The online ramblings of Dylan Bland

By the time you’re reading this you’ve already read dozens of reviews of the iPad so I’ll do you a favour and keep this brief.

Why I love my iPad:

• it’s better for consuming content than a laptop or desktop. Browsing web sites, reading articles, watching videos all feel better on the iPad. It’s magic. No, really it is!
• The Internet no longer feels like the Internet. Spend time with the YouTube app on the iPad and you’ll forget YouTube started as a web site. The lines have been blurred.
• eBooks will work. Forget about the iPad replacing fiction, it’s not what it’s really about. Think textbooks, newspapers, magazines, articles, reviews etc. For this it’s perfect.  And they wont have illustrations, think inline videos and URLs.
• It brings the Internet out of the study and into the home. iPads can be grabbed quickly and used in any room of the house to show pictures, share recipes, send a quick email etc.
• Anyone can use them. I’ve had kids as young as 8 pick up the iPad and use it like a pro. Ditto my Dad…
• iPads make you happy. This is a quality device and Apple has nailed the content. The web, videos, books all come together in a way never seen before.

Bottom line, don’t be a hater. If you’re a geek, a lover of great content, or just want a sneak peak into the future, you owe it to yourself to own one ASAP. Buy Now!

Today I had the same thought twice so it has occurred to me that now would be a good time to resurrect my blog and share my thought with the world: creative people don’t care so much about time, money or opportunity cost, and neither should they.

You may already know this, and to a degree I did too, but it’s worth being reminded of.

When you work with talented creative people they don’t think about what’s “practical” or “how long things take” or “how much something costs to build” – their eyes are fixed firmly on realizing their creative vision. And so it should be. While I’m not advocating ignoring financial or practical realities, sometimes it’s best to leave those worries to someone else and let the creatives run free.

I was reminded of this today when I was working with a designer on some web pages. As always, I was excited and pumped to see our ideas come alive on the screen, but I had deadlines and dollar figures running through my head, thinking of the cost both in time and money. It’s a tricky balance; I wanted it to be good, but I also wanted it “done” so we could move onto the next thing. You have to draw a line somewhere, but to an extent design is “done when it’s done” – the magic is in the little touches that always occur at the very end.

Tonight I also saw Michael Jackson’s “This Is It” (which as a side note, you should go and see) where the point I’m trying to make hit me hard. As you probably know, the film is based on footage of MJ’s sell out (50x over) come-back show that obviously (and sadly) never happened – and it was epic. As I watched it I saw things over, and over, and over again that were massively expensive and time consuming to pull off. Sets like you wouldn’t believe, animations and footage (for the stage) that must have cost a bomb. Costumers, dancers, fireworks – no expense was spared. But it easily could have been. A less creative person might have said “you know what, we could cut this and we could cut that and we’d save a couple of million bucks and you know what, we’d still sell out 50 times over.” And they’d be right. But that’s not what made MJ special. Despite his (apparently) less than ideal financial position, no expense was spared when creating the show for his fans.

Good design, good creativity,  the “Apple Factor”, comes at a price both in dollars and time. But in my opinion it’s a price worth paying. It’s what people remember, and it’s what makes great people/companies/products/whatever great.

Lance Wiggs posted today about someone stealing content from his blog for the purpose of republishing the content on their own site to generate revenue from the associated Google Ads.

The offending site responded positively to Lance’s request to remove his content but also pointed out that their actions were not dissimilar to the actions of Google with their Google News service. (FYI Google News is a new aggregation service that pulls headlines from a variety of publishers so you can get all your news from the one place).

It reminded me of a comment one of the Mighty Ape developers made last week in response to Stuff.co.nz displaying an ad that temporarily took over the entire screen thus masking the content for a few seconds. I’m paraphrasing here but it was something along the lines of “Screw you stuff – switching to Google News.”

So…just because Google News pulls the content in a similar way to the site that Lance took offense to…does that make it right?

I’d argue it doesn’t.

Google News takes traffic away from publishers by “stealing” and republishing content within a news aggregation site where the original publisher has no opportunity to make revenue from ad sales.

Content is expensive to produce. Hiring researchers, reporters, editors and photographers isn’t cheap and in today’s world of declining newspaper sales these publishers will be looking more and more at recouping their investment through online ad sales. Some might stay that Stuff and the nzherald accepting ads that temporarily take over the entire screen may seem daft and short sighted and they’re probably right, but on the other hand some might argue that publishers who pay money to create their own content cant afford the luxury of having that opinion. Wages need to be paid somehow.

In conclusion I’d argue that Google News takes traffic and eye balls away from the publisher…thus reducing their revenues. If I were a publisher I’d be nervous.

Imagine the final 2 minutes of an online auction for a brand new Nintendo Wii with an RRP of $399. The leading bid is just $100. Sounds compelling…yes? You’d consider placing a bid…yes?

If this sounds like you then head over to swoopo.com and more recently planetbid.co.nz and you’ll likely find such an auction…but with an evil twist.

In the case of planetbid.co.nz each bid costs you $1.49 and the bid increment (the amount the sale price raises with each bid) is just 11 cents.

Do the maths: an auction with a leading “bid” of $100 has already earned planetbid a massive $1,354 from bidding fees (divided $100 by the bid increment of 11 cents and then multiply that number by $1.49 which is the cost to place a bid). On top of that, the winning bidder must still purchase the Wii for the leading bid price of $100.

This is an evil business model but what’s really interesting is the psychology at play.

Let’s have a look.

Stage 1: at the beginning of the auction when the leading bid is below say $100 people sniff an opportunity to get a $399 Nintendo at a bargain price – a free lunch if you will. A flurry of bids follow.

Stage 2: the middle of the auction where a handful of bidders have made a small to moderate financial commitment to the auction (remembering of course that each bid has cost someone $1.49). At this point some bidders will see the train wreck ahead and will pull out – cutting their losses.

Stage 3: the end of the auction where, perhaps even unwittingly, two, three or four bidders have placed a large number of bids and in doing so have made a substantial financial commitment. This is where loss aversion kicks in and bidders are no longer bidding to win but are bidding not to lose. They’ve dug themselves a hole and are unwilling to let go. These bidders may have each paid $30, $40, $50 or more in bidding fees and if they lose now they’ve simply thrown their money away. The momentum of the auction combined with an intense fear of loss also brings out blind optimism. When looking at potential loss in the face bidders cling to the hope that everything will turn out OK and the other bidders will drop out before they do. The alternative, to withdraw now, is to accept a sure financial loss – a deeply unattractive option to many people.

Evil. For every auction run there’s only one winner and many many more losers – in the true sense of the word.

As you may have noticed yesterday’s post was my first post in a little over a month…curiously about the same amount of time I’ve been on Twitter.

Follow me @dylanbland

This week I’ve been doing some work with the team over at Mighty Ape to improve some of the site’s key conversion points.

The exercise really highlighted to me how similar building a web site is to building an America’s Cup yacht.

I’m serious.

A web site is like a yacht. It gets designed, built and launched. All things going to plan it does what you designed it to do.

And then the tweaking begins. The optimization.

Teams in the America’s Cup spend hundreds (or more?) of hours testing different sails, different rigs, different bulps and different combinations of all of those things until they settle on a combination that might go a couple of seconds faster round the course than the boat you originally launched.

And so it is with web design.

If you change the copy on this page how many people click through to this page? If you change the colour of this text how many people click this button? If you change the size of this button how many more people click it? And so it goes on.

Just as it is on a yacht you may only milk an extra 2 or 3% but over the course of a year that may add up to a significant increase in people joining, people buying, people making an email enquiry or whatever it is you want people to be doing on your site.

Tweak the boat. Tweak the boat…

A little earlier this year Shane, Simon and I set aside some time to design and build a mobile version of Mighty Ape which launched yesterday.

If you have a web-enabled mobile phone you can check it out at m.mightyape.co.nz.

Building a mobile site was no different from building a regular web site except that you must consider that a) people spend less time on mobile sites, b) people load fewer pages on mobile sites, and c) you have a much smaller canvas to work with.

These constraints forced us to be crystal clear about how we wanted customers to use the site (not a bad thing!). Building every possible feature and page just “because we can” wasn’t an option. We settled on two key objectives: 1) the ability to place orders, and 2) news and releases lists to keep customers informed and to encourage daily visits. We snuck in a few extra things such as checking the delivery status of past orders, but these were secondary objectives that didn’t make it out of the footer.

To achieve the objective of daily visits you’ll find “latest news” “recent releases” and “coming soon” on the home page. This content will change several times per day and is driven directly from the main MA site. To achieve the objective of accepting online orders we obviously added the shopping trolley/cart and the ability to search the database of over 1 million products. We deliberately left off browsing the category tree as it doesn’t work with the whole idea of respecting people’s time and data constraints as described above.

Anyway I’m pleased with how it’s turned out and I’ve already placed my first order from my mobile. If you’re like me and have a short attention span you may even prefer the mobile site to the main site! Visit m.mightyape.co.nz and try it for yourself…all feedback (good or bad) is welcome!

PS: the above may seem all terribly obvious but you’d be surprised how many people I meet that approach building a web site by jumping straight into Photoshop or whatever without giving any thought to what they’re actually trying to achieve. Good web design is so much more than writing clean code or making stuff look pretty!

I’m not in the habit of forwarding on chain emails – however this one that I received today I thought was very good. Enjoy…

A lecturer, when explaining stress management to an audience, raised a glass of water and asked, ‘How heavy is this glass of water? ‘

Answers called out ranged from 8oz. To 20oz.

The lecturer replied, ‘The absolute weight doesn’t matter. It depends on how long you try to hold it. ‘If I hold it for a minute, that’s not a problem. If I hold it for an hour, I’ll have an ache in my right arm. If I hold it for a day, you’ll have to call an ambulance.’

‘In each case, it’s the same weight, but the longer I hold it, the heavier it becomes. ‘

He continued, ‘And that’s the way it is with stress management. If we carry our burdens all the time, sooner or later, as the burden becomes increasingly heavy, we won’t be able to carry on. ‘

‘As with the glass of water, you have to put it down for a while and rest before holding it again. When we’re refreshed, we can carry on with the burden. ‘

‘So, before you return home tonight, put the burden of work/life down. Don’t carry it home. You can pick it up tomorrow.’

…for finding a flat:

I’ve intentionally let the dust settle before posting my thoughts on Ferrit.

What amazes me the most about the whole thing is the loud noise coming from some corners of the New Zealand blogosphere who appear to be delighting in the web site’s failure.

The reasons Ferrit “failed” are obvious – probably even to Ferrit. And sure, if I were calling the shots I would have done things differently. Most people would have. But Telecom isn’t most people and a company that size was always going to go “all in” or not at all. And it’s worth pointing out that Ferrit isn’t the only site taking this approach. Will the same people be so hard on Xero if their dream ends the same way?

It takes a certain type of person/company to put their money where their mouth is and actually give something a go and it’s a lot easier to critisize other people’s mistakes than get out there and risk making your own.

If nothing else, Ferrit gave people something to talk/bitch about. But it also gave a number of small online retailers a real shot at e-commerce; a source of traffic and sales they otherwise may not have been able to afford.