What Are Your Analytics Telling You? by Kevin Dwinnell

We announced this week the launch of our interactive browser theme for Sanjeev Kapoor.  We love the fact that he’s a worldwide celebrity chef with an award-winning and record-setting television show.  Even more relevant to us is that this is the first browser theme for one of our top geographic markets.  That point got me thinking about the information about our audience that we look at but don’t monitor as closely as more critical data and what it tells us.

KPI or Just I?

When we look at the traffic to our site and product, there’s a large percentage of it coming from India.  Geography isn’t one of the Key Performance Indicators we track.  (For a good considerations list of KPIs, check out this post by Max Kalehoff.)  Geography is still an indicator of what’s effecting our business.  It’s easily reviewed when we do our occasional exploration of a much broader data set.  Call it an Indicators

The Whole Picture

We’ve all been groomed to look for exit points and keywords that drive traffic, in essence to look at the funnel and see how users are coming into our site and where they leave it.  While we focus on the browser, we’re in the same category of most web sites in determining what’s in the visible space of our user.  We watch monitor resolution of our audience so we know how to optimize the fusion of design, content and functionality featured in our themes.  That includes the width for the theme content and height for the sidebar content.  The trend of browsers going very thin in the chrome will pose interesting design challenges for us, but gives back precious real estate to the web sites.

Data in Aggregate

Having everything laid out in front of you can also help you identify other patterns that might otherwise be missed.  We’re proud of data that shows how users of an interactive browser theme click back to sites more often than their average user — and it can be an exponential difference.  However, putting all the elements side-by-side allowed us to identify an interesting sub-point.  Two commerce placements provided 2.5x the clicks as a single commerce button alone.  That’s a significant difference and great information for our clients to have.

We like finding these little nuggets as we review our data.  What gold do you find when doing your data mining?

Posted in Commentary, News | Tags: browser theme, Data mining, India, Khana Khazana, kpi, Performance indicator, Sanjeev Kapoor | No Comments »

Brand Thunder and Celebrity Chef Sanjeev Kapoor Dish Indian Cuisine in Interactive Browser Theme by Brand Thunder

COLUMBUS (June 21, 2010) — Brand Thunder LLC (http://www.brandthunder.com), the browser customization specialists, announced its first entry into the Indian market with the launch of the Sanjeev Kapoor interactive browser theme for Firefox.  The best of Chef Kapoor’s vast library Indian cuisine knowledge is now rolled into a free download available at http://pages.brandthunder.com/sanjeevkapoor/download/.

The browser theme is tightly integrated with Chef Kapoor’s web site (http://sanjeevkapoor.com) and offers a full range of videos and links to proven recipes and a host of information on the art and craft of cooking.  User’s install an add-on for their existing Firefox browser to have fast access to new and favorite recipes from Chef Kapoor, plus seasonal suggestions, monthly features, shopping and more.  The video sidebar offers an abundance of cooking presentations including both vegetarian and non-vegetarian selections.

“We wanted to offer our users something that would strengthen their relationship with Chef Kapoor.” said Mr. Adarsh Nigam, VP-Marketing (www.sanjeevkapoor.com).  “This interactive browser theme has brought together the right experience and content for our fans to enjoy.”

“Sanjeev Kapoor has an avid fan base in India and across the globe,” says founder Patrick Murphy.  “We feel the browser theme is a great opportunity to reach his widespread audience and share his inspiring explorations of Indian cuisine.”

Brand Thunder’s interactive themes provide an extreme makeover of the Internet browser.  They are free, lightweight active customizations that can include themes, toolbars, sidebars and other content or functionality. Users can switch real-time between any installed Brand Thunder themes.

About Sanjeev Kapoor:

Chef Sanjeev Kapoor is the most celebrated face of Indian cuisine today. Chef extraordinaire, TV show host, author of best-selling cookbooks, restaurant consultant, architect of a unique range of food products and winner of numerous culinary awards, Chef Kapoor is living his dream of making Indian cuisine the number one cuisine in the world. He hosts Khana Khazana the popular Cookery Show on Zee TV which has won the ‘Best Cookery Show’ award given by the Indian Television Academy year after year ever since its inception in the year 2000. The show has completed more than 700 episodes being telecast non stop for 15 years – the longest running TV show in any category on any channel. His website www.sanjeevkapoor.com is a complete cookery manual with a compendium of tried and tested recipes and a wealth of information on the art and craft of cooking. As a restaurant consultant he has granted his franchise to a number of restaurants abroad and in various cities of India.

Contact:         enquiry@sanjeevkapoor.com

About Brand Thunder:

Formed in April 2007, Brand Thunder creates extreme makeovers for the Internet browser.  Brands enjoy a persistent connection to their Internet consumer driving more website visits and increased revenue.  Through a software installation, end users change the drab Internet browser into an immersive experience from their favorite sports team, entertainment franchise or Internet site.  The interactive browser themes feature official logos, colors, content and functionality, and can also extend capabilities including video, music players or other Internet widgets. Current business partners and clients include Bing, The Daily Beast, Huffington Post, Major League Soccer, NASCAR, NBA, NCAA, NFL, NHL and Universal Music. Samples found at http://brandthunder.com/gallery/.

Contact:

Patrick Murphy, CEO
Brand Thunder, LLC
614-408-8202

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Posted in News, Press Releases | Tags: brand thunder, browser theme, firefox, Indian cuisine, Khana Khazana, Sanjeev Kapoor | No Comments »

Is Your Web Site “Show Ready”? by Kevin Dwinnell

I’ve had my home on the market lately and had to live “show ready.”  At a moments notice, the realtor could (and did) call saying “we’ve got a showing scheduled for today.”  The house had to be ready to sell.  Part of the difficulty in these moments is to see the issues with the items we live with every day.

When you’re getting the house ready it’s easy to spot the cracks that need patching, or the paint that needs a fresh coat.  It’s much harder to see what’s part of the everyday that might turn a buyer off, like when I forgot to clean up the yard after my dog.  I got dinged from a buyer on that.

When it comes to your web site, what are the things that get overlooked and your customers might step in?  Here’s a check list of considerations:

• Images – Are the screen shots and imagery you use current?  Are there elements in the images that might work against you.  (I used to work for a major portal and we always made sure our screen shots avoided the story of devastation that was the feature lead.)
• Descriptions – Is the language you’re using still current and accurate?  Are you using terminology that your customer uses?
• Links – Have you clicked through on links, especially after any site redesign or changes?  404 errors and page not found are killers.
• Legal – Is your TOS (Terms of Service) and Privacy Policy up-to-date?  This is another area that should be reviewed after any product or site changes.
• Copyright – Is the copyright current on your web pages?  Seeing a (c) 2005 just looks sloppy.
• Web Browsers – Have you looked at your site in different browsers?  Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, Google Chrome.  They each have a large audience, and your standards-based web site should serve them all.  Does it?

Hope your site is “show ready” and it sells!  What are the other easy to miss items to review?

Posted in Commentary | Tags: Browsers, Clients, firefox, Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Web browser, Website | No Comments »

World Cup Just One Way to Reach a World Audience by Kevin Dwinnell

The kick off of the World Cup got me thinking about the marketing opportunity for companies trying to reach a multi-national audience with their product, and my own global expectations for Brand Thunder’s interactive browser themes when we were starting out.

For companies that can afford it, the mega sporting events like the Olympics and the World Cup offer a reach not found everyday.  I’m sure it makes sense for the larger companies to maintain their presence.  For smaller companies, we need to think more creatively.

Find Your Extended Sales Force

Brand Thunder leverages a distribution strategy that it began using in the U.S. – working with agencies and organizations that had the new media expertise and the brand relationships to extend the reach of our product.  It’s working well.  Our partner in the UK, KAM Sports International, brought the Scottish Premier League champion Glasgow Rangers into the Brand Thunder client fold.  We’re also about to launch product in Hong Kong through our partner HOTMEDIA, in India through our representative Kevin Jacobs, and are about to announce another large international market partnership.  Is there a sales channel that you can leverage beyond your own?

Leverage Your Product’s Natural Reach

With Firefox being built for the global community, we were prepared to act local for any global opportunity that presented itself at day one.  While we’re making strides in this area as mentioned above, it’s interesting to see that the users are adopting faster than the brands.  Our traffic trends show more than half of users coming from outside the U.S.  We have product categories where U.S. usage is only a third of the user base, and it’s not just in the obvious products like our Euro Football theme.  It’s some of the more general interest themes and it’s interesting to see where and what users find appealing in our gallery of products.  Needless to say, this extended audience wouldn’t be possible if the platform on which we work wasn’t international to begin with.  Is there an international opportunity with your product that you’ve overlooked?

Discover New Distribution Channels

Our clients and their reach to their audience have always been a critical part of our business.  But it’s not been our sole channel to market.  Part of the value add for partners and driver of our growth has been our own distribution efforts.  This includes making sure we’re available on the add-on galleries for the browsers we serve – Addons.Mozilla.org for Firefox and IEAddons.com for Internet Explorer.  We’ve also seen considerable success delivering our browser themes through freeware and shareware download sites.  This is made easier through the use of PAD files.  It has also allowed us to reach users through the sites that serve the product they use (the browser) and the sites that serve their market (download sites across the globe).  Where can you put your product in the hands of new users (more than just an international question)?

None of these suggestions are ground breaking.  However, if we were totally focused on a narrow definition of what our business is and how we do it, any of them could have easily been overlooked.  What are you doing that could easily be extended and expand your market giving you world class appeal at less than World Cup prices?  And what else should we be considering?

Posted in Commentary | Tags: brand thunder, browser theme, firefox, Internet Explorer, marketing, World Cup | No Comments »

Brand Thunder Themes for Internet Explorer Introduced Through Microsoft Promotional Push by Brand Thunder

COLUMBUS (June 9, 2010) — Brand Thunder LLC (http://www.brandthunder.com), the browser customization specialists, announced the launch of its add-on themes for Windows Internet Explorer on the Internet Explorer Add-ons Gallery. Some of these themes have been featured on the Internet Explorer Add-ons Gallery homepage at http://ieaddons.com.

Brand Thunder, is rapidly bringing its interactive browser themes to Internet Explorer users. Each add-on blends a custom theme and interactive content and functionality to Internet Explorer. If multiple Brand Thunder add-ons are installed, the user enjoys real-time switching between any of them. The complete experience changes with the theme, buttons, feeds and sidebar content all changing to match the selected theme.

The initial launch of Internet Explorer themes includes a broad offering of brands and topics like Baseball, CollegeHumor, the MLS’s Columbus Crew, the NFL’s Indianapolis Colts, NASCAR Nationwide Series, Vancouver Canucks, Washington Capitals, Weather powered by WeatherBug among others. Brand Thunder will continue to roll out themes for its client list that spans entertainment, news, sports and colleges and universities.

“Brand Thunder brings a good set of technologies, user experiences and recognized companies that we felt the Internet Explorer audience would enjoy,” said Rob Pulciani, Senior Marketing Manager at Microsoft. “We wanted to help build the awareness of these offerings and highlight the fun and value this can bring to someone’s online experience.”
“Our clients and users have consistently asked for the ability to theme their Internet Explorer browsers,” says founder Patrick Murphy. “We’re thrilled to make this launch event encompassing of our clients and leverage the power of the Internet Explorer community.”

Brand Thunder’s interactive themes provide an extreme makeover of the Internet browser. They are free, lightweight active customizations that can include themes, toolbars, sidebars and other content or functionality. Users can switch real-time between any installed Brand Thunder themes.

About Brand Thunder:
Formed in April 2007, Brand Thunder creates extreme makeovers for the Internet browser. Brands enjoy a persistent connection to their Internet consumer driving more website visits and increased revenue. Through a software installation, end users change the drab Internet browser into an immersive experience from their favorite sports team, entertainment franchise or Internet site. The interactive browser themes feature official logos, colors, content and functionality, and can also extend capabilities including video, music players or other Internet widgets. Current business partners and clients include Bing, The Daily Beast, Huffington Post, Major League Soccer, NASCAR, NBA, NCAA, NFL, NHL and Universal Music. Samples found at http://brandthunder.com/gallery/.

Contact:
Patrick Murphy, CEO
Brand Thunder, LLC
614-408-8202

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Posted in News, Press Releases | Tags: brand thunder, browser theme, interactive, Interactive marketing, Internet Explorer, Microsoft | 2 Comments »