Self-running demos are rude. I’ve written about them before. I hate them.

Self-running demos are counterproductive for marketers, because people who go to your site from their office must usually turn them off or close the site immediately. If they’re like me, and they have to close the site, they will not go back. You’ve lost them.

But the videos that the site visitor cannot turn off are truly abusive. They violate the rights of the site visitor and say, “I’m more important than you, and I don’t care what you want.

Besides being sociopathic and sick, that attitude does not bode well for support—or even for honesty and fairness. Anyone who tries to cram their offer down my throat probably doesn’t have a very good offer.

And as for pages that are all video, with little or no text, forget about it! If you won’t put your offer in writing, it’s probably a scam. So far, my experience has born that out. I’m not continuing the experiment.

So, marketers, suit yourself. Keep abusing customers and turning them off. Because that just leaves more for the rest of us, who treat them right.

Courses encourage marketers to just get on line and blather—and record the webinar blather to sell as a product. It just is not that simple.

Some people should not do webinars. They just are not good at them and never will be. You have to be a reasonably good speaker with a decent voice and presentation to make webinars work for you.

Remember, so-called free webinars are not totally free. They still cost attendees time, and time is money. Respect your listeners by being prepared.

If done wrong, webinars can really tick off customers. I experienced one today that was classically bad.

To save you from annoying your customers, here are some pitfalls and guidelines:

1. Be prepared. I just attended the worst webinar ever—for a product I’ve already bought. The presenter did not really know how to use the product!

2. Organize your presentation. Plan your presentation carefully and present it in the order in which a new user would need to learn. Do not just jump around as thoughts occur to you. Extemporizing is not good in a webinar.

3. Rehearse your presentation beforehand. Do not just wing it. Even if you made an outline and organized your material, you still need to practice before an audience unless you are a master at webinars…and maybe even then.

4. Use good equipment, and test it in advance. I am sick of webinars with horrible sound. Cheap headphones, cell phones, noisy environments, bad VOIP all can be a problem—and adding two or more together compounds the problem.

5. Make sure you have a decent voice for audio. Today’s webinar presenter droned on in a monotone voice that sounded computer generated. It was *awful*! Believe it or not, a really bad voice and presentation makes it hard to focus enough to even understand the words.

6. Strong accents combined with poor sound can be deadly. The odd pronunciations of the (apparently) Eastern European software developer today were not cute. Combined with poor sound, they made him impossible to understand.

He just should not do webinars for an American audience—even to answer questions. What’s the point if you can’t understand what he’s saying.

Note: I have studied five languages, love listening to foreign accents, and over the years have enjoyed worked with people from over 20 nations on five continents.

7. Don’t let your ego run away with you. You are not a rock star. Your jokes are not that funny, and we do not care about your personal life. Stick to the topic!

8. Have a specific subject, and stick to it. You offered a topic. That is what people signed up for. Do not impose on their time and attention by talking about other things—whether sports, celebrities, or other products you have to sell.

9. Start on time. Just because you and your buddies are present and blathering to each other, that does not mean the webinar has started.

10. Give good value for the time expended. Do not waste attendees’ time and patience. Deliver on what you promised in the webinar invitation.

If you are selling a product, wait till near the end, and do not overhype it. Tell the truth. It pays off in the long run.

You are in business for the long haul aren’t you? If so. do good webinars that make attendees want to hear more from you. Bad webinars create bad feelings.

So there!

Generally you get what you pay for—if you can figure out what you need. But price does not always guarantee the best quality. You need to know what to look for.

I have looked at quite a few shopping carts for clients. They generally fall into two groups: free or cheap but very limited, or very, very expensive.

Most do not seem to have considered SEO. They may generate pages that the search engines (and customers) will ignore. But this one is different.

SEO Shopping Cart looks like a good shopping cart solution that almost any business can afford. Prices are $35, $125 or $250 a month, depending on your business needs. All three levels offer these Shopping Cart Features:

Custom keyword-rich URLs (not those junky-looking gibberish strings some shopping carts create)
Custom image ALT attributes (great for SEO)
Custom Page Titles (very important for customers to bookmark potential purchases while shopping)
Custom Anchor Text
Breadcrumbs (for customer convenience)
Custom Header H1 Tags
Configurable META Keywords
Configurable MEATA Descriptions
No Duplicate Content (because this system prevents it!)
301 Redirection
XML Sitemaps generated automatically every night

The two higher levels also feature dedicated product review pages with Add to Cart buttons.

Interested?

Ascender Cart is so confident that their SEO Shopping Cart is the MUST HAVE shopping card that they will give you a FREE SEO training manual.

This looks like a deal to me. What do you think?

Heed their feedback. It’s a warning.

Customers who complain are doing you a big favor. Instead of telling you that there is a problem, they could just go away mad—and tell all their friends.

Just because you have not encountered the problem yourself, that does not mean it is not real. It means that your interface, documentation, web design, or *something* is at fault, and you need to fix it.

And just because no one has complained before, that does not mean there has not been a problem all along.

Quit assuming that the customer is always wrong / stupid / lazy / dishonest. And even if you think that, do not let it show.

And the customer who is trying out a free service or product today (and complaining when it does not work as advertised) is not being “ungrateful.” Grow up! You’re in business.

That complaining, grouchy customer gave you a chance. They could have become your biggest fan. But you failed them.

Good marketers rise to the challenge, accept complaints as feedback, and make sure the customer is happy. That is how you keep customers and get new ones by referral. Sarcasm is not.

Sure, a grouchy customer could be just a mean person. Or they could be just having a bad day. And your product and/or inadequate service and support could just be the cause of that bad day.

So be nice. And pay attention. You could learn a lot.

Customers who speak up are valuable. And they are the tip of the problem iceberg. For every one who speaks up, there are lots more who simply leave in disgust—and tell their friends.

Think about it.

Defying marketing maxims about the difficulty of creating brand new markets for totally new products, Jobs has succeeded on a grand scale with products such as Apple II, Macintosh, iMac, iPod, iPhone…

And lest anyone think his success with Apple Computer was just a fluke, when Jobs left, the company foundered. His return brought the company back to success. Clearly he knows what he is doing.

But Uncle Stevie’s latest brainchild strikes me as a mismarketed product. It is a great product. I believe there is a large market for a tablet computer with great Internet connectivity at a reasonable price. Yet the iPad tablet computer is being marketed as a phone!

Too big to carry in your pocket, and too expensive, vulnerable, and heavy to carry everywhere, the tablet seems likely to fail in the cell phone market for those reasons and a few more. I hope I am wrong, because I really want one—but not to use as a cell phone.

At least that’s my opinion. What’s yours?