FastMail.FM banner comments!

**Jeremy Howard** · 22nd November 2001, 09:13 PM

Before I even mention the 'B' word, let me make something clear--the following does not mean we're about to put banner ads on FastMail.FM! NOT NOT NOT! Do NOT worry!!! OK, now we've got that clear I'll move on...

A couple of people have generously offered to run FastMail.FM banners for free. They're great sites that should attract the kinds of users who will contribute to the forums and give good feedback, and obviously it's great for all of us if we can grow the user base because it means we can start getting revenue in sooner, which means paying for more developer time, which means more features!

So I've whipped up a banner, and I'd love to hear feedback. Is the feature list showing the most interesting features? Can it be better worded? Do you want to mock up a completely different version because you think this is rubbish (it might well be--I've never done something like this before)? Any suggestions appreciated.
http://www.fastmail.fm/users/jhoward...ail_banner.gif

EDIT: Damn forum weirdness again!... It's not displaying the above image inline... Just click the above hyperlink to see the image.

Kyle Babich · 22nd November 2001, 10:27 PM

I think there is an option in the user cp to display images as images or text links to them.

***Edwin*** · 22nd November 2001, 11:13 PM

Not a bad effort, but I was confused about why you mentioned "Hotmail" (Microsoft has probably got a bunch of trademarks on it!)

Oh, and it's not actually clear what the banner is advertising (unless it is going on a page about free email) since the banner never actually says (in so many words) "Fastmail.fm is a FANTASTIC free email provider". Perhaps a better way would be to have more frames of animation and change more each frame, but lower the graphical complexity so that overall it works out about the same.

F1: Fastmail.fm - Free email with NO tag lines and NO ads!
F2: Fast access... Many domain choices... Large storage quota...
F3: Forwarding... Filters... IMAP... SMTP
F4: Click HERE to sign up for FREE today!

And not mention the corporate outsourcing, perhaps? Not enough room on one banner...

DippyTwitty · 23rd November 2001, 12:38 AM

A lot of people (myself included) don't enable GIF animations, so they'll never see past the first frame. That makes it important to get the most important info into that first frame. Like Edwin mentioned, get the "Free email provider" in, and as much else into the first frame.

What I might suggest, is to take up a little less space with the centre pane, get as much pertinent info as you can into the left pane (on the first animation frame). You've already mentioned "No Ads" in there, so it's OK if the "We hate Ad-Banners" comes up in only some of the frames-- maybe it can alternate timing with the other lower-profile stuff like Corporate Outsourcing, in the right pane.

Just my $0.02. If I had a well-attended website, I'd run your ad too!

kirill · 23rd November 2001, 12:43 AM

Some people are using text-only browsers (like me using w3m right now) so dont forget ALT attribute on the image.

P.S. Good this board has ALTs on every single image, smiley and icon. Very very nice.

--
Kirill

pobelly · 23rd November 2001, 03:12 AM

i personally find that having a fake 'button' on a banner ad tends to make me instinctively ignore it and never look back... i don't know if this is generally true, though. just my two cents.

--- po

**Jeremy Howard** · 23rd November 2001, 08:44 AM

Thanks everyone for the ideas. Here's some comments on specific suggestions:

Kyle--I've turned this setting off and on again and still no luck with getting the image to display inline...

Edwin--the Hotmail mention is because we can download from Hotmail accounts. If we put a (tm) next to HotMail we should be OK legally, shouldn't we?

DippyTwitty--The following text will be under the banner: <a href="http://fastmail.fm/mail/?SSignup-Affiliate=whoever">Click here</a> to sign up for FastMail.FM: fast ad-free email. For sites that don't put text under their banners, how about I change the far right hand text to "Fast free web-based email"?

On the animation thing, I don't want to spread it over 4 frames as Edwin suggested, because as DippyTwitty said many of us disable animations (I do too, BTW).

Kirill--I agree entirely. In fact, how about the alternate text reads "FastMail.FM: Fast ad-free webmail with *NO* graphics!"?

pobelly--The reason for the little pretend button is that the little bit of research I did quoted studies that show higher click-through rates. See for instance this and this. On another topic, I found the analysis by my favorite usability author of text ads quite interesting: http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20010902.html .

Adam--thanks for your generous offer. I'd love you to run a banner, or alternatively to put a text only link there. Personally, I prefer text-links. They can still stand out, as Edwin has proven, and importantly they can be weaved into something that is much more informative and personal. For instance, if you think think that IMAP is great (and I hope you do!) then you could mention how FastMail.FM fully supports IMAP and has a big quota and server-side rules, so it makes a powerful service. Or if you use a text browser you can mention how it works really well in Links and w3m because it has no graphics. Or whatever--these are just some ideas so feel free to ignore them!

BTW, if anyone does but up a link to FastMail.FM anywhere, whether it's a text link in an article or a banner, let me know what 'affiliateid' you'd like us to create for you and you can create a link to http://fastmail.fm/mail/?SSignup-Affiliate=whoever so that we can track your click-through. We won't have any particular rewards attached to this until we go to a paying service, but in the meantime it's good feedback and will help us know who to be particularly nice too!

pobelly · 23rd November 2001, 04:33 PM

Quote:

The reason for the little pretend button is that the little bit of research I did quoted studies that show higher click-through rates.

i actually read all the pages you made reference to, and i must say, the only one that didn't make me shudder was the one on text google-type ads... but hey, i'm the furthest thing from a marketing guy. i have to wonder, though... what KIND of people make up the increased click-through on ads that pretend to offer a choice via fake radio buttons, as suggested on the one page? probably the kind that cost you a fortune in tech support, i betcha. as seductive as numbers are, i would probably try to look farther than that, if i were in that position. i dunno. i'm certainly not trying to tell you how to run an ad campaign, but... well, are you planning on trying the google route?

**Jeremy Howard** · 23rd November 2001, 10:31 PM

Heh. I had exactly the same thought, pobelly... I wonder if measuring 'click-through' is not really right in this case. But given the choice between my intuition based of what average 'average user' psychology looks like, and quantitative research (however dodgy it sounds), I figured I'd listen to the research, at least until I have >1 campaigns experience to draw from!

I'm thinking of playing with Google; not because I think we'll actually get many customers, but just because I think it'll be fun to play with, and at $10 a campaign (or less), why the hell not! If anyone want to suggest ad-word combinations, and text messages to try, post 'em here and we'll add them to our campaigns. At google.com, click on the Advertising link, and go through the 'Ad Words' steps, and you'll see exactly how many hits your ad word combo will get. Obviously 'IMAP webmail' and 'fast webmail' and 'text webmail' are ad-word combos that oughta work, but maybe there's some more subtle searches that could get hits...

ikxu · 24th November 2001, 12:06 AM

Hi Jeremy. I think the idea of a banner is pretty good, but...I have the same thought as Edwin's.
Try to come up with another banner and see what happens, or make two or three and pass them by us and see which one is the favorite.
I will add your banner to our outbound business emails.
Take care,
ikxu

neerav · 24th November 2001, 11:48 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Jeremy Howard
BTW, if anyone does but up a link to FastMail.FM anywhere, whether it's a text link in an article or a banner, let me know what 'affiliateid' you'd like us to create for you and you can create a link to http://fastmail.fm/mail/?SSignup-Affiliate=whoever so that we can track your click-through. We won't have any particular rewards attached to this until we go to a paying service, but in the meantime it's good feedback and will help us know who to be particularly nice too!

How about having ourselves (Affiliate) put into the "referer" field when someone signs up from our link?

I would like to put up a text and graphic link on the home page of the internet cafe that I have great influence over. Check your webmaster email for more details.

As a testimonial: I live in an area where signing into Hotmail or Yahoo can take upwards of 15-30 minutes sometimes. And then each message takes 5 minutes to load. However, two of my friends signed up for fastmail AND logged into the service in under 2 minutes (and that too on a bad connection day). They refused to believe how fast the site really was until they experienced it themselves.

Good work guys. You're the beginning of a new trend/movement!!

--Neerav

princessmaeve · 24th November 2001, 02:02 PM

Jeremy-
I may not be the norm, but I never search for 'webmail' when I'm looking for a new address. I always search using 'e-mail'. I like the idea though, it's interesting.

***Edwin*** · 24th November 2001, 02:17 PM

According to the Overture.com search popularity tool, there were 41,690 searches on Overture in October 2001 for "web mail" or "webmail" (the service doesn't distinguish the two in its stats) and 1,566 for "free web mail"

Contrast this to 716,704 searches for "email" and 139,889 searches for "free email" and I think the general trend is clear

Now WordTracker.com (this is a paid service I subscribe to) comes up with 40,015 for "email" (note: you can't directly compare these numbers with Overture.com's, only with other WordTracker numbers!) and 13,544 for "free email"

Wordtracker comes up with 1,494 for "webmail" and 134 for "free webmail"

If you want to play with the Overture tool, it's here:-

http://inventory.overture.com/d/sear...ry/suggestion/

If you want to play with the WordTracker.com tool you have to go to http://www.wordtracker.com/ and then get out your credit card and join

**Jeremy Howard** · 24th November 2001, 05:39 PM

Actually, if you go through the process of creating an ad-words campaign at Google.com (it only takes 5 minutes and is free if you don't actually buy it) it will tell you how many hits per day your campaign will get based on actual google stats. The combos I mentioned are in the 100 hits/day zone, which is nice and affordable. Stuff like 'free email' get tens of thousands of hits so your campaign doesn't last long! The trick is to make every hit on the search phrase be something which fastmail.fm would be an answer to, and make the text ad make that obvious.

Example: search: "blocked smtp" => ad: "FastMail.FM lets you send email even if it's blocked by your ISP!"

**Jeremy Howard** · 24th November 2001, 05:48 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by neerav
How about having ourselves (Affiliate) put into the "referer" field when someone signs up from our link?

Actually I figured that the embedded affiliate tag would remain invisible to the user who is signing up. No need to advertise your FastMail.FM username to them! But yes, if you want to just use your username as an affiliate id that will work just fine. The reason that we also let you define your own is that we may have multiple campaigns from one source to track.

Quote:

I would like to put up a text and graphic link on the home page of the internet cafe that I have great influence over. Check your webmaster email for more details.

Oh great--internet cafe people should love FastMail.FM! I haven't received anything in the webmaster mailbox yet though. Have you definitely sent it?

Quote:

...They refused to believe how fast the site really was until they experienced it themselves. Good work guys. You're the beginning of a new trend/movement!!

Thanks Neerav. Comments like this are not only really encouraging (it makes it worth the hard work to get this kind of feedback) but it's also great to have these kinds of testimonials to link to for uncertain new users who are looking for some comfort that this stuff is as good as they've heard.

22nd November 2001, 09:13 PM	#1
Jeremy Howard Moderator Join Date: Sep 2001 Location: Australia Posts: 11,434 Representative of: Fastmail.FM	FastMail.FM banner comments! Before I even mention the 'B' word, let me make something clear--the following does not mean we're about to put banner ads on FastMail.FM! NOT NOT NOT! Do NOT worry!!! OK, now we've got that clear I'll move on... A couple of people have generously offered to run FastMail.FM banners for free. They're great sites that should attract the kinds of users who will contribute to the forums and give good feedback, and obviously it's great for all of us if we can grow the user base because it means we can start getting revenue in sooner, which means paying for more developer time, which means more features! So I've whipped up a banner, and I'd love to hear feedback. Is the feature list showing the most interesting features? Can it be better worded? Do you want to mock up a completely different version because you think this is rubbish (it might well be--I've never done something like this before)? Any suggestions appreciated. http://www.fastmail.fm/users/jhoward...ail_banner.gif EDIT: Damn forum weirdness again!... It's not displaying the above image inline... Just click the above hyperlink to see the image. Last edited by Jeremy Howard : 23rd November 2001 at 08:11 AM.

23rd November 2001, 12:38 AM	#4
DippyTwitty Senior Member Join Date: Nov 2001 Posts: 107	Don't forget... A lot of people (myself included) don't enable GIF animations, so they'll never see past the first frame. That makes it important to get the most important info into that first frame. Like Edwin mentioned, get the "Free email provider" in, and as much else into the first frame. What I might suggest, is to take up a little less space with the centre pane, get as much pertinent info as you can into the left pane (on the first animation frame). You've already mentioned "No Ads" in there, so it's OK if the "We hate Ad-Banners" comes up in only some of the frames-- maybe it can alternate timing with the other lower-profile stuff like Corporate Outsourcing, in the right pane. Just my $0.02. If I had a well-attended website, I'd run your ad too!

24th November 2001, 12:06 AM	#10
ikxu Guest Join Date: Oct 2001 Posts: 400	good idea Hi Jeremy. I think the idea of a banner is pretty good, but...I have the same thought as Edwin's. Try to come up with another banner and see what happens, or make two or three and pass them by us and see which one is the favorite. I will add your banner to our outbound business emails. Take care, ikxu

22nd November 2001, 10:27 PM	#2
Kyle Babich Cornerstone of the Community Join Date: Aug 2001 Location: NJ, USA Posts: 539	I think there is an option in the user cp to display images as images or text links to them.

22nd November 2001, 11:13 PM	#3
*Edwin* Administrator Join Date: Aug 2001 Location: Tokyo, Japan Posts: 3,043	Not a bad effort, but I was confused about why you mentioned "Hotmail" (Microsoft has probably got a bunch of trademarks on it!) Oh, and it's not actually clear what the banner is advertising (unless it is going on a page about free email) since the banner never actually says (in so many words) "Fastmail.fm is a FANTASTIC free email provider". Perhaps a better way would be to have more frames of animation and change more each frame, but lower the graphical complexity so that overall it works out about the same. F1: Fastmail.fm - Free email with NO tag lines and NO ads! F2: Fast access... Many domain choices... Large storage quota... F3: Forwarding... Filters... IMAP... SMTP F4: Click HERE to sign up for FREE today! And not mention the corporate outsourcing, perhaps? Not enough room on one banner...

23rd November 2001, 12:43 AM	#5
kirill Cornerstone of the Community Join Date: Jun 2001 Posts: 843	Some people are using text-only browsers (like me using w3m right now) so dont forget ALT attribute on the image. P.S. Good this board has ALTs on every single image, smiley and icon. Very very nice. -- Kirill

23rd November 2001, 03:12 AM	#6
pobelly Cornerstone of the Community Join Date: Nov 2001 Posts: 586	i personally find that having a fake 'button' on a banner ad tends to make me instinctively ignore it and never look back... i don't know if this is generally true, though. just my two cents. --- po

23rd November 2001, 08:44 AM	#7
Jeremy Howard Moderator Join Date: Sep 2001 Location: Australia Posts: 11,434 Representative of: Fastmail.FM	Thanks everyone for the ideas. Here's some comments on specific suggestions: Kyle--I've turned this setting off and on again and still no luck with getting the image to display inline... Edwin--the Hotmail mention is because we can download from Hotmail accounts. If we put a (tm) next to HotMail we should be OK legally, shouldn't we? DippyTwitty--The following text will be under the banner: <a href="http://fastmail.fm/mail/?SSignup-Affiliate=whoever">Click here</a> to sign up for FastMail.FM: fast ad-free email. For sites that don't put text under their banners, how about I change the far right hand text to "Fast free web-based email"? On the animation thing, I don't want to spread it over 4 frames as Edwin suggested, because as DippyTwitty said many of us disable animations (I do too, BTW). Kirill--I agree entirely. In fact, how about the alternate text reads "FastMail.FM: Fast ad-free webmail with NO graphics!"? pobelly--The reason for the little pretend button is that the little bit of research I did quoted studies that show higher click-through rates. See for instance this and this. On another topic, I found the analysis by my favorite usability author of text ads quite interesting: http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20010902.html . Adam--thanks for your generous offer. I'd love you to run a banner, or alternatively to put a text only link there. Personally, I prefer text-links. They can still stand out, as Edwin has proven, and importantly they can be weaved into something that is much more informative and personal. For instance, if you think think that IMAP is great (and I hope you do!) then you could mention how FastMail.FM fully supports IMAP and has a big quota and server-side rules, so it makes a powerful service. Or if you use a text browser you can mention how it works really well in Links and w3m because it has no graphics. Or whatever--these are just some ideas so feel free to ignore them! BTW, if anyone does but up a link to FastMail.FM anywhere, whether it's a text link in an article or a banner, let me know what 'affiliateid' you'd like us to create for you and you can create a link to http://fastmail.fm/mail/?SSignup-Affiliate=whoever so that we can track your click-through. We won't have any particular rewards attached to this until we go to a paying service, but in the meantime it's good feedback and will help us know who to be particularly nice too!

23rd November 2001, 10:31 PM	#9
Jeremy Howard Moderator Join Date: Sep 2001 Location: Australia Posts: 11,434 Representative of: Fastmail.FM	Heh. I had exactly the same thought, pobelly... I wonder if measuring 'click-through' is not really right in this case. But given the choice between my intuition based of what average 'average user' psychology looks like, and quantitative research (however dodgy it sounds), I figured I'd listen to the research, at least until I have >1 campaigns experience to draw from! I'm thinking of playing with Google; not because I think we'll actually get many customers, but just because I think it'll be fun to play with, and at $10 a campaign (or less), why the hell not! If anyone want to suggest ad-word combinations, and text messages to try, post 'em here and we'll add them to our campaigns. At google.com, click on the Advertising link, and go through the 'Ad Words' steps, and you'll see exactly how many hits your ad word combo will get. Obviously 'IMAP webmail' and 'fast webmail' and 'text webmail' are ad-word combos that oughta work, but maybe there's some more subtle searches that could get hits...

24th November 2001, 02:02 PM	#12
princessmaeve Member Join Date: Aug 2000 Location: Worcester, MA Posts: 95	Jeremy- I may not be the norm, but I never search for 'webmail' when I'm looking for a new address. I always search using 'e-mail'. I like the idea though, it's interesting.

24th November 2001, 02:17 PM	#13
*Edwin* Administrator Join Date: Aug 2001 Location: Tokyo, Japan Posts: 3,043	According to the Overture.com search popularity tool, there were 41,690 searches on Overture in October 2001 for "web mail" or "webmail" (the service doesn't distinguish the two in its stats) and 1,566 for "free web mail" Contrast this to 716,704 searches for "email" and 139,889 searches for "free email" and I think the general trend is clear Now WordTracker.com (this is a paid service I subscribe to) comes up with 40,015 for "email" (note: you can't directly compare these numbers with Overture.com's, only with other WordTracker numbers!) and 13,544 for "free email" Wordtracker comes up with 1,494 for "webmail" and 134 for "free webmail" If you want to play with the Overture tool, it's here:- http://inventory.overture.com/d/sear...ry/suggestion/ If you want to play with the WordTracker.com tool you have to go to http://www.wordtracker.com/ and then get out your credit card and join

24th November 2001, 05:39 PM	#14
Jeremy Howard Moderator Join Date: Sep 2001 Location: Australia Posts: 11,434 Representative of: Fastmail.FM	Actually, if you go through the process of creating an ad-words campaign at Google.com (it only takes 5 minutes and is free if you don't actually buy it) it will tell you how many hits per day your campaign will get based on actual google stats. The combos I mentioned are in the 100 hits/day zone, which is nice and affordable. Stuff like 'free email' get tens of thousands of hits so your campaign doesn't last long! The trick is to make every hit on the search phrase be something which fastmail.fm would be an answer to, and make the text ad make that obvious. Example: search: "blocked smtp" => ad: "FastMail.FM lets you send email even if it's blocked by your ISP!"