Month: May 2013

Discount Sites driving Business

Prasad AjinkyaLeave a comment

I am a big fan of e-commerce and Indian e-commerce especially. Having worked in the web development field for more than a decade, and having seen multiple start-ups in the e-commerce and e-learning domains, I love the fact that this industry is still booming. What drives this is simple retail sales.

The sheer number of sites who have set up shop within the past two years is mind boggling. With large foreign multi-nationals also entering this market, the influx of money to the country has also strengthened the economy. Obviously with a limited number of consumers (although this is a significant number), and growing number of providers, the competition had to go up.

To battle competition, services and sites started providing deep discounts. Consumers started using these deep discounts to make spot purchases, which drew sales for different service providers.

So much was the power of these spot sales that multiple sites started aggregating these discount coupons and discount sites were born. Sites such as Cuponation.in have spawned and boosted the e-commerce market in the country.

Now why should a consumer like you and me visit a discount site like Cuponation?

The answer is simple, getting a sweet deal on a product which you otherwise would have bought at a full price!

This is like the NET50 coupon of Dominos which you keep handy whenever you want to buy a pizza … have your cake and eat it too!

So why should a service provider look at registering on such sites … hmmm … to be honest, at a business level, you have to start thinking about the cost of sales of an individual customer versus the cost of a discount. If for a 1000 INR product, my cost of sales is INR 160, then I am more than happy to provide a 10% discount on that product since that would drive up my sales.

Another way of looking at this matter is if the contribution (revenues – costs) is positive and I am looking only at the revenues (in which case most likely I am VC funded ;-) ), then I would want a sales promotion like this to drive up my sales.

So it’s a win-win deal. The end customer is getting a good deal on a product he wants to buy, the seller is getting higher sales, and the intermediary (Cuponation in our case) is getting the commissions.

Finland’s Education System

Prasad Ajinkya4 Comments

Finland_Education_SystemAs a country develops and generates capability to support all of its citizens, the requirement to discriminate opportunities based on education levels goes down. What I mean to say here is that in a large country such as India (where the resources are minimal), there is a distinct requirement of having standardised tests such as CAT, IITJEE, etc in order to divide people into different slots.

This division at present is necessary (despite what politically correct activists and politicians might be saying), in order to ensure that the resources available are fully utilized. It’s natural selection at work.

Once the country develops the ability to support all of its citizens (and we are far from that point!), then it would be great to dream of this ideal.

 

Visual.ly now supports Google Analytics data

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I love infographics. The way they break out data into beautiful little pictures and help you understand their impact is excellent. However, it can take a fair bit of efforts to create an infographic … believe me, I have tried and used multiple tools to do this. If you are thinking of doing those from the ground up, then you are faced with challenges such as choosing the colours, typography and which data to show in what manner.

If you are design impaired like me, then this steep learning curve is bound to turn you off.

This is where visual.ly really shines through. It provides you with templates for creating infographics. Templates which have been tried and tested and make your job of creating an infographic easy. What’s awesome is that they keep releasing kickass integrations such as this one, where in you simply have to give access to your Google Analytics data and it will create a weekly infographic such as the one above.

If you are a data nerd, then you may not appreciate the findings of this report, but then you should be able to relate to some of these important points. As a webmaster and a data nerd, I am happy that the organic search results have dropped … since now I am slowly looking at other sources of traffic. This drop in organic traffic has come due to a decent rise in social traffic and that makes me a happy webmaster.

Top 5 things you should do after launching a site

Prasad Ajinkya6 Comments

So after toiling on that idea for more than 4 to 5 months, you have finally launched your site … the journey till here was literally blood and tears. Having to either grapple with the content management system (CMS) or even worse, having to convince the developers working on your site that the site needs to be exactly as the way you want it to be and not what they want it to be. You have managed to stick to the deadline that you set for yourself and finally the site is live!

You feel like celebrating … and you should. Fireworks in the sky, Champagne flowing … you have did it. It feels good to have reached here, doesn’t it?

Reality bites

Now time for a reality check.

Your site’s journey has just started, and its completion is not the end, but just the start. You still need traffic to generate revenues, you need growth in that traffic and you need people to talk about your site. Without traffic and sustainable growth in that traffic, your site is simply going to be a liability. If you are betting your website to do your sales, then have I got a thing (or two) to say to you!

A website once built, can only generate huge traffic if you are relying on the secret sauce. That ingredient which will ensure that thousands and thousands of potential customers come flocking to your website looking to buy your product/service.

The Secret Sauce

To generate traffic, you need to be organized. You need to try out different things to see what works, and then do more of that.

secret_sauceYes. It’s that simple. You need to experiment and see what works for you. This is more work than you actually thought, but trust me … if you like the reason why you started the site, you will love promoting your site! You would love it even more when people reach out to you and seek your help.

If you can Measure, you can Scale

The more help you offer to the good folks who visit your website, the more popular would be. Since people actually start feeling your website useful. It’s a matter of finding out where these people come from and trying to see if you can get more people to visit your site from there. This is easier said than done … and that’s why you need to follow these tips and get to point where you can start doing these experiments.

So buckle up Dorothy, coz Texas is going bye, bye!

To correctly measure the traffic on your websites, you need to have a couple of things setup.

1. Google Analytics (GA)

Google Analytics

I would suggest GA because of the ease with which you can generate insightful reports and also the enterprise class features you get to use for free. There are other alternatives to GA such as Clicky, Omniture and even Alexa for that matter. However, trust me and go with Google! We will save Alexa hacking for later.

2. Google Webmaster Tools (GWT)

Google Webmaster Tools

Using GWT and GA in tandem would be the backbone of your Search Engine Optimization (SEO) operations. I have put up a Starter’s guide for SEO which you definitely need to go through. In case if Bing (Bing Is Not Google) search engine is relatively well known in your country (it’s at 16% market share as we speak in the United States), then go ahead and register on Bing Webmaster Tools (BWT) as well.

3. Start re-writing your content

Schema

I know. You have just completed this task two days back. Life is unfair, I should have told you about this before you finished the site! But in reality, be prepared to keep fine tuning the content on your website on a regular basis. I keep doing this for my top content since the post might be old, but the traffic that comes to those posts is brand new!! Do not be afraid or lazy to re-visit the content on your site. It’s a given that you will revisit it. Embracing this helps you quickly write content better for your users and also for your search engines. Here’s a starters guide to writing for search engines using Schemas.

4. You are your website

Remember, at the start. People do not know of your website. Do not expect too many visitors from the word go. In fact you probably will have to ask your friends to visit your website. So start sharing your website link with people … share it with people whom you think will benefit from the advise you are giving on the website. Share it on your social networks asking your friends to visit the site and give you reviews.

You have to pimp out that site and in style! Use your personal equity and get the traffic rolling in … if the site is good, then soon your friends and contacts will start sharing your site without being asked to! The traffic to your site will slowly grow … but at the start, you are your website. It’s a part of you and you have to ask people to come and visit your digital presence … your website. Do not shy away from this. You would be losing out on a very good initial source of traffic if you are shying away from sharing your site on your own social networks.

Are you yourself not convinced about the content you are dishing out on the site? No? Then start sharing those URLs. Have a few social sharing widgets on your site and ask your good friends to share as well!

5. Prepare for the journey ahead

journey ahead

I have already said this before, but I am going to iterate this again and again until this really sinks in.

Driving traffic to your website is a continuous activity.

This does not mean that you need to stop everything else and only keep doing these things. But, this means that you need to allocate some time in your busy week for Measurements and Experiments. You need to play with your website, and see what different things you can do on your site.

If that means learning HTML or hiring a smart guy to do this work, then so be it. It will pay off in the longer run. Also, do note that if you shy away from this activity and rely on someone else to do this for you, then you are pretty much relying on that person for your traffic and the traffic will dwindle the minute he/she goes away.

So pull up your socks, and get ready for a wonderful journey of web analysis, traffic generation and customer engagement! You are going to love it!!

Hacking your Alexa Ranking

Prasad Ajinkya1 Comment

In case if you are working in any web related business based in India, then you would be aware of Alexa. The site which maintains website rankings by traffic. These numbers are indicative, however some people rely on them so much so that they look at a definitive way of increasing the rankings only … instead of actually working on making an awesome site.

I am going to share a little secret with you.

These rankings can be easily hacked.

So, if you have a boss or a reporting manager who fusses over Alexa rankings, then here’s what you need to do –

  • Convince your team or co-workers (who are most likely bound to keep visiting your site on a regular basis) to install the Alexa browser plug-in. It’s a nifty tool for easily checking rankings of any site. Not only that, but also this is the plugin that Alexa uses to guesstimate traffic numbers on the site. Having more plugin users visit the site reduces your Alexa ranking.
  • To correctly estimate the figures, Alexa asks you to include a javascript on your site. Using this javascript, a small widget is displayed on your site … now although that might ruin the look of your initial design, the javascript will ensure that all your traffic is correctly accounted for by Alexa. Soon you should see a reduction in your Alexa rank.
  • Claim your site. Add as much detail as you can and also get some friends to give you good testimonials for the site.

Now I know what you will say … how does this really help your cause?

  • Well … over a period the person who monitors this false metric will see an improvement and hopefully ask about it. Then you can tell them about the hack. Reckoning will soon follow.
  • A competitor who is trying to assess your site’s traffic will be overwhelmed

Alexa rankings are an extremely rough and over rated method of traffic estimation. Let me repeat what I said earlier, this is a hack and should be treated as such … ideally you should be focusing on your product/service.

UK Government and its forced IE6 use

Prasad Ajinkya4 Comments

As a developing country, we often take a look at how are some of the infrastructure problems handled by the developed nations. In fact in most of these cases, we end up emulating them … the western culture, the accents, the products … we are more than happy to borrow from our western brothers … since they are more developed.

Or so, that is what they would have us believe.

Imagine a governance system wherein you could simply go to a website, fill out the relevant form and be done with it … instead of going to the local municipal center, finding the relevant department, waiting in line, trying to fill the form and get the proper official’s blessing so that the problem could be addressed. Seems futuristic and too good to be true, eh?

Well, I was lucky to have participated in one such e-governance implementation drive back in 2002. This was for Navi Mumbai Municipal Corporation (NMMC), and we were somehow involved in the implementation of this system. So yes, these things are in India as well. But according to this article in the Inquirer, the UK has already been using this system.

So what’s the catch?

The system which the UK government has so meticulously built supports on IE6 and Windows XP!

Alright, lets take a minute for that to sink in.

  • Microsoft does not support Windows XP anymore
  • Ergo, Microsoft does not support IE6 anymore as well
  • IE6 used to come bundled with Windows XP
  • These days you get IE8 or IE9 … in fact we should be starting to see IE10 any time soon

That means in the real world … in the developed countries, IE6 is dead. Yes, we have asked for it and celebrated its death as well.

A platform created for the people in the UK which can only currently be used by the people of China (at least according to the map in the above link). I wonder, if they have a mobility middleware in place so that the site renders on mobiles.