City Car Club: first impressions from their website

March 3, 2009 By Sam Deeks Leave a Comment

If City Car Club can keep my attention for 10 minutes….

…they’re most of the way towards making me into a customer.

I just spent 10 minutes looking around City Car Club‘s website – following a tip-off text from Clare. Keeping a prospect interested for 10 minutes is quite some achievement online, so how do they do it?

Well, first of all, there’s a curiosity factor. ‘Car Club’. Wow. What, exactly is that? Despite a sneaky suspicion that it’s just another techno-car-share system, I was curious. Why? Because it combines many of the things that interest me: the problems of car ownership, the environment and good use of technology to solve a problem.

First impressions of City Car Club are that it’s a bright and cheerful place that knows what it’s doing. The design and colours are bold and confident. So is the tone of address which is light, informal and reassuring.

It’s not too slick or too corporate. It feels like there’s real people behind it all (plenty of little anecdotal snippets and mentions of people and their little foibles) and it feels like something you might want to try.

Drive a new-ish car by the hour? That’s not a bad idea, when you think about it… Book online and be able to go straight from you house to your car and open it with an electronic key? That’s a really good idea! Park in permanently-available spaces in major UK cities? This starts to sound really interesting.

When you stop and look at it, City Car Club is a good example of the right idea at the right time pitched at the right people – typically, people like you reading this.

Clearly suited to cities, City Car Club lists all the locations their cars live – letting you ‘meet’ each car in it’s parking bay in a city near you (if you’re lucky).

What’s great about City Car Club is that – despite having not bought anything from them yet – I leave their website feeling good about what they’re offering and good about the system they’ve developed to offer it. I suspect it’s just because, in the words of the legendary Hannibal Hayes, we “love it when a plan comes together”.

Filed Under: business insight, feedback Tagged With: car, city, club, environment, rental, technology, web

A pretty good day at work

February 25, 2009 By Sam Deeks Leave a Comment

Yesterday was a pretty good day at work. Why?

I went to bed feeling satisfied with yesterday. Since job satisfaction is one of the Holy Grails (can there be more than one?) of business, it’s worth looking at what happened and thinking about why it felt so good.

Here’s my quick diary of the day:

Got up. Coached my colleague over coffee – got him fired up for the day. Walked to work discussing our values. Found 4 £ coins crossing the road. Decided they represented our 4 shared values: awareness, lightness, honesty and courage. Picked up two coins each. Stopped to watch guys pruning huge trees with chainsaws. Had healthy breakfast at work (Greek yoghurt, fruit, nuts, oats, honey).

Worked in the office til 2. Walked to mate’s flat, put on smart jacket. Headed off to Central London to meet hedge fund client. “One of our guys made £4m yesterday”. Ok. Had great session with client.

Came out, walked around Tottenham Court Rd. Went to music shops and Chinese herbalist. Walked from Covent Garden back to Borough on a lovely, grey Londony day talking about stuff all the way – and doing the ‘Tavi Walk’ – slow.

Back to office. Round of for 1/2 hour, then home for Sushi (ordered online). Plug in telly wires for Champions League footie (Man U. v. Inter Milan) – enjoyed horizontally with fat tummy. Then bed.

So what are the components of a pretty good day at work? Being able to work with friends. The feeling of being valued by the people I work with (our company and clients). A sense of being in charge of our own destiny. Working at something that means something more than just working for the sake of it (focused on our shared values).

As much physical exercise as possible; being out and about meeting people (not staying in an office all day). Less computer, more fresh air.

Good food, plenty of sleep. A sense of contentment at the end of the day.

Filed Under: business insight Tagged With: clients, company, exercise, food, friends, good day at work, sleep

Little video site guides. Really, really not very welcome. Honestly.

February 18, 2009 By Sam Deeks Leave a Comment

I don’t even know what these things are called…but I sure do hate ‘em

I clicked a link left by someone on this site and arrived at this. Out pops a little man to help me.

Now I don’t know how to tell him this (literally): I don’t want his help. In the nicest possible way. I don’t want his intrusion onto my desktop and I don’t want the shock of his loud voice suddenly blasting from my MacBook in this office.

There are many ways I could explain why this approach doesn’t work for me.

Perhaps the simplest is to quote myself verbatim as I frantically hit the volume-off button on my keyboard.

“FUCK RIGHT OFF!”

I’m sorry to be direct but in the interests of honest feedback, I hope you’ll forgive my uncharacteristic forthrightness.

I think I’d be concerned if the marketing gimmick I put at the front of my website sent people away with such a strong negative reaction. Perhaps they don’t know because people like me don’t tell them.

Would you?

Filed Under: business insight, feedback Tagged With: bad marketing, don't do it, hateful, lose customers, video guides, wrong use of video

Rate me good! Endorse me! Give me a testimonial!

February 7, 2009 By Sam Deeks Leave a Comment

Does asking for a rating, an endorsement or a testimonial devalue the whole idea?

Late last year, I let my Ecademy membership lapse. Why? Firstly, because I’d learned myself how to get the Google positioning that Ecademy offered via its blogs and profiles. Secondly, because I’d never got any actual work directly or indirectly from being active on it. Thirdly because I’d got fed up being repeatedly spammed by Ecademy members – particularly Black Stars.

Fourthly (this is turning into quite a list, isn’t it? – but you’ll notice, Ecademy, I spared naming you in the title and h3 tag) – I got fed up of people asking to be connected, to be rated and for a testimonial – even though I’d never heard of most of them, far less bought anything from them.

Today, I joined ‘WeCanDO Biz’ – out of curiousity. It’s an online directory / network I looked in on when it started sometime last year and was pretty underwhelmed. About the only thing that raised my interest level a fraction was that users have a ‘I need….’ status feed (a bit like Facebook). Could be handy – if it wasn’t full of people saying “I need… introductions to more customers” and such like.

It also has ‘endorsements’ – the idea being that you get reviewed and endorsed by your customers (bringing them into the network at the same time). Nice in principle.

Two things happened. First, I noticed the ‘No negative feedback’ approach. Ah, so only positive reviews then, or silence.

The second was that as soon as I joined, someone from a forum I’ve signed up for appeared with a request that I give them an endorsement.

Do you think that asking for an endorsement is wrong?

What would make an online endorsement carry the most weight for you?

Filed Under: business insight Tagged With: business networking, endorsements, rate, testimonials, trust

Is Spotify legal in the UK?

January 17, 2009 By Sam Deeks 6 Comments

If Spotify IS legal it’s the end of ‘music ownership’ – discuss

As an old person, one of the things that interests me most about the online world is the enormity of some of the developments taking place versus the relative lack of comment about their significance.

Facebook is one. How often do you hear people talking about the fundamental ways it’s changing society?

The new music-streaming service Spotify is another. I can’t even get the bottom of its licensing arrangements although I assume it’s perfectly legal since it seems to have the backing of some major labels.

What I love most about it is that it throws music ‘ownership’ out of the window. We’re at the point where this kind of service, coupled with always-on wireless access means, effectively, the end of the ownership era.

Even the far-seeing iPod is, essentially, about ownership. You’ve got to put a copy of something on your own machine to take it with you. iTunes, no matter how revolutionary it seemed, is about ownership of music (actually, it’s about sellership of music).

Spotify represents a departure from ownership of music. If it is legal; if it’s business model is sustainable (ad-supported or premium) then what we’ll see is the rapid evolution of iTunes from its ‘pay-per-tune’ model of ownership towards the streaming service. That or its rapid collapse.

And here’s the ‘unspoken’ bit: everybody knows that with Spotify and Audio Hijack Pro (or similar) you can line up your favourite album or playlist, record it as one chunk of mp3 and lob it onto your iPod. Legal? Schmegal. Until everybody’s got a hand-held that effortlessly streams audio, it will happen. The only ‘cost’ is an ad every hour.

So let’s face reality. If services like Spotify are legal, then paid music ownership is dead and so is the idea of piracy – as a comment from a heated debate about Spotify confirms:

“As a hardcore pirate, I’ll just say F**K YOU. Spotify is THE most genious app ever created. I’ve fully stopped downloading music since I got Spotify”

Discuss.

Filed Under: business insight Tagged With: end of music ownership, iTunes, legal, piracy, spotify

Is podcasting a good business to get into?

December 3, 2008 By Sam Deeks Leave a Comment

‘Is podcasting a good business?’ a student asked me in a phone interview

An old friend of mine, Doug Lyon, who now teaches at the University in Brighton called the other day to ask if one of his students could interview me over the phone about podcasting.

‘So… is podcasting a good business to get into?’ asked Tom towards the end of the interview.

Good question, kid.

“No” I replied. “Podcasting as a business is a non-starter. Business owners don’t wake up thinking ‘aha, I need a podcast’. But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t loads of ways that the same skill set can’t be put to work solving some real issue or problem…”

The problem with ‘podcasting’ is that its inherently self-obsessed – thinking and talking more about itself than about other peoples’ problems. Why wouldn’t it be when the word, first and foremost, is a marketing device for Apple?

When we talk about ‘podcasting’ we’re playing into a marketing loop, doing the bidding of the genius who connected the concept of sending audio and video over the web to their own particular plastic gizmo.

‘Podcasting’, I can tell you authoritatively (ok, reasonably authoritatively since we’ve been doing it for 2 1/2 years) is a non-starter in business terms.

Get over it.

What is a starter, though, is being free enough from the limiting, Apple-serving label to spot where delivering audio & video online can fit into a business’s marketing strategy.

Don’t get me wrong. The potential for ‘podcasting’ is immense. In fact, if anything what we now call ‘podcasting’ would better be called ‘internet radio’ and what we now call ‘internet radio’ (a thing that too often tries to replicate real-world radio) should be done away with altogether.

Why isn’t everyone using this technology then? Because when we’ve outgrown the silly brand-centric name and the ‘new technology’ introspection we’re still left with a problem that hasn’t changed throughout history – which is that creating content worth consuming is just plain hard to do, and always will be.

Filed Under: business insight Tagged With: Apple, brand, business, internet radio, podcasting

Customer feedback is like magma

November 25, 2008 By Sam Deeks Leave a Comment

Customer feedback is like magma: : slow moving, unstoppable, potentially explosive.

Yes, customer feedback is a lot like molten magma.

It’s hot, scary and when it erupts, it can re-shape the landscape for miles around. It’s unstoppable – destroying everything that can’t get out of its way. And it leaves a more fertile environment in its wake.

There’s an old idea in business that if we put our fingers in our ears and hum loudly enough, we can pretend that we can’t hear the pressure of customer feedback building up beneath our feet.

All too often, we create organisations that don’t, can’t or won’t listen to what their customers have to say. Culturally, we fear the discomfort that feedback brings and the change it implies.

If we try to suppress it, not only do we lose the power of feedback to initiate and drive positive growth and change but all the positive energy of our happy customers, too. Does your online reputation management strategy (or lack of one) block the flow of feedback or put its energy to work for you?

Filed Under: business insight Tagged With: change, customer feedback, internet, lava, magman

Kashflow: a smart move

November 12, 2008 By Sam Deeks 1 Comment

An invitation from Kashflow turns into subscription

A couple of years ago, I tried out the web-based book-keeping package, Kashflow and got quickly annoyed with one or two interactivity issues that put me off going ahead with the trial. Here’s one: “Please fill in letter 8 of your password”. Bit difficult to proceed when my password only had 7 letters.

When signing up for something (a trial or a listing) requires a heavy investment in time, I find myself hyper-critical if the interactivity design makes that process even more time-consuming. Back then, I gave up on Kashflow.

A couple of months ago, I got an email inviting me to have another look. I did, and because it seemed to have grown up since I first saw it (and because I needed to do some book-keeping) I signed up for the trial.

This time around, the trial immediately made my book-keeping easier, with the result that I’ve signed up.

Some lesssons:

1) Bend over backwards to make peoples’ interaction with your stuff effortless – especially when you’re expecting them to input a lot of their own data in order to use your product

2) Go back and check again with people who might not have wanted to use your services the first time round

3) Make your stuff pay off immediately. I.e., make it fully functional and get people hooked.

Got the approach right, Kashflow – and it’s a good product, too.

Filed Under: business insight, feedback Tagged With: book-keeping, kashflow, software

Google Trends: the best and the worst of the internet

November 7, 2008 By Sam Deeks 2 Comments

Does Google Trends reflect or increase the spamminess of the web?

trends We discussed Google Trends the other day in The Mu Show with Guy Dub (producer of this video showing you how to use Trends to create extra blog traffic). It’s an application in Google that shows you the 100 hottest search phrases in Google at that moment.

And it’s constantly changing so you can keep track of up-to-the-minute trends.

At first, it looks like a bizarre mix of subjects – making you wonder what the logic is behind all those searches.

Until, of course, you realise that the underlying logic is TV.

The hottest search phrase in the US are either TV quiz questions (“What happened in London on September 7th 1859″ for something called the ‘Marriott Giveaway Quiz’) or reaction to TV events like Rick Astley’s surreal (internet swindle) best act ever award at the MTV awards. [Read more...]

Filed Under: business insight Tagged With: google trends, quiz, spam

Even the feedback you ask for is meaningless..

November 6, 2008 By Sam Deeks Leave a Comment

… if you don’t allow it to challenge your assumptions

Earlier this year, I evaluated a site and in my feedback pointed out that the biggest threat was that their claimed benefits were in fact, ‘non-benefits’. Like many, many businesses, they had decided that what they wanted the benefits to be = what the benefits actually were for their customers

And like so many businesses, I was pretty sure that they weren’t listening when I gave them my report (both in writing and verbally). Why? Because my feedback challenged their fundamental assumptions about what the experience of their site was like for their customers.

Today I received an email announcing that the site is shutting down. I’m sorry to see it, but it’s no surprise.

It serves to remind me once again that inflexible assumptions about the benefits our products and services is the quickest way out of business.

Filed Under: business insight, feedback Tagged With: assumptions, benefits, feedback