thinks

And just to aid the process of testing your users’ behaviors, Bryan Eisenberg over at Future Now lists the main folks who can help you figure out what your customers want. I’d add me to the list, of course, but, y’know, these guys are pretty good, too.

I love CopyBlogger. It’s a really great site with many useful tips for marketers, writers and site editors. Over the last handful of weeks, they’ve been reviewing sites and offering constructive critiques the site owners can use to solve for business issues. The latest, as with the whole series, gives tremendous insight into how the site reviewed can improve.

The problem here - and I want to be fair to the author, because she is doing a great job - is that they’re basing their fixes on experience and best practices. Both are valuable, particularly in the hands of such skilled practitioners. But given the availability of analytic tools, why don’t more companies base design decisions on customer data? A/B testing has never been easier. I’m not suggesting you don’t need someone to provide good ideas of what to try. I am saying that on the web, not only is the customer always right, but you’ve got access to the data to prove it.

Anyone doing interesting A/B tests that back that up?

So here’s what happens when Google meets Facebook, eh? GoogleBook. [Appears to be down at this point.] Ionut Alex poses an interesting question about what happens (if and) when Google starts using items from your friends’ history along with your own to deliver results. If that isn’t social search, I don’t know what is.

So, I’m continuing to do a crap job of completing “Local, Mobile, Social web (part 2) post that I promised week before last. In the meantime, check out Greg Sterling’s excellent roundup of local/mobile search providers. Clearly, the ability of your customers to find you on these spaces will pay huge dividends down the road.

And is it just me, or is SMS the new command line?

OK, probably not, but when Google Maps starts appearing in your 5 Series, something’s afoot. Er, a-wheel. Might be the first case where search engine optimization meets car engine optimization.

On a separate note, how many of you have optimized your business to appear on OnStar?

Thanks to Blumenthal’s for the link.

By the way, though I’ve mentioned before why “we suck less” is poor marketing, check out the comments on the Arrington post I mentioned earlier today. It appears mobile might be the only category where that’s an appropriate response.