Developing eWrite

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Bummer. Received an email from Seedcamp yesterday thanking me for applying and unfortunately I didn’t make the short list this year. I was pleased enough to get the email at all, last year I applied without any preparation and received no response. You get back what you put in i suppose. This year I put some work into the application, I didn’t make it but thats OK, I have plenty to learn to help me to promote the work we do with the eWrite software.

Earlier in the month my hopes were raised when I saw that someone involved in Seedcamp signed up to try our eWrite Lite free demo. To use the demo you supply a name and website address. I checked the address and found it to be a site involved with Seedcamp. I was very happy to see they had taken a look and begun to get a little twinge of hope that we might make it through.

It would be amazing to get some feedback from the judges, I imagine this wouldn’t be very practical though, I suspect they’ve had a lot of entires to look though. 100 more entries this year than last year according to their email. Im pleased they looked at the demo at all and I’ll take it as a complimet and continue working hard.

Maybe next year

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• Free eWrite Lite Demo

Yesterday I used OnlineMeetingRooms.com for the first time as part of James Corbetts Coffee Cooler. Online Meeting Rooms is run by Joe Garde and when I logged in, Joe himself was logged in so we had a quick chat.

I assumed it would be a little clunky especially considering my ongoing LAN/Broadband reliability issues but it all ran very smoothly. My 1MB connection didn’t quite meet Joe’s recommended connection speeds for using Online Meeting Rooms but there were no problems at all, the video and audio never went out of sync.

I got to see some very useful features such as being able to share a browser window where the host could append notes or drawings. The quality of the video could also be  put up or down to allow it to better suit the different connection speeds of a user. Users windows could be moved around too and resized to facilitate a main talker if there were plenty of people taking part.

I’d love to use it again with a few more people joining in to see how it holds up. I might also suggest using this to a few customers in Dublin that we visit from time to time to save on travelling up and down. It would be a handy way to show a user how to perform certain actions in the eWrite software for example without the need for them to install any new software.

A few months back I wanted to get a separate phone number for the home office so that I wouldn’t have to use the home phone for calls.

At the time I checked Skype to see if I could get a phone number for Cork. For whatever reason it wasn’t available at the time. The other day it popped back into my mind so I checked Skype, they were available again!

I’d love to be able to set up a number that would spell out ‘ewrite’ but it wasn’t meant to be. All the Cork (021) numbers available started with 2348***.

The number I ended up buying is 021 2348553. It cost €57.50 including VAT for one year. 3 months is also available for €17 or so.

To try it out I phoned the new number from the house phone, it worked just fine except for a little echo of my own voice.  Later in the day I received a couple of calls using the number and it all work flawlessly, grand sound quality.

Caller ID isn’t available for these Irish numbers from Skype however.  If I call someone now from Skype it will show my mobile number as the caller ID, which is fine with me. It takes 24 hours for this caller ID to kick in.

So now with my new number and my trusty Binatone cordless phone / internet phone (€44.99 from Argos) I can make and receive calls from Skype without clocking up the home phone bill.

To help spread the word for the Moviestar.ie Irish Web Awards 2008, eWrite have put an ad on facebook to run for 14 days.

We’ve spent only a small amount on it, $73 (50 Euro). The ad will run from Tuesday August 19th to Monday September 1^st. The parameters for the Facebook ad are : $1 will be paid for every click and a maximum of $5 will be spent each day.

Hopefully this will bring some well deserved attention to the awards. Thank you to Damien Mulley for all the work he has put into this.  Check out the blog for day by day details.

Don’t forget to nominate your site, its free!

Last night I spent the last few hours leading up to the Seedcamp deadline tweaking my application and finally submitted it at 11:41pm.

Last Thursday a few of us got together in Oriel house in Ballincollig to see if we could assist each other in our applications. At first I was disappointed with the turn out of only 4 people. Lesson learned, going to make sure I have numbers before I organise anything again.

I got great value out of that morning though. Thank you very much to Conor O’Neill, Phoebe Bright and Dara Burke for being there to chat about ideas and for practical tips. We created documents and shared them using Google Docs to virtually look over each others shoulders and offer suggestions where we could. I think I received (needed?) the most suggestions. Thanks again to Conor, Phoebe and Dara for your suggestions on the application form.

Also, Thank you to Robin Blandford. I think he was the only one to put his own answers to the Seedcamp application on his blog to get some feedback from his readers. Robin also allowed me to print out his answers to use last Thursday as a guide. Thanks Robin and the very best of luck with your application for Decisions for Heroes!

Roll on the 25th…

I placed an ad on facebook for 10 days to run from July 15^th to July25th. I specified that I would pay 1 Dollar for a Click and that the maximum I would pay per day would be 10 Dollars.

There were a few differences in the number of clicks when I compared Facebook ad details to Google analytics so I went investigating.

Unfortunately, I don’t have access to the logs from Blacknight to allow for a third source of data, logs are kept only for 5 days. If I advertise again on Facebook, Ill include my own scripts to log traffic data too.

A chart of the Ad clicks according to Facebook ad manager and Google Analytics.

According to Facebook Ad manager, the ad was clicked on 66 times. The ad ended on the 25^th but it tells me the ad was still clicked on on the 26^th which is nice.

The numbers in red show the days where Facebook ad manager and Google Analytics disagree about the number of clicks and visits. 8 of the overall 13 days for a 10 day ad campaign show different numbers

On the 15^th, my site was changing hosting over to Blacknight so that probably explains the difference of 3 visits that day. The site may not have loaded correctly for the user that day and so Google probably didn’t record the visits properly.

On the 26^th and 27^th, I don’t know why Facebook still had the ad going on the 26^th, I got charged for it which went over the free 100 dollars I gots from the VISA application and my credit card was charged accordingly.

Facebook charge of €13.21 on AIB 24 Hour banking

According to Google, I received 2 referrals from Facebook on 26^th and 27^th. Based on a comment from John O’Connor that never occurred to me, most likely the 2 referrals on the 27^th is a result of 4 visitors on the 26^th and they didn’t navigate away from the site or close the site until after midnight. Its a pity I cant see specific times on Google. Perhaps the exported reports from Facebook ad manager will tell me, but I can’t open it properly at the moment since the .xls file messes up when I open it in Open Office.

For the rest of the days, I can’t explain the differences between Facebook ad clicks and Google analytics visits.

In total, I was charged 120 Dollars for the ad campaign. I assumed (incorrectly?) that I would only be paying if the ad was clicked so according to the clicks shown above I should only have to pay 66 Dollars as it was 1 dollar per click.

I told the Ad manager I would like to spend no more than 10 Dollars per day so it seems I was charged the full 10 Dollars per day regardless of the number of Clicks.

Has anyone else advertised on Facebook? If you’re considering it, read Damien Mulleys tutorial on Advertising on Facebook and read Alexia Golez’s post about getting money for free to advertise.

The Corbally Suite of Oriel House Hotel has been booked on August 7th for the day for an informal brainstorming session for applications for Seedcamp.

Last week, Conor O’Neill created a poll to see if there was any interest in a meet up like this. There seems to be enough to warrant a group to get together and help each other out in filling in the application form.I have a PDF version of the online form so I’ll have print outs on the day.

If you’re interested in attending, wander in on the day, especially if you have any experience in apply for Seedcorn last year that could help someone else.

Tea or coffee is available in the lobby or the bar and free wifi available too. To find the Corbally suite, come in the main door, reception is to your left. To the left of the reception is a doorway leading down corridors to the old section of the building (in the picture above). The Corbally suite is one of the first couple of rooms and is labelled.

Hopefully I’ll see you there. Email me if theres anything I can help with.

Below is the layout of the invoices eWrite Cork use to bill customers for setting up eWrite Lite on existing websites. The costs include a set up fee for 150 Euro and an annual fee for 200 Euro for support and updates.

It doesn’t include VAT at the moment as eWrite Cork doesn’t earn the amount required.

I had the logo in colour but it was recommended that it should just be black and white for an invoice.

Any suggestions for its layout? Do you think I should add or remove anything?

On Tuesday July 15^th I created my first ad for eWrite Lite on Facebook. I started this after reading Damien Mulleys post ‘Facebook Ad Competition - Best Irish Facebook Ad Campaign‘ and decided I’d give it a go.

Paying for it popped to mind, that was sorted quickly enough by adding the VISA Business network Application. Thanks to a link from Damiens blog to Alexia’s blog describing how to get 100 Dollars free to advertise in Facebook.

I logged into Facebook and added the VISA application on the 13^th. The next day I received a nice email from Facbook Ads Team telling me I have received a coupon code and directed me to enter this into the Billing section of the Ads Manager.

I went through the steps of creating an ad for eWrite Lite. Damien also had this covered with a ‘How to advertise on Facebook‘ guide.

I specified that I would pay 1 dollar for a click, I wanted to spend a maximum for 10 dollars a day and run the ad for 10 days to users 18 years and older in Ireland.

So heres the eWrite Lite advert I created:

This was actually my second attempt. I didn’t like my first one, so I created another, shorter and more to the point.

That day, I also moved my site over to Blacknight.ie hosting so I could use a Linux based server. Quite stupid timing on my part, many of the first clicks from the Facebook ad would probably have received a blank site. Didn’t last long though.

So enough background, heres the graph of clicks from Facebook to eWritelite.com over the 10 day period:

Visits to ewritelite.com according to Facebook ad manager

July 15th : 10 Clicks

July 16th : 9 Clicks

July 17th : 4 Clicks

July 18th : 6 Clicks

July 19th : 4 Clicks

July 20th : 3 Clicks

July 21st : 4 Clicks

July 22nd : 6 Clicks

July 23rd : 10 Clicks

July 24th : 3 Clicks

July 25th : 3 Clicks

Heres the graph of impressions for the same period. The peak on the 23^rd is 37,327 impressions.

The spike in impressions and resulting clicks on the 23^rd is most likey due to Facebooks new interface design opened to the public that week which now shows 2 ads on a page rather than 1.

Heres an image of Facebook.com referrals from Google analytics for the same period. They don’t quite match up wth the clicks that Facebook show to the site.

Visits to ewritelite.com according to Google Analytics

July 15th : 5 Visits

July 16th : 7 Visits

July 17th : 2 Visits

July 18th : 5 Visits

July 19th : 4 Visits

July 20th : 3 Visits

July 21st : 2 Visits

July 22nd : 3 Visits

July 23rd : 9 Visits

July 24th : 2 Visits

July 25th : 3 Visits

—

July 26th : 1 Visits

July 27th : 1 Visits

I don’t get the difference in the Clicks from Facebook and the visits recorded by Google. I certainly don’t get why there are visits to the site from facebook after the ad campaign finished. Not complaining though.

Facebook billing reports 10 dollars taken from my accound each day of the ad. Shouldn’t it only take 10 dollars if I’ve had 10 clicks that day? It also shows I have 20 Dollars left in my account a few days after the campaign ended.

Lessons learned

Don’t move the website to another server at the start of an ad campaign.

As a result of all the clicks from the Facebook ad, I recevied no enquiries from interested people. This is a sharp reminder for me to really focus on the website content and get the eWrite Lite Demo back up and running for users to experience the content manager.

Advertising on Facebook works, just make sure there is something on the receiving end for visitors to consume or interact with.

Conclusions

I’m going to advertise on Facebook again as soon as I’ve made some improvements to ewritelite.com

Conor O Neill recently wrote a post on web2ireland.org regarding Seedcamp and putting in an application before the deadline.

In the comments, we talked about gathering a few people together from Cork with the aim of helping each other fill out the forms a little better than we might do on our own. I imagine I’d be quite embarrassed to read what I wrote in the forms last year, and I’d certainly benefit from any input or feedback that anyone can offer.

Open Coffee would be ideal for this, though with holidays and the deadline of Seedcamp, ad ah-hoc session is needed.

Anyone interested in meeting in Oriel House Hotel in Ballincollig to help polish their form filling talents?

Conor has put up a poll at web2ireland to gauge interest in this meet-up.