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Comment on iPad - Apple for ‘next big thing’? by Paul Compton

Paul Compton — Mon, 31 May 2010 21:07:18 +0000

So far I have two friends with iPads. One bought it for business (he picked it up in America 6 weeks ago) and says it is the greatest thing since sliced raisin toast. The other bought it as a way of having the internet on the sofa without the awkwardness of a laptop.
I shall be interested to hear how both fare in another month or two. I suspect the business user will love it for what it does: he spends a lot of time in clients’ offices and doing small-scale presentations, and most of his work involves the web (he runs a web-design agency). But I am not so sure it is really the right device for surfing from the sofa during the commercial breaks or to look up some stats at quarter time - I think an iPhone is fine for that!
I suspect, though, that the format has a role to play, particularly in the business world for people in on-site customer-facing roles. Whether Apple will once again end up the forerunner with the elite project and only a minority market share, as with desktops and laptops, or instead repeat the iPhone success, remains to be seen.
In two years time, I would put money on it, we will see the iPad able to sync files directly with PCs and Macs, perhaps even mountable as an external hard disk. This will be possible via 3rd-party apps within six months, in the form of the iPad mounting network shares, and Apple will soon cave in on this. But I don’t think Apple will cave in on Flash (and I think this is actually going to be a good thing for the web in the long term).

Comment on iPad - Apple for ‘next big thing’? by Graeme Brattle

Graeme Brattle — Mon, 31 May 2010 07:09:45 +0000

Whilst I love the Apple products, I am happy to wait and assess others reactions to this new product. If it is excellent, it will be around for a while!

Comment on Mixing It Up - keeping it fresh by Larissa

Larissa — Sun, 31 May 2009 23:49:18 +0000

Hi Heather,

Thank you for your tips in the newsletters. I agree that you need to be ready for large responses. Last year I had a casual office assistant help with the mail out of Basic Budgeting packs that people received as a thank you for completing our survey. And as they say, if you’re doing something in business more than twice, have a system for it.

Comment on The 300 million dollar button by Lisa Baker

Lisa Baker — Mon, 25 May 2009 08:59:07 +0000

Agree! The number I of times I have been frustrated by not being able to remember a username or password - even when I think I have very cleverely given myself one I can remember - or, even worse, I decide to go ahead and register and cannot come up with a username or password that has not been taken!

Frustration all round - great advice to forget this annoying step.

Comment on The 300 million dollar button by Linda Bernardi

Linda Bernardi — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 06:28:54 +0000

I definitely get put off with registration process before purchasing, unless I’m getting a very valuable trade/wholesale discount.

I am too impatient and I know I will forget username and password in the future especially if I can’t generate my own password and user name.

Comment on The 300 million dollar button by bERYL WOODHOUSE

bERYL WOODHOUSE — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 04:46:39 +0000

I agree wholeheartedly - no registration - just straight out purchase. So much simpler - I have a registration with one site and last night took me about 5 attempts to get the name and password exactly right. I know I have lost sales because people do not want to register or set up accounts - especially people who are not used to the E commerce way of doing things. So as I said, the simpler for them to make a purchase the better.

Comment on Email Experience Council (EEC) working on new definitions for email measurements by Larissa Zimmerman

Larissa Zimmerman — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 04:22:09 +0000

As with Peter above, yes to 1 and 3, along with his comment of forwarding. For me I would like to know 2 as well.

I think this area of electronic tracking is a case of “I know what I don’t know”. That is, I know you can (but don’t know exactly how to) obtain the information / statistics that will help me ascertain where the visitors are leaving (once they’ve clicked through on a link).

And are the readers counted as opened if they haven’t downloaded images, yet read it in their preview pane?

Thank you Heather. I enjoy reading your newsletters.

Comment on Email Experience Council (EEC) working on new definitions for email measurements by Peter Munro

Peter Munro — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 01:06:22 +0000

1. YES. Also, if I know the time they opened it each time, this will tell me how frequently they have been returning to the information.
2. Not so sure if this is relevant for the type of emails that I use.
3. YES. My understanding is that someone can still read it without opening it. If they are being deleted without being opened it may indicate that the content is not grabbing their attention.

Additionally, I would like to know if they have forwarded it to someone else who then may be a new potential prospect.

Comment on Top 10 Most Important Technologies for SMEs in 2009 by Julie Forbes

Julie Forbes — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 01:11:35 +0000

Interesting that you bring up the Trading Post spam - I had never been to the Trading Post website until a few days ago, then within 24 hours of visiting it, I received spam relating to my ‘trading post account’. It would almost seem as if there is some bug in Trading Post’s website which allows the phishers access to email addresses of people who view the website. Hmmm!

Comment on Interacting with your Contacts - start a mini-community by Glen Smith

Glen Smith — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 00:37:22 +0000

I have had a lot of automated tools dropping spurious posts onto my blog replies, so I guess that’s a downside of using blogs. On the other hand I have measured traffic coming back to my blog from emails. People will actually refer back.
Also, in my emails I can link to specific topics like How to stop fights about money. So the clients who click on this link http://glenthegoalsguy.com/?p=100 are most likely going to be intereseted in that specific topic, even if the rest of the web site is not of interest.
Also, by using widgets, I have set up affiliate ads and google ads, so Wordpress is very flexible in that respect.