What’s Hip Hapnin?

Web 2.0 directory

This is a very cool listing of web 2.0 properties and what they are used for.

complete web 2.0 directory

I consider myself pretty plugged in and I probably only knew about 10% of these companies. There are a couple things that I think are really interesting about this.

1. It is amazing there are so many people doing such incredible things. This truly is the long tail and have I said yet today that I love technology?

2. It is equally amazing that they are all waiting for google to buy them.

If your project isn’t on the list go to this link to submit it.

Submit your project/website to the web 2.0 directory

Update: Apparently Scribd a web 2.0 company that is on this list can’t figure out their embed codes. this doc totally screwed up the formatting on my blog and it is doubling up on the document. I am going to spend about 10 seconds trying to figure it out before you end up with just a link to the directory.

A client asked me to put this together so they could understand exactly what I do as a consultant.  I think often times we make it look way too easy.  People say they want it to be easy and they don’t want to think about it but often times if they don’t understand what is going into the process they will think it is easy.  Maybe that is why so many people when pressed about the website suggest they have a neighbor or a nephew who could do it.

So this is my advice for the day.  Let your clients know how involved it is and that you are saving them tons of time by knowing the answers to these questions.  Maybe you could present them with this list and have them fill out everything they know or at least what they are thinking.  Spend a little bit of time educating your clients and they won’t try to tell you how to do your job.

Why are you building a website?

• Recruiting
• Awareness
• Retention
• Cost savings efficiency
• Commerce
• Partnering
• Generating leads
• Launch a new product
• Sales
• Promote industry

Personas/Audience Segments
Who will be using the website and what will they search for?
What will your visitors want to do immediately once they get to the website? (let them pee) How will they go about doing that?
Should you be using the web to build community?

• Blog
• Forum
• Newsletter
• Podcasts

If you could only communicate one thing from your website what would that be?

Marketing strategy/launch plan
Where does the website fit into the marketing mix?
How will people find you on the web?

• Brandable URL?
• Web Marketing
  • Search Engine Optimization
  • Pay-per-click
  • Buzz building
  • Affiliate Marketing
  • Banner ads = waste of money (usually)
  • PR
• Offline Marketing
  • Print
  • Radio
  • Flyers
  • Direct Mail
  • Television
  • Billboards
  • Trade Shows

How will you get people to stay on the website and then comeback later?

• Newsletter
• Email opt-in list
• RSS feeds
• Frequently updated content

Where does this website fit within it’s web ecosystem?

Measurement
How do you define success? How will we measure that? What are the metrics that matter?

• Analytics?
• Call Tracking?

Do you know what your acceptable customer acquisition costs are?

Operations
Who will create/update the content?
How will the website be kept current who will be updating it? How often? CMS?
Who will answer the email?
Who will answer the phone?
Who will maintain the website?

Constraints
Are there any Imperatives

• Creative
  • Colors?
  • Images?
• Platform
  • Windows
  • Linux - This is what I prefer
  • Unix
• Hosting
  • Who is the current host and what do they support? Can they scale? Are they reliable?
  • I like Media Temple
  • (more) I need a reliable link that isn’t just a bunch of affiliate marketers
• Web Programming Languages
  • ASP
  • PHP
  • xHTML
  • Ruby
  • Java
  • Flash
  • (more)
• Database
  • MySQL
  • ColdFusion
  • Microsoft SQL server
  • PostgreSQL
  • (more)

What is the budget?
What is the timeline?
How long do you need this website to exist before it is redesigned?
Who are the stakeholders in this process and the key decision makers?
What is the approval process?

A few months ago I posted about the horrible UI experience when trying to buy a printer on the HP website.

Here is another example.  But instead of coming from a big company that you would expect to be clueless it is from sphinn a forum on internet marketing

Not only do they make you go back and try to remember some math problem from fifth grade.  They also make you decrypt a secret code.  I tried to make it through the registration 5 times before I realized my encrypted code was actually case sensitive-it seems like that would be an important detail to include.

So the point of this is that with any transaction the risk must be shared.  If consumers are carrying too much of the risk they will sense that and go away.  Traditionally companies pass on the risk to the consumer with restrictive return policies, expensive warranties, etc.  Typically the lower the price the more of the risk you will inherit.

In this transaction they obviously don’t want to pay somebody to go through every account and moderate them and make sure they are legit.  So they are passing on the pain in the transaction to real users.  I pay the price because they don’t want to pay another forum moderator.

I tried to create an account 5 times before I cracked the code.  How many times would you try?

How are you frustrating your customers and making your job easier? how long do they have to wait at your call center?  How many questions on your contact us form are for you and not them?  What are you charging for that you should be giving away?  Just because a few people abuse a service that is offered doesn’t mean you need to make a policy about it. You should be finding ways to make it easier for your customers every step of the way.

This was my response to a recent profnet on viral marketing for small companies.  I thought it was worth sharing.

The larger your potential audience the harder it is to make something become viral.  The problem is that we all have the same base interests but our higher level interests are weird and varied.  Everyone watches when somebody starts to take their clothes off, but only a few people are interested in bird watching or canoe making.  So as a small business if you are marketing to everyone in America between 20 – 30 and you want to stand out then you are in big trouble.  There are millions of people competing for the attention of the audience and they are all using tactics focused on the base interests of the masses.  But if you narrow that audience to a tiny niche that is made up of your very best customers creating something just for them making something viral becomes very easy.   I like to focus my clients not on building an audience but on building a congregation.  An audience tunes in occasionally but has no loyalty.  A congregation is much smaller but more passionate.  A congregation will evangelize you to their sphere of influence.  A congregation will forgive some of your mistakes.  So if I am a small company with a niche product and I want to create something viral my first step is to build a congregation.  The second step is to give that congregation what they want.  Once you have done this making something spread virally through this congregation and the people they influence will be easy.  It is much better to have a few hundred people who are crazy about your products than a few thousand people who are familiar with them.

I found this page a minute ago while looking for images of canoe’s. “The Strippers Guide to Canoe Building” I thought it was a perfect title.

I thought this picture was just too amazing not to post - brilliant marketing

“Our target market is men who will die someday”

We recently moved from Divinci Draper (great central location) to Divinci Cottonwood (nicer larger office).  We were all talking about what made our new office space better.  Melissa made the observation that when you are a girl you know you are in a nice building when your heals click as you walk in.  This struck me as profound for some reason.  It is a simple thing but really ads to the “brand” of the building.

• Have you noticed that laminate floors look the same but don’t sound as nice as real wood?
• Have you noticed that nice cars have a different sound when you close the door than my Mazda?
• Jen pointed out today that she doesn’t like to work at starbucks because they make it too noisy.  I bet that noise is part of the brand.
• Your Ipod makes a nice comforting click when you do something.
• Leather sounds “rich” when you sit on it
• Did you know Harley Davidson trademarks the sounds of it’s bikes?

Sounds are an important part of the user experience.  It seems like I knew this once before but I just realized it again.

Ok so after reading this post on social analytics I decided to see what I have been recording on myself.

Don’t bother me on Wednesday nights at 10pm because that is when I am catching up on my blogs.

Blog Traffic - my ego wishes these numbers were higher

I am not very popular on Twitter…I probably don’t say anything worth reading.

This is from Linked In and is pretty surprising.

Well that was some interesting trivia but probably a total waste of time.

I spent the morning looking at literally hundreds of websites for associations. I am working on  three different websites right now for non profits and associations so it wasn’t a total waste of time.  I feel strongly that they should try to take their offline networks and put them online.  That way the conversation can continue even when your not physically together.

Here are four sites that I felt have done a good job for various reasons.

International Association of Amusement Parks and Attraction – This site does a good job of knowing and understanding the audience.  There are a couple things I don’t like but overall it has solid navigation and user interface.  What I do like is that they treat every page as if it is an entry point to the website.  It is obvious that the Industry Buyers Guide is a very important part of this website because it has prime real estate and it is found on every sub page. The lefthand navigation is very clean and clear.
Military Officers Association of America – I liked the navigation, I also like that they have a bunch of blogs and they are starting to put their toe into the water of taking their offline social network online.

American Heart Association - They did a good job of driving website registration and building community.  “Join 617111  other women”  These women are not joining the American Heart Association they are joining the AHA community and inadvertently increasing the influence and thought leadership of the AHA.  They have done an integrated campaign around this “Go Red” campaign including makeovers for spokespeople on TV shows (giving them more opportunity to tell their story)

AARP/Divided We Fail – Their attempt to build a community around something they see as an important initiative.  Simple registration, clean modern navigation (you tube look)  They are obviously trying to extend their reach below their demographic.  (are AARP members allowed to use the internet?) They have also done some viral things.  They created a banner ad that people can place on blogs and websites they also created ecards you can send around.  There is also a place to “Share your Story”.   All ways to increase the size of the community.   I also like the logo

I watched an interesting documentary the other day.  It was on the history of cold.  Apparently 100 years ago there was a booming ice industry.  Many people became millionaires by exporting ice to places that are warm.  We don’t talk about the ice industry anymore.  I have a feeling that the consumption of ice hasn’t changed much since then.  We still want cold drinks, ice cream etc.  The ice guys should have become the refrigerator guys.  After all they were the “cold” experts right? The problem is they weren’t in the “Make things cold” business they were in the ice distribution business.   It was only a few years after the invention of an affordable freezer that the whole industry stopped.

The record industry is in big trouble.  They blame illegal downloading on the Internet as the cause of their failure.  The problem is the entire industry was built on controlling distribution.  Before recording to physical media was invented the industry didn’t exists.  People would go to a concert or play an instrument and performance defined what music distribution was since 10,000 BC.  That model is dead…they don’t realize it yet but they are already out of business.  Everything they are working on are just desperate efforts to continue to control distribution.   I have a feeling that artists of the future will make money on performances again instead of record sales.  When we look back there will be a 100-year blip on the radar where people could make money on music distribution.  If you ask me that is a good thing.

I have been asked this information a couple times in the last few days so I asked my buddy nelson @ SEO.com to look this up for me.  I knew you could do it (ever try to put “MySpace” into your ad copy?) I just didn’t know what the actual steps were.

You can completely block the use of your brand names in any Ad Text or copy.   To start this process you must file a complaint with Google.Here is a link to file a complaint: Google Trademark Complaints

These are the things that Google will need to know in order to stop people from using your name in their ads:

• Name of trademark owner (Either the company or person)
• Contact info for owner (if it’s not the company)
• If the name, the design or both are trademarked
• If you have registered your trademark with the US government, or any other government (you can only block your Tradmarks  in countries where we own the trademark)

If you want anyone (partners and resellers) to be an exception to the rule. you can add their google id or login email to your account.  (I am not totally clear on what this takes)

It is important to remember that this is only referring to using your name in ad copy.  Google is not saying that if some joker writes a blog post about how “Walmart sucks” that it isn’t going to show up in a search for Walmart

This was posted on the Advertising Design Goodness blog.

Not sure who the band is but the album is called “Doll House” and obviously the CD case becomes a doll house and you can put the band inside as paper dolls.

I had an interesting conversation with my Brother in Law - Eddie the other night. We were talking about how CD’s seem very old fashioned and outdated and we are embarrassed to buy them for people. Everyone uses iTunes but a download isn’t that fun to give. The problem is there isn’t a replacement for the CD.

vinyl>8track>cassette>CD>…

mp3’s are amazing but how do you give away something digital? So if the record companies are going to keep selling us old fashioned crap they could at least give me an incentive not to steal it. Don’t just sell me a disk for $20. I got in my car, I drove to the store, make it an experience. If all I wanted was the music I would jump on a torrent site and download the whole album for free in 10 minutes. Make me want to buy it because it is cool. Don’t force me to buy it because it’s the law.