Compass Intelligence is out with a new report called “Exploring the Best Practices of Experience Strategies Targeting Small & Mid-sized Business Customers Online.”
In the report they rank the “top 10 vendors winning the SMB online experience race.” The list is as follows:
- IBM (Market Cap: $155.85B)
- Microsoft (Market Cap: $290.45B)
- Cisco (Market Cap: $163.80B)
- AT&T (Market Cap: $248.97B)
- Salesforce.com (Market Cap: $5.41B)
- HP (Market Cap: $122.39B)
- Dell (Market Cap: $61.65B)
- Intuit (Market Cap: $10.06B)
- 37signals
- Verizon (Market Cap: $124.38B)
TAKE THAT VERIZON!!!
No, really, it’s a genuine thrill for our little 8-person company to be included on this list. Thanks to whoever noticed us and decided to include us on the list. It really does mean a lot.
You can buy the full report if you are interested.
Every time I pass a store I wonder “How do they stay in business? How do they make money?” With so many businesses so empty so often you just have to wonder how it all works out. What are their keys to profit? How do they make rent? How do they pay their people? How do they cover their bills? How do the owners take something home at the end of the day?
With the help of Edward Glaeser, a pioneering urban economist at Harvard, New York Magazine profiles a diverse range of New York businesses including a private school, a yoga studio, a drug dealer, a sex shop, a cab driver, a copy shop, a 4-star restaurant, and Goldman Sachs.
Best way to make money as a drug dealer: Sell to many users in small quantities. “It’s like taking a pound of coffee and selling one grain at a time,” says Nick. “If you sell by scoops, you’ll make a couple thousand dollars, but if you break it down into quarter grams and work for a few days, you’ll make tens of thousands.”
Most profitable fares for a cab driver: Low-traffic city trips: “Every time somebody gets out, someone gets in, and I get my $2.50.” Midday airport runs: “At 3 p.m., there’s no traffic, and so many planes are coming in that you get $90 plus tips.”
Most profitable for a copy shop: Restaurant flyers. Those annoying restaurant flyers fuel the photocopy industry. Local restaurants order 1,000 new flyers every three days.
Least profitable diner customers: The elderly. They have a tendency to return food.
It’s enlightening. [via kottke]
This new iPhone ad is one of the best ads I’ve ever seen.
In 30 seconds you learn you can hold this thing in your hand, you control it by touching the screen, it flows, you can watch a movie on it, the screen pivots, it’s fast, you can type on it, it has maps, it knows your location, it makes useful decisions for you, and you can make calls. It’s all so obvious and comfortable and easy in 30 seconds without being rushed.
And you learn all of this in the context of a scenario, not in the context of an explanation. An anonymous hand can be yours, your mother’s, your father’s, your kid’s, your grandparent’s, anyone’s. A friendly voiceover represents your own internal voice. Easy music reinforces an easy product. This is the actual interface, not an interface that is enhanced or embellished so it looks better on TV.
A simple close-up focus on the product and the experience because both are so good. This recipe doesn’t need any additional seasoning. Which other cell phones are advertised on the quality of the experience and interface? When’s the last time you’ve seen any technology product advertised like this?
This is wonderful advertising.
If you haven’t heard, our fellow Chicagoans at Feedburner are now part of Google. The official announcement was made today.
Congrats to the Feedburner crew and Google. Everyone I know at Feedburner is quality. Feedburner’s man in charge, Dick Costolo, is one the sharpest (and funniest) people I’ve been fortunate enough to meet in the past few years.
Great companies are made of great people and Google definitely gets greater with this acquisition.
Well done on both sides.
When collaborating with others – especially when designers and programmers are part of the mix – watch out for these dirty four letter words:
- Need
- Must
- Can’t
- Easy
- Just
- Only
- Fast
They are especially dangerous when you string them together. How many times have you said or heard something like this:
“We really need it. If we don’t we can’t make the customer happy. Wouldn’t it be easy if we just did it like that? Can you try it real fast?”
Of course they aren’t always bad. Sometimes they can do some good. But seeing them too often should raise a red flag. They can really get you into trouble.
Related: Revealing hidden assumptions in estimation by Jamis Buck.
If you’re into Frank Lloyd Wright and the old-timey direct interview style of Mike Wallace, this two-part interview (that’s an iTunes link) may interest you. I found it fascinating.
In 1957, at the age of 90, Frank Lloyd Wright was in New York to supervise construction of his final masterpiece—the Guggenheim Museum. Mike Wallace invited him to be a guest on the TV show, The Mike Wallace Interview. Rarely has a figure of such historic importance been so revealingly captured. Guided by Wallace’s questioning, America’s greatest architect emerges as a wise, idealistic, nonconformist, and uniquely self-confident man. This is the complete soundtrack to that legendary interview.
If you have RealPlayer installed you can watch some clips from the interview on PBS.org. The entire interview is available on VHS from Amazon.
Also highly recommended is the two-and-a-half hour Ken Burns documentary on Wright.
The May 28th subscriber’s edition of Time (Al Gore is on the cover) includes a piece on 37signals called Small Is Essential by Jeremy Caplan.
It includes a 3/4 page shot of the whole team. It’s rare we’re all together in the same place so it’s pretty cool to have it on film.
The article focuses primarily on how we’re structured, what we’re focused on, and how we place high value on small and simple.
Special thanks to Jeremy for writing the article and to Chris Strong and his crew for the working around our schedule to slip the photo shoot in. Much appreciated.
Note: This article only appears in the subscriber edition of the magazine. The newsstand edition does not have this article.
This weekend we pushed a new view in Basecamp called the List view. You’ll find this new view in the messages section.
List view makes scanning multiple message titles a lot easier (one of the top requests we’ve had). It also does a great job of showing you which messages are seeing a lot of comment activity (another top request).
- New messages or messages with new comments are marked green.
- Messages/comments you’ve already viewed are marked grey.
- The number of comments per message are listed at the front of each row.
- The last commenter (if any) is listed in the right column.
- Messages with file attachments have a paperclip icon after the subject.
- Private messages are marked with the red private flag.
The Standard view, which was the only view until we released List view, remains the default. You can toggle between the views at will. Basecamp will remember which view you last looked at and keep you in that view until you switch to the other view. This is a per-user setting.
We hope you like it as much as we do!
Our little ad network that could is growing up. We’ve just added Matt Haughey’s brand new site Fortuitous to The Deck. Fortuitous is where Matt documents his “new career in professionally screwing around on the web.” Few people have screwed around as successfully as Matt, so his experience and wisdom is especially valuable.
These sites are The Deck:
A List Apart, Daring Fireball, 37signals,
Waxy.org, YayHooray!, The Morning News,
Design
Observer, Kottke.org, IconBuffet,
Helvetica: The Film, Computerlove, Vitamin,
Fortuitous, Zeldman,
Subtraction, swissmiss, Airbag,
& Coudal.
If you have a product or service that could benefit by being in front of millions of creative, web and design professionals, check out The Deck. June-August inventory is now available.
For the past few weeks I’ve been trying out Irv & Shelly’s Fresh Picks weekly Fresh Picks Box delivery. You can order a box for 1, 2, or the family size.
Fresh Picks offers year-round home delivery in the Chicago area of local and organic produce, meat, dairy and eggs. They work with local sustainable farms and know the farmers by name.
What’s great about the Fresh Picks Box isn’t just the produce, or the freshness, or the locality, or the great story. It’s all of those things plus on big thing: The surprise. Every week something new based on what’s in season. It’s a really great way to eat better (eat with the seasons), and try new stuff all the time. This last week my box included Burdock Root and Black Spanish Radishes—two things I’ve never had and probably never would have purchased on my own accord.
Each hand delivery comes with a description of what’s in the box, the farm it came from, and some suggested cooking/preparation instructions. A handwritten thank you is included sometimes. It’s really folksy and nice. Irv himself delivered my first order.
So if you’re in Chicago and looking for some good wholesome local organic produce (or meat, dairy and eggs), give Irv and Shelly a try. Yes, you can order online.
