On Friday 30 November 2007 11:27:50 :murb: [maarten brouwers] wrote: > Hi,
Hi Maarten, > > >> The three tenets of Marketing > >> *Create a need > >> *Create a desire > >> *Fill a present need > > Important. But let me add: > > If the desire is not big, but the cost is low, consumption may still take > place (e.g. take the free newspapers that get thrown at you) There are different types of "Cost" For me for instance the cost of download is substantial in time. Downloading OOo takes around 12 hours. During that time my phone is unusable, for people on dialup such a download is very expensive and despite protestaions to the contrary, the vast majority of Internet users access the internet via dialup connection > > And if there are already needs (e.g. I don't have money, but would like to > have a good office suite, or I want an OpenSource Office suite, or I would > like to use something different than MS word, or I used OOo at school, and > it worked great), we don't need to create a desire. All of these are catered for at present because the person you describe above comes to the site for a reason. They will be hunting for a download button. They have weighed the costs before they got to the site. For them the "I want to download the latest OpenOffice.org now!" option is for them I made another comparison offlist the other day with some marketing people. Note that this is in relation strictly to casual arrivals at the site. Not people who for some reason or other had at some point made a decision to come to openoffice.org for whatever reason. <quote.> In terms of process, we break one of the Cardinal rules. The process of selling something has three distinct steps No 1: We provided an excellent product, IMHO the best in the Market No 2: We provided easy access to that product BUT and this is the biggy, at step No 3: We fail to create the Desire for that product. When it comes to any sort of advertising you have to put a step in that turns Curiosity (That got the user there in the first) and Browsing (Retailers Vernacular) into Sales or in our case Download. it's like walking into a TV retailers shop. In the OOo TV shop, all the Super HiDefinition TV's are in boxes stacked down the back. Getting the TV is really easy, just pay the money and grab the box Next door however, they have the TV's down the back in boxes but when you walk in, a Flash TV is going just inside the door showing the latest DVD release or the last big sports event and the friendly shop assistant is there to tell you why you really need this new TV. There is nothing essentially wrong with the first version, but desire needs to be created before the buyer enters, so the proprietor in this case spends large on Advertising and reduces facility costs. Internet advertising however, is the Electronic version of Foot Traffic. Curiosity gets the client through the door.... and in this case We HAVE to be the second retailer to turn the curiosity into desire. </quote> Obviously all of the above comes from a marketing POV, but as Louis said the priority for this process is to raise downloads. That is down to marketing. I know some think of marketing as a dirty word and that marketing people live somewhere off Mars, but right now that's what we're talking about > > Some bad outcomes: > >> *They can't satisfy that curiosity within a reasonable time and they > >> leave frustrated > >> *They can't find the solution or it is not obvious and they leave > >> frustrated > >> *Fear of the unknown > >> > >> Our problem is right now, and the discussions up to this point are > >> reinforcing this point, we are not asking the User what he wants to do > >> we are telling them what we expect them to do, We inform them where to > >> download, but we don't give them information that will make them feel > >> comfortable about hitting the download button, or to stretch our > >> metaphor a bit further, we talk to our horse about the trough but not > >> about how good the water is, while the horse is still worried about > >> drowning.. > > Well, we have the information, even linked from the main page, but it is > not clear enough (e.g. click on 'office suite' in the introduction text, > you get the product pages, telling what it is). Not that these pages don't > need attention... > > >> which I'm a fan of. The difference is that we provide "Answers to the > >> Question" > >> > >> "You have arrived at OpenOffice.org what would you like to do now?" > >> > >> http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/mwiki/images/a/a3/Home_page_draft_11 > >>-27.jpg > > I think you over-simplified the type of questions. Problem with a question > based approach is that it may not fit all questions (or the user may have > formulated their questions differently). Furthermore, long texts on > buttons are not easy to process either, so I am not sure whether that > would fit in with the simplicity approach. Actually that is incorrect, when a person is in a familiar environment then yes a simple suggestion, a single word, a simple icon is enough > Simplicity to me means > intuitiveness. E.g., One click download (no questions needed) is intuitive > if it works like expected. Intuitive is a difficult concept, there a lots of different types of intuitiveness. What is intuitive for me may not be intuitive for you. The most basic intuition is to read sentences. People do not read words. They read blocks of words in groups of between five and eight. People are ALWAYS attracted to any sentence with " I " in it. I'm talking the Definite Pronoun here not the letter. They will then take in the block of text around that. They will read large text first before small. They will read anything in or around the colour Orange before anything else. All of the above are on the level of instinctive People first approaching an icon for instance are confused. It is NOT intuitive until familiarity has been reached. We often deal with people who do not find ANYTHING about the internet "intuitive". However, the first question that everyone asks themselves when they arrive in any situation, usually subconsciously, is "What Now", this is not intuitive it's instinctive. It is always the precursor to a decision. There is NO SUCH THING as "No Question Needed/Asked" It is fundamental, it is hardwired > > What I would like to know though is, I am just not convinced yet, is what > do you think the pages look like when you click on the specific questions, > what will happen? This is what we have done wrong in the past, look e.g. > at the 'New User page', good idea, creating a page for those who are > afraid of the water, but the execution was poor, too much text, not > friendly... merely a placeholder for something better yet to come (but has > been there now for over a year, if not years...) I agree about the New User Page however the idea is aimed at what we have already, no need to create new pages, just upgrade the present pages that we feel need it . And So: "I want to download the latest OOo now" --> http://download.openoffice.org "I want some more information before I download OOo" --> http://why.openoffice.org "I have OOo and I need some help" --> http://support.openoffice.org "I want to contribute to OpenOffice.org" --> http:contributing.openoffice.org The front page could be changed right now without any big drama and it would all still work, and each individual is having their initial needs catered to with a single click. > > I think we can offer a lot with a much more traditional approach (which is > also good for usability, people have expectations of how websites work in > general). Download is straightforward, a label stating support as well... > almost all website use this so we can be rather safe in assuming that > users know these concepts. However, the pages we send them to when > clicking on these buttons/links are/may be not equal to what users expect. > I think this is a much larger issue than a bad choice of items on the > front page. > > If you do think however that a question based approach works, please show > me how the subpages look like, or show some other website which inspired > you to build the page like you suggested. For now I am sceptical about the > question/answer approach. Question based is not really a good description, more answer based. I'm sorry to say that this is completely original and I didn't use any website for inspiration. :) I am however a Teacher and knowing how people take in information is important in my profession. Some people touted the OpenSuSE.org front page and I like it's simplicity but when I went there to get help for a problem with 10.3 I decided that it was actually really bad and in fact other than the central download button very confusing. Does that count as inspiration caused by frustration? :) The simplest thing is a black box, the problem is that a black box tells you nothing. However on the internet, intuition would tell the experienced user that clicking on it would make something happen. Of course without any further information very few would actually click it.... actually probably a lot would! :) Single Uninformed Choice. The Answers I put up however follow the sequence What now? -->yes =click no= "What else" and so on down the list until the answer matches the users need at that moment. > g., > > > Maarten > Always a pleasure Cheers GL -- Graham Lauder, INGOTs Assessor Trainer Moderator New Zealand (International Grades in Office Technologies) www.theingots.org OpenOffice.org MarCon (Marketing Contact) NZ http://marketing.openoffice.org/contacts.html --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
