The iPad doesn't have to do as much as a laptop. It just as to do as much as people need it to do.

It’s no secret that I like Apple.

I like the simplicity.  The design.  How everything is intuitive.

No doubt, there was a lot of skepticism when Apple announced the much anticipated iPad.  No Flash.  No multitasking.  No keyboard.  Simply put, it didn’t live up to expectations.

Know what?  Sounds just like the iPhone.  And I would argue many of the same reasons the iPhone was successful will be why the iPad will be successful.

First, the iPad is simple.  Those who are in the tech community take computer competency for granted.

The fact is, a lot of people still don’t get computers.  How many of your parents could set up an email client?  How about the WiFi in their home with networked printing?  Hell, most people don’t know how to reliably adjust the margins in Word.

There seems to be this mentality that the iPad is somehow deficient because it runs iPhone apps as opposed to full size Mac OS X apps.  Which is a valid argument if we say that more is better.  But more isn’t always better.  More is just more.

I remember when I was using Quicken to try to manage my finances.  It was an absolute nightmare.  Why?  Was it because there was some feature that Quicken didn’t have that I really needed?  Nope.  Quite the opposite.  It gave me more than I needed.  I just got lost in the thing.

People don’t need to get lost.  They need the basics.  There’s not many day-to-day tasks that I can’t do on my phone.  Search for an address?  Check.  Pay my bills?  Yep.  Check email, read the news, get the weather?  Yes, yes and yes.  I actually prefer to do email on my phone than on my computer.  It’s faster and easier.  And for 90% of people, that’s what they need.  They don’t need to run Photoshop, develop a website, or make a pivot table.  They just need the basics.

Second, the iPad is always connected to the web (well, the 3G iPads are).  The impact of this has certainly been overlooked by many.  Is your laptop always connected to the web?  On the train, in the car, at the airport terminal?  Unless you have one of those mobile broadband cards, the answer is probably no.

Think about what it’s like to constantly have information at your fingertips.  Compare that to before you had a smartphone, when getting lost meant you had to bring out a map and waiting anxiously for that important email meant you had to be at home to receive it.  If you had to choose between an always-on internet connection or the ability to do advanced spreadsheet functions, I’d be willing to guess you’d pick the connection (and apparently with iWork, you could do the spreadsheet stuff, too).

Finally, I think one of the big reasons the iPad will win is because Apple had the discipline to say no.  To say no to Flash.  To say no to multitasking.  One of my favorite Steve Jobs quotes highlights this:

It comes from saying no to 1,000 things to make sure we don’t get on the wrong track or try to do too much. We’re always thinking about new markets we could enter, but it’s only by saying no that you can concentrate on the things that are really important.

I’ll probably get a lot of flack for this, but Flash isn’t important.  I know 75% of online video uses Flash.  I also know that it’s not that hard to port Flash videos over to another format.  It’s way too resource-intensive for things that don’t need to be that bloated.  Besides, Flash would be an awful  user experience on the iPad.  Right now, Flash interfaces are designed for something the size of the mouse pointer, not the much larger size of your finger.  That isn’t a user experience I want.

As for multitasking, I’m on the fence here.  I understand that it doesn’t have multitasking because that leads to more crashes.  And frankly, I’ve had periods where my iPhone apps crash much too frequently.  So I realize I wouldn’t want more of that.  Still, when you’re surfing the web, it would be nice to be able to listen to Pandora at the same time.  Would multitasking be nice?  Yes, as long as it was relatively crash-free.  But it’s not critical for me.  And I’m guessing it’s not critical for most people.

I’m not blind to the flaws.  As opposed to the iPhone, which served as a replacement for existing cell phones that were absolutely awful, and the iPod, which replaced CD players that were bulky and required that you carry around a huge book of CDs, the iPad doesn’t replace anything.  Most people don’t have netbooks, but everyone had a cell phone before the iPhone.  Everyone had a CD player.  Those were easy upgrades to understand.

When I hear criticism of the iPad, I can’t help but remember the criticisms of the iPhone and think about how far the iPhone has come.  In the beginning, the iPhone was on a slower EDGE connection with no MMS, no copy/paste, no application development platform.  It was, in many ways, simple and basic.  It’s still simple today, but with 3G, MMS, and thousands of apps, it’s not basic.

The iPad will be the same way.  It’s basic right now, because developers have not been building applications for a 10 inch screen.  That will change, and I expect that developers will slowly unlock the full potential of a large, fast touchscreen device.  Apple has shown a propensity to release very focused, basic products and iterate on them.  The iPod and iPhone are the exemplars for this philosophy.  The iPad will follow that same model.

Apple succeeds by making simple products that often do less, but do enough and do it better.  That’s the first half.  The second half of the success equation is creating products that replace something consumers already have.

Half of the Apple success equation is present in the iPad.  Logical replaceability, however, isn’t as clear.  Will people ditch a laptop for a more basic device?  The answer to that question will be predicated not on whether the iPad will do as much as a laptop.  Rather, the answer will lie in whether the iPad will do as much as people need it to do.  Which, to be sure, is a very different standard.

Much has been said about the opportunities that Internet-enabled mobile phones and so-called smart phones bring to advertisers.

While I agree that the next 3-5 years will bring about significant innovation with regard to mobile advertising, current mobile-based advertising has shown a lack of effective execution.  Granted, my view is biased toward advertising on the iPhone, simply because the iPhone is the device that I use on a daily basis.  However, along with the Blackberry, the iPhone is certainly the most sophisticated and advanced cell phone available, and should offer a good case study of advertising execution.

Below, I offer an analysis of various advertising on iPhone apps that I use daily.  I have also given each ad a letter grade.  To determine the grade, I considered the the advertisement itself (i.e. the banner or text ad, whether it had a call to action, placement), the landing page after tapping on the ad (usability on a mobile device, messaging) and whether or not the ad was tracking a conversion, thereby delivering the ability to track a true ROI for the campaign.

Weather Channel

The Weather Channel application places a small advertisement at the top of the screen.  The current advertiser when I pulled my screenshots was Zyrtec.

Zyrtec ad on Weather Channel application.

The drop-down ad is actually pretty good.  The unopened ad says “The fastest 24-hour OTC allergy relief.”  There is not a call to action, but the ad is simple and easy to read.

When I tap on the banner, the offer drops down.  There is a clear image of the Zyrtec product and a very clear message.  So far, so good.  However, the second screen fails to execute well for a mobile device.

After I tap on the expanded offer, I am redirected to what appears to be an internal page from the regular Zyrtec site.  The page has extremely small type.  While I can zoom in on the text, it would be better to have a landing page that is optimized for a mobile device.

Once I zoom in, I can see that there is a “Download PDF” link to redeem a refund if I was not satisfied with the product.  When I tap on the link, nothing happens.  Why would the advertiser require that the user download a file if they are on a mobile handset?  It just doesn’t make any sense.  It would have made better sense if the user could enter their email address and receive the necessary file in an email that they could print off later on.  While conversion tracking may be implemented on the “Download PDF” link, it is irrelevant because it is not possible to download, let alone print, the form to be sent in.

Mobile Ad Execution Grade: D-

New York Times

Similar to the Weather Channel application, the New York Times hase an advertisement on the home page of the app.  While the New York Times has featured various different advertisers in it’s in-app advertising, they also fill those advertising spots with ads for their own content and features.  This was the case when I reviewed their advertising execution.

New York Times mobile advertisement

The NY Times runs ads on the bottom of the screen, as opposed to the Weather Channel which ran its ad on the top.  The landing domain m.nytimes.com is listed in the ad, along with clear messaging “Find movie showtimes.”

New York Times landing page

The landing page is optimized for a mobile device and lists current movies.  From there, the user can view showtimes or reviews from the New York Times.  The user can easily get the information they are looking for on this well optimized mobile page.  The conversion metric here may simply be click-throughs, however it is feasible that the NY Times is tracking clicks through to reviews and/or showtimes.

Mobile Ad Execution Grade: A

Chicago Tribune

The Chicago Tribune iPhone-optimized site uses Google AdSense to serve advertising on the site.  The Tribune runs AdSense on the article pages of its iPhone site.  The Trib also runs small banner ads on the homepage of the site.  However, like the NY Times, the Chicago Tribune was advertising its own content, so I opted instead to take a look at the AdSense.

AdSense on Chicago Tribune

The ads on the Tribune’s iPhone site are located below the article.  It seems very likely that many users would finish reading the article and neglect to even look at the ads.  But, as Internet-marketers know, we don’t need many users clicking on the ads.  If we have enough traffic on the site, we just need a small percentage of the traffic clicking on ads, and that makes the system work.

University of Phoenix ad

I tapped on an ad for what appears to be a University of Phoenix affiliate site.  The landing page does not appear to be optimized for a mobile phone, however the page is very simple and actually works quite well as a mobile landing page.  The first page captures information such as citizenship status, prior level of education completed and email address.  Then, after tapping on the continue button, the user can submit additional information such as address, phone number, and whether or not they want a University of Phoenix representative to contect them.

Mobile Ad Execution Grade: B+

ESPN

The ESPN iPhone optimized site serves ads on the top of the site, above all of the content.  It is similar to the Weather Channel and the New York Times in that it is analogous to what we think of as a traditional banner ad.

Knight ad on ESPN iPhone site

In this case, the ad includes the company name, a call to action and a landing page domain.  However, there is no indication of what is being advertised.  I am not familiar with Knight, and to be honest I have absolutely no clue what they are advertising.  I’m not sure if it’s software or an ISP or financial services or what.  With all of the other ads, I had at least a decent idea of what the advertisement was trying to push.

Knight ESPN iPhone ad landing page

After tapping on the banner ad, I found that the landing page was actually on the ESPN.com mobile site and not on an external site.  The landing page simply has a small amount of text from the advertiser and a URL.  However, the URL for www.knight.com is not clickable.  Despite trying to touch the URL to go to Knight.com, I was not able to be taken anywhere on the Knight website.  While the advertiser may be able to track click-throughs, they are not capturing visitor information to record any type of conversion.

Mobile Ad Execution Grade: D

Conclusion

Based on the four mobile advertisements reviewed, it appears that the biggest area of improvement for mobile advertisers is in the area of mobile usability.  Two of the four ads sent users to non-mobile  optimized landing pages, and another sent users to a page with the advertiser URL that couldn’t be clicked on.  Many of the advertisers were able to strike a good balance between short messaging and clear phrasing letting the user know what is being advertised.  Surprisingly, but thankfully, conversion tracking seems to be something that most of the advertisers had the capability of tracking.  While mobile advertising is certainly progressing, advertisers need to consider and account for the mobile medium when creating ads, as opposed to retro-fitting existing assets that are better suited for a user on a fully functional computer.

There is no doubt that Flash creates many issues when it comes to search engine optimization.  As you probably know, Flash files are similar to interactive movie files.  Even when there is textual content inside of Flash files, the text probably will not be indexed by the engines.

A webmaster may or may not know about the various tactics that can be used to compensate for the SEO issues that are created when Flash is used.  They may be more likely to know best practices for graceful degradation from a user interface perspective than from a SEO perspective.  These user interface best practices can help with SEO issues as well, as long as they are implemented correctly.

SWFObject

The SWFObject is essentially a small JavaScript file that detects whether a users browser has Flash installed.  If the user has Flash, then the Flash file will load and the user will be able to engage in the rich Flash experience.  However, if the user does not have the Flash player installed, the SWFObject can be set up to show HTML content in place of the Flash file.

This type of graceful degradation is important to search engines as well as to humans.  Because search engines are not effective at indexing Flash, and since they will not execute JavaScript, the SWFObject allows replacement HTML content to be shown not only to human users, but to search engines as well.  Google has come out and said that use of the SWFObject is an SEO best practice, as long as the replacement content mirrors exactly the content in the Flash file.

Low Speed Pages

Sometimes, Flash developers may use what are called low speed pages as a way to provide graceful degradation for non-Flash users.  What are low speed pages?  Very simply, they are pages designed to be smaller in file size, and thus, load faster.  Generally, low speed pages are HTML versions of their Flash counterparts.  Low speed pages originated back before broadband was widespread.  This way, users with Flash could view the larger and bulkier Flash pages, while users who didn’t have Flash or who couldn’t load it quickly enough could use the low speed pages.

Wait a second, you are surly saying.  Why are developers using low speed pages if they can just use SWFObject?  The reason is because the original intent of low speed pages was, and to a increasingly smaller percentage of internet users still is, to provide a page that is quicker to load than a larger Flash file.  But now that high-bandwidth broadband access is available to more and more users, the need for a low speed page is decreasing.

Still, that doesn’t mean that developers have stopped using low speed pages.  After all, there are still users out there that do not have broadband access, or may be visiting your site from a mobile device, and the low speed pages work well for those users.

If you are doing search engine optimization on a site that has Flash as well as low speed pages that mirror the Flash pages, you need to check to see which page, the Flash version or the low speed version, has the better chance of ranking in the SERPs.

For a smaller site, the low speed version may have an easier time ranking, because there is little external link equity which means the search engines have to rely more heavily on internal factors to determine what a page is about.  In this case, you will want to add a meta noindex tag to the Flash version of the page.

On the other hand, for a larger enterprise level site, there may be much more external link equity for your Flash pages.  This is not always the case, so make sure to do a backlink report before you start making changes.  If you do determine that the Flash pages have significant link equity, while the low speed pages do not have as much link equity, you may make the decision to put a noindex tag on the low speed pages, despite the fact that they have better on-page optimization.  The low speed pages will still be entirely available to the user, but will not be indexed by the major search engines.

The Best of Both Worlds

In the end, you can use both Flash pages that use the SWFObject as a graceful degradation method, as well as low speed pages.  The content can be the same in both the Flash version, the HTML SWFObject backup, and the low speed pages, as long as the low speed page has the noindex tag.  However, if you want the low speed page to be the page that ranks, then you will need to take steps to make sure that the content is different enough to not create duplicate content issues with the Flash page’s SWFObject backup content.

Still, the situations where you would want the low speed pages to rank are increasingly rare.  With the SWFObject, and by putting your JavaScript and Flash in external files, you can effectively minimize the file size of your primary Flash page and deliver HTML content to users that do not have Flash installed and to the search engines.

As I have mentioned before, keyword research for search engine optimization is more than just traffic and competition metrics.  It is important to look beyond traffic and competition to try to understand the intent of the user when they type their query into a search engine.

Profile the User to Get Qualified Traffic

It is not enough to only look at keyword traffic, or only look at keyword traffic and competitiveness.  In order to conduct effective keyword research, it is important to develop user profiles in your keyword research.  With every keyword that you add to your list of potential target keywords, think about what the user is looking for when they type in that keyword.

If they keyword is “widget reviews,” you know that the user is probably not yet in the buying stage.  They are looking for more information about the quality and reliability of the widgets they are seeking.  In this case, you would want the target this keyphrase to a landing page providing user reviews or testimonials.  If the keyword is “buy widgets,” you can be pretty sure that they user is ready to purchase, and you would want them to landing on a page that allows them to satisfy this need.

When performing keyword research, segment your potential keywords into separate sheets, with each sheet geared toward a specific user profile.  Using our example with the widgets, you would want one sheet that contained keywords for a user that is looking for widget reviews, another sheet with keywords for a user looking for widget specifications, and yet another sheet for a user looking to buy widgets.

User Profiles Should Mirror Your Conversion Funnel

If the idea of segmenting your keyword research based on user profiles seems a bit overwhelming, keep in mind that your user profiles will likely mirror your conversion funnel.

Your sales team is likely familiar with these different phases of user purchasing phases.  In the beginning, the user may be looking for information on whether or not they even need a widget.  Later, once they come to the conclusion that they do need a widget, they may look for information about different brands of widgets.  After that, they make look for information on widget specifications, widget reviews, costs of widgets, etc.  Then when they have collected all of the necessary information, they may decide to purchase a widget from a particular company.

In this scenario, your keyword research would be segmented based on the user as they exist in each stage of the buying process.  Of course, your website will ideally be set up to direct the consumer from each stage of the buying processes to the next relevant stage.  That way, the user can land on your site in any stage of the buying process and be taken logically through each step to the final conversion page.

Remember, though, that there will likely be users who do not fall anywhere in the conversion process.  An example would be a reporter looking to get to your web site’s press page.  Even though this kind of user is not one that would necessarily be making a purchase, it is still important to include this type of user profile in your keyword research.

The New York Times is reporting that CNN has decided to cease use of the Crawl, the scrolling text at the bottom of the TV screen.

I remember the first time I saw the Crawl.

I was returning from an intro biology class at Michigan State University at around 11:15 AM Eastern time. During the class, someone had mentioned something about a bomb going off at the Pentagon. “Big deal,” I thought to myself. Bombs go off all over the world, and the Pentagon is one of the most fortified structures on the planet.

Yet as I walked back to my dorm room, I began to sense that something was very wrong. I checked my cell phone on the walk back to my dorm and saw two missed calls and a voicemail from my father. Clearly, he had called once, hung up and immediately called back again, exhibiting an urgency that is very uncharacteristic of my father. I hastily listened to his voicemail, something about making sure I was alright. “Alright? I’m fine.” Why wouldn’t I be?

I took the elevator up to the fifth floor of the east wing of Akers Hall. I walked through the door from the elevator lobby into the resident hallway. It was normal for my floormates doors’ to be open, with the sound of televisions filling the hallway. Except this time the sound of TVs was different. Louder, no wait, not louder…but synchronized and almost echoing. The identical sounds of a newscast was rising and falling in volume as I walked past open doors. The same newscast was coming from my room, too.

I’m not too sure what happened next. I don’t know if someone was in my room, and if so who it was. But I remember watching TV for hours those next few days. It was gripping. It was frightening. It was a tremendous emotional burden for me. I remember the feeling of exhaustion, not of my physical body, but of my mental state. I wanted to know more, to find out what happened, what was going on and perhaps most pressingly, what was going to happen next. That was the Crawl for me. Every new piece of information seemed to have appeared on the Crawl many minutes before a newscaster started to talk about it. I remember reading the name “Usama bin Laden” well before I had heard it spoken.

It was the beginning of the commodification of news. Everything was a breaking story. And it was! We had heard the names, and the number of planes, and the exact times the buildings tumbled to the ground. Eventually the rate of new information slowed, but the rate of breaking stories put forth by the news networks didn’t. Sure, it was about news, but it was about eyeballs too.

For me, the Crawl represents what I perceive to be a fatal flaw in how an individuals attention is engaged by modern society. It’s data without context. How can I create and formulate an informed decision without the context of the data?

This is something we see all the time in politics. Soundbites are taken out of context and posted across the web and the 24 hour news networks. No context is provided, so the recipient is lead to make a judgment that is based off of limited information.

I just think how effective my recommendations and insights would be if I were given a data set with no context to what the data set was about. Just rows and columns filled with numbers, with no story or understanding as to what I was looking at. Sure, I could pull out some figures and trends. But there would be no way for me to take those figures and trends and weave them into a meaningful context that contributed to the story of where the data set came from.

37signals’ Signal vs. Noise blog wrote a post about the Crawl and how it is an example of trying to underdo your competition. I think there is another point that 37signals founder Jason Fried talks about that applies here too, and that is the idea of how our days are split up into smaller and smaller segments, resulting in work moments instead of work days. In the same way, our attention keeps getting divided into more and more directions, forcing us to “multitask.” We are forced to work on two, three, five things at a time, until we get to the point that everything becomes noise, and we are not thinking in ways that create meaning from the noise any longer. And it’s when we can’t create meaning that we lose value.

I don’t know about you, but I like to go with things that allow me to create value.