Prosperity. Happiness Works.

Have you ever heard the phrase “… the majority of users like…” or “…most people would not…” from someone in a conversation about web design? And were they referring to a specific audience and results of A/B testing? No? That happens all the time. People talk about what users like without actually asking any users at all.  The biggest mistake one can make is believe they know best what visitors to their site think and not check if that is true.

Which Test Won? gives you the chance to test your gut and see if you really know what “most visitors” would do. There are nearly 100 A/B test case studies, with real-life data and creative samples.  You get to find out if your preferred solution is most compelling, which can be quite a humbling experience, and also how much you can lose out on if you decide not to test at all. Purchase conversion of 49% is great – but what if you could actually get 265% and the only difference is in the wording of your sale slogan?  What if  you could get 40% more registrations emphasizing the most appealing of multiple benefits?

To see that and many more example visit Which Test Won? You can also submit your own test and enter the yearly Testing Awards that aim to inspire and evangelize testing and if you find testing your gut as addictive as I did make sure you subscribe to the newsletter which brings you a new test challenge every week : )

Karolina Martyniak – Prosperity.ie : )

The online stock photography business has seen some changes over recent years, from the heady days when Jerry Kennelly sold to Getty Images for US$135m, to the current fall off in global stock photography revenues due to global tightening of advertising budgets and reduced demand for high dpi images due to a constriction of global print media.
An Irish company has come up with a variation on the model, one that has recently won them the NDRC ‘Lift Off’ competition (Launchpad is a three-month accelerator programme for start-ups to develop at the NDRC in a dedicated environment alongside other start-ups.)

The idea behind www.picturk.com lies in ethical crowd sourcing
For those who are not aware of the concept of crowd sourcing: Crowdsourcing is a distributed problem-solving and production model. Users—also known as the crowd—typically form into online communities, and the crowd submits solutions. The crowd also sorts through the solutions, finding the best ones. These best solutions are then owned by the entity that broadcast the problem in the first place—the crowdsourcer—and the winning individuals in the crowd are sometimes rewarded.
In the case of Picturk, a designer might be seeking a particular image; they can go through the route of trawling through billions of images on online resources, or they can submit their request to the Picturk community (who will be a group of talented amateur photographers). They can upload their images, and if they are matched with the brief, the photographer will gain a monetary reward and some kudos.
The founder of Picturk, Paul Geraghty, said in an interview with Silicon Republic that  his idea being accepted for the LaunchPad programme was a great boost.
“It was very good to have three months to develop a really good proof of concept from a pilot. They gave me some useful financial support. There was a lot of development to be done so there was no way I could accomplish that on my own. LaunchPad provided the mechanism for me to test my idea and get customer validation on it, really moving Picturk as far forward as I could on my own with the support of the NDRC. Winning the Lift Off competition was a great endorsement for the idea.”
The third LaunchPad series is starting this week, with 10 start-up teams involved, comprising both teams and individuals

The latest online adspend study from IAB Ireland, the trade association for the Irish online advertising industry and PwC has shown a 12.3% growth for the first half of 2010 compared to the first six months of 2009.

Suzanne McElligott, Chief Executive of IAB Ireland, said: “The double digit growth in Irish online adspend is a recognition by advertisers of the impressive return on investment delivered by online advertising formats. Our market is now really embracing the digital opportunity. The H1 2010 growth rate of 12.3% ranks Ireland as the fourth highest performer among IAB markets audited in this period.”
All online advertising formats saw increases in adspend, with growing numbers of advertisers embracing the online channel. Advertising on social media sites contributed to the growth of display spend from a share of 26% in H1 2009 to 29% in 2010.
Speaking to Prosperity’s digital media ezine, McElligott commented on this growth in display advertising :“It’s very good to see more new brands and anew advertisers are coming online, and increasing their spend as well. It is pointing to our channel moving more centre stage.”
According to the study Irish marketeers invested €53.9 million in online advertising in the first half of 2010 compared to €48 million in the same period the previous year.
More than two-thirds (68%) of participants expect growth or strong growth in the next six months.
Paid-search advertising continues to perform strongly in challenging economic times where there is a strong focus on return on investment, search accounted for 45% of online adspend in H1 2010.
Online classified advertising again showed a strong performance with a 26% of total adspend.
Drivers include that there are more people online -3,442,439 in Q2, 2010 (ComReg’s Consumer ICT Survey). 68% of households have broadband connections (Comreg’s Irish Communication Market report for Q2, 2010). The average hours spent online each month per visitor increased from 15.6 in H1 2009 to 19.4 hours per month in H1 2010 (Comscore).
29 leading publishers participated in the study, many of whom represent multiple websites. Other participants include sales houses and advertising networks. It is estimated this study accounts for 90% of online adspend.

An Irish company specialising in Facebook applications has made waves across the pond with its new Facebook Places application.

Just weeks after Facebook Places was made available in the UK, Betapond, a company with offices in Dublin and Waterford, has launched the world’s first online league table of popular places created by tourists for tourist authority VisitBritain.
Top 50 UK places is based on the new Facebook Places technology, a feature that lets users “check in” to Facebook using a mobile phone, tablet or computer to let a user’s friends know where they are at that moment.
The app from Betapond encourages visitors to ‘’check in’’ by mobile device every time they reach a notable British location and write a review of what they find. This information then goes automatically to update the new list of ‘’Top 50 UK Places’’.
They will automatically receive information about which of the traveller’s friends have also been there – and what they said about the location.
Arrows will show whether particular attractions are rising or falling in the league table as more “check-ins”’ arrive.
It is the first time the system has been used to promote a whole country.

There’s a one-in-three chance that if you’re viewing this article from a computer that your browser is Firefox.
According to recent findings from StatCounter Global Stats, Firefox and Google Chrome are catching up on the power of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (IE) browser has had.

According to their findings IE has fallen below 50% of the worldwide market for the first time. It fell to 49.87% in September followed by Firefox with 31.5%. Google’s Chrome has more than tripled from 3.69% in September 2009 to 11.54% in September this year. In June Google Chrome overtook Safari for the first time in North America.
In North America IE is still above 50% at 52.3% followed by Firefox at 27.21% and Chrome at 9.87%.
Closer to home, in Europe, IE market share has fallen to 40.26% in September this year from 46.44% in September last year.
“This is certainly a milestone in the Internet browser wars,” commented Aodhan Cullen, CEO, StatCounter. “Just two years ago IE dominated the worldwide market with 67%.”
He added that Microsoft’s agreement with European Commission competition authorities to offer EU users a choice and menu of browsers from March may have tipped IE below 50% globally.
StatCounter, which provides free website traffic information, publishes browser stats in its StatCounter Global Stats, a free online research tool.