Yearly Archives: 2007

I Feel Lucky Doesn’t Work For Google

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I Feel Lucky doesn’t need an ad blocker.

The I Feel Lucky button on the Google keyword search page has been there forever. Many have questioned its utility given that even Google acknowledges few people click on it. Perhaps it’s nostalgia on the part of the two founders. Perhaps it’s a subtle marketing ploy to encourage the notion that Google always gets it right. It does seem somewhat of an enigma.

Brendan Newnam decided to find out why it still hangs around. One interesting finding in his article comes from Tom Chavez, the head of Rapt, a company that helps determine what advertising real estate on a Web page is worth. He did the math on how much the 1% of people who use the button are costing the company. Google makes a lot of its money by selling ads on its search results page. People who are “feeling lucky” never see such a page and therefore Google’s ads. The “I’m Feeling Lucky” button automatically directs them to a non-Google web page. He estimates that Google loses $110 million of revenue per year by leaving the button for this 1% of visitors.

That’s a huge loss for a button that no one seems able to defend.

Related: I’m Feeling Lucky – Thanks, Google

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Customer Complaints – Are They Worth It?

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Your Call is important to us!

Is it worth complaining? As Donna Swain recounted in a discussion on the Cre8asite Forums, an online retail company lost a sale and didn’t even want to know why. Others had had similar experiences and it was suggested that it’s all a wasted effort. Perhaps the most effective way to get your message across is to blog about it.

That’s all very unfortunate. Indeed any successful company should be asking that question in the title. Their answer should be an emphatic yes. Sometimes the non-complainers are equally dissatisfied but never bother to send word. If you’re looking for ways to improve then those complainers are like gold. They are particularly important because at least they wanted to be customers. As Brendon Sinclair put it, Learn to Love Complaining Clients.

Happily the Internet is levelling the playing field. Consumers have a greater voice. That’s why it’s perhaps less surprising now to see a headline like Will Customer Complaints Bring Call Centers Back to the US? If our call is important to them, then it should be handled in the best possible way. Perhaps the message is getting through.

The study found that customers who believed they were dealing with a call center outside the United States rated their overall satisfaction 26 points lower than those who believed the center was U.S.-based. In addition, callers to foreign centers were almost twice as likely to sever business relations with the company.

Related: Your Call Is Important To Us

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British Comedy and Humor – Best.ever.com

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.. or should that be British humour?

British comedy is very well received. However British humor occasionally seems to miss the mark. Wikipedia provides the explanation:

Some general features characteristic of British humour are:
  • Puns: these do not too easily translate into other languages (if at all).
  • Nonsense: has its origins in the writings of Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear.
  • Black humour: main features of black humour can already be found in the drama of the Elizabethan era.
  • Eccentricity
  • Satire and sarcasm
  • The use of understatement and irony, so that many jokes pass unnoticed by those not familiar with it.

If you find this post somewhat out of the normal run, you’re right. It was triggered by a somewhat amusing marketing idea from Squidoo. Squidoo was started by what they dub as the Original Squid, Seth Godin, although many of us know him as an innovative and thought-provoking marketer. The Squidoo Home page trumpets the following:

Stop by Squidoo’s latest partner project, Ever.com, and stake your claim. Before it’s too late!

If The Ever Project is news to you, here is how they explain it:

In November 2007, Squidoo is launching the Ever project, the first use of a new domain (and not a squid domain) for our site. People from around the web can build pages like worst.restaurant.ever.com or funniest.joke.ever.com or skinniest.actress.ever.com. We’ve partnered with Digimedia, owners of ever.com, in a venture to match great hand built content with really promotable URLs.

Squidoo itself is one of those sites like MySpace where you can create your own mini website. It is supported by the revenues from the advertising and affiliate links that are added to all pages (or lenses as they call them). This particular venture seems likely to be a popular one. It certainly got our attention.

If you would like to catch a little British humor, there are some notable videos at the site we created in very little time at Smartest.Blokes.Ever.com. Let us know what you think.

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FacebookCamp Montreal, A Cool Hotspot

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Watch out Google, there goes Facebook

Roberto Rocha of The Gazette has an article on a Montreal conference that covered a current hot topic, social-networks. This was FacebookCamp Montreal, organized by Sylvain Carle. The main topic of conversation was of course Facebook. The conference provided guidance to local developers and marketers on how they could hopefully profit from this burgeoning social network scene.

Facebook has launched a new targeted ad system that pushes commercial messages to members based on their behaviour on the site. Since May, the social networking site has encouraged external software developers to create applications for users. These mini widgets let users, for instance, create slideshows, share movie tastes, and play Scrabble against each other. No fewer than 5,000 developers have signed up to create Facebook applications. Users can choose from thousands, ranging from useful to completely pointless. Tim O?Reilly, a top technology pundit, analyzed the 200 most popular Facebook apps last month and found that it?s a highly exclusive club. Out of 5,000 applications, only 45 boast more than 100,000 users. In fact, 84 applications claim 87 per cent of usage.

Despite this, it would seem that Google is concerned by this potential competitor. That may be the reason for Google starting its OpenSocial initiative with much fanfare. This is meant to encourage social network applications by using open source software. Tim O’Reilly finds this somewhat overplayed. The key issue here is who owns and manages the personal data on each individual. Given privacy concerns, this is an essential part of the equation. As yet there is no indication on how OpenSocial will tackle this.

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Strong Loonie, Opportunity Or Threat

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A strong loonie is a mixed blessing

The current historical high for the Canadian dollar, currently at $1.07 US, delights some and terrify others. As Eric Beauchesne points out an economic think-tank is warning that Canadian cross-border shoppers will rob the Canadian economy of billions of dollars in economic growth. The surge in cross-border shopping due to the strong dollar … could knock nearly three-quarters of a percentage point off growth in the Canadian economy, says Action Economics, an online research firm. What is an opportunity for consumers is clearly a threat for manufacturers here in Canada.

Peter Hadekel in the Montreal Gazette this week felt that Montr?al would be feeling the heat from this strong loonie. This affects particularly Montreal’s manufacturing base.

The stronger dollar means that manufacturers are less competitive in their principal market, the USA. More than 77 per cent of the region’s exports head south of the border. The lobby group Manufacturers and Exporters Quebec, or MEQ, estimates exports to the U.S. market are down three per cent vs. last year and Canadian exporters have lost 20 per cent of their market share in the United States.

The reverse side of the coin is that it is now cheaper to buy new manufacturing equipment from the US. This could reduce the manufacturing cost. However this does not compensate for the much bigger effect on sales volumes. The MEQ points out that 130,000 manufacturing jobs have gone in the last two years. For each one percent rise in the exchange rate, the impact on Quebec manufacturers is about $400 million.

A study by Informetrica, an Ottawa-based economic think tank, estimates that for Canada the positive impact of a $10-billion, or 3.3-per-cent increase, in manufacturing exports over four years would generate 67,000 new jobs directly plus 48,500 spin-off jobs, three quarters of which would be in the services sector. It says a decline of that magnitude would have the same effect in the other direction. Clearly any concerted actions that can reverse the drop in exports for manufacturers are highly beneficial. However the strong loonie makes that quite a challenge.

Related: Strong loonie may lead Canadian economy to collapse – Pravda

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