Revenue Journal®

We recently moved the Revenue Journal from Blogware to Movable Type. Our experience will help you if you're considering a blogging platform, or if you're providing some kind of online tool or service.

Movable Type is a packaged software program sold to end-users (bloggers and website managers). On the other hand, Blogware is part of a package offered by Tucows to its ISP customers - which, in turn, offer the web-based blog platform program to their own customers. In other words, the customer of Blogware is really the ISP, not the blogger. This is key. When the end-user of your program is not your primary customer, trouble is sure to follow.

Why did I make the switch from Blogware to Movable type? We'll start with the white screen of death:

When you use your web tracking tool to identify the search terms that people type in before coming to your website, what you're seeing are the words that finally got them there. What you aren't seeing are the words they typed in first, at the beginning of their search.

People who are searching for your product or solution start out by typing the phrase that makes the most sense to them. Then, as they see the first set of results, they learn that their logical search term isn't producing the results they needed. They add a word or change a word, and try again. This learn-and-refine process leads to relevant result...and (hopefully) to your site.

Your web tracking tools record this last search term, but do not capture the first search term or even the interim search terms that they used to find you.

I started using WYSIWYG Web Builder recently. It's an intuitive, non-irritating web page mockup tool that makes it easy for text approvers to work with the files.

You can quickly create website pages, in a matter of minutes, placing text, links, and graphics exactly where you want them on the page. The underlying HTML code is generated automatically, as you lay out the page and make changes.

Web Builder can be downloaded (for a free 30-day trial) from the company that created it (Pablo Software Solutions). I found it through a great site called SnapFiles, a site that showcases downloadable tools.

I'm currently helping several clients redesign their websites. I sent the marketing guy at one company a link to the Web Builder software. A couple of minutes later, I got this email: "This is a gas!"