MSN AdCenter – Where Usability Goes to Die
Ugh – you want to know why you are so behind AdWords, team MSN? Let’s start with your absolutely horrid usability. I got an email stating that some keywords and/or ad text was disapproved. I clicked on the message setting in the UI and got this completely useless information (account ID blacked out):
Notice that the message doesn’t tell you which keywords (and/or ad text) was disapproved – you are left to your own devices to hunt through the UI and find the disapprovals. But wait – it gets better – there’ s no report that will show you disapproved data, which means that you have to go through each campaign – one by one – to find the disapprovals. So if you have a couple of hundred campaigns, get ready for a full day of “find the disapproval.”
Rule #1 when it comes to all things paid search: JUST COPY ADWORDS AND YOU WILL BE OK!
Rule #2: Don’t have engineers design your UI.
God help the new MSN/YSM – they need it.
I won't disagree that the adCenter UI is SOOOO horrible. I just wanted to point out that the things you're talking about (and likely the things you hate but haven't talked about yet) can be dealt with fairly quickly using the adCenter desktop application. Its a free download, and VERY useful to making changes to your adCenter campaigns.
OK Steve, I am going to re-download the desktop app again and give it a whirl.Typical Microsoft "usability" though if the desktop app does work – the system works as long as you adapt your processes to the way Microsoft designs things!
The desktop app – that is too funny! It rarely works. Steve, I will bet you $1 that it will not work for David. David's account will be too big, or his operating system will be 'wrong' or whatever. I've gotten the desktop app to work for a few minutes here and there, with a small amount of data, and the app is itself horrible, and barely saves any time anyway.
Good point Terry. I do recall that the MSN desktop app only allows you to manage one account at a time anyway. I think I had to go through all sorts of hoops just to switch from one client to another!