In this edition of Web Enlightenment we'll be talking about squeakers, and how they can easily provide you with inaccurate perceptions about your own web efforts.

This newsletter focuses on giving you practical, interesting insights into how to successfully use technology as a tool to improve the way you do business. Bridging the gap between knowledge and understanding that all entrepreneurs have will help you make money online.

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All the best,

Squeakers vs. Stats

Long before we were were measuring every detail of web site visits with analytics programs, smart Entrepreneurs spent lots of time keeping their ear to the ground. Through customer polls, simply chatting with folks, and a variety of other methods they spent lots of time trying to figure out how people felt about them and their products.

Entrepreneurs that are good at this readily identify what I call "squeakers" - customers who make lots and lots of noise with great regularity. The experienced shopkeeper might say: "Oh, that's just Mr. Biddle, he complains about everything and we just smile and nod." That same shopkeeper is keeping a very close eye on the habits of Mrs. Biddle, who never says a word but she also never buys an item twice unless it's good.

Another place where squeakers get identified is when you install a computerized cash register in a store for the first time. I spent a bit of time in my youth programming 2170 machines for NCR and I'm not sure why but I ended up servicing lots of liquor stores.

Pretty reliably the store owner would have some strong opinions about what sold and what didn't - the items they were sure were important were positioned near the register. The first time the store owner saw an actual weekly sales report they would always call me in, convinced something must be wrong with their new machine. "There is no way we sell more Absolut than Jameson's, that is simply not possible."

And so I would patiently go through the log and extract all the sales data and several hours later the store owner would find out that every Absolut drinker in town tended to show up on their day off.

Today we have a different situation - especially on the web - and that matters for an Internet Entrepreneur. Squeakers tend to write emails - often long and complicated - about ways to improve your web offerings.

A good Internet Entrepreneur will do something pretty radical with these squeakers - ignore them.

Now I'm not suggesting that you don't reply to the message and play nice, and I'm not suggesting that they aren't worth reading to see if there are any useful nuggets there - but I am saying that squeaker emails have a big inherent danger you need to be aware of.

Sites that have been taking squeaker suggestions and altering their pages based on them are easy to spot - especially in shopping cart check out sequences. They tend to contain long winded complicated explanations about weird scenarios that are meant to be "helpful" - something like: "If you are ordering a large purple T-shirt and live in Hawaii remember that regulations require all purple shirts to be inspected so it will take an extra week to arrive."

And so we have provided service to the 0.001% of customers that are in fact Hawaiians that look good in purple and we have increased the shopping cart abandonment rate for the other 99.999% of customers.

Remember our friends Mr. and Mrs. Biddle? He made a lot of noise and she quietly bought the nice products while the shopkeeper kept a good eye on her? The quiet Mrs. Biddle is actually much more important to your success.

The way to "see" Mrs. Biddle is to look at your web site statistics.

And while you are busy ignoring those squeaker emails remember this - on the web you need to have at least three customers mention a problem before you consider doing anything about it, this is especially true in areas of functionality. At a large site the number is more like 10 or perhaps 20.

Here is the bottom line: if you don't read your stats but listen to squeaker emails you are really doing yourself a disservice. The best bet is to read and understand your statistics (so you can see what Mrs. Biddle is doing) but if you don't do that please be sure to basically ignore those squeaker emails.

A Very Successful Vacation

As mentioned in my last newsletter I went on my first "real" vacation in three years last week. I boarded Celebrity Cruises in Miami and meandered around the western Caribbean.

I had never been on a cruise before and I am here to tell you it was amazing - fabulous - spectacular.

Those folks really know how to cook and that reliably makes a guy like me happy, I think I gained about 10 pounds. I also enjoyed delicious frozen rum based cocktails and that was great fun. While visiting Grand Cayman I had the opportunity to go swimming with the dolphins, to the right you can see a picture of me hanging about with Pepe.

Long story short I had such an amazing time that I did something I can't quite believe - I booked another cruise vacation for next year, February 2011 - that way I'll be sure to not wait another three years until my next break.