the goose

Last year I set up an A/B test on our ebook subscription page on Piehole.ie.  We are a pretty low traffic site but I didn’t let that stop me drawing conclusions early on.  My thought was that hard as nails sales copy was outperforming a very much more understated (and a little scrappy) subscription page.

It looks like I jumped to conclusions though.  Checking back again this morning after some time I noticed that actually, the simple copy out-performs the snazzy buy now copy.  This goes against conventional wisdom.

Of course google did tell me that the early results had a weak level of confidence but I was too impatient to wait for confirmation.  It is just by luck that I forgot to stop the experiment early on.

@jdrumgoole did a great job of detailing the goings on at the #igap marketing conference in Dubiln.  It is at times like this I wash I was back there myself.  I’m posting Joe’s tweets here for posterity.

If we can just get 1% of our visitors to convert  …

Never have more dangerous words been written in a business plan.  It sounds plausible only because humans are mind-boggelingly bad at understanding percentages.  Even if you were a complete wingnut in school you probably still managed to get 10% in the honours math exam.  A 5% discount is nothing.  A doctor telling you that you have a 1% chance of not waking up after an op is hardly worth losing any sleep over.

However, I don’t see a lot of discussion on the chances of a 0% conversion rate in your business. Read the rest of this entry »

Agtweet has been going through the wars recently.  A combination of simple mistakes, expiring credit, tripping over cables, twitter connectivity issues and getting snowed in in the Wicklow mountains, all conspired to patchy service.  In my experience, these things come along like buses, in clumps of 3 or 4.  We’ve had about 7 months of pretty continuous service but over the last few months there have been problems.

All of which results in posts like …

and … Read the rest of this entry »

Fortune 500 listing excerpt

According to Wikipedia, Raytheon makes …

• 3.2 Air Traffic Control Systems
• 3.3 Radars and sensors
• 3.4 Satellite sensors
• 3.5 Communications
• 3.6 Radioactive materials detection system
• 3.7 Semiconductors
• 3.8 Missile defense systems
• 3.9 Missiles
• 3.10 Hi-tech simulators
• 3.11 Training Services and Learning Outsourcing

Coca-Cola makes bottled sugary water. Read the rest of this entry »

Right, so O2 have started offering Twitter from your mobile phone over SMS.

Now who do I know that does that?  Oh yeah – me.  So is this good news or bad news?   Well, the good news is that it means more people are using Twitter although I’m still detecting a slow down in the number of Irish Twitter sign ups.   Read the rest of this entry »

Market Size:  €6 Trillion (revahealth.ie)

Market Share:  85% (daft.ie)

Customer Retention: 97% (backmeup.ie)

Sales Channel: Public Speaking (getexceptional.com)

Lead Conversion Rate: 100%

Tax Liability: 10% (U2)

Administration: none

Company Car:  Spaceship2

‘Giving back’ as the American’s call it seems to be all the rage these days.  Perhaps a latent guilt for money/success drives people to try and rebalance the scales a little.  Of course they’re bloody unlikely to much of an impact.  95% of the worlds population live in vast pools of poverty.  A relentless focus on profit and money is perhaps wearing on the soul after a while.

Let us be clear about this however.  I’m pretty sure there is no such thing as an altruistic act.  When I take part in some kind of charitable activity I’m in it to make myself feel better the next time I meet someone working with drug addicts or rehabilitating abandoned quadriplegics.  One group that I’ve been keeping an eye on from afar is Connect Ethiopia. Read the rest of this entry »

Ever had awful service in a restaurant?  Been overcharged at the till in a Supermarket?  Had your phone company rip you off while you were roaming on Holiday?

Infuriating, isn’t it.  You do at least have the pleasure of taking your business somewhere else however.  The same cannot be said for your government.

Like it lump it, no matter how uncleanly the hospitals or how backward the public transport, you pretty much just have to grin and bear it.  Or do you? Read the rest of this entry »

Although I hate the term, you could roughly describe me as a entrepreneur.  Like most entrepreneur’s my Mother despairs at the fact and really wishes I’d just get a proper job with a carreer path.  With that in mind, I thought I’d try and put one together. Read the rest of this entry »