In September 2007 I wrote an article for our Competitive Edge newsletter on What Price Google Analytics.

The article generated a fair amount of debate, yet despite the large number of people who were quite vocal with their disagreement, many also agreed.

The point of the article wasn’t that Google Analytics is bad. The point was that Google Analytics isn’t necessarily free.

The original point still stands. And I’m still amused by Google’s burning the candle at both ends.

A quick search for urchin on Google reveals interesting results – look at the first natural result and the first ad:

Analytics is a great piece of software at a (hopefully) reasonable price. We’re even using it on this blog. The only problem is that we don’t know how much we might be paying.

But knowing that we don’t know is better than thinking we do.

Share and Enjoy

Whether you’re about to launch a new product or are considering renaming an existing one, deciding what to call it often proves to surprisingly difficult.

One approach is to name according to what the product does.

For instance some of our clients have products like System Mechanic, PDF Annotator and Advanced Outlook Repair.

Another approach is to make the name fit the product. So the name doesn’t say what the product does, but when you see the product the correlation is obvious.

For example some of our clients have product names such as WinZip, 3D Issue Professional and PRTG Network Monitor.

Then there’s a third option – make the product fit the name.

We’re currently working with Balsamiq. There’s a good chance you’ve heard of their product – Basamiq Mockups, but if you haven’t, the name will give away nothing.

Use it for a while, try the trial or just visit the website, and the name will stick.

The sticky name approach is a good one. If you choose the right name, one that wraps itself around the product perfectly, it just works.

Imagine meeting someone who had never heard of FaceBook. You describe the product, and when they ask why it has that name, you’ll pause. It seems obvious and it just seems to fit.

DreamWeaver doesn’t actually weave dreams – it creates web pages. But the name just fits.

Twitter, QuickBooks, Excel, Evernote, MindManager, RoboForm, FeedDemon – all are great names for great products. But before they were chosen they were far from blindingly obvious product names.

Make the product fit the name. Make the name memorable. Oh and make it easy to spell and pronounce if you can too.

Share and Enjoy

From Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox:

“Users pay close attention to photos and other images that contain relevant information but ignore fluffy pictures used to “jazz up” Web pages.”

And he can prove it.

Like many of Jakob Nielsen’s statements, it sounds absurdly obvious. So why do so many websites get it wrong?

How many times have you seen websites using a picture of an inanely/insanely happy person using a headset to answer a call?

How many times have you seen a real person wearing one of those headsets who looks even remotely happy?

Too many websites use images for adding a splash of colour or filling space.

A picture may well be worth a thousand words, but if the image used is cheesy and looks like low-budget stock photography, what words and ideas are being communicated?

Share and Enjoy

Share and Enjoy

Google have quietly introduced a new preview feature – in the form of a little magnifying glass next to each of the search results.

Click on it and a preview of the web page opens:

My first thought was that this was a result of an updated Chrome extension, or perhaps from Norton Internet Security. Yet a quick search on Twitter confirms that this comes from Google themselves.

My second thought was that I was surprised at how they chose to implement this. Click any of the top listings and the preview falls right on top of the adwords ads.

It’s interesting that they chose to obscure ads that are paid for, as opposed to organic listings that aren’t.

My third observation was that it won’t work in Chrome’s incognito mode. I have no idea why.

Share and Enjoy

Is it just me or has the list been getting longer?

It’s a shame they don’t offer a “Last 28 days” option. I suppose that would be too useful.

Share and Enjoy

Company Q have a great service that sells well. An impressive 5% of the visitors to their website buy what they sell.

With 200 visitors a day, their sales are reasonable, but they want more.

Company P are using marketing company SP to manage their Google AdWords account.

Their conversions are great, obviously, and they see around 20 sales a day (at a very reasonable cost) from their account. But they want more.

A search for how do I get more people to my website generates a staggering 754,000,000 results.

Yet a search for how do I get more targeted people to my website produces only 7,480,000.

[Take some reassurance from the fact that most people don't know what they're doing.]

Getting more visitors to your website is easy. I’d go as far as saying that anyone can do it.

Getting more targeted visitors is more of a challenge.

It boils down to this: Quantity is easy, quality requires skill.

Getting more incoming links to your website is easy. There are services that claim to deliver 1,000 one-way links for less than $10. It’s safe to assume that every one of them will be worthless, but you get what you pay for.

Getting more clicks from AdWords is simple. Raise your bids and raise your budgets. Oh and watch your ROI sink like a stone.

Quality requires skill.

A few mini-points to consider.

1 – Companies P and Q may be hitting as much of their market as possible. No matter what they do to try and get more it won’t work. They’ve hit the top of the curve. But there are other markets.

2 – The weak link in the chain may not be the company’s ability to hit their potential customers. The weak link may be their website’s inability to convert visitors to customers.

How can you get more of the right people to your website?

Share and Enjoy

It’s a common question.

Software developer leaves school or university and is great at churning out tight, functional, well-written code.

Software developer doesn’t want to work for someone else, and likes the idea of running their own software company. But s/he doesn’t know what to write that will sell.

They could start by following the wisdom of crowds through Google:

But crowds can’t be trusted.

Most successful software stories begin with a problem.

Software developer is looking for a simple solution for Problem X, can’t find anything particularly good, so writes Solution Y.

Solution Y turns into a business.

If you’re looking for your Product Y, you could do a lot worse than helping fix a very big problem.

Here’s my big problem.

About ten days ago my system became infected with some sort of trojan-virus thing. It spread through my system, trashed one of the hard drives, and left Windows unusable.

This was a Windows XP Pro system that was reasonably up to date with security fixes and updates, that was running an up to date version of Norton Internet Security.

Yet my system was wiped out.

Ten years ago I would have said that my system was watertight. I used a firewall, anti-virus software, NAT, kept my Windows Updates current and so on.

Today, as I can testify, we simply don’t know.

Give me an application that will secure my system. Even if it acts as a hub between my anti-virus, firewall, malware protection and windows updates.

It’s a big problem, and people will pay good money to fix big problems.

And it would be a marketing dream come true.

Share and Enjoy