Author: Luiz A D R Marques

I've been developing software and selling it on-line since 1994. Current products include STG FolderPrint Plus - a tool to Print Folders, and STGThumb - HTML Album Generator, among others. Some of my other sites - Disk Usage, Directory Printer ,Print Folders and Jejum Intermitente .

Categories
Product Review

SurveyMonkey – Review

While I have completed surveys using SurveyMonkey for many years now, I had never used their system to make a survey, till last week.

I decided that there was too much I didn't know about STG FolderPrint Plus users, and that this got in the way of deciding on new features and products. So I used SurveyMonkey, with the MailChimp integration.

First of all, it was very easy to sign up for SurveyMonkey and get started. Their portuguese translation isn't very good, but thankfully I was able to change the language to english.

The free version has many limitations, but none is all that bad. You can only ask 10 questions, but more than that would be annoying anyway, and you can pack a lot of stuff into a single question matrix (see below).

Question Matrix
Question Matrix

There is also a limit of 100 visible responses. I got less than that so far, and if I get more, I can just sign up for their basic service then.

There are also a ton of extras on other versions, but mostly aren't that interesting. Some that I miss is the ability to download the raw data and use filters and crosstabs. For example, I'd like to know what features business users want vs home users, but that is not possible with the free version (you can see each response, so I imagine you could spider or hand copy and paste each one…) .

Sending the survey was very easy using MailChimp (not related, despite the simian names). You just have to authorize with your SurveyMonkey account, and use a special template to get started. At this point you just pick the survey, and send to an existing list.

The nice part about the integration is the extra abilities that you get (otherwise you'd just do a normal campaign and send the survey link).  You can see right at MailChimp which users answered your survey, and see their responses. You can also send follow-ups thanking them (and maybe sending them something extra), or requesting people that didn't take the survey to do so.  I'm not going to do that though – seems quite annoying!

Overall, I liked SurveyMonkey. For free, it is a very good service, and I've gotten plenty of useful information from the survey, which I plan to share in a few posts later.

 

Categories
Article

6 Smart ways to Capture E-mails

Interesting article on a few techniques to grow your e-mail list.

The scroll-triggered box is very, very old, as are most of the others, but they are still very useful and good ideas.

Categories
Article

More Cool CSS3 Effects

CSS 3 Logo

Some very nice effects with sources listed in this article .

My favorites (with direct links and images):

– black and white images (might try these for STGThumb albums)

– page top shadow (looks very nice)(broken link)top Shadow CSS3 Effect

– stitched effect

stitched CSS3 Effect

 

– corner ribbon corner-ribbon-css3

Categories
Book Review

Interactive Data Visualization for the Web – Book Review

I've just finished reading Interactive Data Visualization for the Web (An Introduction to Designing with D3), by Scott Murray. This book covers the basics on how to use D3, a library to make it easier to do data visualizations (see the very cool gallery for an example of what has been done with it).

This is Early Release Version 3 of the book, so there may be changes in the finished release.

The book covers the basics on how to use D3 – starting with a bar chart all the way to how to convert shapefiles and display maps.

One thing I found interesting is how similar using D3 feels to JQuery. They very much are helper libraries. I expected D3 to be more of a delphi component – point it to the data, set a few parameters and it goes from there. But in reality, there will be a quite bit of code for anything you do. The advantage is that it is very, very flexible.

The style of the book is quite light, and it is targeted to all users who want to do data visualization – not just programmers. Thus, there is a quick introduction to a lot of basics, including the Web, HTML, DOM, CSS, Javascript and SVG. It seems feasible that a dedicated reader would be able to follow it without much programming experience.

Overall, I liked it. The examples all work and are useful, and it took me about 4 hours to read it, including trying out all examples and following some of the links to useful resources.

Categories
Book Review

Profit Pulling PPC Ads – Book Review

Profit Pulling PPC Ads – by Karon Thackston – covers how to write PPC ads for maximum CTR and conversion.

While I have read a few PPC book – mostly about Adwords – I believe this is the first book about copywriting for PPC ads I've ever seen.

Obviously this is an important topic, since even minor changes can have large differences on your CTR or conversion rates. Given that I find it hard to write good Adwords ads (and that while my CTR is great for some keywords, conversions are nowhere near as good), I bought it right away. I also know the author from a few other books and her newsletter, although I got the book offer from Wordtracker.

There was plenty of useful advice (I have about 5 pages of notes from the 77 pages of the book). Here is what I liked:

  • If you read any copywriting book, you probably saw this – find your target market and write for them. Still important for PPC.
  • Differences between active searchers and passive onlookers (Adsense and Facebook, for example).
  • List of ad styles, with a couple of examples each.
  • 5 Step Process to write your ad.
  • Reminders of what you can't include on your Google and FB ads.
  • 35 ideas for ads (category sales, coupons, statistics, etc).
  • Using Dynamic Keyword Insertion on Adwords.
  • Quality score – how to improve yours – and keeping in mind that a bad score with better conversion can be worth much more to you.
  • PPC Copywriting plan: lots of suggestions for words, goals, motivations and more.

Conclusion

Profit Pulling PPC Ads is very short – 77 pages. It took me about an hour to go through, even while taking notes. There isn't much content here, but there is useful advice, and any change on your ads' conversion rate will easily cover the US$49 price (I paid US$29, but there was a special on the book release). I will certainly be going through my ads after reading it.

Categories
Book Review

R Graphics Cookbook – Book Review

I have just finished looking through (and trying out) the recipes in R Graphics Cookbook, by Winston Chang. First of all, I'm very much a beginner in R, but it was possible to follow the examples.

For those wondering what R is – it is an interesting language for statistical computing and graphics. Usually I am more of a Delphi guy (although I have used many other languages in the past, and still use PHP when adequate), but R has a bunch of features and libraries that makes it easier for that area, and it is also used on a few courses – thus my interest.

One thing I really liked about the book is that the example data comes straight from a package. So you install and download them with a simple command in R when you start the book, and you just have to do a library(gcookbook) each time you use an example in a session. Very nice (vs downloading, setting a folder or using the full name for each file,etc).

The book seems to cover the material well enough, and the discussion section usually present useful options. For example, on the recipe Labeling Points in a Scatter Plot the basic solution is presented, and then it shows how to shift labels so they don't crowd the data points, or how to add only a few relevant labels. The examples I tried almost all worked (except for one that needed an extra library, which only took a install_packages call), which unfortunately is not true for many technical books.

Since my background only include the most common graphs, I also learned about a few other graph types, such as correlation matrix, dendograms, vector fields and choropleth map.

Overall, pretty good.

It is interesting to note that this was a free review copy – fortunate, too, since I had almost bought it a few days before getting an offer to review it.

You can get it directly from O'Reilly or other places. The advantage of O'Reilly is that their e-books are DRM-free (and usually available on mobi, PDF and ePub formats).

Categories
Product Review

Long Tail Pro – Keyword Research Tool – Review

I recently bought Long Tail Pro – a keyword tool that can find keywords and have a nice competition analysis using SEOMoz data.

In principle it is very nice, and according to the demo it is faster than Market Samurai. However, here it didn't work nearly as well as it should.

First of all, it asks for your e-mail and authorization key. That is OK – the first time. And then it continues asking, every time. Annoying, but certainly not fatal.

Then there is the keyword system, which simply didn't work here at all. It tried to get the keywords and never returned any result.

Competition analysis has some great data. My problem is that it worked a couple of times, and then simply stopped working. No error messages, nothing. Sometimes I'd press the button to start it, and eventually the button would be clickable again, with no results and no feedback.

There is also rank tracking, but frankly, I had very little interest there – it is easily the most common function (personally, I use Rank Tracker).

I'd like to note that after all these problems on a program I just bought, I just gave up. I didn't spend time pursuing the causes with support, because at this point I didn't think it'd be worth it. I just requested a refund, which was granted fairly quickly (about a couple of hours).

So if you believe my problems are rare or uncommon, well, at least you can probably feel safe about getting your refund.

My recommendation is still for SEO PowerSuite's Rank Tracker .

There are also a ton of web services that do this. BiQ, SEMRush, etc.

Categories
Book Review

Sell More Software – Website Conversion Optimization for Software Developers – Book Review

Sell More Software – Website Conversion Optimization for Software Developers by Patrick Mckenzie is a collection of his blog posts on marketing, with a few new articles added.

Why would you buy this, instead of going to his blog? Well, I recently subscribed to his e-mail list and got a sample of the new chapters. Not only it was excellent, but I also find it much more comfortable to read on my iPad than on my computer, and unlike his blog it is much easier to make notes in the mobi version of the eBook.

So what does the e-book cover? It is divided in 3 major parts:

Selling your Stuff

  • You should probably send more e-mail than you do: covers a number of reasons why e-mail is still important. It converts great, your list is your list (unlike in Facebook or Twitter, where it is really theirs and they can start charging per broadcast like FB did, and RSS tends to get ignored). Some of the click rates he mentions are amazing – 1% for a link in his blog, 15% of the full mailing list for an e-mail. E-mail also keeps leads warm and can help you get more revenue out of existing customers
  • Does Your Product logo actually matter? – you can get 10% less or more of your conversion rate with a logo.
  • Dropbox-style Two-sided sharing incentives – using referrals to get more customers, and how he implemented it.
  • Two-Sided Referral Incentives Revisited! – continuing the previous article – didn't work for him.
  • Engineering Your Way to Marketing Success – using benefits instead of features. Getting data from product usage for content generation and automated error detection and correction.
  • Selling Software to People Who Don't Buy Software – make sure your program looks good, give good support and make it easy to buy.
  • Increase your Software Sales – use analytics, do SEO and get links. Include a sidebar box listing synonyms for your key search terms (great example here, I plan to follow it). Blog – but try to keep it evergreen. Adwords.
  • The Black art of Saas Pricing – how to charge for your service. Apparently, being cheap can quite frequently be a very, very bad idea – and the people who will only get the cheap version often need the most support. Also some great advice on price testing.

Increasing Conversion

  • Stripe and A/B Testing Made me a Small Fortune – how he implemented Stripe (sounds like a great service, BTW). Interesting part on how to use git to test what version of a library breaks your application. Some testing on limits with great effects. 
  • The Most Radical A/B Test I've ever done – how he tested dropping a downloadable app for the web only version.
  • Keeping the User Moving Towards Conversion – short post on adding buttons to screenshots. Might try this myself.
  • Practical Conversion Tips for Selling Software – monitoring your sales funnel and optimizing it.
  • Minor Usability Errors in Checkout Funnel = You Lose Lots of Money – interesting look on how a simple cart UI logic caused him to lose 94% of CD buyers.
  • 10-Minute Tweaks to Boost your Conversion – some simple ideas on how to improve conversion. Interesting stat on people not returning from thumbnail clicks – I wonder if it still holds true today.

All about SEO

  • SEO for Software Companies – based on a presentation, pretty good if you aren't already proficient. Some great ideas on how to use/create content.
  • Strategic SEO for Startups: more SEO stuff. Surprising stuff: people looking for [free bingo cards] convert at 5 times the rates of regular searchers!
  • The Big Book of Getting People to Link to you
  • Developing Linkbait for Non-technical Audience
  • Why You Shouldn't Pay any SEO You can afford – interesting look on the economics of SEO.

Conclusion –  This chapter has a nice article on churn rates.

Some of the other advice I liked:

  • If you have to worry about sales, marketing, etc AND coding, you are not a software developer – you are in business.
  • You should talk to people BEFORE you build your product/service, and find at least a few who would be willing to pay what you want for it, or give up on this approach to the product and look for another.
  • Getting a commitment out of someone before giving them your software can really increase conversion.
  • Publish early: if you have no content, talk about the problem domain and the need of your customers.

My Own Conclusion

Patrick's advice is pretty good and the book is also a pleasant read – I recommend reading both the book, his blog and signing up for his mailing list – there is a lot of excellent content there.

Categories
Software Release

STG FolderPrint Plus 4.01 Released

I have just released version 4.01 of STG FolderPrint Plus.

Changes:

– Fixed ID3V1 tags being read instead of ID3V2 on some MP3 files.

You can get it at http://www.stgsys.com/fpp.asp, or just run the program, and use Menu Help, item Check for new version.

Categories
Articles

WordPress and SSL

Wordpress Logo

Yoast has a nice article with important details when settings WordPress on SSL. It details how to force SSL on specific pages, using Cache and CDN and fixing links in theme files.