Jay Meydad's Life Mashup

As I blogged in the past, the fact that the website of Apple’s reps in Israel is not apple.co.il but iDigital.co.il is a big disadvantage for them, since they do not get free traffic from search queries such as “apple.co.il”, “apple in Israel” or “Apple Israel”. Instead, other sites, including this blog, which is ranked at the top of the result set on Google for these queries, are seeing an increase in traffic as the popularity of Apple products in Israel increases over time.

Well, it looks like something is cooking and soon a new home page will be launched. The question I asked myself is, by who: iDigital or Rami Prashove, the current owner of the domain? and what is going to happen to this blog’s traffic?

Last week, when I was at the TheMarker COM.Vention in Isreal, I noticed the presence of a very impressive Apple booth on the Expo floor. It was very nice and added to the feeling that this is a true international event (beyond the fact the program was in English and dozens of speakers and many attendees arrived from the US and Europe).

While I was at the Apple booth, I was looking for one of the iDigital mangers to provide some tips & feedback, but since I could not find any of the managers, I will use this post to do it.

Since I first blogged my thoughts about Apple’s web site in Israel, I have been receiving questions and comments from people who visited Israel, purchased an Apple product there, and later on had a need for customer support. Since iDigital’s web site is only in Hebrew they could not find their answer there, and so using the help of Google, these people searched and landed on my blog. I was glad to help as much as I could with basic questions & translations, but did not have answers to all of their questions. So, here’s tip #1 for the iDigital team – create an “English” page with at least “contact us” information. You’d be surprised how many people who do not read Hebrew are looking for a way to contact you.

Anyway, the last question I received was from a woman who was looking for the customer support phone number for iPod, so I visited iDigital’s website and saw that they have recently started offering group workshops and one-to-one training, similar to the training programs that are available at Apple stores across the US. These are great news for Mac users in Israel (but still not for iPhone users since it is not officially sold there yet and therefore not supported) but there is one difference that makes it look somewhat wrong in my point of view – the price.

• Workshops – In the US, group workshops are free and cover a wide range of topics (I sat on a few in the past and learned a lot), but in Israel they cost a small fee and they are limited only to “Introduction to Mac OS”
• One to One – In the US, one to one training personal training costs an annual fee of $99, but in Israel you pay 225 Shekels/hour – roughly $65/hour. I can understand why these private sessions who are done at the client’s house (since there are not Apple stores in Israel) would cost more, but still, the price difference between one to one training is ridiculous.

So here is tip #2 – if you really want to build a market share, look at how things are done where Apple is gaining market share, and then mimic. Only good things could happen if you would do that.

A few weeks ago I criticized the language inconsistency and other bugs that existed on the Apple Israel web site. It’s time to follow up and see whether things have improved:

• If you just look at the home page, then yes, the site feels more localized to Hebrew speakers. The top navigation bar uses more Hebrew labels than in the past. However, the experience across the site is still inconsistent. The home page (and many other pages on the site) serves as a simple launch pad since many of the links take the user to apple.com.

• The support section has improved and contains plenty of content in Hebrew including quick starts, PDF guides, FAQ and more.

• There are still annoying bugs that I don’t expect to find on an official Apple site, such as linked “Store coming soon” image  that leads nowhere, or problems with Safari for Windows (as I wrote in the previous post).

Last note – In the past few weeks, some of the top search keywords that led traffic to this blog were “apple Israel” and “apple.co.il”. I expect this to increase when iDigital starts selling the iPhone, MacBook Air and other products. I wonder when will Rami Prashove, the owner of apple.co.il, get an offer he won’t be able to refuse.