Chris Mortimer - entreprenör, affärsutvecklare och utbildare
This is a translation of an article published in Swedish press in Internetworld, the Swedish bible of Internet (in my opinion), on an upstarter to Spotify. I will publish these translations when I see articles that are interesting and should be available to a wider audience. I am currently testing and reviewing the
This is a translation of an article published in Swedish press in Internetworld, the Swedish bible of Internet (in my opinion), on an upstarter to Spotify. I will publish these translations when I see articles that are interesting and should be available to a wider audience. I am currently testing and reviewing the Revibe service as I have done with other services and will post later on my views/feedback. Translation of /Översättning av Spotifyutmanare lanseras i Norden (link to original article) Revibe, a music streaming service targeted towards the electronic music niche and which Internetworld drew attention to in last year’s entrepreneur list, has existed as an open Beta in Sweden since 2012. Now the service is being launched in Norway, Denmark and Finland where the service’s entire catalogue of artists and songs within the electronic music genre will be made available. In order to attract fans of electronic music the service sports built-in DJ-features, including an automixer which matches beats between songs to make a playlist sound like a DJ set. For more advanced users there is also a dual-channel mixer for manual mixing. – Our goal is to become more than a streaming service, where DJ tools and a Nordic launch are just steps on the road. We will expand the service with more features and expand to other markets outside the Nordic area , says Magnus Örn Berg, CEO and one of the founders of Revibe, in a press release. Currently Revibe has 20 000 users and new users may trial the web service for 30 days. After this a subscription costs 5 euros a month and a further 5 euros for access to the mobile app ( (IOS and Android).
Spotify challenger is launched in Nordics
Happy to say I met a guy called Sam with a boat a couple of months back, a traditional Irish boat called a currach that he’d built in Stockholm. He wanted to sell it, I wanted to buy it – on the condition he’d row it to Ireland with me for illegal people in the EU. Sam said grand because he was planning a boat and heritage centre in Ireland based on Swedish models. And yes, you’ve guessed, it was kind of late at night when we met. Anyways, the day after he didn’t want to sell it, and I didn’t want to buy it – but we agreed to row it anyways. For the craic*.
So, what’s this Currhack 5533N project?
The row itself is a manifestation of expat (or ex-Paddy actually) community spirit and is being run by myself, Sam and Brian. It’s being run through the 5533N association and being received by the Rennafix group and Having a laugh festival in Ireland at the end of August 2013. It aims to profile the importance of community and the contribution other peoples make to host countries by crewing a boat from Sweden to Ireland in 8 EU countries while having a bit of craic along the way. We’re connecting the Irish community in in each country and associations for EU illegals and each country will organise crew, a receiving event with music and PR with a positive message. It starts in June in Stockholm, goes across Sweden to Gothenburg, then Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, England and Ireland.
Why do I think it is important?
The illegal migrant angle is crucial because we can see a hardening across Europe of attitudes towards people, in particular those who are not European and who come to Europe on a a tough journey most often for reasons far, far beyond their control. Irish emigrants historically up to recent times have been subject to very similar circumstances and also lived outside and below the system, as members of a perceived lower class or caste, to slowly work their way up and into the countries they moved to. And, at least in my opinion, they did this through community, contributing, hard work and keeping a positive attitude. Peoples living in the EU, and indeed any country, carry with them a very real and positive contribution to their host countries. This needs to be highlighted, not problematised. The row is this community spirit and positive contribution in action.
The time is now
We live in an EU where the citizens in practically every European country outside of the Nordics have voted for change in the last couple of years. Because the recession is killing them. Voted for change at precisely the same time as the fiscal and ideological stance of austerity is becoming systematised, meaning essentially that newly elected Governments will have very little they can practically do to stimulate the economy short-term. They’re on a long-term game. And what will happen when they fail? Well, I think the electorate will move to the next party on the list, which in some countries are extreme right parties. It’s a dangerous situation and I think for that reason even more urgent to now communicate community, contribution and positivity for and through the migrant communities in the EU, of which the Irish community is also part.
Join us on Facebook at 5533N or just go crazy and share our messages wherever you like.
*craic is a word in Irish for fun, enjoyment
Went on 2 trips on this train service between Gothenburg & Stockholm. Great concept, worth reviewing and I always like an upstarter 😉 Soooo:
What’s the business concept?
Blå tåget is a retro 60s train service between Stockholm and Gothenburg which offers an alternative to the State-run SJ train service.
What’s different? […]
Went on 2 trips on this train service between Gothenburg & Stockholm. Great concept, worth reviewing and I always like an upstarter 😉 Soooo:
What’s the business concept?
Blå tåget is a retro 60s train service between Stockholm and Gothenburg which offers an alternative to the State-run SJ train service.
What’s different?
Blå tåget wants to compete on being a personal service with a proper restaurant carriage, bar carriage and a retro train experience from the 60s but with modern amenities such as Internet. In general, I think they rock on all points.
Background
Blå tåget was started by a guy called Måns Bolin in December 2011, and as early as January 2012 Expressen described here how passengers were ignoring the newly launched service.
The train conductor and the rest of the crew are all really friendly and relaxed
Recommendations for strategy and communications
This is a service that is very little-known even now, a year after launch. If I were running Blå tåget then I would do the following as a start:
– Use social media & PR far more extensively to spread the word. Examples here include a Twitter account to complement their Facebook account, and optimised press releases. Connect shares to benefits on the train, communicate those benefits on the train so people share en route. Make the experience shareable as it’s being experienced – nothing beats true emotion.
– Use their disruptive position in a positive way. There’s only one other competitor – SJ. How can they grab more coverage than SJ? This is a real advantage and unique position – work out how to capitalise on it best. When you’re the other option in a monopoly market, you can go crazy on your comms and win huge gains.
– Look at partnerships as a part of their “experience”. For instance, Liseberg in Gothenburg as part of a total experience package for families, Hasseludden as part of a Spa romantic experience for couples in Stockholm. Use the channels of partners to further push the Blå Tåget experience and ensure partners are themselves increasing the overall Blå Tåget experience.
– Use passengers & partners to suggest and build further parts of the experience and publish in online channels. Capture those requests and repackage for PR purposes, optimise for SEO purposes.
– Examine opening up for Interrailers and their tickets. There may be a tradeoff in terms of how much poverty-stricken and hygiene-challenged backpackers can pay for drinks and so on, but this may be outweighed by the publicity and SEO benefits of having a bunch of teched-out students singing your praises on various social media.
The piano bar is just waiting for people to roll up their sleeves, and their voice chords, and get rocking
In summary
A great service. I unfortunately didn’t get to experience the live music but any time I’m going between Gothenburg and Stockholm by train you can be sure I’ll look for this train first. If you’ve been on Blå tåget please feel free to share your experience in the comments field!
I wrote a blog post a few weeks ago about LinkedIn and their, in my view, serious error in strategy. Thought I should summarise the post here and you can go to the blog for Search Integration, where we work with digital strategy, to read in more detail.
In summary
- You can now multi-invite up to 50 people at a time on LinkedIn who you don’t know at all with the invite text “Because you are a person I trust, I would like you to join my network on LinkedIn”. This opens up for spammers hugely.
- As a network of contacts becomes wider rather than deeper, expect CPCs and other ad revenues per member to decrease for LinkedIn.
- A gap has opened up, in the long-term, for other networks to fill the quality role provided by LinkedIn as they move towards a broader, less qualified professional network.
Hope you enjoy the post! Go to Search Integration for it.
Booked a flight for some buddies last week and realised after like 30 seconds that Ryanair were, for a change, leaving a lot of money on the table. In fact, maybe 24 million Euro, or even more, a year. Or, are they just being clever again?
Bit of Ryanair background first
Ryanair and lots of other companies have been fighting a war against screen-scraping services for years to block the possibility to scrape information from the primary, original website. Ryanair chose to go with a captcha (those annoying little boxes you have to fill in to let people know you are, definitely, you promise, cross your heart, human) to solve the problem. I think they introduced it in November 2011. Here’s a screenshot from the Ryanair.com captcha.
This screen comes after you've chosen your destination & dates, in fact, quite bloody often!
And, where is le probleme?
There are two things wrong with this.
Number 1: from a usability perspective it’s a disaster.
Users are asked on MULTIPLE occasions to fill in the captcha. So, often when you perform a new search you’re presented with ye olde captcha again. And every man and his dog knows that when you are booking flights, you compare dates and prices a few times over and often on a couple of travel sites at the one time so frustration is something you can do without. In a report I mention below 60% of travel buyers researched their trip using search engines, and 40% using airline websites meaning your competitor is probably open in another tab while the customer is choosing where to buy for most purchases. Literally a click away.
Number 2: this really, really, impacts conversions.
Imagine you’re trying to buy an apple in a store, and every time you go in there they ask you to identify some squiggly text on a board then write it down, and if you fail you can’t get your apple, sorry! That’s a captcha. After a while you’re not going to want to go to that shop even though it might be on your way home, and that is roughly the impact it has for some people trying to buy a flight on Ryanair.
The captcha’s possible impact on Ryanair’s conversions & revenue
So, on numbers it’s hard to say exactly but according to this hands on study done by Casey Henry at SEOMoz there could be 3.2% of conversions which never happen here if we use his study as a benchmark. That equates to 3.2% of Ryanair’s annual revenue, about 24 million euro in bookings. Now in his study, surfers were filling in various forms, probably contact forms and the like meaning there’s a very specific and objective-oriented reason why they would fill in that form. If that’s true, then they would want to be able to complete the action, and it can almost be seen as a transaction. In Ryanair’s case, the user is requesting a price & date, it’s a signal that they’re thinking of going to a destination. Not a signal of actually purchasing. For that reason I’d bet the impact on the conversion rate is even worse. Users are in the information-seeking phase, and are being continually presented with new hurdles to jump. Hmm, no sweeties for them on Sundays.
Plus, a slap on the old usability wrist
And, many people who book are older, meaning filling in a captcha is even more challenging when you have sight and hearing difficulties. In fact, 23% of people aged 55 or older take three holidays a year as evidenced by this report from Harvest digital. And they book at the last minute, meaning a smooth online booking experience is vital.
Where the dinero leaks are
If it’s not clear by now there are two primary leaks of revenue (more in the actual purchase process too, but let’s leave them for now): defecting to other providers for ease of use as they have a competitor already up, and just not booking at all.
Ryanair are in effect lengthening the stay of users on their website, which if they were in the publisher game might not be a bad thing. But they’re in the business of closing customers to a plane trip, that means get them to the checkout as quickly as you can, present relevant and clear information, remove any blocks to this smooth process, and offer the extra goodies as you move them towards closing.
On the other hand, as a mate of mine Stephen O Callaghan says, they may just be engaging in mitigating post-purchase dissonance. In other words, don’t let others publish your price in other places because then you can get away with higher overall prices and make your cash as buyers don’t know you’re not cheap. And if you control that lens through which your prices are viewed (not viewed in comparison to others) then you can control the customer behaviour and sentiment to a greater degree. Not entirely sure I agree with that approach if that is the strategy ,as I believe there’s more value to be had through other approaches.
Revenues are on your left and right, if you can tell me what this squiggly text means
So, in summary to Ryanair:
1. Remove the captchas, or at least only show them once to a new visit.
2. If not removing the captchas, A/B test to quantify the effect on your conversions contra the higher prices you extract. The revenue leak could be less than stated above, on the other hand it could be far higher – in short, find out.
3. Captchas are completely breakable, read more on the links in my post, in fact hugely breakable. Get another fix instead.
3. And, I expect free flights for life for this post.
ps. if keeping the captcha, tell people WHY you have the captcha there: communication 101
pps. There are other huge and hairy conversion and usability issues on Ryanair’s website but I won’t go into those here. I have a life too you know 😉
Aaannd, Rant Complete!
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