Thinking small in a big world - click to enlarge

Starting a new project or new business is often a leap of faith, nobody knows what the outcome will be, exactly. But the effort you put in has a direct effect on the results. Seth Godin talks about this in his blog ‘An atomic theory of business size‘.

In the article, he warns about unrealistic expectations from scaling up a well-running business. You can’t just take an idea that works well at one level, multiple the number of staff by a factor of five for instance, and expect turn over and revenue to also increase by the same factor.

But there is another side to the same coin: while working on establishing a new business, your attitude will have an enormous effect on the outcome. If you set out to be a major player in your town, you can’t expect to be market leader nation wide, because your actions and image don’t align with that.

Talking to potential customers, partners, suppliers or employees, you could behave and speak as if you have already achieved your goal. You’ll come across as a serious contender, as long as you make sure you stay close to the truth. There is a fine line between sounding very confident and plain lying.

(Photo credits: Bies)

One of the first things we had to do was to prepare a pitch for a potential customer for the project. In essence, we were going to propose a fundamental change in their thinking about how to generate extra revenue for the company. That made me think about another blog post by Seth Godin: Change and its constituents.

We decided to make a list of all the stake holders within the organization of our potential customer. Using this list, we established if they might feel hurt by the proposed change or benefit from it (or perhaps even both). This enabled us to prepare a response for every objection that we might encounter.

The pitch was going to be for senior executives in the organization, and our first task would be to win them over. But after we left, they would have to go and essentially sell our proposal to the rest of the company. Handing them an appropriate response for each possible objection we could think of might just make the difference.

Visit Seth Godin's blog for more thought provoking ideas and questions

A few months ago, I bookmarked a blog post by Seth Godin that really made me think at the time. He lists 16 questions that people should answer when they’re planning to start a business. What I liked about these questions is that most of them are not the typical multiple choice questions that you often see. These are open questions that really force you to dig deep into your motivations and personal goals.

I revisited this page this week because I’m working on a project that quickly turning into a completely new business. Instead of just rushing into the project, I sat down and made myself write down the answers to all 16 questions. Putting words to paper means you can not fool yourself into thinking you’ve fully answered the question.

As it turns out, it’s not always as easy as you would think to understand your own reasons or needs that guide you when considering a new venture. Often, you just go with the flow and continue doing what you’ve always been doing. Working through these questions helped me to be better prepared for the project and to be ready for when the project turns into a real business.

The Anatomy of a Perfect Landing Page

In July 2009, I posted on this blog about “7 Common problems with landing pages and how to fix them“.

Today I found the perfect companion to this post in a page on “The Anatomy of a Perfect Landing Page“, published by Formstack. The tips included focus on copy, content, and structure, and the use of images, video, links and color.

OpenX Master Class: October 7, 2010 in Amsterdam (Netherlands)

On Thursday October 7, 2010, I’m hosting an OpenX Master Class in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. During this unique event, a small group of experienced OpenX users will gather to discuss advanced features and use cases of the OpenX Ad Server software. As an OpenX consultant with over 7 years of experience supporting OpenX users from around the world, I will be facilitating this event to make sure it will be an intense training course and a memorable experience.

Read more and sign up for the OpenX Master Class.

ListMessenger.net is an online service for e-mail marketing and sending e-mail newsletters

Next to my work as a consultant, I own a business offering an online service for e-mail marketing and sending e-mail newsletters. It’s called ListMessenger.net, and earlier this month we’ve launched a new website. At the same time, we introduced a new pricing model. An account now costs US$ 149 per year.

What is ListMessenger.net?

ListMessenger.net is an online system for e-mail marketing and for sending e-mail newsletters. Every user gets their own online account. Using their login, they can create a newsletter and send it to their mailing list at any time. Mailing lists are built using a complete double opt-in mechanism, making the system compliant with today’s rules and regulations.

ListMessenger.net has been in business since 2003, and many companies and organisation have sent their messages to millions of e-mail addressess.

ListMessenger.net pricing

From January 2010, an account at ListMessenger.net costs US$ 149 per year. This comes with mail credits to send 10,000 e-mails. Customers needing more can order additional mail credits at a price of US$ 30 per block of 10,000 mails.

About the new site

A nice detail about the new site is that it was made entirely using WordPress. This free software turns out to be incredibly simple and effective for website development, and much more than just a blogging tool.

Google Wave may be the way we all communicate and collaborate 5 years from now

I just received my Google Wave Preview Invitation. I’ve been waiting for this for a few months, and exciting started to grow when the first invitations started to be sent out almost a week ago.

It is hard to describe what Google Wave is. Just think what it would be like to explain a micro wave oven to someone living 100 years ago. The people that created Google Wave describe it like this: “this is what e-mail would have been like, if it was invented today instead of 40 years ago”.

The short video below attempts to explain only a fraction of what Google Wave is:

As a user of the Google Wave Preview, I get to invite others too. That’s because there is no real point in communicating and collaborating with just yourself. Now who should I pick to invite …

I will be presenting a very practical use case of the integration of WordPress and OpenX. OpenX is an ad server. More information about OpenX can be found on my blog. OpenX is free open source software, just like WordPress, and can be downloaded from www.openx.org.

On large websites with a variety of sections, it can be a good strategy to enable advertisers to place their ads only next to those sections that match their product or service. By assigning a category to each blog post, this can easily be achieved. In my presentation I will demonstrate how the post category can be passed on the ad server, and how the ads can be targeted to the precise category or categories that the advertiser is looking for. That way, the ads will only show up on articles that match the targeting criteria.

There are many advantages to helping advertisers target only relevant blog posts:

• advertisers can target their ads more precisely, and as a result their ad spending will have a higher return on investment
• publisher of a site or blog will be able to sell advertising more easily and find multiple advertisers for a better segmented website
• site visitors will see more relevant ads, which means they will appreciate them more than just ‘random generic advertising’

This presentation is intended for beginning WordPress users with some experience adapting their theme (or a willingness to learn).

More information about WordCamp NL 2009 is on the webite, including a registration form. there are only 200 seats, and they are filling fast, so speed is of the essence!

Truly life changing technology

Perhaps even more amazing: according to Pritchard, it would cost about 8 billion US dollars to hit one of the Millenium Goals of halving the number of people without access to safe drinking water. That is a lot of money, unless you put it in perspective: the UK government alone spends 12 billion UK Pound or 20 billion US dollars on foreign aid each year. That money would be sufficient to give every single human being on the planet access to safe drinking water. It would change the lives of 3.5 billion people and save the lives of 2 million children, every year!

The video below will explain it all in just 10 minutes.

This video was filmed in July 2009, at the TED Global conference in Oxford, UK.

Google Website Optimizer helps webmasters and site owners improve their website and increase conversions and sales

When people arrive on your website after clicking an ad or a link, the first page they see is what is known as the ‘landing page’. The purpose of this page is to enable the visitor to buy your product, request a quote, sign up to be a member or receive a newsletter, or whatever action you had in mind.

There are many things that can distract your potential customer from completing that action. Online expert and author Tim Ash presented a webinar on “7 Deadly Sins of Landing Page Design”, for the Google Website Optimizer YouTube channel.

It’s a pretty long video, where the 7 most common problems are presented, including recommendations to fix those problems. In the second part of the video, Tim answers questions from the audience.

If you don’t have the time to watch this video, I’ve made a list of the 7 common problems in landing page design and the fixes that Tim Ash suggest.

7 Deadly Sins In Landing Page Design

7 common problem in landing page design and how to fix them

1. Unclear call to action

Question: What does this website want me to do?
Solutions:

• Call to action should be clear & draw the eye
• Placement of call to action should be above the fold
• Competing calls to action should be de-emphasized

2. Too many choices

Question: What should I do next?
Solutions:

• Don’t present details too early in the process
• Group choices in a small number of categories
• Use visual shortcuts to reduce reading

3. Asking for too much information

Question: Is this information absolutely necessary to complete the current transaction?
Solutions:

• Ask only for absolutely required information
• Collect additional information at a later date
• Shorten labels and unclutter form layout

4. Too much text

Question: Do you really expect me to read all this?
Solutions:

• Use clear headlines and (sub) headings
• Put the important information first
• Do not write in complete sentences, use bulleted lists
• Ruthlessly edit and shorten your text

5. Not keeping your promises

Question: Is this the page I expected from clicking a link or an ad?
Solutions:

• Repeat the ad text or keywords on your page
• Provide clear access to the information that was promised in the ad

6. Visual distractions

Question: Where am I supposed to look?
Solutions:

• Make the page more boring
• Don’t let the design of the page compete with the call to action
• Remove colorful page elements and animation/motion
• Replace generic photos with specific relevant images

7. Lack of credibility & trust

Question: Why should I trust you and buy from you?
Solutions:

• Borrow & solidify trust
• Feature well-known trust symbols prominently
• Use client logos, brands or media coverage as ‘badges’
• Remove anxiety with generous policies & guarantees

More information

The presenter of this webinar, Tim Ash, also wrote a book called “Landing Page Optimization“.