Simon Lilly's Blog

Congratulations to Yahoo!

// February 27th, 2009 // No Comments » // web thoughts

Not often do you hear that Yahoo! does something better than Google (and strictly speaking, they didn’t). But in a recent head-to-head Yahoo! Web Analytics beat Google Analytics in a number of areas that are vitally important for enterprise level analytics (source: CMS Wire)

Having used both tools extensively it’s a pretty close call and for simple information and website statistics it is very hard to separate the two. For a SME or blog site, I think Google Analytics is easier to implement and has the core functionality you would need. This is the core market that Google targeted with it’s Analytics solution.

Yahoo!’s acquisition of IndexTools got little coverage outside of Anayltics blogs and forums, but IndexTools was and still is one of the best enterprise anayltics solutions out there. Yahoo! very wisely closed the service for new sign-ups while they took on the infrastructure and re-organised. Recently they have let in a small number of Yahoo! store owners in via invite to enjoy this excellent analytics solution.

It is a solution that’s very much geared towards e-commerce stores and large-scale websites. As long as they keep enterprise and e-commerce as their core target market they should continue to grow in this area, but how will they monetise the service? I can’t imagine this is high on the new Yahoo! CEO’s tasklist, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see some form of support/maintenance fee being introduced in the next 6 months. The server infrastructure and staffing for such an analytics venture can’t be cheap?

Canonical URLs – The Big 3 Agree

// February 16th, 2009 // No Comments » // web thoughts

Whenever Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft agree on something it’s a good indicator that it’s important and worth finding out more about. For a lot of people this really is a significant change, but it’s also one that needs careful explaining and will take a little time to implement.

Having read a number of articles about it online, here are my top 3 resources to help you understand the wonderfully titled ‘Canonical URLs’:

1. Learn about the Canonical Link Element in 5 Minutes
Google search guru, Matt Cutts, explains what it all means in words, video and even a slideshow! What more could you ask for…

2. Canonical URL Tag – The Most Important Advancement in SEO Practices Since Sitemaps
SEOmoz (One of the best, if not the best, SEO Blogs) talks through the new ‘highly recommended’ way of enhancing the way your website is indexed by the big 3.

3. Canonical URL Tag Is Worth A Shot
Then finally Get Elastic get hands-on and talk specifically about the benefits this offers for e-commerce sites.

Exceeding expectations – Zappos.com

// February 7th, 2009 // 1 Comment » // web thoughts

Sometimes you hear about a concept that sounds to good to be true and I thought that was the case with the Zappos.com Culture Book. Fortunately after a little bit of Googling I found a blog post from a guy that had managed to get hold of a copy. He sang fantastic praise about the book and left a simple instruction on getting a copy if your outside the US – why not e-mail the CEO (Tony Hsieh)? So I that’s what did, in all honesty I was expecting to get an auto-reply or not hear anything at all, after all how many CEO’s have the time or inclination to reply to a request like this? Then within a couple of hours a response came back requesting my postal address and additionally offering a tour around their HQ if I’m ever in Vegas. Now this to me exceeded my expectations by a mile and has become a story I tell to a lot of people.

The 2008 edition is around the 500 page mark and gives an insight into how the business ethos was created and then has page-upon-page of testimonials. Now the difference with these testimonials from traditional customer ones are that they all come from the staff that work there! Whilst it sounds crazy, each one is a response to a question put to them by their CEO – What does the Zappos culture mean to you?

If you haven’t heard of Zappos, take a trip to their site, browse their blog and look at Zappos Twitter stream to begin to get under the skin of a business that in 2008 just passed the $1 billion sales mark. The whole business is built around one mission: to provide the best customer service possible. This is a fantastic goal for any company and particularly in the current economic climate should be at the top of any companies to-do list and from my experience is part of the company culture from the CEO down!

To get a copy of the book, you can now simply order one online and at $15 is amazing value for the difference that reading it could make to your business – Zappos 2008 Culture Book

User-Interface Tweaks and Facebook

// February 7th, 2009 // No Comments » // web thoughts

After reading the brilliantly titled $300 Million Button article over at User Interface Engineering I found myself looking at small changes on the sites I frequently use, that might make a difference to their effectiveness.

The first one I thought about was Facebook’s Login screen which they are constantly tweaking (it’s been changing over the few days I’ve been thinking about it). The login itself is a simple combination of e-mail/password, but with the addition of an optional Remember Me tick box. Recently I ticked the box and an additional option titled ‘Make Facebook my homepage’ appeared – genius I thought, they’ve detected I’m engaged by Facebook and they want to see how far they can take me. Then I thought what about people that don’t trust the Remember Me feature, but would like Facebook as their homepage? Are they missing a trick by not showing both options to everyone? Quite possibly… Or is it a case of saving homepage real estate? If it is the later, then maybe overtime they change Remember Me, for the people that don’t use it to Make Facebook my homepage?

The key point from this suggested tweak, as with the £300 Million Button article, is that on such a well used part of any site, a small change could offer a potential benefit for both you and your visitor – keep tweaking! See what works (analytics are vital here) and keep striving to improve the key parts of your website.

Facebook is without doubt changing the way a generation of users use the internet. A vast number of users begin their online journey on Facebook and explore from there, so the simple tweak suggested above could convert an even larger number of people to get instant Facebook gratification when they fire-up their web browser. Microsoft bought a stake in Facebook to get a slice of the Facebook action, for a period of time the Facebook search option had two options – search Facebook or the web (with Microsoft). That second option has now disappeared, was this causing session times to drop as people left Facebook to explore the web? We can’t know for sure, but we do know it’s not there any more.

Although this change of internet entry-point is taking place for some, people still love Google, their share of search is continuing to rise (recently reported up to over 80%). Maybe Microsoft’s investment in Facebook was purely to avoid Google acquiring them? After all if Facebook and Google were to collaborate that would be a fatal blow for anyone else trying to gain market share in an environment that’s so enamoured with social media.