Blog

Helping Live Green Toronto be Green

oliver — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 13:00:00 GMT

It wouldn’t have been very green of LiveGreen Toronto to use paper while registering businesses for the Green Membership Card program. Just think of the number of trees that would be killed going storefront-to-storefront handing out brochures and completing membership forms, not to mention the number of trees needed to create the massive flip book it would have taken to present David Miller’s video welcome message.

However instead of an arborcide, trees were saved by some iPads, HTML5, and some speedy programming from our Trioro team.

We developed an iPad specific web-based application to be used by representatives of LiveGreen Toronto. The application works in both online and offline mode and automatically synchronizes any information collected offline once a connection is acquired.

Though HTML 5 is a new technology not yet ready for widespread web use, we utilized it for this iPad specific application which made an offline version possible. The offline version is particularly useful for the WI-FI only iPads and ensured that data would not be lost if the internet connection was dropped (some networks aren’t exactly as reliable as others).

Making the application web-based was a further benefit because it meant that we could deploy the application to many iPads in no time (simply go to a URL) and we didn’t need to go through the App store.

It always feels good to quickly bring together the right technology in order to help programs, like Live Green Toronto, meet their goals – saving trees at the same time is even better.

How will local lifestyle guides respond to new Geo-tagging services?

Oliver Moorhouse — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 20:37:34 GMT

City centric blogs and lifestyle guides such as BlogTo, Sweetspot (our client), and Toronto.com have built strong readership from loyal followers who want to know what's hip and what's happening in their city.

Each property, and others like them, have their distinct brand and target demographic, but they share a focus on local, feeding their readers insatiable desire to know about what is going on around them. For their efforts each of these online properties have been rewarded with increasing advertising revenue from Brands eager to reach their targeted readership and growing digital media budgets.

Enter geo-tagged services like FourSquare and Gowalla, local search Apps like Poynt and Loopt. These new services, as well as the introduction of location into Twitter and, what looks to be imminent, Facebook are capturing a lot of attention.

I spoke to Tim Leung, Senior Developer at TorStar Digital to get his perspective on the emergence of mobile and geo-tagging services.

How do you think the growing usage of iPhone, Blackberry, and Android phones will impact local online publications?

Tim: Just like the internet came into play a while ago, mobile devices are coming into play today. It’s a new distribution channel for media companies. They already have the local content [and] it’s a way for them to reach new users. The heavy adopters of blackberries and iPhones are a different generation of people , not used to reading print. For existing print and online, mobile can be a way to increase their reach from existing content.

What about the impact for marketers and advertisers?

Tim: For marketers and advertisers [mobile devices] give a new way to track the return of advertising dollars. Also,[the experience on mobile] often gives a closer connection the point of sale than say a website does. It's a pretty big and growing market, but at the same time you can't put your attention solely on mobile, you need to take care of your bread-and-butter, online.

What do you see are the biggest challenges to developers of local online publications given the growing usage of mobile devices and increasing demand for incorporating geo-tagged services?

Tim: The biggest challenge is time and resources. For bigger companies, they may have a group or couple developers to do the research, learn the platforms, and see where to scale out mobile development. For small publications, most likely they will need to outsource this and won’t have developers ready in house - especially developers with mobile development skills and device specific skills for the iPhone or Android, [etc.]. On a website where it works across browsers with some tweaking here and there, with mobile applications you have to use specific knowledge to develop on each platform.

There has been a huge number of mobile Apps that use GPS to provide information tailored to the readers location. At the same time existing local publications have great content about the places these readers may want to go, yet very few local publications seem to have built mobile apps, why do you think that is? What is the delay in the uptake?

Tim: It's cost, but also it’s the in-house knowledge of the technology. Publishers are focused around content, and mobile presents itself as a distribution platform. For existing players there is a lot of research needed or they need to acquire the technology expertise [to figure out how best to utilize this technology given their current position]. For others [who understand the technology already] it can be easier to [figure out how to ] make mobile technology work [first] and then pull the content. As the market develops more and more publishers will be on board either by partnership, outsourcing, or developing the knowledge in-house. You're going to see more mobile [offerings] from media companies.

What do you think developers should do to increase their knowledge? Is there an approach they should take?

Tim: I think most developers have the curiosity to develop in a new platform and technology, but it's being given the opportunities, whether at work or outside, [where they'll be able to] gain that knowledge. It's a growing space and is hot right now. From the business standpoint it's [understanding] how to monetize the content being distributed [to give the developers the opportunity.]

The local online publication industry is a competitive one, what do developers in this industry need to do to help their publications be successful?

Tim: Figure out how to monetize it. The key is to have space [on the moblie App or website] for the sales team to sell to generate revenue. On the user side, it's a different platform to develop. For the iPhone it’s a touch screen interface and you need to think of different use cases and how to make it the best user experience. Developers need to [practice] development and try out different Apps on different platforms available , consult with third party players that already have experience to see what's possible, and train [their team].

People are talking a lot about Foursquare and its potential to sell a lot of local advertising, do you see services like Foursquare as a threat to existing local online publications?

Tim: I think any time that someone is playing a local space you could see [Foursquare] as a threat. Foursquare is generating content from users and tracks people coming in and out of places. There is a more direct tie to the local businesses for them to see a correlation between [advertising or activity on Foursquare] and customers coming in. For [online publications] it can be harder to track. So for a business [who want to drive foot traffic] it can be a struggle to see the value of advertising without having that measurement around it. Also, it can be hard for [businesses] to understand how the technology works. On Foursquare you can see someone checking in with their membership and see how it ties to the sponsorship you've given on the [Foursquare] platform. It's about business spending the money and acknowledging that the service worked.

The last facebook developers conference did not see a big location announcement, but there is a lot of anticipation for it, what do you think the impact would be if Facebook included location?

Tim: [For local businesses] it about increasing the word-of-mouth. From my experience working in the local space friends and friends recommendations are huge. With facebook opening the platform to location it gives the opportunity to developers and publishers to integrate that into their site and provide a better way for people to be notified by their friends about the best deals and places to go.

You talked earlier about the need for monetization to drive development in the mobile space, do you think there is a monetization will be driven off a Facebook or Foursquare model, or will there still be space for local publications to monetize themselves?

Tim: I think local publishers will still have opportunities. They are connected to the local space already, and they have the content. When looking to put a publication out there on mobile, you're looking to syndicate that content out with good geo-location data so that it can be more local, and targeted to the user [ you should be able to monetize that].

Thanks Tim for taking the time with us today and sharing your perspectives.

Mobile Web Review: Walmart vs Canadian Tire

Oliver Moorhouse — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 17:57:00 GMT

Recently Canadian Tire and Walmart have made forays into the mobile web world. I decided to take some time to review what they had to offer.

I asked myself a simple question:
If I received a link to one of these sites for a featured/sale product, what would my experience be if I clicked that link using my BlackBerry or iPhone? (For example if I had received the link in an email or tweet from a friend)

Walmart
I took a product featured on Walmart's home page, a set of transforming toys, went to the product page and sent myself the link. Unfortunately my experience came to a screeching halt when I clicked on the link because most of the page content was flash based, which is not supported on either device. After the first attempt I gave Walmart a second chance. On the second attempt, I sent myself a link to a product from their online flyer, which actually has a sharing feature encouraging me to share product links. This time I got a page, however it wasn't from their mobile site, I was simply loading their full website. As you would expect this took a long time to load, not all content showed up, and I was forced to zoom to read it. Walmart's Mobile Website (viewable on computer - blackberry version)

Canadian Tire:
Canadian Tire did better. I sent myself a link to a product featured on the home page, a 3-in-1 Lawn thickening mix. Clicking on the link from either Blackberry or iPhone worked well. The page loaded relatively quickly and I was able see the product details in a mobile formatted page and add it to my shopping list if I wanted. Good Job Canadian Tire. Canadian Tire's Mobile Website (viewable on computer)

To be fair though, Canadian Tire still has some significant room to improve and Walmart's mobile presence, though it's product pages aren't available, has some other valuable features. Canadian Tire's mobile website is primarily a mobile product directory, which is a great step, however with the mobile technology available today I'd like to see them highlight featured products and promotions, and utilize the mobile phone's GPS functionality (yes that can be done on a mobile website too, not just in an App). Using the GPS location from the phone, Canadian Tire's mobile site could highlight what featured products or promotions are at the closest store and tell you how to get there. Walmart's mobile site, though poor at supporting link sharing, already utilizes GPS for their store locator and also prominently highlights promotions and the instore flyer.

With customers sharing links on a large and growing scale it is important to consider how your mobile initiatives support this behavior. Without considering scenarios like the one I've highlighted here, you risk frustrating your customers by giving them an experience that does not live up to your brand.

Engaging your audience with new media tools: grow your circle organically

Aditya Mardia — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 19:55:00 GMT

More and more often, we get questions from our clients asking us how they should use social media to widen the reach of their organization. Samara is a non-profit dedicated to strengthening the culture of public service in Canada (http://www.samaracanada.com). We built their public website and it's really neat how Alison Loat, Co-founder and Executive Director of Samara, has managed to drive a steady amount of traffic to her site. By using a variety of readily available new media tools, she has been able to engage her audience with a simple and intuitive strategy.

In this multi-part interview, Scott Snowden, Partner at Trioro, chats with Alison about how she uses social media to spread the message of her organization. In this series, we highlight how she does what she does - the tools she uses, type of content, frequency of posting, traffic measurement, and how offline efforts go hand-in-hand with online efforts. As Alison says, it's important first engage the group that's interested in what you're doing, and then slowly build your way out.

Part 1 - Samara and Social Media

Part 2 - Social Media Toolkit - Personal vs Organizational

We believe the same lessons apply to for-profit businesses because it takes time and effort to build a brand and create loyal customers, who will in-turn spread your message for you. It's important not to get overwhelmed and to understand that this is an organic process. We hope you will find this series of videos a useful starting point in creating or adapting your social media strategy.

Mobile friendly websites are becoming crucial for your audience's experience

Oliver Moorhouse — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 23:40:00 GMT

You've just scored a social media victory. The buzz about your brand / product is trending on twitter and it's the hot topic for Facebook status updates. People are talking about you and they want more. Through their mobile phone your audience click on your link excited about what you have to say. However, the frustration sets in as they wait while the page loads, and when it finally does the tiny text and blank space, where a flash component used to be, serve only to create more frustration. Unfortunately this scenario is far too common.

Two trends are driving this frustrating user experience. First, people are sharing links on a huge scale, and second they are increasingly using mobile phones to access the internet. Consider this, the service bit.ly which is used by many to shorten URL's for status updates on facebook and tweets, reports that their shortened URL's are getting 2 billion clicks a month. (And this is just one of a handful of services to shorten URL's) While at the same time mobile browsing has more than doubled its share of all browsing over the last year according to figures by Net Applications.

Are you ready for your audience when they click on a link to your site from their mobile phone? Or are you creating barriers for them by not having a mobile friendly site?

At Trioro we design, build, and integrate internet technology to help you connect with the people that are important to you, regardless of device. We have experience creating mobile web and mobile applications for clients such as Crystal Light, Kool-Aid, and Sweetspot.ca. Ask us how we can help you make these technologies work for you too.

To App Or Not To App?

Aditya Mardia — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 16:09:00 GMT

As a marketer, you want to effectively reach the largest percentage of your target market at the lowest possible cost. iPhone Apps are all the rage these days and companies are spending lots of dollars creating fancy ones. Here's some food for thought.

According to Gartner, iPhone sales accounted for around 17% of all smartphone sales of a total of 41 million worldwide in Q3 2009. As you are aware, there are a number of other choices out there including RIM's BlackBerry, Google's Android, Microsoft's Windows Mobile and Nokia's Symbian OS. Each of these platforms have sizable footprints which means that creating only an iPhone App could exclude a large portion of your target market.

So what's a better approach? People's behavior in how they access the web has been changing. The use of smartphones to access internet sites is becoming commonplace and some gurus are debating on whether it will become the primary method. As per IDC's estimates, mobile internet users will number around one billion by 2013; that's up from 450 million today. This means that while maintaining a standard website that is accessible by regular computers is a given, it is also necessary to have a mobile version for those smaller screens.

While Apps have the disadvantage of being tied to a particular platform or device, mobile sites can be can be built so that that are accessible through browsers on a majority of devices. Further, these sites can easily be made to sit as icon shortcuts on mobile desktops. Instead of creating Apps that must be developed and maintained separately for each platform, a well designed mobile website could enable you to reach the largest possible audience at a lower price point.

Admittedly, Apps that help simulate activities like beer chugging, ice hockey, or fishing will be hard to replicate. However, what you can do with mobiles sites is catching up quickly; it's definitely an option worth pondering.

SharePoint 2010: Promising Preview

Aditya Mardia — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 14:39:00 GMT

SharePoint has evolved significantly over the past decade from a simple intranet/extranet content management tool set to include functionality from business intelligence to corporate social networking. Microsoft is touting the 2010 release as its biggest Server product release ever. From my perspective, here are some of the top enhancements:

Business Connectivity Services (BCS): The ability to access and edit data from external systems using built-in features is absolutely the biggest enhancement. While SharePoint 2007 could only retrieve data (editing was a custom development job), the 2010 release supports editing without writing custom code or installing external plug-ins. This bi-directional ability dramatically increases both productivity and the scope of what the system can do out of the box.
Elegant and Intuitive Designer Tools: The look and feel of SharePoint applications have been a sore point for sometime now. Starting with 2007, complete page layout freedom was given to .Net developers. However, with 2010, both SharePoint Designer and the Visual Studio extension have been dramatically improved. The simplicity and elegance of the ribbon-like contextual menu makes design and development a whole lot neater.
Search: The FAST search feature is simple and intuitive. The Bing-like interface with an ability to preview documents in-place as well as shortlist by a variety of filters (some of which are automatically and intuitively generated meta data) makes finding information a whole lot easier. The capability to index both structured and unstructured data (with minimal customization) will allow information to be found from many more places.
Deeper Integration with Office: Once you find what you're looking for, you can edit Office documents in place without leaving the browser. The versioning and history is essentially taken care of automatically; this could be a huge time saver for end users. Further, cutting and pasting between Office applications like Word/Excel and SharePoint will be much less of a hassle.
Workflow Enhancements: Custom workflows can now be created with SharePoint Designer without custom code. These templates can be easily imported into Visual Studio for further enhancements. Additionally, Visio documents can now be opened and edited in browser in real-time (without a Visio installation on the end user's computer); interesting, to say the least.
Business Intelligence (BI): The BI Server was earlier sold as a separate product whereas it is now included as a part of SharePoint Enterprise Server. The claim is that users will easily be able to assemble dashboards to analyze data from disparate systems; sounds promising.
Corporate Social Networking: A lot of excitement here. The community features will analyze data from user profiles, Outlook accounts, organization positions, project involvement, and areas of interest to update and connect people.
Browser Compatibility: The range of browsers that will be able to render SharePoint sites properly now includes FireFox and Safari. This will come as a big relief to many IT departments and end-users alike who will be less constrained by browser requirements.

What I've described here is just a tip of the iceberg. The product's value to a firm could increase exponentially as data from disparate applications can easily be brought into one place, and then shared and modified using its toolkit. At Trioro, we are quite excited about this release and look forward to uncovering its full potential.

The Sound of Found (Bing!) with SharePoint 2010 ?

Aditya Mardia — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 17:59:00 GMT

Honestly, we all are guilty of wasting a little time. But what about when you're actually trying to get something done?! According to IDC, the information worker spends an average of 3.5 hours looking for information and not finding it. Further, an average of 2.2 hours is spent on versioning issues and an additional 3 hours is spent on recreating content. If you add it up, more than nine hours a week are spent on low value tasks. For business owners and managers, this could amount to over $13K for an employee who makes $60K.

Microsoft is aiming to solve part of this issue with its improved search and tighter integration with Office in SharePoint 2010. First, an easy to use visual Bing-like interface of the FAST Search feature provides centralized and contextual results that includes documents, people, and other unstructured information. Further, a number of external sources can now be easily added and indexed. Additionally, the phonetic search engine seems to do a pretty good job of returning relevant results even if you make spelling mistakes.

With easy to use filters on the left navigation, search results can be short-listed quickly by document type, author, job titles, project, tags, etc. Each filter also displays a count of results for better information. Microsoft appears to have made improvements in the way meta data is generated, handled and managed thereby increasing relevance of search results. Importantly, the social behavior of the users has an impact on the relevance of the results returned. (See search demo)

What's cool is a preview feature that allows you to slide through documents in place. Once you've determined it's the right one, depending on the format, you could edit the file right in the browser; the version issues are taken care of by SharePoint. Besides Enterprises, SharePoint could start to make economic sense pretty quickly even for SMBs .

However, a search engine is fueled by data. And data is fueled by people and processes. How your data is captured, processed, and managed play a crucial role in this equation. You might know what you're craving for and the ingredients might be available but hitting the spot largely depends on the recipe.

Engaging Media - Value of the online newsroom

Oliver Moorhouse — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 13:58:00 GMT

As the media landscape changes - reductions in traditional full time media and an increase of a disperse set of bloggers and citizen journalists - public relations professionals (our clients) are getting more creative in order to generate earned media. Whether it's High Road (client) tailoring their 'media events' to accommodate bloggers' day jobs by planning an after work bloggers reception for FORZA Motorsport 3, or Media Profile taking a laser focus on piquing a journalists attention in five words or less, change is in the air.

The creativity however, doesn't stop with traditional word smithing and event planning. Instead, industry leaders are challenging their colleagues to make the experience for traditional journalists, bloggers, and citizen journalists better, while saving time in the process. They're asking:

How do we continue to engage media after the face-to-face interaction?
Media liked what they've heard, now how do we make it easy for them to access the information they need to write their article/blog post?
With so many bloggers and citizen journalists, how can we save time providing digital resources like photos, fact sheets, etc?
How do we connect with our audience when they're using social sites like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and Flikr?

Though the audience and engagement strategy will differ by client, we found that an online newsroom tailored specifically to the clients engagement strategy can be a great enabler and launching point to get creative in answering these questions.

Here are a few good examples to get you thinking:
http://news.microsoft.ca/
http://pressroom.toyota.com/
http://www.timhortons.com/ca/en/about/about_media.html

When PR professionals approach us to help them unleash their creativity, whether for an online newsroom or something else, we take down the technical barriers and fit the technology to their strategy - not the other way around.

4 Ways to Improve Your Web Body Language

Oliver Moorhouse — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 15:57:00 GMT

We've found that using body language as a metaphor for website usability is helpful, and makes the rather broad concept of "usability" easier to understand. Here are 4 ways to improve your web body language:

1) Nod-show you're listening

Display additional content that is specifically related to what visitors are viewing

Structure your site from the visitor's point of view with tag-based navigation

Never ask the visitor to enter the same information more than once

Provide areas for comments and feedback

2) Uncross your arms-be open

Create clear, topic based navigation

Ensure the visitor doesn't get lost, by creating clear navigation points

Display relevant content, even if it comes from a different source

Make it easy to browse, search and show off what's new and popular on your site

Integrate applications with other systems, networks, content sources, etc.

Make it easy to share your content with others

Give options for personalization (favorites, voting)

3) Smile-give positive reinforcement

Use green checkmarks (or another symbol) to indicate successfully completed steps

Greet a person with their name when they log in

Give prominence to user ratings and comments

Email confirmations of important interactions

4) Be engaging-gesture

Create motion on screen

Display social media feeds on your site to "show off" what others are saying about your brand/site

Use colour deliberately to indicate where action can be taken by users

Enjoy The Ride Rewards with Sweetmama.ca

Scott Snowden — Fri, 22 May 2009 12:15:00 GMT

A recent article from Media in Canada touts the success of the new Huggies EnjoyTheRideRewards.com campaign.

As the article mentions, Moms can earn points towards Huggies rewards by participating in various online activities. One of these experiences was delivered through Sweetmama.ca. We thought we'd share a few more details about that program...

Trioro delivered the Sweetmama.ca integration with a seemless user experience for Sweetspot Insiders. Create a profile or login to one you already have with Sweetmama and those Huggies rewards are at your fingertips.

The Huggies environment on Sweetmama is not only built as a natural extension for Sweetspot Insider users, but it also provides a user friendly handoff of your reward codes to the EnjoyTheRideRewards.com microsite. It's a fast, easy and fun way to "Enjoy The Ride".

Usability: Body Language for the Web

Oliver Moorhouse — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 16:30:00 GMT

Usability can sometimes be hard to understand. A metaphor for usability I've been using a lot lately is body language. In face-to-face communication your stance, facial expressions, gestures, and eye contact can say as much if not more than words you say. On the web, navigation structure, the amount of motion, how you collect user information, and availability and presence of comment/feedback functionality can also say as much if not more than the content itself. For brands that spend a lot of time and money to develop their brand character and messaging it's important not to undercut that with poor usability. A brand claiming its fun, easy going, and full of life isn't too believable if its website is hard to navigate and search, doesn't give positive feedback for user actions, and has no motion on the site.

Does your website's usability support your brand?

It just keeps getting sweeter

Oliver Moorhouse — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 14:00:00 GMT

We've been busy over at Sweetspot. Sweethome.ca, a site dedicated to living comfortably, has recently launched. A members section for all the sweetspot properties and a new homepage design are also new additions. Just like the existing Sweetspot and Sweetmama sites, this new site fully leverages the existing content management system we built. The members section includes some fun features such as commenting on articles and creating your own personal sweetpicks (a collection of your favorite articles). Meanwhile, the new homepage design includes a more impactful featured section, and is organized to more clearly highlight the most recent content.

Check it out, and make sure to sign up to be a sweet insider!

Did Skittles do it right?

Oliver Moorhouse — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 16:55:00 GMT

From a buzz point of view, I think Skittles made their mark. Their new website which consists of a branded navigation bar that hovers over social media sites like YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and Wikipedia has received a lot of attention lately. From a marketing effectiveness point of view I'll let others be the judge, see Ad Age's take on it (membership required for older articles) or Bite Communications blog. However, from a usability perspective how does it rate? There is a lot that goes into good usability, but for this lets keep it simple - does it make it easy for the audience to do things they want to do on your site. Here's my take on Skittles usability:

What's Good:

Flexible home Page
Whether they've done this on purpose or not their home page can be easily changed from Twitter to YouTube (as they've recently done) or to Facebook, depending where the most action is. This can be used to make YouTube the home page when they release a new video, or Twitter the home page when there is a lot of chatter about all the ways you can have fun with Skittles, which helps them ensure the home page is as relevant as possible to their audience.

Simple Navigation Bar
It's straightforward without too many levels and very easy to use.

What's Bad:

The Navigation Bar blocks important content
Unfortunately the navigation bar blocks content and important links on the social media sites, esspecially on small screens (like the 13inch tablet that I have). Usually I like to be able to click on the Videos or Channel links in YouTube's main navigation, or the discussion tab on Wikipedia, or see that the Twitter stream is based on a skittles search. Even on larger screens some of these are blocked. What could have been done to make the experience better is allow you to move the box around the page. This was already done on Modernista's site, on which this design is based, so I am not sure why they didn't include this feature.

The Ad Box below the Navigation bar opens on every click
Every time you click on an item in the navigation, a Skittles ad pops up below the navigation bar. This is quite annoying for me because it blocks even more content, and needs to be closed on every new page I view. This could be easily addressed by making it smart enough to remember if I've already closed it and keep it closed until I return to the home page. Though of course that would mean I wouldn't see their Transplant the Rainbow ad, and get annoyed, as many times.

What do you think?

Match Marketing gets a new site

Oliver Moorhouse — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 16:34:00 GMT

We recently launched Match Marketing's new site. Match asked us to make their web presence consistent with their overall brand. To accomplish this we designed and built matchmg.com as well as modified the look and feel of their existing job application system, hotjobsatmatch.com.

Congratulations Match Marketing on your new site!

An evolution in medical networking

Oliver Moorhouse — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 18:03:00 GMT

The last couple months we've been working on an exciting new online professional network for doctors, due to launch this month. The site will provide doctors involved in specific clinical studies a secure community to collaborate and share information with each other as well as receive important resources and medical news.
There are some great features in this site:

Group areas where doctors can share documents and coordinate on specific projects/tasks
Easy to search news and resources sections
Forums where doctors can discuss, find answers to questions, and poll the community
An Event Calendar where doctors can keep track of the events they are invited to and add these events to their Outlook calendar
And a host of other features that allow them to easily connect and communicate with other doctors.

Unless you're a doctor involved in one of the registered studies, you wont be able to access the site, but don't worry, we've put together a animated tour of the community which is available on the communities registration page. Check it out.

Shopping Guides on Sweetspot & Sweetmama

Oliver Moorhouse — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 16:59:00 GMT

We recently launched Shopping Guides on Sweetspot.ca & Sweetmama.ca. This is a fun section that features a variety of products in different categories, cities, and price ranges. The ladies over at Sweetspot love it because it is easy to manage using their CMS web interface. They get to load product images, descriptions, and categorizations all in one screen - and it's pink too!

Check out the Shopping Guides they've created
Sweetspot Shopping Guides
Sweetmama Shopping Guides

The new Sweetspot.ca

Oliver Moorhouse — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 15:40:00 GMT

After a summer of developing at break-neck speed, we've launched the new Sweetspot.ca and Sweetmama.ca. These sites are built off a sophisticated custom CMS that we developed which allows Sweetspot more flexibility than they ever had before and improves efficiency in their editorial process. We've been getting great feedback on the usability of the site and the design, and have started seeing the results of this in the web statistics.

Congratulations Sweetspot on your new sites!

Launch of PopUpRetail.ca

Oliver Moorhouse — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 16:17:00 GMT

We just launched Pop Up Retail's corporate website. It's a straightforward and clean informational site, and the jobs section has an easy-to-use administrator section where the Pop Up Retail staff can manage their list of available positions.

Congratulations to Pop Up Retail on their new website!

In the eye of the beholder

Oliver Moorhouse — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 14:13:00 GMT

Like beauty, a brand is in the eye of the beholder. No where is this more evident than Brandtags.net, a site that allows the public to tag brands and pit one brand against another.

If you work on a brand, see how it ranks on the leader board. (If it's not there, you can have it added)

Trioro in the news

Oliver Moorhouse — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 20:32:00 GMT

Yesterday ConnectIt news ran an article about our work to build Sweetspot.ca a robust custom content management system on a .Net platform. Check it out.

Navigating through technology clutter

Oliver Moorhouse — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 21:27:00 GMT

At every turn, it seems there is a new technology product claiming it can, as if magically, connect you to your audience and improve your business. All too often, we come across businesses where these promises have rung hollow (a little too often lately, which is why I am writing this post). For example, we've recently come across businesses with content management systems that allow them change content, but cannot be configured to work well with their content creation processes, and with forums that help manage and moderate many conversations but are not flexible to allow the customized design necessary for that businesses brand. This is not to say technology product developers are incompetent or most of the products are useless, far from it - there are a lot of great technology products out there.

The point is that it takes the combination of business understanding and technical understanding to make a proper fit between your business and the right technology, and all too often technology providers simply try to fit the business to their technology, rather than the other way around. They do this for a reason; they own a pre-developed technology that they want to sell you.

As an internet technology agency, Trioro takes the opposite approach. We have skilled business resources that learn about your business first, and then find the right technology to fit with your strategies and goals - even if it has been developed by someone else.

Web Design - the OXO test

Oliver Moorhouse — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 18:31:00 GMT

"User-centered design" is often used to describe designing products and services from the consumer's point of view, which is something we are very fond of here at Trioro.

Recently the User experience arts blog outlined the 4 criteria that OXO use to evaluate which consumer product ideas to commercialize. I think these criteria also work well to evaluate websites.

So does your website pass the OXO test?

You must be able to understand what it does [or what type of information it contains] just by looking at it
Knowing how to use it has to be obvious (no instructions!)
It must be thought provoking
It should warrant consistent use (not a use-once-and-put-away product)

Source Michael Grossman, User Experience Arts

The POST approach: Where Internet Technology Agencies fit in

Oliver Moorhouse — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 15:45:00 GMT

POST is a simple approach invented by Josh Bernoff and Charlene Li from Forester Research to help people step back from the dizzying social technology buzz, and get back to the basics of figuring out what they want to accomplish. It's an approach that has been getting a lot of attention.

The POST approach (Learn More):

Source: Forrester Research

An Internet Technology Agency, like Trioro, typically enters into this method at the strategy stage. Once people and objectives are defined, the process of collaborating with the client on strategy and then delivering the technology becomes more effective.

Actually the Trioro process has always been centered on this fundamental idea, our terms are slightly different, we use "user experience" and "business goals", but it is the same thing. We put the people and objectives at the center of our process to collaborate, create, and connect.

Who needs paper! - Part 2

Oliver Moorhouse — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 21:04:00 GMT

Though phrasing their headline as a question, rather than a statement, the Economist has published an interesting article also called "Who Needs Paper?"

What I find particularly interesting, is that the article mentions that Continental Airlines is testing a system to deliver tickets to traveler's mobile phones using the same technology as the Digital Coupons I talked about in a previous post.

Who needs paper!

Oliver Moorhouse — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 21:16:00 GMT

My recent trip to New York really highlighted how little paper is needed when traveling. The combination of credit cards, and online or mobile services meant that my trip was almost paperless.

Hotel and Flight Booking: Expedia - E-tickets and electronic booking.

Shows, Meals, Museum, Shopping: Credit Card, Credit Card, Credit Card! Even many of the street vendors had credit card readers attached to their mobile phones. Though there were a couple that still only took cash.

Recommendations: No tourist book here. DailyCandy.com , city search, and email & txt with friends gave me great recommendations.

Finding Places: I did use the free tourist map, mostly to figure out the subway stops, but most of the time I used Google and the map on my blackberry. Sometimes the digital maps in New York taxis came in handy too.

Getting Around: Credit Card. The subway and all taxis take credit card.

Money Exchange: I didn't change any cash before I left, or get travelers cheques. I actually didn't have a single (U.S. or Canadian) in my pocket when I boarded the plane. I did take out cash from a bank machine when I got there, mostly as a precaution, but I ended up having to try to spend it, using it instead of a credit card so that I wouldn't be left with it when I got back.

Tips: Credit Card and Cash, this is one of the last bastions of paper.

Comparing auto manufacturers' websites

Oliver Moorhouse — Wed, 28 May 2008 16:26:00 GMT

J.D. Power and Associates recently ranked auto manufacturers' Canadian websites. The ranking put Subaru first, Hyundai last, and Mini right in the middle. The ranking was based on a shopper survey which took into account four areas: information/content; ease of navigating; appearance; and speed of page load.

Take a look at these sites yourself, and see what you think.

www.subaru.ca

www.mini.ca

www.hyundaicanada.com

What I find particularly interesting is that with all the flashy bells-and-whistles that are included in the Mini site, it only ranks as average. I think this is partially a lesson in the effective use of motion and animation on websites, which many people have yet to learn.

What is an Internet Technology Agency?

Oliver Moorhouse — Tue, 13 May 2008 02:35:00 GMT

With the rapidly changing world of internet technology - from Facebook applications, eco-calculators, voting platforms, to blogs, music sharing, online stores and online communities - the possibilities are limitless. Because of the opportunity for infinite permutations and combinations, turning internet technologies into useful and engaging experiences has become just as much an art as it is a science.

This is the core of an Internet Technology Agency.

Like advertising, marketing, or public relations agencies, creativity and a focus on the consumer is paramount. However, unlike these other agencies who's end product is made up of spoken and written words, colours, images, song and dance, and human action; an Internet Technology Agency's end product is made up of computer code, databases, existing software products and services, automated processes, mobile devices, and computers.

At Trioro we develop, assemble, and orchestrate a huge variety of internet technology into engaging and useful consumer experiences customized to meet the client's business goals. At the same time, these experiences enable words, colours, images, song and dance, and human action to come to life through the technology.

This explains why, for Trioro, partnerships with marketing and public relations agencies are a natural fit - our creative expertise just mesh!

What Makes a Good Online Community?

Scott Snowden — Thu, 08 May 2008 00:23:00 GMT

Based on some recent activity at Our Power and some questions I got after the Toronto Star ran a related article I've been thinking about what it takes to put together a successful online community.

From my perspective, the most important aspects of an online social network are as follows:

Access has to be free of charge - this probably goes without saying.
Obvious representation of the size of the community

New and returning visitors have to be given some sense that they're not the only person visiting the website.

Before connecting with other people in the community there has to be an evident visualization of how many other people are actively involved.

Sincere community commitment

Bells, whistles and a fancy facade will be quickly overlooked
The website site doesn't necessary need to be "useful", but the service or offering has to be genuine

Without those three aspects, an online community will quickly dissolve.

Real, long-term success would need to add to the following factors:

Provide a sense of security, privacy and comfort

Obviously a security or privacy breach would be game over for any website.
I say "sense" because people have to inherently trust the website they're interacting with - a privacy policy isn't enough.

Critical Mass

For a website to take on a life of itself it needs to hit a critical mass of participation - that number depends on the purpose of the community.
At this point you've hit the jack-pot and user-defined content can really be a big driver of success.

These are base essentials, additional success factors would be specific to the type of community and the activities the community undertakes.

On many occasions I've run across websites that make failed attempts at starting an online community.
Here's a quick list of potential pitfalls for building an online community:

A forum or chat room is NOT an online community.

These are features and elements that are part of most successful online communities, but a forum unto itself is NOT an online community.
If you build it, people WILL NOT come - the offering needs to be much bigger.

A blog is NOT an online community.

A blog is a great way to be a casual journalist and talk TO your community, but communities are interactive and involve feedback and conversation.
Commenting on a blog is NOT the feedback and conversation I'm talking about.

Product marketing websites are under the most scrutiny from potential community participants.

A product or brand website can indeed result in a good online community if the essential aspects above are followed.
The sincerity of the community commitment is most important in this case.

Now that I've made this list, how does Our Power compare?

Our Power is certainly free of charge and has a sincere offering to help people adopt renewable energy.
What's missing is the obvious size of the community.
Our Power has a database of hundreds of interested people, but that network and those relationships haven't been visualized or aggregated for others to be able to see the success of the online community.

Good thing there are some new developments in the works for Our Power! :)

How does this list compare to some of the online communities you're a part of?

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Own your niches

Oliver Moorhouse — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 21:09:00 GMT

Advertising Age recently ran a story about Purina's jump into the role of curator for pet enthusiasts with its website www.petcharts.purina.com :

Purina Joins Pack of Marketers Turned Content Aggregators (if you aren't an AdAge member, articles become unavailable after about a week)

The site is a good example of using technology to make the job of gathering, selecting, and publishing relevant content easier. The technology has enabled Purina to provide a valuable resource to their target - pet enthusiasts - in an efficient and effective way.

In the future, more and more brands are going to try to claim the curator role in the niches that make up their target market. Will you be next?

If you look at the niche communities that make up your target market, is the thought of owning them overwhelming? You know you have the insight to select relevant content, and the skill to craft complementary brand messages and programs, but how would you execute it?

As an Internet Technology Agency, Trioro is here to help you execute. We find the most effective technology for your goals and develop engaging easy-to-use online experiences for your audience - own your niches, and leave the technical details to us.

Trioro in the community

Oliver Moorhouse — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 23:17:00 GMT

Though a little different from what we usually blog about, we're pretty proud of our involvement and support of local environmental organizations, so we wanted to share. The organizations listed below are doing great work to improve the state of the environment by educating, enabling, organizing, and encouraging our communities to take real actions - making a positive impact on the environment. Check them out:

Earth Day Canada

Earth Day Canada is a national environmental communications organization mandated to improve the state of the environment by empowering Canadians to achieve local solutions.

Our Power

Our Power is a voluntary organization, partnered with the Toronto Renewable Energy Co-op (TREC), whose mission is to promote and facilitate community-based sustainable energy projects.

Zerofootprint

Zerofootprint's mission is to empower individuals and communities to fight climate change in measurable and practical ways. Zerofootprint develops applications and initiatives to measure and manage carbon and ecological footprint for the purpose of reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Digital Coupons - part 2

Oliver Moorhouse — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 13:14:00 GMT

A couple days after my last post on Digital Coupons insideTORONTO ran an article about the Downtown Yonge BIA providing its 2000 members the ability to offer digital coupons through its Mobile Yonge program. : Yonge Street stores going high-tech

Though not explained very well on the Mobile Yonge site, the system works by choosing coupons on their website or through a mobile version of their website. Then if you have a decent mobile internet browser, you redeem the coupon by viewing its unique bar code on your phone's screen, which the cashier scans at the time of purchase.

If you don't have a good browser, you're left to print the coupon at home and bring it with you.

I signed up to try it out, and I must say that only having two coupons available is a little underwhelming. I hope they have a lot more in the pipeline.

Persona's Defined

Scott Snowden — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 13:05:00 GMT

In the world of website development a persona refers to the description of a fictitious person that is very similar to an actual human that would visit your website.
Personas are typically given a real name so that the development team can refer to them as a real person. The characteristics given to the persona paint a picture of what you would expect to see if someone fitting that description were using your website.

Using only one persona to describe all the users for your website would be an over-generalization. It is common to have several personas, each describing a different type of interaction and a different type of person that would use your website.

The approach of using personas allows a team to share a consistent understanding of who there users are that are going to work with the website being developed. Personas also give clients and developers some common ground to help relate to the business need with the technical solution. In a sense this provides a "human element" that helps the development team empathize and identify with the end user. For the same reason it is common for the persona to be given a photo of someone similar to the persona.

The more detailed a persona can be, the better. However, even a simple persona is helpful.
Here's an example...

Kathy is a 30 year old business professional who is always on-the-go. Kathy has Internet access wherever she goes and is quite comfortable with computers. As a result her interest and time available to research new information is limited.

The development team can then infer that the following considerations should be made when building a website Kathy would use:
- be concise and straight forward so Kathy doesn't have to hunt around for what she wants
- it's okay to use familiar interface elements such as clicking column names to sort data, Kathy is probably familiar with this
- consider providing mobile content so that Kathy has access to the website from her Blackberry

Of course, this is a simplified example, but hopefully you get the point.

More information on personas is available here:

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Within Six Degrees

Oliver Moorhouse — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 15:56:00 GMT

Trioro is proud to announce the addition of Six Degrees Medical Consulting to its growing list of clients in Marketing and Communications industries.

"We have been very impressed with the ideas, creativity and energy of the Trioro team. They have helped us recently with cutting edge ideas for use in our new business presentations. In addition, they redid our company website and gave us something that is now generating very positive feedback from our clients. I look forward to our next project with Trioro!"

Colin Buchanan

Six Degrees Medical Consulting

Digital Coupons

Oliver Moorhouse — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 20:46:00 GMT

Some grocers are experimenting with digital coupons. The most promising of these looks to be a system where coupons are "loaded" onto the shoppers loyalty card. The shopper selects coupons online adding the coupons to their account. Then, at the register, the system retrieves the coupons for the products purchased.

What seems to be missing from these systems are options for the shopper to remember what coupons they have "clipped" once they are already in the store. Right now, the shopper needs to go online to look at their list and print it off.

An option to retrieve the list from a SMS text message might be helpful for the younger, on-the-go crowd, but they are not usually the target demographic for coupon clipping. In store kiosks may be a smarter option for the target coupon clipper. The kiosk would allow shoppers to scan their card to receive a print-out their coupon shopping list. Stores that already have self serve check-out kiosks might be able to avoid additional capital expense by adding this extra feature to this existing infrastructure.

There are also other types of digital coupons out there. One example is with mobile phones where the consumer takes a picture of an advertisement with their cell phone and sends it to a short code. The picture is matched to an available promotion, and a coupon is sent to the consumer's cell phone. One company that provides this service is Snaptell.

Earth Hour: A Positive Measure

Scott Snowden — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 02:12:00 GMT

I was watching CBC Sunday this week - the day after Earth Hour. The show featured a segment, "Was Earth Hour Worth It?" The debate centered around whether or not Earth Hour accomplished the goal of raising awareness about climate change. The dissenting opinion was that turning off our lights for an hour isn't really accomplishing anything. The gesture may even leave some people feeling that they've actually done something to directly result in solving the climate crisis.

Our Power is an initiative started in Toronto to enable neighbourhood groups to purchase renewable energy systems for their houses. As a collective, the process of making a significant purchasing decision is easier. There is also an increased benefit of having multiple houses reduce their environmental impact.

Trioro supports the Our Power website. The statistics for the Our Power website were quite encouraging this past weekend. The traffic was up 400% over any other weekend. Although Our Power has been busy raising awareness, there has been no recent event to directly result in this traffic spike. The increased traffic was very specific to Saturday and Sunday. Our Power also has no direct affiliation with Earth Hour or the WWF.

This increased traffic to the Our Power website came from people taking their own initiative to do more than just turn off the lights for one hour.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Could prediction markets help you create an engaging long-term experience?

Oliver Moorhouse — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 20:08:00 GMT

Google has been experimenting with an internal prediction market to forecast their product launches, office openings, and some of their other important events. A prediction market is a virtual stock exchange where people buy and sell stocks of specific events (e.g. A democrat will win the U.S. presidency in 2008) which will each payout $1 (usually virtual money) if the event actually occurs. With many people buying and selling, the resulting price of the stock then represents the probability that the event will occur. (E.g. $0.50 = 50%) More on prediction markets.

Google's prediction market is an experiment on whether these markets accurately forecast the likelihood of events. (read article for more).

Google came up with a couple conclusions:

Prices in their prediction market accurately reflected the likelihood of events actually happening
As time went on, the accuracy of these predictions improved

So if you are not one of the world's largest companies, with a thousand or so staff to participate in an internal prediction market -how could such a market help you?

Do you run any contests or execute events with thousands of consumers?

Would you like to tap into the knowledge these consumers?

Does your company or organization have a "gatekeeper" who decides what content will best engage your audience at large events? - (E.g. chooses the bands for a festival, chooses the set of speakers for a conference)

Think about combining a contest with a prediction market, giving your audience some of the "gatekeeper" role, to create an engaging and long-term experience while also generating consumer insight.

Example:

I was lucky enough to attend a presentation by Piers Handling recently, the CEO of the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF). As I learned, TIFF prides itself on being a very audience centric organization. It relies heavily on a group of 15 "programmers" (gatekeepers) to pick the movies that draw approximately one million admissions* per year, and international acclaim. It was also interesting to hear, that one of the ways TIFF judge the quality of their programming choices is to see whether the chosen films or directors win international awards in the years after appearing at TIFF.

Would TIFF dare to open up a spot in its program to an audience member? - giving them the some of the gatekeeper role.

TIFF could combine a prediction market with a contest (or likely a series of contests). The prediction market would have the typical incentives to earn simulated money by buying and selling virtual shares in movies, directors, and actors. The contest could then provide additional incentive. The most successful participant would become be a temporary "programmer" picking a film for the festival as well as getting all the access that this position affords. This could be global too. Yeah, that's another thing I learned, TIFF attracts a significant audience with events run all over the world.

If they did, not only would they have a highly engaging contest, but the existing 15 programmers may find that they also get another useful source of information to identify, assess, and ultimately choose the great films we see at TIFF every year.

Key things for you to think about, if you want to run a prediction market:

Number of people - to have market accuracy, you need a lot of people
A public event(s) (or information you can make public) to "bet on"
Relevance of the event to your business

*895,879 admissions were reported for 2006 - TIFF

Hyper-Multi-Youth: Trioro at the Millennials Conference

Scott Snowden — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 13:48:00 GMT

Last week, we took a trip around the corner to attend the Millennials conference kicking off Canadian Music Week here in Toronto.

Here are a few of my notes from that day...

What is a Millennial?
Generally speaking, we're talking about people born leading up to and around the year 2000. To be honest - I'm still not sure what the exact definition is. What was obvious was that every description seemed to be prefaced by the term "multi".

Multi-taskers
Multi-media
Multi-cultural
Multi-facetted
you get the point

I rolled my eyes a bit when one speaker halfway through the day came up to the stage to declare that "multi" was the wrong word and that we really should be using "hyper". Okay sure, trying to prove a point, that's fine, but really!?

In my mind, the best definition came from Ted Cohen about halfway through the day:
"1 in 2 people in the room don't do it the way we're describing: multi-threading, not-multi-tasking is making a lot of this possible."

The statistics and research being done to conclude that millennials are multi-taskers are concluding that this generation is packing 26 hours of activity into a 24 hour day. Huh? Well, if you have the radio on while you're studying with instant messaging open on your computer... that's being counted as 3 activities at once. Is this really different from any other generation? Are older generations really that archaic that they are incapable of walking and breathing? What if I fall asleep with the TV on!?

I digress...
The traits are obviously still applicable and yes, millennials are using technology to increase productivity and connectivity while having fun at the same time. The truth is, they are multi-threading. Several processes operating at once with cycle time being swapped quickly from one individual task to another. (Yes, I just compared a millennial to a computer processor... kinda seemed fitting.)

What else can describe a Millennial?
From Dr. Mike Atkinson:

Double income "cherished" generation.
Used to a lot and and expect a lot.
Driven by fun and high energy.
Strong community spirit.
Very family oriented.
Confident.

These themes were certainly reiterated throughout the day. People growing up now are certainly citizens of the global village. Millennials respond to global causes, environmental activism and feel a sense of self that is larger than the individual.

A bit more on the environmental note can be found over here.

Before I close out, I'll mention a couple of comments offered by Alan Cross:

50% of all millennials have never set foot in a record store and never will
Today's rebellion songs are more about peace and global issues

Blogged with the Flock Browser

What makes a good online community?

Oliver Moorhouse — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 00:20:00 GMT

Many companies have been playing around with the online community idea to help build relationships with, and around, their brand. Have you seen any good examples lately?

Here are four important questions to ask yourself, if you are thinking in that direction.

Ongoing, or Temporary?
It is important to decide whether you want the community to be an indefinite entity, or created around a specific objective or time frame which will have an end. This decision is important because it frames the type of communication, the tools that should be used, and when resources are needed.

How do you decide between indefinite and temporary?

An indefinite community likely already has existing off-line versions - tap into them. It will also tend to focus around a broad idea and have many sub goals/objectives.
A temporary community needs a compelling and relevant objective. It may not have an existing off-line community, but has a latent desire passion waiting to be expressed.

Who are the trusted filters of your community?
There is a lot of information out there, which can't always be trusted. A community creates good spill-over effects when trusted members assess information, find what is valuable, and share it with the group. Who is playing this role in your community? It's not always your prime target, but it's a role that creates a lot of value in the community.

What is the relevant shared value or purpose, and how is it recognized?
Though this seems very straight forward, it is often missed when "communities" are simply built around an open forum or a contest without mechanisms to reward those who take their time to participate and contribute.

What resources are accessed through the community?
This is the basics of incentive. What valuable resource/asset can be received from the community, which isn't easily accessible somewhere else.

Trioro takes the High Road

Oliver Moorhouse — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 17:07:00 GMT

Trioro is proud to announce the addition of High Road Communications to its growing list of clients in Marketing and Communications industries.

"Trioro has provided valuable technical capability that has been instrumental to delivering results for our clients" Martin Hofmann, Senior Vice President, High Road Communications

Web metrics help deliver a better experience

Oliver Moorhouse — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 21:47:00 GMT

Back in December the Economist wrote about Web Metrics, highlighting the vast amount of data that can be tracked to measure a websites success. However, they bemoaned the lack of a singular and simple measure for Advertisers, like the audience measures used in the offline world today.

Could it be that those simple metrics in the offline world have been in part responsible for leaving a bad taste in the mouth of many potential customers?

Over-advertising, forcing messages, lack of respect for the customer's time, many of these sentiments have been expressed frequently towards advertisements and advertisers (rightly or wrongly). For TV this has lead to use PVRs to avoid commercials, and DVD and Home Theater sales continue to do well while the groans during the first 20 min of advertisements at the movie theater are audible.

Maybe that is why Professor John Quelch, in Harvard Business's look at the year ahead, predicts that 2008 will be the year that Advertising Companies Will Learn to Love Google. Though more time consuming, analyzing the numerous online metrics may result in online advertising that is more tailored and in-tune with potential customers, delivering a better experience for the audience and in-turn a better return on investment â€¦ wouldn't that be nice.

No Click Rule

Scott Snowden — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 21:59:00 GMT

In several meetings recently people have told me that they understand usability because they "know about the three click rule".

That three click rule can be blamed for so many websites that have too many pages.

I propose: The No Click Rule

If you're unfamiliar with the Three Click Rule, it essentially says that a website visitor should be able to find the content that they're looking for without having to click the menu more than 3 times. Other's argue that it's okay to make that at 5 click limit.

Off the cuff, the Three Click Rule seems rather sensible. Wouldn't you think? Now, I concede that if you're building a new website for Microsoft that this is a good rule of thumb.

Before the arrival of technologies like AJAX, developers were forced to make people click through sequential forms that collected data. It's now possible to design websites to be much more dynamic.

The purpose of the "No Click Rule" is to force a change in mind-set. Don't strive for a 3 click setup. Aim for NO clicks - at all. Very few websites will be able to achieve that, but designing with the No Click Rule in mind will force you to think of short cuts and usability optimizations.

Answering some Facebook questions

Oliver Moorhouse — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 21:43:00 GMT

When talking to clients about leveraging social networking, specifically Facebook, two questions are predominant:

1. There is a lot of hype about Facebook, but really how many people are using it in Canada?

2. What are other companies doing on Facebook, am I being left behind?

Here are some stats, and a quick but not exhaustive survey, to help answer those questions.

Facebook is Huge in Canada.

Facebook reports that it has over 7 million active Canadian users, which is approximately 20% of the entire Canadian population. This makes it second only to the U.S. in total number of users, but with Canada being about 10% of the size of the U.S. , Canadians really have embraced Facebook in a much bigger way. As for cities, Toronto has the largest representation of any city, with over half a million users.

Furthermore, the bulk of those 7 million Canadian Facebook users are likely in the 15-39 age range. In Canada 15 - 39 year olds account for roughly 34% of the population (2006 Census). Though not an exact calculation, these numbers suggest that over half of Canada's 15-39 year olds actively use Facebook!

What some companies are doing:

Company /Brand: PlayStation Canada

Facebook Presence: Sponsored Group

Reach: ~28,000 members

Focus:

The main focus of the PlayStation Canada group has been creating awareness of limited addition offerings and new games, and running contests. Contests have used Facebook as platform for contest entry, for example one contest asked entrants to "Show us where you play" by posting pictures in the Photo section of PlayStations Facebook group.

For members, this group page has also become a resource for them to get answers to specific questions about games, system set-up, and product availability. Furthermore, most answers come from other group members, rather than from Sony Canada - a true community.

Company/Brand : CBC

Facebook Presence:

Sponsored Group - The Great Canadian Wish List

Pages - CBC, CBC News

Application - CBC Radio 3 Player

Reach:

Group - ~14,000

Pages - 545, and 370 fans respectively

Application - Loaded to ~2100 accounts, 42 daily active users

Focus:

There has not been much overall focus to CBC's activities on Facebook.

Though there are CBC and CBC News pages, they are not highly used by CBC or users. The CBC news page does attempt to drive traffic to news stories at cbc.ca with a tool bar showing latest stories.

The Great Canadian Wish list has been the most successful. This program used Facebook as a platform for users to communicate their wishes and get support for them. Through custom forms in Facebook, users could categorize their wish, provide details, upload photos, and send to friends for support.

The CBC Radio 3 application allows users to add a playlist to their profile, and allow their friends to listen to that playlist within Facebook. Though a cool idea, there are other applications such as My Music that provides a better application to share music on Facebook, so this has not really taken off.

Company/Brand: Molson Canadian

Facebook Presence: Sponsored Group

Reach: ~17,000 members

Focus:

Mostly Molson Canadian uses the sponsored page to drive users to existing online content at molsoncanadian.ca. It also uses the page to raise awareness of contests and sponsored events, and to support its brand positioning with video content directly available on the sponsored page. However, so far Molson Canadian has not used Facebook as a platform for contests or other direct engagement. Furthermore, discussion by members is limited.

Other Company/Brands:

Apple Students: Sponsored Group ~440,000 members

Pink Victoria's Secret: Sponsored Group ~350,000 members

Red Bull U: Sponsored Group ~22,000 members

Red Bull: "Red Bull Roshambull" Application (a rock, paper, scissors game) ~2,000 daily active users

Want More Stats?

Check out the recent CMA post on Facebook Stats.

Top Universities reach the world with Online Service

Oliver Moorhouse — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 21:37:00 GMT

The Globe and Mail recently reported on an initiative called OpenCourseWare lead by MIT and other top U.S. schools, such as Stanford and Berkeley. This is a great example of using internet technology to increase the power of an organizations offering.

You may be wondering, why would MIT, or the other 100 universities worldwide, give away all this course material for free, how is that a worthwhile offering? (You still actually need to go to MIT to get a degree - that cannot be done online)

Here is my take:

Awareness & Trial: Placing valuable content online will drive a huge number of people to the MIT site and allow them to get a taste of the quality of the education. This will likely result in much larger and global audience with significantly more impact than any advertisement could. Only internet technology has the power to enable a program with this much reach.

Prestige: MIT and others are in the business of prestige. They need to be at the forefront of knowledge, recruiting the best professors, only taking the best students, and making sure everyone knows they are the best. By broadening the audience of a professor from a lecture hall to the world, these universities will be able to empower their professors to make an even bigger impact and garner more prestige. This might even result in better teaching if reputations start being made off of courses and not just research/publications.

Furthermore, many of the users of these materials are professors and students at other institutions, who are adapting their teaching/courses to the MIT material. This is a huge compliment that only increases the allure of MIT. (If properly cited - of course)

Usability will be critical: For both the end user and the professor/administrator an easy to use system will be critical. For the end-user it is straightforward, if you can't easily understand and navigate through the material then the experience will degrade, not enhance, the perception of the university.

For professors/administrators the time spent maintaining the courseware catalogue could be a significant cost in terms of time and distraction if it's not designed to fit well with how these staff members operate.

There are many content management systems out there that could theoretically "do the job", after all it's just posting text, documents, and video to a website â€¦ right? Not quite. To create a system that really hits the mark and makes it easy for both the users and professors, they will need to develop a custom system. That's why in Stanford's Open CouseWare Business plan they call for a custom web application, and Berkeley is focusing on an automated system to record and post lectures.

Globe&Mail Article

Usability Defined

Scott Snowden — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 21:41:00 GMT

A key focus of what we do at Trioro is ensuring the websites and solutions that we build are "usable". Â A few posts that will come in the near future will help define how we interpret some of the terms used to understand usability. Â I'll start right there - with the definition of "usability".

Usability is an understanding of how easy it is for a person to interact with a computer.

At Trioro it is important that we build websites that make sense to the people using them. It is important that the websites we build are easy to use and effective at getting the job done.

A usable website has the following qualities:

easy to understand
easy to navigate
very obvious functionality
familiar (even for new visitors)
pleasing

For anyone using a website they should be able to get what they came for in a fast, effective way. You're probably familiar with the term "user friendly" which implies that a website is highly usable.

Understanding your audience is key to building a good, usable website. The resources on a website must be presented accordingly. Casual web users need overly obvious navigation. While financial investors need advanced analytic functionality that behaves just like the spreadsheets they're used to.

At Trioro we use scenarios to make sure that websites are highly usable. It is absolutely necessary to describe and understand your audience by "walking in their shoes". Describing scenarios which detail the interaction a visitor has with the website will ensure a usable tool is built.

If you're interested in more on the topic, check back here for continued posts. And in the mean time, check out these web links on the definition of usability:

Why we use Silverlight on Trioro.com

Oliver Moorhouse — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 21:45:00 GMT

You may have wondered why we chose to use Silverlight on our own site, while we use Flash on our client's sites. It's really about looking to the future.

Looking to the future:

Flash is currently the standard, and is already installed on practically every computer. For our clients this is a good thing and what we typically recommend for the time being.

However, Microsoft Silverlight is a new technology that will help us improve the interaction and user experience for our clients. Though not as widespread as Flash currently, Silverlight is gaining fast and works across systems -even non-Microsoft. The plug-in (what you need to have to view a Silverlight site) is free and is quite fast and simple to install. Once installed it doesn't not require any other change from the user, so it's really quite painless. (Download Silverlight Now)

Also, with Microsoft sites ranked number one in Canada for visitors (from Com-Score) and NBC's online Olympic coverage being delivered by Silverlight, its growth doesn't look like it will slow down anytime soon.

Putting the technology to use on our own site is a small investment now, which will allow us to deliver more value to our clients in the long run.

Download Silverlight>

Designing customer experiences - New?

Oliver Moorhouse — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 21:44:00 GMT

To some it seems that designing customer experiences is a completely new phenomenon.

I've been reading Polar Unlimited's blog, since being introduced to them through a mutual client, and have been reminded again of the business world's continued focus on "design thinking" and "customer experience".

In 2002, Roger Martin (Dean of the Rotman School of Management) created the Desautels Center for Integrative Thinking to bring together design and business thinking "to change the way business schools teach business". P&G's CEO has over the last several years been leading a transformation of the largest package goods company in the world to a design focused company. And more recently, Microsoft has launched Expression Studio, a suite of tools to make it easier for designers and developers to work together to create better user experiences for web and windows applications. The launch in Toronto was accompanied by a presentation from NextD on the future of design to solve the worlds "wicked problems".

However, designing customer experiences is not new.

From Shakespeare and Motzart to George Lucas, Cirque du Soleil, and Nuit Blanche (which I had the pleasure to attend this year in Toronto). Individuals and organizations have aspired to capture the hearts and the minds of their audience. To engage and delight, to awe and inspire; sometimes for purpose and sometimes for play. (there is a reason that the word "art" appears in the title of Roger Martin's The Art of Integrative Thinking)

A focus on design and experience is not new, but it is incredibly important.

What is new is the means. The tools and technology to design customer experiences is ever-evolving, and the online world is the new stage. I don't think anyone can claim to have completely figured it out yet - and that's why Trioro exists. We're here to help our clients apply these new online technologies, and find the path to delivering great experiences online.

Trioro's Focus

Oliver Moorhouse — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 21:43:00 GMT

This is the first post since the visual expression (the re-design of our own site) of our company's renewed focus: building business by unleashing internet technology on your most important business objectives.

In this blog we will provide ideas, information, and commentary on the ever changing world of internet technology, its impact on businesses like yours, and what is most important to get right. We want to help you win in your industry by bringing strategy and technology together in a creative way that delivers results. This blog will hopefully be a useful resource in the pursuit of that goal.

Hope you like it

Search Engines: Online Word of Mouth

Scott Snowden — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 20:30:00 GMT

Without a doubt, one of the first questions we get when working on a website is:

"How do I get my site to be the top site on Google?"

When describing the technology of search engines and their rankings I like to use "The Hamburger Analogy"...

Suppose you are the owner of a neighbourhood hamburger restaurant. In an effort to draw in more business you put a big flashy sign on the front of your building claiming that you have the "best hamburgers in town"! Obviously the problem with this approach is that no one will believe your claim... unless people are trying your hamburgers for themselves, discovering that you do have a fantastic recipe and spreading the word around the neighbourhood.

Internet search engines like Google work in a similar fashion - it's all about online word of mouth. Google will not give much attention to your website if no one else is talking about you and linking back to your website. Of course, you need to make sure that your website is accurately describing your message. Keywords and phrases are still important.

It is also important to understand that search engines DO NOT actually search the Internet for you at the very moment when you run a query. If you use Google to search the Internet the results are actually displayed from an enormous database that has been carefully built by Google. Search engines have automated programs called robots or crawlers that head off and build a catalogue of the Internet one website at a time. The keywords and links that the robots find are stored in the enormous database. Your search is run against this database and the results bring back the links to the sites that match.

Tips for the website owner:

Make sure your content contains the keywords AND phrases people would use to search for your site.
Approach your associates about linking back to your website with an accurate description of your website - again using keywords and phrases.
If you have a Flash website make sure you have a text-only version which can be indexed by Google and other search engines. Text that is embedded in a Flash file cannot be read by the robots that add your site to a search engine's database.
If the topic of your website is similar to others it will be more difficult to generate enough "word of mouth" to move your site up to the top of search engine results. Emphasize the unique qualities and content of your website to get yourself ahead of the rest.
Be patient - it may take awhile - sometimes several months for a search engine to find you and properly catalogue your site in their database.

Benefits of co-locating

Oliver Moorhouse — Tue, 02 May 2006 20:51:00 GMT

Over the past 5 months, I have been working a large global project to create a step-change improvement in profit forecasting work process and computer systems. Our team is large and spread out around the globe. Team members hail from four different companies and six countries: U.S., Canada, India, U.K., Venezuela, and the Philippines. Last week, team members gathered in Toronto for a design review. What I found so striking was how effective co-location can really be - even if it's only temporary. Our team was able share knowledge and experience much more quickly than normal; each one of us picking up on each other's more subtle cues and body language. The big issues were put on the table immediately, and we were able to drill to the heart of matter. We were then able to put plans in place to tackle these issues in a few hours rather than a few days. The experience was motivating for the whole team.

We often hear about the rise of off-shoring, specifically in India, and the cost benefits that it brings. However, we shouldn't forget the hidden time, co-ordination, and motivation costs that separating a team can have. I think this is especially relevant in system development and business process optimization (BPO) work where iterative/agile development and team cross-training are so important. Also see Embedding Design Into Business (bottom of link - Rotman Magazine).

But how does this relate to smaller businesses where off-shoring may not even be an option? Off-shoring is clearly not the only way a team can be separated. Flexible work arrangements, outsourcing, and sub-contracting can separate a team even if all the work happens in the same city. There are many good reasons to build a team that is not naturally co-located (by no means am I saying that teams should only be co-located), but the benefits of co-location are also real and significant.

Jutta Eckstein has some good suggestions on what can be done when your team is not naturally co-located in Aglie Software Development in the Large: Face to Face Conversation. Though written from the perspective of large developments, the suggestions are generally applicable. There are several things that you can do ensure your dispersed team is communicating effectively, but is the responsibility solely yours? What about the companies, such as Trioro, that provide development, sub-contracting, and BPO services? Shouldn't they be enabling effective communication and making co-location easy for you â€¦ the client?

I will leave you with that, as I am sure you can guess my opinion.

Don't think about it.

Scott Snowden — Fri, 17 Mar 2006 17:55:00 GMT

This post is inspired by Jay's Journal that aired last night as part of Daily Planet on the Discovery Channel. Jay's Journal is a regular editorial from Jay Ingram - co-host of Daily Planet.

The title of the column is Unconscious Decision. The premise is that over-thinking a decision is not healthy. Research shows that the less time spent thinking about an involved decision the happier you'll be with what you decide.

Click here to watch the video clip. (Windows Media - length: 3 minutes and 10 seconds)

In this clip Jay Ingram discusses the process of buying a new couch and the difference between weighing the pro's-and con's versus buying on impulse simply because you like the couch you just saw. You'll likely be happier if you avoid thinking too much about the purchase.

We can all relate to the experience of having a "Eureka" moment where suddenly something occurs to you without thinking about it. In that circumstance you have already become familiar with a problem, but after forgetting about it your sub-conscious mind discovers the solution.

Let's extend the concept of Jay's Journal to the business decision making process. How many times has your project team kept going in circles trying to make a decision? Perhaps it is best to get everyone's first impression right off-the-bat... Discuss some of the ideas so that everyone has some familiarity and leave it at that until a follow-up meeting tomorrow. Similarly, don't over think some of the decisions - if there is consensus, go with it.

... what do you think?

Word-of-mouth via email

Oliver Moorhouse — Tue, 03 Jan 2006 21:41:00 GMT

When you were a teenager, do you remember how you heard of the best parties, or found out about the cool new bands? I'll bet it was from a friend, who in turn heard of it from another friend. Soon enough there was a buzz all around you.

Word-of-mouth is powerful, even more so with the flood of information that surrounds and distracts us today. Everyone needs as much help as they can get to wade through it all, and we often look to our friends for this help. We benefit from the trusted people in our lives who act as filters and only pass on what is useful.

Word-of-mouth via email is especially tricky, since we get so many a day, they are easy to ignore, and many of us are weary of mass emails. However, when distributing information, I've found that understanding and leveraging these filters (the people we know and trust ) is a more effective method than the mass/direct mail approach. By using these filters effectively, you are respecting the audience's time.

Here are some tips on how to use email for word-of-mouth campaigns:

Categorize your email list based on interests
Instead of just sending out mass emails, break up your list into groups that will have similar interest in the event, service or product you are providing. Most importantly, tailor your e-mails to the different groups based on their interest.

Be personal
Word-of-mouth is based on strong and trusting relationships. If people don't trust you, or the person they are receiving the information from, they are less likely to pass your message on. Don't just use their names, but write personal messages where possible. Also, use blind carbon copy - an email with a huge list at the start signals that this is not a personal message.

Be concise and stagger emails
Don't overwhelm your audience; give them small chunks of information spread out over time. Also, stagger the emails between the groups that have different interests. You'll likely find that the message spreads across the groups anyway, but the message is not always coming from you. Getting the same message from different people whom you trust, adds credibility to the message.

Measure your results whenever possible
Whether using a system like WebEcho, or just asking people what they think, it's important to get feedback and adjust your campaign accordingly. Sometimes it will just take a simple tweak to achieve significantly improved results.