What’s your Life’s Roadmap?
May 31, 2008 | Leave a Comment
Had a quick email exchange with a friend — I liked the roadmap he rattled off quickly:
1) Make money anyway possible
2) Create something of value that makes money
3) Help others (in whatever way you’d like to contribute to society)
There are ways to make money out there that aren’t glamorous — and although we may not be contributing to society by doing them, they can give us the means to our end … and so it’s just an interim step to helping others.
Lessons on Search and the Simplicity of Google
May 23, 2008 | Leave a Comment
These are just some scattered thoughts I have on Search. These numbers are based off a large general base of searches from a project I’ve been working on…
- The number of user’s queries that actually result in a match is ~70%. Which means on average, each user does ~1.4 searches to narrow down to ultimately clicking on at least 1 result. If you were to improve that average, you could assume you’ve improved user’s search results and allowed them to find what they were seeking faster. However, there is an assumption that user’s knowledge/use of how to use search engines improves over time/use, so the user is getting their results easier by understanding how to use multiple keywords and such.
- Tons of users type ‘google’ in just to find a Google search box — I think they just think Google is how you search the web and that their current search box won’t actually do that.
- Google has just a search box — that’s where the billions are. The billions are in relevant text ads based on a search. They don’t put the latest headlines on their homepage, because that will distract the user. They want the user to search for what they want, then hopefully click on a sponsored result. ~21% of the time, the user clicks on a sponsored result.
- Google doesn’t [til lately] show images or videos in their search results. The “glimmer” of a photo or video distracts the user to click on them — when Google really wants you to click on a sponsored text result.
- Even if you could create the “Google killer” and started gaining traction in the market, Google OWNS sponsored text advertising. OK, ok, Ask, MSN, and Yahoo all have their own initiatives (MSN AdCenter, Ask Sponsored Listings, Yahoo! Search Marketing) [and there are other 2nd/3rd tier alternatives: Miva, Looksmart, etc] … but advertisers flock to Google right now. It likely would take years for them to flock to you, even if you had an easy system for them to use and had gaining market share. Google dominates the advertiser/money inflow on the web. I don’t think we’ll see a Google Killer for text search — just like we haven’t seen an Outlook killer for email, or an MS Word killer for word processing.
IDEA #84 - Reskin The Web
May 22, 2008 | 6 Comments
I kind of like this idea. Imagine this — users install a plugin to their browser; then they can view various designs of a website. Other designers/users can post new designs of a website — basically reskinning websites. Users can then vote on the various designs and use whichever one they want whenever they visit that website.
This works very well if the website itself agreed to allowing this to happen — because then anytime their style sheet or classes were updated in their source code, the designers could easily know and make the appropriate changes. It basically would be standardized a bit — the CSS for a site, so that it was easy for designers to reskin their website.
The other thing is ads — I’m sure some skins would want to rearrange a website so that the ads didn’t appear anymore — that wouldn’t be good/nice, and likely the website owner would keep altering their CSS/tags to ensure those design skins didn’t work in our system.
Think of this as allowing people out there to turn the web into a giant MySpace, where you can change the design of any website/webpage out there — but as a browsing user, you see the default skin [which is how the website wants themselves conveys in the first place], but then you could choose from a drop-down of design options to see what other user’s interpretations are of that website.
Yes there might be some ‘hate’ skins — but who is really going to see those on a regular basis? If those users hate a site, then they likely aren’t going to be visiting it anyhow.
Etailers - What To Use Twitter For
May 22, 2008 | 2 Comments
Attention Etailers: Here are some simple/quick ideas for how to use Twitter and increase sales…
- Why not post a new Twitter “tweet” every 30 mins or 60 mins, posting the hottest selling item of the hour? Or which item(s) are trending with number of views, or number of sales?
- Why not post a deal every hour? “This hour’s deal — Sony Digital Camera for $69! While Supplies Last - 10 available”. Woot is huge and fun — it’s an addiciton — you never know what they are going to post and they are usually great deals. So clear out your excess inventory or clearance items with vast discounts on some things — heck, don’t even make a profit on the items you post here — because you’ll start getting new customers, as word of mouth start telling their friends about these crazy hourly deals you have going on. And really, how hard is it to have a coupon/discount code created ‘on the fly’ each hour [or have the whole week planned, but only allow the coupons to work for 1-hour]?
- Post favorable feedback testimonials from customers — and/or reviews they just posted to your website about a product; …START A CONVERSATION!
- Post a daily tip, and/or article related to your niche.
Everything I’ve mentioned above could simply be done with a free Wordpress blog, which you can time when the items will post to your blog [change the date/time stamp]. And then use the Twitter plugin for Wordpress that will auto-publish your blog posts to your Twitter account.
Do you know a Web GUI Designer?
May 15, 2008 | 2 Comments
I have various projects here and there that require someone that can take the pencil drawings I create for various pages, and turn them into actual designed webpages — just as a PSD file, I don’t need cutups. I need an interface guru [for the web].
If you know someone that’s excellent, can show me some previous examples of their work, and is available for some part-time work — please contact me.
