Google Wave could mean the death of email

Posted Saturday, 13 June 2009  |  Category:  All things web  |  Comments

Watch out for Google Wave! It's set to come out later this year and completely re-structure the way we communicate electronically. Some have called it the most exciting thing Google has launched since it brought out Google.

So what is it?

Essentially an online collaboration tool, Google Wave looks to answer the question, "what would email look like if it was invented today?"

While traditional email is based on the snail mail concept – posting messages back and forth between individual recipients – Google Wave treats email as shared conversations (called waves), which users can open up and collaborate on in real time. As such, it merges elements of traditional email with instant messaging, wikis, web chat, file sharing, social networking and project management software. Sound complicated? It’s actually not. Here is an introduction on the key elements:

1. Real time communication

Instead of waiting for the proverbial postman to arrive, Google Wave users can communicate in real time, seeing messages instantly as they are being typed. This allows you to formulate faster queries and responses, similar to face to face scenarios. The full potential for this feature becomes clear when you see how it can be integrated with robots like Rosy and Stocky (more info below).

2. Multi user collaboration

Have you ever tried to wade through a multi-colour email where different users provide input on the same project? Over time, it becomes a technicolour nightmare! With Google Wave, multiple users can collaborate on the same wave, with clear denotations of who contributed what. Replies can be posted contextually within the message, and late comers can "play back" the entire conversation, seeing all amendments and replies in sequence.

3. File sharing and embedability

File sharing is super-easy with Google wave! Simply drag and drop your videos, photos, maps and documents from your hard drive directly into your wave client. This makes it easy to share files with particular users on specific projects – and could replace intranets and online file sharing apps. Furthermore, you can easily embed a wave on your blog or website, and see it update in real time. View the demo here.

Demystifying Google Analytics

Posted Wednesday, 13 May 2009  |  Category:  All things web  |  Comments

An Overview of your Website Statistics

If you are a website client of ours, you will receive a monthly report on your website statistics. This report will give you a quick overview of the who, the when and the how - how many visitors access your site on a monthly basis, the geographical distribution of visitors, the keywords used to access your site, and so on.

Here is a quick overview on the key components of your report: 

1. Site Usage

Let's start with site usage. The visits figure indicates the number of sessions initiated by all visitors to your site, ie. the total number of new and returning visitors. To hone down on the number of unique visitors, see page 3 further down in your report.

The bounce rate indicates the percentage of visitors who entered and left your website on the same page. A high bounce rate (eg. above 80%) could mean that your website is not "sticky" enough – there is not enough engaging content to retain visitors, and it would be a good idea to add more resources.

The pageviews figure indicates how many pages were viewed in total by all visitors. You can interpret this in conjunction with the pages / visit figure – simply, the average number of pages viewed per visit.  Again, a low pages / visit ratio could mean that your website needs more valuable content relevant to your consumer.

Avg. time on site indicates how long people stay on your site (typically measured in minutes and seconds), while the percentage of new visits reveals the ratio of visitors who have accessed your site for the very first time. By reverse calculation, it will give you an indication of the percentage of returning visitors.

How to drive traffic to your site

Posted Friday, 9 May 2008  |  Category:  All things web  |  Comments

So you have a business site with all the right basics – beautiful design, user-friendly navigation, carefully selected meta tags – but it is just not getting the desired amount of web traffic. Well, here are a few tips to improve your site and boost your hit rate.  

1. Offer Added Value

Search engines love sites with informational value – and so do people. Rarely do we stumble on a site because of its main business proposition, but rather because of an added educational benefit.

The trick is to offer quality information that updates regularly and is relevant to your target market.

Here are a few examples:

• If you are a design college, post interviews with up- and coming designers. This will attract your target demographic.  
• If you are a gardening supplier, offer "how to" articles on plant buying, pruning and greenhouse maintenance – information that avid gardeners are likely to search for.
• If you are an online furniture store, offer articles on home makeovers, interior design trends and furniture care. This will give browsers a reason to return again and again.
• If you are a management consulting company, upload reviews of the latest business books.
• If you are an agricultural company, offer news feeds on industry headlines...

The list is endless!

A great example is the online grocery store - freshdirect. This site offers pages and pages of themed recipes (each with a handy ingredient purchase form), detailed nutritional information on each product, taste and price comparisons on all categories, tips on how to prepare and store foods, and much more. The result? They now dominate the New York online grocery market with more than 250,000 customers and 5 million deliveries to date.  

"Don't click this"

Posted Tuesday, 19 June 2007  |  Category:  All things web  |  Comments

The "Institute for Interactive Research" has created a radical experiment in user-interface design – a flash website that allows you to navigate without a single click! The idea behind the experiment is to reduce browsing times by eliminating the need to click. Don'tclick.it allows you to navigate, play games, read articles and submit comments easily via the use of mouse movement.

So visit the site and tell us if you missed the click!

Don't be fooled - google "hoaxes"

Posted Thursday, 4 January 2007  |  Category:  All things web  |  Comments

Once a year, the folks at Google put their heads together to come up with a fun way to celebrate April Fool’s Day. This year it’s the Google TiSP, which promises free in-home wireless broadband service by connecting your router to your, um, toilet. All you have to do is drop the end of a fibre-optic cable into your toilet and flush (visuals here). This connects the cable to “TiSP access nodes”. A bit of further wiring and installing, and you have 8Mbps of internet connectivity, free!

How is this all funded, you ask? According to Google, the service would be supported by "discreet DNA sequencing" of bodily waste to display online ads that relate to culinary preferences and personal health!