The problem with new is that users don’t like to learn. Unless there’s something in it for them.

New for the sake of new usually just means difficult.

If you’re big enough to force your users to adapt to your new interface, they may grumble, but they won’t really have a choice. Think Microsoft’s Ribbon toolbar and Gmail’s new interface.

If you’re prepared to be niche enough that your different approach will attract a new type of user, then your innovation may offer a genuinely unique selling point for a small number of users. Think Ommwriter. Exactly.

If you’re not big enough to force your users and want to fill more than the smallest niche, then new may be risky. Unless your new approach is easy to learn and actually useful. Think Trello.

Bucking the trend may sound cool at conferences and networking events, but there’s usually more of a case to be made for improving norms and conventions.

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How do you choose your toilet paper?

Your first thought might be that price is the dominant factor, but you’ll almost certainly take into account the texture/comfort factor as well. None of us want to use the low-grade sandpaper that we saw in our schools, for example. A few extra pence can make for a far more comfortable experience.

I assume that the manufacturers have an uphill battle to separate themselves from their competition for two reasons.

The first is familiarity. There’s a good chance that the next time you buy toilet paper you’ll simply buy the same brand as last time. Which is why here in the UK so many of the options on offer use a similar blue or lilac colour scheme. Blue looks clean, and lilac looks… purple. But I myself have on occasion bought the wrong brand, which is one of the many reasons that I usually leave such matters to my wife.

The second reason is that it’s very hard to create a competitive advantage. Too cheap implies a painful user experience, so how do you differentiate what you have, when the product only performs one very basic and ultimately unpleasant task?

One way might be to lean towards the absurd:

Do this company really believe that your toilet experience will be any more luxurious by what the toilet paper is enriched with?

Or could this even be a little tongue in cheek (pun intended) humour?

Aside from the absurdity, I’m absolutely amazed by their choice of colour scheme.

Differentiation is important in a crowded market, which is why I’m surprised that there are no major “eco friendly” toilet papers on the shelves of our supermarket.

Surely a paper designed to biodegrade far quicker than any of the competition would have a competitive advantage that might actually persuade their loyal customers to switch?

If customers are merely loyal out of habit and convenience, the market is usually ripe for innovation.

Stupidity probably won’t make a dent.

Note: I was overwhelmed by compelling ideas when choosing the title for this blog post. Please feel free to add suggestions to the comments below. Crudity and vulgarity are very much expected.

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Last month Google announced dramatic changes that seem to have fallen below the radar for many businesses.

In a nutshell, they will no longer be reporting on the organic keywords used by anyone logged into their Google accounts.

So if, for example, you are logged into your Gmail account, carry out a search on Google and click one of the organic results, the keyword you searched for will not be reported in the website’s Analytics account. It will simply be classed as (not provided).

As Google put it:

“We hope that today’s move to increase the privacy and security of your web searches is only the next step in a broader industry effort to employ SSL encryption more widely and effectively.”

This raises a number of questions.

1 – Why does this only apply to organic search results? If Google are genuinely taking a stance on protecting privacy, why not apply the same rule to Google AdWords?

The cynic might assume that Google can’t afford to upset their paying advertisers, but have no qualms about doing so to their free Analytics users.

I might class myself as a cynic.

2 – This all stems from Google’s recent move to force logged-in users to the secure version of Google. So why not force all Google users to their secure server? SSL became the default setting in Gmail almost two years ago.

3 – The big question:  How big a problem is this?

The scale of the problem will depend on the people you’re trying to target. We’ve been looking at some of our client’s Analytics accounts, and have seen that the number of affected organic searches seem to average around 10-12%. Sometimes considerably higher.

The above screenshot shows a sample of data from our blog. Over 16% of the organic keywords used to find our content are not being reported.

If we’re lucky, the 16% will consist of a representative sample across the board.

If we’re unlucky, it might contain some incredibly useful data that is now beyond our reach.

By taking away such a large sample, our data has to all intents and purposes been polluted.

To see how much of your data you’re losing right now, go into your Analytics account and choose TRAFFIC SOURCES, Sources, Search, Organic.

You will then probably see (not provided) in the top ten keywords.

If not, you can count yourself lucky – for now at least.

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Good marketing is about clear communication. When did it become the norm to use half-truths and lies in marketing? When did this become acceptable?

I was looking through a recent print issue of PC Pro magazine and saw the following ad for a monitor:

A monitor that lets me do more than ever before? I know there’s a play on words, but is this honest?

Jason Cohen shared a fascinating insight into honesty in business at the recent Business of Software Conference in Boston, and it made me think.

The About Us page on our web site told no lies. But it stretched the truth a little.

Note the problem with the whole honesty thing: it’s addictive. Let me rewrite the above.

The About Us page on our web site told no actual lies. But it stretched the truth considerably.

We reworked it.

When the truth is stretched, it loses clarity, meaning and credibility. And it’s harder to read.

Honesty is better for the soul, better for your business and helps you sleep at night.

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Three ways to sell more software (or anything else). They’re all different flavours of the same idea, but with different degrees of complexity.

B-A test: the basic-but-better-than-nothing option.

Take an important page that gets a healthy volume of traffic.

Look at the last 7, 14, 21 or 28 days of data (see the points below) and note the basic page performance indicators. Eg: bounce rates, exit rates, time spent etc.

Create a new version of the page – but make it noticeably different.

Changing “Download our trial!” to “Download our trial!!” won’t blow your visitors or your results away.

Let the new page work for 7, 14, 21 or 28 days and compare before with after. Hence the B-A name.

One version of the page will almost certainly out-perform the other.

Use it and test it further.

Split test: the intermediate-and-feeling-good option.

Take an important page that gets a healthy volume of traffic.

Either create a script that divides traffic to one or more variations, or use a service (see below) that makes life easier.

Compare the various versions.

One version of the page will almost certainly out-perform the other.

Use it and test it further.

Multivariate test: the expert-and-don’t-I-know-it option.

The same as above, but instead of pages you create variations of individual content. Eg: different headlines, texts, buttons, offers etc.

These are displayed in conjunction with each other.

It’s more complicated to understand and easier to misinterpret, but in the right hands can produce better results.

Points that apply to all of the above.

- Only work in full units of 7 days. Every website demonstrates a clear seven day trend, so don’t contaminate the data by looking at mixed samples.

- Only compare like-with-like data as far as possible. A write-up on Hacker News will boost your traffic but pollute your data.

- You might be able to write your own system for the tests, but why reinvent the wheel? Services like Visual Website Optimizer, Optimizely or even Google Website Optimizer are easy to setup, use and understand.

- Anything is better than nothing. We’ve run hundreds of split and multivariate tests for our clients, and if I remember correctly I’ve only ever seen two experiments that didn’t result in an improvement.

Do it today – you can be up and running in less than 20 minutes.

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Last week I was at the incredible Business of Software Conference.

The quality of the speakers and attendees were once again unlike anything I have ever come across before. Aside from last year’s conference.

In fact I only have one complaint: awesome.

At risk of sounding older and more set in my ways than I am, I can’t even begin to count how many times I heard the word awesome.

I know that I’m from a country that use language differently – we tend to be more correct * – and I understand that there are different linguistic trends in what’s popular, cool and hip. None of which apply to me.

The problem with awesome is that the more it’s used the less impact it has.

Awesome isn’t synonymous with great, nice, cool, good, very good. really good or impressive.

It means something else entirely.

Two problems with using gratuitous language.

The first problem is that most of us automatically block-out and ignore superfluous words. They have as much impact as a 640×80 banner in your web browser.

The second problem affects people who genuinely do sell (for example) quality goods.

They need to find a way to communicate this, without using the bastardised language of popular choice.

A search on istockphoto for awesome produces hundreds images of rock climbing, aeroplanes, paragliding, a bridge, lighthouse, body builder, shopping, pineapple, sunset, photographer, news, alpine trail, tiger, businesswoman, cake, laser tag warriors, waterfall, elegance, clouds, flowers, mosque, rock…. you get the idea.

Language sells. You can do better than awesome.

* – I’m British. I’m supposed to be sarcastic and arrogant.

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My name is Dave Collins and I’m a data addict. Actually screw that. I’m proud of it.

My name is Dave Collins and I love data.

As a company, we measure everything we do. I believe that data is worth more than personal interaction and intuition.

I even have an application on my iPhone to track how well I sleep at night. Er… I just like it, okay?

Google Analytics gives you an enormous amount of information, but what happens to most people when they log into their accounts?

They drown.

There is so much overwhelming information that they have no idea where to begin looking, let alone make sense of what’s in front of them.

Today we have access to more data than we can possibly use. Today we need to know how to make sense of the data.

DigMyData does exactly that – and more. Ultimately it’s an analytical tool for people who don’t like analytical tools:

Forget about spreadsheets. Forget about complicated tables that you need to interpret.

DigMyData essentially does two things.

The first is that it pulls in lots and lots of beautiful data from all your accounts – Google Analytics, Google AdWords, PayPal, Google Checkout, MailChimp, CampaignMonitor, Gmail, Twitter, Facebook, your own spreadsheets and more.

The second thing it does it create a chart, showing as few or as many of these data streams as you choose.

By way of a simple example, I have just over 11,000 followers in my Twitter account. And in July this year I decided to see what would happen if I started tweeting more.

Instead of 4-5 tweets a week, I started trying to churn out 40 or more each week.

I ran with it for a few weeks, then looked at the results in DigMyData, starting with the correlation between tweets and traffic to the website:

Whoops.

Or not.

The apparent dip in traffic actually came after a three-week spike in traffic. From the middle of July onwards you can see that the number of tweets and the level of traffic do in fact have a bearing on each other.

So the next thing I did was to compare the number of tweets with number of new sales enquiries:

This was the moment I fell in love with DigMyData. And you should too.

You probably have no shortage of data. Your do, however, have a lack of time to analyse it.

DigMyData allows you to see the correlation between cause and effect instantly.

Imagine trying to compare the effects on sales of spending more on AdWords, with sending out a mass mailing or following-up old sales leads.

These are just two very basic examples and barely scrape the tip of the iceberg.

The best way to see how useful it is is to try it. They’re offering a free extended trial until December 31st, and you’ll be up and running in literally minutes.

I’ve never seen anything like DigMyData. My only regret is that they didn’t bring it out sooner.

Oh and no, they’re not our clients. We just know a great tool when we see one.

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What a stupid thing to say.

Let me rephrase that:

We ran a handful of experiments with Facebook advertising and the results were inconclusive.

Background:

We do a lot of work with Google AdWords, but Facebook really appealed, mainly due to the razor-sharp targeting.

With Facebook, for example, we can target people interested in Software Development in the UK and US between the ages of 25 and 55.

Try doing that with AdWords.

We were also realistic in our expectations, mainly in that we had none.

Facts:

- This was no more than dipping our toes in, so we budgeted $2,500.

- We committed almost no time to learning the system. This was our learning experience.

- We only setup a small number of campaigns and ad variations.

Results:

- 8,384,960 impressions

- 957 clicks

- $2,466.54 total spend

- $2.58 per click

- 1 lead

- 0 conversions

Analysis:

- Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in AdWords any more. Those click through rates would be nauseating in AdWords, but this isn’t AdWords.

- Time spent on the website and bounce rates were very good, so the targeting appeared to work.

If we really wanted to establish whether or not Facebook would be a good fit for our company, we’d have to make three commitments:

1 – time to master the system

2 – time to manage the campaigns

3 – a reasonable budget

Conclusion:

I was hoping for a black or white result. Either Facebook advertising works or it doesn’t. But I didn’t get one.

If one person had signed up for our services, and remained with us for only three months, we’d certainly have made a healthy profit. But they didn’t. Not yet at least.

So we’ve established that Facebook might work for our company. Potentially.

The problem with dipping your toes into the water is that it’s sometimes difficult to see whether it’s cool or warm. You can rule out boiling or freezing, but sometimes the only way to really decide whether it’s for you is to jump in.

The only way to decide whether this works for our company would be to make the commitment to try, this time properly. But deciding that Facebook isn’t a good fit might prove to be a costly mistake in the long run.

If only everything was black or white.

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Your website’s first mistake is a common one. You’re trying to squeeze in too much information.

You may not like the idea, but there’s a reasonable chance that your website is the online equivalent of that guy who cornered you. You asked him what he did, and half an hour later he was still sharing far, far more information than you were interested in.

Microsoft Word is one of the most overwhelming applications I have ever come across. Yet Microsoft’s main page on Word 2010 lists only three features, and three goats:

If Microsoft can describe the most feature-overloaded application of all time in three benefits, so can you.

If you had to describe what you sell in one short sentence, what would it be?

What do we do? We help software companies sell more. And you?

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When I first started shaving, I tried a Bic disposable razor.

It made mincemeat of my face, but never tried to be anything more than the cheap, disposable razor that it was.

I remember when the first “twin-blade” razor came out.

It was quite interesting because it was new and different, and it actually did seem to shave closer than a single-blade.

Then came strips of aloe vera (to soothe the skin a millisecond before it gets scraped away). This too was new and different, as was the launch of the first three-blade razor, the twin-moisturising-strips, the battery-powered vibrating wet razor, the electrically-powered dry razor that oozed slug-like gel and more.

Actually much more.

The Gillette Complete Product Line-Up features no less than 22 different razors – my personal favourite being the Fusion Gaming Razor:

“When it’s time to step up, you need to put your best face forward. The Gillette Fusion Gamer razor gives you the home advantage by combining Gillette’s advanced shaving technology with sophisticated performance. You can take control of the 5-blade technology and gentle contouring Microfins standard on the Gillette Fusion Gamer razor.”

I don’t like swearing for the sake of it, but holy crap.

And yes, you read that correctly. There are indeed five blades on this advanced shaving technology.

How did we cope in the past?

A razor does one thing – it shaves off hair. A good razor does so with less irritation.

Without a doubt we’re heading to the Retro Razor at some point, that will help you start the day “getting back to nature with one single blade with the allergen-free-no-moisturiser-strip“.

Yesterday I came across the Gravity Defyer shoe range:

Let’s ignore the fact that the logo is a sperm, and concentrate instead on marketing hype that includes a Master Spring that propels you forward yet somehow reduces fatigue, VersoShock Trampoline Shock absorbing heel and of course the Twin Stabilisers.

I understand where they’re coming from. They’re trying to be new and different, but while there may be a fine line between hype and stupidity, this level of sensationalism crossed it a long time ago and never looked back.

Please don’t allow this form of marketing to work.

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