Google, please borrow from 37Signals

I love Google Apps. I really do. I find that I hardly ever open Microsoft Office products anymore.

But, because I've been using Apps from the beginning, all of my documents are under my personal Google login. This is also true for most of my co-workers who also adopted Apps early on. This wasn't much of a problem, but now Google has released a "team edition" and wants me to migrate everything over to a new Google account associated with my work email.

But wait... there are no tools to migrate between accounts! There's no easy navigation to switch between my Google Docs for my personal account and my work account. Please, Google, take a quick look at 37Signals who has solved this problem very well with their Open Bar. Do that and provide me with a tool to move docs between accounts and I'll be happy.

Why am I complaining about this? It feels to me that Google is treating their loyal users just like Microsoft did with Office 2007. When Microsoft launched the new Office, the re-design seemed to be geared towards people who had never used Office before, not geared towards the millions who had learned for over a decade how to use the old user interface. Google is doing a similar thing. They're launching new functionality that is geared almost exclusively towards new users, not towards the users that have been around since the early days.

So, come on Google. Throw your loyal users a bone and help us use your new features. Provide a migration path. Something. Please.

The end of text ads?

A few days ago Google's stock hit a bit of a speed bump as investors worried over comScore data suggesting that the click-through rate on its paid search ads is decelerating. This could be one of several things: a slowing economy, a crack-down on click fraud, or the beginnings of ad fatigue.

I'm sure the reduced click-through rate was caused by a combination of the three things above, but I would worry most about ad fatigue if I worked at Google. The all-mighty Google text ad has not actually changed that much over the years in placement or in style. And, while these ads are clearly effective, I'm sure users are starting to tune them out.

What can Google do to innovate in this area? With few changes in several years, it does feel like it's time for a make-over of the text ad. What would you do?

Related?

How are these videos related???



Looks like Google/YouTube needs to do a little more work on this...

YouTube - Googel Developers Day US - Testing Distributed Systems

Writing online copy

Check out my post on the Bplans Blog today about writing & testing online marketing copy.

Who do you trust?

It turns out that Verisign can charge a HUGE price premium for their SSL certificates simply because their security badge is better designed than any of the "budget" SSL providers. The kicker is this: almost all SLL certificates are made equal! Your end users get the same security regardless of the provider.

That said, users probably trust some brands more than others or, more likely, trust some graphic design more than others. Looking at them images above, it's easy to figure out which providers are the budget ones and which might be more expensive. Which would you trust?

So, if I ran GoDaddy, wouldn't I want to invest $1,000 or $2,000 to get a really good security badge? After all, as a certificate provider, you're not really selling security, you're selling the image of security. Online marketers that run shopping carts will buy the certificate that looks the best, even at a price premium. So... Thawte, GoDaddy, go buy some good graphic design talent and win not only on price but on consumer trust.

What did you fix?

Joel Spolsky has a great post about problem solving over on his blog. The post is a fun read for geeks but no normal person will get through the first few paragraphs. This is unfortunate as the real salient advice comes towards the end of his post. To solve his problem,

...we borrowed an idea from Sakichi Toyoda, the founder of Toyota. He calls it Five Whys. When something goes wrong, you ask why, again and again, until you ferret out the root cause. Then you fix the root cause, not the symptoms.

This is fantastic advice for any business. How often do we only work on solving the symptoms of a real problem? How often do we only ask why once when we are trying to figure out customer behavior?

All businesses should ask why more often when they are looking to fix problems - not just problems with hardware or software, but problems with marketing strategy, business partnerships, and sales pipeline issues.

Did you ask why today?

Local Business Marketing

I just posted over on the Bplans Blog about shopping, buying, and marketing locally. Check it out.