After reading Seth Godin’s insightful little post on archtypes I started to think, “Why is the Ipod such a success?” Many other personal MP3 players are just as capable (if not more) as the iPod. Yet they are relegated to the fate of little to no market share. What’s the biggest factor?

The big circle! People are somehow drawn to the circle way more than your standard left/right/scroll buttons. The visual aspect of the circle and the simplicity of it (implying “i’m easy as pie to use”) work hand in hand to elicit a feeling of comfort. I looked up “circle archetype” in several search engines but only got back “hippy” results that all talked about stars and life and other stuff that made me want to put on a hemp dress. Anyway, the circle symbolizes womanhood, the womb, and life itself. Put the ipod in a baby’s hands, I bet you it will be happy to play with it. As we all are.

Look at these two photos - which one makes you feel better (ignore photo of the guy eating the razor scooter handlebars)?

The whiteness! Aside from Bono’s red/black version and some pinkish ones, the ipod is generally (and advertised) white. Once again, that brings you back to purity and comfort. And as we all know, product buying decisions are based in large part on comfort.

There are plenty more ways to deconstruct the ipod and analyze why it’s such a sucess, including the brilliant marketing that goes well to support it’s Google-like-friendly mystique, but at the moment I’ll say it’s all due to its white circle.

By the way, thank you, Seth, for adding two new words back into my consciousness lately: maven and archetype.

Marketing Sherpa just published its 2006 Ecommerce Benchmark Guide with some insights into online buying. It took all kinds of data from big retailers like Apple.com and Best Buy Online to come up with some conclusions. Editorial side note… I subscribe to Marketing Sherpa but have never felt the need to plunk down $200-300 on one of their “full” marketing reports. While some of the insights are good, I feel on the whole the editor there isn’t always on target and sometimes comes up with faulty generalizations.

Some conclusions that I derive from Anne Holland’s conclusions, my own silly little brain, and crap I’ve read before:

• Search is continuing to spoil people into instant gratification. If possible, you should always provide a search on your site.
• Loyalty tracking will make your site and business more profitable. It’s a pain in the ass sometimes, but you gotta do it.
• Grow your opt-in email list.
• Flaunt your privacy policy, return policy, and “make me feel fuzzy” anti-fraud/anti-hacking/security badges

Google was just granted a voice search patent that will bring it one step closer to the inevitable: voice search for your cell phone. With all the hype surrounding mobile penetration and how everyone will be able to access the web through their phone, PSP, and toaster, I haven’t seen too many players out there focusing on the next gold rush: bridging the gap between the tiny things in millions of hands and the wealth of information online (or at least effectively).

Google did this with search, they will next do it with mobile voice search. They will probably have to go up against MS, which I imagine is working on this as well behind the scenes. Local search is the next frontier.

My phone, PDA phone, and PSP (playstation portable) can all access the internet. But I harly ever use them for that. Why? Typing in information into a device without a QUERY keyboard is painfully slow. Now, if you could just press a button and tell your cell phone “Google me pizza” or “Google Shakespeare’s restaurant, Sarasota, Florida” and get a concise screenshot back with address, phone, (and maybe map), then you have something that millions and millions of people will use.

Microsoft voice command is probably the best product I’ve used that recognizes speech, the only problem is that it’s only good for the limited amount of information and names stored in your pocket pc. So “Call Duane Anderson at home” only has to compare that to my contacts. When you leave it open ended like “Call Rico’s Pizza”, it has to compare that to the world at large, so there have to be some VERY sophisticated AI algorithms to figure out what the most likely categories of what you’re looking for would be, hopefully match that to your zip code (GPS or known user data), then ask you back what IT thinks you were looking for, maybe ask you to refine its assumptions, then give you what you need.

The technology is still in its infancy, but the first player to make voice search via mobile device a reality will win a huge piece of the local search pie.

Quick tip: If you haven’t tried this already, use your cell phone to send a text message to “GOOGL” (46645) with anything local like “pacific rim sarasota fl” - you will get a txt back with the address and phone number. My prediction: coming in 2008 or so - voice instead of type.