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Pre-Launch Blogs

When preparing to launch a website in the future an organization/individual has two likely choices. They might decide to not put anything up on the domain they plan on launching and only announce the site once their is an actual site to show. On the other hand they could put a placeholder page (splash page) up on the domain and whoever visits the site will place it in the back of their mind like the other million sites that people forget to go back and check on.

However, now there is a third option that shouldn’t be ignored. With today’s technology organizations are capable of putting up pre-launch blogs to help maintain the visitors that come to their site.

Most recently I visited the website of my favorite magazine, Play, to find that they had a more sophisticated splash page then one may think. However, I also found that they are missing a great opportunity to improve their image and traffic while also saving a lot of time when their official site launches.

Their target audience consists of people who enjoy video games and technology and the number of people who visit their site is not known, but seeing how this crowd uses the web extensively you could imagine the loss of people their site experiences daily. What they could do is setup a little blog that has frequent updates so that people have a reason to return to the site.

They already have a basic layout on their site and they could fit a blog in there and start writing industry newsbits or keeping everyone updated to the inner workings of the magazine. They may plan on doing this already with their official site, but why not begin that process now?

The Benefits

What this does is help keep people interested in your company. More and more companies are going the route of releasing beta products, software, and websites and a pre-launch blog could be looked at in the same way. You could find out what type of features users want and what they expect to see or you could choose just to write small entries/articles for your readers to enjoy.

More importantly you get your site in search engines immediately. If you type in “play magazine” into Google you won’t even find their website in the first 50 results returned. Obviously, search engine traffic is something that cannot be overlooked, but this is exactly what they are doing. They spent the time to put together a basic website and by the time the real one launches, they will have to invest even more time in getting it established in the search engines.

If you put up a website like they have and then spend 5 months finishing the real one and assuming it takes 2 months to get your site thoroughly established in the search engines, you find that your company has lost 7 months of traffic. However, if you did the basic site with the blog, not only will you get in the search engines, but assuming quality content you will also find your site linked to by other sites. Once the official site launches your website is already moving in full-force with an established customerbase and all it took was a small blog.

If you were to use a hosted service such as Squarespace, you could easily setup a blog that provides interesting content and helps to maintain and grow a customer base before your official site even launches. Even though your site may not be done, it doesn’t mean your ability to win an audience can’t begin now.

Who Wants A Piece of Yahoo?

After Microsoft’s unsolicited bid for Yahoo last week, it seems everyone has their theories about what is actually going to happen. Will Yahoo accept the offer and piss-off most of their employees? Will they hold up their middle finger and realize that they need to get their act together? The only thing we know so far is that there may be alternative outcomes beyond MSFTYHOO.

  • Private Equity Buyout – There’s a slight chance that a private equity firm could purchase Yahoo with the hope of reselling down the road, but it’s a slim one. The credit crisis in America has led to tighter restrictions so we’ve seen fewer private equity acquisitions lately because of this.
  • Apple – CEO Yang has been an admirer of Steve Jobs in the past (and even came on stage to introduce the iPhone) and at least one report has speculated on an Apple buyout. The problem is that Apple doesn’t have enough cash on hand and I can’t see Jobs wanting to blow their cash stash on a company that doesn’t really benefit them. Now if Apple bought Adobe that would make more sense, but Apple Yahoo?
  • Google – Google has reached out to Yahoo in an attempt to outline what a bad decision the MSFT acquisition would be, but it seems Google might be holding all the cards. It’s been noted that most of Yahoo’s core services run on FreeBSD, Apache, and other open source technologies, and Microsoft’s core services run on Windows Server and Microsoft-centric technologies. If Microsoft successfully acquires Yahoo then it might tie up their collective engineering resources for a very long time trying to integrate their platforms, and that would allow Google to really push forward with its Office-killing web applications. People are saying that Google might want to acquire Yahoo, but I think Google’s secretly hoping the acquisition happens so that Google appears to be the most nimble of all technology companies.

How To Identify Bad Web 2.0 Design

You’ve got your web 2.0 interface design checklist, 10 things that aren’t web 2.0, current styles in good web design (thanks for 9rules link Ben!), and now I bring you ways to identify *bad* web 2.0 design. We’ve all seen it, and now here are some quick ways to figure out if a web 2.0 product is well-designed, or just trying too hard to fit in.

[Read more…] about How To Identify Bad Web 2.0 Design

Startups And The Recession

There’s no doubt in my mind that the U.S. economy is headed for a recession. The Federal Reserve just cut rates — again — down to 3.50%. This, coupled with oil’s rising prices, the fall of the value of the dollar, the rise in inflation, and the credit lending problems are all pointing to a dramatic downturn in the stock market. Heck, U.S. markets opened today down 5% but managed to come back a few points through solid intraday trading. This isn’t just a random blip on the radar, it’s a signal.

The genius behind the Drama 2.0 blog posted his thoughts on the recession’s effect on the tech industry so I’m going to jump in and post two impacts of the recession right here.

What Will Get Cut First?
When budgets get tight and revenues aren’t as high as they were in the glory days, what will go first is marketing. You can’t dip on your core competencies and get rid of a dozen highly-skilled engineers because then you’re cutting your own throats. Getting rid of your top people and replacing them with low-level morons was the reason that CompUSA went out of business, and cutting the head off your engineering department is a similar mistake.

When advertising gets cut, the ones with the lowest ROI will be the first to get the slash, and that’s going to mean CPM advertising. With CPC, a company is putting all their effort into converting the click on their own website so they control the conversion rates. CPM ads put all the pressure on the publisher to get good click-through rates, and if they’re paying top dollar for CPM rates on popular sites and aren’t getting a good CTR, then it’s a waste of money. AdWords and AdSense aren’t going to drop much, but CPM rates will.

Investors Change Their Tune
VCs have been pouring dollars into companies like paper money is going out of style (*cough*) and 2008 will be the year they take a more careful look at their investments and investment strategy. Investing in pre-revenue companies with no revenue strategy is a lot different than pre-revenue companies that have a solid revenue strategy, and you can guess which type of company won’t be raising as much money this time around. The theory of “past success indicates future success” when it comes to startup founders is going to be flipped around and although an entrepreneur may have had a big name a few years ago, investors will realize it’s a totally new game in 2008. If you’re giving away the cow (the service) and the milk (unique value proposition) for free then you don’t have much of a leg to stand on when it comes time to introduce a revenue model for your “at scale” company. You may be big, but you’re not sustainable. And money doesn’t grow on trees anymore.

Skip Prestige, Do It For The Fun

I do things very differently from a lot of my friends in the design consulting profession. Everybody seems to be looking for the big client, the big money, or the well-known website, but I skip all of those and concentrate on projects I know are interesting and fun to work on. I immediately turn down projects I think are going to take too long, be too draining, have too much corporate political bullshit, or won’t let me express my creativity because what’s the point? It doesn’t matter how well a project pays, if it’s a hassle to deal with it every single day for X months then you’re going to be miserable. Money != happiness.

Some of my friends from school graduated and are now trying to make it on their own, but what’s difficult to figure out is that you’ll hate consulting work if you pick the wrong types of projects, and now those same friends are totally burnt out after only a year or so…..