bwagy

Now take it.

Chances are you will be on the wrong path.

It doesn’t matter, your moving.

You can always change or create a new path later.

The biggest inherent problem we all have is lack of focus.

If you pick a path stick with it.

You will find fantastic things will happen.

It will be tough at times.  But persist. Keep at it.

Perseverance is genius.

Every Monday I like to throw some ideas out there and see what happens.

They return to me in the form of ‘I’ve tried that and heres why it didn’t work’ or ‘that’s already been done’ or ‘feedback’.

This one I have been throwing around for ages and talked to a lot of people so I thought now was time to unleash it.

Think about the mass of learnings we make online, monetisation models, usability

Now let’s apply them to an offline situation.

Why?

Fundamentally we are all humans interacting with your website or service.  We all have the same basic needs and wants.  We engage with your product sometimes with an end goal in mind othertimes we get sold on that end goal.  

Imagine I have taken over the local cafe.

Monetisation

Hmmmm ok, immediately I think of two things.

1. Offer coffee for free or very low cost to boost volume. (adsense model)
2. Offer coffee for free but charge for the experience (freemium)
3. Offer unlimited coffee at a monthly charge.  Different plans better coffee (saas)
4. Offer a special coffee that comes nicely packaged with chocolates on the side. (price discimination)

Usability

I like this one

1. Remove barriers to your end goal.  Buying a coffee.  Have a sliding door, efficient ordering system. 
2. Rather than volume (above) make it usable, friendly help user have a compelling experience (create flow), they are likely to spend more. (something online world hasn’t tapped yet).
3. How quickly can i read your menu? how does the language affect my selection? do you have a top 10 list or ‘most popular’ items.  

I’d better stop you get the idea using usability you can keep going for a while.

Community

This one is already applied somewhat

1. Create a community of coffee lovers, run a coffee course, teach them how to make coffee.
2. Setup a monthly newsletter for your loyal fans
3. Give your loyal fans cards valid for a free coffee for there friends (help them spread your idea)
4. Offer free wifi and organise tweetups / meet ups (via meetup.com)

You get the idea.

Other filters you can view your cafe through: 

• Conversion Rates: Optimise your entry points and languages for certain products.  
• Authenticity: Have nice personable people greeting you, I’m more likely to open my wallet if I’m feeling good about my experience
• Colours: Colours affect my perception of the store.
• Analytics: Do you know what type of customers come when? how long they stay? what they buy? Most effective source?
• Leaking links: Do you advertise / have signs that are building others brands not your own?

Conclusion: Ben should buy a cafe!

You can see that we have this great platform of learning online, we should all be looking at how we can apply these learnings into new contexts.

Patterns are heuristic shortcuts.

Patterns are what experts have.  It’s how doctors can sum up a patients state in a glance or how you can make snapshot judgments.

They come from experience and learning.

The are all around us, in our clothing, our behaviour, how we interact.

Identifying patterns helps in creating greater understanding.

Learning something new builds new patterns.

Doing something that makes you uncomfortable or afraid builds new patterns.

You should always be seeking new patterns!

Quite often the same patterns are everywhere.

Now use these patterns in your strategies, they will be more creative and remarkable than you ever thought possible.

(remember innovation is the application of patterns in new contexts)

Here is a freebie strategy I use all the time.   Seems obvious but quite often gets overlooked.

This is the most simple way you can increase sales online whilst decreasing costs (over the medium to long term).  It’s the Adwords Long Tail Strategy.  Simple, quick and effective.

What to do after running your Adwords campaign for a period of time (say 3 months):

• Do long tail analysis of impressions.  (How? get keywords, total impressions over time period, graph)
• Find the head of the graph
• Target those keywords via seo
• Cover the rest with adwords

Results:

1. Decrease acquisition costs by gaining visitors you already know convert
2. Increase traffic.

I have increased traffic at organisations whilst decreasing their acquisition cost by up to 75% with this simple strategy.