How to Write eCommerce Product Descriptions that Sell Like Hotcakes

The best eCommerce descriptions create an impression at once. They communicate value, get people excited, and make them switch from browsing mode to paying customers instantly.

Although it’s not fair to give all the credit for conversions to product descriptions, but they do play a key role (after the images).

Still, so many eCommerce site owners prefer to do without them. And worse, some copy-paste manufacturers’ descriptions on their websites, which are already being used all over the Internet. Don’t be one of those people. This can hurt your SEO efforts as well as the conversion rate of your website.

Realize that your potential customers cannot touch or feel the product. So, the responsibility of identifying and addressing the needs and expectations of your target audience relies on your copy to a great extent.

Make sure you include all the information that they might require to buy the product. Use your words to give them the necessary information in an engaging fashion that impels them to click that “Add to Cart” button right away.

8 Quick Tips to Write Distinctive Product Descriptions that Sell Like Hotcakes

1. Speak to Your Target Audience

Should your voice be serious and formal, or casual and funky? Should you emphasize your descriptions on the technical aspects of the product, or should you concentrate more on its looks?

Understanding main considerations of your ideal customer is the most crucial to make them relate with your descriptions and buy your products. Once you know who your target audience is, you can then know which voice or personality should you take up to communicate with them.

The J. Peterman Company is an apparel website that celebrates vintage fashion. The dreamy descriptions on their website perfectly matches with the taste of classic fashion lovers.

I can tell you this because I’m one big time vintage fashion lover. And I’d buy from them without any second thoughts. Reading beautiful descriptions on their website enriches the shopping experience all the more. This makes them stand out from other apparel websites any day.

Read it to feel the magic yourself:

Product description by The J. Peterman Company matches the vintage taste of their target audience

Creating online personas can help you write more effective copy for your target market.

2. Bridge the Gap Between Features and Benefits

A feature is essentially a fact about your product or offer. The benefit mainly answers how a feature is useful for your customer.

For most products, it may seem like customers are already aware of the primary features, unless the product is really complicated, like crane equipment maybe? And usually, you can easily add specifications of a product in bullet points and get done with it.

But if you want to really persuade your visitors to become customers, you will need to spell out the benefits of these features in your descriptions. Tell them exactly “how” a particular feature is useful for them, and “why” they should make this purchase.

As Simon Sinek mentions in his TED talk,

    People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it.

Here’s an example of a benefits-driven product description from Mothercare.com:

Benefits-driven description from Mothercare.com

Bonus Tip – Notice how the third point under the benefits section settles the concern many parents, who might be concerned if the material of this teether might be harmful for their baby.

Figure out such concerns of your prospects and address them in your copy to make them confident about the purchase.

3. Rely More on Verbs, and Less on Adjectives

Admission letters are no less of a selling copy. And an analysis of MBA admission letters sent to the Director of Harvard Business School revealed that verbs are much more compelling than adjectives.

In a world where no one clinches from using the same set of adjectives, verbs help to make an impact like nothing else.

This cute, little sleeping bag is perfect for your one year old baby.

Or,

This bright sleeping bag gives your baby plenty of room to kick and wriggle without the worry of getting tangled in layers of bedding. He will never wake up cold having kicked his bedding off. Your baby will feel safe even in unfamiliar surroundings.

Which one sounds more compelling? Decide for yourself! Or, wait! This article might help you decide (just to be sure!).

4. Use Jargon Only When Talking to Sophisticated Buyers

Excessive jargon that your customers do not completely understand can lead to confusion. It is best that you avoid it in product descriptions because if they don’t understand it, they won’t buy it.

But probably, you want to include the jargon because you think that it makes you come across as an expert. And you’re right. Using jargon adds to your credibility. This is especially true when you want to cater to sophisticated audience.

But if you know that majority of your customers do not care about too many details, it is best to hide these details under the “Know more” or “Technical specifications” section and keep product summaries simple.

Too much information can also overwhelm visitors and segregating information under different sections is a perfect way to display information and appeal to different target audience.

5. Give Them a Story

Make them imagine how their life would be if they buy the product. People take decisions emotionally and attempt to justify them with logic. And weaving a good story is a great way to reel them in.

ModCloth pulls this off brilliantly by transporting their visitors into another world with their charming small stories that have a dash of humor to them:

ModCloth has unique product descriptions that weave beautiful, compelling stories

6. Borrow the Language/Vocabulary from Your Ideal Customer

Joanna Wiebe, the conversion-focused copywriter and the Founder of Copy Hackers, mentions in one of her articles:

    Don’t write copy. Swipe copy from your testimonials.

In the article, she explains how she swiped the exact words from a customer testimonial for the headline, which increased conversions (Clickthrough to the pricing page) by 103%.

Here’s the testimonial that she used:

Exact words from this testimonial were used in the copy to improve conversions

And this is the winning headline that swiped words from the above testimonial:

Winning headline that swiped words from the above customer testimonial

Conversion experts swear by this technique and you can easily use it to write high-converting product descriptions. It’s all about matching the conversation in the minds of your prospects.

7. Add Social Proof to Your Descriptions

The popular online furniture store, Made.com, tempts people by adding social proof in their descriptions. They add the media box (like the one shown below) to descriptions of products that have been featured in the press.

Made.com adds media mentions of its products in descriptions

8. Check for Readability

a. Use Short or Broken Sentences. Yes, you got me right! Your English teacher in school probably didn’t approve of broken sentences. But this is no academic writing. Your sales copy or description should be about what is easier to read.

If reading will feel like a task to your customers, they will ignore your descriptions, which will eventually plummet your conversions. Feel free to begin your sentences with words, like “And,” “Because,” “But,” and others.

Here’s how Apple uses broken sentences:

Broken sentences used by Apple in its copy

b. Use Bullet Points. Most people scan pages on the Internet. They do not read word-by-word. Get them to notice the important points by listing them in bullets, like Amazon does:

Amazon uses bullet points to help its customers scan the product description easily

The placement order of the points/benefits is also important. Be sure to mention the primary benefits/concerns first, followed by other lesser important points.

c. Use Larger Fonts and Well-Contrasted Font Colors. It’s annoying to read grey text on a white background, especially if you’re using a smaller font size.

Make sure that your font color easily stands out on the page and that your font size is easily readable for people of all generations. Don’t make your visitors squint their eyes to read your text and they will happily read more, if your words make sense to them.

Otherwise, they would just say “Chuck it!” and move on to some other website.

The best part about changing eCommerce product descriptions is, unless you need a complete page overhaul, setting up an AB test for product descriptions will only take a few minutes in Visual Website Optimizer’s WYSIWYG Editor.

To test the waters, you can only A/B test the descriptions of your most popular product pages to see how it works for you, before assigning your copywriter with the task of writing descriptions for all product pages of your website.

Source:http://visualwebsiteoptimizer.com/split-testing-blog/ecommerce-product-descriptions-that-sell/

Using the HubSpot API and CasperJS for Contact Data Scraping

We recently had a client that needed customer data from their web store to be accessible from their HubSpot account. They needed each person who ordered a product to be put in HubSpot as a Contact, along with the customer’s order number, purchase date, price, and a list of products that were ordered.

Typically, a developer would incorporate the HubSpot API into the web store code natively.  In this case, the client’s web store provider is located in a country many time zones away, making it difficult to solve problems outside of basic web store functions. Additionally, the web store platform does not have an available API that would allow us to easily export data in a computer parsable manner.

As a HubSpot and inbound marketing partner for the client, we decided to bypass the third party development firm entirely by writing scripts to scrape data from the web store and send that data to HubSpot. Today, these scripts are hosted on the server and run daily, automatically scraping and importing data from the previous day’s orders.

This method requires two components: a web scraper, and a script that can push data to HubSpot using their new Contact API.

Web Scraper

CasperJSThe web scraper uses CasperJS to authenticate with the web store through a headless browser, navigate to the recent orders screen, and enter date filters. Our only difficulty was working around the antiquated and non-semantic web store markup to programmatically select the correct buttons and tables. In fact, we assumed writing the scraper would be the hardest part of the project, but we were pleasantly surprised by the simplicity and reliability of CasperJS. We chose to output the data in CSV format to standard out, so the data could be piped to a CSV file on the server, allowing a separate script to feed the data into HubSpot.

HubSpot Contacts API

This part ended up being much harder than it needed to be. HubSpot has made a few changes to their API recently, and we were not sure which parts needed to be used and which parts are set to be deprecated. Initially, we chose to use the HubSpot PHP API Wrapper – haPiHP with the Leads API component. This requires that a custom API endpoint be created on HubSpot, which they call forms. Using this API, data can be posted to the endpoint in key-value pairs, which the form will accept and convert into Leads.

Ideally, the scripts run once a day and post data from the previous day’s orders, but we ran into a problem with the initial post. Since the web store does not have an export function, we had to use the script to access all the data from previous sales. After running the script on a few hundred orders, HubSpot informed us that a Leads were being created by sending us email notifications — over 150,000 of them.

Unfortunately, each email contained a Lead with blank data, so the necessary data was not pushed into HubSpot.  On top of that, the API went awry and left our email provider with no option but to queue all emails from HubSpot. We were not able to communicate via email with them for a few days. At first, we assumed that a job had been corrupted on their end and that there would be no end to the emails. After a phone call with the HubSpot development team, we were convinced that the emails would stop and that we actually needed to switch to the Contacts API and away from the Leads API. We also learned that the Leads API is asynchronous and that the Contact API was not, which would allow us to immediately see if the data was posted correctly. Best of all, there is no email notification when a Contact is created through the Contacts API.

In trying to switch to the other API calls, we found two issues. First, we had been using the custom form API endpoint on a number of projects, and it was unclear whether that part of the API was slated to be deprecated.

After some back and forth with the HubSpot dev team, we learned this:

    I would encourage you not to use those endpoints to push data in, unless that data is form submission which you are capturing. If you simply want to sync data in from one DB to the other, I strongly encourage you to use the “add contact” and “update contact” API methods.

    The custom endpoints won’t be going away per se, and there are newer versions of that process in the Forms API, but it’s not really the intended use.

So we will continue using the custom form endpoint to push data in until it stops working … per se.

The second issue we encountered was that, of the two API key generators in HubSpot, one of them does not work with the Contacts API, and the other is hidden. In the client’s main HubSpot portal, you can generate a token by clicking:

Your Name → Settings → API Access

The token provided will not allow the use of the Contact API, and the PHP wrapper returns a message that the key is not valid.

After more back and forth with the HubSpot dev team, we learned that the key required can be found by going to https://app.hubspot.com/keys/get. There is no link to this in the client’s main HubSpot portal which was causing a lot of confusion.

Wrapping Up

From here, the process was pretty simple. A Contact will be rejected if it already exists, unlike with the Lead API. We had to implement a simple Create or Update method which looks something like this: HubSpot Contacts API – Create or Update. Once the two scripts were in place on the server, we set a cron job to run the scraper and pipe the output to a CSV. Once that completes, the PHP script runs and pushes the data to HubSpot.

Source:http://www.sailabs.co/using-the-hubspot-api-and-casperjs-for-contact-data-scraping-474/

Web data Scraping is the most effective offers

Every growing business needs a way to reduce, significantly, the time and financial resources that it dedicates to handling its growing informational need. Web Data Scraping offers the most effective yet very economical solution to the data loads that your company has to handle constantly. The variety of handling services from this company includes data scraping, web scraping and website scraping.

The company offers the most valuable and efficient website data scraping software that will enable you to scrape out all the relevant information that you need from the World Wide Web. The extracted information is valuable to a variety of production, consumption and service industries. For comparison of prices online, website change detection, research, weather data monitoring, web data integration and web mash up and many more uses, the web scraping software from Web Data Scraping is the best bet you can find from the web scraping market.

The software that this company offers will handle all the web harvesting and website scraping in a manner that more of simulates a human exploration of the websites you want to scrape from. A high level HTTP and fully embedding popular browsers like Mozilla and the exclusive ones work with web data extraction from Webdatascraping.us

The data scraping technology from Web Data Scraping has the capability to bypass all the technical measures that the institutional owners of the websites implement to stop bots. Imagine paying for web scraping software that cannot bypass blockade by these websites from which you need to use their information. This company guarantees that not any excess traffic monitoring, IP address blockade or additions of entries like robots.txt will be able to prevent its functioning. In addition, there are many website scraping crawlers that are easily detected and blocked by commercial anti-bot tools like distil, sentor and siteblackbox. Web Data Scraping is not preventable with any of these and most importantly with verification software’s like catches.

We have expertise in following listed services for which you can ask us.

- Contact Information Scraping from Website.

- Data Scraping from Business Directory – Yellow pages, Yell, Yelp, Manta, Super pages.

- Email Database Scraping from Website/Web Pages.

- Extract Data from EBay, Amazon, LinkedIn, and Government Websites.

- Website Content, Metadata scraping and Information scraping.

- Product Information Scraping – Product details, product price, product images.

- Web Research, Internet Searching, Google Searching and Contact Scraping.

- Form Information Filling, File Uploading & Downloading.

- Scraping Data from Health, Medical, Travel, Entertainment, Fashion, Clothing Websites.

Every company or organization, survey and market research for strategic decisions plays an important role in the process of data extraction and Web technology. Important instruments that relevant data and information for your personal or commercial use scraping. Many companies paste manually copying data from Web pages people, it is time to try and wastage as a result, the process is too expensive, that it's because the resources spent less and collect data from the time taken to collect data is very reliable.

Nowadays, a CSV file, a database, an XML file that thousands of websites and crop-specific crawl your pages can have different data mining companies effective web information technology, or other source data scraping is saved with the required format. Collect data and process data mining stored after the lies hidden patterns and trends can be used to understand patterns in data correlations and delete; Policy formulated and decisions. Data is stored for future use.

Source:http://www.selfgrowth.com/articles/web-data-scraping-is-the-most-effective-offers

Web Screen Scrape With a Software Program

Which software do you use for data mining? How much time does it take in mining required data and is it able to present in a customized format? Extracting data from the web is

A tedious job, if done manually but the moment you use an application or program, web screen scrape job becomes easy.

Using an application would certainly make data mining an easy affair but the problem is that which application to choose. Availability of a number of software programs makes

it difficult to choose one but you has to select a program because you can âEUR(TM)t keep mining data manually. Start your search for a data mining software program with

Determining your needs. First note down the time a program takes to completing a project.

Quick scraping

The software should nâEUR(TM)t take much time and if it does then there âEUR(TM)s no use of investing in the software. A software program that needs time for data mining would

Only save your labor and not time. Keep this factor in mind as you can âEUR(TM)t keeps waiting for hours for the software to provide you data. Another reason behind choosing a

Quick software program is that you a quick scraping tool would provide you latest data.

Presentation

Extracted data should be presented in readable format that you could use in a hassle free manner. For instance the web screen scrape program should be able to provide data in

Spreadsheet or database file or in any other format as desired by the user. Data that âEUR(TM)s difficult to read is good for nothing. Presentation matters most. If you

ArenâEUR(TM)t able to understand the data then how could you use in future.

Coded program

Invest in web screen scrape program coded for your project and not for everyone. It should be dedicated to you and not made for public. There are groups that provide coded

programs for data mining. They charge a fee for programming but the job they do worth a fee. Look for a reliable group and get the software program that could make your data

Mining job a lot easier.

Whether you are looking for contact details of your targeted audiences or you want to keep a close watch on social media, you need web screen scrape service that would save

Your time and labor. If you âEUR(TM)re using a software program for data mining then you should make sure that the program works according to your wishes.

Source: http://goarticles.com/article/Web-Screen-Scrape-With-a-Software-Program/7763109/

Web Scraping a JavaScript Heavy Website: Keeping Things Simple

One of the most common difficulties with web scraping is pulling information from sites that do a lot of rendering on the client side. When faced with scraping a site like this, many programmers reach for very heavy-handed solutions like headless browsers or frameworks like Selenium. Fortunately, there's usually a much simpler way to get the information you need.

But before we dive into that, let's first take a step back and talk about how browsers work so we know where we're headed. When you navigate to a site that does a lot of rendering in the browser -- like Twitter or Forecast.io -- what really happens?

First, your browser makes a single request for an HTML document. That document contains enough information to bootstrap the loading of the rest of the page. It loads some basic markup, potentially some inline CSS and Javascript, and probably a few <script> and <link> elements that point to other resources that the browser must then download in order to finish rendering the page.

Before the days of heavy JavaScript usage, the original HTML document contained all the content on the page. Any external calls to load CSS of Javascript were merely to enhance the presentation or behavior of the page, not change the actual content.

But on sites that rely on the client to do most of the page rendering, the original HTML document is essentially a blank slate, waiting to be filled in asynchronously. In the words of Jamie Edberg -- first paid employee at Reddit and currently a Reliability Architect at Netflix -- when the page first loads, you often "get a rectangle with a lot of divs, and API calls are made to fill out all the divs."

To see exactly what this "rectangle with a lot of divs" looks like, try navigating to sites like Twitter or Forecast.io with Javascript turned off in your browser. This will prevent any client-side rendering from happening and allow you to see what the original page looks like before content is added asynchronously.

Once you've seen the content that comes with the original HTML document, you'll start to realize how much of the content is actually being pulled in asynchronously. But rather than wait for the page to load... and then for some Javascript to load... and then for some data to come back from the asynchronous Javascript requests, why not just skip to the final step?

If you examine the network traffic in your browser as the page is loading, you should be able to see what endpoints the page is hitting to load the data. Flip over to the XHR filter inside the "Network" tab in the Chrome web inspector. These are essentially undocumented API endpoints that the web page is using to pull data. You can use them too!

The endpoints are probably returning JSON-encoded information so that the client-side rendering code can parse it an add it to the DOM. This means it's usually straightforward to call those endpoints directly from your application and parse the response. Now you have the data you need without having to execute Javascript or wait for the page to render or any of that nonsense. Just go right to the source of the data!

Let's take a look at how we might do this on Twitter's homepage. When a logged-in user navigates to twitter.com, Tweets are added to a user's timeline with calls to this endpoint. Pull that up in your browser and you'll see a JSON object that contains a big blob of HTML that's injected into the page. Make a call to this endpoint and then parse your info from the response, rather than waiting for the entire page to load.

It's a similar situation when we look at Forecast.io. The HTML document that's returned from the server provides the skeleton for the page, but all of the forecast information is loaded asynchronously. If you pull up your web inspector, refresh the page and then look for the XHR requests in the "Network" tab, you'll see a call to this endpoint that pulls in all the forecast data for your location.

scraping-forecast-io

Now you don't need to load the entire page and wait for the DOM to be ready in order to scrape the information you're looking for. You can go directly to the source to make your application much faster and save yourself a bunch of hassle.

Wanna learn more? I've written a book on web scraping that tons of people have already downloaded. Check it out!

Source: http://tubes.io/blog/2013/08/28/web-scraping-javascript-heavy-website-keeping-things-simple/

The WPKube Guide to Content Scraping in WordPress

Content scraping is essentially the act of copying the content from one site and publishing it on another.  If you are publishing content online then there is a good chance that you have been a victim of content scraping at some point.

Content scraping is usually carried out in one of two ways. One popular method is to use a content scraping bot that has been created to search the internet looking for relevant content, and then scraping it or copying it, before publishing it on another website. Another approach is to manually search for content, copy it and then publish it elsewhere.

However, for the victim of content scraping the end result is the same and their content ends up published elsewhere without permission and usually unaccredited to the original author.

As Google and other search engines reportedly don’t like to list the same piece of content in their database more than once, if your content gets scraped, then you run the risk of not being listed in the search engine results pages, despite the content rightfully belong to you. Not only does someone take the credit for your hard work, they also end up standing a good chance of taking the readers and visitors that would’ve made their way to your site via a Google search.

Content Scraping Lego

Why Do People Scrape Content

At the most superficial level, the main reason for carrying out content scraping is to add content to a site with minimal effort. By using an automated content scraping service, unscrupulous webmasters can quickly build out a site with thousands of pages in a very short space of time and with very little effort involved.

One of the reasons why they might do this is to effortlessly create a site that gets lots of traffic via the search engines. As in most cases traffic equals money, there is a good incentive to attempt this. The traffic to the site can then be used to build an email mailing list which can then be used to promote products, display pay per click ads from networks like Google AdSense or advertise products using an affiliate program such as Amazon Associates.

Another reason why people might scrape content is to claim credit for other people’s work, in an act which is also known as plagiarism. While the above reasons related to making money online from content scraping might take place on a massive scale, copying content from multiple sites on a daily basis, this reason for doing it might involve a more selective approach.

Individuals or small business have been known to selectively scrape content on a manual basis, cherry picking the best articles from a site as they find them, in order to boost their credibility and appear an expert on a particular topic. Appropriating other people’s content for portfolios is a common example of content scraping, where the content can then be used to gain clients and work. This content could take the form of images, written content or any other types that can be published or distributed online.

How to Check if You are a Victim

Many victims of content scraping are blissfully unaware of the fact. However, by using WordPress, the chances of you discovering it taking place are greatly increased.

By making use of the WordPress pingback and trackback functionality, you will get a notification when someone publishes content that links back to your site. This only happens if they content they scrape contains links to your site, which is another good reason to interlink your content, while it won’t stop it from happening, it can be a good way to be notified after the fact.

However, its best to ensure your installation of WordPress isn’t setup to publish these trackbacks on your site as you will be publishing a link to the offending site. To find out how to disable publishing your trackbacks and pingbacks on your WordPress site, read our post on How to Deal with Trackbacks and Pingbacks in WordPress

Another option is to use Google, or use another search engine, to search for your content online. By copying and pasting the title of your post, or a whole sentence into the search engine, surrounded by quotes, such as “WPKube Guide to Content Scraping” you can view all the pages indexed in the search engine that contain that exact phrase. As long as the phrase you search for is fairly unique, then any results returned are worth investigating to see if your content has been scrapped.

Content Scraping Crime Scene

How to Prevent Content Scraping

There isn’t much you can do to prevent content scraping from taking place. There are some anti-content scraping WordPress plugins available as well as commercial services that you can sign up to help dissuade scrappers from targeting your site. Some plugins work to make sure that once your content has been scraped, you can still try and ensure you get a credit for it once it has been republished elsewhere. Some plugins to consider include:

    Anti Feed-Scraper Message: this free plugin adds some text and a link to each of your posts in your RSS feed, where the bot is likely to be sourcing your content from, attributing the author and a link back to your site.

    Copyright Proof: this plugin works with the Digiprove service to ensure that there is a record of your site being the rightful owner of the content you create and publish.

    WordPress Data Guard: block the IP addresses of those you suspect are stealing your content, preventing them from accessing your site.

    DCMA Protection Badge: this free plugin allows you to easily insert anti-scraping badges on your site that might help dissuade scrapers from targeting your site, although it’s no guarantee.

Once it has taken place you do have a couple of limited options. One such option is to invoke a DCMA takedown. This service works in line with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and for a fee, will attempt to get your stolen content taken down. However other than getting in touch with the website owner or their host and stating your case, there aren’t really any other options.

Content Curating vs. Content Scraping

Content curating is a popular method of publishing that if done incorrectly could see you inadvertently becoming a content scraper. Content curation can be described as the practice of sharing content with others. This can be in the form of a Tweet or a creating a top 10 list on your blog of must read articles.

Some lists of curated content feature an excerpt from the source material along with the link back to the original site. While this is in most cases acceptable, it is essential that you properly attribute the author and the original source. Good content curation sees the curator adding value to the reader in some way such as by highlighting a key point or giving their take on the topic.

Conclusion

Content scraping will continue to take place for as long as the efforts of those doing it are rewarded. Until Google and the other major search engines become sophisticated enough to determine what the original source of an article was, and not list the unauthorised publisher prominently in their listings, sites with stolen content will continue to thrive.

While there are steps you can take to minimise the chances of it happening to you, while also ensuring your stolen content is still attributed to you in some way, at the end of the day, the fate of your content is out of your hands.

When it happens to you, the best approach is to remember the saying that imitation is the best form of flattery and then get back to creating the best content you can. By building a community around your site and making a name for yourself in your niche, you can ensure that you benefit from creating great content, even if others try to piggyback your efforts and dishonestly gain from your hard work.

Source:http://www.wpkube.com/wpkube-guide-content-scraping-wordpress/

Street scraping begins tonight

Finally, city plows will attack residental neighbourhoods tonight to hack down the road ruts that have jolted drivers, damaged the suspension of vehicles and caused accidents.

Only one question: What took them so long?

Last week's dump of snow caused the city to deploy more than 300 pieces of equipment to clear the main streets and collector routes -- even back alleys and sidewalks.

The city had mulled since last Thursday whether to order the plow. But it wasn't decided until Monday afternoon to begin plowing the hundreds of kilometres of residential streets starting today at 7 p.m.

CAA Manitoba wanted faster action. The organization representing drivers believes the hard-and-high ruts made it dangerous to drive city streets.

That is, calling on the city to plow residential streets when ruts -- like the ones left from last week's blizzard -- cause dangerous driving conditions.

"When the roads are in an unsafe condition, then money can't be the first factor," CAA spokeswoman Liz Peters said on Monday.

"Safety has to be the main factor. We think it is time to plow."

Peters said they have reports from its members the ruts are currently so deep, cars can't get out of them to change lanes.

As well, Peters said because there is ice at the bottom of the ruts, vehicles are sliding into other vehicles.

She said one motorist told CAA when they tried to drive out of the ruts they lost control and began spinning.

Forecast snow delayed plow: public works

North Kildonan's Jeff Browaty, a member of Mayor Sam Katz's powerful executive policy committee (EPC), said he doesn't understand why it took so long to clear residential streets.

"I'm surprised and frankly a bit disappointed it took them this long to initiate a full residential plowing operation," Browaty said. "In my own experiences, I've found navigating residential streets in North Kildonan, even at very slow speeds, to be challenging due to the ruts and slick nature of the compacted snow."

Tonight's full residential street plowing brings an accompanying ban on residential street parking.

Coun. Russ Wyatt said council delegated the decision on when to plow to the public works director, Brad Sacher.

Sacher said the city could have tackled residential streets last week but held off until now because more snow was in the forecast.

"We didn't want to start a plow if more snowfall was coming," Sacher said, adding the city believed most streets were passable and the decision was to use the weekend to assess the situation.

With nothing but sunny skies in the forecast, Sacher said residential streets will now be done.

'We must all slow down': Wyatt

Wyatt, finance chairman and also a member of EPC, said he found residential streets were rutted but driveable.

"We must all slow down a bit when driving," Wyatt (Transcona) said. "We live in Winnipeg -- not Waco, Texas.

"Most any other city hit with last Thursday's storm would have been shut down for a week."

A survey of city councillors found driving conditions varied across the city.

Brian Mayes (St. Vital) said parts of his ward were clear but he did receive complaints from residents living near St. George School and River Pointe.

John Orlikow (River Heights-Fort Garry) said he believed driving conditions were "dangerous" in parts of his ward.

Grant Nordman (St. Charles), another member of EPC, said motorists need to relax.

"Was driving good? No; Was it passable? Yes," Nordman said. "It's Winnipeg, it's winter -- leave earlier, take your time, relax."

Wyatt said the residential plow will exhaust city's 2013 snow clearing budget, adding he's concerned another snow storm this month will push the city into a deficit for this year.

"I think we should have waited," Wyatt said.

"The streets were passable."

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WORD ON THE STREET

MECHANICS: Vehicles don't like it rough

If you feel jarred by ruts that have carved up Winnipeg streets, your vehicle feels your pain.

The ruts cause problems in the front end of a vehicle, specifically in the alignment, steering components and suspension, Rudy Epp owner of Rudy's Auto Service said.

If tire pressure is low, the ruts can damage rims and tires above and beyond what may happen to the suspension, said Myron Naumik, body shop manager of Macdonald Auto Body.

"Just turn up the radio and take it slow, and make sure you have the proper tire pressure."

POLICE: A question of traction

Winnipeg does not put snow tires on police cruisers. "It's something we would like to see, but ultimately it's the service's responsibility. Our members are well-trained drivers," said George Van Mackelbergh, vice-president of the Winnipeg Police Association.

"The city is talking about cutbacks to the police budget. If they cut back services they won't be paying money for snow tires.

"But it's a difficult time to respond to calls because the other drivers are getting reacquainted with the dangerous conditions."

FIREFIGHTERS: Heavy trucks don't need snow tires

The large trucks firefighters drive probably don't need snow tires, said Alex Forrest, president of the United Firefighters of Winnipeg.

Forrest said firefighters respond to 93,000 fire and paramedic calls per year and many of those are in winter driving conditions.

"It's part of being a firefighter here. We're a winter city and we go in the worst conditions."

Source:http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/local/street-scraping-begins-tonight-235188231.html