Government Services
Proprietary data, global reach and complete accountability for federal, state & global government agencies.
Learn More
Yahoo! and the Search for Intuitive Design
Theodore Cohen | September 21st, 2007
Intuitively and simply designed products and interfaces are the “end all, be all” in business. Businesses live and die based on this functionality.
In this regard, Yahoo! has seemingly missed the boat on their sponsored search advertising interface. The interface that Yahoo! employs isn’t “awful” by any means, but it does seem to lack intuitive design. The consistently top performing products and companies are always those that look at their customers and try to imagine their quintessential needs and wants. They are able to synthesize this with powerful features, yielding a stellar good. Perfect examples of this would be Google AdWords and Apple’s iPod. Both products perform exceptionally with customers because they offer so much flexibility and such ease of use, while mitigating much of the technical jargon and difficult procedures that their competitors sometimes incorporate.
Regarding Yahoo!’s oversights, we must first turn to their bidding system. In Yahoo!, when you reach the portion of the sponsored advertising campaign creation process that has to do with setting keyword bids, you are prompted with a graph that attempts to detail an estimated amount of clicks, impressions and so on. Yahoo! also suggests a generally too-high starting bid amount. In order to correct the bid, it requires that you change the bid amount and hit an “update†button, otherwise your new price settings are not applied.
Perhaps Yahoo! was trying to take the guesswork out of bidding and trying to help novice advertisers achieve better visibility. If so, I disagree with the approach. Where monetary aspects are being introduced, it is best to err on the side of saving money rather than improving visibility. Google, for example, doesn’t suggest an initial price; it lets you put in an amount you think would be reasonable for keyword bids and then gives you the option of seeing if those prices are “high enough†to get activity. Bid first, then show the graph; it’s simple, accurate and effective, without seemingly trying to extract additional money from the user.
Posted in Technology, Yahoo! | No Comments
Farewell to Business 2.0
Mike Mothner | September 20th, 2007
I have to say that I am genuinely sad to read details about the final issue of Business 2.0, which I will unequivocally place in the top 5 of my favorite magazines.
Clearly, the last 5 years have been tough ones for the print industry. With the explosion of the web, ad dollars have been in competition, and ultimately billions have moved from traditional media to online, making the likes of Google rich. Newspapers have shed staff around the country as they struggle to remain solvent, and I have heard rumblings for months that Business 2.0 was struggling for survival.
In fact, another of my favorite magazines, Fast Company, only remained alive because Joe Mansueto, the founder of Morningstar, purchased both Inc Magazine and Fast Company and made the pledge not to shutter the latter, despite a common consensus that most any other buyer would do so.
Regardless of how the web has changed the way we consume media, nothing will replace my love of lounging around in a pocket of free time, flipping through my favorite magazines from cover to cover; Business 2.0 was one of the very few to have reached this status, along with Wired, Inc. and The Economist (given sufficient time!).
Posted in Random! | No Comments
The Importance of Appearance
Mike Stone | September 19th, 2007
According to the State of Retailing Online report released today, Online retailers plan major investments in improved web site design.
“88% of the 150 retailers responding to the survey have prioritized improving product detail pages, 80% adding online images and 76% A/B testing of offers and promotions. In fact, 14 types of web site improvements were rated investment priorities by more than half of the merchants participating in the survey.â€
This movement is welcomed here at Wpromote, as we are constantly stressing to our clients the need for a site that captures user attention and landing pages that convert at a high rate. Often users who are new to Search Marketing ignore the aesthetics and move right into the “how much traffic can I get and what does it take to be number one?†I constantly encounter greenhorns and professionals alike that are too eager to increase visibility and efficiency to take a step back and look at the actual site they are promoting.
By taking a portion of your marketing dollars and putting them towards site improvement, you are ultimately increasing the worth of each dollar you put towards marketing in the future. Today’s users are becoming increasingly savvy and competition in the search engines is growing daily. Your customer is only a back button away from your competition at all times. By keeping your site up to date or ahead of the times you are able to create buyer confidence and generate return visitors.
Posted in Internet News, Random!, Wpromote | No Comments
MySpace Targeted Ads: Friend or Foe?
Michael Block | September 18th, 2007
If the Internets were so inclined, they could probably write a pretty good biography on you.
They know which pages you browse, which searches you run, which products you buy, which pictures and movies you look at, which blogs you read and more, not to mention the fact that they have your social security number, credit card number, home address and other scary-specific private information floating around somewhere inside them. They know what you like; they know what you don’t like; they know who you are.
Perhaps the only reassurances that we, as users of the World Wide Web, have are the following:
1) We browse with at least some anonymity through our IP addresses, which, hypothetically could be being used by anyone,
Posted in Google, Internet News, Random! | 3 Comments
Acquisition Fever Continues: Yahoo purchases Zimbra
Mike Mothner | September 17th, 2007
As reported today, Yahoo! continued the recent frenzy of acquisitions by purchasing Zimbra, a popular maker of an email and calendar suite, for a cool $350 million in cash. This seems to be capping off a flurry of activity by interim Yahoo! CEO Jerry Yang who took over after the departure of Terry Semel.
This is a very, very smart acquisition in my opinion. Yahoo! currently is heavily invested in the e-mail space, with the Yahoo! mail system counting over 250 million users worldwide. I imagine the purchase will allow Yahoo! to leverage much of Zimbra’s excellent email, calendar and collaboration technology, already popular among it’s educational and corporate clients.
This purchase is setting up what will turn out to be a bloody battle of the desktop and the home page:
One of the biggest questions will be whether or not web-based software such as Google Apps, Yahoo! Mail and Gmail, can become functionally capable enough to actually start taking market share from Microsoft Office. They have come a long way to be sure, but as cool as I think Google Apps is, and as much as I hate shelling out for dozens of copies of Office each year it seems, there is no way in the foreseeable future that even an open-minded, web-loving company like Wpromote will take that plunge.
Posted in Google, Microsoft, Yahoo! | No Comments
MSN Slings Mud as Google Encroaches
Michael Block | September 13th, 2007
In the same week that Google got into bed with Capgemini to help it break into the business application market, MSN criticized Google’s ability to produce such programs up to the standards that consumers are used to seeing from companies like (oh, I don’t know) Microsoft, for example. CNET News covers the blow-by-blow in wonderful detail, however, I did want to highlight one quotation in particular from a Microsoft rep in an address from Monday:
“We believe competition is good for customers and the industry. That said, customers tell us that our solutions deliver the ease of use, reliability and security that enterprises need.”
Let’s pause here. Okay, have you stopped laughing yet?
You don’t have to be Steve Jobs to know that the one thing that Microsoft cannot tolerate is competition. Well, let me rephrase that: Microsoft loves competition, just not competition that it cannot trample, buy out or render obsolete through immense investment in R&D. Okay, let’s proceed with more of the quotation:
Posted in Google, Internet News, Microsoft, MSN | No Comments
