Things to ask before you redo your website

by Seth Godin

I don't do any consulting, but that doesn't stop people from asking me questions. The most common question people ask me when they want a new website is, "If you were in charge of this, who are the 2 or 3 people you’d want to be sure to talk to – to help think through the issues, help us figure out who should do the work, etc.?"

The second most common question people ask me, "In addition to Apple’s site, are there 2 or 3 that you think are really appealing and work well for their business?"

I think these are perhaps the tenth and eleventh questions you should ask, not the first two. Here's my list of difficult and important questions you have to answer before you spend a nickel:

• What is the goal of the site?
• In other words, when it's working great, what specific outcomes will occur?
• Who are we trying to please? If it's the boss, what does she want? Is impressing a certain kind of person important? Which kind?
• How many people on your team have to be involved? At what level?
• Who are we trying to reach? Is it everyone? Our customers? A certain kind of prospect?
• What are the sites that this group has demonstrated they enjoy interacting with?
• Are we trying to close sales?
• Are we telling a story?
• Are we earning permission to follow up?
• Are we hoping that people will watch or learn?
• Do we need people to spread the word using various social media tools?
• Are we building a tribe of people who will use the site to connect with each other?
• Do people find the site via word of mouth? Are they looking to answer a specific question?
• Is there ongoing news and updates that need to be presented to people?
• Is the site part of a larger suite of places online where people can find out about us, or is this our one sign post?
• Is that information high in bandwidth or just little bits of data?
• Do we want people to call us?
• How many times a month would we like people to come by? For how long?
• Who needs to update this site? How often?
• How often can we afford to overhaul this site?
• Does showing up in the search engines matter? If so, for what terms? At what cost? Will we be willing to compromise any of the things above in order to achieve this goal?
• Will the site need to be universally accessible? Do issues of disability or language or browser come into it?
• How much money do we have to spend? How much time?

And finally,

• Does the organization understand that 'everything' is not an option?

The Funda of Debt & Banking

from Trakin' the india business buzz by Arun Prabhudesai

I stumbled upon this 47 minute presentation called “Money as Debt” by Paul Grignon and trust me, this has cleared many of the doubts that I had.

The videos will show you how the Banking started and what shape it has taken over the years – and how does modern banking, Debts and deposits function in today’s modern world.

These set of 5 10-minute videos will be a great education for you and I suggest you bookmark it for future reference, if you are not able to view them now.

Is Selling Becoming More Like Marketing?

from Duct Tape Marketing by John Jantsch

I have to admit that part of the motivation for the title of this post is to excite the sales oriented folks out there, but no question, the Internet has forever changed the practice of sales.

Today’s salesperson is often greeted by a sales lead that knows more about the technical or historical aspects of a product, service, or industry than they do. Selling evolved long ago from an act of presenting and closing to one of educating and consulting, but access to information via online sources, rating sites, filtering social media streams, and tools for competitive analysis have once again changed the game.

The game of selling in today’s digital information age has become one of helping a prospect aggregate and filter information and come to the shared conclusion of what value looks like. The salesperson that can best illustrate a valuable outcome wins. I don’t know about you, but from where I sit, that sounds a lot like what good marketing aims to do.

I love to use the medical profession to help make this point. (Doctors have long sold patients on what was best for them!) Years ago you went to a doctor, they diagnosed your problem, and offered a solution. If you were really sick you got a competitive prospective, but for the most part, you took the advice and moved forward. Today, patients have access to information about medical conditions, experimental drug trials, and therapies from alternative practices. Today’s medical buyer is often more informed on new medical directions than treating physicians. Few doctors can expect to see a patient and dictate a solution. The practice of medicine has evolved, in large part due to access to information, into one of helping patients filter information and come to a shared conclusion of the best path.

Today’s salesperson must employ the same online aggregating, filtering, and listening devices as their prospects or prepare to be dismissed as a hack.

Where’s Your Fortune Cookie Moment?

Where’s Your Fortune Cookie Moment?

from Duct Tape Marketing by John Jantsch

One of the delights for many who dine at Chinese restaurants is the fortune contained inside the little cookie desert.

Finding little hidden gems inside a surprise package takes us back to the fun we had at birthday parties and opening presents during a holiday.

I think businesses can tap the fortune cookie tactic in their own little way to create good feelings and the subsequent word of mouth that comes with a nice little surprise touch.

The thing is, it’s not really that hard.

My wife and I hit a sale at REI, an outdoor store that thankfully has not yet made it to our community, and she found a coat that she loved. She purchased the coat and off we went. Last evening we went to an outdoor event and she took the opportunity to wear her new coat. As we went out the door she reached into the pocket and found a little slip of paper. She pulled it out fully expecting to read a note that said something like “inspected by #48,” but instead it read “You are a goddess!” That little simple note kind of made her day as it was so unexpected. So, immediately we’re both thinking, who made this coat? And now here I am gushing about and checking out the website of what turns out to be a very cool little company located in Burlington VT called ISIS.

So the point is, what can you to add a fortune cookie moment? How can you add a creative twist that makes people pass the word on? Why stop at one thing, maybe you can hide all kinds of surprise moments in your products and services just waiting to create warm feelings and smiles.

Share your fortune cookie moments – those you’ve experienced and those you’ve done in your own business.

Image credit: The Truth About

Interesting Revelations of Orkut Zeitgeist

Interesting Revelations of Orkut Zeitgeist

from Trakin' the india business buzz by Arun Prabhudesai

Google India recently announced its first ever Orkut Zeitgeist in India. Here is the meaning of Zeitgeist,

zeit·geist | Pronunciation: ‘tsIt-"gIst, ‘zIt | Meaning: the general intellectual, moral, and cultural climate of an era.

"Zeitgeist" means "the spirit of the times", and Google reveals this spirit through the aggregation of millions of search queries we receive every day. We have several tools that give insight into global, regional, past and present search trends. These tools are available for you to play with, explore, and learn from. Use them for everything from business research to trivia answers.

Google has been doing it for quite sometime with its Google Zeitgeist. The aggregation of search keywords based on demographics is what Google Zeitgeist was about.

Remember the news floating around that Katrina Kaif is the most searched female actress with Shahid Kapur leading as the male actor?

Come to think of it, it sure helps immensely to get the insights into what the people are thinking collectively.

But , for a marketer a Zeitgeist is like the Holy Grail.

Getting a peek-a-boo into the customer’s mind is what marketers thrive on. And with youth becoming the most targeted consumer base for marketers , and Orkut Zeitgeist is a great bit of exercise by Google that has immense value to the e-commerce fraternity.

Orkut, being the undisputed king (atleast currently) of "Social networking" being the single largest generators ofIndian web traffic are the best place to check out what India’s youth are up to online and turns out they are all on Orkut!

People are using Orkut (ok, twitter and facebook are gaining popularity but in an Indian context, Orkut still continues to take the major chunk of traffic). For a majority of the school / college crowd, Orkut is still the place to network, express themselves, seek advice, to come together around causes and topics that excite them or simply to share their creative pursuits with a wider audience.The kind of communities on Orkut can easily give you an idea that the minds of youth have no barriers.

If you are a fan of cricket, pani puri (Lip smacking Indian snack), pizza, Shahrukh khan and what not, there is atleast one active community in Orkut for anything and everything that you can conjure up. And no they are not "for fun" communities alone. You have Education, programming etc and then there is the always buzzing Stock Market community in Orkut too.

Orkut Zeitgeist looked at the activity in the communities to compile the Orkut Zeitgeist highlighting the trends.

According to Google,

The trends are based on an anonnymized and aggregated study of the behaviour of Indian users over the past seven days. The analysis was repeated over several seven day periods, to confirm the accuracy of results and to rule out episodic variations. We scoured through lists on a national level and then dug deeper into city trends. The results are fascinating.

"Orkut is the number one web property in India with over 17 million* active users that comprise 48% of India’s online population.
Therefore it is no surprise when everyone refers to orkut to comprehend the dominant trends in the Indian way of life.
While different people find different things to do on the web, the list of the top Orkut communities (based on popularity) is the best representation of the unique ways in which Indian users are mining the Internet and social networks." said Rahul Kulkarni, Product Manager, Google India.

The Orkut Zeitgeist is an exhaustive list, with categorizations like ‘Top National Communities’ and then region based most active communities. Enough has been posted on blogs/websites all around which is basically copied from the official google page. So, instead of repeating the same, you can find it in the official press release on Orkut Zeitgeist Results

Avoiding the redundancy, I put on my marketer hat and penned down what the Orkut Zeitgeist means to Google and the Marketers. As usual, I am open to criticism and backlashes if you find flaws in my thoughts.

For The Marketer

• A healthy indicator of gauging the community interest.
• A deeper insight into the minds of the youth and their desires. If "Stylish people" community tops the list, there is a plethora of opportunities for the marketers remotely related to the style/fashion segment. Be it clothes, cosmetics, grooming there is a whole new customer wish-list right there.What better way for a fashion outlet to know what kind of clothes the youth find appealing.
• It allows for region based targeting. This is one area where i think the most marketers lose money. Some things will appeal only to a specific demographic based audience and doing a nationwide marketing / advertising may only lead to over shooting marketing spends. When you are out targeting the youth, the marketer can now delve into the demographic based interests.

I understand that this might be a exaggeration of sorts, since the Orkut Zeitgeist isn’t the complete picture and I am not the one who understands the marketing nuisances. But, as a wanna-be marketer for whom the Internet audience means a lot, I would not dare to overlook the trends mentioned in the Orkut Zeitgeist. Chances are that I already stalk the online communities for potential user interests and with the Orkut Zeitgeist, google has served it to me on a platter.

Whats in it for Google?

What does Google have to gain from this ? They already have the data and they just refined and published it. But, could be it be that simple. Moreover, Orkut has been around for quite sometime. Why come up with Orkut Zeitgeist now

• To create a short term buzz and get the focus of people back on Orkut. I am one of them who left Orkut for good. Twitter and Facebook have been giving me able company. But with the Orkut Zeitgeist published, I was tempted to go back and see why a "TCS 200 Batch" community has been doing. I did that and realised some friends have scrapped me and a lot of new additions at Orkut. I stay back and checked out a few. Wouldn’t the same hold for a lot of people who became inactive on Orkut.
• A boost in revenues with advertisement. An Open Cry to Advertisers to come and advertise with Google Adwords. I am no adwords geek, but I can vouch that some keywords like "style","stock market" should have become more competitive and expensive. Moreover,the advertisers who never signed up with adwords might wanna give it a try, since they now know the kind of footfalls that can occur on their landing pages.

There could be more or it might just be a typical Google routine to share the data that their servers hold. What ever it is, it sure is a welcome move. I enjoyed going through the fine points of the report and it did give me some insights into the minds of the Orkut junta.

What are your thoughts on the same? Did you like the trends presented in the Orkut zeitgeist. More so, if you work in the advertising/marketing domain, I would love to know your opinion on my hypothesis.

Here are a few interesting inferences I picked up on the internet on the Orkut Zeitgeist

• Indian alarms snooze the maximum
• Tom congratulates Jerry as they still manage to tickle the young
• Mirror mirror on the wall, who’s the most stylish of the lot
• Battle of the sexes continue even as none win

Interesting uhh…

[This post is written by our regular contributor Ankit Agarwal, an ERP Consultant by profession, a wannabe entrepreneur and stock market stalker by passion]