websense

OK, so I gave in. We’ve been traditionally a PC shop for the last 10 years. However, over the last couple years, we’ve added a few team members that prefer Macs. And I have to admit, they’ve sold me on the usability and capabilities of Macs. To the degree that my wife and kids will hardly touch the PC at home. Needless to say, the huge beautiful monitor is a factor, but there is no doubt, the Mac makes photo and video editing much easier for a novice!

So, this afternoon we decided to pick up a couple of I Phones. Cool as heck. 3 or 4 of the guys at the office have ‘em and love ‘em. Of course, I love to spark debate because my Windows Mobile 6 device makes syncing with exchange extremely quick and easy. However the Moto Q has almost no “cool factor” when compared to an I phone. Lets be honest, a calculator with a color screen hardly looks good compared to a solid piece of brushed aluminum and glass that accesses the web, makes phone calls and takes pictures!

Now that I’ve sufficiently advertised the I phone; everyone knows Mac is known for ease of use right? Well, not if you’re a business. AT&T, the only provider through which you can legitimately get an i phone in the US, has zero accommodation for corporate accounts. So, we went to the AT&T Store, applied, got approved and received a confirmation code for our new accounts. Unlike a traditional wireless carrier, they don’t set them up at the store and hand you a working device. Rather, they hand you a couple really cool, but disconnected I phones with a “confirmation code”. Unfortunately, when you access their web activation site, via I Tunes, it has NO IDEA what to do with a “confirmation code”. Nor does anyone at AT&T, when you call them.

To try and shorten a long story, their web interface is useless for a Corporate Account. So are their sales support people available via phone calls. They told me I had to set it up personally, and they would convert it later! The person on the phone (after I had been transferred twice) actually told me we needed to “get around” the system to make this work. In other words, going into the store and setting it up before hand was a complete waste of time, which I know all small business owners love.

Now, because I wanted to keep the commitment I had made to a couple people regarding getting the I Phones, and the fact that i really enjoy cool new toys, I worked through this and got them working. But If Apple is smart, they will hopefully realize that not every business owner will be willing to spend 3 or 4 hours setting up something as simple as a new cell phone.

The syncing process for calenders etc. is awesome. If they could just carry the simple usability concept through their whole business!

Our Cleveland Search Engine Marketing Made Simple Seminar in Cleveland kicked off a couple of hours ago. We’re at the Rec Center in Strongsville, with a small group of just under 30 people.

While some of the sessions are going, I am sitting outside chatting with Anita Campbell, regarding the changes she’s been observing in the Search landscape. One of the things she mentioned is the speed of indexing and ranking. With her blog, Smalll Business Trends and how quickly rankings change and shift very quickly these days.

So, we decided to run a test. We’re both going to write a post about some pretty non-competitive phrases (Search Engine Marketing Made Simple Experiment) and just see how fast they get indexed and rank. We’re guessing that they’ll be indexed and ranking within a half hour.

I’ll post later with the results.

I was just reading the Feb, 08 Kiplinger Letter and found some great insights in it. Even some good tips for online retailers that were pretty accurate in my opinion.

What I really found interesting is that much of the report discusses the weak economy, inflation in the near future, and the weakness of the dollar. It also discusses that almost as a result of this online retail will continue to rise. The Letter says that not only will the percentage on online shoppers increase significantly in 2008, but the amount that current online shoppers purchase online will rise.

So, while I hope no one would wish a bad economy on the US, it’s important for all businesses to find and capitalize on the areas of growth.

There are also some great insights regarding low conversion rates of e-commerce sites, and finding ways to convert abandoned carts. I know many business leaders read The Kiplinger Letter, so their advice should lend some great credibility to the Search Marketing and Web Analytics industries.

I recently had a very interesting discussion with Jeff Gauger, the Executive Editor of our local paper The Canton Repository. From what I gathered, he’s been in the print publishing industry for the bulk of his career and clearly still is. One thing that makes him different, at least in my opinion, is that he truly realizes the collision that is happening between the off line and online worlds. News is no longer limited to the paper, the TV, or the formalities the we’ve all grown to expect in those mediums.

I was surprised to hear these words come out of his mouth, I believe he said “web-first publishing” was a major initiative, which I of course agree with. However, I was somewhat shocked to hear that come out of the mouth of the Editor of an almost 200 year old newspaper! Kind of refreshing.

Jeff made some great observations in this article, regarding coverage of the Bobby Cutts trial and a great effort the Rep made to focus on the fast pace that web users expect the content to be delivered as well as the style and format they want it in. It sounds to me like they made some great strides and learned quite a lot from this process. A high profile, national story gave them the perfect venue to try some new things and they had the guts to take the risk and give it a shot.

Jeff wrote this article for the audience of other journalists, but web marketers and site owners could certainly learn a lot from his observations! Take some time and read the article. He talks about the variations in the content, style and of course speed. Web marketers have known for years that regurgitating print materials to the web isn’t going to do the trick. This reinforces that fact in a great way.

Kudos to Jeff and the Rep for taking the web seriously, and making a good effort to serve the demands of their market. The next year or two will be interesting to watch.