Hows Google Plus and Search Working out?

I've noticed on a bunch of ads recently that there is a google plus hanging off it. When that happens within the context of a search engine, I guess it's a good thing or at least, nothing that I care about. But, when that happens in a content ad that is on my site, I think it is very confusing and something that I do NOT like.

Check this out, isn't this confusing?

The Google plus sort of floats so that sometimes its hard to tell whether it's about the advertisement or the website. Also, it looks sometimes like you are supposed to click on the G+, not the advertisement.

On another note, when did ads require you to fill in all this info before you could click on them? As a website owner, doesn't it make sense just to ban these?

Translating Classic Sales Process Thinking into Online Sales

I was trained in classic organizational sales. I have managed international direct sales forces whose bread and butter was modelling and executing on a sales process. I just ran across a beautiful online presentation describing the sales process. This reminded me of where I come from: consultative organizational high value sales

However, I don't operate in that world anymore. I operate in the world of online sales of educational services generally priced so low that there is no profit in a process if it involves any human contact. So I build sales funnels for my sites that somehow tries to translate the process of selling into a few webpages and follower up newsletters.  We still operate with the concept that prospects need to be moved several steps from idea to buying and that an attempt to close too quickly will not work out well.

However, I also have spent time learning about the direct marketing and mail world which preaches compressing the hook and the close into such a tight two-step that I have trouble discerning a real sales process.  Later, I'll show how our sale funnel, models the process of building rapport, learning about the customer, and then moving them to buy-in to our solution, as steps to having them buy.

gplus

del.icio.us

Friends don't let friends build bad websites

I'm going to plug a service just because I think it deserves a plug. I've used it, it's great.  And they sent me this marketing this morning that just cracked me up:

Friends don't let friends build bad websites - UserTesting.com

Display of Google Paid Results

Is it just my imagination or is the advertisement pink box around the advertisements on the top of Google getting increasingly faint so that now, it's almost impossible to discern?  Additionally, didn't they use to limit it to two results?

del.icio.us

Compete.com - A little more disclosure please?

Compete's Table Explaining Data Differences
Where's the point about school and business-based computers?

Compete.com says "Compete's data comes from a statistically representative cross-section of 2 million consumers across the United States."  They elaborate on how their data differs from log data but in all of this, I think they side step a really big point.  In the case of my site (SpellingCity.com), the reason that they differ from my logs is that most of my traffic comes everyday not from home computers but from computers inside K12 institution. ie  Schools.  In short, there are three big sectors of our economy:

• business and government
• education
• consumers at home

In the old days,  all the computers were in business, government, and educational institutions.  Today, however, consumers also have computers at home.  But many of these same people leave their homes during the day and go to jobs where usually, they have another computer. These same people do a lot of their shopping and see a lot of ads while they are at work.  Schools in particular, have a very large number of computers which get used in many cases over 50% of the time since they are often on carts going from class to class or in a media center with classes filing in and out. 

I know that in my case, the reason that Compete's numbers are misleading, the reason that they report less than half of hte full traffic for SpellingCity is that they don't measure the traffic from schools. Should they? I do not know.  Should they admit and highlight the fact they are no reporting this data? Absolutely.  This table is misleading and misses the biggest reason that at least in my case, local logs don't match what they report. 

Googles kills off its losers

A fall sweep (copied from the googleblog.blogspot.com)

10/14/2011 10:03:00 AM

We aspire to build great products that really change people’s lives, products they use two or three times a day. To succeed you need real focus and thought—thought about what you work on and, just as important, what you don’t work on. It’s why we recently decided to shut down some products, and turn others into features of existing products.

Here’s the latest update on what’s happening:

• Code Search, which was designed to help people search for open source code all over the web, will be shut down along with the Code Search API on January 15, 2012.
• In a few weeks we’ll shut down Google Buzz and the Buzz API, and focus instead on Google+. While people obviously won't be able to create new posts after that, they will be able to view their existing content on their Google Profile, and download it usingGoogle Takeout.
• Jaiku, a product we acquired in 2007 that let users send updates to friends, will shut down on January 15, 2012. We’ll be working to enable users to export their data from Jaiku.
• Several years ago, we gave people the ability to interact socially on iGoogle. With our new focus on Google+, we will remove iGoogle's social features on January 15, 2012. iGoogle itself, and non-social iGoogle applications, will stay as they are.
• The University Research Program for Google Search, which provides API access to our search results for a small number of approved academic researchers, will close on January 15, 2012.

In addition, later today the Google Labs site will shut down, and as previously announced, Boutiques.com and the former Like.com websites will be replaced by Google Product Search.

Changing the world takes focus on the future, and honesty about the past. We learned a lot from products like Buzz, and are putting that learning to work every day in our vision for products like Google+. Our users expect great things from us; today’s announcements let us focus even more on giving them something truly awesome.

SEO Periodic Table of the Elements

I thought this was silly. Actually hysterical. Its the SearchEngine Land's Periodic Table of the SEO Elements. Speaking of ridiculous inside jokes....
http://searchengineland.com/seotable/download-periodic-table-of-seo

Google Analytics Premium

This past week, Google introduced Google Analytics Premium.  Quoting the little-known industry pundit Brian May,

 ..."the new premium option is targeted at enterprise clients and the messaging is that there will not be any change to the regular Google Analytics as it stands today and that the Premium version offers advanced features and phone call technical support....This is strictly aimed at companies like Webtrends, Coremetrics, and Omniture to offer the kind of support and guarantees that are necessary for some large enterprises to adopt Google analytics....This could be a way to force existing large volume users to adopt the premium version. When the problem occurred a few months ago, it was because of a switch to “Fast Access Mode” which meant that Google Analytics was taking a sampling of your real data to build reports rather than usual all of the actuals. If they roll this out as default on the non-paid version, there may be a need to switch to the paid version to get consistent reporting.

The cost of Google Analytics Premium is in the $150,000 range which makes it very competitive with the other web analytics software providers.

Here's Google's Announcement. 

Paypal Reserves of 20% on a Paypal Merchant Account

Does anyone have experience with Paypal reserves and getting them removed from your paypal account?  I just realized that on one of my paypal merchant accounts (I have two), they are withholding 20% of my money for 90 days!!!!!

Let me start by saying that I'm generally thrilled with Paypal as my merchant account vendor. With a total expense rate of 2.7% and a high level of reliability, they are better than the other vendors that I use to process credit cards.  I give them high marks for low cost, high reliability, great technology, and great service.

I've previously had one big frustration with them in that their reporting sucks.  I have several product lines being sold (I'm in the hundreds of thousands of dollars of revenues in a year with the average payment way under $100) and Paypal isn't really able to help us track by product line.  Even when we have the payments come in under different emails, they can't sort them out. It turns out the solution is to open a child account. The process was cumbersome, basically, open a new account, get it approved, get it linked to the old one, drop out all the fees, and the child account can ONLY withdraw money up to the parent account. And it's an automatic process which happens nightly.  Which would be fine except we have some refunds (we do a money-back offer) and about 4% of our customers take the refund.  Paypal does an automatic withdrawal every night but on the days that there are refunds, they try to withdraw too much and it produces all sorts of emergency warnings and failure notes.

Second big problem I just released. My account has reserves. In fact, they hold onto 20% of my funds for 90 days on a rolling basis. 


Paypal's rules say this but they don't seem to apply to my case:

[I]Reserves are funds that belong to you but have been set aside. We hold money in reserve just in case you receive payment reversals or chargebacks and your PayPal balance isn't enough to cover them. Reserves are typically applied to merchants who handle:
·         large sums of money,
·         high dollar items, or
·         items in high-risk categories[/I]

Quantcast Marketing Statistics

One of my sites is enjoying a particularly strong back-to-school rush. Take a look at these statistics published by Quantcast (which you can view realtime on their site).   Notice that:
1. VocabularySpellingCity.com (url is spellingcity.com) is getting over two million people visiting monthly.  If you change the pulldown on the top left (you'd have to be on the Quantcast site to do that), you'll see that Spellingcity site is growing past 5 million visits/monthly and has already passed 60M page views monthly.  This is big.
2. Quantcast ranks VSC  number 692  in the US by number of people visiting. Number one is Google,  two is YouTube, three is Facebook, four is Yahoo, five is Ebay, six is MSN, seven is match....and #692 is SpellingCity.com.  Does that make us the top K12 educational site?  Sadly, Quantcast doesn't rate by industry otherwise, I could give you an answer.

Quantcast SpellingCity.com demographics, 9/28/2011

3. Quantcast also has some data about the demographics of users of the site.  (See the second image).  Here's my first problem with this data, it misses the point. SpellingCity is mostly used in schools on school computers.  This vital piece of info does not show up anywhere in their analysis. I would think that the basic info on a site would distinguish between sites used in offices, homes, schools, and mobile devices but none of that is evident.  A second problem with the data is that it's wrong. Mostly,SpellingCity is used by elementary school students but Quantcast says that it is used mostly by kids over age 12.

Lastly, here's some very popular games and resources on VSC:

• handwriting worksheets 
•  Vocabulary, Alphabetical Order,
  Word Meaning, Unscramble, Parts of Speech, Hangman
• Analogies  Dolch - Sight Words  Segmenting syllables
  Compound Words 

Common Craft on SEO

Common Craft makes some of the most simple appealing how-to videos in the world. They're fantastic. 

Topsy just alerted me that they had stepped up to explaining how search engines and SEO work.  Its a showcase of how to use a simple analogy to illustrate a very complicated concept.  Take a look:

http://www.commoncraft.com/video/search-engine-optimization-seo

BTW, I thought this video was good but not necessarily their best. I first discovered Common Craft was I trying to figure out Social Bookmarking, a few years ago:

http://www.commoncraft.com/video/social-bookmarking

And, whenever we do howto videos inhouse, I keep in my the effectiveness of CommonCraft's minimalist approach to explaining things.

Email Marketing - Newsletters & Blasts

I'm trying to upgrade our marketing team by building a broader team with sharp marketing skills. So today we held a session on newsletters and marketing. The basic idea is that there are lots of great videos and articles about newsletter / email marketing. We can watch them as a group and discuss them.

Here's the few that I found this morning.

Here's the Newsletter marketing principles that I'm collecting for us to think about:

1. Test and measure results. Be clear about what we want in the results.
2. Have a methodology to quantify. Estimate the value of a signup (or other action) and an unsubscribe.
3. Be statistically savvy. There's way too much decisions being made by not nearly enough data.
4. Relationship. When someone gives us their email address, they've responded to something and a relationship is being started. Build the relationship. Think about our personna. Are we are place for sharp deals? For people interested in education?
5. Segment and personalize the list.  Try to talk to the new members about their issues, the people in Alaska about theres...
6. Branding. The email is part of our brand. This is sort of like the relationship.
7. What changes when we are sending out a newsletter which could have a role as part of support and education and an offer/blast trying to clearly sell. How well can these be combined?
8. Pretty does not mean effective.
9. The offer and the information should be clear, concise. I often think the main goal is just to maintain some mindshare and show them we care.

Training materials:

Marketing Experiments

http://www.marketingexperiments.com/email-marketing-strategy/the-five-best-ways-to-optimize-email-response.html

http://www.marketingexperiments.com/email-marketing-strategy/the-five-best-ways-to-optimize-email-response-part-3.html

Aweber

https://www.aweber.com/users/video Watch Part One  Watch Part Two

http://www.aweber.com/blog/live-webinars 

• Case Studies    Email Deliverability   Email Marketing   Email Design   New Features
• http://www.aweber.com/blog/email-marketing/super-sized-autoresponder-series.htm

Vertical Response

AUGUST

Subject Line Savvy
Thu, Aug 4, 2011 1:00 PM - 1:30 PM PDT

Register Now

Blogging For Your Business
Thu, Aug 11, 2011 1:00 PM - 2:00 PM PDT

Register Now

Creating a Successful Email Newsletter
Thu, Aug 18, 2011 1:00 PM - 2:00 PM PDT

Register Now

Create Winning Calls To Action
Fri Aug 19, 2011 1:00 PM - 1:30 PM PDT

Register Now

Lifecycle Marketing
Thu, Aug 25, 2011 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM PDT

Register Now

Social Media Tools: Listening and Engaging
Thu, Aug 25, 2011 1:00 PM - 1:30 PM PDT

Register Now

SEPTEMBER

Advanced Email Creation
Thu, Sep 8, 2011 1:00 PM - 2:00 PM PDT

Register Now

Starting Out With SEO
Thu, Sep 15, 2011 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM PDT

Register Now

Creating a Successful Email Newsletter
Thu, Sep 15, 2011 1:00 PM - 2:00 PM PDT

Register Now

Quick Tips for Effective Email and Social Media Copywriting
Wed, Sep 21, 2011 1:00 PM - 2:00 PM PDT

Register Now

Social Media Tools: Does Your Facebook Measure Up? 
Thu Sep 22, 2011 1:00 PM - 1:30 PM PDT

Register Now

Email Delivery and the Inbox
Wed, Sep 28, 2011 1:00 PM - 2:00 PM PDT

Register Now

Lynda?
Youtube?

Old Email Addresses Remembered by Gmail

This problem has plagued me for years. The problem is that some of my contacts have switched email addresses (or I once typed in their email erroneously) and the old emails keep popping up in my gmail.  I can't seem to remember which is which (old vs new) so I'm constantly having to look it up or risk making mistakes.

This has turned out to be a very sensitive issue in the case of one attorney that I work with who switched firms. But his address at the old firm pops up and I'm worried about sending sensitive stuff to the wrong law firm.  And the actual emails are obscure lawfirms names like:  ibsolaw.com    vs   aobtlaw.co  (ibsen, broderdick, and ostrich law partners).  I have the same problem with our book-keeper.

Solution: Click in Gmail on Contacts.  There are three groupings. "my contacts", "most contacted", and  "other contacts".   I found the problems under other contacts and removed it.

Steve Jobs - I idolize him

I've never met him and he has had an enormous impact on how I work, how I think, and my ambitions. I was at 3DO when he was NeXt, we shared a cafeteria. I stood next to him in the cafeteria line a number of times. He wasn't real friendly or approachable.  I tried not to stare.

I have a small library of big Steve Jobs stories that account for the impact he has had on me.  One was shortly after Jobs returned to Apple. It was told to me by a friend name Rick who was one of the supergeeks, independent at the time.  He loved the NeXt interface and for his amusement, ported it onto the Mac (or copied it) and started distributing it. One day the phone rings, it's Steve Jobs who wants to know if he would have time to come over to Cupertino to meet him. Steve shows him around Apple, discusses a number of philosophical and technical issues, gets to know Rick, and even shows him (after Rick agrees verbally not to discuss them), some upcoming products.  Takes him to lunch in the cafeteria. Long lunch. Introduces him to all sorts of people.  Walks him to the car after lunch and asks casually in the parking lot, "Heh, hows that going with your NeXt software clone? Would you stop distributing it, its an awkward situation for us?"

Problem solved. No enemies created. No waste of time with lawyers. Very efficient use of Jobs time overall.  I found the vision and savoir-faire in that one story (which might not be dead-accurate), forever inspiring.

Prior to 3DO, I worked at SGI. At SGI, I worked with a software partner called Pixar that had some software for 3D rendering called RenderMan, some artistic ambitions that were only seeing the light of day in their annual Siggraph animation, and some people who were electric to talk to. They radiated vision, know-how, creativity, and work ethic. And patience.  George Lucas had ditched these people as too dreamy and too expensive for him to continue supporting. A guy named Steve Jobs thought their vision was worth investing in. Year in and year out. 

Steve Job's achievements were no accident, he was a genuine visionary and operator.  Although I've never earned an Apple paycheck, I bleed in rainbow colors, I've drunk the cool-aid, I'm a total believer.  Who else would use a logo of the forbidden fruit with a bite taken out?  Its in front of everyone's face all the time but seems rarely to get much attention. Take a minute to appreciate what a statement and positioning that is! The logo was prophetic of an ongoing revolution.  Forget Mao and his Red Book, Steve's revolution is truly ongoing!  

Thanks Steve. It's been great.  You lit the fire!