Patience is only a nanosecond away. (Editor's Corner).

Have you noticed lately that you have much less tolerance for phone calls that take longer than a few minutes? Why didn't they write me an e-mail, you think to yourself. Have you found that the only way to reach someone is by e-mail? Voice mail goes unanswered but e-mail gets a response. If someone asks to meet with you in person from outside your immediate work group you think of that as a major imposition.

As technology allows us to interact with people in a fast and furious pace we lose patience with the old fashioned ways of doing business that are slow and more personal and geared toward forging unique and personal relationships between buyer and seller. And it seems that "fast and furious" mentality has crept into the way we design web pages and web applications, the way we've built opt-in e-mail addresses, and the way we market to these names.

I think the latest findings about online shopping covered in this issue attest to one main theme: make it easy, make it friendly, make it convenient and make it fast. Time appears to be the costliest commodity. How many times have you abandoned a clunky shopping cart application and picked up the phone and ordered via customer service? And how many times have you gone to a competitor's site instead, hoping to have a better online experience? The research shows that 75% of shoppers abandon their shopping carts, with 41 percent saying it takes too long.

Maybe it doesn't really take that long. After all, it takes much more time to drive to the store, park,shop, pay at the register and then head on home. But people think it takes too long because perceptions are completely warped today. If you can send and receive e-mails in nanoseconds and be beeped and paged every minute of the day, have instant messaging services and have cell phones to receive calls while you ride the subway or drive a car, well then, a five minute check out scenario online must feel like being tied to your chair.

The same fast and furious mentality is what caused the early opt-in e-mail lists to be built so shabbily. In many cases the only data element asked for was someone's e-mail address. Why? Because the philosophy was that you couldn't ask people for too much information, they wouldn't opt-in to your list. I know from tests I've done for a client that when we dropped two fields from the opt-in form, we saw a boost in registrations. But a boost in what? An unidentified critical mass of names? The beauty of e-mail marketing is that it is easy to do small highly targeted mailings. Yet how do you target groups without some demographics?

We're all highly manipulated by the powerful effects of technology and we need to be on our guard. Technology may be causing a massive psychological mutation. In a hundred years there may no longer be humans left that exhibit any known forms of patient behavior. They will have become extinct.

In the meantime, have a Happy Thanksgiving and turn off all your electronic devices. Have a really slow and wonderful day!