Florence is a Stardoll
Stardoll is a fashion portal aimed at 8-12 would-be girl-teens. The principal activity seems to be dressing celebrities with different clothes from a virtual wardrobe. Only Florence (9) is qualified to give me any insight into this world.
PB: What do you do on Stardoll?
FB: You click on a celebrity, or an athlete, or a singer and they’ll come up with lots of clothes next to them. You click on the clothes and drag them to on to the person. You can do Princess Diana, and royalty. You can dress Queen Elizabeth in casual clothes or rich clothes.
PB: How often do you visit the site?
FB: Quite a lot, normally after school. The site’s quick and I can do it before tea and after my homework. And I do it a lot in the holidays.
PB: Did you know there are clubs where you can meet other people?
FB: No, I haven’t discovered those. I just enjoy dressing up people.
PB: How did you find out about the site?
FB: It was from my friend, Sophia. We were having games in ICT and we were allowed to play on different sites, and we were allowed to play on Stardoll.
PB: How does Stardoll make money?
FB: I don’t know.
PB: Did you know you could pay to be a community member?
FB: No. I just thought you went on to dress up people. I thought there might be something else, but didn’t want to do it without my parent’s permission.
PB: How could Stardoll be better?
FB: I’d like fashion advice on what goes with what. And the men should be more interesting …
PB: Is Stardoll better than Club Penguin?
FB: With Club Penguin you can’t really do anything without being a member. With Stardoll there’s no real reason to pay to be a member.
PB: Thanks Florence.
<end of interview>
Great insight from Florence. I quite like the fact that Stardoll hasn’t pushed a commercial route for Florence. I suspect she will grow out of Club Penguin, and Stardoll will provide a teen-aspiring environment in due course.
Stardoll’s real achievement, like Club Penguin, is that their target audiences are buzzing offline. But unlike Club Penguin which has the hallmarks of an impermeable classic, Stardoll will need to constantly reinvent itself if it’s to remain ubercool.
Conversion Rate Optimization
SEM agencies typically will do a lot of work on your Adword account, they’ll fiddle with copy, keywords, etc., but they’re less happy rolling up their sleeves and hacking your site to improve conversion rate.
But when should you start work on conversion rate optimization? Never without stringent testing. Assuming your site is reasonably designed, and your product offering is reasonably priced, you should be able to achieve 6-10% click through rates (CTR), and 6-10% conversion rates. So roughly 1 in 10 clickthrough, and 1 in 10 of those on the site buy.
You can increase your CTR by analysing your copy and keyword cohesion. Spin out the higher CTR keywords into their own ad groups, and just use the target keyword in the Ad title. Speak the language of your customers.
But to increase your conversionr rate, you’ll need to roll up your sleeves and start someone serious work on the design and information hierarchy of your site. But again, I’d stress, don’t do it without testing. These guys know their onions, and their 101 tips for using the Google Optimizer are an excellent place to start.
How much do you care about your customers?
At HealthSpark we’re in the start-up phase, so we’ve taken to ringing customers who register but don’t order. The results have been fantastic. Customers are bowled over that we care enough to ring, and we start by asking them what they think of the site, and then we email them a £5 voucher to say thank you for telling us.
This shouldn’t just be the activity of a start-up. If someone bowls into your shop, you should talk to them. Consider LiveChat, or better still call them.
Florence Balderson and Club Penguin Part 2
It’s been 2 months now since Florence (9) became a Club Penguin addict. Here’s a quick update on how life is in Club Penguin land.
PB: Florence, how long every day are you spending on Club Penguin?
FB: I don’t have much time to play after school, normally maybe half an hour a day. My Mac stops me at five hours a day, so I should have enough time.
PB: I reckon you’re spending on average one hour a day.
FB: Maybe…
PB: Tell me about your role as an agent on Club Penguin?
FB: To start off, I needed to click a yellow button (to see what it does). I had to answer a quiz to become a secret agent. The quiz covered issues like when you see a penguin being rude, or mean, or asking for personal information. Then you report them to the moderator. What I do is I normally just do missions like ‘the missing puffballs’ and you get this little phone and you can teleport to places, and you read codes and all sorts.
PB: As an agent, have you had to report any naughty penguins?
FB: I reported this man for saying, “move your big butt off the chair”, so I reported him for rude behaviour. He’s now on my ignore list, and he can’t talk to me, or come to my igloo.
PB: Do you think Club Penguin is a safe environment?
FB: I think so, because mum and dad have told me not to give out personal information, and no one’s asked me for that. I make friends with people who seem friendly, and report people who are unfriendly. Lots of people are friendly on Club Penguin. I go round visiting people’s igloos.
<end of interview>
As a parent I couldn’t be more pleased with the Club Penguin environment. It’s well policed, and Florence is learning important online social networking skills. Skills, I think, which will be foundational for the next generation.
Change This - starting with a click
Quick site recommendation, and a favour to ask…
ChangeThis is a very cool site which was the brainchild of Seth Godin. It’s a site for perpetuating new ideas and new thinking. High quality ‘manifestos’ are published, and then the ChangeThis community spreads the idea.
I’m close to finishing my new book on how to become an ecommerce gazillionaire, and I’m going to pre-release the book for free on ChangeThis. To get ChangeThis to carry the book, I need lots of votes (this is the favour bit). So please please can you click this link, and forward it to your mates to click also.
Thanks to all who’ve voted already, we’re currently no.4, which isn’t too bad for 24 hours voting!
How to eat an elephant, (how to make an online mega-brand)
Making a new online store really work often feels as unachievable as eating the ubiquitous elephant. The answer, of course, one mouthful at a time. Here’s a selection of tasks you could consider as a mouthful. You just need to do one of these a day:
- Negotiate or create a meaningful hyperlink from an external website to your site (ideally, on a content link from a site with appropriate context, e.g. Rosehip. Reciprocal links (where the other site links back to you) are not worthless, but have less value.
- Add new and compelling content to your site. If you keep improving the content on the site, the GoogleBot will revisit more frequently. And frequent content changes are a powerful signal to Google that your site *must* have relevant content.
- Make a tweak on an adword campaign (but do remember to split-test, and pull weak ads quickly).
- Read your Analytics Data, find the most exited page, and change it!
- Write a blog entry that someone will want to share
- Approach a possible affiliate partner
- Make a cheese and ham sandwich
- Drink a cup of coffee
- Will be at ten soon, all good blog lists come in tens
- Remember to forward this post to a friend.
Chitika Premium Units - AdSense watch out!
I’m really impressed with Chitika’s behavioural targeted Ads. The Ads show in the context of the blog, and only show when the blog/content is directly relevant. This makes AdSense look like a scatter-gun approach, and surprisingly ham-fisted.
Chitika’s model is based on much less traffic, but it is highly targeted. Moreover, the quality of the click is higher, because the traffic hasn’t been irritated by lots of other irrelevant advertising. This is a bright future for context advertising - where you only get the advertising you want.
Nice to see Google’s monopoly being challenged. If I was Google, I’d do even more with Google Checkout, and make sure that adverts are only served to those likely to buy, so that Ads are served not just on context but on your previous buying patterns. Then you’d only get really useful ads when you need them. You don’t need a holiday ad when you’ve just got back from holiday.
You can see the Chitika Premium Unit in action on this page, by clicking http://baldysblog.com/#chitikatest=mortgage
Florence Balderson becomes Club Penguin addict
Virtual playgrounds are booming according to a recent BBC article. Here’s what Florence thinks about Club Penguin:
It’s fun. I like lots of the games. I need to practice on saving money, instead of spending it on new clothes and wigs that are super-cool.
[Dad: How did you get into Club Penguin?]
When Leonha came round she showed me website and I played the games, and I really liked them, but I couldn’t upgrade my igloo, or buy clothes and wigs, or puffballs and furniture, so I really had to persuade you to give me a year’s membership.
What’s really impressive about Club Penguin is the quality of the graphic environment, and I hope the child protection (the Disney brand lends considerable credibility here). You can’t fault the new marketing approach of Disney - they’ve provided a free playground (currently being enjoyed by 15 million kids), and they’ve got kids talking to kids about how cool it is. But the real masterstroke is monetizing premium membership with must-have digital articles that have a ZERO marginal cost of production.
However, when you review the stats below on membership, you can’t help but a little alarmed at the rampant commercialisation of our kids - particularly when it’s my wallet that’s burning!
VIRTUAL WORLD NUMBERS
Habbo - 90m accounts
NeoPets - 45m accounts
IMVU - 20m accounts
Club Penguin - 15m accounts
Star Doll - 15m accounts
Gaia - 12m accounts
Barbie Girls - 12m accounts
Source: K Zero
Florence is reading this blog as I write, so she can close it (by the way, she also wanted her own Google reference, so Florence this blog’s for you!)
Disney should make it completely free, and they could make some money from advertising
Way to go Flo!
Dunells.com - great online wine store
Webreality has just launched a new e-commerce site for Dunells Wine Merchants in Jersey. It’s an exceptionally good site, and particular credit must go to Dale Broadhead, and the whole WR team.
What makes this site a Purple Cow
Great mash-up
You’ll like this: Addictomatic mashes up Ask.com, Technorati, Addicto top blogs, YouTube, Digg, Flickr, Twitter, and more all on one page. No faster way to see what the web’s saying about anything. Bet Google buys them.