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The well-deserved success of Mint, and what other businesses can learn from it. (slate.com)
36 points by jamesk2 on Sept 18, 2009 | hide | past | favorite | 14 comments



Can I get a success story for ClickTale or CrazyEgg from someone who doesn't have a straight-up web app? I see how valuable this could be if converting leads to paying customers just meant moving them to a signup form, but my conversion process usually involves a phone call at some point.

I have a blog and a product site, and I register people for downloadable evals. This stuff seems like overkill. Am I wrong?


Can I get a success story for ClickTale or CrazyEgg from someone who doesn't have a straight-up web app?

I've been a happy $20 a month user of CrazyEgg for years prior to introducing my web application, mostly for working on the visitor-to-downloadable-trial conversion. It works wonderfully. If you search my blog you'll find a few examples of where it helped me.

Example: http://www.kalzumeus.com/2007/04/20/crazyegg-vs-google-analy...


crazy egg runs only $9 a month on the low end and is well work it, particularly if you are trying to see what users are clicking on.

If you have a process where you try to get users from one page to another, no matter if you want users to sign up or just continue reading, or click on your contact information Crazy Egg is invaluable. Often you will start to see how you are bleeding users, by distracting them from the goals you want for them, or they have for themselves.

It is keep and the have a money back guarantee. And I don't work for them I just use them a lot.


first big payoff for a Web 2.5 company.

Why do tech companies and media have to compartmentalize business into discrete iterations? This isn't software; we have some larger events that can act as Game Changers, but there's more continuity in the evolution of tech business than what seems to be perceived.


It's marketing/douchebaggery and demonstrates a lack of creativity. "Web 2.0" was coined by a dude trying to sell more books.


And it worked, right? Instead of complaining about the way the world works, perhaps it's more rewarding to exploit it and become better at framing your work in a way that fits with how the average Joe sees the world.

People reading this should instead take note that Farhad is pushing a web 2.5 theory and therefore might be more receptive to pitches that fit his outlook.

His job is to filter out all the noise to present a semi-coherent view of the tech scene to upper-to-middle class consumers. Concepts like web 2.5 are his way of guiding the reader through a world they're probably only visiting.


I'm not complaing, just making fun of :). It probably worked in terms of sales. But unfortunately it has the unintended consequences of all these people trying to coin unnecessary gobbledygook words when simple English will suffice. Now sometimes reading a newspaper article feels like sitting through a business school class. IMHO if anything making up terms and introducing more jargon just makes communication harder.

>Many of the basics are now essentially free, which means a business built on the infrastructure laid down by the first two generations of Web companies can gain scale on a shoestring budget, all while giving away its products and services for free. Call it Web 2.5.

Or in other words, things have become cheaper and it's easier to start a web company. Call it technology. Also, this has been true for much longer than the author acknowledges. He's trying to a fit a company into his cookie cutter view of the internet while coining an unnecessary word.

Your perspective seems to have more to due with pitching him than the merits of the article.


perhaps it's more rewarding to exploit it

This feels evil. Exploitation. It's a lie. It's wrong. That's the problem with it.


It was coined by a dude trying to sell more conference tickets.


The guy sells books and conference tickets :).


"Web 2.0" was coined when it was given as a name to a conference.


Yeah but the whole O'Reilly empire sells books, conferences, webinars, etc. all bearing the Web 2.0 scarlet letter:

http://search.oreilly.com/?q=web+2.0&submit.x=0&subm...


I've been contemplating clicktale all week. Had to click on that headline...wish the article elaborated on some of the ways they used the heatmaps, user movies, etc to influence their design decisions.

Anyone else have experience with Clicktale or CrazyEgg? Do you find it useful for improving your visitor conversion rates?


It's nice to see a company with that kind of valuation and user base not just blowing cash on Super Bowl ads (I'm looking at you, Pets.com).




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