leader. They cause a belief that some objective, goal, attitude or frame of mind can be achieved that was otherwise not thought possible or simply never before reached. The idea that great leaders need to be the best managers or coaches or have a laundry list of other qualities I found to be both true and false at the same time. Great qualities may be great assets of a leader, but that’s like being good looking and rich at the same time. It’s a bonus.

Study the great leaders over the past 1,000 years and you will find that most of them were quirky at best. Many of them were not the best managers and they were not always the most politically correct. Yet, they still inspired massive change and rallied colossal support from people around them. Study the greatest figures of our time and you’ll find some great leaders wrapped around some weird people.

Kurt Cobain, for example, led and inspired a music revolution that many historians say was greater than The Beatles. All this from a guy who wouldn’t pass anyone’s “10 Point Test” of a leader.

This is an important fact to face because we can’t fabricate an ideal leader for the car business just so we feel safe and get “buy-in.” Only by looking at the reality of what a leader really is can we apply it to our lives and businesses.

In today’s business society, “leadership” is held out as that ultimate greatness everyone wants wrapped around them. To be a leader supposedly means to be the best of everything to everyone, is now sexy and since books on the subject fly off the shelf, the concept must have merit.

I think the waters are murky at best so let’s define what leadership really is and is not. Let’s set aside today’s desired character of a leader and look at the actual results of a leader. What does a leader produce in the universe? Then the real qualities of a leader will become significantly simplified and we can then spend less time striving for the qualities of a leader and more time producing the results of a leader.

Here are the key outcomes produced by true leaders. The final valuable products of a leader that leads to something substantial being done, which in turn creates a legacy. You should find yourself amazed at how these few things create the surface qualities we look for in today’s leaders and how the subject today is in essence studied backwards.

A Clear and Correct Vision

Regarding What Is Possible

The only way a leader rallies people to a better place is first having a clear vision of what that place is but there’s more to it than that. The true leader has to see the end goal so clear that he or she develops a razor sharp ability to explain it or demonstrate it to others in an explicit manner. If the vision and or goal is not clear it cannot be communicated and then duplicated with exact understanding in the mind of the people that are listening.

Telling someone about what is possible is only effective to the degree that the recipient of what you have to say understands it exactly as it was intended. You understanding alone doesn’t cut it. Historically great leaders surround themselves with people who serve as translators having the ability to describe the leaders vision to people of different personalities and points of view so that a great number of people can see the goal clearly.

Communication is the universal solvent in life but for a leader, great communication stems simply from a clear and correct vision regarding what is possible. Leader’s need not be good at making or maintaining decisions. The clarity of their visions and goals will do it for them.

Agreement

Now that the leader has an absolute clear vision of what is possible and can produce a freakishly clear understanding, agreement can exist. Leaders produce large amounts of agreement plain and simple. Agreement exists in life only through communication that is understood. What’s more interesting is the fact that agreement is the single factor responsible for creating affinity and or fondness between people. Only to the degree that people see the world the same in some fashion do they actually like each other. So no, a leader is not a people person by nature that simply created a ton of agreement along the lines of their vision.

Teamwork

Once a group of people clearly understand the vision and agree on it, they all become equal in the drive forward for a period of time, which makes them a team by default. Once a team is formed, people with the ability to manage and place people in their proper positions take over and help to push for the realization of the goal.

Conclusion

So in the end the natural order and sequence of things surrounding leadership becomes: Vision leads to clear communication, which leads to exact understanding. Understanding leads to agreement. Agreement leads to teamwork. Teamwork leads to management. Management of the team cultivates physical results. The leadership to results formula in the order of priority is thus: Vision = Communication = Understanding = Agreement = Teamwork + Management = Physical Results.

There we have it. The mystery of leadership revealed. I hope it makes reaching your next goal a little easier.

 

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Leveraging Randomity To Increase Website Conversion Rates

I use the term “randomity” to describe how an individual can switch gears between one task and another fluidly without hesitation.  Randomity is most often and easily witnessed in small children.  If you have ever had a child sitting in the backseat of an automobile on a long trip you might have noticed the child seemingly getting out of hand, causing the adults to become extremely aggravated.  This does not mean the child was doing anything wrong, but rather was most likely moving rapidly from one task to another. 

For example, a child might be playing with a hand-held game while talking out loud one second, kicking the back of your seat the next second, then crumpling up some paper the very next second.  Usually, adults perceive this as rambunctious behavior and an inability to focus.  Eventually, the parent winds up instructing the child to sit still and settle down, and to choose and stick with one activity or another.  This is a very good example of a child displaying their ability to handle randomity.  Randomity is typically suppressed out of children as they grow older.  The degree to which it is suppressed will greatly depend on the parents’ ability to handle randomity as adults. 

As a result you wind up with adults that fit dramatically into two completely different emotional categories.  I call these groups public “A” and public “B”.  As a child grows up, their ability to handle randomity equips them with the capacity to excel in certain subjects while having a difficult time in other subjects.  The opposite is true for an individual who has had randomity suppressed out of them throughout their childhood.  These differences form the opposing characters of public “A” and public “B”. 

With this framework now laid, we can move forward, mapping out the basic differences between a prospective  buyer that fits into one category as opposed to another.

Public “A”

Public “A” is representative of the adults who never had the randomity suppressed out of them during their childhood.  Usually, this is because the parents themselves were able to handle a higher degree of randomity.  In essence, the resulting behavior simply does not bother the parents like it would most people.  Now public “A” comprises the smallest portion of the general population as compared to public “B”.  Over the years I have reviewed numerous studies on the subject of human behavior, some conflicting and some not.  My research has led me to conclude that Public “A” makes up approximately 3% of the population.  In other words approximately three out of every one hundred adults have the ability to handle high levels of randomity.  This would leave approximately 97% of the population in the category of public “B”.

Now let’s take a look at personality.  It has been my observation that an individual who can handle a high level of randomity can tend to have underdeveloped social skills but rank highly in their natural ability to comprehend technical knowledge.  A person with these qualities might fit the standard profile of a large majority of computer programmers.  Often times you will see movies and television shows portraying a computer programmer or someone in the computer industry as being a “techy”.  These people are often times depicted as nerdy people who are rather reclusive, emotionally distrusting and lacking in certain social skills.  While I wouldn’t place much stock in how Hollywood attempts to categorize people, when it comes to individuals who have high randomity skills and low social skills you will often find that some of these stereotypical characteristics are present.

When it comes to purchasing an automobile, this type of public displays consistent behavioral patterns.  They might feel the need to extensively research before they buy, and are able to handle more and intensely detailed technical information on a vehicle than even the salesmen themselves.  I have found that as a rule, people who fit into public “A” have little desire to confront a salesman face-to-face when there is an alternative option. 

This type of public may also, at times, appear to be extremely distrusting and suspicious of information that is relayed to them in a verbal manner as opposed to data obtained through research.  I could write a separate book on the psychological traits of public “A” but I think for our purpose here I will cut it short.  Also please keep in mind that the description given here of public “A” is intended to be a theatrical description for the sake of giving you a point of reference.  There are many people who will embark on  buying missions as members of public “A” but may not display the characteristics described above.

Public “B”

The textbook description of public “B” would naturally be the polar opposite of public “A”.  An individual fitting the profile of public “B” could be described as the customer that strolls into the business on a Saturday, has more fun telling stories to the business’s employees than learning about the vehicle he just took a test drive in, pays the business a $3000 front-end profit, bites off on just about every product pitched by the F&I department, refers everyone he knows to the business, and then winds up purchasing his next vehicle from the business as well!

An individual who has had the majority of randomity suppressed out of their behavior will we be less likely to be a natural computer programmer and will tend to become a better communicator.  This comes from a learned ability to “slow down”.  Most exceptional sales people, managers and Business Principals in the  business reside in the public “B” group to one varying degree or another.

Emotional types and e-business website design

Many businesses express frustrations with Internet buyers.  An Internet buyer is often times described as an individual who will research a vehicle to the point of insanity, refuses to pay the business more than $200 profit, requires a great deal of effort to acquire as a customer, is a poor fixed operations customer, refers few if any people at all to the business, gives the credit for his exceptional bargain to the Internet as apposed to the business that accepted his offer, and then finally ends up buying somewhere else at the end of his lease.  The question is, why do many businesses have this horrific opinion of Internet customers?  I believe the answer to this question is fairly obvious.
 
Look at which public the average web developer most likely fits into!  I don’t believe it will take you much time at all to realize that the average web developer fits nicely into the categorical profile of public “A”.  Now, without getting too deep into the psychological aspects of this whole scenario, let’s take a look at how this reality affects the average  business’s web site. 

First of all, it’s important understand that when an individual creates something from nothing, the end product must make sense to them mentally.  In other words, the structure, flow, content and design of the website must make conceptual sense for the individual who has been placed in charge of creating it. This is common in any design field whether it be computer programming or structural engineering.  This becomes a problem in the field of  web development because there is a specific psychology necessary when creating a web site that will disseminate to the market that we are after.

When a group of individuals that fit the profile of public “A” are assigned the task of designing and developing a website for the purpose of convincing thousands of people to take the next step towards making an extremely emotional and expensive decision, you wind up with what potentially can be a 52 car pile up on the Santa Monica Freeway.  In the end, the common sense aspects of this concept are relatively simple.  If an individual that fits the profile of public “A” is commissioned to build a public website, it only stands to reason that the public that will most likely respond will have a similar psychological make-up as the individual or group of individuals that were responsible for its creation.  This is the primary reason why websites consistently produces what I believe are unacceptable conversion percentages. 

It is also the interconnecting recipe for improving a business’s online state of existence.

Creativity and stress don’t mix.

The first insight to being effectively creative is to understand that real creativity and stress cannot occupy the same space at the same time.  Sure we’ve all seen someone blow out an idea or two under pressure but doing so always leaves lots to be desired.  We always come up with our best ideas when we are relaxed, which is why most people have their best ideas while on vacation.

So as we can see the idea of hurrying up and thinking of a good idea for a last minute sale would not go down on the overly smart list.  We may pull out the month but we’ll leave ourselves in the same spot for next month and from there we go into that whole definition of insanity thing.  When recovering from stress and overstimulation, you are in the perfect moment to be ultimately productive and profitable with your creative thoughts.

So then how would you motivate others within the business to be create or how would you monitor the manager that is in charge of the advertising to make sure that they are tapping into all their potential?  One thing you can do is to never be or ask anyone else to be creative after a sales meeting.  Sales meetings are motivational which implies stress. 

Side Note:

The reason motivational meetings typically induce stress and thus reduce creativity is because the individual is what we call at the lower levels of the success band.  The first success band is called “Determination” or “Positive 1”.  It’s where the mind tries to recover from a period of lesser success by forcing itself to succeed by putting itself into the stressful and eventually destructive state of determination.  Determination leads to “Positive 2”, which is the state of “Carelessness”.

Carelessness exists to try and recover the mind from being determined as its primary fuel for success.  While it’s a higher condition of existence than “Determination” it leads to failure if the person does not have the techniques for jumping past “Carelessness” and into “Positive 3”, which is “Conserving”.  This is done through a specific success action recall interview process that moves the individual into the higher bands and into stable, predictable in the future.  This ugly cycle of determination and carelessness can be seen every time a salesperson or business has good months followed by bad months or successful advertising followed unsuccessful campaigns. 

Ok back to advertising & creativity.

Now that we are in a creative mental space, let’s look at some philosophical shortcuts to a profitable advertising message.

1. Embrace the offensive.  If you want your message to be clear then be willing to mildly offend 15% of your audience.  Bold statements are some of the things that the mind does not expect and it is the unexpected that keeps the audience keyed-in to your message the necessary six seconds it takes to make a lasting impression.  I don’t mean be theatrical I mean be bold. Theatrics in automotive advertising are expected and it’s difficult to keep the minds attention when they’ve seen and heard it before.  

1. Take the leap of faith between business mathematics and creative advertising.  Decisions in marketing that are made purely from a calculator and a pencil is vulnerable at best.  The advertising industry presents itself as a science for the slide rule and pencil pushers.  Learn to separate fact from fiction.  Advertising is an art propelled by medium, which results in an audience. Defining the audience is the only place a calculator should be used.  Leave the painting to the canvas.

1. Trust your message over the medium of delivery.  In today’s marketplace we are constantly being dazzled with new innovative mediums to deliver our message.  Electronic billboards, online blogs and highly integrated sponsorships to name a few.  Remember the medium of delivery is not your message.  Your message is the message.  The medium is and always has been just the catalyst.

1. Avoid Risk and Perish.  In times of change the biggest risk is to take none at all.  They key of course is calculated risk.  Just don’t get stuck on the “calculated” part or it really becomes a sham to make yourself feel like a risk taker.  Risk is a shared thing in most organizations.  Learn to take risks that are calculated but still greater than your competition is willing to take and in the long run you will succeed.

1. Pick a rope and climb it.  Taking a list of every perceivable quality that a business thinks they should have then trying to be all things to everyone inevitably results in meaning little to anybody.  Most political candidates that fail at the polls, in the final analysis do so as the result of trying to be liked by everyone.  Deciding what you want your business’s brand to stand for must stem from real beliefs that you can stand behind at all times.  Most consumers don’t like you anyway so make the ones that do your friends for life by picking a rope and climbing it.

1. Pick a fight with other businesses.  To stand out from the scores of nasty advertising that exists in this industry, you need to position yourself against the competition.  Taking a stance is a good thing for any business’s own brand and image.  Pick something that is considered an alternative choice to your business’s message, values or selling proposition then pick up a club and start swinging.  Do it tastefully and with style and you’ll win the hearts and minds of the public.

1. Don’t ever think you can win by out spending the competition.  The only way businesses get to the point where they can out spend anyone is by first out thinking them.  Spending to much will temp you into making bad decisions.  As an example, in every market that our company is in we easily leverage a $20,000.00 advertising budget into what any other business in town would have to spend $80,000.00 to get.  Then based on ad placement and message, we leverage it 3X over again.  That’s a $240,000.00 budget on $20,000.00 in real money, which is all the result of outthinking not out spending.  Grow into your ad budget with certainty while still taking risks for real long-term success.

One of the most meaningful discoveries we have noted since we coined the concept of conversion rate as it pertains to web design is the considerable contrast in  buying habits from one geographical area to another.  Of particular interest is that his is true even while staying within the context of one kind or type of buyer.

For example, let’s say you have two groups of customers.  One group is in Dallas, Texas and the other group resides in Phoenix, Arizona.  Both of these groups are comprised of individuals who are sub-prime lending candidates in the $10,000 price, $250 per month payment range. 

Now, let’s say these two groups have similar shopping habits, are all the same gender and all fall within the same age group.  To take it one step further, all of these individuals work in a similar occupational field and all listen to the same kind of music.  Wouldn’t you think that a bruised credit website that is effective in creating reach from one of these groups would be effective in reaching the other group?  There was a time when I certainly would have believed that!  The reality is that nothing could be farther from the truth.

If we bench marked this website using the typical visitors to sales lead conversion rates that we see today from most dealership websites and  lead generation services, we might very well see a consistent level of performance in each area without taking into consideration that the bar can be set much higher. 

If, however, you have created an online campaign that disseminates to one of these groups in a specific area such as Dallas, Texas, and your campaign is based on specific psychological research pertaining to Dallas’s specific marketplace and demography and then you launch the same website in the same manner, with the same advertising campaign plus or minus a couple of tweaks in Phoenix, Arizona, you will undoubtedly witness a massive disparity in success rates between the two geographic areas.

My point here is that it is astonishing how a similar group of consumers respond differently to colors, shapes, line movement, eye trail, and advertising in general based on their geographic location.  In addition, when e-dealer marketing research is conducted with a focus on the dealer’s local marketplace, a remarkable and massive increase in website originated sales leads can result without an increase in the dealer’s website traffic. 

If you’re a business that owns multiple locations in multiple geographic areas, this information should equip you with an extra (and powerful) tool when strategizing and planning the incorporation of your website with the marketing scheme of your individual stores.

While there are countless qualities of a successful business, some apply to your business more than others. Here’s what is on our radar for 2010.

Sales

The biggest factor for increasing sales in 2010 will be seen in a business’s ability to limit “cross line communication”. Every time someone pulls another off task to communicate non productive data, down time is the result.  70% of the average person’s day consists of pulling or being pulled off task.  Hold a class on it, label it and have your employees sign an anti cross line communication policy.   Remember confronting out ethics is 80% of eradicating it from your environment.  Stay away from paying more to get more. 

Money is the least effective motivator of man kind.  Duty is the most effective.  Sounds crazy but it’s a fact.  Create a company culture and live by it. You’ll find that beyond a certain income level, your employees families won’t spend nearly as much time explaining their income as they do explaining what they actually do for a living.  Finally have patients. In 2010 businesses that pencil their lives on a 30 day plan are going to get slaughtered by businesses with longer term visions.

BDC vs. the Internet Department for 2010

This is becoming a real issue nationwide.  Either use a BDC (Business Development Center) business wide or skip it. If a little BDC is good then more is better.  The reason they work is because the best people on the phone are usually the worse in person.  If considering a BDC for 2010 look carefully before signing on with an outsourced operation wielding an auto dialer like a sword. You can’t auto dial greatness any more than you can obtain salvation through better golf equipment.   Internet departments by contrast are now jack of all trades often made up computer savvy hotel concierges turned salesman.  

Then there are the real pro’s who are worth their weight.  Internet managers manage a relationship from start to finish, while a BDC should be comprised of people so good at getting people on the phone and in the business that watching them makes you dizzy.  Internet departments make more sense when the way a sale is made is more important than how many are made and the reverse is true of a BDC.  

Both can produce equal customer satisfaction scores but one is a padded leather chair for the imaginary internet customer and the other is a sales weapon.  So if deciding on a BDC make sure not to blow your foot off.  You can manage Internet departments with great predictability, which is a major benefit.  BDC’s by contrast are more risky and chalked with incredibly out dated sales systems but can double a business’s volume in short order if set up correctly.

Management

In the final quarter of 2009 U.S. payrolls are increasing at a steady pace.  In 2010 businesses that know how to maximize existing employees will prosper.  While leaders rally others to a better future, managers know how to discover a person’s talent and exploit it by posting them on the best job for their talent. I call this the ability to “Discover, Develop and Direct”.  This skill will be essential in 2010.

Advertising

In 2010 I’m advising our businesses to get a grip and get out of print.  I know its co-op friendly for some but so what.  Buy a stable schedule and stick with it. Go gorilla!  Most ads are designed not to offend, design yours to win.   2010 is a political year and you’ll hear it from every ad rep in town.  Don’t listen to it.  Focus on investment per item sold and make your budget work.  Steer clear of local ad agencies.  They’re taking your best ideas to your competitors as you read this and they’re horrible at negotiating good buys. 

Yes that goes for your agency too.  Bottom line with local agencies is the media outlet means more to them than you do. 2010 will bring a crash in agency business and they’ll end up doing anything to sign up your competition for can of cat food. So if you need a friend, buy a dog, if you need help negotiating take a class and if you need help managing media hire a temp. In 2010 blitz one source followed by another but based on a brilliant plan.   Make your buys in Dec for 12 months in 2010 then have them guarantee no bumps.

There’s a way to do this that is incredibly effective.  Stay away from afternoon drive times because in 2010 everyone will be talking on their cell phones when they leave work due to new laws surrounding headsets.   Stay away from paid streaming media.  Every business’s ad budget I’ve ever looked at was paying 300% more than they needed to. Every one!  So sharpen you pencil, know what you want, know what you don’t need and know how to negotiate to get everything you ask for.  Don’t hit on your ad reps.

Recruiting

It always comes down to people and those of us that have the best one’s stand the best chance of success.  Company culture in 2009 was surveyed as the #1 deciding factor of prospected top talent.  Leverage your best employees to reach out for you.  Use emotional intelligence. Research indicates that one of the worst employment moves a business owner can make is disengaging from the hiring process.  Keep new hire’s eyes on long-term opportunity over short-term gain.  Never over leverage your pay plan.

Employee Motivation

Leverage your perks. Pay and commissions are expected, but perks are not. Perks are concrete confirmations the organization recognizes that an employee went the distance. Have your admin staff work with local vendors to trade for perks.  You give me a free dinner to give away and I’ll give you a free oil change etc.

Training

A certain percentage of your net should be earmarked for training.  The lower you’re closing percentages the more your training budget should be because you have the most to gain the fastest.  The better your performance the less you allocate because the goal is to maintain and discover.  When stats are down you are in a “Danger Condition” because you are the effect of your competition, which places your business at risk.  Get smart and get better trained but know how much to spend, when and with whom.  You want to approach your training budget with certainly not speculation.

With that said have a prepared 2010.

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Depending on who you are and how technologically up to speed you are there are some solid research tools that you may find helpful along the way.   The more you know about the world of search engine optimization the more you will understand the difference between what SEO and Sale Accelerator.

Knock yourself out, write all your questions down then prepare yourself for answers you never thought possible.

Useful SEO Resources:

SEO Tools

Developer Tools 

Understanding the fine points of your Business.com

In an evolving dot.com world it’s important to understand the structure of domain names for Businesses and how to avoid common misunderstandings and pitfalls of the system.  A Business can go though justifiable melt down surrounding this issue.  It’s important to know how domains registrations, management and renewals work within the relationship of their service providers.  There are some simple guidelines that can provide you with valuable wisdom around this evolving subject. 

Here are some of the most frequently asked questions and their answers you can share with anyone in your organization that this responsibility falls on.

1)      What is a domain name?  www. (anything in between) .com .net or any other extension is considered and Internet domain name

2)      How can my web provider end up owning my pre-existing domain name?  There are a few ways this can happen.   New registrations.  Most service provider’s bulk registration accounts have pre-set registrant data that is listed on all new listings.  Renewal errors. This is common is when a web developer that manages the account uses the domain owners credit card to renew and the card is declined by the registrar.  When this happens some providers apply the charge to the managing company’s primary account, which can often switch registered ownership and contact information.  This can be a nightmare for all parties and as of 2008 that seems to be an issue of the past.  Renewal default settings. Frequently domain names can change hands by simply renewing a name with new payee information.  The best preventative maintenance is to check your domain names yearly and know the renewal date.  Most developers manage thousands of names and it can be nearly impossible to manually cross reference them all without hiring a full time staff.

3)      Can I manage my own registration account?  Yes.   Within just the last 6 months we have been able to create sub accounts with individual passwords for separate clients making management and yearly renewal payments less hassle.  Migrating old accounts to new platforms has proven to be a hassle but is expected to become manageable as domain registrar providers advance their technologies.

4)      Are there disadvantages of self managed domains?  Yes several.  First, most people forget to renew them.  One day they wake up and their website is down.  This is usually followed by less than friendly calls to the developer.  72 hours later the web-developer calls after discovering the domain name wasn’t renewed and as a result the name has to be redeemed, which usually costs $150.00 and brings the site down for as much as a week.  The key is a failsafe alarm clock or just register domains for several years at a time.  The second biggest issue is server pointing.  Developers often re-point websites to upgraded and new equipment.  Without access to the domain, this responsibility falls on the owner.  Usually it becomes a hassle resulting in sufficient down time.  Developers manage I.P. addresses in clusters so domains outside the group can be very difficult to track.  Also domains have both web records and e-mail records.  In the event of an outage the developer must be able to trouble shoot the issue, which requires either access to domain name records or instant collaboration from the technical contact listed on the record.  The easiest solution for these two challenges, if domains are self controlled, is to hire a full time I.T. person who has experience in the field.  Even so your guaranteed triple the down time but while it’s a costly solution it may be worth the investment if you have enough records to manage or a large enough email user base.  Finally when your domain name is managed by the provider you won’t get scammed by all those fake renewal notices that we’ve all received in the mail.

5)      Can a provider hold up the transfer of a domain name due to non-payment of services?  Yes.   Once service is interrupted due to non payment, it of course must be restored again to complete the transfer, which is a part of the service most of us are paying for in the first place.  It would be like not paying a cell bill and then trying to move the delinquent phone number to another cell company to get out of paying charges due. 

6)      What is the relationship between email and domain names?  While in the physical world we can’t be in two places at one time, in the internet world that’s not the case.  You see each single domain name actually is in two places at once.  One part of the domain points to the web or www address of the website itself and the other part points to the email server hosting the domain’s email.  So in essence domains must be dually managed.  The key is to have both web and mail managed in the same place.  Especially for the auto industry where the primary purpose of the website is to generate leads.  The primary advantage of this method is the fact that a developer can test the leads from the website all the way to the mail server, which keeps finger pointing down to a minimum.

7)      What is the relationship between administrative, billing and technical contacts on my domain record?  In essence each record will be in receipt of different notices as the occasion arises.  Technical aspects of the site can be managed by a qualified technical person, while other aspects such as billing notices can go to say the accounting department.

8)      How much should I pay for domain registrations and renewals?  Depending on volume and service provider between 5.95 and 12.95 per year.  Some providers will give discounts or multiple year registrations.

9)      How valuable is my domain name?  That all depends.  If it is the name of your Businesses then its value is clearly high on the food chain.  If it is a lead generating name then it is as valuable as your current month’s ad budget.  Advertising can be decreased as the result of continued marketing, creating an exciting suspended value but pull the plug all together and you’re looking at a short shelf life.  Finally a name is as valuable as the conversion rate it can produce in terms of visitors to leads.  This is more a measure of your developer than a name.

10)   Who in my organization should be in charge of domain names? Either a qualified I.T. employee whom is governed under a similar agreement as a standard service provider or the business principal or all of the above.  Many times when management moves from one store to another, small details such as domain names can be completely forgotten about until the need arises.  I.T. employees by contrast don’t overlook these kinds of details as it is a standard part of their job description and is a piece of their employee agreement.

11)   What do I do if one of my managers is listed on my domain who as left the company and is now unreachable?  A simple notarized change request letter to the domain provider on company letter head will usually suffice and typically takes less than two weeks.

12)   What are some examples of problematic domain issues that can be avoided through best practices?  The list is almost endless.  Just in the past year we have seen several circumstances surrounding some easily avoidable issues.  In one case a dealer from the northeast coast left their domain name on our registrar for nearly two years after the service expired.  With all the names we register we never even noticed and subsequently and unknowingly paid all the costs associated with the name free of charge.  That was mildly humorous.  What was not funny was when their current provider dropped their email record bringing down the whole Business’s email system, resulting in a rightfully upset friend angry at completely the wrong person.  These situations can be difficult to explain when someone is panicking over their much needed email and are easily avoidable.  Providers have witnessed attempts to try to abscond with services, back-date notices, have ex-employees try and get money they didn’t earn and so on. 

For example when our dealer in Houston acquired a new Dodge Dealership we learned that the domain was owned by a scalper.  Every time we sent him a notice to relinquish the domain he would transfer ownership to another fictitious company making it nearly impossible to pin him down.  In the end we were able to find his primary hosting provider and after holding them accountable through some well crafted letters, the domain name was magically released saving our client tens of thousands in legal fees.  The ideal situation would have been to secure the name before the Business was purchased.  Luckily I enjoyed the hunt.  Sort of.

Conclusion:

Most domain related challenges are the result of simple confusions, which when understood are not so seemingly scary.  Through a crash course in domainology, businesses can install best-practices and sleep better at night.  Providers are typically more motivated for clients to have a grasp on the inner workings of their domains than the clients themselves.  This is due to the fact that in nearly 100% of the time fingers are pointed at the provider in the event of a misfire, which only reflects unjustly on the provider.  As a result providers are always eager to provide a helpful and free course on domain name CPR.