Re: the dearth of posts - I’ll have some military obligations for the next few weeks. Thanks for your patience, and I’ll be back soon.
Pages
-
Meta
-
RSS Feeds
Active Duty
23-Feb-07New Marriott Blog
26-Jan-07Via Brandon Cornett, a highlight of Bill Marriott’s new blog. This got a fair bit of press, and I was a bit skeptical that it would be more than basic PR. In fact, so far, it seems to be a subject of some serious effort. As a Marriott customer, I’m finding some useful info (I hadn’t heard about the LA Live Project). Blogs are at their best when they’re a conversation, and I would note in particular that even negative comments on Bill’s posts are getting responses. Brandon lists some worthy blog criteria at the tail end of his post. Check out both Brandon’s and Bill’s blogs.
Via Steve Rucinski’s blog, news of a new service from ePrize. Long story short, it allows businesses of any size to deploy marketing sweepstakes within North America and the UK. The application allows customization, geographic targeting, etc, in a way that would have previously been challenging for a small business, if it was achievable at all.
I’m positive on this, though perhaps not as much so as Steve. Some of the service’s features, such as PrizePool, have been done before, e.g. in the radio business, and it’s easy to misuse a sweepstakes campaign. Having said that, there are some important things here -
More…
Just a quick follow-up to this post, by way of Mark White’s excellent blog. Mark points out new UK rules requiring website disclosures of corporate info. Though I’m not based in the UK, nor do I currently post all of that info myself, I think it’s a fair illustration of the kind of disclosure that helps customers build trust in a company. Check it out.
New IE7 Small Business Issue
10-Jan-07This came up right before the holidays, and I didn’t get to it at the time. I’ve heard enough about it that it warrants comment.
In Internet Explorer 7, Microsoft has included a bunch of new security features. Generally speaking, they seem to be positive, if limited, changes. One that caused a fair bit of uproar in the press is an anti-phishing and anti-fraud feature. Long story short, a business can acquire an Extended Validation SSL Certificate. IE7 and other major browsers will acknowledge that, in the case of IE7 with a green address bar. Criteria for a EV SSL certificate were set by an industry working group. These criteria exclude individuals and general partnerships. In short, you need to be a LLC or incorporated. This seems like a reasonable summary, though perhaps a bit slanted.
A few points -
-This may not take hold at all, and almost certainly isn’t going to be a big deal right off the bat. It will likely take time for the new certificates to take hold with site owners, and time for consumers to come to expect a green bar.
-This isn’t really a Microsoft issue. I have no interest in the browser\Operating System wars, but the WSJ article above paints it as a Microsoft intiative. In fact, in includes other companies, though I couldn’t say to what extent it’s Microsoft propelled. Regardless, even if you loathe Microsoft, don’t let it blind you to the larger point that customers need to have trust in your site and your business. This may include EV SSL and a green bar, but it may also include turning off privacy in your domain name registration (check this with a whois ), a DUNS number, a 411 listing, decent “About” and “Contact” info, and lots of other things that tell your customers that even if you’re not running a 2000 employee company with a massive, fixed headquarters, you’re not a fly-by-night operation.
-Speaking for the US - given the liability climate here, I’d be very skeptical of running any kind of a significant e-commerce operation without some sort of protection from personal liability for my business operations. This is generally true, but is even better advice re a self-hosted (not eBay) operation. Given the relative ease of establishing a LLC or corporation, plus all the additional benefits that stem from it (particularly in acquiring credit), think very hard about whether or not a sole-proprietorship is the best structure for you. Acquiring one of these certificates is just one more point in favor of incorporating.
-If you’re really worried about this, you could set up web analytics reports to track off of browser version. A full description is outside of the scope of this post, but if IE 7 users are dropping out at a significantly greater rate than IE 6 users, particularly on the first page or at the start of a shopping cart, there may be an issue. Of course, it may be other issues as well (early adopter behavior comes to mind), so be careful about overreacting.
In short, I don’t think this story is all that big of a deal in and of itself, but it is a chance to think about other business issues. Comments and emails welcome.
Happy New Year!
05-Jan-07A belated Happy New Year to all. I hope everyone had a happy and safe holiday season. I’ve returned from vacation and will resume posting shortly.
Teeny, Tiny Analytics (Part 2)
10-Dec-06continued from previous post
Would knowing
-where people drop out of your web shopping cart
-what percent of site visitors convert
-how that new FAQ or format for the instruction manual affected the number of service calls
-is your new blog being used more by existing or potential customers
-which of your customers are most profitable
-where are those highly profitable customers coming from
-insert question of interest to your business here
be helpful?
It would be irresponsbile to make too much of a blanket statement in these matters, and to be sure, analytics isn’t necessarily easy. But neither does it only belong to the big guys. The questions I asked above don’t require vast server farms or armies of consultants. The questions I asked above can often be answered, and trended on a recurring basis, with a few spreadsheets, a little bit of time, and perhaps a subscription to a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) tool.
Most importantly, analytics isn’t this super-duper tool that as soon as you can afford it, should be installed to replace intuition and experience. Rather, it should be an ongoing effort to inform and refine those same qualities.
This was a fairly quick post, and I’ll try to post more case studies later.
Teeny, Tiny Analytics (Part 1)
10-Dec-06While doing research for an upcoming post, I came accross this post from Neil Raden. Neil is responding to the Harvard Business Review article “Competing on Analytics” (purchase required, or made available through membership in BPMI) by Tom Davenport, as well as his Davenport’s subsequent commentary on it. To oversimplify, Davenport is in the camp that holds that not only does analysis trump everything, it must be a highly centralized affair, staffed with lots of expensive experts and tools. In short, a big, centralized, operation at a big business. Raden disagrees. Full disclosure - I read the article at the time, but didn’t reread for this post - I’m primarily working off of Raden’s analysis.
To be sure, HBR in general, and Davenport’s article in particular, are written largely for an audience at much larger businesses than my usual niche. For that matter, Raden probably usually focuses on larger companies as well. But Davenport’s message disturbs me all the same. As best as I can tell, it’s on the order of -
Lesson
Analytics is better than, and incompatible with, intuition and gut feel. Hire a bunch of PhDs and issue some big consulting contracts, put the smart guys in charge of everything, and well, maybe you’ll be able to compete.
End Lesson
No thanks.
Far more sound, and appealing, is Raden’s message -
“It may not be glamorous and it may not reek of the “next big thing,” but little bits of BI attached to the smallest processes and process steps seem to have enormous impact and potential for continuous improvement. Thought leader Peter Drucker has said that it was important to find a way to run organizations with the honest contribution of ordinary people, not the efforts “of a few supermen.” (emphasis added)
Yep. Chances are, you’re already doing some of this, even if your efforts don’t have as glorifed of a title as “BI” (business intelligence, by the way). If not, or you haven’t thought about it much, think of it like this -
continued in next post
Media Roundup
07-Dec-06There have been several great articles lately showing how businesses are using tech to “play big” -
CNN Money - Small Companies That Play Big
A good piece, though it may get a little carried away. Note in particular the examples of web analytics software, fulfillment services and WebEx.
Small Biz Resource - How to Make Your SMB Look Like a Player
Good overall read.
Washington Post - The New Dot-Economy
A good article. Note Zimbra’s use, or non-use, of venture capital. The fact that new tech allows you to bootstrap a business at a far lower cost is going to be a recurring theme. If Zimbra works out, I bet the founders and other investors are going to wish they had some of that equity back.
CNN Money - Cost-Cutting Software Targets Small Business
This last article covers larger, more elaborate implementations than the usual target niche of this blog, but the examples are good ones.
And, here we go…
07-Dec-06Okay, I was going to do a little more housekeeping before I started posting, but I ran into too much good stuff over the last couple of days, so I’m going to jump right in. There’s more to be done around here, so don’t be surprised if the layout continues to change over the next few days. Otherwise, …