Google+, waste of time or real contender?

In the last few days, Google launched its latest attempt to conquer the social media world (Google gets social again with Google+ | Mobile Apps | ZDNet UK) with Google +

Call me cynical, but to me this new effort is very likely to achieve as much as Buzz and Wave did.....not much!

While I don't blame Google for the actual willingness to crack this market, I'd be happier if they focused fully on their core business: search

When figures start to show that Facebook is reaching saturation points in certain markets, is now a good time to try and launch a competing service, albeit a little more advanced in terms of communication?

As usual, only time will tell if this is going to succeed, but I wouldn't bet money on it.

What's your view?

Google Instant Pages, why?

Ok, this is going to sound like a rant, but as I'm an opinionated french man, I'm going for it.

So this week Google launched Instant Pages, a clever system that predicts which search result you're going to like and pre loads it for your in the background, thus reducing time to view the page.
While I do appreciate the fact that Google is always trying to enhance the searchers experience, I'm still wondering why people there probably spent hours/days/months developing something that has extremely little value in my eyes.
I watched the intro video for this new tool this week and greatly entertained @rochelledancel when I said "if you can't wait 3.8 seconds for your page to load, get off the web!". Well I stand by this and ask the question: why do we need Instant Pages? Internet speed is increasing everyday and most web users will be able to view a page within a matter of seconds depending on their connection, with sometimes background scripts and tags taking a little longer to run (but not affecting the viewing experience). So the only place where this could be useful is in countries where people still use dial up connections....
Surely you would think Google has bigger fish to fry at the moment in its quest for world domination: How to integrate more relevance in searches, how to crack the social media world, latent semantic indexing.....

But hey, this is just my opinion, so rant over!
As usual, I'd be glad to hear your views on this, so feel free to share.

Design vs conversions - finding the right balance

Recently I've been working more and more on conversion optimisation, and the impending launch of a new website has made it clear to me that the best design is not always best for conversions and lead generation.

As I don't want to upset any web designers here, please let me explain what I mean in more detail.

No conversions = no business

For most businesses, conversions on a website mean revenue, hence the importance of always trying to optimise your pages. Conversion rate optimisation, through A/B or MVT tests, will help you achieve better conversion rates and assess which calls to action work best with your customers.

Beware of assumptions

While working on a website relaunch in the past few months, I made a lot of assumptions as to what would/should convert and how to use the real estate on the web pages. I've got to admit that original results where not as good as I expected.

I had made the classic mistake of thinking that the most attractive design would always convert better. As it turns out, and as proven by CRO, sometimes a more subtle approach with less visible buttons for example can have a dramatic impact on conversions.


Design still matters

Now don't get me wrong, what I'm saying here is not that design is not important. It is obviously crucial for a business to have a nicely designed site that will appeal to its core customer target.
However, decisions on conversion elements of a page such as calls to action or buttons should not be made on look and feel only.

The right conversion / design balance

The trick here is to make sure that your site not only looks nice but also converts. It is all about finding the right balance between good design and conversions, and this can only be achieved if the teams working on the site work together: design and marketing working in harmony and testing for conversions on an ongoing basis.

So next time you review your site, think of design and conversions as 2  things working together as opposed to one element leading the other.
If your design is good and has been optimised for conversions, then your whole business will benefit.