Bob Browning's blog

Google calendar is a great piece of work, smooth as silk, very functional. But sadly missing one item I neeed – synchronisation to Outlook. Without this its no use to me.

I will carry on using Plaxo – nice system and syncs beautifully – most of the time.

Web 2.0 and AJAX are the way of the future for sure, Microsoft is about to lose its word processing market as new web-based word processing applications such as Writely take over.

Or not.

I was too late to sign up for writely, but there is a new application at http://www.ajaxwrite.com/ which you can use for free. Sadly no cigar – it is full of bugs. But an interesting demonstration of what is possible.I think it exposes some limitations. I would be interested to know if people who have tried other products such as Writely see the same sort of thing.

1. To edit a file you have to upload it. As most broadband has a 256k upload speed this could take a while for large documents.
2. Can a server-based application ever have anough control over the printer to get things formatted just right?
3. How can the sever-based application save the file to the right path on my computer?
4. I like to edit pictures in my image editor and just copy and paste direct into my word document – will that ever be possible?

These are just a few things that occured to me, I am sure there are more. My feeling is that this is never really going to work 100% unless and until Micosoft decides to get into this market and adapt IE for the requirements of its web-based applications. Thereby opening up yet more security holes no doubt. And why would they do that anyway and open themselves up to real competition?I remain a sceptic.

A phrase often used to critisise a senior politician or corporate manager is “He couldn’t run a whelk stall” – attributed I believe to Winston Churchill. However the skills to run a whelk stall are quite different from the skills to run a major corporate department, and I am not convinced that they are any simpler:

1. Total control of detail. You have to know everything that happens, if you run out of wooden forks you are the only person to blame.
2. Working always on the edge. If you do run out of whelks you are out of business – period. There is no corporate infrastructure to help out.
3. Don’t delegate. You tell people what to do and then follow up to make sure they have done it. If you delegate whelk-ordering to your assistant Jimmy, it is absolutely no help to know that it was his fault you are out of business. Out of business is out of business and no-one else cares the way you do.
4. Results are the only important measure of success. A lot of corporate sales people spend most of their time explaining why they havn’t made their numbers – and if only the product was changed such and such way they would be able to hit the target. In a small business – forget it. You make the numbers or someone else does. A small business can’t afford sales people who are incapable of selling the product you have rather that the one they wish you had. A manager who plays the ‘if-only’ game is heading for the tubes.

I was told once that the most critical period for a growing business is when they pass an invisible barrier at about 20-30 people. At this point you start being an organisation and the management skills needed flip to those required to run an organisation. I have seen this happen and its true.

I had a call from a very nice lady who offered me a trial subscription to a lead-generation service called first rate directory. The price for a lead is low – less than a tenner.I checked it out and the site is a nice piece of work. Looks good, works well and lots of leads.However here is a typical lead:

Lead runs a garage repair business and would like to start selling car parts. He would require the user to search by Type of car then by the type of car part e.g. wiper blades, gear nobs etc then by manufacturer then by part no./type. Then through to the checkout to buy product. He would want to add products himself (but will need some instruction. Will also need hosting and a domain name. Is willing to work with anyone in the UK and has a budget of £1000.

I emphasise that this is typical. Two people have already purchased this lead and they have had 9 leads in the last two days in the category Web Site Development.

Is there some parallel universe out there where people are getting major e-commerce websites developed for £1,000? Is there a bug in their system and all the budgets are missing a decimal point?

I went to the technology for marketing exhibition at Olympia yesterday. Reactions:

1. The subheading was technology for sales, and in fact we were looking for sales force automation tools. Couldn’t find one – except goldmine. This is despite there being 30+ listed in the exhibition index. Tick-all-the-box-itis strikes again.
2. There were however a lot of CRM solutions, email marketing solutions and web analytics.
3. I don’t quite understand what a web analytics tool costing ten grand a year does that the free Google analytics product doesn’t. I asked several to explain but never really got to the bottom of it. Throw-aways like ‘oh – the google product is just a lightweight system’ doesn’t cut the mustard – I want features and benefits and I didn’t get em.
4. Great card trickster on one of the stands – but which company? I have no idea. He left me a playing card as a momento. What a chance missed that the company details were not printed on the back.
5. Some of the people on the stands were not really up to the job. Too many didn’t understand their product or if they did were incapable of explaining what it did. We walked away from several stands bemused and wondering what the product did.
6. Overall marginally interesting. But I am still wanting to find out about web based sales force automation tools other than salesforce.com

bob

http://www.textor.com

Eye tracking is fascinating. They sit users down as a computer screen and measure the bits of the web page that they look at, and how long they look at it. The company who specialise in this is at http://www.e-consultancy.com/out.asp?source=blog&com=global&url=http%3a%2f%2fwww.eyetools.com and the company has a new blog at http://www.e-consultancy.com/out.asp?source=blog&com=global&url=http%3a%2f%2fblog.eyetools.net%2f .

Before and after studies on web sites show the effect of different design styles. Every designer should get up to speed on this. A really good example is in the middle of other fascinating data in the teaser slides for the marketingsherpa benchmark study. http://www.e-consultancy.com/out.asp?source=blog&com=global&url=http%3a%2f%2fwww.marketingsherpa.com%2ftele%2fEMBG1_24.pdf Spin down to page 12 and see how a change in design dramatically increases the impact of the copy.

Bob
http://www.textor.com

My direct experience is with setting up a closed forum for a large (3,000+) community. The communioty were building contractors and we envisaged the site being used to help them sort out subcontracts. find staff, and other business benefits as well as just discussing issues of the day.Result: nothing, nada, zilch. The forum wasn’t used – at all – for two years until it was closed.

What was missing?

IMNSHO what was missing was a core of enthusiasts who drive the forum on a day to day basis, raising issues and resonding to posts. Nobody wants to be the first poster. We have been discussing a forum for a medical charity last week. Again multiple real benefits of such a tool. However my advice was not to think about it unless the client was willing to put in the time to raise awarenes and most of all – keep it busy.

bob
http://www.textor.com

Over the years we have worked on a number of joint ventures and this morning I got to thinking about our experience and maybe sharing with others who do the same sort of thing.

We are a technology company and normally we work with designers on a fixed-price basis. But sometimes when an entrepreneur has a good idea but not much money we are prepared to share the risk with them for long-term revenues.

1. Our first and still going strong (we are on our third rewrite) sells management reports and subscriptions B to B. We take a percentage of revenue and although we are very google-dependant so the money goes up and down, over the year they basically pay our rent.
2. We then set up a site to sell foreign currency on-line to the US market. It limped along for a couple of years and then got hit by a major fraud. Goodby to that one. The arrangement was that we had a higher take until the site met a threshold cumulative income and then it dropped. The threshold was never reached.
3. We started a toy store with an entrepreneur. It took a couple of years to take off (this bas back in the late 90’s) but when it did the guy figured he could get it re-wriitten by a small freelancer for not much money and not have give us our cut.
4. This slightly put us off, but more recently a designer we work with a lot decided to go into business for himself selling architectural hardware on-line. We did the site, he went the adwords route and instantly the site started making money. We get a nice income and we are working continuously on it. In this case we take a percentage of the net profit. This was higher in the early stages, and then dropped to a lower percentage when we reached a threshold.
5. Finally. A site I stated myself in 1996 or thereabouts and which we reformed as a separate company. (www.bobsguide.com). This is very successful and we make a regular income from it.

Lessons:

1. Because we have an ongoing interest in such a web site, we are moritvated to continuously improve it. Because we do this in time that would otherwise not be billed the opportunity cost is low and we can just get on with it.
2. We sacrifice instant cash flow for long-term income. We tend to go for this sort of project when orders are thin, so the opportunity cost is much less than you might think. Of course if we did nothing else our cash flow would kill us.
3. We need to satisfy oursleves that the project is going to be successful. I think we have a pretty good nose for this having worked on the internet for 10 years. Believe me I have had some pretty hairy propositions.
4. These work if the enterprise is genuinely a partnership. None of the successful projects has been run as a traditional client/supplier relationship. We talk, we agree, we do some work.
5. Most important of all is the trust between the partners.

For the right case this can be a good way for someone with a good idea but not much money to get a project off the ground cheaply. The entrepreneur is mortaging a certain amount of the value of the business of course, but this effect can be minimised if the partner takes a higher percentage of the take in the early stages and then it drops to more of a maintenance level once a cumulative threshold has been reached.

I heard this story on the radio from an old-time comic.

Guy goes into a clothing store, he says ‘how much is this suit”.
Assistant: you will have to speak up sonny I am hard of hearing
Guy: HOW MUCH
Assistant: I will have to ask Lou. LOU HOW MUCH IS THIS SUIT
Lou (from the back): $35
Assistant: Its $25 – you want it.
Guy: Sure – hands over $25 and rushes out the door before he is found out.

This way they sold hundreds of $15 suits for $25.

We have been trying to set up the electronic equivalent. Our approach is to use offer codes which give a discount, but which look as if they are supposed to be hidden. Our theory is that secret offer codes are more likely to be spread virally than ones we advertise. For example:

• Offer codes available in Javascript in the HTML – If you look for it
• Offer codes distributed anonymously via blogs

and so on.

Wacky idea – don’t know, we shall see.

I walked down Charlotte St yesterday. It used to be have the best greek restaurants in London. Now not one. The big brands like Zizzi’s and Pizza express plus Japanese noodle bars and so on have replaced them.

The Venus Kebab House is a Cafe Nero.

Dreadful.