Jeremy Armstrong

Today, we published the new MoGiZ.com look.  Here is some of the negative feedback we received on the old site:

1. The site looks too black and white (like a newspaper).
2. It appears that you only sell electronics based on your home page.
3. It is not clear you can sell on your site when you first visit it.  It takes some searching.
4. Your site does not look friendly.  It looks cold and technical.
5. It is hard to find your browse/support/cart buttons.

Of course we received good feeback too, but we wanted to fix the negative areas of the site.  Here are some of the changes we have implemented:

1. We have re-arranged the toolbar on the site so that the browse/cart/support buttons are on their own row to the very left of the site (so that it is easier to see quickly).
2. Our logo has been modified slightly to be more bubbly and friendly.
3. Color has been added to several areas of the site to make it less blah.
4. Our home page has been completely redesigned to better express that we sell many items (not just electronics), and to help sellers understand that they can list their items on the site.

There are more changes planned in the very near future, and we are getting feedback from our users every day.  We take this feedback seriously, so keep it coming.

The 2008 Olympics officially began last night, and the opening ceremonies were amazing.  I experience a mixture of excitement and fear when the Olympics start, because they are so fun and addicting to watch.  I really don’t know what I would do without a DVR and HD (high definition) TV.  It makes a huge difference being able to skip through commercials and lulls in the games, and watch the shows around my schedule.  Also, HD really makes the games pop.  I liked the outfits that Ralph Lauren designed for the US walk, but I think they actually should have used one of the designs off of Project Runway (there were some really sporty and sharp looking designs).  Oh well.  By the way, NBC has also put together a very nice summary page of the Olympics for those of you that want to track medal counts and scores.  That’s it for now!

Jennifer and I went to Zoo Boise last night to meet up with some family members:

• Phyllis (mother-in-law)
• Trina (sister-in-law)
• Harrison (nephew)
• Lilly (niece)
• Nolan (nephew)

It was “First Thursday”, so the kids were given hotdogs, chips, and drinks when we got in.  We sat at a picnic table and watched the dance shows they had going (not spectacular, but still fun).  Nolan kept telling us stories about things going in the water, and it was incredibly cute.  We tried to take some pictures, but Harrison kept making faces and putting his hands in his sister’s face while she was trying to smile.  Dang big brothers.  We sat by the water watching the ducks until we were done eating, and then took a tour of the zoo.

It has been a long time since I had been to the Boise Zoo, and I honestly thought it would be very rustic and simple, but it was way better than I remembered it.  They have made some very cool improvements, and the kids had a blast.  Some of the highlights included seeing the penguins, zebra, bear (sprawled out in a ditch relaxing - lazy bear), snow leapards, blue poison dart frogs (they looked so bright blue and plastic that Trina and I thought they were fake until they moved), tigers, and monkeys.  It was all fun and games until Harrison got a hold of a squirt bottle and started soaking me.  I had to chase him down (as he was laughing hysterically at my expense) and rip the bottle from his hands.

After we walked through the gift shop and touched every single item in the store, we went out to the car to give Lilly her presents (her birthday is today).  We had to hurry a little bit because a big thunderstorm was quickly rolling in, and I was pretty sure we were going to get blown away.  Lilly got a princess pink cooking apron from Phyllis, and a kids cookbook from us (although I tried to give her a leftover hot dog I found in the stroller still wrapped in tin foil, but Lilly just gave me dagger eyes and handed it back to me).

After the zoo, Jennifer and I went to Kahootz (a local pub) to have a drink and a quick dinner.  It was a fun night, and we really missed seeing those kids.  Anyways, that’s it for now!

Well, I faced another CPC travesty today, and I couldn’t resist sharing my experience (which will hopefully save a few others from going through the same thing).  For those of you that don’t know, most CPC advertising is (what is an appropriate for all ages word I can use here) dishonest and unfair.  There are many articles on the web that share negative experiences with CPC advertising, and very few that I have found that share positive experiences.  Over the past few years, I have tried using many CPC programs to help drive quality traffic to www.MoGiZ.com, and so far, I have not found one CPC program that has proved that they have honest business practices, fair prices, and quality traffic.  Here is a quick breakdown of the issues I have found:

• Click Volume Discrepencies - We have found that on average, CPC companies charge for about 2-3 times as many clicks as any reliable third party web log tool will record.  They will always give a variety of standard excuses (our tool is more reliable, you may accidentally be only looking at unique visitor data, etc.), but the truth is they are never willing to prove it.  I have asked for IP address data to validate against my web logs, and I am turned down quickly.  The CPC companies have a reason to fudge their numbers (more money for them)… third party web log tools don’t (they don’t make more or less money based on your traffic and sources).
• Low Quality Traffic - We have found that all of the major CPC engines send a significant amount of low traffic to your site.  A great example is when we looked at our billing statement and noticed that we received quite a few links from people looking for perfume and make up… and this is back when we only sold electronics.  We asked about the discrepency, and they could not give us a straight answer.  CPC companies definitely have the motive to send you low quality traffic (more money for them), and very little motive to control it.
• High Prices - Most CPC companies charge between 50 to 70 cents per click. Doesn’t sound like much until you take into account the first two items I mentioned.  Realistically, if a site can send you very high quality traffic (which we haven’t found a CPC company that does yet), 50 cents a click can be reasonable.  If not, 20 cents or less is probably a more realistic price for a click.
• Terrible Support - Whenever we noticed discrepencies with our data, we never get quick responses, clear answers, or significant resolutions to our problems.  We have taken extreme measures a few times to get our money back, but most of the time we are just out our hard earned cash.

To top it off, it isn’t like we are using bad sources.  We are using some of the best known and most used CPC programs on the web, including:

• Shopping.com - (Terrible)
• PriceGrabber.com - (Moderately Poor)
• Pronto.com - (Poor)
• PriceRunner.com - (Moderately Poor)
• Shopzilla.com - (Terrible)
• BizRate.com - (Terrible)

None of these have yeilded positive results, and all of these companies have been unflexible and unwilling to prove their claims for ROI.  This business practice is not only hurting businesses, but it hits consumers too.  Many users do not realize that everytime they find a product on a CPC site and click on it, the business is charged for that click (which means the price of the product has to be raised - even if the user is just browsing and is not serious about shopping).  And of course, there is click fraud (where competitors click on other businesses links to raise their prices).  Some of the CPC companies claim they are good at preventing this, but we have not seen any proof of that to date with our results.

So, how do we make things better?  The answer is CPA (Cost Per Action) advertising or free advertising.  There are many companies on the web today that provide CPA advertising, and method where businesses are only charged when an item sells.  Although there are still possibilities of fraud and unfair practices with this model, it is not NEARLY as risky as the CPC models today (and much easier to manage and track).  Here are a list of some companies we have tried and have had decent (if not excellent) results from:

• www.JellyFish.com
• Google Base
• www.ZooCaro.com
• www.SortPrice.com
• www.ShopWiki.com
• www.ClicksGalore.com
• www.RewardTrak.com

Of course you can also use www.MoGiZ.com.  If you do, your product data is automatically sent to all of the sources listed above (and more).

The vast majority of merchants and shoppers still use sites that utilize the older CPC model, but as more and more merchants and shoppers become aware of the mutual advantages of CPA or free advertising models, the better these programs will get.  And, if you are still determined to use CPC (which can still be helpful if you do it right), the advice I can offer is to ensure the company is willing to prove their value (either through a trial period where you validate the results, or they agree in writing to a certain performance level that can be validated through third party web log tools).  If they aren’t willing to prove it, they probably aren’t worth it.

Still want more?  Check these two articles out:

• http://gothamjg.wordpress.com/2008/01/02/shoppingcom-clicks-part-iii-roi-tracker/
• http://mogiz.wordpress.com/2008/08/07/pay-per-click-in-your-face-part-i/

Hope this helps someone out there…

Well, another day is starting to come to a close, and once again I find myself involved in a new project.  This new project will be posted at KitchIt.com, and I will be posting details soon about what is planned.  Another exciting project that I am hoping to share with everyone soon.  It is becoming quite clear that I hate relaxing. 

Despite all these projects, I was still able to squeeze in enough time to watch the season finale of Flipping Out on Bravo. You have to check out Jeff Lewis. His personality (an equal mix of control freak with no boundaries, drama magnet, and perfectionist) totally hits home with me (although I hope I am not as uncontrolled).  You also have to love Jenni, Zoila, Ryan, and the rest of the group. If you have never seen this show, I suggest you check it out.  It is an absolute riot.

On a random side note, David reminded me today that I am lucky enough to have a name that seems to be associated with a history of crime.  When you search for my name on Google, it does not paint a pretty picture.

Speaking of Google, have you heard about the search engine called Cuil (pronouced cool)? It was started recently by some engineers that split off of Google determined to create something from the ground up that was faster, broader and better.  I actually set it as my home page for about a week to test it out.  It is a very interesting project.  Due to a press release, their site was somewhat overloaded for a couple days.  Despite this, it still ran very quickly most of the time.  Their format is very different, and definitely takes some getting used to.  Some of the interesting differences are:

• they list their results in columns with images (indicating it is easier to quickly see what you are looking for).  I really though the idea was great, and it sounds better, but for some reason I could not get my brain to wrap around the new look.  Not sure if this means it is really not easier, or if I am just getting older and need more time to adapt.
• they indicate they have indexed significantly more pages than any other search engine (even Google).  Definitely a plus there.  They also indicate their technolgy will allow them to keep ahead of the curve.
• they do not base their searches as much on populatity like some of the other search engines (including Google).  I still can’t tell if this is a good or bad thing, since sometimes popularity really helps weed out some useless content.
• they do not collect user’s browsing history and habits.  Go privacy!
• they offer new organizational tools (tabbed and drilldown search results) to help you find what you are looking for.  I have used these a little bit, but I admit they were so foreign to me I did not give them much of a chance yet.
• their technology supposedly uses less hardware to do over three times as much work as existing search engines. That being said, their web crawler (Twiceler) is somewhat (if not very) invasive when it is crawling websites.  After looking at my weblogs, I noticed it looking for all kinds of pages and directories that did not exist (by parsing existing URLs into peices or trying to predict possibilities).  This is different than many other cawlers that just use links found in your HTML to find other pages and directories on your site.  This seems like a waste of power (and can impact website performance for smaller operations).

To be honest, I am really rooting for Cuil (partly because I am with the masses and I tend to vote for the underdog and value small businesses, and partly because I really think their technology has some really neat potential).  I am just still struggling to find the relevant results I am used to seeing.  I will continue to try it out and let you know if I have given up or am a devoted fan in a couple of weeks.

That’s it for now.  Have a great night!

It has been a busy for MoGiZ.com.  Not only did we post over a dozen site improvements (primarily in seller and admin tools), but we also created an offical place on Twitter and BlogSpot for MoGiZ.com.  We will be using Twitter to post quick and frequent updates about new features, products, sellers, and anything else that might be going on.  Our BlogSpot page will have more detailed articles and news. We will be adding direct links to both of these locations on our site (about us page) tomorrow.

We have been getting more calls from sellers asking questions about our program.  Not surprisingly, many of the people that contact us are curious what the catch is.  The common question is “So I only have to pay $23 to list 1,000 products for a whole year, and there are no other fees (like cost per click, cost per sale, credit card processing, order processing, etc.)?  What is the catch?”  Well, there isn’t one!  Once we explain how our program works in detail, we get some very excited responses.  We know we have a program that will make a huge difference to sellers and shoppers (especially as we get more people signed up), we just need to keep spreading the word and breaking down preconceived notions people have been programmed with after using other advertising and selling companies.  Just like our tag line states… there really is no biz like MoGiZ!

Even though we have posted quite a few updates and MoGiZ.com is stable, we are working on some very cool improvements.  Some of the new things that can be expected in the next few weeks include:

• a facelift (we have a design firm working on some new graphics to help us add some color)
• seller instructional videos and seller guide improvements (our guide is fairly easy to follow, but we know we can do better.  And hey, who doesn’t like a video over a technical document?)
• additional automated ad generators (so products listed with MoGiZ.com are automatically posted on more and more sites on the web)
• reward programs for users that leave ratings and help us improve product categorization and data.

I will let you know more as we roll some of these changes out.  If you have more ideas, please let me know.  We want MoGiZ.com to be the best place to shop and sell online!

Thank you for visiting my blog.  Originally, I was planning on wiring together a simple blog application, but after looking at my project list, I realized using an already built solution would be best.  I looked at several applications (I really wanted to use dotnetblogengine since I am an ASP.NET guy, but it was not compatible with my current server setup), and I settled on WordPress.

So far, setup has been quick and easy.  Everything is pretty vanilla so far, but I will go back and tweak things as I have time.  I will be checking back in soon to post something about my current projects, web development, or just to rant about something in general.