Comments on: The Long Tail by Chris Anderson http://jamescrisp.org/2008/06/09/the-long-tail-by-chris-anderson/ C#, .NET, Ruby, Rails, book reviews, mind hacks, Wing Chun and the occasional personal bit. Sun, 15 Jan 2012 14:28:18 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3 By: Ryan Walker http://jamescrisp.org/2008/06/09/the-long-tail-by-chris-anderson/#comment-4870 Ryan Walker Mon, 09 Jun 2008 22:15:19 +0000 http://jamescrisp.org/2008/06/09/the-long-tail-by-chris-anderson/#comment-4870 The last part of your comment regarding "..helping people find what they want" is an important one. I have two examples that come to mind related to your post (hope they r useful):- 1. HP increased their sales of PDA devices by an order of magnitude by simply creating a comparison matrix of features across all their PDA models. Before the use of the comparison matrix it was too hard for customers to browse and compare the PDA models that were all on separate web pages. This lead to customers just not buying them, however the feature matrix solved this. 2. The world vision web site had a 30%* increase in online child sponsorships by introducing a button on their web site that randomly selected a child. Prior to the random selection button, users were over whelmed by the large selection of potential children to sponsor and instead left the web site without sponsoring any children as the selection was too emotional. The random selection button instantly removed this pressure. * P.S. Sorry the above examples are anecdotal. They were told to me by others and I am going off memory. I had a quick look for link references but couldn’t find them. Sorry :) P.P.S This podcast of Chris's about his new book Free might be also of interest to you. http://itc.conversationsnetwork.org/shows/detail3328.html The last part of your comment regarding "..helping people find what they want" is an important one. I have two examples that come to mind related to your post (hope they r useful):-

1. HP increased their sales of PDA devices by an order of magnitude by simply creating a comparison matrix of features across all their PDA models. Before the use of the comparison matrix it was too hard for customers to browse and compare the PDA models that were all on separate web pages. This lead to customers just not buying them, however the feature matrix solved this.

2. The world vision web site had a 30%* increase in online child sponsorships by introducing a button on their web site that randomly selected a child. Prior to the random selection button, users were over whelmed by the large selection of potential children to sponsor and instead left the web site without sponsoring any children as the selection was too emotional. The random selection button instantly removed this pressure.

* P.S. Sorry the above examples are anecdotal. They were told to me by others and I am going off memory. I had a quick look for link references but couldn’t find them. Sorry :)

P.P.S This podcast of Chris's about his new book Free might be also of interest to you.

http://itc.conversationsnetwork.org/shows/detail3328.html

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