The online ramblings of Dylan Bland

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.

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’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.

I was amazed to learn the other day that the nzherald developed their iPhone-compatible site in a single weekend. The team responsible went from sketching some designs on Friday to coding it up on Saturday and Sunday.

To be honest this isn’t something I expected to hear about a publicly listed company like APN. What’s more, the site’s really well thought out too and has totally changed the way I consume my local news (now brought forward 10 minutes to while waiting for my morning coffee at the local cafe as oppose to in front of my desk with the coffee in hand!).

This is a great example of how a small amount of work targeted in the right area can have a really big impact.

Nice job guys.

Update: The clever people behind this project are Nigel Horricks (the one and only!) and Justin Matthews. I’ve met Nigel and he’s one of the lucky ones who really gets the Internet. Inspired choice APN…

Last week I posted about the launch of my friend Simon’s online shopping site Mighty Ape.

One of the key reason my money’s on Mighty Ape going all the way in New Zealand is their same-day shipping service, a carryover from GP Store.

Take for example Richard Branson’s new book Business Stripped Bare. The book was released in New Zealand only yesterday – it looked good so I ordered it…

… and today it arrived. That’s the benefit of holding stock and it sure beats the experience of waiting 2-3 weeks for shipping from overseas or battling the inner-city car parks. Go The Ape!

PS: iPhone cameras suck!

BNZ’s old brand.

BNZ’s new brand.

Fail.

My good friend and Zillion business partner Simon Barton finally took the covers off his new shopping site today with the launch of Mighty Ape.

Simon, Matt and the rest of the team at GP Store have been working hard on Mighty Ape for a very long time and I really rate them to go all the way and deliver New Zealand a truly world class shopping web site. The site’s great, they have a warehouse packed full (really full) of stock and a solid team of guys and girls packing and shipping orders quickly (like GP Store, Mighty Ape offers same day shipping of in stock items).

Well done guys. Seriously well done.

Check out Mighty Ape

I love web apps. I love having access to the same data at home and at the office. I love being able to collaborate with members of the team who work remotely.

At Zillion we already use Google Docs and Basecamp and last month to prove I’m not a total hater we added Xero to the mix.

Xero doesn’t disappoint. It works as well as it looks. I’m yet to be convinced the numbers stack up on the business side but they’ve built a truly world-class product that should benefit hugely from word-of-mouth. My new accountant works for a firm and while she’d heard of Xero she’d never used it. Thanks to the intuitive interface (that recently picked up an award from one of my usability hero’s Jakob Nielsen) she was up and running in no time and has already signed up to one of their Auckland-based advanced training sessions. Another convert that will no doubt tell her friends.

So thanks to Xero when my accountant enters and reconciles transactions I can see the results in real time. It’s a great feeling and I recommend Xero to any web savvy business owner. Aside from the price and the possiblity of it being increased once you’re “locked in” I don’t see any reason for small business owners to stick to MYOB.

Good work Xero and best of luck getting those subscription numbers up.

PS: if anyone from Xero is reading this. We loved Xero so much we did the unthinkable and re entered three years of historical data into Xero. Because BNZ Internet banking doesn’t let you export data further back than 6 months we did a lot of manual entering. While I appreciate entering transactions manually one at a time isn’t your core business the interface for this could be improved hugely if you let people enter more than one transaction per page. Web apps will never be as fast as local apps and waiting for pages to load is a pain, especially if you’re reloading once every 20 seconds or so.

It was cool to read an article on Stuff today that had positive things to say about both Zillion and happysheep.

On Zillion…

“Zillion was runner-up in the 2008 Netguide trading awards, and is the self-proclaimed auction alternative to Trade Me.

Three of the better features that emerge from the two pages of comparisons with Trade Me include the streamlined buying system, a “Wanted” list and that auction starting prices are the reserve prices.

The streamlined buying system is refreshingly simple. As soon as an item is won through auction or bought via Buy Now, the buyer is directed through a payment process that begins by selecting shipping method and address and ends with payment details.

The buyer is prompted at each stage of the process, circumventing the relatively long-winded back and forth exchanges that are familiar to Trade Me users.”

On happysheep…

“Happy Sheep is a classified site that combines event notifications, flatmates and flat rentals, a personals section, jobs and services and a for-sale section.

Happy Sheep has borrowed the vast majority of its features from its immensely successful American counterpart Craigslist and European equivalent Gum Tree.

Happy Sheep is at the forefront of the movement towards localisation. After registering, users are asked to pick the city closest to them from the five major centres, ensuring that the classifieds available for viewing are relevant to the user.”

Our decision last year to switch Zillion to “no reserve” auctions was in response to buyer preference away from auctions where the seller’s desired selling price is unknown, as described by this article’s author. Earlier this year Trade Me followed suit although continue to allow a reserve price if the seller pays an additional listing fee. It’s encouraging to see a journalist (especially one employed by Fairfax) do his part to educate buyers and sellers on alternatives to Trade Me.

Related links:

• Trade Me alternatives