Alex Hardy

This is my first “official” book review! I recently bought a copy of Conversation Marketing by Ian Lurie. Lurie is the founder and president of Seattle-based Portent Interactive and writes a blog, which is also called Conversation Marketing.

He dispenses advice on SEO, internet marketing and analytics and occasionally has some fun exposing the charlatans of his profession (of which there are many).

Here are some of my favourite posts:

• 59 Things You Should Be Doing But Probably Aren’t
• 49 Things You Probably Are Doing But Shouldn’t
• Internet Marketing Is About Discoverability (Not Yelling)
• Google Analytics Tagging Demystified
• 3 Signs The Pitch is Slimey

This book is also available to read in a free HTML version. Why buy something you can read for free you might ask… In my opinion, the best efforts of new technology still haven’t delivered us a way to read that is more convenient and pleasurable than a simple book. I bought the book on the basis that I regularly read the blog.

Lurie was helpful enough to personally send me a copy by international post, in exchange for a review. Before I stand accused of advertorial, I’ll quote his email:

I’ll send it to you for postage […] You can give a bad review if you hate it

My impressions

I should point out that this is not a book on SEO. Lurie takes a more holistic view and covers design, development and communication. An endless cycle of observation and adjustment is the core of his argument that a site must serve its user’s needs, not the ego or presumptions of the website owner.

The book covers six rules, that are analogous to the human interactions you might engage in at a party or business networking event. A fictional custom bicycle shop is the vehicle (no pun intended) for his explanations of these rules:

1) Know the room

This chapter covers user personas, workflows (anticipated paths through a site) and calls to action. You have to know your audience, not just accumulate pageviews.

2) Dress appropriately

An overview of web design considerations. Professionals might roll their eyes at the simplistic advice, but this is not about teaching design. Rather, the goal is to impart a degree of appreciation to the would-be site owner. It wouldn’t do a professional any harm to think about the criteria others use to judge their work…

3) Sound smart

The technical angle. This chapter is more detailed than the previous one (I sense Lurie is more comfortable with code than colour theory). He writes about site maps, the case for standards compliant code and best of all, contingency design.

I was pleased to see browser testing and help messages treated as fundamentals rather than after-thoughts. Some advice on content writing and image preparation rounds off a useful chapter.

4) Make a connection

Once you have a user’s interest, what can you do to keep a relationship alive? Email marketing best practice, and a mention of RSS and podcasting for the uninitiated in this brief chapter.

5) Brag modestly

This chapter may be the most immediately interesting to readers. An introduction to natural rankings and PPC advertisements in search engines. It also contains some words of advice for how to spot the SEO cowboys.

It has always seemed to me that there’s no magic shortcut to search engine visibility. Remember that search engines exist for the user’s benefit, not yours. Provide relevant, up-to-date content and users will seek you out. Leave the tricks to people who can’t create an offering of value.

6) Observe and adjust

This chapter was of particular interest to me: The basics of web traffic analysis. Definitions of common terms are backed up by some insightful words on tracking conversion rates. This book was published in 2006 and two years is a long time on the Internet. The references to specific tools are somewhat out of date, but the principles remain sound.

Conclusion

You may have noticed that this review has been peppered with words like “basics” and “overview”. Quite so. This is a short book at 93 pages, but it achieves its goal.

With a friendly, informal tone it equips you to start work. You’ll go on to seek out weightier and more specific resources, but you’ll incorporate that knowledge into the right frame of mind that you’ll gain from this book.

The matter of availability

A minor criticism: I originally asked about overseas postage because I believed Conversation Marketing was unavailable outside the USA. I have since discovered that it is available on Amazon, but this remains a flaw in the book’s homepage.

I would also like to see a PDF version of the book, so that all bases are covered in a similar manner to Getting Real by 37signals. An HTML version is of little use when the reader is not online. Nor does it send any money in Portent’s direction. I would buy a downloadable eBook and hope to see this option added soon.

Other books of interest

• Meatball Sundae by Seth Godin
• Designing with Web Standards by Jeffrey Zeldman
• SEO Book (eBook, blog and tools) by Aaron Wall
• Building Findable Websites by Aarron Walter
• “Essential” series of free eBooks by Nixon Mcinnes

This post won’t age well, because its subject expires from iPlayer in six days (from the time of writing). If you do live in Englandshire and have an interest in the history of design and typography I have a fascinating programme for your attention:

‘Stephen Fry and the Gutenberg Press’.

Johannes Gutenberg was the 15th century inventor of the first movable type printing press, in a time when books were written by scribes. In so doing, you could say he invented the font as we understand it, was a pioneer of mass production and venture capital funded business. As Fry puts it, his machine helped define the modern age.

If like me, you find Stephen Fry endlessly watchable/readable, you should also check out his blog.

I’d observe the Twitter chatter and wager that the “self-hosted RSS reader” that Shaun Inman casually mentioned in an interview with Peppermint Tea in January is not only real but nearing release.

If it’s half as cool as Mint and handles authenticated feeds, I’m buying it for sure!

UPDATE: Looks like I’ve been speculating about what is already known

As I wrote yesterday, I’ve upgraded my blog to WordPress 2.5. I’d resisted this for a while, because I knew it would bring certain issues. I didn’t want to deal with it until other projects reached a natural break…

Much has been said about the inadequate security of old versions of WordPress. It was even announced that Technorati will not index vulnerable blogs. I decided therefore to bite the bullet and open the can of worms (mixed metaphor intended).

I was using WordPress 2.1, so the first step was to alter my database encoding. As touched upon in a previous post called “UTF-8 text encoding and self-hosted PHP / MySQL web applications”, versions prior to 2.2 created database tables using the Latin-1 character set and the latin1_swedish_ci collation.

Wordpress have a codex page about this issue, but more importantly there is a database converter plugin that does all the hard work for you. After backing up my files and data I offered a prayer to any blogging god that might be listening and pushed the button. It worked perfectly.

The next step was to go through the standard WordPress upgrade procedure. I transferred my theme and re-applied my modifications to wp-includes/widgets.php. Some CSS tweaks were necessary because 2.5 created different selectors in my sidebar, but I expected this.

I use very few plugins. Here they are:

• Google Analytics and Sociable plugins by Joost de Valk
• FeedSmith, originally by Steve Smith, now maintained by Feedburner

The other major step was because of the Google Analytics plugin. It uses the new ga.js tracking code, so the tags that I’d placed around my site had to change.

For example, where you might have tagged a link:

onclick="javascript:urchinTracker ('/download/my ace ebook');"

… you now have to tag it:

onclick="javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview('/download/my ace ebook');"

A bit of a chore to fix, but it’s not something you have to do every day. It can be handled with a simple find/replace.

My jury is out on the new WordPress interface, famously redesigned by Happy Cog. It has a more inviting colour palette, but some users have already complained that common tasks are now more clunky than before. I already miss having a list of my drafts at the top of the “Write” page.

Time will tell whether I prefer it to Steve Smith’s WP Tiger Administration.

I am upgrading my blog today to the latest version of WordPress. Normal service should resume shortly

In the meantime, my other pages remain available.

UPDATE: Upgrade complete.

I’ve been quiet on this website for a few weeks, but I have not been idle. Here’s a quick update on my recent activities:

simpleContact Pro

Development of simpleContact Pro is well underway. I’m currently working on the form builder itself, which is coming along nicely. It would however be premature to announce a release date other than a May/June window. I plan to write a substantial blog post at the start of May that will preview the app (with interface screengrabs).

StumbleUpon

I have got the StumbleUpon bug. I’ve been using it since January, and it is quite addictive to keep a blog of webpages that you like. It has also become a steady driver of traffic to my website. In time I’ll integrate my StumbleUpon blog with this website, since referencing other sites can be valuable, but rarely merits a full post.

Manchester Great Run

I start my overdue training programme tonight, newly bought iPod Shuffle in hand. My fundraising page is set up and I am seeking sponsorship between now and May 18th. I am running for Barnado’s in this, my third Great Run.

I’ll be getting back into regular posts soon, apologies for the brief hiatus.

A little bit of Friday fun. Tom Dickinson of Will It Blend? takes the metaphor of Seth Godin’s book Meatball Sundae (which I’m currently reading) a bit literally. Delicious.

The release of the iPhone / iPod Touch SDK and the excitement among developers and gamers begs the question: Just what kind of games will be on the iPhone?

Comparisons can be drawn with the Nintendo DS and Sony PSP consoles. Both have revised hardware, an established library of games and a head start in sales. Both also demonstrate that the best portable games have these characteristics:

• Simple
• Make use of the hardware’s unique features
• Suitable for short periods of gameplay (e.g. the bus to work)

On PSP, Loco Roco displays large areas of brilliantly vivid colour. WipEout Pure shows that the wide screen aspect lends itself particularly well to racing games. On DS, Zelda: Phantom Hourglass, Nintendogs and Dr Kawashima’s Brain Training leverage the Nintendo heritage, as well as the dual screen, stylus and microphone.

Both platforms fall prey to what is often called “shovelware”. Clones. Lazy ports. Tedious licenses. The iPhone will be no different. It will be the game designers’ challenge to figure out the iPhone’s key features. At a glance, they include:

• Touch screen (game interfaces can be unique)
• Accelerometer (also referred to as a “tilt sensor”)
• 3D graphics which appear to be inferior to the PSP, but on a par with the DS
• Multiplayer gaming over wifi
• Internet access and a unique content delivery mechanism

The lack of traditional control buttons and tactile feedback will present a new design challenge. Some will use the accelerometer for controls, while some may choose to draw virtual buttons and joypads for more traditional games. Some ideas I’d look forward to seeing:

• “Touch Tetris” is so obvious I’d be surprised if EA haven’t already written it
• Line Rider
• Flick Sports (think Wii Sports for touch screen)
• Tap-tap rhythm action games
• Episodic games

If the iPhone / iPod Touch has one unique advantage, it’s that it will provide an opportunity to sell games to people who don’t buy games machines.

The Apple Store went down this morning. Nothing unusual about that; they have routinely taken the store down every Tuesday this year so far to introduce updated iPods, MacBooks, Time Capsule etc. Today was apparently just maintenance.

It isn’t common practice however to take down an online store to add new products. Imagine if Amazon did the same. It has been claimed by people on the inside that it is actually an architectural limitation of the store itself. It has to be re-published in its entirety – a requirement you could justifiably call poor design.

Apple’s relationship with the web conflicts with its image. They provide tools to write a blog but notoriously forbid their own employees from doing so. They are secretive and openly hostile to rumour sites (Think Secret the latest casualty). Bizarrely, their management of the store seems to be an exception.

A company with Apple’s resources could easily build a new store, but they choose to persevere with the old one. Why? It can only be the excitement and speculation that spreads through the mac websites like wildfire the moment that little “We’ll be back soon” post-it note appears on the page.

Call it PR, call it the Reality Distortion Field at work. Only Apple could spin a flaw in their service into a social marketing campaign. If I was a conspiracy theorist I might imagine Phil Schiller sat at his desk, leaking “rumours” to the web…

A video of yesterday’s SDK event is online at Apple’s website.

Much will be said in the coming months. In the words of Jason Fried of 37Signals:

What we saw today was the beginning of two decades of mobile domination…

Enterprise features (e.g. Exchange support). AOL Instant Messenger. Console quality games (the Super Monkey Ball demo was allegedly built in just two weeks). A comprehensive software development kit, to be released in June.

The 30% sales tax by Apple seems steep at first, but developers can set their own prices and won’t have hosting/bandwidth or credit card processing costs. They also gain a platform and delivery channel with millions of users and an installation mechanism that’s as easy as buying a song. I think most will find these terms livable.

The iPhone / iPod Touch platform just became a deadly rival to every mobile phone, PDA, media player and handheld videogame console out there.