Digital Marketing | Digital Strategy | This Digital World

Google Has a Great Future with the Arrival of the Chrome Web Store

In case you missed it, Google is trying to do for the web what Apple has done for the iPhone - provide an 'app' based experience for you to consumer content online.

The idea is that Google Chrome browser users can experience a much richer display of content through web apps - essentially web pages rewritten in HTML5 that are designed to be more immersive, look better and offer a more pleasant browsing experience (it also offers site owners rich advertising opportunities).

I think it's a good way to go and makes a lot of sense.  Most people tend to have a favorite website list of about eight frequently visited sites, so if they are all available as web apps and look better, it's got to be a good thing right?

Of course Google will also capitalize on the fact that as more and more web apps are created, it will become increasingly difficult to find the good ones.  Hey presto, isn't search something that Google does quite well?

And with free apps come paid apps and guess who is going to take a share of your hard earned cash when you buy a paid add through the Google app store?  Let me just say (as a long term shareholder of Google), that I am bullish on the future of Google.

WordPress Blog or TypePad Blog?

There were 16 million searches on Google last month for 'wordpress' and only 300,000 for 'Typepad' so on the face of it, one might expect the massive popularity of the WordPress blogging platform to be a strong indicator of quality and value, but I'm not so sure.

I have been a TypePad user for more than four years (this blog is a TypePad blog and so is my other restaurant blog, so I know that platform pretty well.  But recently I have also been playing around with creating a WordPress blog and thought it would be interesting to compare the two.

So what am I evaluating?

Thanks to Blogger (not evaluated here), WordPress and TypePad, creating a blog or website nowadays is very easy and very cheap.  Here I evaluate the ease of creating a new business website or blog for the typical small business owner, that doesn't know much about creating visibility online.  I will evaluate both WordPress and TypePad on the following:

>Account Creation
>Domain name
>Interface
>Design options
>Publishing
>Stats
>Marketing
>Pricing

Here goes:

Account creation

Both WordPress and TypePad allow you to set up a free account and both are very easy to set up.  Click here for WordPress and here for TypePad. Typical registration information is required and you do not need to enter any credit card information. Make sure you have already thought of your website name though, since this is one of the first things you will be asked; which brings me on to...

Domain name

Your website (or blog) address at WordPress will be yourcompanyname.wordpress.com.  At TypePad it will be yourcompanyname.typepad.com. Either of these is fine for a personal blog but if you want to be a bit more professional then you should register your own domain name and map your domain name to your WordPress or TypePad website address.  Check Go Daddy for .com availability.  Once you have your own domain name, the mapping process for both WordPress and TypePad is a little tricky to do the first time around but both provide good step by step instructions.  WordPress will charge you $12 per year to map your domain name and with TypePad you will need to be on their monthly plan (minimum $8.95 per month).  Money well spent.

Interface

Both sites offer simple interfaces but both take some time to get used to.  Just knowing which section to make the change you want to make takes time to get used to.  But everything is logical. Just be patient.  At a push I would say that the TypePad interface is a little easier to use, mainly because there are less options.

Design options

Creating a professional, good-looking website takes time and if you outsource it to a design agency, can cost you a lot of money.  Fortunately, both WordPress and TypePad offer a range of design templates that make it very easy to create a professional looking website.  You need to think about the layout first - do you want two columns or three, headers, footers etc?  Then choose colors that reflect your brand.  Both WordPress and TypePad will allow you to upload your own photo or logo to use as a header.  If you don't already have a logo, you can create free, simple text style ones using Cooltext. Overall, WordPress has more design templates but TypePad has plenty of options too.

Publishing

Creating posts and pages (for companies wanting more of a website feel than a blog feel, you will want to create pages) is super-easy on both platforms.  Both are WYSIWYG interfaces (what you see is what you get) that enable you to change fonts, text color, size, insert pictures or videos etc.  If you know a bit of html then you can customize even more.  And both will let you post from your mobile phone. Simple all round.

Stats

So you've created your website and you've added a load of content to it. Is anyone reading it?  Both WordPress and TypePad will give you very basic stats packages that really just show you the number of visits per day.  TypePad however, offers very easy integration with Google Analytics and for that reason alone, I favor TypePad over WordPress.

Marketing

One of the biggest advantages of creating a website using WordPress or TyePad versus designing, building and hosting your own site, is search engine visibility.  You can submit a post and it will be indexed in Google in a matter of days (some TypePad posts of mine have been indexed in 24 hours), meaning that more people are likely to find your content.  TypePad has a number of options during set up that ensure your website will get maximum visibility (such as the option to create a site map) and enables you to add specific keywords to each post.  Downside is that you cannot alter the metatags of individual posts or pages.  WordPress seems to have less SEO (search engine optimization) options, but I haven't spent enough time evaluating all the options.  Any regular users of WordPress please comment on this!

Pricing

Finally, we come to pricing.  I mentioned that both sites give you a free option (and TypePad will give you a free 30 day trial of its monthly, professional package).  But as you develop your online presence, you will find that forking out a little cash will make things so much better.

WordPress charges 'add-on's that soon mount up. For example:

Domain mapping (essential for any business) - $12 per annum
More space - $19,97 pa for 5GB (you get 3 GB free)
No ads (important for that professional look) - $29,97 pa
Custom CSS (if you're a budding designer and don't like the standard templates) - $14,97 pa
Video uploads (if you want to upload regular video clips) - $59,97 pa

TypePad on the other hand, makes you pay monthly, with the first monthly package costing $8.95 per month.  This will enable you to map your own domain and gives you ample space for your website.  There is a 150 MB upload limit though (not a problem unless you are uploading a lot of video or audio files) and this option does not give you custom CSS.

So overall on pricing, WordPress probably wins through, since most people really only need to pay for the domain mapping and the ads removal.

Because I've used TypePad for so long, I am probably biased towards it, but having spent time with WordPress, I can see why it is so popular.  If I were to start a new blog tomorrow, I would go with WordPress.  But if I wanted more of a website than a blog, I would go with TypePad - it just seems that much easier to create the layout and pages that fit with a more traditional looking website.