The Power of Targeting

"Turbo Jam" came up as one of the top deal search terms earlier this month. It turned out to be a fitness program of workout combining calorie-blasting kickboxing, body sculpting, and the hottest dance music. I observed from our system log that visitors came in searching for "turbo jam" but the must be disappointed because no results turned up. This is before.



After some research to dig out a "Turbo Jam" deal offered by our affiliated Beach Body merchant, an offer was added to our bargain selections. This is after.

Stats reveal that amont 137 impressions, 4 out of 5 click-thoughs ended up with a sale. This is the power of targeting deal search.

4/2/2006 - 4/5/2006

Transaction Date	Merchant Name	SKU#	Product Name	Quantity
Sunday 02-APR-2006 17:38	Beachbody (Product Partners, LLC) www.beachbody.com	TJDVDK10-B	Turbo Jam package + FREE upgrade to Express Delivery in Continental U.S. -- normally an additional $15.00 (3 payments of $19.95)	1
Monday 03-APR-2006 22:40	Beachbody (Product Partners, LLC) www.beachbody.com	TJDVDK10-B	Turbo Jam package + FREE upgrade to Express Delivery in Continental U.S. -- normally an additional $15.00 (3 payments of $19.95)	1
Tuesday 04-APR-2006 02:41	Beachbody (Product Partners, LLC) www.beachbody.com	TJDVDK25-1U	Turbo Jam Maximum Results package (1 payment)	1
Wednesday 05-APR-2006 03:26	Beachbody (Product Partners, LLC) www.beachbody.com	TJDVDK10-B1U	Turbo Jam package + FREE upgrade to Express Delivery in Continental U.S. -- normally an additional $15.00 (1 payment)	1
Wednesday 05-APR-2006 03:26	Beachbody (Product Partners, LLC) www.beachbody.com	TJDVDK26-B1U	Turbo Jam Maximum Results package (1 payment)	1
Report Totals:	5	***	***	5

Breakdown by All Link type Email Product Text Banner Search Box Store Front Other Html Active Display Link Builder Dynamic Rich Media Merchandiser Manual/Unassigned
Merchant Name	Impressions	Click-Throughs	C/I(%)	# of Orders	# of Items
Beachbody (Product Partners, LLC) www.beachbody.com	137	5	3.65%	4	5
Report Totals:	137	5	3.65%	4	5

Blogosphere Search

The Pew Internet study of 2004 estimates that about 11%, or about 50 million, of Internet users are regular blog readers. What is a Blog? Blog stands for Weblog which is a Web site that contains dated entries in reverse chronological order about a particular topic on which most recent posted entry displayed first. As Technorati puts it:

The power of weblogs is that they allow millions of people to easily publish their ideas, and millions more to comment on them. Blogs are a fluid, dynamic medium, more akin to a 'conversation' than to a library

Every day, new Blog sites are being created, conversations are being posted onto these new and existing Blogs - thoughts, ideas, news, conversations, discussions, comments, etc. The universe of Blog is called blogosphere. Technorati is a real-time search engine that keeps track of what is going on within this blogosphere which continue to grow at a quickening pace as of early 2006.

Keeca selects Technorati as our preferred search engine in the Blogosphere domain. Particularly, Technorati's 'Watchlist' let you predefine keyword(s) of your interests, so you can easily access your watchlists and see the conversations related to the topics you set up. Another useful tool is the authority bar on every blog search result page. You can simply adjust the authority bar to filter out Blog sites with less authority.

To try the Blog Search engine selected by Keeca.com, go to Keeca Web, click on the Blogosphere link under Editor's Choice on the left.

Web Calendar

For years, rumors have been Google is working on a Web calendar application. Days ago, google released Google Calendar. I once fell asleep while waiting for Google to come up with its calendar app, I turned to BackPack of 37Signals, an web application that supports group collaboration on writing documentation quite well. BackPack also comes with a reminder feature which I have been using it as my simple calendar. I had put numerous reminders into my BackPack that remind me to do things when the times come. So far so good. I particular like the way I can set a reminder in a fuzzy way - set up a coming event to happen 'in a couple days', or 'in a week', thus I don't have to be precise on every to-do when setting it. Google Calendar, on the other hand, may require to be precise in date when setting up a future event. However, you can set up an event quickly by specifying a date, say '5/1,' using the 'Quick Add', and Google Calendar is smart enough to finish setting the event for you quickly.

No doubt, on the first peep, Google Calendar can share multiple calendars and alert you though cell phone, which are much more powerful. In the near future, I might have to switch to Google because I manage multiple calendars in real life. For now, it has been added to Keeca Web collection.

Random Deals of the Minute

Random Deal of the Minute made its debut on Keeca.com homepage last year November. Until today, it showed one dynamic 'qualified' deal a time and changed every minute.

Speaking of dynamic ... If you had experience using Amazon's Gold Box, it is a little treasure box that you can access on the upper right of Amazon.com. What's in the box are product deals that vary every day, and you have only one chance of viewing what are inside the box that day. They are more than one, or precisely, ten product deals in the gold box each day personalized to your taste. I had never bought a single item from the box yet, but browsing through is interesting.



Back to Keeca's random deal, in stead of just one random deal, 'Random Deal of the Minute' has become 'Random Deals of the Minute.' Now three random deals are displayed in stead of just one on keeca.com homepage. This change should fill a stylish 20" Apple Cinema Display better.

Rejected by Blog Explosion

Yesterday, I tried to join the "fastest growing Blog community" at Blog Explosion but received a brief email this morning which turned my Blog down:

Your blog was declined for the following reason:
Nothing but links to keeca -- Sorry we do not accept these types of blogs

mmm .... not quite what I was expecting but being turned down is part of life and I am a bit disappointed. The response was brief and I got it only after one day after my application was turned in. They must be doing a great job of reviewing Blogs and get back to bloggers quick.

At any rate, my curiousity toward this Blog community can only be fulfilled if my blog can be approved. For those of you out there blogging, you may want to give it a try and let more people read your Blog.

In retrospect, Keeca.com Blog was created similar to de.licio.us has a de.licio.us blog dedicated to talk about things related to a specific Web site. Among this type of Blogs, Google Blog is another good one with Googler insights into product and technology news and Google culture. I'll sure try again and see what the folks at Blog Explosion think to have my Blog in.

Shopping Tips

In addition a page to cover some basic deal-search questions that I put up the other day, I just finished up two writings on shopping tips: Buy a Mac & Ways to Save Money Online. For each, I broke up tips within the topic and explained each tip a bit with a paragraph or two. These tips are what I as a consumer would consider helpful and practical. Take a look at these shopping tips and drop a comment to this post. I sure can use your tip too to touch them up and/or write more tips based on your inputs.

For other money saving tips, forums at SavingAdvice managed by Jeffery Strain and Nate Sanden also worth your visit. The collection of their Personal Finance Blogs give insights to others' daily money saving life.

Hint and Examples of Search Terms to Find Deals

At the end of earlier post of 'First Impression on a Site', I walked away by saying works ahead for me to do to improve users' impression. Since then, as a person who follows up, I have been pondering how do I not making visitors come to keeca and scratch their heads saying 'What the hack is this site for?' I may have to choose to pay for an professional that does Web site assessment to give me some pratical advices. For a little more than a hundreds bucks, it might worth the money, but I'll save it for later. Before then, I decided to DIY and learn from your feedback.

To recall, the comments I got for keeca Deal Search were:

"I don't know what to type for search."
"I am not sure what your site can return."
"How is your site different from Google?"

Thus, on the Deal Search homepage, I made two changes around the deal search box:

First, I added a hint of 'Show savings on:' before the search box. I hope this to give stronger indication to visitors that they can type in terms that they are looking for discounts.

Secondly, I also added examples of what visitors can type as search terms below the search box. For this, I chose "clothes", "old navy", "prada" and "ipod" representing category, store name, brand, and product.

Show savings on:

Deals[?] Web Travel Classifieds Events E.g. "clothes" or "old navy" or "prada" or "ipod"

While you're here, why don't you leave comments about your first impression of seeing Keeca Deal? I sure will follow up.

The Price of Going Cheap

Time is precious.

I had an iBook that I use it for my work everyday. Weeks ago, my 9 years old son accidently tipped my morning coffee onto the keyboard. I quickly shut the iBook down and wiped out the liquid on top. When I turned my Mac back, the keyboard wouldn't work properly. I had tried to dry it with a hair dryer. It didn't work. I dismounted the keyboard and washed it and dried it for 5 days, booted iBook back up ... sigh ... it still didn't work. The tips on the Web worked for others didn't help me. I gave up then, and search online for the keyboard part made for my iBook 12" G4 model.

The power of price comparison as one of many ways to save money online didn't give me much information about this particular computer part. I had to rely on a Web search to give me pricing information from very limited online merchants. The prices online for an iBook keyboard ranges from $54 (before tax and shipping) to about more than $120 a piece. The difference is so big that I couldn't resist to go with the one that offered the lowest price.

37 days later, I had not received my order. I am paying the price of time as a result of such buying decision.

My conversion with the merchant in the chronical order:

Day 1, 2/21: Order placed on MacSupportStore.

Day 5, 2/25: Status inquiry sent.

Sent: Saturday, February 25, 2006 2:26 PM
To: macsupportstore@mac.com
Subject: Order Status

Could you give me a status on my order #1140505767? Is it shipped?

Day 6, 2/26: Merchant replied saying delay.

Apple and The Mac Support Store are experiencing delays due to heavy order volume, and cannot estimate when your order will ship out. Rest assured we will ship your order within 24 hours of The Mac Support Store receiving it from Apple.

You have the option of continuing to wait for this order to ship out, or you can cancel your order.

Day 8, 2/28: I responded I’d wait.

Date: Tue, 28 Feb 2006 14:32:30 -0800 (PST)
Subject: RE: Order Status
To: jeff@macsupportstore.com
Hi Jeff, I'll have to wait then. Thanks.

Day 24, 3/16: Status follow-up.

Date: Mar 16, 2006 2:51 PM
Subject: Re: Order Status

It's been another 2 weeks and my order status is still 'pending' and not shipped. No words from Mac Support Store thus I'm writing to check on the status again after these days.

Please let me know if I I need strech my patience a bit and I'll do so accordingly. Some words are better than none. Thanks!

Day 25, 3/17: Merchant said to process in a week.

Date: Mar 17, 2006 9:46 AM
Subject: RE: Order Status

We’re confident that orders will begin again no later than the middle/end of next week. Thanks again for your patience.

Day 34, 3/26: Status follow-up with complaint.

Date: Mar 26, 2006 12:01 PM
Subject: Re: Order Status

Another week passed by and my order status is still pending, not being processed as promised.

Please accept this formal complaint to MacSupportStore, and I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Day 36, 3/28: Merchant said the order is ‘moving ahead’ and ‘will’ be filled.

Subject: Parts ordering is back online
Date: Tue, 28 Mar 2006 18:53:01 -0500

I’m glad to announce that your parts orders are now moving ahead and will be filled in the order we first received them.

Again, I appreciate your patience during these last few months.

Day 37, 3/29: Merchant said my order has been ‘authorized’, and will be processed. Still not shipped.

Subject: Your order at The Mac Support Store! (Order #:1140505767)
Date: Wed, 29 Mar 2006 15:28:37 -0800

1140505767has been authorized, and will be processed.

The Mac Support Store

Please ship my order. I won't go this cheap next time.