In 2003, O’Reilly Publishing came up with the term ‘Web 2.0′. A couple of years later, Tim O’Reilly wrote a great article titled ‘What Is Web 2.0?‘ in which he shared this graphic from their original brainstorms:

Few would disagree with the right-hand column (other than perhaps ‘napster’) & there are some seriously accurate predictions in there. But amongst the left-hand column - the Web 1.0 elements that were supposed to fade - there are a few items that are still going as strong (if not stronger) than they were back then.
I’ve highlighted them above & here they are (in no particular order) including a couple of nice ironic twists: Keep Reading this entry –»
 

How many seconds does it take you to read the message in this box?

This is a prime example of backward thinking. Customers are concerned enough today that they will read something like that on a signup screen. Making it difficult for them to read it only serves to diminish your brand perception (either you appear difficult, or you appear shifty).

Here are a few takeaways:

1. Write in a way your customers can easily understand
2. Don’t say it in 6 lines when you could say it in 1
3. Don’t use double-negatives & other language that make people feel you’re trying to trick them (’untick if you do not…’)

Technorati Tags: copywriting, usability, brand perception

Every company wants to gather data around their customers & their products. For Google this is quite a unique problem:

1. Google’s customer-base is huge: pretty much ‘everybody online’
2. Google’s biggest product (targeted advertising) relies on them knowing as much as possible about their customers (you!)

Q: So what would you do if you were Google?
A: Try and track as much as you possibly can; make some strategic acquisitions to build a more detailed picture; create new tools & products to learn even more about your users

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Whenever you go into Google AdWords and set up a new campaign, by default it is set to appear both in search results & on the Google Content Network (pages running adsense ads). There are two problems with that:

Problem 1. Searchers & Page Viewers Have Different Motives

A searcher is actively looking for your product / service. Whereas someone viewing a webpage with AdSense ads on is probably not actively looking to buy from you. Obviously there are situations where these require slightly different ads, different keyword triggers & different landing pages. Just as there’s a difference between cold-calling someone at home, or having them call you requesting information.

Problem 2. It Makes Tracking & Optimisation 10x Harder

Because of the above difference, ads on the ‘Content’ and ‘Search’ networks perform very differently… Keep Reading this entry –»
 

This post is about a little piece of information that can turn around a failing search campaign; A golden nugget of knowledge that can turn an already-good campaign into an utter barnstormer; A pearl of super-condensed wisdom that can… You get the picture - it’s something really simple that offers big benefits yet hardly anyone recognises its possibilities…

Here’s a chart from the latest Enquiro search survey showing a summary of 1,086 b2b buyers answering the question (totally paraphrased):

“where (online) do you start each phase of the purchase cycle”?

• 65.3% begin the ‘awareness’ phase of a purchase at a search engine
• 51.8% begin ‘research’ at a search engine
• 42.1% start ‘negotiation’ at a search engine
• 42.6% begin ‘purchase’ at a search engine

What’s The Golden Piece Of Information Here?

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Email Personalisation is always a hot topic in email marketing &, if you ever do an A/B test on this, you’ll see a personal email will come back better in almost every situation.

Some email marketers misunderstand ‘personal’ though - they look at it from a technical point of view & think “personalised email is an email where you automatically insert the name of the recipient”. In actual fact, it’s not just that… Keep Reading this entry –»
 

They drive tiny, tiny click-through rates & if you ask the average person what they think of them the answer will be (at best) apathetic or (at worst) disgusted, yet display ads continue to be incredibly popular amongst marketers & search engines have been snapping up every display ad network going. So why are display ads still so popular? Why does anyone sell them & why would anyone want to advertise using them?

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Calculating the ROI (return on investment) of a campaign tells you whether it made sense to do it &, more importantly, whether it makes sense to continue. If you’re running several campaigns (or, for example, advertising on several sites) it can also tell you where to place your marketing budget.

How Do You Calculate ROI?

ROI is best calculated by looking at the profit you’ve made from a marketing campaign (or channel) vs the total amount you spent on that campaign/channel. (you can get more complicated by factoring in the costs of having money tied up, etc, but for now we will keep things simple)…

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There Are Some Things Everyone Puts Effort Into:

1. Company Name
2. Logo
3. Homepage Design
4. Business Card
5. Email Signature

Everyone expects these to be at least ‘good’. It’s tough to be ‘great’ here, because the standards are high…
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Here’s a really simple way to lose customers: If they go away from the computer for 10 minutes with your website open & then they come back & try to continue browsing your site, make sure that the next link they click fires up a great big “Sorry, your session has timed out” notice, wipes out their cart & requires them to go right back to your homepage…

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