General Reviewed Update
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I'm just settling in from a great three day weekend vacation and was browsing over the corporate site realizing it's been over a month since I updated the blog. Good thing our editorial teams publish with much greater frequency than this blog or else we'd be in trouble. Right now we're deep in Q3 reviewing and Q4 prep and working on some big projects so I don't have any big things to write about, however I can give a good general update.
Big Launch Coming - Right now we're deep in a beta of a new site which we should be launching very shortly. We're trying to change the way we launch here at Reviewed.com, especially big software roll-outs. We've developed a good software version and testing phase system which we're using for the first time with this upcoming launch. The site that is about to launch is very "software" intensive, so we've been going through an Alpha, and now Beta stage with the site. The beta is currently private so I can't share a link.
What I can say is that the new site is going to be a lot different from anything we've published before. We're not going to do a big splash with the launch, rather we're going to put the publication up there and start gathering feedback. With this new site we're trying to approach reviews, reviewing and the product research process from a different perspective than you've typically seen from us. I really think the new site is great. I'm sure there are things about it people will love and things people will hate. The best part is, we're going to continue testing and improving it, so the first version you will see will change and evolve over the coming months and years.
Second Big Launch Coming - Somewhat related to the other launch above is another big launch we're simultaneously working on. This is one is also something new for Reviewed.com which you haven't seen before. I think it's a huge positive step for the company. Again, I can't really disclose much on this one accept to say it will be exciting. Doing two launches at the same time isn't easy, and the development team, (special thanks to Brett and Andy) have been working extra hard the past few weeks.
WirelessInfo.com and PrinterInfo.com Doing Great - Both publications are carving out their own niche's and growing on a healthy steady curve. WirelessInfo.com's blog continues to pump out the hits led by Richard and his team along with reviews that are just amazing in their depth. PrinterInfo.com is showing some nice steady growth and publishing some really nice content. Good work to Tom on that publication. I'm so proud and amazed at what the team was able to accomplish with both of the new publications. 12 months ago no one on our staff had reviewed a printer or a cell phone. Now I can confidently say that we are publishing some of the best reviews and content in the wireless and printer space. I think this last expansion round is a positive sign for our ability to continue to grow into additional niches in the future - even ones that might surprise!
DigitalCameraInfo.com Continues to Grow - DCI is doing great. They are publishing tons of reviews and tons of news. We're getting record traffic each month on DigitalCameraInfo.com and I think it's positioned wonderfully for the holiday shopping season. Alex and his team have for the past month been dealing with a downpour of camera announcements. Last count I heard was 40+ new models. The reality is setting in that the lifecycle of a digital camera is now about 6 months and since it's right before the holiday season all the manufacturers are rushing to get new models out.
CamcorderInfo.com - Nothing huge to report on CCI. However, I do want to say that David is doing a great job leading the site. Now, almost a year after I stepped down as editor-in-chief I think everyone can agree that David has done some amazing things with the publication. The new tests they've added in 2007 are very innovative.
Travel - My travel has really lightened up when compared to last year. It's very nice. I've basically cut down on conferences and tried to group trips a bit more. While I am traveling between New York and Boston quite a bit; I've been able to resist flying west for quite a few months now. While I love Vegas and California, I'm happy to not repeat the week last year when I traveled back and forth between California and the east coast three times in one week. I think I decided to reduce my travel when earlier this year I showed up at National Airport and asked for my ticket to New York. The woman at the counter said she didn't have a reservation for me, the conversation went something like this:
"Are you sure, I'm positive I booked a flight," I said. She searched her system and suggested we look for flights departing from other D.C. Metro airports.
"You're at the wrong airport," she said "you're flying out of Dulles, not National."
"Simple mistake, must happen all the time," I laughed out of embarrassment.
"Oh it does, but the reason I couldn't find your ticket is that you're also not flying to New York, your flying to Boston. Luckily we can change your ticket."
Showing up at the wrong airport, and thinking you're flying in a totally different city than you are was probably a sign that I needed to try to travel less. I got the most basic part of air travel wrong, where I was flying from and where I was flying to. Admittedly, living in two cities can feel nomadic and disconnected at times, but it's a lot better on my internal compass if I try to restrict it to just two cities, instead of living in two cities half the time and in a hotel room the other half.
Multivariate Testing - I'm a stats geek - big geek. It's why online publishing and I do well together. I swear I've quadrupled the page views of this one tiny online Z-Test calculator website. This summer I've gotten really into multivariate testing and ongoing optimization. It's amazing to me how tiny alterations in the presentation of something can have dramatic impacts on the way users interact with it. We've been testing all kinds of things on the websites, but mostly those related to price comparison integration. I've really enjoyed running these tests - it's just tons of fun. The best part is the constant stream of data. Every morning we get a few hundred or thousand test cases in and get to keep refining and tweaking our tests. We've found some really interesting things about the ways users interact with our publications.
Ad Optimization: Showing People More Relevant Ads - We're also learning a lot about what people like and don't like when it comes to advertising on the publications. It's clear Google revolutionized online advertising with contextual targeted text ads. It's also clear now that text ads that are targeted to the text of a page was only the first step in showing users more relevant ads. Look, people don't always love ads. Some can get really annoying. What Google did so well was show people ads that are relevant to what they're looking for. That's just great. If I'm going to have to see ads to "pay" for free content, I'd like to see relevant ads. I don't want to see (too many) mortgage ads when I'm reading a camcorder review. In fact, if I'm reading about a high definition camcorder it'd be great if you can show me ads for high definition camcorders. Using a lot of testing and analysis we're finding novel and innovative ways to show our readers more relevant ads. I know we're not revolutionizing the targeting business, but for a company with a small development staff I think it's pretty impressive some of the things we've found. The result is that we've been increasing CTRs 30-50%. Which is growth on top of already impressive performance statistics. This article in the NYT about Digitas shows the innovation I think that is going to really define success in online display advertising in the coming years.
The Reviewed.com Brand - One of the things that is really exciting me this fall and into 2008 is building the Reviewed.com Brand. Up to this point we weren't very hip on marketing that didn't begin with an S in it. As in, marketing that wasn't SEO or SEM; maybe with the exception of public relations. In fact, we were cared so little about brand that we didn't really have a company name. It was CamcorderInfo.com / DigitalCameraInfo.com for about two and a half years. However, through interactions with some very great people; I've really awoken to the importance of brand building for Reviewed.com. I had a great meeting about a month back with a very esteemed magazine company executive who gave me great advice that we really need to concentrate more on the Reviewed.com brand.
I think we've always known that the trust our users give to us to help them with their buying selections was our most important asset. That the ethics, standards and fair process for reviewing that we've developed was our DNA. I think now though we are realizing that those concepts are our brand and we need to make sure that our readers associate those concepts with our name.
Marketing is not a loved thing in the Reviewed.com offices. I've heard many times from editors that their job is to defend consumers against overly-zealous marketing - and I agree with that mission in part. When we turn that word in on ourselves and look at our own Reviewed.com marketing the reaction can be equally negative. However, I'm realizing that marketing and brand building, when done in an honest fashion, is nothing more than helping consumers associate the concepts and processes that make your business great, with your name. If our branding went out there and said, "We're the electronics magicians who are going to solve all your gadgetry problems!" it'd be wrong, and the exact thing our editors work to fight against. In our case though, I think that what branding for Reviewed.com is about is taking the organizational DNA: ethics, scientific method, unbiased reviewing, fairness; and making sure those concepts are associated with our name in peoples' minds. To me, it's not something I know about, but I've already bought quite a few books on it and I'm ready to learn!
What Else? - Looking through this post, I've realized what I thought was going to be a few lines has turned into a small treatise. Here are some random bits. I've been reading a lot more and gotten really into audio books. I've gotten into the habit of listening to an audio book while I work. I'm perfecting the art of reading the news and RSS feeds or emailing while simultaneously listening to a classic novel. Don't be surprised if I subconsciously start writing about the memories madelines evoke in next email to you.
I've rediscovered Facebook. It's interesting to me how all my social worlds are combining (colliding?) on the social networking service. I found this great Facebook App called Friend Wheel which illustrated the different clusters of people I know.
I'm fascinated by this TV show Admen. It's about advertising executives in the early 60s. The show is interesting and well written. To me, a lot of my job is understanding the people behind ad agencies and marketing. Obviously the TV show is far from an accurate depiction of what agency life is about today. What's interesting about it though is that it's a depiction of what the popular image, or I should say the popular attraction of working in the ad world is for a lot of people. What draws people to an industry and what they end up doing in that industry are often two different things. You can learn a lot more about people, especially young people my age, from their work choices, if you think of them in the context of what the popular, and glamorized image of that job is. It's like an image based self selection bias of people's career choices.
I think that's enough for one post. I'll end by saying that this job is a roller coaster, and I'm loving the ride and learning through every minute of it.
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