Last month I was interviewed for information on Levolor.com and its product configurator to be featured as one of the “Hot 100” in Internet Retailer’s annual list that is rolled out each December. As a part of the Hot 100, Internet Retailer editors outlined 10 key areas that the collective 100 “hot sites” shared focus on this past year:

There are astute strategies to be found in each of the profiles in this issue. Here are 10 lessons that all e-retailers can take away from the innovations of this year’s Hot 100 online retailers.

1.) Connect with consumers

2.) Go mobile

3.) Be an expert source

4.) Make navigation more useful

5.) Personalize the experience

6.) Make tough purchases easy*

7.) Sell yourself

8.) Create a sense of urgency

9.) Connect site and store

10.) Play the value card

*Levolor.com was highlighted in the “Housewares / home / hardware” category and the feature can be seen here. More specifically, we addressed the #6 lesson above of “make tough purchases easy.”

This is the synopsis graphic Internet Retailer publishes for each of the Hot 100 sites outlining things such as technologies and vendors/partners used:

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Before the internet, the following scenario could not have existed, and an online business of affiliate dollars and music sales like this was not possible. I still find the ease and convenience fascinating.

1.) While watching the Vikings vs. Packers NFL game this evening, a commercial for HTC’s new “You” campaign came on.

2.) Feeling so connected to it, I tweeted about it while on the couch with my laptop.

3.) Prior to tweeting about it, I had to find the video on YouTube to link to it in the tweet. I found it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-QhxjJFl7E

4.) In the YouTube comments, I saw the name of the artist that created the song used in the commercial. (It should be noted that I wasn’t really looking to buy this song initially.)

5.) I copied & pasted the artist & song name into Google (search results here).

6.) Found the song on Last.fm. Was able to play it directly on Last.fm to verify that it was the correct song. It was.

7.) Clicked the “buy” button on Last.fm. That brought me to Amazon.com for a 1-click purchase.

$0.99 later and after couple minutes of my time, I now have the song.

The above scenario will only get easier.

The above scenario will only get easier and faster with fewer steps to the point of purchase. Convenience is key. If your industry or market hasn’t been impacted by this, it will be. There may be technical limitations or generational preferences, but either way, both will catch up, align, and make buying your product as easy as it was for me to buy this song (even for someone not necessarily in the market).

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In my ongoing effort to keep the definition of “What is E-Business” up-to-date, I have expanded on the topic of the E-Commerce pillar to E-Business specifically addressing Channel Strategy. Here’s the excerpt:

A component of any E-Commerce strategy impacting end-buyers will ultimately need to incorporate channel strategy, too. Managing channel conflict, especially for manufacturers selling direct to consumers, is a critical component to your E-Commerce strategy. Pricing, promotions, product offerings, how you communicate where and how to buy your products — these all play into your E-Commerce Channel strategy.

I keep a running and constantly-updated definition of E-Business outlined here: http://www.ebusinessblog.org/what-is-ebusiness/ .

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During this time of year when next year’s annual operating plan is being crafted and you’re looking at your sales trying to meet full-year estimates, now is a more important time than ever to be meeting regularly with your direct reports.

I prefer a cadence of every-other-week 1-on-1 meetings with direct reports. Your mileage may vary depending on number of direct reports, geographic location, etc.

Commit to a schedule

Whatever you do, when you schedule these meetings with your direct reports, don’t reschedule them, and reschedule them, and reschedule them.

Nothing says “this conversation is not important to me” more than a meeting that repeatedly gets pushed back days or weeks after its originally scheduled day and time.

Depending on your position on the organizational chart, there may be a lot of preparatory work that your direct reports go through prior to a 1-on-1 meeting. Your availability may also be a premium, so your direct reports may queue up important discussions for that 1-on-1 session where they have your undivided attention that they would otherwise not be able to get.

Fish or cut bait

If the meeting is destined to never actually take place, then don’t bother setting the expectation that you will meet in the first place — it’ll save time for everyone.

During this time of year especially, when everyone is busy, make the time to invest in meeting with your direct reports. After all, they are supporting your objectives and ultimately make you successful.

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This is the first installment of a 3-part series of online pizza configurators. This 3-part series is part of a larger series of blog posts reviewing online product configurator experiences.

Step 1: The homepage

• After visiting the homepage of PizzaHut.com, you see a very clear “Order Now” button. No confusion here.

Step 2: Enter delivery address

• My primary concern here is whether or not Pizza Hut recognizes my address since our home is newer and is often not found in mapping databases like Google Maps or Mapquest. No issues here — it lets me proceed with my order, no questions asked.

Step 3: Pizza menu

• Body of page: The featured products tab is highlighted by default and I see two featured products.
• Right-hand side of page: Here it clearly shows my order is for delivery and which Pizza Hut location will be delivering my order. This is helpful because if I change my mind and order this for carryout, I may want to pick up from a different location (i.e. if I’m ordering from work and swing by a different location on the way home). Smart.
• Cons:
  • There’s an unusual amount of white space due to the right-hand side of the page containing an advertisement reminding me “don’t forget dessert!” Recommendation: This may benefit from more relevant placement after I’ve added an item to my current order.

Step 4: Building the first pizza of the challenge

• No search. As mentioned in a previous post in the Outback configurator, there are no search options on PizzaHut.com. Since I understand the products, I can generally find what I need, however I’m looking for “deep dish” pizza which means “pan pizza” on the Pizza Hut website. Subtle difference, and a search option would ultimately clear this up for me either by returning the Pan Pizza result or providing me a “did you mean pan pizza?” alternate search.
• View Larger Image: I took these screen shots in Safari 4 and unfortunately this link does not work. Recommendation: at this point it may be more relevant to use the page real estate to show some pricing (i.e. Small Starting at $9.99, Medium Starting at $11.99, Large Starting at $13.99).

Step 5: Configuring the first pizza

• This preselects the crust as “Pan Pizza” based on the item chosen in Step 4. It can optionally be changed to another crust type at this point.

• The defaulted list of options.

• Pros:
  • Straight-forward — intuitive option layout indicating you can have sauce, cheese, and other toppings on the left, right, or whole of the pizza.
  • Based on the criteria outlined in this pizza configurator challenge, I was able to successfully build the pizza I wanted without confusion
• Cons:
  • “x2″ while less intuitive means twice the topping. I’m not sure why sauce and cheese doesn’t have a “x2″ option — instead these both have an alternate selection called “EXTRA.” Recommendation: When user interfaces are inconsistent, it leads to confusion. If you’re doubling the topping or adding extra, it’s typically best to utilize the same user interface options for selecting this.
  • No pricing is listed, so you don’t know how much additional toppings will cost. In fact, as I will point out later, you can never understand how the cost of the pizza is calculated because you only ever see the total cost. If you are on a budget, you have to guess your way through the pizza configurator and hope that you land within your price range. Recommendation: Show the surcharge next to each topping. There’s enough page real estate to do it, so there shouldn’t be any layout challenges in doing so.

Step 6: Add first pizza to order

• Pros:
  • As you add items to your order, they are shown on the right-hand side of the screen. This is helpful if placing a large order to ensure you don’t miss a line item.
• However, what’s wrong with this picture? No details on the pizza. If you have multiple pizzas on an order, it would be impossible to tell the difference between them all. Let’s click on “Show details.”

• Cons:
  • This reads rather unfriendly for me. Recommendation: A bulleted list would be more appropriate using the graphical indicators like on the configurator screen to indicate which side of the pizza the toppings are being added to.
  • Again, no pricing to indicate surcharges for the extra toppings. Recommendation: Showing surcharges by topping would enable consumers to edit the configured pizza and add, remove, or substitute toppings that make sense for their budget. If my budget is $15.00, nobody wins by not showing me the surcharges because I’ll play with the various configurations until I get my order to be in the budget I’m working within.

Step 10: Configuring the second pizza

• The second part of the challenge is to order a large, hand-tossed pizza with as many toppings as possible to test the limits of the pizza configurator. Here we go:

• I was able to select every possible topping. However:

• Cons:
  • After the 6th topping, this message popped up each time I added an additional topping. Recommendation: If you can’t successfully make something, then it probably shouldn’t be offered for purchase.
  • If you do still offer to make it, is there any guarantee that it will be fully cooked? Or do the cooks just throw their hands up after the pizza rolls through the oven? Recommendation: The error message is a bit vague and while I understand there may be problems, I would rather be restricted from ordering it at all if there’s going to be an issue with the product…or at least be provided with a means for contacting the store for special instructions for cooking.

Step 11: Add second pizza to order

• Exact same concern as in step #6 above. This time the problem is evident. How do two large pizzas amount to $52.82? Let’s click “Show Details” to see.

• Cons:
  • Same concerns as #6 with the addition of the following insight:
  • Toppings aside, there’s no way to see how much each pizza on this order costs. For the budget-conscious, this presents a problem. When I got to the local Pizza Hut, I get an itemized breakdown on my receipt, shouldn’t the website behave similarly?

Step 12: Checkout

• I’m showing the checkout pages to illustrate any additional merchandising efforts and here Pizza Hut is promoting stuffed pizza roles and P’zone pizzas.
• Pros:
  • This is a nice layout, easy to understand pricing, easy to see how to add to cart. Plus, they have provided photos at the top of the merchandising offer which show the products.
• Cons:
  • On their main menu, they had a right-hand advertisement saying “don’t forget the dessert!” However, here I am at the checkout page and I don’t have the dessert, but they are not promoting dessert — they are trying to sell me products that could essentially amount to an entire meal on their own. Recommendation: This is an example of a missed merchandising opportunity because the website isn’t smart enough to realize I already have my main course in the cart, ready to check out. They should be targeting other items to compliment my order. (This appears to be a trend as I review more sites, Outback suffers from it, too)

(Brief) User Experience Analysis

Pizza Hut’s site suffers from browser-specific issues in Safari that have been prominent for a couple years (as long as I’ve used Safari, actually). While these do not hinder my ability to place orders, it’s the equivalent to eating at one of those wobbly restaurant tables (because the floor isn’t level). While this doesn’t deter you from leaving, it sure is a nuisance and plays into the overall customer experience.

Outside of this, I personally use Pizza Hut’s ordering site the most primarily because we choose carryout a lot and it’s one of the closer locations to our home. The very fact that they have a configurator is reason enough for us to choose Pizza Hut over another local pizza establishment because of the convenience of ordering online.

A comprehensive analysis of Pizza Hut, Papa John’s, and Domino’s configurators will follow after each review is posted. Stay tuned for my next review of the Papa John’s pizza configurator as a part of this “building your pizza online” series of posts.

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