Internet marketing

When you pay for something expensive(-er), you have a risk – that item may be good or bad; when you pay little, it’s a guarantee – it’s bad. This is true in lots of cases. What you generally get is the mind safety and peace that you have at least a chance of getting something better. You pay for the mind comfort of knowing you might actually get something good. There are countless cases in which more expensive doesn’t lead to better. The fact that these are the exception, not the rule, only strengthens the rule. (this was said by an Economics teacher I had in school; he told it in the context of salaries – “pay somone a high salary, and you may have a good or bad employee, it’s a risk; pay someone a small salary, and, since the good people will always find a better paid job, you’ll have a certainty of having a poor employee”) In electronics, to get only marginally better products, you pay very high margins. Samsung Galaxy S4 is not 4 times better than a 4 times cheaper phone. An iPad is not 2-3 times better than an average tablet, as it is 2-3 times more expensive. If you can’t settle with little/average quality, you’ll pay much more. (Original quote – “Este absolut incredibil cat de putina “value for money” poti cumpara in ziua de astazi, cam tot pe ce-am pus mana high-end m-a dezamagit teribil. In general platesti 500% peste pretul “pietei” ca sa ai sporuri de sub …

Citește mai departe

Let’s say you want to go through your friends list on Facebook (a very popular social network) and Hi5 (an ex-glory). Facebook shows you a list of your best friends, people with whom you interact the most. Hi5 shows you an alphabetical order and gives you the task of finding what’s relevant to you. What do you think Google shows you when you Google “fejk sdfjk vsdn dfkj“. Does it show you “we don’t have any relevant results”? No, it says: “Showing results for fjk fjk vsdn dfkj” (this is an altered version of my query), instead of saying: “No results found for fejk sdfjk vsdn dfkj”. So, instead of saying “we found nothing, how about you refine your search”, Google refines the search for you, takes a chance by changing what you have typed, and gives you the right result. You may say “but this is minor, it’s a small thing what Facebook / Google do”. At this single level, perhaps. But you think of all the thing Google tries to get right from the first time, without waiting for human intervention, if you think how much effort Facebook puts on trying to give you exactly what you expect of it right the first time, then the changes are not, by all means, minor. I dare saying that Facebook is much more successful than Hi5 (and others) and Google is much better (the user usage prove it) than Bing (and others) due to small things like these, on a higher level.

I see this from time to time – a web site has a pagination are on the bottom of the page: , but when I click on page 2 (I start navigation from page 1, the homepage), the URL, instead of changing to something like: http://www.website.com/navigation?page=2 , changes into: http://www.website.com/navigation?page=1. I understand the IT reasons behind it (having a page 1 as an actual page 1 may lead to duplicate content, if not handled properly, and the first paginated result is, actually, page 2), but it’s illogical to click on page 3 and the URL to change on page 2. It happens more often than not. People expect symmetry.  

Hi, I launched some new blogs (which are, somehow, connected to what I write in here): olivianbreda.com – Internet marketing, general, English. betterish.com – how to do things better. audithink.com – SEO & Usability audits. I also write, in Romanian, on olivian.ro, cetd.ro, lumeaseoppc.ro, seogan.ro (contributor) and in Romanian and English on oliii.com. Find subscription options on olivian.weebly.com.

At the Lumea SEO PPC series of events, we didn’t like Facebook pages as much. Initially, we created a standard Facebook user. Time passed, we made a Facebook group, a place where pretty much all the conversation went. Then, we converted the user into a page, but lots of things were lost (especially photos). Right now, we have no user, but a page and group. The community, concerning the number of members, is bigger on the page (close to 1,300 likes) than on the group (900+). We can’t say the same thing about the activity (engagement) of the users, which are more active on the group than on the page. This would be the small tip of the current article – if it is possible, take into account creating a Facebook group, rather than a classic page. Perhaps an online store wouldn’t be a prefect fit for a group, in which the buyers and sellers share the same level. Perhaps an institution wants to communicate one-to-many (as on a page), not one-to-one (like in a group, where any member can have become a message carrier). But if you have a group of people which may potentially be united in a Facebook group, you can take into account that, when the moment of “let’s join Facebook” comes, you would do this on a group, not on a Facebook page. The advantage? The fact that only about 20% of the people who liked your page actually see its messages, unlike the Facebook group, where, if they wish so, the …

Citește mai departe