You only get one chance to make a first impression. Get it wrong and you’ll never be able to completely shake it off. At best you’ll be the person who walked on stage with toilet paper stuck to his shoe who actually gave a good presentation. But year’s later you’ll still be remembered as the toilet paper guy. If my … Read More
Perfect Website Equilibrium (looking good isn’t enough)
Finding the right company to design or radically overhaul a website is incredibly difficult. It shouldn’t be, but it somehow is. In theory you just need to find someone who can produce what you want for a reasonable price. But all too often you’ll find companies who don’t reply to emails, don’t read the brief you send them, can’t follow … Read More
Interruption versus While-You’re-Here Marketing
Neil Davidson recently wrote an interesting post on Interruption Marketing: Rumors of its Death have been Greatly Exaggerated: “It’s hard to interrupt us, but it can be done. Not by being loud, but by being different. Be witty, tell a story, and tell it to us when we want to be interrupted, and you can leap out from the clutter.“ Google … Read More
Poke the box is bad for you
Seth Godin’s new book, Poke the Box, is annoying me. The main criticism I hear of his ideas is that although they’re brilliant, they’re not practical. Interesting but not actionable. This is true. I’ve had the pleasure of seeing Seth speak twice, speaking with him and grinning like an idiot with him once, and have read most of his books. … Read More
Fewer people are looking for your software. More people are itching.
Google trends never lies. Less people are looking for your software than ever before. And the trend suggests a continuing decline. The reason is simple. They don’t need it. When people have a problem, they go looking for a solution. If people don’t realise they have a problem, they look for pictures of cute animals. And if technology means that … Read More
How much can you crap on your users before they notice the smell?
Many people are concerned by how much information Google have on them. Yet many of these same people share an incredible amount of information with their Facebook friends, and often with friends of their friends. I use Facebook, and think it’s great. But I’m careful to the point of paranoia with what I share. Like AdWords, many of Facebook’s defaults … Read More
How do you compete with free? Quickly!
Napster and Spotify have an uphill battle because of their competition. They compete with your radio, your MP3 collection, your CDs, your dusty record collection, internet radio, illegal downloads, the music collection of your friends, apathy and more. So how do they persuade people to part with their cash? They do it quickly. Their website main pages are classic examples … Read More
Drop the hype and deliver quality
We live in an age of hype. Every product or service we come across is the latest, greatest, fastest and cleanest, and independent tests consistently prove it. Yet people appear to be growing weary of hype. 2011 might be a good time to start focusing on actual quality rather than hot air and hype. Take the concept of internet marketing gurus. Most … Read More
When will the Facebook bubble burst?
I’m perpetually baffled by Facebook. I use it and I like it, but I don’t see how they’re ever going to make enough money from their advertising to break-even, let alone make a profit. To me it’s simple. I go to Google because I want to find something. The search results and ads that I see in Google are (mostly) relevant … Read More
What should I call my product?
Whether you’re about to launch a new product or are considering renaming an existing one, deciding what to call it often proves to surprisingly difficult. One approach is to name according to what the product does. For instance some of our clients have products like System Mechanic, PDF Annotator and Advanced Outlook Repair. Another approach is to make the name fit … Read More