The Old Paradigm: Rely on quasi-monopoly and second-rate legacy products to squeeze users starved of choice for every last penny (*cough* Microsoft, *cough* *cough*).

The New Paradigm: Put end-users first and profits will follow. (Google).

Much can be said about the corporate cultures (particularly Google’s) which have in part enabled this brand of user-centric thinking, but that is a topic for another discussion.

Time and time again Google has put the best interests of their users AHEAD of their own share-holders and short-term bottom line.  This isn’t to say that they are profit agnostic in the slightest, they happen to make very healthy profits, rather they believe that doing right by their customers will earn them more loyalty (read: money) in the long run.

To phrase it another way: Google is not successful in-spite of putting users interests first, to the contrary, they are successful BECAUSE they put users’ interests first.
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Great deck by Joshua Porter

Have you ever wondered how exactly “direct” traffic is measured in Google Analytics? For the most part, this traffic comes from users directly navigating to your site through their browser toolbar or a bookmark. As it turns out there could be other sources that are counted as direct traffic when they aren’t. These include ppc,display or links from other sites that for some reason don’t pass a referrer.

You can paste the following code into you’re browser toolbar after clicking through an ad to you’re site to see if (any) referrer was passed. If it’s empty than Google Analytics will count it towards direct traffic if you don’t pass any campaign tracking parameters.

javascript:alert(document.referrer)

How do I fix this?

1. Realize that a chunk of the traffic that shows up in your “direct” bucket ~(10-15%) could be attributed to some other source e.g (ppc,display,link). This could be from click-through traffic or type-in traffic (where people see you’re ad and type in you’re url instead of clicking on it.) The latter case is essentially free advertising and while hard to measure directly should be considered into the ROI calculation for advertising. This is why it’s always important to display a url in you’re advertisement.

2. Always use tracking parameters in your urls when possible. http://www.google.com/support/googleanalytics

Is your product sexier than grilled cheese sandwiches? Do people like it better or are more willing to refer a friend to it? I’m willing to bet in 99/100 cases the answer is…NO.

Case and point: Grilled Cheese Sandwiches have a whopping 212,686 fans who are willing to self-identify as Grilled Cheese Sandwich lovers on Facebook!

If most people are not willing to “self-identify” as being a fan or user of your product than you are not alone. It is the rare exception where a product is so fantastic or speaks to a certain demographic in such a way that the users feel compelled to broadcast their affinity to others in their social spheres.

A great example of a product that people self-identify with is the Apple iPod, not only is it an incredibly sexy product but it is made by a company with tremendous customer affinity and good will.

The iPod has 341,820 fans on Facebook.

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