Sergio Gonzales

10 iPhone Apps for Ads, Sales, and Marketing

2010-02-23T13:01:10Z

Quicksense – track multiple AdSense accounts for page views, CTR, CPM, and CPC
Quick AdMaker – simple ad creatives using templates; nothing fancy but easy to use; would like to see a way for user to add their own template files
iDCRM – full implementation of Microsoft Dynamic CRM without an infrastructure investment
Pictomobile – image recognition based on magazine, print, and outdoor advertising; no need for barcodes
AdBox – monitor AdMob network earnings
Azoogle Ads – monitor Azoogle ad network earnings
CHI & Partners – allows clients to view and manage creatives
Inwindow Outdoor – outdoor advertising firm’s news, videos, and latest campaigns
DialogCentral – allows users to provide immediate feedback based on location; has application for user reviews as well; similar app is Survey On the Spot
iYell – broadcast multimedia and text messaging to your app users

10 iPhone Apps for Your Car

2010-02-23T12:53:13Z

RepairPal – quickly get a repair estimate based on your auto MMY and find a nearby mechanic
Drive Safe – driving exam preparation guide
Dynolicious – car performance diagnostics tool
iLease My Car Pro – loan and buying calculator
iWrecked – manage auto accident info as well as the ensuing police reports
FYI Mileage – tracks your mileage
Car Spotter – GPS tag your parking spot location and the app will lead you back to your parking space
Cartopia – auto shopping app
Cars.com – Cars.com iPhone app
Learn Parts – Cars – reference guide for car part maintenance

10 iPhone Apps for Developers

2010-02-23T12:45:49Z

Box.net – file sharing and collaboration
Citrix Receiver – mobile Citrix Receiver
IPEToolbox – network engineer’s toolbox
Cisco SIO To Go – network security notification
Mocha VNC – VNC on your iPhone
Network Utility Pro – check website server status
Snap – check what else is on the network with your iPhone (servers, routers, other iPhones)
TouchTerm Pro SSH – SSH terminal
Source Code Viewer – view web page source
FTP On The Go – FTP client

10 iPhone Shopping Apps

2010-02-23T12:07:04Z

My Mall Shopping – create your own virtual mall from your favorite sellers
Woot Watch – flash sales app
Coupon Sherpa – mobile coupons app
CardStar – track your rewards cards
Red Laser – scan barcodes and retrieve product info including prices
QuickPing – uses the Ping.fm network and API to broadcast updates to multiple social networks; you can imagine how this might be used as notifications between users
SnapTell – already an iTunes store classic this great app just gets better with time; quickly take a picture of a movie, video game, cd, or book and it will find it for you; that’s right, not the barcode or ISBN but the actual cover itself! unfortunately, this is just the US catalog for now but they’re promising to expand their catalog
How To Videos – learn how to do just about anything by viewing videos from the howcast.com network
PhotoNote – quick and simple; snap a pick and add a note; that’s it! app would be better with a default configuration to optionally upload to a preferred photo hosting service
iGarage Sale – find nearby garage sales including a keyword search that will return nearby garage sales with that item

10 iPhone Fashion Apps

2010-02-23T11:57:51Z

TrendStop TrendTracker – track the latest fashion trends just as they’re hitting the runways
Stylish Girl – virtual closet to catalog your outfits; share with friends and shop online; if you liked this, you may want to check out their Cool Guy app for the fellas
ChicFeed – photos taken from the latest fashion blogs; fashion is meant to be seen and admired; this app gets that and features great photos from popular fashion blogs; now imagine you overlay a shopping component to it
Social Mall – shopping malls in the palm of your hand that includes social group shopping features; I liked this app because they captured an important essence of shopping IRL (in real life), the social aspect! you can send invites, track who’s coming, chat, and even find each other in the mall by location; this app’s creators get it, and I look forward to more enhancements from them
myFendi – Fendi brand mobile shop; there are lots of great brands coming online as iPhone apps, so be sure to check them out; included Fendi here because I appreciated the restraint to keep the app simple and easy to browse through the Fendi product line; didn’t have a chance to go through all the other fashion brand apps, but I can guess there are others that will have even more engaging features
Sales Buddy – what shopaholic doesn’t like a sale?! track how much you’ve spent; better yet, how much you’ve saved!
Closet Friend – I wouldn’t buy this app, but I wanted to show an interesting idea that didn’t quite live up to implementation; track when you last wore that outfit and where; that by itself is lacking but you can quickly imagine where you could go with this app if you integrated it with a shopping and social aspect; note: links to developer website and support are dead links; listed here as concept only
ChicWalks – this app differs a bit from all the other “near me” shopping apps in that it focuses on a walking shopping trip; stores as well as places to eat or grab a refreshment are included with helpful GPS maps; trips were chosen by fashion and shopping journalists, bloggers, and professionals; really like this app, great way to explore a city if shopping is your thing
ShopStyle – gorgeous photos take center stage as this app focuses on a few well-chosen fashion categories; links to retailer; bonus: save favorites and send to friends by email and Twitter
iShoes – shoes take center stage as this mobile app lets you do searches on shoe style; detailed shoe attributes are returned, along with links to webshop; bonus: save favorites; you may also like myShoeBox

How You Can Save Your Company $2,000,000 in Just 5 Minutes

2009-12-13T10:41:53Z

In my last article, I wrote about kaizen, a Japanese business philosophy of constant improvement. I’d like to follow up on that discussion with a brief demonstration of how even seemingly small changes can have a huge effect on your business.

How can you save your company $2,000,000 in just 5 minutes? Follow along to see how.

It takes my laptop 14 minutes to startup. That’s from the moment I press the power button to the time I am able to launch my first email in Outlook. Even if you subtract for XP itself, that’s a long time. I am not your typical user: I defrag my machine often, explicitly shut off non-essential services, map only one network drive, have wifi explicitly disabled, and put nothing in my startup folder except for the aforementioned Outlook. Oh, and I’ve done most of the recommended tweaks to get XP to boot faster. So where does the rest of the time come from? All the stuff my company does to make sure my laptop is secure, has its updates, and whatever else is in the standard image.

Don’t get me wrong, this is important stuff and I support it whole-heartedly. But consider this, what if a VP walked over to the IT department and said: “Guys, find a way to shave 5 minutes off the system boot times while keeping the systems secure and I’ll pay you a $5000 bonus.” Watch how fast those minutes disappear.

14 minutes. Big whoop, right? Chillax, press start, go grab a cup of coffee, and when you come back you’re ready to go. Okay, smart guy, what if I’m in the middle of a critical 30-minute meeting with the CFO and my laptop requires a restart? ‘Cause that never happens on Windows, right? So there goes half my meeting there.

What would happen if IT just shaved off 5 of those minutes?

Embed the Kaizen Calculator on your site by copying the code below:

That’s what 5 minutes means. Backup for a second, Serge, that’s great for large companies but what about smaller companies? Okay, take a 25-person outfit, with an average of $15/hr:

Cancel one unnecessary 30-minute meeting each month ($2250)
If half are parents who usually leave 15 minutes early to pick up their kids, provide onsite daycare (still at the employees’ expense) ($11250)
Save 2 minutes by reducing just 5 emails ($3000)
Provide computers that boot just 1 minute faster ($1500)

That’s $18000 right there.

Yes, yes, it’s a bit of a leap to say that this saves the company in real terms because you won’t actually see that in the bottom line. Okay, so quantify for me how much work-related stress does cost the company. What are the recruitment and training costs of retaining and having to re-hire talent due to attrition? What is the value of being recognized as one of the best companies to work for? Measure for me the lost opportunity costs of all those minutes added up when said employees could be working on other things in a state of peace and tranquility.

That is the point of kaizen. A relatively simple idea of reducing the amount of time it takes for a computer to restart can create a culture capable of constant improvement. This is the type of environment that nurtures employees who will think of that huge cost savings or that next multi-million dollar revenue stream.

Have time-saving ideas for your company? Share in the comments section below. Play around with the Kaizen Calculator to see how much your company could be saving.

Oh, and you probably could have read this article 8 times in the time it took me to restart my laptop.

Kaizen, The Japanese Art of Continuous Improvement

2009-11-27T20:45:39Z

It seems I’ve been thinking a lot lately about my time in Japan. Usually it comes about when I’m thinking about technology or gadgets. But lately, I’ve been reflecting a bit more on Japanese culture and specifically the culture of the workplace.

In the early 1980s, Japanese business was the dominant global player, easily trouncing the US and its western brethren on profits and efficiency. The seemingly impossible advances and pace set by the Japanese automotive industry and electronics manufacturers became the blueprint that many companies tried desperately to duplicate.

In fact, many modern practices in business find their roots during this period of business growth and change. During our current period of economic difficulty, business uncertainty, and low employee morale, I’ve been thinking about one practice in particular:

kaizen (改善) – Japanese for improvement; comes from the words kai, meaning to change or break and zen, meaning good or better

Kaizen is a system of employee-driven suggestions to improve every aspect of the business. But even this definition falls short. Kaizen is a state of mind, it is ingrained in Japanese business culture. It asserts that all employees are responsible for the quality and profitability of a company. Masaaki Imai is known as the father of Continuous Improvement (CI) in the workplace and recognized as the inventor of kaizen. This practice of employee suggestions dates back much further though, when in 1721 the shogun Yoshimuni Tokugawa issued the following proclamation: “Make your idea known. Rewards are given for those that are accepted.”

Focus on the word “accepted.” In the West, we tend to reward ideas that are “implemented.” In Japan, merely making a suggestion is met with a reward, albeit a very small financial one (something like $5 per idea). A large reason why suggestion programs tend to fail or are ineffective is this emphasis only on ideas that are implemented. Management has the most significant impact on whether an idea is actually implemented, and yet the individual employee only gets recognized (rewarded) if Management actually does something with the idea. Pretty soon, you train the employee to not bother.

Yes, yes, we can talk about establishing programs that empower the employee to take action, but that will be the subject for another article. I leave it for now with the assertion that such an approach is all well and good, but it has to start from the top, from defining the system, allocating the budget and time, and actively engaging in the program. This is one instance where “delegating” or “empowering” downwards is a bit of a cop out.

The National Association of Suggestion Systems (NASS), now known as the Employee Involvement Association (EIA), reports that the average employee suggestion returns about $7000 to the company in profit or savings. In the US, the implementation rate for employee suggestions is about 35%. In Japan that number is more than 70%. The total savings/earnings for companies and state agencies which have employee suggestion programs is in the billions. That’s billions with a “b.” Yet only 3% of companies in the US even have a suggestion program. Successful and sustainable ones are a fraction of that.

There are many spectacular stories of employee suggestions–American Airlines bought a Boeing 757 from the $55M in savings its annual IdeAAs in Flight program delivered–but thinking small in this instance has another positive effect…it creates access. From the Managing Director all the way down to the housekeeping and maintenance staff, anyone can submit an idea. A Managing Director may not be bothered with $5, but a janitor will submit tons of ideas if it means it’ll pay for lunch. Shoot, I’d submit an idea every single day!

Consider what just a few of the following ideas might save your company:

switch to mugs instead of disposable coffee cups
change to long-life lightbulbs
change printer defaults to double-sided printing
meeting moratorium Fridays
onsite car wash (vaccinations, oil change, etc)
workplace dry cleaning and laundry delivery services
onsite child daycare

Do any of these ideas directly impact your product or service? Probably not. But ask your COO or CFO if they care about their impact on operating margins (they will). Also consider that these handful of suggestions alone mean employees can focus on their work instead, which does impact your product or service. It also instills a culture that every employee has a chance to make a difference and it encourages creativity, which will translate in the way your employees approach their work.

Estimating the impact of such a program on morale and employee retention is extremely tricky and not likely to convince Management on the value of the program. So let’s say such a program retains just one employee. One single employee. I don’t think you’re asking anyone to make too much of a mental leap in accepting that this sort of program could save one employee. Estimating very conservatively, the cost of interviewing, hiring, and training an employee would easily be $50,000. For $50,000, you could fund 10,000 ideas (at $5 each). If ideas average about $7000 back to the company, that’s an additional $70,000. That’s already $120,000 right there.

Here’s my proposal, start an employee suggestion program at $5 an idea. Reward implemented ideas with an additional 0.5% of the total return back to the originating employee. Don’t be greedy, give a half percent back to the employee. You’d rather have 100% of 0? (that’s still zero) Or would you rather have 99.5% of the more than $2B which came from employee suggestions last year? (that’s still $1.99B).

For more reading on kaizen, check out these presentations:

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This post was inspired by an article forwarded to me by one of my team members. Thanks for jogging my memory, K.

EX Marks the Spot in Japanese Classifieds

2010-02-26T18:57:14Z

I lived in Japan for a few years and still maintain a few networks there. For a little while I even had some fair facility with the language. Well, at least enough to understand the original Dragonball anime (Dragonball Z was still manga at that time). This by no means makes me an expert–indeed I’m far from it–so please excuse the few liberties I take in generalizing my experience there.

Consider the five pillar categories of Classifieds: goods, autos, jobs, real estate, and services. Win any two of these, and you’ll probably win your Classifieds market. Let’s talk about goods and autos.

Goods in Japan = Electronics and Media (books, music, movies, and video games). Most mainstream users in the West will change technology every 2-3 years. Early adopters perhaps 6-9 months. Innovators 3-6. In Japan, technology changes every 30 days. 30 days! The Japanese consumer wants it compact, personalized, and jam-packed with every feature imaginable even if they aren’t going to use those features. It’s just good to know that biometric scanner is on your toaster if you ever need it.

The electronics mainstream in Japan is shifted to the left, closer to the early adopters and innovators. So there isn’t much of a market for second-hand electronics goods. By the time you tire of it and get around to selling it, next month’s crop of hot, new gadgets will be out and no one will bother with an old model.

The majority of used cars from Japan are actually exported. Some 1.5M cars were exported from Japan in 2007 (ref: Japanese Used Motor Vehicle Exporting Association). These are mostly to neighbors, namely Russia, New Zealand, and South East Asia.

So if second-hand goods don’t play well locally, what might a Japanese Classifieds strategy take? I can think of three:

exports
exchange
expat

Providing a Classifieds experience that simplifies the export process, for electronics or cars, will position that player well in the lead. These would include considerations like: payment escrow, car inspection/verification, export duties, and shipping. Further, this kind of play will require local expertise and a local sales team to bootstrap the business.

Video games rule. 32% of Japanese play video games regularly and spent about $2.5B in 2009. 64% of Americans play video games regularly and spent about $22B in 2009. (ref: Computer Entertainment Supplier’s Association, Enterbrain magazine). That’s a whole lot of gaming. There are opportunities for an export market here, but this is complicated by compatibility issues as well as language translation problems in the games themselves. So perhaps an exchange/swap model is a viable Classifieds play.

Finally, there are about 2.2M registered expats in Japan (ref: Ministry of Justice). 40% of surveyed expats in Japan have income in excess of $200,000/year (ref: Expat Explorer survey). This is a potentially large and loyal market. Imagine a local offering available in several languages. This would be uniquely positioned to win loyal expat customers.

Traditional local Classifieds have not done well in Japan. There are several niche plays that could be an interesting play for a local Classifieds player in Japan: exports, exchanges, and expats.

Lost and Found in Tokyo

2010-02-26T18:57:51Z

If you lost $250 or your shiny new iPhone on a train in New York, what chance do you think you’d have of getting it back? Air-bound swine and Hell-popsicles come to mind. In Tokyo, I’d be shocked if you didn’t get it back.

That’s because Japan has an old culture of turning found items in to a government official. The law dates back as far as the early 8th century, and has been updated several times since, the most recent in 1958.

My information is very old–I have a call into the Tokyo Metropolitan Lost and Found Center, but translations are a bit tough–but more than 2 million items pass through the Tokyo Metropolitan Lost and Found warehouse, with more than 7500 items being turned in every day. Somewhere in excess of $35M in cash is turned in each year. Yes, that’s million with an “M.”

Items can range from bus passess, to umbrellas, to cellphones (their most popular item). Each item is meticulously catalogued and archived in the system. After six months, unclaimed items can go back to the finder or sold. Tokyo makes something between $4M-$5M each year from the sale of unclaimed items.

Don’t quote me on these exact numbers. My Japanese is pretty rusty (read: non-existent) and the clerk or officer helping me (can’t tell which) seemed a bit shaky on the numbers himself.

Part of the reason for this imprecision is that the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department seems surprisingly low-tech. I mean no disrespect here. Perhaps this is simply the low-tech site they show to gaijin like me: http://www.keishicho.metro.tokyo.jp/foreign/submenu.htm.

It seems to me that Tokyo Metropolitan is prime for a player to come in and create a national database and website to better catalog, track, and manage this vast inventory. The upside for such a venture? A tidy little Classifieds business for unclaimed items.

Future Directions
This model could easily be packaged and sold to metropolitan transit and police authorities anywhere. Take it a step further and integrate it with pawnbrokers to help police catch thieves at the point of sale. In Georgia, pawnbrokers are required to catalog items pawned/sold to them and report this in to the police. You know how this is done? Via spreadsheets and printouts. Now imagine a system where this is all online. A thief comes in to sell his stolen goods, as the pawnbroker enters the item into the system–via serial number presumably–it triggers an alert that is sent to a nearby squad car. As the thief steps out of the shop? Busted!

Now extend that same wonderful database into your SYI flow. I think that’s a pretty compelling feature that no other online marketplace currently offers.

The Best Product Search in the World

2010-02-26T18:56:01Z

eBay has the best Product Search in the world. Period. Sorry, Google. What’s more, eBay actually executes more searches than Google each day. Significantly more. Like 7-8 times more. (ref: comScore, investor reports)

eBay Product Search wins on quantity and quality. Don’t believe me? Do the following searches on Google, Amazon, and eBay:

nike dunk low size 11
nike dunk low sz 11

My results (as of this writing):

Google: 188, 370
Amazon: 20, 1
eBay: 432, 439

It gets better. A rough analysis of overlap (the actual items found by “nike dunk low sz 11″ that are also found by “nike dunk low size 11″):

Google: less than 50%
Amazon: 0%
eBay: more than 96%

That means on eBay, I’ll get about 400 results regardless of which phrase I searched and only miss out on about 10 items from the other search query. Google and Amazon expect customers to be savvy enough to know to do two searches using “sz” and “size” to see all the relevant products.

eBay Product Search is not perfect either. What would the three do if the customer didn’t specify the word “size” at all? What if they did the search using UK sizes? European sizes? In the US, we call them “sneakers.” The Brits would say “trainers.” My Dutch friends search for “sportschoenen.” Sneakerheads might look for “sneaks” or “kicks.” Should I be expected to search several hundred permutations to get a complete view?

So what are people searching for on Google? According to Google Zeitgeist: “Facebook,” “YouTube,” “Yahoo,” “Hotmail,” and “Google.” For general knowledge, breaking news topics, or blind searches, Google is the champ. That’s why I made it a point to say eBay has the best PRODUCT search in the world. eBay couldn’t tell you the lyrics to “Sweet Home Alabama.” eBay won’t show you a map to get to Roscoe’s Chicken & Waffles on Pico. eBay doesn’t have the steps for jailbreaking your iPhone. Nor should it.

So let’s see what’s happening on Google Product Search. It varies ever so slightly depending on what market you look at, but worldwide, the top search terms for 2009 are (according to Google Zeitgeist): “ipod touch,” “macbook,” “laptops,” “acer,” “iphone,” “canon powershot,” “lcd,” and “ipod.”

Going by Apple’s Q309 report, they sold: 2.6M Macintosh computers, 10.2M iPods, and 5.2M iPhones. Microsoft reports it sold 1.7M Xbox 360s in Q309. Canon PowerShot cameras are no more than about 4M (Canon’s total camera division sold $529M in Q309, so I’m being very generous here).

So. The most searched products on Google map to about 24M devices, all with the same structured data and pre-defined attributes. Guess what? If you searched for that on apple.com, newegg.com, bestbuy.com, or bol.com, you’ll get exactly the same results as you would on Google. Exactly the same specs. Exactly the same stock photos. Not so sexy. You know who I’m going to buy from, the one who ships it to me the fastest and cheapest.

That’s great for electronics. But what about clothing? Cars? Jewelry? Art? Houses? Plumbers? I don’t search for these things the same way I search for the latest iPod and I’m guessing you don’t either.

It’s sheer lunacy to expect even the most brilliant of minds to come up with one unified finding experience that covers all these categories. Not unless you’ve perfected a USB-powered mind-reading cap. If you have, let’s talk.

It would also be foolish to dismiss the fact that the level of sophistication of online shoppers has increased as well. 14 years ago, when eBay first started, online commerce was confined to the BBS’s and consisted mostly of collectibles and hard-to-find electronic components. These days, people are used to buying their books over the web. People buy cars sight unseen online. We stream our music and movies. When was the last time you spoke to an actual travel agent?

eBay is uniquely positioned to dominate and revolutionize Product Search. But it has to rethink how it approaches finding. We BUY things, but we GO SHOPPING. Shopping is not a cold, lifeless, mechanical process. It’s emotional. It’s impulsive. It’s an experience. To have the best Product Search experience anywhere eBay needs to focus its energies on 4 key areas:

Experience
Inventory
Discovery
Value

Experience
eBay has to break its obsession with the single search bar with category dropdown. Do you really think I want to search all eBay categories for Prince tickets? So why bother bringing me ticket stubs from his 1985 concert in Hartford, Connecticut? If I had wanted that, don’t you trust that I would have been smart enough to explicitly look in memorabilia or collectibles?

Giving me more product finder dropdowns on the sidebar isn’t going to help either. eBay has to think about how real people look for real things. I don’t expect to search for work boots the same way I search car parts for a ‘69 Chevy Camaro. Choose function over form. I’m not going to mind that I have to use a different interface. In most cases, I’ll even thank you for the difference.

Boyfriends are drilled into memorizing the 5 C’s of picking an engagement ring. So why not offer me product sliders like this from Blue Nile?

Some categories lend themselves better to image-based search. Some are entirely price-driven. Some work better as browse, while others are query explicit. They won’t all be the same. Don’t try to make them to be.

Inventory
eBay.com has over 100M items with more than 10M being added and sold each day. Mix in all the eBay international sites, eBay Stores, eBay Classifieds Group sites, Gmarket, Tradera, Half.com, ProStores, StubHub, and Rent.com and you have around a quarter of a billion items. I think you’re pretty well-covered for most things you might look for. So you aren’t really impressing anyone bringing me back 3412 pages of search results for “iPod.” In fact, you’re actually discouraging me from looking on eBay because the volume is so overwhelming.

“But Serge, what about all the mom and pop sellers on page 112 who won’t get a shot at your business?”

Sorry, they don’t get it anyway. You think I am going to have the patience to go through 112 pages of iPods? Name me three people in your family who would. The only shot they have is if they can get it to me faster at the cheapest price. But you already have those sorts in the search results, so what’s the point? Now, Ella’s Bling’d Out iPods Emporium might just be what I’m looking for because they offer the gold grill collection with the iced out case edition. How would I know that was on page 113?

Some items are commodities, so price and shipping will rule. Others lend themselves to customization and personalization. Some are truly unique and one-of-a-kind. Why return those all in the same results? How are you benefiting either the Seller or the Buyer in that situation?

Celebrate the unique. eBay has the most unique, varied, and abundant inventory in the world. People don’t just come to eBay to find the latest Dell desktop. They come to eBay for the overclocked, liquid-cooled, see-through case, neon cable sheathed, desktop with the Elmo custom-painted mouse. Think about how you give that item the proper spotlight in a search result.

Come for Dell. Stay for Elmo.

Discovery
Discovery goes hand in hand with inventory. eBay has an incredible opportunity because of its inventory. One of the eBay companies, Marktplaats.nl, just launched www.hippas.nl. At any given time, there are probably no more than about 3000 live items on the site. You don’t want a million items on Hippas. Why? Because Hippas is meant for high-end women’s fashion. The type of customer who doesn’t want to see the same 132,000 items that were there yesterday. How would that stylish lady find the iconic and rare Chanel 2.55 bag in a sea of inventory? She wouldn’t. But given that inventory is a manageable size and the fact that items turn over so fast (that Chanel bag was gone the day it got listed) she has motivation to come back every day to discover new finds. And she does.

How can Craigslist, with its decidedly low tech interface be so dominant? Because people enjoy coming back each day to see what new things have been listed. Because listing an item is dead-simple and joyous. Because things turn over so quickly that they see fresh items. Because older items are explicitly and unapologetically demoted to the bottom of the results list.

For two great examples of finding experiences that encourage the shopper to browse and highlights their great inventory, visit: www.charlesandmarie.com and www.thinkgeek.com.

Think about the real world. You’d think people wouldn’t have the patience to go through those ubiquitous bins of miscellaneous knick knacks at the store, but they do. Why does it work? Because these people look for the thrill of that unexpected find. That rare UK release of Michael Jackson’s album. The complete Automan series on DVD. A script with Hitchcock’s notes in the margin.

Why do they have those aisles of candy, usb flash drives, magazines, and soda lining the checkout line? Impulse shopping. I never knew my life was incomplete without a Sharpie Micro Marker to put on my keychain. Now, thanks to Fry’s my life is complete.

Value
At the end of the day. Value rules. However you define value–and it will vary from customer to customer, from item to item–it is a significant part of your decision on whether to buy something. I’m not just talking about price here. I’m talking value. What value does a car have? It symbolizes freedom, independence, style, practicality, performance, and much more. So finding that beloved addition to your garage should evoke those same feelings, it should enhance that experience.

A computer memory upgrade is valued for the brand, performance, and price. So my finding experience should highlight that value. Artwork is about aesthetics, emotion, and taste. How does sorting on shipping and price help highlight that value? A goose-down comforter is valued for its fill power, thread count, and baffle. Finding should help me search on these values.

Drive value.

eBay has the best Product Search in the world. Let’s keep it that way. Let’s make sure every member of the eBay Inc. family can say the same.