“Don’t Hire Your Nephew to Build Your Small Business Website” says the makers of Intuit
Intuit, the maker of Quicken is hitting the traditional airwaves and social media channels with ads depicting disgruntled small business owners regarding the build out of their websites. The YouTube ad featured below for example entitled, “Don’t Hire Your Nephew to Build Your Small Business Website” hits the point home.
At first glance, I thought to myself that I should cancel my subscription to Quicken in protest for picking on the Web design tribe that we here at the WOW represent. Then again, I’m not a customer of Quicken or any Intuit products that I know of so that won’t work out very well.
After giving this some thought, I think the ad does an effective job at communicating the reasons that small businesses should “hire a Web professional” in the first place. As a result, the ad campaign is kind of growing on me. That’s not to say that all nephews that create websites are bad mind you. I know a few personally and they do very nice work!
As the executive director for the Webprofessionals.org organization, I’ve been getting hundreds of calls over the years from disgruntled small business owners asking if WOW could intervene on their behalf to settle contract disputes. I suppose ads of this nature are inevitable. Ugh, so thanks I guess for that Intuit!?!
The walk away from this ad for Web professionals I suppose is to take it in stride. It comes with the territory. General contractors and those in the construction trade face similar issues every day and have for years. Makes a great case for ethical behavior, a Web professional code of conduct and best practices I’d say. Changing the public’s perception however is a whole another discussion.
Google Receives 70 percent of searches for same period
Press reports reflect that that Google accounted for 70.60 percent of all U.S. searches conducted in the four weeks ending Oct. 31, 2009. Yahoo! Search, Bing and Ask.com received 16.14 percent, 9.57 percent and 2.62 percent, respectively. The remaining 52 search engines in the Hitwise Search Engine Analysis Tool accounted for 1.10 percent of U.S. searches.
Percentage ofU.S. searches among leading search engine providers
Domain
September 2009
October 2009
Month-over-month percent change
www.google.com
71.08%
70.60%
-1%
search.yahoo.com
16.38%
16.14%
-1%
www.bing.com*
8.96%
9.57%
7%
www.ask.com
2.56%
2.62%
2%
Note: Data is based on four-week rolling periods (ending Oct. 31, 2009, and Oct. 3, 2009) from the Hitwise sample of 10 million U.S. Internet users.
*This includes executed searches on Bing.com, Live.com and MSN Search but does not include searches on Club.Live.com.
Source: Experian Hitwise
Longer searches increase this past month
Longer search queries, averaging searches of five to more than eight words in length, increased 3 percent between October and September 2009. Searches of eight or more words increased 4 percent. The same time period showed that shorter search queries – those averaging one to four words long – decreased 1 percent from month to month. Searches of one word comprised the majority of searches, amounting to 24.03 percent of all queries.
Percentage of U.S. clicks by number of keywords
Subject
September 2009
October 2009
Month-over-month percent change
One word
24.32%
24.03%
-1%
Two words
23.55%
23.13%
-2%
Three words
20.52%
20.53%
0%
Four words
13.69%
13.83%
1%
Five words
7.94%
8.13%
2%
Six words
4.30%
4.42%
3%
Seven words
2.33%
2.43%
4%
Eight or more words
3.35%
3.49%
4%
Note: Data is based on four-week rolling periods (ending Oct. 31, 2009, and Oct. 3, 2009) from the Hitwise sample of 10 million U.S. Internet users.
Source: Experian Hitwise
Google is a greater source of traffic to key U.S. industries
Search engines continue to be the primary way Internet users navigate to key industry categories. Comparing October 2009 with October 2008, Automotive, Business and Finance, Entertainment, News and Media, Online Video, Social Networking and Sports categories showed double-digit increases in their share of traffic coming directly from search engines.
U.S. category upstream traffic from search engines and Google – October 2009
Category
Percentage of category traffic from search engines – October 2009
Percent change in share of traffic from search engines – October 2008-October 2009
Percentage of category traffic from Google – October 2009
Percent change in share of traffic from Google – October 2008- October 2009
Automotive
30.21%
18%
21.22%
19%
Business and Finance
22.17%
19%
15.63%
21%
Entertainment
28.55%
21%
19.37%
20%
Health and Medical
42.72%
-5%
30.98%
-3%
News and Media
25.43%
22%
17.24%
14%
Online Video**
36.21%
12%
25.75%
9%
Shopping and Classifieds
27.27%
8%
19.06%
9%
Social Networking**
20.53%
11%
13.86%
13%
Sports
16.30%
36%
11.38%
35%
Travel
38.48%
8%
28.81%
9%
Note: All figures are based on U.S. data from the Hitwise sample of 10 million Internet users.
Microsoft Settles and has Agreed to Let Europeans Pick Web Browser
Press reports released today report that Europeans will be picking a Web browser after Microsoft agreed to offer “Internet users a choice to avoid fresh fines — a move that could represent a real thawing of long-standing tensions between the software company and the European Union”.
The deal just announced ends all current antitrust charges brought by European Union regulators. Beginning in March, Microsoft Corp. will provide a pop-up screen to all European users of its Windows operating system, asking them to choose one or more of five major browsers — including Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, Mozilla’s Firefox, Google Inc.’s Chrome and Apple Inc.’s Safari — and seven smaller rivals.
In return, the European Commission will drop charges it filed against Microsoft in January, when it said tying Internet Explorer to Windows — already installed on most computers — gave the browser an unfair advantage. That was the latest in a long list of concerns — in more than a decade of EU antitrust action, Microsoft has been fined €1.7 billion.
IT Savvy – What Top Executives Must Know to Go from Pain to Gain and What Top IT Professionals Need to Know About the C-suite
Greetings and Happy Holiday’s Web Professionals!
Today’s podcast is an extended interview with Dr. Jeanne W. Ross, Director and Principle Research Scientist at the MIT Sloan School of Management Center for Information Systems Research and author of a recently published book entitled, “IT Savvy” what Top Executives Must know to Go from Pain to Gain.
I reached out to interview Dr. Ross in response to and interview with Cia Romano CEO, Interface Guru last week regarding her take on the state of the Web and frustration with the lack of education of those providing and contracting for Web services.
If you ever wanted to better understand the mindset of the folks in the C-suite regarding the topic of Information Technology, (IT) you owe it to yourself to listen to this thirty minute podcast on today’s Web Professional Minute.
Dr. Ross’s research centers on the organizational and performance implications of enterprise initiatives related to enterprise architecture, governance and new IT management practices. At MIT she lectures, conducts research and teaches public and customized executive courses on IT management.
I’ll have a full transcript of this podcast shortly. In the meantime, here is what I asked Dr, Ross to respond to.
* What prompted you to write IT Savvy?
* What is the role of IT from the perspective of the C-suite?
* How does the Internet fit in to that role and that definition?
* How can companies strive to convert IT from a strategic liability to a strategic asset?
* A lot has been said about the potential divide among and executives and IT and you refers to this in your writings. For example in your book you recommend that executives become IT Savvy. Does that mean that executives are solely responsible or should IT professionals become more business savvy?
* What effect if any did the tech bubble bust have on the reluctance of some companies to invest in IT?
* Many in this industry talk about a talent and a skills gap? What are your thoughts?
* Is outsourcing contributing the reluctance on the part of some executives to embrace becoming IT savvy?
* Is their a role that education can play in improving the synergy between IT and the executives?
* What role should business and industry play to encourage parents and youth to see the opportunities IT as a profession? Second part of that question what role if any should business and industry play in promoting the benefits of IT both from employment productivity point of view.
* What kind of foundational knowledge should future IT and business professional’s posses and what will they need to succeed.
* In the book you talk about the importance of IT empowerment. Can you expand on the benefits of this?
* In the book you talk about empowering the digital culture? Can you summarize that and can you provide with a summary benefit statement on Why IT Now?
For today’s podcast, I reached out to interview Rob Bowen, Freelance Writer and Grahphic Designer for Dead Wings Designs from Manitou Springs, Colorado. Rob frequently wrirtes about Freelancers and he recently wrote a thought provoking peice on Critical Mistakes Freelancers Make.
* They Don’t Use A Contract
* They Misuse Social Media (Or Don’t Use It At All)
* They Put Quantity Over Quality In Their Portfolio
* They Stop Learning
* They Don’t Know How To Deal With Clients
* They Fail To Prepare For Dry Spells
* They Overload Their Plate
* They Miss A Deadline (And Think It’s No Big Deal)
* They Lack Confidence
* They Go To Work For Someone Else
A Full Transcript of this podcast will be available in seventy two hours.
Today’s Web Professional Minute is sponsored by Peach Pit Press. Peachpit has been publishing top-notch books on the latest in graphic design, desktop publishing, multimedia, Web design and development, digital video, and general computing since 1986.
