You can.
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The good news: it’ll only take 20 minutes of your time.
January 20th, 9:00 AM Pacific, 5:00 PM GMT.
Availability is limited, so register now.
A search for speed up my PC on Google (predictably) produces a lot of ads featuring surprisingly happy women. In fact five out of the first ten ads I clicked:
Clearly this segment of the industry believe that deliriously happy (usually blonde) women sell software, but why?
Could it be that they’re trying to sell to women? Unlikely. A Squidoo lens on Sellling and Marketing to Women estimates that around 75% of all buying decisions today are made by women, but I find it difficult to believe that women are the main user group for this type of software.
So why use pictures of women in ads aimed at men?
Is the idea that the man’s partner is delighted that her laptop (it’s always a laptop) is finally optimised for performance? That her hard drive is defragmented, her boot time is 15% faster, and that her cookie and temp files are finally cleared? Unlikely.
So what is being communicated here.
Woman + optimised laptop = ?
I know there are still an incredible number of shows and exhibitions that use young, attractive women to help sell their goods, but isn’t the software industry a little more progressive?
Surely such an imaginative and creative industry are better than Mad Men?
2011 will be the year of…
Facebook advertising. Right now it doesn’t work for many companies because people going to Facebook are going to see what their friends are doing while they should be working. Not to buy things.
I believe that Facebook can and will change this. It’s their only realistic source of revenue, so they have a good incentive.
Here in the UK we have a variety of junk newspapers and magazines that publish horoscopes for the gullible. They make entertaining reading for their attempts to make one size fits all predictions sound accurate.
So here are my predictions for the gullible – see how many of them you come across elsewhere:
Google AdWords will become more complex and more expensive.
SEO will become harder to achieve, harder to measure and more competitive.
Social Media will be more important than ever before.
More predictions for 2011:
After a recent (horrible) virus experience, I’ve taken all reasonable steps to protect my system. I use Google Chrome, and use the excellent NotScripts to protect my web browsing.
One of the useful features of NotScripts is that when I get to a website, I have to allow scripts to run, and if I’m not sure about a domain, I merely click a question mark to see how Google rate it on their safe browsing diagnostic page.
It’s useful information, but badly presented:
Not suspicious: no malicious software, and no suspicious content found on the site within the last 90 days.
So why does it then tell me that malicious software includes 2 scripting exploits and 2 exploits?
Is it safe to authorise or not?
When my Norton Internet Security runs a scan, the results have a clear and obvious graphic above them:
I instantly know that everything is fine. In fact I don’t even have to read the details unless I want to.
If your website, software or emails don’t communicate efficiently, then you’re annoying your visitors, potential users and customers.
Make it crystal clear and you can’t go wrong.
Your website doesn’t work. And I can prove it.
Print out this blog post and answer the following questions.
1: What is the purpose of your website?
Hint: Most businesses would say that the purpose of their website is to sell their products, to attract new customers, to support their customers, to gain visibility on the search engines and so on. Most (but not all) would be wrong. The purpose of most websites is just to sell.
2: How well does your website achieve this?
Hint: If you get a fair number of visitors and sell to 100% of them, then you’re doing a great job. Anything less than that has room for improvement.
3: How many of your website visitors leave within a few seconds?
Hint: You probably don’t know the answer to this without checking, but a generic answer might be “too many”.
4: Are you happy with your answers to (2) and (3)?
Hint: No.
5: What can you do about it?
Hint: More than you realise.
A good starting point would be to take part in our free 20-minute interactive webinar (interactinar) in January – guaranteed to get 2011 off to a good start.
Watch this space.
I just received an interesting email from our (second) broadband provider, with the following information:
“100Mbps Internet connections We’ve just connected our first 100Mbps customer to our new Ethernet Direct Leased Line service.
This is dedicated fibre delivered direct to the premises. It is aimed primarily at business customers and is the new very cost-effective 21CN alternative to legacy 20CN leased line services.”
Obviously I clicked, and was delighted to see that I could get an immediate quotation. The results, however, were less reasonable than hoped for:
£16,524 a year ($25,700) for the cheapest package. Not including the incredible connection charge.
I’m all for speed, but that makes hotel internet access look cheap.
Why do I feel that the UK may not be ready for the broadband revolution?
If you work with Google you most likely enjoy a love-hate relationship with them.
You love the traffic they send, but you hate the way they move, rename, camouflage and smoke-screen the goal posts.
Yet what choice do you have? There are alternatives, but if you combine all the traffic they might collectively send you each month, you’re still only looking at a very small percentage of what Google can and will generate.
New search engines come and go, and I rarely bother to even look at them. But blekko is actually interesting.
“blekko is a better way to search the web by using slashtags. slashtags search only the sites you want and cut out the spam sites. use friends, experts, community or your own slashtags to slash in what you want and slash out what you don’t.”
Their bill of rights is particularly eye-catching:
“1. Search shall be open
2. Search results shall involve people
3. Ranking data shall not be kept secret
4. Web data shall be readily available
5. There is no one-size-fits-all for search
6. Advanced search shall be accessible
7. Search engine tools shall be open to all
8. Search & community go hand-in-hand
9. Spam does not belong in search results
10. Privacy of searchers shall not be violated”
I like the way listings can be instantly marked as spam, and many of the results are surprisingly accurate.
More importantly, blekko has a lot to offer from an SEO point of view.
Take a look at the tag under each title:
tag is for making use of their slashtag system.
seo provides an enormous amount of useful information:
links instantly displays all pages linking to the page/website.
And more.
Whether blekko poses any sort of threat to Google remains to be seen. But as it stands it’s already an extremely useful SEO tool.
True story – almost live.
I just went to buy a useful product – I didn’t need it, but I wanted it.
Here’s what happened.
I clicked on the buy button, and was told that I had to set up an account. (Hurdle 1)
Clicked on the link to do so, and was asked for my name and email address. Clicked save, and was told to check my email for a verification email. (Hurdle 2)
Waited for almost 5 minutes for the email to arrive. (Hurdle 3)
Clicked on the link and was then presented with a depressingly large form. (Hurdle 4)
Filled out the form, clicked save and was told that my user name was taken. (Hurdle 5)
Changed the user name, clicked save and was told that my password had to contain at least one upper-case letter and one digit. (Hurdle 6)
Changed the password, clicked save and was told that I hadn’t entered a user name. (Hurdle 7)
Gave up. I saved my money, the company lost a sale.
Nico Westerdale of Software Marketing Resource, BitsDuJour, Iconico and more has published his interview with yours truly:
The SoftwarePromotions Interview
Thank-you Nico!
Most (but not all) business sectors are driven by the need to innovate.
Yet consumers and business are fickle.
We want innovative tech devices, but get annoyed when our media streamer isn’t as reliable as our CD player.
We want ground breaking features in our new cars, then get annoyed when the electronic seat memory positions can’t be overridden manually.
We like the fact that Standards exist in our software interfaces (File, Edit, View) so that we can easily find our way around most new applications, but get angry when new standards are introduced.
When Microsoft released their Ribbon interface in Office 2007, everyone hated it.
We complained that we couldn’t find the features we relied on, and we hated that we had to learn something new.
Prior to that, we hated that the Windows look and feel hadn’t significantly changed since Windows 95.
Essentially we wanted the new version to look different but be fundamentally identical.
It was brave of Microsoft to introduce a dramatic new change, but they knew that the decision wouldn’t cost them any customers.
Can the small to medium sized software company afford to be as innovative?
Google AdWords