ankitoberoi

I wrote a somewhat similar article about an year ago: http://www.adpushup.com/blog/how-typography-affects-readers/

Quoting from the article: An experiment conducted by Kevin Larson and Rosalind Picard looked at how typography affects mood and performance of the readers. It happened across two studies, where they took three kind of measurements: Relative Subject Duration (RSD), Likert Scale and through a cognitive task which was different for both studies.

There were twenty participants, half of them got the text with poor typography and half got good typography.

In the first study, the participants were given twenty minutes to read the passage, amid which (after 15 minutes) they were interrupted and asked to estimate how long they had been reading for. After the RSD data was recorded, they were asked to fill out the Likert preference questionnaire with 6 statements, where one of the statements was whether they found the text easy to read.

Next, they were given a cognitive task, which for the first study was a Candle problem.

The second study was very similar to the first one, except for the RSD data, they were interrupted 17 minutes into reading, and the cognitive performance task was changed to remote associates test.

Results - Participants with good typography underestimated their time by 3 minutes 18 seconds in the first study and by 5 minutes and 21 seconds in the second study. This shows that when a passage is well structured, the readers are more engrossed in the text. - With the Likert scale questionnaire in the first study, the results were not reliable. But in the second study, some scores were in favor of good typography. - For the Candle problem, out of the 10 participants who were shown good typography, 4 successfully completed the task, while 0 participants completed the task in the other group. - In the Remote associates task, the results were not statistically significant or reliable with the good typography group succeeding on 52% of the task at an average speed of 6395ms, and the poor typography group succeeding at 48% of the task at an average speed of 6715ms.

Even though the result was not reliable enough in the second study, the good typography group did perform better. This can be attributed to the fact that they were in a better mood before starting the task. Hence, they were better at problem solving.

There have been a few times I've seen an ad on a website that looked like it was for something I wanted, and wanted to click it.

Absolutely. IMO, Banner Blindness alone is the biggest reason why web publishers are facing difficulty in monetising web inventory.

Many a times, people don't notice ads even if they were relevant to them, just because of banner blindness. In fact, 3 out of 10 display ads are never seen [1]

[1] http://www.adpushup.com/blog/banner-blindness/ (Disclosure: I wrote this)

That's right - INR 115,000 per month (~ $1900 per month).

Thank you for reading! Here's an article on how we're built traction before the round: http://www.adpushup.com/blog/how-were-getting-tons-of-beta-s...

Thanks! From what we've been told, 50 is somewhat large - I personally don't know of any other startup which has done that, in an angel round.

We'll have a dashboard for each investor and if something requires investor approval - it comes from a select few, who have the Power of Attorney from the rest of the group.

To get a better Google Page Speed score :)

Thanks! fixed that.

That's quite interesting - not heard of this before. Can you share more information on this?

I wrote the article.

You are correct - Current will flow through all paths, with more current flowing through the lower-resistance paths - Just like humans :)

Wow - was just about to ask the same.

I'm based out of India and hate the Taxation system here (it's worse than what you read for the US) - software attracts Service Tax and VAT (Sales Tax) both - you pay reverse service tax for services you take from abroad and you even pay TDS (Withholding Tax) from your pocket for entities not incorporated in India. I could just go on and go on here.... it's just stupid.

I'm planning to incorporate my startup soon and want to do it in a country where I can: 1) Use a PG like Stripe. 2) No Service/Sales Tax just flat out corporate tax on profits. 3) Easy, Simple and Affordable Registration and maintenance process.

AdPushup (http://www.adpushup.com), to help publisher optimize ad revenues.

http://www.adpushup.com/blog/adpushup-helped-publishers-doub... - This post helps explain what we do, much better.

Yes and a lot of very talented people would not be able to focus on doing what they currently do full time (and love to do) as they'll have to worry about making money.

OR

As a content consumer, you'll have to pay for the content directly which is currently available for free.

Yes, I know everyone hates ads and I'll probably get downvoted here too but - You should punish publishers who serve malware, popups, JS & other bad stuff BUT you don't punish ALL the publishers - many of them don't do that and are just fine.

Quite useful but the site has ignored about 17.5% of the world population - Indian names are missing.

I agree and I think everyone would - we've all seen such businesses and no likes getting spammed.

Although I wonder if it makes sense financially to do that. It would be great to see if someone has data on this. I'm not really sure if one can actually improve conversions or whatever they want to improve by sending emails that way.

Actually, two emails a month is the upper limit, which we use for actively engaged new signups. With 2 emails a week in this category, we were able to get about 4 times more engagement and time spent on the app than single email a week.

Also, we measure when people use the emails we sent and it's generally of no use to send more emails, after two consecutive emails not being clicked on - so one can stop there.

I don't see why one should not send two or even more emails, when the user wants them. Users have understood our product better and it helped achieve what we define as activation, much faster.

On the other hand, If you were a normal trial signup who just registered and never actually used the product, we'd email you thrice in the first month (including the first email) and then once every 3/6 months. We're also thinking of sending some informative blog posts once in a while. This system isn't old enough yet to give significant data about the effectiveness of the mailers sent after the first month.

We are not talking about boycotting a company or industry here. That's boycotting the Internet because Publishers who provide free information here make a large part of the Internet.

In the end, you won't find so much content freely available and would have to pay for it directly - most likely.

Interesting. Another reason why text only emails are better is they make it to Gmail's primary tab and get more attention.

However, I disagree with the only two more emails part. Email is a very strong tool, often underestimated.

Depending upon the stage in the lifecycle, you can send emails to: 1) Convert trial signups to Activated users. 2) Re-activating users. 3) Convert activated users to paying customers. 4) Upselling paying customers. 5) Improving retention.

It goes without saying all emails should depend on what the customer has done with your app so far. For example, if I'm losing an activated user, the script can check which important sections of my app have not been visited and send an email informing about what he missed and why it's important - you get the point.

So, it is best to collect extensive data about how your customers use your app and fire customized emails accordingly.

I normally don't send more than 2 emails a week for the first one month and then this number decreases. I'm wondering what others do here.

You should punish publishers who serve malware, popups, JS & other bad stuff BUT you don't punish ALL the publishers - many of them don't do that and are just fine.

In fact, instead of an AdBlocker, it is better off if there is a plugin which blocks such sites completely. Why use their content if you don't like them anyway.

Just Blocking Ads on all websites, is not a solution. You are only trying to put publishers out of business who provide and share information.

I actually wrote a post on the subject sometime ago: http://www.adpushup.com/blog/ad-blocking-bad-news-consumers/

Sorry about the plug, I'm a co-founder @ AdPushup and a near future product goal is also to prevent publishers from Ad Blockers.

I know I'll get downvoted here (everyone just hates ads so much), but there are networks which do serve malware-free ads.

Also, you don't want to punish all the publishers just because some (or even if it's a majority) do bad.

Agreed, but my point still remains, even that law would not be perfect.

You would always miss out something or leave something open for abusers, so, to some extent, common sense should prevail too.

I use FB advertising to generate leads for my retail education business. We use Adwords too.

CPL via FB is about $1 (we're in India) and the CPL via Adwords is about 80 cents. Conversions: FB is basically garbage, less than .5%, while Adwords does way better and gives a positive ROI.

I have used Adwords retargeting but not FB retargeting, has it been beneficial to anyone?

Nothing is perfect.

Breaking the law sometime makes sense. Think of a person driving his pregnant wife or a injured person from an accident scene to the hospital.

I drive a Ford (No GPS) and I'm not sure if any ford car here in India has GPS which uploads the data.

I'm curious: How does the upload happen - In-built SIM? Who pays for the Data?

If bitcoin goes mainstream, it would definitely affect other crypto currencies too, but very little. Others may not necessarily go mainstream. The reason why I say this is since:

1) Bitcoin alone has enough liquidity to handle $100,000/coin or even more and this would not affect its usability as people can still use the smallest denomination, a satoshi. So the finite supply is not a concern at even $1m/coin.

2) Global acceptance will have an important part in making it go mainstream. Right now, online/office vendors have started accepting bitcoins but thats too little, just like how paypal was in its initial days and compared to this, very very less business are accepting other crypto currencies. I know a lot of business who plan to start accepting crypto currencies soon and all of them mean bitcoin. So, why would other crypto currencies go mainstream when you can't actually use them around the Internet?

3) No one would mind buying bitcoins at a higher price, eliminating the need for other crypto currencies. This is so because all vendors peg the bitcoin with USD or some other currency. So if bitcoin prices soar, it really doesn't affect the new buyer much.

True, very unlikely but still, not impossible.

Considering if bitcoin goes mainstream the demand it will generate can easily take it above $100,000 at least. To give you an example, not a single non-techie friend of mine owns a bitcoin, even today.

It's not 10x the cost. To make it simpler, what you charge is 1/10th the value which you create for your user.

So if your user benefits by making an additional $100 by using your product, you charge him $10.

Very well put, which is why it is extremely important for startups to actually figure out the value which they can create for their customers.

This is easy said than done though, depending upon what business you do.

Normally, I like to test pretty much everything (start with 10x, compare with 9x/11x maybe) but when it comes to prices, I personally feel A/B testing them is a bad idea.

Oh great, I'm a ENTJ just like Steve Jobs & Jim Carrey.

So, Steve and Jim both were similar in personality?

So that includes people who have me in their circles or the ones I have in my circle?

Glad I'm immune to such modal boxes.

Before I can even consciously notice them, my reflex action is to press escape or click on the close icon :)