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Setting up Google Analytics and Website Optimizer across multiple domains and sub-domains
Posted by Dave Martin on January 23, 2009 11:09 AM
Setting up Google Analytics and Website Optimizer correctly across multiple domains & subdomains can get pretty tricky. With our latest release of Campaign Monitor, we wanted to make sure that we could utilize both Google Analytics and Website Optimizer to help improve our site. As a result, we had to piece together a solution from about half a dozen different articles. If you ever find yourself in the same boat, here's the step by step tutorial:
Note: This article applies only for the latest version of the Google Analytics tracking code (ga.js).
Step 1) Tag all cross-domain links and forms
The first thing you will need to do is identify ALL links & forms on your site (even links on pages that do not include website optimizer tests) that go from one domain (or sub-domain) to another and tag thcode with the following code:
For links, add: onclick="javascript:firstTracker._link(this.href); return false;"
Example: <a href="https://www.domain2.com" onclick="javascript:firstTracker._link(this.href); return false;">Domain 2</a>
For forms, add: onSubmit="javascript:firstTracker._linkByPost(this);"
Example: <form action="http://www.domain2.com" method="post" onSubmit="javascript:firstTracker._linkByPost(this);">
Notes:
- firstTracker._link and firstTracker._linkByPost are shared by both Google Analytics and Website Optimizer to track visitors cross-domain
References:
- Tagging links and forms cross-domain with Google Analytics (See steps 2 & 3)
- Using website optimizer with multiple domains
Step 2) Load JS on Domain1.com and all of it's sub-domains
Add the following tracking code to the HEAD section of all pages on domain1.com (including sub-domains, www.domain1.com & sub.domain1.com)
<script type="text/javascript">
var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www.");
document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E"));
</script>
<script type="text/javascript">
try {
var firstTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-xxxxx-x");
firstTracker._setDomainName(".domain1.com");
firstTracker._setAllowLinker(true);
firstTracker._setAllowHash(false);
firstTracker._trackPageview();
} catch (err) { }
</script>
Notes:
- You MUST include this code above the links in step 1
- Be sure to include a "." before your domain for _setDomainName
- Replace UA-xxxxx-x with your Google Analytics profile ID
- _setAllowLinker set to true enables linking to another domain for Google Analytics
- _setAllowHash set to false prevents a unique domain hash (or numerical representation) of the domain name to be used in the cookie
References:
Step 3) Load JS on Domain2.com and all of it's sub-domains
<script type="text/javascript">
var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www.");
document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E"));
</script>
<script type="text/javascript">
try {
var firstTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-xxxxx-x");
firstTracker._setDomainName(".domain2.com");
firstTracker._setAllowLinker(true);
firstTracker._setAllowHash(false);
firstTracker._trackPageview();
</script>
} catch (err) { }
</script>
Notes:
- Your tracking ID (UA-xxxxx-x) should be the same as in step 2
- Be sure to include a "." before your domain for _setDomainName
- See step 2 for notes and references
Step 4) Add the Website Optimizer Control Script to the top of your test page
Add the following to the very top of your test page (Before the <HTML> tag):
<script type="text/javascript">
_uhash = "off";
_ulink ="1";
_udn ="domain1.com";
</script>
<script type="text/javascript">
function utmx_section(){}function utmx(){}
(function(){var k='XXXXXXXXXX',d=document,l=d.location,c=d.cookie;function f(n){
if(c){var i=c.indexOf(n+'=');if(i>-1){var j=c.indexOf(';',i);return c.substring(i+n.
length+1,j<0?c.length:j)}}}var x=f('__utmx'),xx=f('__utmxx'),h=l.hash;
d.write('<sc'+'ript src="'+
'http'+(l.protocol=='https:'?'s://ssl':'://www')+'.google-analytics.com'
+'/siteopt.js?v=1&utmxkey='+k+'&utmx='+(x?x:'')+'&utmxx='+(xx?xx:'')+'&utmxtime='
+new Date().valueOf()+(h?'&utmxhash='+escape(h.substr(1)):'')+
'" type="text/javascript" charset="utf-8"></sc'+'ript>')})();
</script>
Notes:
- You must add a reference to _udn above the normal utmx_section function in order for your test to work
- Be sure to include a "." before your domain for _udn
- Replace XXXXXXXXXX above with the value found in the control script of your Website Optimizer test
Reference:
Step 5) Add the Website Optimizer tracking Script under the GA JS code on your test page
Your GA JS code on the test page will now look like:
<script type="text/javascript">
var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www.");
document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E"));
</script>
<script type="text/javascript">
try {
var firstTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-xxxxx-x");
firstTracker._setDomainName(".domain1.com");
firstTracker._setAllowLinker(true);
firstTracker._setAllowHash(false);
firstTracker._trackPageview();
var secondTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-yyyyy-y");
secondTracker._setDomainName("domain1.com");
secondTracker._setAllowLinker(true);
secondTracker._setAllowHash(false);
secondTracker._trackPageview("/zzzzzzzzzz/test");
} catch (err) { }
</script>
Notes:
- Again, be sure to include this code above the links in step 1
- Replace UA-yyyyy-y with your account ID from Website Optimizer
- Replace /zzzzzzzzzz/test with the ID of your current Website Optimizer test (Found in tracking script code when creating a new multivariate test)
- Be sure to include a "." before your domain for _setDomainName
Reference:
Step 6) Add the website optimizer page section script to your test page around each test elcodeent
It's pretty simple. You can read more about this in step two of any new multivariate experiment, or by visiting this help topic.
Step 7) Add your website optimizer conversion script to your goal page (the page that users reach after a successful conversion)
Add the following code to the end of your conversion pages source code:
<script>
if(typeof(urchinTracker)!='function')document.write('<sc'+'ript src="'+
'http'+(document.location.protocol=='https:'?'s://ssl':'://www')+
'.google-analytics.com/urchin.js'+'"></sc'+'ript>')
</script>
<script>
try {
_uacct = 'UA-yyyyy-y';
_udn =".domain1.com";
_ulink ="1";
_uhash = "0";
urchinTracker("/zzzzzzzzzz/goal");
} catch (err) { }
</script>
Notes:
- Again, replace UA-yyyyy-y with your account ID from Website Optimizer
- And, replace /zzzzzzzzzz/goal with the ID of your current Website Optimizer conversion script (It should have goal at the end instead of test)
- Be sure to include a "." before your domain for _udn
- _udn manually sets the domain for Website Optimizer
- _ulink set to 1 enables linking to another domain for Website Optimizer
- _uhash set to 0 prevents a unique domain hash (or numerical representation) of the domain name to be used in the cookie
Step 8) Add advanced filter to show domains
Add the following filter to your Google Analytics profile so that you see domains in your content reports.
Filter Type: Custom filter > Advanced
Field A: Hostname
Extract A: (.*)
Field B: Request URI
Extract B: (.*)
Output To: Request URI
Constructor: $A1$B1
That's it - 8 easy (well actually slightly difficult) steps... I hope you find it useful.
A quick thanks to Eric Vasilik and ShoreTel for their help in troubleshooting this code.
11 comments so far
Tools we use: Skitch
Posted by Mathew Patterson on June 19, 2008 1:36 PM
In the last "tools we use" post, I mentioned the excellent HelpSpot application, which we use for all our support. Today's featured tool is also used in support, but in a slightly different way.
Even though Campaign Monitor and MailBuild are both pretty straight forward, there is times when we need to explain how to do something specific, or where to find something.
Some of those questions are answered by the narrated videos, but others are one off or less broad. In those cases, I love to use Skitch. Skitch is a tool from Plasq, the awesome Mac developers also responsible for Comic Life. They are so smart they even use Campaign Monitor for some of their newsletters!
Plasq have a tagline for Skitch - "Snap, Draw, Share!" - which is pretty descriptive. You load Skitch, and take a quick snap of any part of your screen, draw over the top of it, and then you can automagically make it publicly or privately shared.
I love to use Skitch to make super quick screengrabs of different parts of Campaign Monitor and MailBuild, annotating the image to show where a setting is or where to click. I've got a folder setup on the Campaign Monitor site, and Skitch can automatically upload the image and give me back a URL for it, which I can paste into my HelpSpot response.
It will do timed screenshots too, which is helpful when showing drop downs like in the screenshot above. Skitch literally saves minutes of faffing about taking screenshots, editing sizes, uploading in FTP clients and so on, every single time I use it.
A clear screenshot can also save a lot of back and forth with customers when trying to explain in text something that can be understand visually much more easily. I highly recommend you try out Skitch yourself. You can signup for the public beta right now at no cost.
3 comments so far
Freshview Favourites: Books
Posted by Mathew Patterson on May 29, 2008 1:47 PM
Although we're all the way down on the bottom of the globe, thanks to the magic of Amazon we can now get books at reasonable prices here in Sydney. I've surveyed the Freshview team and come up with a few recent favourites.
Code Complete by Steve McConnell
Selected by Jason, Freshview developer — "for developers starting out and for those with experience but who haven't really been following best practices, or any at all, Code Complete is a must read".
Good to Great by by Jim Collins
Selected by Dave, Freshview founder and designer — "Simple, practical advice using real world examples on how to build a great business".
Chicago Manual of Style by University of Chicago Press
Selected by Diana, Community and Support guru — "Not the most interesting read but where else are you going to turn to when you can't remember if it's e-mail or email?".
Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind by Al Ries and Jack Trout
Selected by Ben, founder and developer — "written about 15 years ago, and has no mention of the Internet, but very relevant to online businesses operating today".
Getting Real by 37Signals
Selected by Travis, Community and support guru — "Do they still even make books? (you're talking about that paper kind right?); Getting Real is highly relevant"
Naked Conversations by Robert Scoble and Shel Israel
Selected by Mathew, Community Manager — "Packed full of great stories and advice on using blogging to connect and converse with your customers".
Not everybody find books the most useful way to learn, but if they work for you, you could do worse than check these out. We'll post in the future about other favourites among the Freshview team; if you want to find out something specific, just ask!
2 comments so far
Webstock in Wellington: It's about story
Posted by Mathew Patterson on February 29, 2008 2:06 PM
Earlier this month I made the short hop across the ocean from Sydney to Wellington, New Zealand, for Webstock 08. Webstock promised "Truckloads of design, development, user experience, web standards, content, community, innovation & inspiration", and certainly delivered.
As well as finding out why they call it windy Wellington, I met a ton of cool people, including some Campaign Monitor and MailBuild customers who had some great feedback for us. In fact, early on day 1, at the registration desk, I spotted a fellow attendee wearing a Campaign Monitor t-shirt!
The conference proper was tremendously well run, great swag, decent food and the main hall featured seating around tables, which I found both different and helpful in talking to people.
Awesome talks from Freshview favourites Dan Cederholm and Kathy Sierra were accompanied with some other great speakers on a variety of topics.
One theme I've noticed starting to take hold in web design and business generally is the idea of 'telling a story', and several speakers focused on that point, including Jason Santa Maria. I expect to see more of this in 2008, including a lot of people helping businesses to craft their own stories.
The two days went by quickly, and too soon I was back in Sydney. Thanks to everyone who came up and said hello, and hello to everybody I met in Wellington (and a special hello to the Indian woman singing 'ice ice baby', to her baby, in the hotel).
3 comments so far
Freshview goes surfing
Posted by Mathew Patterson on February 28, 2008 5:15 PM
One of the cool things about working at Freshview is our 'First Friday Fun' - the idea is that once a month we take a Friday afternoon off to do something fun as a team. In the past we've played Lawn Bowls, Ten Pin bowling, seen a movie and had table tennis lessons from a gold medallist.
Last Friday, on a beautiful summers day in Sydney, we all drove the 10 minutes from the office to our local Cronulla beach for some surfing lessons. Freshview founders Dave and Ben are both keen surfers, but the rest of us....let's just say table tennis holds far less risk of drowning.
So it was with some trepidation we all got kitted up and hopped into the water. After a brief, yet embarrassing stint in the safety of the rock pool. we'd 'mastered' the art of paddling and eskimo rolls, and we were allowed in the actual ocean.
Then followed an hour or so of spectacular falls, flailing arms and the occasional moments of surfing glory. The young interns Dan and Toby showed the rest of us up by standing up within minutes and spending the rest of the time cruising past, as if they we're on a travelator.
Meanwhile, Dave and Ben stood at the shore taking photographs and making 'encouraging' remarks. Developers, QA and support team members got there eventually however, and nobody was lost to the sea (good news for Campaign Monitor and MailBuild users).
The final score: Ocean: 378 defeated Nerds: 6.
As we retired for a quiet beer, the stories were already being exaggerated, and it was only the release of photographic evidence several days later that restored the truth. This one is going to be hard to top!
North Shore eat your heart out!
Paddle practice in the rockpool
It's all about style
Jason gets up
Bob entertaining the crowd
You can check out more pics of the day on Flickr.
9 comments so far
Tools we use: HelpSpot
Posted by Mathew Patterson on February 7, 2008 2:16 PM
One of the great advantages of producing software for web designers is that typically, our customers are pretty damn smart. That means they don't often need to ask us for help with using Campaign Monitor or MailBuild.
Sometimes things go wrong, or something's a bit unclear, or they just have an awesome idea for us, and people get in touch with us by email. Multiply that by all the thousands of customers around the world, and it adds up. To handle all that incoming mail, and the ongoing conversations, we use a great piece of software called HelpSpot from Userscape.
HelpSpot is essentially a web based issue tracking tool that fully integrates with your email. So when our customers email us, it pops up in our HelpSpot workspace and is immediately trackable, so nothing gets lost. As they come in the emails can be filtered, tags can be applied automatically, replies to existing issues are assigned to the right person and much more.
So our design and development team each have their own HelpSpot inbox, and issues are transferred to the person who can solve them as needed. If you've emailed support before, we can look up your previous issues and see what has happened, so we don't have to cover old ground.
For issues which pop up more often, we have a bunch of prepared response snippets we can insert and modify as required, which means a much faster and more detailed response. When we combine that capability with the reporting, we can easily see which parts of the application could use some improvements, and we know where to spend our time.
One recent improvement we've made uses HelpSpot as a form of monitoring tool. Even though we have all kinds of hardware and software monitoring in place for our applications and servers, some problems are spotted much faster by people than they are by any kind of system.
We've found in the past that our customers are pretty good at letting us know if something's gone wrong with a rush of support emails. However, sometimes it would happen overnight, and we wouldn't find out until other monitoring woke someone up.
Now we've harnessed HelpSpot so that it counts the number of requests coming in, and if it crosses certain thresholds triggers a system that will ring the phone of the person responsible for fixing it. Since it is web based, we can easily check it from home. (No, that is not a request to send 20 emails in a row to try and wake us up at night!).
There's lots more to HelpSpot, and it is a pretty key part of keeping everything running here at Freshview. We'd definitely recommend checking it out if you are finding a standard email client is not enough any more.
2 comments so far
Building the ultimate office for software developers
Posted by David Greiner on January 16, 2008 3:05 PM
When we moved Freshview into a much larger space at the end of 2006, we figured we had enough room to get us to the end of our 3 year lease. There were only 3 of us at the time, so 160 square meters (that's about 525 square feet) seemed like it would do the trick even if we added a few more people to the team. While our customer base was growing very quickly, we were big fans of scaling our software without necessarily having to scale our team with it.
Starting open plan
We went for an open plan layout in the office for a couple of reasons. The first being that it's by far the easiest and most cost effective way to lay out an office. Secondly, with only 3 of us in all that space there weren't a whole lot of distractions and it allowed us to communicate very easily. Basically, it worked.
Over the next 6 months or so we were lucky enough to double our customer base, revenues and inevitably, our team size. Before too long we added another 4 great people to the team, not to mention an extremely popular (and recently upgraded) ping pong table. We still had plenty of room, but one thing soon became clear. Open plan offices don't scale well for software developers.
Getting into the zone
You see, software development is a little different to most other jobs. To be truly productive, developers need time to really "get in the zone". To get their best work done, they need to phase out all the other distractions around them and be genuinely focused on the task at hand. This is when the really good stuff happens. Unfortunately, this isn't something that can be switched on or off instantly, it takes focus and time (from a few minutes to half an hour). As you can imagine, a ping pong ball to the forehead can be quite the flow killer. Over time, lots of these small distractions can prevent smart people from getting things done and generally piss them off at the same time.
This isn't just something we've learned from experience either. Peopleware, a must-read for any software developer (and especially their managers) devotes an entire section to the importance of removing distractions from the office environment. Joel Spolsky's famous Joel Test dedicates number 8 out of 12 to making sure your programmers have quiet working conditions and 37signals have long advocated the importance of alone time.
Of course, not everybody feels the same way about open plan, which is clearly why so many software companies still use that format. We had our doubts about the open plan approach working long term, and so we decided to look for some alternate space that would allow us to create an environment perfect for keeping our growing team happy and productivity high.
Time to move... again
Eventually we settled on some recently vacated space a few levels above us in the same building. It was double the size of our current office and gave us a blank slate to plan our dream setup. Similar to the approach Fog Creek took in their planning, we put together a wish list and then approached a number of architects to make it a reality.
Above all else, the priority was for closed offices for all our developers, a nice big area where people can relax and take a break, and a communal eating area where we could all have lunch together. Oh, and it needed to scale to support 20 staff members, we didn't want to move again in a hurry.
Closed offices and catered lunches
Working with the talented team at Watershed Design, we eventually had a layout that would give us closed offices for 8 developers and very large, private workstations for 11 other team members who aren't writing code. We used loads of glass and timber to keep as much natural light flowing through each office. We also ended up with a large breakout area for relaxing and working on your ping pong game. To make everything feel as open as possible, we also cut out a big chunk of the roof and added some cool lighting.
Here are a few photos of the finished product, which you can click for a larger version.
Big closed offices for our developers, most with a nice outlook over the park
A sweet entrance and reception area
Our 2 meeting tables
Funky closed offices and over-sized workstations
One of our biggest concerns about moving from open plan to closed offices was killing the awesome vibe we have around the office. The entire team get along extremely well and while the older layout was occasionally distracting, it was also plenty of fun. To alleviate this, we've since introduced free fully-catered lunches for the team. We now eat together every single day, which has made a huge difference and is something I wish we introduced a long time ago. It's also a fantastic way for newer team members to get to know their workmates in a very informal setting (not that it ever gets formal around here anyway).
Now that everyone has a closable door you don't need to tippy toe around the rest of the office, but can chat to other members of the team knowing you're not distracting anyone else. If the door's shut, come back another time or send them an IM or email. No more flow breaking or ping pong head shots.
Was it worth it?
From start to finish, the fitout took about 4 months to complete and we couldn't be happier with the result. We moved in mid November 2007 and have already measured a tidy improvement in the amount we're all getting done. Even more importantly, after a casual survey of the team while writing this article, every staff member prefers the new closed office environment over open plan.
Going closed office might not be the cheapest or most intuitive option, but given the increase in productivity and positive feedback from the team, I can't recommend it enough for small, growing software teams.
19 comments so far
Web Directions Expo Part 2
Posted by Mathew Patterson on October 22, 2007 3:04 PM
In part 1 I covered some of our decisions relating to why we attended, and our stand design. In this post I wanted to mention some of the lessons we learned during the two conference days.
People love free stuff - I know, hardly surprising, but we gave away our 200 t-shirts within the first couple of hours, and a ton of people were wearing them on day 1 and 2. Next time we would bring more shirts (or something else), or spread them out a bit to reach more people.
You don't need free stuff to attract people - This was a bit more of a genuine discovery. Even after our shirts had gone and you could no longer enter the competition, we had a lot of people come up to talk about our products. Without the distraction of freebies, we could spend time really explaining the concept, and getting to know existing customers.
A great stand position helps - we were located right opposite the main hall doors, so as everyone came out after a session, they saw us first. That really seemed to help get people in. Obviously you can't always choose your location, but it's worth knowing that it makes a difference.
People like demos - we had worried that if we were talking to individuals, we'd miss out on connecting with people walking by. As it turned out, having one of the team talking through the applications with individuals was a draw card - people walking by stopped to listen and ask their own questions.
Face to face conversations are valuable - we talked to people who had seen Campaign Monitor or MailBuild before, but just had one little question holding them back. They had not bothered contacting us by email or phone, but since we were right there, could just ask in person. It's easier to understand someone's requirements when you are having a live conversation than it is online or on the phone.
Overall, it was a fantastic learning experience for us, and very enjoyable too. We'd started out unsure about the whole idea, but by the end were convinced that a small Expo like this could really help connect us with existing and new customers.
We look forward to future opportunities!
2 comments so far
Lessons from the Web Directions Expo
Posted by Mathew Patterson on October 5, 2007 2:14 PM
Last month, half the Freshview team headed into Darling Harbour, Sydney, to man a booth at the Web Directions conference and Expo, a two day event.
You can read about the days, and check out more photos over on the Campaign Monitor blog. For the Freshview blog I wanted to explore a little of the background - why we decided to go, how we prepared and whether it was worth doing.
Prior to Web Directions this year we had not had a presence in this way at any events. Dave and Ben had talked at Web Directions last year, and Freshview has sponsored BarCamp and Webjam, but an expo was a new idea.
Why be part of an expo?
When we were approached about the possibility of being at the expo, we had to sit down and think about what we would hope to get out of it. We knew the audience of web designers and developers would be perfect, but would a stand actually help reach them? In the end, we came up with a list something like this:
- Increase the exposure to both Freshview the company, and to Campaign Monitor and MailBuild as products
- It will be easier to talk to existing customers in person if they can find us at our booth
- A good opportunity to demo the products to potential new customers
- Get the attention of people who could potentially be future employees
- Dave and Ben don't have to talk in front of a crowd again :)
- More flexibility to interact directly with people than straight sponsorship offers
- Find out relatively cheaply if expos/ tradeshows are worth Freshview attending in other locations
So having discussed those benefits, and weighed them up against the alternatives of just attending as a team, or sponsoring the event, we decided to give it a jolly good go.
What's involved in having a booth at an expo?
A lot more than we initially thought! Since we were starting from scratch, we needed to work out how much space we wanted, which space to choose, how that space would be designed, what we would actually put into the space, what technology was required, how many people would be needed....
Fortunately, a very helpful professional conference organiser came to assist us in making those decisions and more, and guided us towards what would work for this particular situation.
One key lesson learned is that it is very tricky to work out in your head, or on paper, what something will look like in real life. It's like decorating a tiny room in your house without being able to see it.
You can see what we ended up with in this photo from very early on day one:
The contents of our stand:
- 3 staff members: Dave, Ben and Mat
- 2 iMacs - one to demo Campaign Monitor and one for MailBuild. We also ran a competition to give away the new Mac at the show.
- 200 free t-shirts - the idea was to get people wearing the shirts walking around the show floor
- 2 tables - with rented tablecloths to floor length
- 1 Windows laptop - under the table, acting as the demo server
- 1 wireless internet connection - we didn't rely on it, but it was handy to have available
Continue to Part 2: Lessons from the show itself.
2 comments so far
Someone else's customers
Posted by Mathew Patterson on August 27, 2007 12:21 PM
It's a problem in the "nice to have" category — people who want to use your products, but that you know are not suited to them. Most of our customers are web designers themselves, or at least in companies and agencies with HTML skills available, and the products are targeted quite specifically at that market
However, with both Campaign Monitor and MailBuild we have been fortunate enough to get quite a lot of word of mouth referrals, and publicity in different areas. This has sometimes meant enquiries from people who are not in that target market, who don't have html skills or helpful web designers around. They've heard good things about Campaign Monitor and are excited to get started, and just have 'one quick question' about online editing or templates or...
It's fantastic that they've got such high expectations for our products, but we know that they will not have a great experience using them, because they don't have the necessary background. One of the key differentiators of Campaign Monitor and MailBuild is that they don't get in your way with restrictive templates and form based editing. You can 100% control the HTML you send.
For these non-HTML people, that kind of flexibility is not a benefit, it's a major stumbling block. Trying to use the systems will only frustrate and disappoint them, which is the opposite of the experience we want them to have.
So how do you handle these situations in a polite way that doesn't damage the goodwill they have already about Freshview and our products? Our approach is always to gratefully acknowledge their feedback, explain our target audience and then recommend to the customer a company that might be a better match for them. Generally this is one of our competitors who have a slightly different focus. Different people are more suited to different services, and we try to give a specific recommendation when we can.
Hopefully, that gives the customer the best experience - they end up with a system that better matches their needs and expectations. It helps us maintain that goodwill they held for us, and hopefully clarifies our position as the email service provider for web designers. If that customer later recommends us to someone else, they will be able to mention our target audience too.
Finally, it may help us build better links with competing services, and could result in those competitors sending to us customers that would have a better experience using our systems.
It can seem counter-intuitive, but sending potential customers away can be the best result for everyone, saving them frustration and pain, and helping us avoid unnecessary support and loss of focus on our core customers.
4 comments so far
5 things you didn't know about Freshview
Posted by Mathew Patterson on July 31, 2007 3:36 PM
- There are only seven of us here — so far, but we are looking for the next few 'Viewers
- Three of us have the same degree — in Information Technology from the University of Wollongong
- Coke Zero beats Original Coke — The Zero supplies run out three times faster than the original
- We have a huge whiteboard — big enough to reserve some space on it for recording ping pong tournament scores
- Six out of the seven have a Wii — interpret that however you would like...
What do you wish you knew about Freshview?
6 comments so far
Customer designed merchandise
Posted by David Greiner on July 25, 2007 4:42 PM
About six months back we had the idea to put together a couple of t-shirts for Campaign Monitor. The idea was never to make a profit from the exercise, but I wanted a nice way we could say thanks to those customers doing cool things with our software.
This idea is obviously nothing new, but at the same time most software company tees really suck. We've all seen the cheap looking white promo tees with a logo or a bad tagline on the front that you can only get in XL. I wanted something I'd actually be happy to wear down the street. And remember, making a shirt about email marketing that people want to wear is quite the challenge!
We threw a few ideas around the office about what might work, but to be honest struggled to come up with anything that really grabbed us. Not long after I was chatting to the always interesting Mike Cannon-Brookes of Atlassian fame. They've got a range of hilarious shirts and I mentioned how we'd been having problems coming up with ideas. He suggested that instead of trying to come up with an idea ourselves, why not let our customers decide. Why the hell didn't we think of that!
Not long after, we asked our customers to help us come up with some funny t-shirt ideas. We got hundreds of funny (and creepy) suggestions, picked our top ten and then put it to a customer vote. Once the winners were picked, we approached a professional designer to help us go from an idea to a cool looking shirt. I built a quick online store using Shopify, which was honestly one of the best software experiences I've had of late. If you're whipping together any kind of online store, these guys are awesome.
Finally, we found a local printer who could print the designs on high quality slim-fit tees for both guys and gals. Here's the result...
We announced the shirts on our blog a few days back. Within 20 minutes the first order rolled in (Security, sent to David in the UK) and we've been getting plenty of orders from all over the world ever since. The shirts have even been picked up around the web.
Thinking about the process later, I realised the way we created these t-shirts wasn't far off the way we build software. Have an idea, get a prototype in front of customers as early as possible, get their feedback and then iterate and release. Eat your heart out Threadless ;)
1 comments so far
"Someone in this room... is a murderer!"
Posted by David Greiner on June 22, 2007 4:45 PM
This little guy kept the office in stitches all day and I couldn't resist sharing. Next step, figure out how to make this my alarm clock so I wake up laughing every day of the week.
4 comments so far
Getting personal with your automated emails
Posted by David Greiner on June 6, 2007 3:48 PM
Ever since we launched Campaign Monitor in late 2004, we've always prided ourselves on being a very open company. Pretty much every post-launch feature we added was based on requests from real customers. We use our blog, our newsletters and our built-in support system to capture as much customer feedback as we can get our hands on.
As well as trying to give our customers as much opportunity as possible to tell us what they want, there's a final thing we do that's more important than all of the others combined. We ask. Every Campaign Monitor customer gets an email a few days after signing up where we thank them for giving us a try and ask for any feedback they might have to help us improve.
For the first 2 years, we tried to get pretty fancy with this approach and sent a HTML email with a built in form so they could give us feedback right there in the email client. We also segmented our customers and sent different questions to different people based on how they used the app. If you signed up but didn't send a test campaign, you'd get a different email to someone who did.
This approach worked fairly well, but something about these emails always bothered me. They were too automated. Too robot-like. It didn't look like there were real people on the other end anxiously waiting for any feedback they might have. In a recent experiment, we ditched the fancy built-in survey version and went for an extremely simple, personal plain text email. Here's a basic version:
Subject: Did you fall for Campaign Monitor? Dear Dave, Many thanks for signing up to Campaign Monitor and having a look around. Looking at your account, we noticed you hadn’t sent a campaign or really got your hands dirty with it just yet. If Campaign Monitor didn’t really grab you, we’d love to know why so we can right any wrongs. Just reply to this email and tell it like it is. We read every bit of feedback we can get our hands on and would love to hear your thoughts. Thanks again for checking us out, Dave Greiner and Ben Richardson Campaign Monitor founders
So what happened? The quantity and quality of the feedback shot through the roof. More than double the normal amounts of feedback have been coming in since. Not only that, but the responses have been more detailed and you can tell more effort has gone into crafting them. When people know they're talking to a person and not a database, they really open up.
As well as getting priceless feedback from prospective customers, these emails have also been a great way to get a conversation started. What starts as a missing feature can quickly turn into us suggesting an alternative approach, and before long we've got a strong relationship that never would have formed unless we got in touch. Now don't get me wrong, we never hound our customers. There's a fine line between asking for feedback and generally pissing people off. This is a simple, one-off email and they won't hear from us again unless they have any questions for us.
Here's more proof this approach is working for us. Just yesterday I spotted a great blog post from a new customer that decided to go for us based purely on the personal and "non salesy" nature of this email. It really is the little things that can make such a big difference.
3 comments so far
How we create walkthroughs and screencasts
Posted by Mathew Patterson on May 1, 2007 4:11 PM
Recently we released a series of short, narrated videos about Campaign Monitor. They are designed to give people quick overviews of how different features work, and what is possible. This post will detail the process we went through to create them, the tools we used and what we learned while doing it.
Getting started
We kicked off by doing some quick research to see what was out there, and how other people were doing it. A couple of the examples we check out were the Macromates TextMate screencasts and 37Signals' Basecamp overview.
Then we sat down and tried to set down what we wanted to have in the final product. The parameters we came up with were:
- The final size should be close to actual screen size, to make sure everything is clearly visible
- It should be a narrated video
- The final format should be Flash video for widest compatibility
Given those goals, we check out a bunch of different options for software to make it happen. After a few trials, we settled on this line-up:
Hardware
Apple iMac 24" — My existing machine
Logitech USB Desktop Microphone — A cheap but effective microphone that did well cutting out background noise.
Software
iShowU — a great OSX application that is easy to use, but has a ton of capturing options.
Quicktime Pro — Used on OSX for simple editing and clip combining. Also good for transcoding in some cases
Flash Video MX — a Windows application not actually associated with the Adobe / Macromedia product, but a fast and simple way to create Flash videos with controls from the source movies.
The recording process
With the technology setup, and a few tests completed, it was time to record the real thing. We sketched out the basic outline of what we wanted to cover in each video, and had a practice run through. The practice runs were are a good way to find out what preparations were needed for each video, including:
- Setting up the browser to the size we wanted for recording, as well as removing unnecessary toolbars.
- Creating a test account in Campaign Monitor with the right information setup
- Building the lists and emails we needed for demonstrating
We created a new user on the iMac, so we could leave the browser setup and the desktop clear, ready for use, which saved a lot of time. Below is a screenshot of how the windows were arranged during recording.
To the right of the browser is the iShowU window, which is doing the actual recording and encoding. Below that is a text document that I used for notes about what I wanted to focus on, URLs I needed to remember and so on. In iShowU we had setup a preset that contained all the settings for our screencasts. We had settled on Apple Animation as the encoding, as it produced a high quality recording at a reasonable size. The screenshot below shows all the options we were using.
Finally, it was time to record. Several of the videos were recorded in one take (after quite a few attempts!), which helps it to flow through naturally. I did have to restart many times due to getting off track with the narration, or forgetting to include a particular segment. In some cases, where the videos were long and had a natural break point, I recorded in two sections and joined them later using Quicktime Pro, using this helpful Automator Workflow.
After a viewing to check the content, the final recorded file was opened in Flash Video MX and exported as a Flash video complete with controls. We tried various different settings to balance quality with file size, keeping in mind that our target audience tends to have reasonably large monitors and decent bandwidth.
Once we had sorted out the process, each video could be completed in a couple of hours from working out a basic script to the final Flash video.
General tips
Here's a few things we learned during the creation of our videos.
- Make sure you turn off your phone before recording...
- and turn on the microphone!
- Record in the highest quality you can, in case you want to re-encode later to a different format
- When you are talking on your own, you need to feel like you are exaggerating your voice just to sound natural
- Don't forget to reset your browser history and product settings so that you see what are expecting to see when you record
- For parts of the narration that are critical, it can help to have a script to read
No doubt we'll discover better ways to do this in the future, and we'd love to hear from you about the software, hardware of techniques you have come across for making screencasts. Leave us a comment!
6 comments so far
Geeks and ping pong
Posted by David Greiner on April 26, 2007 5:26 PM
What is it with geeks and ping pong? Google does it, Skinnycorp do it too. If the geeks run the show, good chance you'll find a ping pong table out back somewhere.
When we moved into our bigger office space 6 months ago, our first purchase was a trusty new ping pong table. Every Friday afternoon the Freshview office seems to transform from a software company to a high tension ping pong arena. I mean it, we go crazy for it. The strategic plan and interface sketches on the office whiteboard are quickly replaced with the afternoon's draw. Favourite bats are selected. Trash is (badly) talked. We take this stuff seriously.
But what is it that lures our profession to the ping pong table? Out of all the at-work recreational activities you read about at technology companies, the trusty old ping pong is always near the top of the list. I've got plenty of friends working in other industries, but it seems this trend doesn't really continue outside the tech world.
So why is it that us geeks enjoy the game so much? And although it's tempting, no jokes about geeks and indoor sports ;)
If you're one of those lucky enough to get into a bit of at-work ping pong action, check out the video below for some pre-game inspiration. Something tells me that cartwheel shot took some time to master.
10 comments so far
Teach your customers, sell more software
Posted by David Greiner on March 28, 2007 7:36 PM
Just last week I received an email from a startup asking how I got into building web applications, and how he can replicate some of the success we've been lucky enough to have with Freshview. We ended up having a great conversation and there was one particular marketing approach we discussed that I'd love to expand on here in more detail.
Before I do though, one important thing to remember is that back in 2004 we built Campaign Monitor on the side whilst running our consulting company. There was no round of angel funding or credit card debt, the whole thing was paid for through our consulting revenues and we've never taken any outside investment, which I'm very proud of. Of course, that also meant that we didn't have piles of cash lying around to throw into marketing our new product. Our marketing budget was basically zero, so we had to come up with ways to get the word out on the cheap. Luckily for us, the web offers plenty of great opportunities to spread the word and build buzz about your product without a big budget.
Out of all the methods we've tried however, one approach has consistently helped us improve our relationship with current customers and attract loads of new customers. It's a very simple one that almost every company can use to their benefit. It's called education. Whether it's through blog posts, articles, podcasts or email newsletters, educating our customers has been our most effective way to spread the word about our software.
Here's the clincher though. I'm not talking about teaching people how to use our software (although that's important). I'm talking about helping them get better at something they might use our software for. In our case, that's email marketing, which is why we've put together dozens of resources, more than 60 articles and 120 design reviews to help our customers kick ass at email marketing. Incidentally, I was also asked by 37signals to contribute a few words on this topic for their Getting Real book, which you can check out here.
Here are the 5 reasons why I think teaching your customers is such an effective way to sell software.
1. It helps create customer evangelists
More than anything else, word of mouth can make or break the success of your product. From experience, the two most important ingredients in generating good word of mouth is actually having something worth talking about (obviously) and then ensuring you can provide that customer with everything they need to get the most out of it. That's where education comes in. Kathy Sierra (one of the team's favourite bloggers) couldn't have put this better in her out-spend or out-teach post...
Those who teach stand the best chance of getting people to become passionate. And those with the most passionate users don't need an ad campaign when they've got user evangelists doing what evangelists do... talking about their passion.
It's these customer evangelists that continue to drive more customers to our products every day. This was especially important in our early days, when one positive review can literally throw thousands of new customers your way overnight.
2. Successful customer = successful business
This one's pretty simple. If our customers are sending better looking, more relevant email newsletters then there's more chance they'll attract more subscribers. This helps us in a couple of ways. First off, we look great by association. We've attracted plenty of new customers simply because our current customers are doing some amazing things with email.
Secondly, more subscribers joining our customer's lists has a direct and positive impact on our bottom line. Sure, plenty of our customers would be doing some great things with or without our help, but we've certainly given many of them help along the way.
3. The lessons last forever
By keeping any of your education material free and public facing, you not only get the benefit of helping current customers, but those lessons are also crawled by search engines and linked to from other sites. We've got plenty of blog posts that continue to throw some amazing amounts of traffic our way, even though they were written more than 2 years ago. This also helps us to attract new email newsletter and blog subscribers. Here's a quick graph showing the growth in one of our product blog's RSS subscribers over the last 2 years.
We've also been fortunate enough to become the number one result in Google for a few important search terms. We don't focus on search engine optimization or keyword balancing or anything like that. We write about topics relevant to our customers and the rest comes organically. Educate your customers and Google will become your best friend.
4. It keeps our team at the top of their game
Sure, our customers get plenty out of it, but by continually focusing on customer education, Freshview also builds up a team of domain experts. Here's an example. About a year ago I was tasked with documenting the CSS support in every popular email environment. This hadn't been done anywhere before and we knew it would be an incredibly handy resource for our customers.
The entire article took a day or so to write and in the process our team became instant experts on the previously unchartered territory of CSS support in email. The moment a customer has a question about this particular area, or we're designing a new feature for the app that relies on designing an email, we've got it covered.
5. The greater good
While the 4 previous points focus solely on business goals, there is another important benefit of educating your customers, especially if you make that material available to everyone for free. We know that plenty of the articles we write and the resources we create aren't just used by paying customers. While that doesn't directly help us sell more software, it certainly provides intangible benefits for our reputation and company perception.
Out of all the different approaches you can take to marketing online, promotion through education has got to be the biggest contributor to a better Internet. Sure, banner ads and affiliate links are other options you can take, but I can't think of a less intrusive and more helpful way to spread the word about your products than by helping people and letting them do the talking for you.
2 comments so far
Working for a small company vs a large one
Posted by Mathew Patterson on March 22, 2007 3:22 PM
One of the things I remember wondering about when I was doing my degree was what kind of company would I work for? Would it be a huge company with big impressive offices? An established medium sized business in the city? Or maybe even a startup.
At that point, my main understanding of the corporate world came from a combination of my Dad’s government department office (complete with hilariously named ‘Wang Computers’) and movies like “The Secret of My Success”.
As it turned out over the next 9 years or so, I would work for companies covering all those categories, and for myself. Now that I’ve been here at Freshview for a few months, I wanted to reflect a bit on the differences between them all.
We’re only a small team here at Freshview; Two founders, three employees and a ping pong table. So how does that compare to somewhere like ASX?
Let’s set up a meeting
It’s a cliche, but an accurate one. The bigger the company, the more meetings you end up in, and the less things are actually decided on. So many people who need to be involved means you end up delaying action just to fit them all in.
On the plus side, the catering for meetings is good, particularly if you can get invited to meetings on the executive level. In small companies, you can often have a quick chat while still sitting in front of the actual work, and make a decision on the spot.
Money for something
Depending on the department (or cost centre) you end up in, big companies can often allow you to spend the money to make things happen. If you run the meeting gauntlet and get support from high up, projects can be kick started very quickly.
When you really need to have specific tools or expertise, you can get them. Smaller companies often just can’t afford the expenditure, and need to make do or just wait longer.
To be fair, I’ve also been in large companies where every financial decision went through a process (a word you will learn to hate in big companies) that made you wish for MacGyver like skills to construct your own equipment.
Ongoing education
In my experience, working in bigger companies means easier access to conferences, workshops and training courses. The training budget is set, and you are often required to spend it. I have learnt a lot and met some great people through training arranged by work.
For smaller companies, the cost of the conference plus travel can be a budget breaker. Being in the web industry, the guys here at Freshview get to a lot of web meetups and conferences that are relatively low cost, which is fantastic.
If you work for a different kind of small operation, you may need to do a lot more self education, or be prepared to really justify your education costs. The web industry is fantastic for learning online, and some companies like Freshview make training a focus.
Politics and getting things done (eventually)
Have you seen the movie Office Space? If you have, and you found it painfully funny, you’ve probably worked in a medium or large company. Big companies can sometimes seem to be deliberately preventing anything from actually happening. In a big company, personal politics can be semi-hidden but disruptive.
Small companies can be equally political, but it is usually more obvious, and therefore easier to call out or spot in time to avoid. If you want to be agile in your work, you want to be in a small company, or at least a small team in a big company.
Specialisation
When I was working on big projects, one of my favourite things was being able to hand work off to the professional testers. They did fantastic work on a job I really did not enjoy.
Big companies can find and hire those people who love doing just testing, and let them do it full time. When you don’t have access to those people any more, you feel the loss!
Still, if you enjoy expanding you own skills, a small company where you take on many roles can be fantastic.
The company tipping point
If you start working for a fast growing ‘small’ company, you might soon find it is a medium size company. I’ve got a personal theory that there is a kind of tipping point between a ‘small company’ and a medium sized company.
It’s not how many employees there are, or the turnover. It’s the point when you start to get emails referring to the ‘stationery policy’. When you can’t just go and get a pen from a draw somewhere, and you have to see someone to ‘request a stationery resupply’, you’ve crossed the line.
Your perfect match
Personally, I think on balance I prefer working in a small team. I’ve tried the other options though, and it may be that without that experience I would not have the same opinion now.
Freshview is a great place to work, and I get to take part in shaping it in the future. Maybe one day it will be a large company, and I’ll have to fill in the ‘Form for the requisition of Requisition Forms’ form with the pen I brought from home, or maybe not.
What about you? Do you work for a small company and wish it was bigger? Or are you looking to escape the office block?
7 comments so far
Making help more helpful - store user search terms
Posted by Ben Richardson on March 20, 2007 12:47 PM
I just finished listening to the podcast of Kathy Sierra's opening remarks from SXSW, and the main theme throughout the talk is how can we help users when they're confused. She talks about how critical it is to help users at this stage, or they'll never move beyond the I suck threshold and onto becoming passionate users. As an example, she discusses how her book series has been so successful because it contains context sensitive help based on questions that actual students have asked when they've been confused on a particular topic.
So how do we know the questions that our users are actually asking? If your offering email or phone support, it's obviously a good idea to keep track of what customers are asking you through that channel. But another great way, that takes a lot less work once it's in place, is to keep track of what terms your customers are using are searching your help with. Once you start capturing this data, you can quickly see what your users are searching for in their time of need, and more importantly, if the results they're getting would be helpful.
When we first started capturing this data for our products we found very popular search terms that were returning either the wrong results or sometimes no results at all. Other terms user were searching on returned lots of results, but the most relevant topic wasn't the first in the list. Not exactly the desired result in a moment of panic and confusion.
Luckily, fixing the problem is easy. Add the missing help topics, tweak a few of the existing topics so they come up first in the search results. Before you know it your users will think your application has psychic powers. And you'll have helped them through a moment of confusion and hopefully one step closer to becoming a passionate user.
1 comments so far
Are people still prepared to pay for software?
Posted by David Greiner on March 15, 2007 1:15 AM
Just over a week ago Ben and I had the chance to head to Australia's first ever BarCamp at UTS in Sydney (which Freshview sponsored). For those not familiar with BarCamp, it's basically an unstructured meet-up for those with an interest in all things web. Plenty of people have written about the day (which was fantastic), but there was one thing I took away from the event that's been on my mind ever since.
One of the earlier sessions I was looking forward to was on bootstrapping a startup, moderated by Nick McNaughton of Zookoda fame. While some good points came out of the discussion, I was genuinely shocked by the number of people saying how impossible it is to charge for anything on the web these days. People were giving examples of Flickr and YouTube, saying that everything had either been done already, was free or wasn't worth paying for. I couldn't believe what I was hearing.
Not long after this, the predictable recommendation came that you shouldn't charge for your app, but instead try and get as many customers as possible and rely on ad revenue. I even managed to hear the old beta line thrown in a few times for good measure. I chimed in with my own position on the issue, which is something I want to echo and expand on here because I think it's so important.
Forget about the lottery winners
It's so easy to get caught up in the billion dollar hype from Silicon Valley. People hear about YouTube's US$1.5 billion acquisition price and think it's something they can replicate. Forget it. Really, don't even entertain the thought for a second. What you don't read is that for every glittery success story, there are hundreds or even thousands of other startups in the same space who fizzled overnight.
Remember, if you're looking to get bought by one of the big guys like Yahoo or Google, you'll probably need something with the potential for a huge horizontal consumer market. Horizontal markets are tricky for a number of reasons
- Building something that anyone can use is bloody hard. It's impossible to know which features to add and which to leave out. You might get customers, but getting passionate customers is so much harder.
- Lots of other people are building exactly the same thing as you. Right now.
- It's very hard and very expensive to market something that anyone can use as opposed to something built for a particular niche.
Sounds like a lot of risk to me with very little chance of reward. Sure, there are exceptions to these rules, but I'd like to propose an alternative that I think is much easier to pull off and a whole lot more realistic.
Stop being so incestuous
The web and software development community has a nasty habit of looking in on itself and forgetting about the other 99% of the online population. While everyone else out there is building for the early adopter crowd and going to bed dreaming of getting TechCrunched, why not look outside this circle and try to solve a real problem that real people are having.
Too many people I speak to are focused on technology instead of a solution. "It's gonna be really cool, we've got RSS feeds, a neat tagging system and the whole thing runs on 3 lines of Rails code". Now take a deep breath, and realise that none of that means a thing to your customers. They want to leave work 5 minutes early, they want it to take 2 steps instead of 5. They don't want a tag cloud.
Solve a specific problem for a specific group of people
Instead of trying to build the next video sharing or social networking site, why not narrow your focus a little more. There are loads of simple problems out there that are waiting to be solved online. Here are a few thoughts to get the creative juices flowing.
Solve a real problem
I know, too obvious right? Not really. Every day I see apps that are cool or do something interesting, but they're rarely something I'd actually pay for.
Pick an industry that might not be treating a particular segment well
This is the exact approach we took with Campaign Monitor. There were hundreds of email marketing tools on the market back in 2004, but none of them were built just for web designers. By focusing on a smaller section of the market, we could focus all our energies on building the perfect tool just for them. Think vertical, not horizontal.
Scratch your own itch
Many of the apps that are successful today were initially built to solve the developers own problems. If you can't find the right tool for the job then chances are plenty of others can't either. Solving your own problem is way easier than trying to figure out what might be annoying others. Again, try and think outside the early adopter market.
Try and build something that actually adds value
If you can build something that saves someone time, helps them look better to their own customers or makes them money by using it, you've got a much better chance of people handing over their hard earned cash to use it. Building software for other businesses to use is a whole lot easier than selling to the consumer market.
People will pay good money for something useful
Here's the kicker. Businesses want to give you money for your software. If you can make them operate more efficiently, close more deals or make more money, it's a no-brainer. Don't try and start off free and then charge later. You might end up with an awesome product, but if there's no business model then your options are pretty limited.
Many businesses would actually prefer to pay for software than get it for free. If they know there's a profitable, stable company behind the product then it's going to get improved, they'll get technical support, the product won't just drop off the radar at any moment. Make it as easy as possible for potential customers to try your product, but don't give the thing away for free.
Well, turns out my quick review of Barcamp turned into quite the rant in the end, but I'm glad that one's off my chest.
10 comments so far
The ultimate 3 screen setup for a designer
Posted by David Greiner on November 16, 2006 12:22 PM
I often get asked what platform we work on at Freshview, so today I thought I'd walk you guys through my current desktop. After a decade of spending most of my working time in front of a computer screen, I've finally achieved what I think is my dream work setup.
I've combined one PC with dual-screens and a Mac Mini with a single screen into a 3 screen setup with a single keyboard and mouse. I can move my mouse across all 3 screens like it was a single platform and easily copy and paste between both systems. For me, it's the perfect PC/Mac hybrid that Bootcamp and Parallels just can't compete with.
Why I need this setup
Before I get into the details, I should point out that my requirements are probably a little different to most, which is why I can't just choose Mac or PC and be done with it.
- I design and develop on the PC. We're a Microsoft shop developing .NET applications, so I need my PC for source control, SQL Server and few other PC only apps I use every day.
- I need a Mac for testing our software, and also use it for all of Freshview's customer support.
There's just no way that I'd put up with working out of Parallels all day every day when I spend the majority of my day on a PC. I'm also sick of having a lonely Mac stuck in the corner of the office that I have to go back and forth between every time I want to test any UI changes. To me, this is the best of both worlds.
See it in action
This isn't really something that you can demonstrate with screenshots, so here's a quick video showing my PC/Mac setup in action (and yes, it's damn windy in Sydney today).
What you need
To get started, you're going to need the following:
- A PC with a dual-screen capable video card.
- A Mac mini with OSX Panther (10.3) or greater.
- 3 screens, preferably all the same so everything lines up nicely.
- A second keyboard that you can plug into your Mac Mini, hide under the desk and forget about.
How it works
There are only two bits of software you'll need to make this work. One's open source and completely free, while the other will set you back a mere $40.
Synergy
The brains behind this whole approach is an amazing open source piece of software called Synergy, which makes it dead easy to share a single mouse and keyboard between multiple machines, no matter what OS they're running. It's the glue that keeps everything together.
For details on how to set Synergy up so your PC and Mac can share a single keyboard and mouse, check out this awesome how-to by Matt Haughey on Lifehacker that inspired this setup in the first place.
As well as letting you use the same keyboard and mouse for the Mac and PC, Synergy also allows you to easily copy and paste text between both apps. This sounds trivial, but when you start working between the PC and the Mac throughout the day, it's an absolute godsend.
Ultramon
I've tried plenty, and Ultramon is the best dual-screen manager for Windows that I've come across. It extends the default Windows taskbar across both screens and makes it a piece of cake to drag maximized applications between both screens, both of which take almost all the annoyance out of managing a dual screen PC environment.
31 comments so far
What we learnt building Campaign Monitor
Posted by David Greiner on October 18, 2006 9:45 AM
Late last month Ben and I were lucky enough to be invited by the lovely Maxine Sherrin and John Allsopp to present at Web Directions South, Sydney's premier web design conference. It was a very cool experience for the both of us. We're certainly not seasoned public speakers but everything came together quite well and we were lucky enough to get some great feedback.
Our talk covered how the idea for Campaign Monitor was born, and what we learnt on the way such as deciding what to build, pricing, building on the side, marketing and supporting a web app from Sydney.
Download the podcast of our talk (41 minutes, 27 seconds - 18.9mb)
John and Maxine have been kind enough to make both the slides, transcripts and podcasts for each talk, including our own, available to anyone free of charge. Also, if you're going to be in Canada early February, do yourself a favour and get to the inaugural Web Directions North, the northern hemisphere version which looks to be a cracker with speakers like Doug Bowman, Cameron Moll and Dan Cederholm to name a few.