Good Design *Still* Evades Microsoft
French analyst and researcher Andreas Pfeiffer recently reported that Microsoft’s new Vista OS is a step backward from XP. While Microsoft has worked hard to give a new look to its OS, it clearly went the wrong direction from a design standpoint. This brings me back to what Adam Smith preached back in the 1700s: specialization is the most effective way to go. Here’s what I mean.
Microsoft has employed gazillions of tech gurus from around the world to build software. Now, it’s debatable how well they do that, but everything still comes down to the design. Design is the bottleneck. If a user is lost in the program, it does not matter at all what the program can do; the user can’t access the power or the features. Time and again software companies hire out the guys that can build features but get little design help to make those features accessible. Microsoft, the world’s biggest software manufacturer, is at a loss of design expertise.
Take their rival, Apple. Apple employs as many industrial and graphic designers as they do programmers. And the result is that people know how to use the product right out of the box. There is always the learning curve, but no one can doubt the fluidity of using an Apple product as compared to a Microsoft product.
The principle? When building applications, web applications or any other, we need to spend as much time, if not more, in fleshing out the design. And the more Microsoft neglects to do this, the more frustrated users will become and the greater advantage they hand over to Apple and other competitors.
Beware of Microsoft AdCenter, et al.
I was excited to try out Microsoft’s free $200 promotion for new signups at AdCenter. In all, I discoved some serious problems with the service and figured I’d pass them on to you.
Highly untargeted leads
I ran simutaneous campaigns on Google AdWords and Microsoft AdCenter and Yahoo! Search Marketing. Using the same series of keywords, the same ad copy and the same budget, I found that Google referrals were as much as 10 times more likely to make a purchase than MSN or Yahoo. In some cases, the numbers came out to be over 20 times more likely for certain keyphrases. So I’m now highly skeptical of Microsoft’s claim that their traffic is highly targeted.
Incompatibility with Browsers
Lots of bugs creep in when using an alternate browser to Internet Explorer in AdCenter. It’s a major pain to try to navigate their control panel in Firefox, Opera, or Safari. I found that Firefox worked best of these three, but as AdCenter is all Ajax-ified, the user interface is poorly designed and you have to click way to much to get around. Not a comfortable experience at all.
Billing and Promotion Problems
The only and I mean only service that has billed me correctly without any issues is Google. I am currently in a dispute with MSN over their billing system. For two weeks after I paused a campaign it continued to suck out money for which I have to fight for it back. A full two days after I issued a complaint I got an automated email response and I’m still waiting (it’s been over a week now). Well over $200 has owed me, and I’m really ticked about it. Yahoo Search Marketing did the same, but they would not refund me one dollar. I’ve decided to never do business with Yahoo ever again. Google on the other hand, has been very receptive to billing questions, has responded promptly, and has even listened to inquiries about PPC spam refunds.
Conclusion
Both Microsoft and Yahoo are really rushing to get their PPC services ahead of the pack, and I find their services to be laden with bugs and problems. They’re just not there yet. Once again, Google has out done their rivals. Beware of the Microsoft and Yahoo products because you’ll likely find errors all over the place. I personally wish to dissuade all of you from using these services until significant improvements have been made.
Search Engines, the Answer?
In response to many online marketing constraints, many webmasters favor search engines for these reasons:
- Getting listed usually is free.
- Search engines are almost always the starting point for most users.
- Organic results (results obtained from non-paid sources) are more trusted than paid ads.
- Search engines are major thoroughfares for the bulk of internet activity, and as such, can refer high amounts of traffic.
- Users spend more time on sites referred by search engines.
Yes, search engines are highly effective at producing targeted traffic. And, they are all of those things. No web site can expect moderate or better success without passing through search engines at some point. But the door swings both ways:
- Search engines are not perfectly relevant and are updated frequently without notice to improve relevance, necessitating sometimes drastic changes to web sites to maintain ranking position.
- Search engines often take weeks to months to even list your site. For exceptional results, on average, they require years of consistent modifications.
- Algorithms that determine relevance are highly safeguarded by search engine companies. Thus, no one outside the company knows positively every factor that will improve rank.
- Sites compete over search engines more easily than offline. For most keywords, small businesses are unable to segment themselves away from bigger companies without incurring substantial expenses that they are unable to afford.
Search engines are definitely one answer to improving marketing strategy online, but clearly not the answer.
