Expanders Don’t Make Happy Users

I am blogging from the street, outside the GoNOMAD Cafe. The temps are sort of warm, not embracing, yet the sun is shining. I had a moment of solidarity today, corresponding with Sean Keener of Bootsnall about a type of ad that was proposed to run on our site. They’re called…”expanders.” They are innocent looking ads that get bigger when you run your mouse over them. I felt at the offset, no no, we’re not running that. Sean concurred, saying “I hate those.”

I remember when we took a taxi downtown in New York a few years ago, and Sean said he wanted to make it about the user. Whatever is good for them is good for us. So that is what I thought about when I heard about these expanders. No. Just don’t wanna annoy my GoNOMAD users.

Then yesterday I came across a brilliant idea of Google’s. It’s called the website optimizer. This new tool lets webmasters create unlimited versions of landing pages so that they can test the results of different headlines, photos and selling text. This will let the advertiser know which one is the most efffective…and both Google and the website will make more money. Whoever heard that by helping your customers make more, you would make more? Well…that’s the Google way. Love it.