Usability Can Cut Costs

Usability is generally associated with benefits like reduced friction, superior UX and greater cross-selling for e-commerce providers. Click here to read a couple of my articles and blog posts about usability in this context. During a recent transaction, I realized how better usability could also cut costs for an online business. I normally buy domain names … Read more

GenY Is The Sweet Spot For QR Codes – At Least For Now

The use of QR codes in advertisements continues unabated. We came across three of them on a single day recently. As you can see below, there’s one from the leading Indian retailer SHOPPERS STOP, another from THE BODY SHOP, the UK-headquartered multinational that is the global leader in ethically produced beauty products, and the third … Read more

Differentiate Your Product By Going The Extra Mile – Part 2

In Part 1 of this blog post, we’d compared the realtime SMS alerts for credit card transactions sent out by  two banks, BANK1 and BANK2. Let us reproduct the two banks’s SMS messages. First, BANK1. Next, BANK2. In this Part 2, we’ll look at these SMS alerts as ‘products’ and see how well they work for … Read more

Differentiate Your Product By Going The Extra Mile – Part 1

Credit card holders in India might have noticed of late that they’re receiving SMS alerts on their mobile phones each time they use their cards. I’m not sure if this is a bank/card-specific initiative or the outcome of some new government regulation applicable across the industry, but I’ve been receiving these notifications from the issuers … Read more

Art Meets Science With A/B Testing – Part 2

http://optimize.ly/l2BfDR http://www.gtm360.com/images/logo_optimizely_100w.jpg http://techcrunch.com/2010/07/15/optimizely-ab-test/”>http://techcrunch.com/2010/07/15/optimizely-ab-test/ Art Meets Science With A/B Testing – Part 1 Enter the new crop of providers of cloud-based A/B testing solutions. They include Optimizely, Unbounce and Webify. These A/B testing solution providers free up the designer to focus on the business side of optimizing their applications and lift much of the load of … Read more

Art Meets Science With A/B Testing – Part 1

I’d read this post when it was published last year. I recently found the need to do A/B testing and happened to read a newspaper article about Wingify / VisualWebsiteOptimizer. This article had alluded to Optimizely as a high-cost competitor of VWO. I headed to VWO and found that it lacked the most elementary performance … Read more

Loyalty Or Disloyalty Programs?

Despite several new malls and stores opening up in the last seven years that I’ve been living in Pune, India, I’ve been a loyal shopper at one of India’s pioneering retailer. Good ambience, adequate assortment of products, reasonable prices, and, above all, a loyalty card that gives me reward points every time I shop there … Read more

Use QR Codes To Create Augmented Reality & Bolster Conversion Of Leads To Deals

The other day, during a visit to the local temple, I came across a poster advertising a concert for Carnatic music, which is a South Indian classical music form. I was very keen on attending it. However, since there was a lot of crowd in the temple and I wasn’t anyway carrying any writing material at … Read more

Preserve Aspect Ratios & Protect Corporate Identities!

If you can recognize the person without clicking the image on the right, you can stop reading this post right now. However, like most of us with normal eyesight, if you’re able to recognize that it’s Aishwarya Rai only after clicking on the image, welcome to the world of distorted images on the world wide … Read more

Google Versus LinkedIN Advertising Rekindles The Quantity Versus Quality Debate

I’ve been using Google AdWords, the #1 PPC platform in the world, for several years. LinkedIn recently launched its LinkedIn DirectAds PPC platform recently. I recently completed a month-long campaign on the latter and thought of comparing it with various campaigns I’ve run on the former. This blog post is the result. Both Google AdWords and … Read more