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FriendFeed Monetization? Focus Groups.

February 19 2009 // Marketing + Social Media // Comments Off on FriendFeed Monetization? Focus Groups.

The other day Steven Hodson wrote a post on the Inquistr that opined that Twitter could generate revenue through one big focus group. I like Hodson, who also writes the thought-provoking WinExtra, but I disagreed that Twitter was the place for focus groups.

As I wrote my response as to why, I realized that FriendFeed was the ideal environment for focus groups. I could even envision a new green FriendFeed icon to denote a sponsored conversation.

FriendFeed Focus Group

FriendFeed Focus Groups

Focus groups are conversational, which is exactly where FriendFeed excels. A typical focus group will have a moderator who will pose questions and follow-up to gain additional insight into the participant’s response.

For example, a focus group moderator might ask you to tell them what animal best represents a specific car. The moderator will likely be able to understand the categorization but might want to follow-up to ensure they understand why you chose to associate, say, a Hummer with a Hippopotamus.

These focus groups are already taking place – naturally – on FriendFeed. Conversations about different cameras and different phones. Discussions about music, books and movies. Debates between Mac and Windows enthusiasts. FriendFeed fosters this type of robust interaction where details and nuances are often revealed.

What about demographics?

The part that’s missing are the demographics. It’s missing from Twitter too. Facebook seems to be banking on the demographic targeting capability. Many companies do want to ensure they have the right sample and a good cross-section of users. Perhaps FriendFeed could present a small lightbox form to users prior to commenting on a sponsored conversation?

What about psychographics?

Then again, many companies put more stock into psychographics. Who exactly are these people? What do they like? Do they travel? Where do they go out to dinner? What do they read? What are their interests? This is where FriendFeed – again – provides added value.

Moderators would have access to the feeds or lifestreams of participants. The amount of data for each participant would clearly vary depending on the number and variety of services each fed into FriendFeed. Some might be limited but others would provide bonanza of data.

Imagine Netflix, GoodReads, YouTube, Google Shared Stuff, Amazon, Last.fm, LinkedIn, Delicious and even BrightKite. Talk about building a profile on potential customers! And could FriendFeed provide an abstract of each participant? A digest profile for each participant on a sponsored conversation?

Would it be interesting for marketers to see not only what each participant fed, but what they liked as well? Or a keyword (or other) analysis on their comments? The degree of interaction, variety of content and abundance of text make FriendFeed an interesting and dynamic data hub.

The right kind of engagement

Twitter simply does not support real conversations. It was built as a status update service (and it performs that service well.) Facebook often creates conversations but those conversations are both asynchronous (wall post time lag) and seem to be less topical and more personal in nature.

FriendFeed, by comparison, is built for conversation around topical content. It fosters the exact type of engagement savvy marketers crave.

What do you think. Will we see green FriendFeed icons and sponsored conversations?

Call To Action Button Size and Color

February 08 2009 // eCommerce + Marketing + Web Design // 3 Comments

In December I said that testing your call to action should be at the top of your New Year’s resolution list.

On the Internet the call to action often takes the form of a button. So while words still matter, there are other dimensions to consider.

Thinking about the size, shape, color, and placement (among other characteristics), our findings indicate that future testing could reveal surprising – and positive findings – based on changes to the download button.

That’s an excerpt from a post (The Download Button Drives Downloads) on the Mozilla Blog of Metrics. By the way, they’re absolutely right.

Call To Action Button Size

Your call to action buttons should be big and obvious. If you abide by Five Foot Web Design principles you should have no problem seeing the call to action when you take a few steps back from your monitor. If you can’t see it, your users are likely to miss it as well.

Here are a few examples of sites who got it right.

Dropbox

Dropbox Home Page

Intense Debate

Intense Debate Home Page

Songbird

Songbird Home Page

WordPress

Wordpress Home Page

Size can be relative based on the placement of the button and other design elements on the page. Your call to action button doesn’t always have to be huge but … you’re probably better off with it being bigger rather than smaller. (No jokes here please.)

Don’t be afraid to make your offer! Be confident. Not doing so is a subliminal sign to users that the product or offer isn’t valuable.

Call To Action Button Colors

Size is a relatively easy subject to tackle. The color of call to action buttons, on the other hand, is a hot topic. Jonathan Mendez (who you should be reading) touts the use of red in his 7 Rules for Landing Page Optimization.

Tell your brand team to go to hell and throw your styleguide out the window. Red buttons can by themselves raise your conversion rate. Green can be good as well but most times in our testing if color matters it is red that wins.

Not everyone agrees that red is the answer. And clearly none of the examples above took this advice to heart. Yet three out of four (Songbird being the outlier) have buttons that adhere to the site’s current styleguide and color palette. So who’s to say red wouldn’t provide a boost in conversion rate.

Why is color such a big deal?

Research reveals all human beings make a subconscious judgment about a person, environment, or item within 90 seconds of initial viewing and that between 62% and 90% of that assessment is based on color alone. [Institute for Color Research]

Each color is associated with different emotions and meanings. The ‘red’ debate revolves around whether the benefits of the color – passion, desire, excitement – outweigh the drawbacks – anger, danger and debt.

Red should be used sparingly, so as not to overwhelm users, and should also be first on your list of colors to test on your call to action button.

Lets face it. The speed of our society has accelerated and time is perhaps our most guarded resource. A site has a very short window to capture, retain and direct a user. So red doesn’t sound like a bad idea. In fact, any contrasting color might do the trick.

Ogilvy on Advertising

Less talked about is the color of the text on the call to action button.

David Ogilvy, often called the Father of Advertising, made black text famous in his book Ogilvy on Advertising. (Yes, the man practiced what he preached.)

Yet the overwhelming number of call to action buttons use white text on a colored background. Ogilvy would certainly have thrown a fit if he saw white text on black.

Three out of the four examples above (Songbird being the outlier again) use reversed out text. Is that a lost opportunity?

Don’t forget to try a black text version when testing your call to action button.

You’ve got nothing to lose and everything to gain by testing the words, size and color of your call to action buttons. It is one of the easiest things you can do to improve your business.

Post Click SEO

January 27 2009 // Marketing + SEO // Comments Off on Post Click SEO

post click seo

Should search engine optimization professionals be more involved in post-click marketing? Yes.

SEO shouldn’t end with the click. Getting the click is half the battle. What happens after that click is just as important. Post click marketing has taken off as more and more realize the need to optimize pages and conversion paths.

SEO should be leading the charge, not taking a back seat.

Post Click SEO

Keyword targeting adjustments are the first way in which SEO can influence post click marketing. What keywords are bringing users to the page and which of those keywords is performing best from a conversion perspective?

Decisions can be made to alter the keyword targeting of the page to optimize for the better performing keyword(s). Traffic may go down but the effective yield of that traffic may go up based on the higher conversion rate.

This process might also help identify areas for new content that better meet the needs of those arriving on poorly performing keywords.

Meta descriptions and titles are extremely valuable from a post click perspective because they can set expectations and even include a call to action. Optimizing solely for the keyword or keyword phrases in the meta description might not a) encourage clicks and b) may drive unqualified clicks.

Remember, search engine marketers are constantly testing new ad copy to increase click through rates and conversion. Search engine optimizers should do the same, using the larger canvass of meta description.

The meta description can even be used for promotional purposes. Changing the meta description on a product page to include an offer of free shipping will likely increase the click yield and, if the page matches their expectation, will continue to convert effectively.

On-site optimization in the form of keyword density, headers and even bold text can all have an impact on conversion. On-site SEO is about making the page easier to understand. While the initial audience for this optimization is a search engine, those same changes help everyday readers.

A highly descriptive header will help tell both the search engine and the reader what that page is about. H2s and H3s can help further explain the topic of that page. Again, both search engines and readers benefit.

Keyword density also increases the readability of a page. Here’s an example.

The procedure was a success and fully solved the patient’s condition.

This type of sentence might appear near the end of a descriptive paragraph. The writer probably referenced the procedure and condition beforehand and believes that the reader will fill in the blanks, turn generalizations into specifics and make the mental connections needed to gain comprehension. Search engines will do none of these things.

Instead, what if the sentence read as follows.

The stomach stapling procedure was a success and fully solved the patient’s obesity condition.

Changing generalizations to specifics and filling in the mental connections we make ensure that search engines and users immediately understand the content upon scanning the page. And people are scanning pages more than ever.

Don’t make your users do the work.

Post-click marketing and SEO

Companies that seek to maximize clicks in isolation and conversion in isolation will see results.  But those results will be less than what could have been obtained. Don’t be fooled by the false positive of this silo mentality.

Search engine optimization and post-click marketing should work in tandem to get the most out of every click.

Should You Submit Your Own Content To Social Sites?

January 15 2009 // Marketing + Social Media // Comments Off on Should You Submit Your Own Content To Social Sites?

Is it ethical to submit your own content to social sites?

Should you Digg your own blog post? Should you bookmark it on Delicious? How about Stumbling it too? (If you can.)

promote your own content on social sites

My answer? Yes.

If you’re not confident enough to promote your own content, why would others do it for you? Sure, in a perfect world you want others to get the ball rolling but inertia remains high. In this instance, don’t rely on the kindness of strangers.

Remember, you’re not trying to game the system. You simply want to give your content the best chance to find an audience. Would you exclude your content from being indexed by Google? Heck no!

Would you refrain from Tweeting about a new blog post or exclude your own blog from your FriendFeed? Of course not!

Again, what happens to your content once it is submitted is out of your control. It could sit there in a corner doing nothing or it might find an audience who likes and shares it with friends. But it’s up to you to ensure it’s there in the first place.

Submitting versus spamming

Moderation in all things. Don’t go overboard. If you’re cranking out a lot of content, not all of it might be worthy of being submitted to every site. Pick your spots. Learn what works best on Reddit versus Digg. Figure out what content is most interesting to those using StumbleUpon. For the best marketing advice for linkedin automation for messaging , people can always check it out here!

Your personal brand will suffer if you are labeled a spammer, so don’t over submit your content.

Self submission increases content quality

Before you submit your own content, ask yourself if it is really worth submitting. If you hesitate that should tell you something. Again, you must be confident, and proud, of your content to submit it to social sites.

Use self submission as a filter to make your content better. It’ll help you deliver more value to readers and increase the chances of natural social media adoption.

No one likes a know it all

For best results you should participate on these sites. Not only will you better understand them but you can help and promote others. After all, these are social sites. Take as little as 15 minutes out of each day to promote recent posts by your favorite blogs or newly discovered websites.

Only promoting your own content makes you look selfish, vain, condescending and insecure all at the same time. But never promoting your own content might make you invisible.

eCommerce and RSS

January 11 2009 // eCommerce + Marketing + Technology // 1 Comment

Are eCommerce sites overlooking RSS?

RSS still hasn’t hit the mainstream, but could eCommerce sites help drive RSS adoption and at the same time increase the effectiveness and reduce the costs of their communications with customers? Yes!

Too many eCommerce sites seem to believe that the only place for RSS exists if they have their own blog. And lets face it, many don’t have the bandwidth to produce a decent blog. It’s a resource drain and one that many find hard to explain during budget meetings.

Yet, most eCommerce sites already have blogs, they just don’t know it. They’re called newsletters. So the time and effort argument is irrelevant.

Why push newsletters via RSS?

Most eCommerce sites use email as their primary method of communication. Yet, email has three big (and growing) drawbacks: deliverability, over saturation and cost.

Deliverability issues persist as email finds its way into spam folders or bounces due to changed email addresses. A 2007 Internet Retailer survey indicated that only 40% of respondents experienced 90%+ deliverability. And a 2008 Return Path report showed commercial deliverability at 88%.

Just like the old direct mail world, people move … a lot. Here’s the data from Jupiter Research (2008) and Return Path (2007) respectively.

17% of Americans create a new email address every 6 months

30% of subscribers change email addresses annually

Part of the deliverability problem is over saturation. Email marketers have overused the medium, flooding mailboxes to the point where users feel overwhelmed. The result has been a steady decline in open rates, from nearly 40% in 2003 to 13% in 2008.

eMarketer Email Marketing Open Rates 2007-2008

Many eCommerce sites have increased the frequency of email to respond to declining open rates. The open rate might be low on each email but if you send six emails a month your total open rate might wind up being pretty good.

Yet, there is incremental cost associated with this increased volume. Not only that but it contributes to the over saturation problem which negatively impacts open rate and effectiveness. It’s a vicious and costly cycle in which eCommerce sites wind up paying more for less.

The advantages of RSS

RSS solves most, if not all, of the deliverability problem. There is no spam filter or black list. I’d also argue that you’re less likely to switch readers than email addresses, thus reducing the churn rate of your subscriber base.

Email has become unncessarily intrusive and ephemeral. An email will be pushed ‘below the fold’ of a person’s inbox with greater speed as the volume of email a person receives increases. The adage ‘out of sight, out of mind’ is apt in this instance.

Over saturation might be an issue in RSS but the format is a more ‘on demand’ type of solution. TV networks are starting to understand this, that forcing people to watch their show at 8pm on Thursday might not be optimal. Similarly, RSS allows subscribers to engage with your content on their own terms.

Subscribers will still get an inbound notification that new content has arrived, so you’ll still see an immediate (though perhaps less pronounced) traffic surge. And the content will have a longer life due to increased delivery and visibility in the reader.

Did I mention RSS would be radically cheaper than email? Leaps and bounds cheaper really.

But didn’t eCommerce already try RSS?

Yes and no. When RSS first arrived on the scene there was a big ruckus about how RSS could replace email. The problem was marketers didn’t have a clue how to really make that happen. Most didn’t even use RSS and found it confusing at best.

I speak from experience. I was smack dab in the middle of it all as Director of Marketing at Alibris. I sensed that it had potential but I didn’t fully grok RSS until later on, after I’d left the eCommerce space.

The topic was a blip on the radar at conferences and no one really wanted to upset the applecart. Email was a solid performer and search was the shiny new channel.

So any attempts made in those years were premature and uninformed for the most part.

Why could RSS succeed this time?

If eCommerce sites began to understand that RSS could help them achieve their goals they could be a force of change for the technology. RSS needs to be relaunched, rebranded or both. Who better to do that then those in the business of selling.

In addition, the reader market has matured and stabilized. I see no reason why Google wouldn’t want to partner with major retailers and offer their customers an easy (perhaps cobranded) way to start using RSS using Google Reader.

Finally, RSS can be used more creatively by eCommerce sites. In a tough economy, why not let users select products and create a price watch feed? Or let users subscribe to reviews of a product to help them through the sales cycle?

Email versus RSS

email vs rss

The revenue stream from email has obscured the growing cost of the channel. I don’t know of a single eCommerce retailer who really ‘likes’ their email service provider. The time and money dedicated to producing and sending email seems to grow and not shrink.

Yet, instead of looking at new ways to communicate with customers many simply look to ‘fix’ email or find another service provider. Deliverability in particular has given rise to a number of new businesses. That should be a clear signal for change.

I’m not saying eCommerce should abandon email, but the ones who figure out RSS will have a marked advantage.

Call To Action. Read Now.

December 29 2008 // Marketing // 1 Comment

Read Now Call To Action Button

Test your call to action if you want to succeed in 2009.

Sure, you can work on your site design. Describe your product in new and better ways. Add testimonials. Get yourself a Twitter account. Try out a video tutorial. There are plenty of other things you can do in the quest for better conversion.

But testing your call to action should be at the top of your New Year’s resolution list.

The BusinessDirectory defines call to action as follows:

Words that urge the reader, listener, or viewer of a sales promotion message to take an immediate action, such as “Write Now,” “Call Now,” or (on Internet) “Click Here.” A retail advertisement or commercial without a call-to-action is considered incomplete and ineffective.

The Firefox team has been doing some testing and revealed the results in a post aptly titled The Download Button Drives Downloads. Using multivariate testing on the main Firefox product page, they found 4 of the 16 different variations performed significantly worse than the control or existing page.

The common thread among these four poor performers? The call to action on the download button. The four laggards used ‘Try Now’ while other variations used ‘Download’ and ‘Free Download’.

Firefox Try Now Call To Action Test

Words matter!

A call to action should be active, short and easy to understand. Simply tell them what you want them to do. Some are uncomfortable with this concept, thinking it’s a bit overkill. But it works. Keep it concrete and simple. Let natural consumer behavior take over.

Don’t get sucked into the idea that you or those you know won’t respond to this type of call to action. You’re wrong. You are not the target market and you likely have responded but simply don’t remember. The act of not remembering is, in some ways, the measure of success for a call to action.

Email marketers understand (or should) the power of subject lines. In the past I’ve seen a dramatic lift by simply inserting the call to action ‘open now’ at the beginning of the subject line. Sure it sounds a bit crass, but 10%+ lift can’t be ignored. And I doubt those people recall the overt ‘open now’ call to action.

Further evidence comes from a 2004 Advertising.com research study that analyzed the impact of various design elements in over 10 million impressions served for three unique advertisers.

Of the tested design elements, call-to-action had the greatest impact on performance — with Advertiser A experiencing an 85 percent lift in revenue earned per thousand impressions, or RPM, for banners with a call-to-action over those without. It was not surprising to find that the presence of a call-to-action impacted performance; however, the significant lift in RPM substantiates the importance of strong call-to-action messaging in banner ads.

In the web world the call to action is generally a button. In future posts I’ll discuss the importance and impact of size, color and placement on the call to action button.

Subscribe now to make sure you don’t miss these future installments. (See what I just did there?)

2009 Internet and Technology Predictions

December 23 2008 // Advertising + Marketing + SEM + SEO + Social Media + Technology // 9 Comments

Now is the time when bloggers go on the record with their thoughts for the year ahead. Place your bets! Stake your claim! Here’s mine.

Crystal Ball 2009 Predictions for Internet and Technology

Facebook Becomes A Portal

Realizing that social media and advertising is like oil and water, Facebook repositions itself as a portal leveraging Microsoft’s Live Search as the revenue model. This also might result in the potential acquisition of Netvibes to provide a more robust offering to compete with Yahoo!

Identity Systems Fail

Confused about the difference between OpenID, Facebook Connect and Google Friend Connect, users throw up their hands and decide not to use any of the above.

Video Advertising Succeeds

The adoption of video is surging faster than many expected. Longer formats and better quality will bring even more eyeballs who will grudgingly accept advertising.

Microformats Go Mainstream

Why they aren’t already is shocking. Nevertheless, in 2009 we’ll see microformats become a standard and search results will become far more robust as a result.

Banner CTR Becomes Obsolete

Brands will finally realize that measuring success by click through rate (CTR) isn’t working. Measurement ‘beyond clicks’ will be the new yardstick, whether that’s through new brand advertising measurement services like Vizu or through monitoring services like Brandwatch and Trackur among a gaggle of others.

RSS Adoption Spikes

Someone will (finally) figure out how to market RSS to ‘the masses’ who will grasp the sublime benefits of having content come to you instead of the other way around.

Kindle 2.0 Flops

Amid a weak economy Amazon releases the newest version of Kindle. Other readers have gained ground where Kindle has not and at the core Kindle is a solution without a problem.

Google Search Share Stalls

The move by Facebook (see above) causes a radical change in the search landscape. Microsoft passes Yahoo! for second place and talks about a Microsoft Yahoo merger are (unbearably) reignited.

FriendFeed Surpasses Twitter

FriendFeed adoption increases at an accelerated pace due to quick innovation, uncluttered design and an interface that lends itself to communication.

Someone ‘Dies’

Users reach social media overload and VCs get even more nervous about revenue creating social media shrinkage. In this instance ‘Dying’ means a company goes under or is purchased for a song. My short list includes Plurk, Twitter, Digg and Seesmic. This isn’t a reflection of the people or product but the inability to truly reach the mainstream with a service that has a profit model.

There are plenty of other things that I believe will happen in 2009, but they seem more obvious or an extension of current trends. Instead I tried to be a bit more bold, at least on a few of my predictions.

We’ll check in this time next year to see how I fared. In the meantime, feel free to comment and provide your feedback and reaction to my predictions.

Forgive Me StumbleUpon For I Have Sinned

December 04 2008 // Advertising + Humor + Marketing + Technology // 1 Comment

StumbleUpon No EntryThe other day I updated my StumbleUpon toolbar (well, I was essentially forced to) and immediately couldn’t Stumble posts from this blog or my Used Books Blog. Each time I tried my Stumble just would not go through, stalling at a blank white box where the review and tagging takes place. I tried numerous times on a couple different browsers. Nothing worked.

I assumed that something had gone awry with the new toolbar. I even posted a message on FriendFeed calling eBay lame. But you know the old saying about assuming, right?

I sent feedback to StumbleUpon about my problem and got a prompt reply as follows.

Hello,

Thanks for writing in.

After reviewing your account history, it appears
that you’ve repeatedly submitted content from one
or more sites in particular.

Our site software detects behavior like this to
prevent the unauthorized use of StumbleUpon to
promote a specific Web site, product or service.

This limit will likely remain in place until you
use the StumbleUpon Toolbar more frequently to
rate, review and discover Web sites that can
shared with other members.

If you’re interested in using StumbleUpon to
advertise a Web site, please look into our
Advertising program:
http://www.stumbleupon.com/ads

If you have any other questions, please review our
Terms of Service and Community Rules:

http://www.stumbleupon.com/terms/
http://www.stumbleupon.com/rules.html

Thanks for your feedback,

Oops. I admit, I’ve only been Stumbling my own sites lately. However, I think they’re pretty good so I don’t see anything too wrong with that. Also, I’m pretty transparent. I don’t have a Stumble army nor do I have multiple profiles so I can distribute my Stumbles across accounts and dodge the software.

But I get it and I’m not really complaining. It’s not what StumbleUpon is really supposed to be about. And I respect them for protecting the product and StumbleUpon business model. It also got me to Stumble again and I discovered some interesting sites and images. So … thanks for that.

My one nit would be that I had to contact support to get this information. Instead of presenting the white box of frustration I suggest that StumbleUpon simply insert the text I received into that area. Not only would I have immediately understood what was going on and not throw invective into the htmlosphere but StumbleUpon would have saved a bit of money on customer support.

Forgive me StumbleUpon for I have sinned. My penance? Stumble.

Cyber Monday Facts and Fiction

November 26 2008 // Marketing // 1 Comment

Cyber Monday is defined as the Monday after Black Friday. It is heralded as the kick-off to the online holiday shopping season and/or the busiest day for online retailers.

What does it mean to me? Cyber Monday could be the case study for the power of marketing.

Hovercat

Cyber Monday hinges on the idea that shoppers make purchases upon returning to work on the Monday after Thanksgiving. These shoppers might be avoiding Black Friday altogether or are buying items they were unable to purchase offline. Combine this with the (once) natural day-of-week effect that shows Monday as the most trafficked day for retail and Cyber Monday seems to make a lot of sense.

In reality, Cyber Monday is a clever lie created by savvy marketers. The term was coined by Shop.org in 2005 and immediately drew media attention both good and bad. Naysayers pointed to the fact that Cyber Monday didn’t really pan out when you looked at the numbers.

But the numbers have changed in the last few years and what we’ve witnessed is the triumph of marketing.

Cyber Monday Statistics

It was widely reported in 2005 that Cyber Monday was historically only the 12th largest online shopping day of the year. Even a Shop.org study found that the busiest shopping day in 2005 was actually December 12th.

This trend continued until 2010 when Cyber Monday was the highest ranked online shopping day, raking in over one billion in sales.

2010 Top Holiday Ecommerce Days

That trend continued with Cyber Monday ranked the highest online shopping day in 2011. What’s fascinating here is that this is happening against the backdrop of some strong trends to the contrary.

Broadband adoption and fast internet connections have made the ‘wait-to-surf-at-the-office’ behavior far less powerful. And in recent years smartphones and tablets have all but erased these patterns.

In fact, more and more retailers are finding that Monday is no longer the biggest day of the week. MailChimp Research also seems to indicate that Monday is less important than it used to be.

Day of Week Email Statistics

Lastly, while Cyber Monday may be the biggest day of the year it does not reside in the biggest week of the year.

eCommerce Holiday Sales Trends 2007 to 2011

So despite the bulk of the sales happening in the later weeks marketers have figured out a way to crank up the volume on Cyber Monday.

Is Black Friday really black?

Black Friday is a big shopping day for retailers. But is it the biggest day? Maybe.

Snopes has the data through 2002 which shows Black Friday ranks between the 4th and 8th biggest day of the year. Black Friday did take the top spot in 2003 and 2005 according to International Council of Shopping Centers. However, I’ve seen conflicting data from other sources.

More recent data from ShopperTrak seems to suggest that Black Friday has secured the top spot. Once again, belief in the Black Friday myth, and the marketing muscle behind it, made it real.

Seth Godin hits the nail on the head in All Marketers Are Liars.

Successful marketers don’t tell the truth. They don’t talk about features or even benefits. Instead, they tell a story. A story we want to believe.

Marketers succeed when they tell us a story that fits our worldview, a story that we intuitively embrace and the share with our friends.

Within this context, Cyber Monday is a well constructed and beautiful fiction. The knee-jerk reaction is to believe the Cyber Monday story (as well as Black Friday) and most won’t do the research to validate that belief.

TL;DR

The fact is Cyber Monday and Black Friday were both fiction, but ones that we collectively embraced (even Google). As such, our collective suspension of disbelief led both to become a reality. Marketers succeeded in telling a story that people believed. Perception became reality.

I Love Firefox Metrics

November 25 2008 // Marketing + Technology // Comments Off on I Love Firefox Metrics

I’m a direct marketer at heart which means I like numbers and I absolutely love testing. The other day I found the Mozilla Blog of Metrics via a FriendFeed post by AJ Batac. The blog is subtitled ‘When in doubt, sample it out …’ and gives me yet another reason to like, perhaps even love, Firefox and Mozilla.

Mozilla is moving forward with multivariate testing but wanted to crawl before they walked. So, they conducted a simple A/B test on the call to action on their download button.

Now, I probably could have told you that ‘Download Now – Free’ would outperform ‘Try Firefox 3’ However, they admit that the test was more about validating the tool and process rather than about the actual test.

What’s exciting (to me at least) is that Mozilla is going to run these tests and (hopefully) follow a fact-based decision making process. Do any of us want to sit through another meeting where the merits of design or copy are debated endlessly? Too many organizations continue to design based on instinct, opinion and best practices instead of testing their way to success.

You and your team are not the target market, and best practices may not be best for your particular product, site or audience. What worked at your last place of business may not work again. In fact, what worked last year may not work now, which is why organizations should always re-test assumptions via challengers.

If we’ve piqued your interest, please note that we’ll soon have some exciting findings related to a currently ongoing multivariate test at the main Firefox product page (www.mozilla.com/firefox).

Yes, you’ve piqued my interest! I’ll be eager to see the results of multivariate testing and hope that Mozilla can help usher more organizations into a test-and-learn, fact-based decision making environment.

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