Brian Ma's Blog (@zealoustiger) » Google

Google’s Genius: User Experience

Bma — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 22:05:45 +0000

We’ve had a very busy week last week generating mockups and writing specs for our product. Lots of exciting stuff happening – I’ll blog about some of it and save the SUPER EXCITING stuff for later.

I ran into Google’s User Experience Guidelines a couple days ago and thought it was really good. Here their top 10 list:

1. Focus on people – their lives, their work, their dreams
2. Every millisecond counts
3. Simplicity is powerful
4. Engage beginners and attract experts
5. Dare to innovate
6. Design for the world
7. Plan for today’s and tomorrow’s business
8. Delight the eye without distracting the mind.
9. Be worthy of people’s trust
10. Add a human touch.

They’re all quite good, but I’d have to say #9 deserves to be higher. What can be more important than a user’s sense of trust for the site? If they don’t trust your site, they won’t come back, they won’t tell their friends about it, and you’ll lose customers. Trust. It’s important.

Google Doodles

Bma — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 19:37:21 +0000

I’ve been trying to get my photoshop skillz up to snuff recently since I’ll soon be needing it soon to draw mockups of my startup. I already talked a little bit about how amazing Google’s creative aura is here, but today I ran into this:

So cool. Wish I could draw like that.

Project Virgle – Belated

Bma — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 01:29:54 +0000

I was so busy yesterday that I forgot to blog about Project Virgle and April fools. For those that haven’t seen it, go here for the Project overview and here for the blog post. It’s another one of Google’s creative random creations kind of like their logos. Never ceases to amaze me all the things that Google comes up with – if there’s one thing to learn from Google, it’s that the small things count.

Btw, just to let the Google guys know – I’d probably be the best candidate for Mars. I’m a world class expert on Guitar Hero (question #2) AND I like algae (question #3). Too bad I missed the deadline.

(You can check out the Virgle applications on Youtube too. Nothing I was super impressed with)

$$$: Online Ad Spend

Bma — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 03:02:27 +0000

I’ve been doing a lot of market research lately for my startup. Any web entrepreneur is probably considering or has considered Ads as a viable business model. Google has made it super easy here. $9.99 Billion in ad revenues in 1H07. They must be doing something right. So what category/industries spend the most online? Here’s what I undercovered:

Categories that spend the MOST online:

Internet (51.2%)
Diet and Fitness (26.1%)
Computer Products (18.6%)
Financial Services (17.0%)
Education (14.2%)
Media (13.7%)

Categories that spend the LEAST online:

Home Furnishings (1.8%)
Personal Care Products (1.8%)
Retail Home & Building (1.7%)
Household Products (1.5%)
Apparel (1.4%)
Restaurants (0.9%)

The percentages read something like this: Diet and Fitness category advertisers spend an average of 26.1% of their 2006 total media budget on the Internet. So while this might not be a good indication of how much absolute $$ each category spends, it is a good indicator of how comfortable each of these industries are at spending money advertising online.

Maybe I should start a “LOSE FAT IN 30 DAYS” startup to capture that 26.1% Diet and Fitness category. :)