We’ve been working with Read Write Web for a while now, and one of our first tasks has been the design of their super exciting guide to community management.
Emma has read the whole thing many times and it is jam packed full of useful information. If communities are you thing, then the Read Write Web team have what you need to take it to the next level!
There are a tonne of coupon sites popping up. Until yesterday I paid little attention to them.
But I read an article the other day about how you should do a quick search for coupons WHENEVER you buy something online… It changed my life!
My latest two purchases, I would make regardless of discounts, so when my quick searches resulted in 20-40% off the price, it was a nice little deal sweetner. It’s amazing what you find on the internet. I’m never buying anything again without coupons. It’s just so EASY!
My favorite coupon sites:
http://www.retailmenot.com
http://www.tjoos.com
http://www.vouchermate.co.nz
Quite often customers ask me to make sure their site ranks at number one on Google.
After Ronan heard my reply one too many times, he sent me an article that rips apart the notion of SEO. I agree with basically every part.
Unless SEO experts partake in some of the more ‘dodgy’ SEO activities, what they generally do is good web marketing.
As I tell my customers, good SEO is not necessarily the best and/or only strategy. Many websites sell products and services that people probably don’t even search for, rather they find referrals from trusted sources – i.e other complimentary websites.
If you take a 3 pronged, manual approach that relies on your genuine interest and knowledge in your chosen topic, then you can boost traffic from not only search engines, but from others sites that your audience go to:
There are still a lot of misconceptions about SEO, and I think one of the big ones is that Google is your only option for driving traffic to your site. You do not have to be listed at the top of Google to get good quality leads to your website… The ‘invention’ of blogging has long since proven that. If you treat the web as an overall marketing tool, Google will appreciate your efforts, but you will also get traffic from potentially better sources.
Courtesy of Lance Wiggs, I came across Website Grader (which I REALLY want to call Website GradR, due to it’s web 2.0ness).
It’s awesome.
There has been some controversy over whether or not the 6,000 odd links pointing to Decisive Flow are the high quality ones I think they are, or if they could in fact be (shock horror) junk. However, other than that, it’s a cool simple tool that gives you a nice insight into how well your website is doing marketing-wise.
As Lance points out, there are some things that should be taken with a grain of salt, but I reckon it’s worth the 5 minutes it takes to generate the report.
And yes, this post was written at 7.12pm on a Friday night. First time I’ve worked this late on a Friday in ages. Not sure I’m a fan.
I’m sure Anna wont mind me just posting her entire email:
Hi Natalie,
this is Anna with ForeSoft.
First of all let me congratulate you on your 1 year anniversary! You are really doing a great job girls!
In support of my words here is our current results after publishing a new version of BUGtrack site.
Our trial conversion rate really increased, as expected, we can’t tell anything about subscriptions yet, but I guess it’s just the matter of time (we think the math won’t let us down and it will increase proportionally to trials order).
Anyway, we’ve really met our expectations despite the mess with the financial crisis and stuff, so I would like to thank you.
Our results:
Order of free trial has ALMOST TRIPLED (capslock was my doing because I’m so excited – Nat)
This is what we’ve got after 1 month of redesign.
Thank you, girls!
Ann
I was at my doctor the other day and as I was leaving (perhaps because she knows a lot about my business), she asked if I would be happy to receive test results via text.
At first I said ‘yes’, then quickly realised my default ‘go technology’ line totally didn’t work in this particular situation.
Subsequent surveys have confirmed my reservations. Who wants to receive a text saying ‘u hav cancr – frm ur dr’? And even IF the text simply said ‘call us’ you’d freak. The fact of the matter is, that there are some things in life that will ALWAYS need the human touch.
On the other side, my surgeon texted me the other night to say ‘hope u r feeling ok’. I thought it was a bit weird, but super cool, especially because his magical hands did leave me feeling ok.
In summary, I am all for doctors spending large on technology, but I think the technology they should be spending on should be the equipment they use to save lives, not social media and bulk texting.
And also, for all you who care. 4 days after surgery:
That’s it from ‘Fat Face’
I was wandering the streets at lunch, when I came across a pink petition signing extravaganza.
The petition was to get lighting in official dog walking parks in Wellington (did you know currently NONE of our official dog walking parks has lighting at night or on dark winter days?). I vaguely recognised the brand that covered the stand where we were encouraged to sign the petition as Pet Angels.
Pet Angels is soon to be a major competitor of mine, when Verity and I start a company called WeWillLookAfterYourHandbagDog.com to fulfill our desire to be constantly surrounded by cute puppies without the 17 year commitment. (FYI, our prices will be very competitive, as we are not planning on actually charging at all for our dog sitting services).
However, despite the fact that we now HATE Pet Angels because they will be a competitor, we LOVE the way they Guerrilla market themselves. How clever to cotton onto one issue and make it their own. And be out on the streets as a major dog advocate, getting all these dog lovers onside, then slipping them a brochure.
Pure genius.
I was talking this morning about the joys of becoming ‘the guy’ on a particular issue in terms of marketing. If you find an issue you care passionately about AND that just happens to be relevant to your business, start creating a fuss. The media will soon catch on and you will be the expert in the area. Then you simply squeeze in a word about your company, and voila! everyone knows about it.
I like it how the traditionally boring world of pet services has caught onto this! Good luck an I wish you all the best for when Verity and I launch :)
There seems to be quite a flurry of good business ideas being directed towards me in the past few days. One thing they ALL have in common is exponential growth. This is not exponential growth in customers, but in the size of the idea.
One sentence that I find myself regularly repeating is “There are 6 billion people on this planet. You do not need to appeal to ALL of them”
Yes, if you have a great idea, people WILL get excited about it, they will tell you how it applies in many situations and how much an extra feature would help them.
But while your idea is growing ever bigger, your prospects of success are shrinking just as quickly. Rowan’s diagram explains this phenomenon nicely:
There are MANY downsides to having 6 Billion people on this planet. One of the few upsides is that you can have a super focused, simple and targeted product that 99.9999% of people have absolutely no use for, and your target market will still be multi-thousands or millions of people.
I know it’s scary and adding new target audiences feels intuitively like a safe way to play it, but the reality of the situation is that the more you DILUTE your idea and spread the appeal, the less that your main and most profitable market will like it.
When you have that target market eating out of the palm of your hand, that is the time to start looking at how to attract a different group of people. If you are unsure of whether your idea is enough to get your initial group knocking down your door, then maybe it is the idea and not the size of the market that needs analysis…?
Last night I headed along to a market research session with two of my most outspoken friends, to offer feedback on a branding and marketing strategy in return for wine and freebies (note: If you do market research, you will be surprised at how much people will do for a free glass of wine)
The product was targeted at females and is a hot hair conditioning treatment… Which is all I’ll say because although we weren’t sworn to secrecy, it feels way more exclusive when I’m one of a small group who knows about it. However, here we are ‘testing’ the product:
Market research is a very interesting thing. These guys did a good job of getting a range of people, with a range of values and finances. They even let me go even though my hair has never been fortunate enough to be treated to a hot conditioning anything. I did feel like maybe this set me outside the target market, but I think I managed to come up with an alternative marketing strategy that would entice me to make a purchase (I have a cold and anything hot on my head sounded like heaven last night). Lessons we learned (other than Verity is allergic to vege crisps):
As Marie-Claire pointed out, we use RIDICULOUS amounts of products that quite literally harm others. While there were still a few eye rolls when the topic was approached,it became apparent that most of us do care, and most of us are rather cynical about modern marketing. If you are using cotton in your product, you have a responsibility to know WHERE it is sourced, WHO it is sourced from and HOW MUCH money they get in return for their labour. You also need to know what chemicals are used in the process, because we are not OK with you polluting any river, even if it’s not in our backyard.
And unless you stick a BIG MASSIVE label on the outside packaging specifying every single potential sin you could have committed and how you didn’t commit it, we WILL assume you are a bad guy. One person even commented she wont buy any cosmetics unless they are from an Organic retailer because otherwise she just DOESN’T know, another person pointed out that people are happy to come and spend $1,200 a pop at the shop she works at because they cannot live with the idea of purchasing clothes that have caused misery or harm.
Our wide rage of situations and finances did not stop us from having one nearly unified voice on what we expect from luxury products. We are sick of being pummeled with chemicals, we are happy to pay more to ensure the bunnies were not tortured and we just can’t feel comfortable with the idea that our beauty products produced through exploitation.
This is quite true. Maybe in 5 years there will be another fashionable issue (because I’m pretty sure a lot of people knew this stuff was happening years ago but didn’t have quite the same passion about putting a stop to it). But either way, you’ve still got a good few years to get on this particular train, so why not jump on the first carriage and get a headstart?
I think I am not very feminine, as I didn’t even know half the things people were talking about and clearly missed out on beauty school somewhere (I blame my equally non-fussed school friends). But other women DO care. They sit there with stunning gorgeous hair and complain about how they wish it was shiny. Crazy but true, so they are certainly willing to pay for this stuff (as I suppose the large cosmetic companies figured out a few years before me)… But they want to know it will WORK – they are sick of failure.
I just arrived back to find the office all a flutter about someone pulling apart one of our websites (www.zogix.com) and the design work we did.
Having worked in startups and design for a while, I am well used to getting criticised for the work we do – I am yet to find one designer who is universally loved and I would much prefer to be loved by some and hated by some than ignored by all…
So I take it as compliment really, but have been asked for comment, so here goes:
“Oh! and FYI… this is an example of exactly what not to do designwise…
Check out: http://www.zogix.com/
God Awful! When Web2.0 design goes bad! Cutesy bubbles, shadows, pink and HUGE type (cos we’re all blind). This is an example of design not being applicable to their market. And there’s no relationship between their site design and the product design.”
The very reason why this website was a resounding success when they launched at Oracle open world is because their product was situated in a sea of masculinity and they were pink. I love pink, but you may notice we don’t generally design with it. In this situation the design NEEDED to make an impact. Check out any web 2,0 review site, there are like a million products on the market. Colour is one (very successful) way of standing out.
As for the cute part. We are of the opinion that business people are people too. I don’t understand or adhere to the belief that anything to do with business needs to be drab and boring. If you are using a product it should be fun and easy. Whether or not you agree with that only really affects whether or not you will be a customer of ours. It will never affect how we approach our design.
Erm. Yes. We kind of are… or will be if we spend too much time squinting at small grey text on lit up screens.
We do not apologise or feel at all worried about the fact we give your eyes a break when you are at our websites. You are not viewing a painting and therefore our design is not led by form alone. Function is key to everything we do and although big fonts are now so common they are almost cliche, it doesn’t actually make them less relevant. And I don’t intend to wear glasses before my time (as I have seen many web geeks forced to do) because some designer has decided 8 point font is more important than my ability to see. SO no apologies there.
We agree on one thing, which is why we are still working with Zogix to bring the product into line. This re-design was led by the knowledge that the current product was not up to scratch – but it was more important to have a good marketing site for launch than a half-done product.
Startups = compromise, but I don’t think this was a compromise that they regret.
I’m quietly stoked we got such a strong reaction – and that such a recently launched product was picked up on! I’m also stoked that the things that were ripped apart were, for the most part, the MOST successful aspects of the website, and the website chosen has been a key factor in securing us more work as a lot of people seem to disagree with Mr Reviewer.
Hello, my name is Natalie, I have a business called Decisive Flow. We design websites that people love to use and are experts at designing great websites, web applications and blogs for startups, right through to government organisations. This is where I talk about my experiences running, marketing and growing companies that are simple and loveable.
comment