Which factors encourage word of mouth?

Posted on January 27, 2012 by widhadh

Why do people talk about products? What makes them social about a service or device?

Extreme enjoyment is one major reason, along with it’s ugly twin, extreme disappointment.
Wow factor! The iPhone, lends itself to cultist adoration and mass fanaticism, to convince me to use another phone someone would really have to wow me.
Commitment to a brand. For example: I love Nikon cameras and lenses.
Length of relationship with the brand, company or product is another dimension. You know those anniversary events for customers, loyalty programs, etc? Those are all geared towards generating positive, spontaneous reactions which stick with people over the long term and foster positive feelings and hopefully creating the desire to share their pleasure with others.

Niche marketing at scale, how the best businesses move along every axis

Posted on January 26, 2012 by widhadh

The best companies do niche marketing at scale. When you consider a go to market strategy, you have to aim at a niche, then scale the number of niches either vertically or horizontally. By doing this, you’ll develop large numbers of engaged fans and achieve greater long term mind share. The key is progressively acquiring more and more niches, and rolling those niches up to larger more umbrella market segments. Each time a business moves from one value proposition to another, or leverages a newly adjacent possibility, their reach, scale and value grow tremendously. Lets walk through the various ways some of the world’s biggest tech companies are solving this same dilemma of trying to market to small, niche groups with specific messaging and doing so at scale across their entire customer base.

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Three Key Factors of a Transformative Web Strategy

Posted on January 18, 2012 by widhadh

The public internet has been around for decades. Broadband, online video and the merging of TV and the computer have been around for nearly a decade and a half (WebTV). Based on a detailed analysis of the why’s and how’s of the best internet and tech companies in the world, from Google to TripAdvisor, to Flickr and Facebook, there are key themes in the proper strategy, point of view and sustainable competitive advantage across each of these firms and other leading tech companies.

Design

From a design perspective, the blend of “normal” web and mobile web is defining the changing face of consumer expectation. This combined with the market trends that this generation of decision makers grew up with, have a massive impact on your product’s design.
Take Google+ for example, the same icons are used both on the web page and on the mobile interface. Further harmonization and integration is the future of design. Continue reading →

FunAdvice mobile interface concept

Posted on January 13, 2012 by widhadh

Why does a social network need a good mobile interface?

Even without an app, FunAdvice grew the share of mobile audience 100′s of % in growth over the last few years. At one point, our mobile usage spiked from 8% to 25%, and this was a few years ago. The reason for the mobile adoption is simple: if you can pop open a web page, fire off something quick, read a small blurb or bite of content and maybe check out some photos of interesting people, that’s a lot more gratifying an experience than reading the latest tabloid headlines while at the grocery story.

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One Box Social Please

Posted on January 13, 2012 by widhadh

I love the idea of having one actionable place on the page where you can post everything, whether you are starting a chat or posting an update or question. Something like this:Clicking within the field to start typing would expand it to: Continue reading →

Code Compliance: Why it is important and how to measure it.

Posted on January 11, 2012 by widhadh

Code compliance and standards are important because you want to be able to rely on your web page functioning as you designed it to rather than it varying from device to device. I know it has no correlative SEO benefits but I aalways recommend at least checking so you know where you are at.

There are two main components of code compliance.

The first is based on code standards and the W3 consortium which is the standards organization for HTML specifications.
The second part of code compliance is accessibility which is also a standard set by the w3 consortium which ensures web pages are accessible and useable on alternative browsing devices. My personal beelief is that accessibility has a great deal of correlation to conversion. Continue reading →

FunAdvice Recovery: Home Page Improvements

Posted on January 7, 2012 by widhadh

FunAdvice changed the home page from a product centric experience to one centered on search. As a result, it’s a lot harder to see what’s in the product than before. I’ve always wanted to show people what something does, before asking them for anything – it makes for a more engaging experience. Take a look at the old page:What this page does that the new page does not: Continue reading →

Microsoft patents a search innovation – something we created in 2000

Posted on January 6, 2012 by widhadh

This was a pretty amazing find for me. Apparently, Microsoft patented their feature to bing search history display historical search queries next to you as you use their search engine. Jeremy, Ericson and myself came up with this very thing about a decade ago.

Yep, it’s been that long. The beginning of the new year is when I always take a look back at the last year and accomplishments. This year I looked way back. When Jeremy was working at Did-it, he met Ericson, who also had entrepreneurs in his family, as do Jeremy and I (that’s probably why we worked well together for so long). The three of us created W3matter, the company that Ericson runs and operates to this day. The first product created by W3matter was Makunu, which in Dhivehi means, “Spider,” which I came up with. The name was fitting for a search engine software. In the days of Lycos – Greek for wolf, and Inktomi – a trickster character from the Lokota – I felt that a word which meant spider was fitting. There were a few transformative features of the software, only one of which has a screentshot available from Archive.org. Continue reading →