Business Bricks

Derek Powazek lists four homepage goals + argues you should design the homepage last, not first. Does backwards work?

This experiment by filmmaker Vertigo reminds me how hosting company TextDrive raised 40k in 75 hours from 200 customers.

How to Do What You Love

Photoset of 88 Evening Standard headlines at Flickr. I hate the Evening Standard and particularly its alarmist and sometimes (imho) misleading headlines. If you work or have worked in London, you’ll know what I mean. But I can’t help but want to know which headline sold most copies: SISTERS EXECUTED NEXT TO BABY: PICTURES
TOOTHPASTE CANCER ALERT or DOG STOLEN AT GUNPOINT.

The best Google AdWords ad I’ve seen in ages (see left) clicks through to the most underwhelming homepage I’ve seen in ages. There’s a huge potential market being missed here: [1] Strangers are more likely to tell you the truth than friends — if you ask the right questions [2] If Google can make money from people paying researchers to just answer questions, someone can make money from people paying strangers to get blunt feedback — I know what I’d pay more for.

Battle of the to-do list software. — Whereas Ta-da List [1] is deliberately minimalist, Remember the Milk [2] is deliberately maximalist. — We just sold our flat and used [1] to tick-off all 67 renovation tasks we faced at the start of November. Most of the time I manage my to-do list(s) using my favourite text editor. But the magic of [1] is that it offers far less features and flexibility than your average text editor or word processor. You can group and share and tick-off tasks, but there’s no sleep function, flags or colour coding to help you procrastinate. — [2] is yang to [1]’s yin: “what started as a simple idea soon became a huge web application with every feature imaginable”. — Both [1] and [2] are hugely popular because they lie at the extremes. People don’t want software with some features. They want software with very few features or very many features.

Meetings are evil

In less than 200 words —

Foreword
Small is the new big
Beware these 17 start-up screw-ups
Don’t start a cafe
What’s the least amount of work I can
do that ends up having big value?

Chapter 1
Ready. Fire. Aim
Keep your plan in your head
Pick a name
Print chocolate business cards or none at all

Chapter 2
The to-do list = the one tool that
will make or break your career
Chase invoices the minute they’re late
Do one thing every day that scares you
Don’t be a martyr, be a partyr

Chapter 3
Start your own network
Keep your town weird
Boycott Dixons
Never hate your enemies, it affects your judgement

Chapter 4
Smile
Make a binary decision —
[0] build a website for search engine spiders or
[1] cut your site in half
Unlearn sales techniques. Learn buying techniques

Chapter 5
Nopen plan is better than open plan
Hire help. Hire fast
Help another start-up start-up — in Africa
Sell out
Don’t kick your kitten

What would you add?
What would you delete?
Comments are open

17 start-up screw-ups. “After I sold my business to Hasbro, I decided I’d make a list of everything I’d done wrong and [had] seen other entrepreneurs do wrong.”

Can anyone decipher Jakob’s rant?

McDonaldisation
One of the few academic books I own is a text called The McDonaldization of Society. Spelt with a z, not an s, because it was written by an American, George Ritzer. I can’t remember ever reading it, or how I came to own it, but it does contain some great stuff about the tactics McDonalds used to stop people hanging around, including … uncomfortable seats.

I also found this tragic story last week:
“I opened up a charming neighborhood coffee shop. Then it destroyed my life […] our cafe was too cozy and charming to pop in for a cup to go. The average coffee-to-stay customer nursed his mocha (i.e. his $5 ticket) for upward of 30 minutes. Don’t get me started on people with laptops.”

Most websites are like uncomfortable seats
Most websites are designed to appeal to search engine spiders, not to humans. They’re designed (like McDonalds seats) to drive traffic (where traffic means the movement of people) — not to make new or repeat sales. In other words, what went for Eighties fast-food restaurant design now seems to go for Noughties web design.

Two weeks ago I picked Jason Fried’s Cut Your Site In Half as one of the two best things I read last year. If you cut your site in half, the logic goes, you convert more clicks to customers.

In return I got a lot of email about SEO (short for Search Engine Optimisation). The SEO lobby argues that, if you want more search traffic, you need to double your page count, not cut it in half. Sadly, there’s not much you can do to strike a balance between doubling a site and cutting it in half. You need to make a binary decision.

Decision 0
[a] Decide between SEO vs SEE vs SED
[b] Double your page count
[c] Use Google Analytics to maximise traffic
[d] Dance to the tune of Google’s PageRank algorithm (at least until the world turns on to social search like del.icio.us)
[e] Find a way to make money from a site that’s designed to be read by search engine spiders, not human beings

Decision 1
[a] Figure out what one thing your site does
[b] Cut your site in half
[c] Buy Don’t Make Me Think and Call To Action
[d] Use Google Analytics to measure and maximise conversion (of clicks to customers or leads or regulars)
[e] Remember Seth’s line: “Any fool with money can buy traffic”. Once you’ve maximised conversion, buy traffic. Scale

You decide.

Alex Tew just sold his last 1,000 pixels on The Million Dollar Homepage via eBay. A character called greatdealsdepot paid £21,593/ $38,100 for a space that cost $1,000 two weeks ago.

One last observation: I spotted the ad on the left searching for “million dollar homepage” at Google. Now that’s opportunism. For all the hundreds/ thousands of copycat pixel auction sites — buckapixel.fr, pixelmart.it, pixelpensions.co.uk etc etc — I bet the only people making real money are Alex Tew, the domain name registrars, and people like www.TheMillionDollarScript.com. In other words, don’t follow the sheep — make money selling to the sheep.

Photo at plasticbag.org. Not as bad an idea as it first sounds. Nobody looks at business cards more than twice nowadays.

There’s one less word on the Google homepage today. It’s Louis Braille’s birthday. Good work Marissa Mayer.

Must-read tragedy by Michael Idov.

Includes some great throwaway lines:
[1] the small cafe connects to the fantasy of throwing a perpetual dinner party, and it cuts deeper—all the way to Barbie tea sets—than any other capitalist urge
[2] make your monthly rent in four days to be profitable, a week to break even. if you haven’t hit the latter mark in a month, close
[3] our cafe was too cozy and charming to pop in for a cup to go. the average coffee-to-stay customer nursed his mocha (i.e. his $5 ticket) for upward of 30 minutes. don’t get me started on people with laptops
[4] our marriage appears to have been saved by a well-timed bankruptcy.

Copy Tom Peters’ New Year’s Resolution.

“Leap Ahead” will replace “Intel Inside” in 2006 — Note: Walter Werzowa wrote the original 3-second jingle after reading the KLF’s brilliant The Manual: How To Have A Number One The Easy Way. I previously wrote about that here.