Lessons Learned

Over the course of growing Knowmad Technologies from a freelance programming business into a full-service Web agency, I’ve learned a few things along the way (sometimes by the school of hard knocks). For instance, there was the pivotal learning moment in realizing that we not only needed to be good at designing & building Websites but also good at discovering and capturing business goals & objectives.

This particular engagement was to streamline information from multiple sites as well as to replace an old, custom-built Website with a more reliable, user-friendly content management system. After a protracted development cycle due to more custom programming than we had anticipated (inadequate planning) as well as several change requests resulting from unanticipated features (inadequate planning), we learned upon delivery of the Website that the primary goal of this project was to increase online sales (inadequate planning).

As a result, we had built a solution that met the stated needs of improving the Website design to make finding services and checking out much more user-friendly. However, had we known about the client’s business goals, we could have made strategic suggestions, such as Internet marketing or design elements that support their goals, to further improve the effectiveness of their Website. At the very least, we could have created better rapport by understanding the critical success factors that were driving our client’s need to engage our services.

In looking back on other engagements, we have found that the requirement to build a “new website” is often a presenting problem to a much larger issue. As Gerry McGovern writes in his article “Web manager: Top tasks versus tiny tasks”:

“A classic web redesign is like taking a raving alcoholic and sending them to rehab for a month. They come out looking clean and redesigned.  However, the underlying problems have not been addressed so six months later you’re back in the same mess.”

Whether you are working with internal staff, freelancers or an agency, the more you can share with your Web team, the more effective they can be in making your Web presence into a successful component of your business strategy. This starts with sharing your business goals and objectives. Again, McGovern sums this up nicely in his article “Web teams need constant feedback”:

“The Web is so important today. And yet many of the web teams I deal with are way down the management hierarchy. That needs to change because the reality is that the Web is central to the present and future success of most organizations.”

What are you doing to improve the effectiveness of your Web team?

Here’s some advice that might be hard to swallow: The colors, fonts, spacing and imagery on your Web site could be the difference between a user purchasing from you or choosing a competitor. This means that even the most strategic SEO or marketing campaign could be jeopardized by a visually neglected site.

According to a 2002 study by Consumer WebWatch, nearly half of Web users assess a Web site’s credibility based solely on visual design elements. Not privacy policies, customer service numbers, evidence of a physical location or depth of content. Design alone trumps all of those rational indicators.

Like it or not, aesthetics are closely tied to our emotions. It’s evolutionary. And the way humans make decisions is far more emotionally-driven than we would like to admit. Therefore, you stand a better chance at gaining a visitor’s business by creating a compelling, trustworthy aesthetic.

There is no reason to use the terms “functional” and “ugly” interchangeably. The idea that one must sacrifice either form or function when creating a Web design is absurd. True design thrives upon constraint; it forces innovation. Anything less would be merely misdirected decoration.

Good design is subliminal

While beauty is important to initial impressions, no one (except perhaps you and industry web designers) should be staring at your homepage for too long thinking about how gorgeous it is. Good design is transparent and should not be consciously considered by a visitor. It is subliminal when it’s right, and blatantly obnoxious when it’s wrong. Most importantly, good design works. When evaluating your Web site (or individual pages on your Web site), ask yourself these questions:

• Are the most important tasks a user would want to perform apparent? (You have conducted audience research to define these tasks, haven’t you?) Also note that this does not mean cluttering your home page with every single task that a user might want to accomplish.
• Are there multiple logical paths to the resources users want to find? Instead of placing all of the tiny tasks on the homepage, create logical paths to them through the main navigation (which goes from general to specific).
• Are your calls to action relevant? Don’t put the same sidebar graphic call to action on every page; it will be overlooked if it is repeated too often.
• Are your forms forgiving? The forms on your Web site should provide human-friendly feedback, they should allow a user to correct mistakes easily, and they should be generous about what kind of information is accepted (does the phone number really need to have dashes in it?). If you get this wrong, you make yourself look like a sadistic, impatient robot, and no one wants to do business with one of those, right?

These are but a few considerations to make. A Web designer who truly understands the Web medium will be able to design not only the page’s initial look, but for the interactive states as well.

Well-designed, Usable Sites Have a Higher Return

Even if you think your Web site is performing well, there is still room for improvement: according to research conducted by usability guru Jakob Nielsen, the average Web site redesigned for usability increases core business metrics such as conversions, page views, and target feature usage by 83%. And in the case of an e-commerce Web site one button could cost you $300 million  over a year.

Now, to most Web developers and designers, touting that a Web site is “usable” would be akin to a chef bragging about his “edible” food. While Web usability has increased dramatically on the whole over the years, there are still many sites that get it wrong (or, more commonly, are just plain oblivious to it) and are losing customers or spending a lot on customer service support because of a poorly designed, difficult Web site.

Discordance between what a Web site or application appears to do and what it actually does can damage trust. Consider success messages that are red instead of green, buttons that don’t “push” in when you click on them, and text that is blue and underlined that isn’t really a link. These things may seem like minor annoyances, but they create the perception of an unstable, disoriented environment.

Bottom line: Yes, your site should be pretty (and functional).

I’m not suggesting that your Web site should be senselessly embellished and decorated like a scrapbook (unless your market research indicates that this is what your target audience will respond to). But your online presence should have a degree of emotion, and an aesthetically-appealing quality that fits with your brand and the strategic functionality you plan to build into your site.

Don’t fight human nature–use it to your advantage by building a site that fosters trust through elegant, thoughtful design, and you’ll be headed in the right direction.

It’s not that we didn’t know the value of audience research. We all know that it’s important to know who your audience is whether you’re writing, performing or creating a design. Otherwise, how can you ensure quality or perform well?

Sometimes, we just did it informally for an internal guide and didn’t deliver the research to the client. Other times, sadly, it just got skipped because there was no budget. So for a dark time in Knowmad’s history, we didn’t formalize the audience research process and it wasn’t fun.

These days, I don’t know how we designed a site without this valuable and easy to obtain information! Crazy, I know. I also know we’re not alone here in having skimped on the audience research step in the past so I thought I’d share some insight into our ever-evolving process.

Audience Research: In a Nutshell

So, how do we conduct audience research? The research can be very simple and you might be surprised how much we human beings love helping by giving our opinions. Generally speaking, we like doing favors for others, if it doesn’t take too much of our time and isn’t a lot of work. Translation: keep it simple and quick.

The hardest part of the research is asking for help from the audience groups and getting their attention. We haven’t yet had to offer an iPad to get responses because our clients typically recruit audience members through existing relationships.

Here’s a quick overview of how we conduct & use the research.

1. Define target audience groups
2. Create questions to illicit insight on needs, values, goals & tasks
3. Analyze the results & create a user task matrix
4. Share the results with our client
5. Use the information gathered to inform wire-frames for design
6. Use the information for content strategy
7. Also use the information for visual design
8. Review the audience research during & after project development

As you can see, this information drives most of the process. I really don’t know how we ever built websites without it.

What questions do we ask?

Our questions vary by industry and organization type. Generally speaking, the questions center around needs, desires, values and behavior. Technical questions are limited to keep the interview or survey easy for the audience member. Most technical questions can be answered via an analysis of web analytics. Some common questions include a variant of the following:

• What do you expect to accomplish while on this website?
• In relation to Company X, please rank order the following values.
• How much does the website influence your purchase?
• In relation to Company X’s website, please rank order these 5 tasks.
• How much time to you spend in the following social networks? (Provide a list with % options for time, e.g. ’50% or less’)

What’s in it for the client?

Aligning audience needs with established business goals ensures the web presence is performing for the business or organization. We use audience research for both functional & visual design as well as content strategy. Audience research helps us & our clients prevent spending budgets on web initiatives that audience members won’t find beneficial.

My favorite example for this is the idea of adding a forum to a website. On the surface, it may sound like a fantastic idea. Users will stay on the site, they’ll talk to one another and Ad revenues will go up!

Forums are a lot more work than you might expect to succeed. You need moderators who are quick to respond. When spam issues arise, they must be remedied quickly. To get a forum going, you may need ‘ghost posters’ to make it look active and encourage real users to join the conversations.

If audience members do not already engage in this behavior (posting to and reading forums), it’s much easier and often more effective to engage them via an existing behavior.

Are you conducting research on your project’s target audience? If so, share your techniques and stories. We’d love to hear them.

So, let’s look at what it takes to turn your Website into a tool for your business to prosper rather than a liability to wither on the Web. We’ll look at three key elements of a successful Website project:

• Define your goals
• Create a strategy
• Measure the success

Define your goals

Before starting to build your Web site, make sure that you know what success will look like. Your goals will influence the design, features, implementation & marketing of the site. Here are some common goals for your corporate site:

• Coporate branding – ensures that your online presence accurately portrays the size, depth & capabilities of your business to prospects, partners & employees (both current and potential)
• Sales support – give your sales team tools to provide additional product or service information
• Lead generation – provide your sales team with new warm leads for prospects seeking your product or service
• Customer service – give your clients the ability to self-service their accounts or get more value from your service
• E-commerce – being able to sell products directly online can lead to higher margins and better customer relationships
• Online community – business models that serve a community can use their Web site to enable better communications & provide additional resources for their community

Create a strategy

Once you’ve defined your goal, it’s tempting to want to jump right into development. However, taking the time to create the strategy of how you will accomplish the goal will pay off in an effective Web site that delivers results. Your strategy includes the target audience, sitemap, features, wireframes, business risks, security requirements, user roles and metrics for success.

For instance, if you own a services company looking to increase leads for your sales team, your site will need to have conversion points that will generate leads. These could be product sample or demo requests, premium content downloads, appointment scheduling, contact form, request for a quote and more. The design and site structure should create an enjoyable experience that makes it easy for your visitors to find what they are looking for.

Your strategy should also define criteria such as whether you will you capture contact info via a form for file downloads or allow open downloads in order to spread your content widely. If you choose the latter option, you may also want to put call tracking in place so that you can measure how many phone calls the Web site generates.

Measure the success

Finally, once you have completed the design, written the content & launched your Web site, it’s important to measure the success of your efforts. If you took the time to create a strategy, you’ll already know what you need to measure to determine the success. There are many tools that can help though a popular favorite is the freely available Google Analytics.

It is amazing how much raw data a Web site can generate from visitor traffic and user interactions. For the purposes of measuring the success of your project, Analytics allows you to customize the dashboard and setup goals which provide a quick status update to see whether you are meeting your objectives. If you are not, there are many additional reports which can help you to review user behavior and try to understand why your visitors are not taking the actions you would like.

Conclusion

Building an effective Web site involves setting goals, planning & measuring results. If you think of your Web site as a component of your overall business strategy, you’ll be better able to create a tool that drives your success rather than distracts you from your work. Like a business, creating a successful Web site is a process, not a product.

So tell me, why do you have a website?

Kmart isn’t a place I shop, which isn’t saying a lot because I’m not a big in-store shopper. I can’t say I’ve even been on the Kmart website until reading this news nugget. The brand doesn’t strike me as modern, so it made me curious about how the company is using the web and what results they might achieve.

After a quick search, I found that Kmart has several initiatives on the web including a mobile app (kmart2go), mygofer.com and kmartdesign.com. Business strategy and the web are two of my favorite topics so I began to wonder…

What can we learn from Kmart?

Here’s what stands out to me about Kmart’s web strategy, none of which is surprising and gives us a great example to look at for web strategy.

• Clearly define business goals
• Segment and target specific audiences.
• Offer presentation formats specific to the target audience
• Use Social Media to augment existing marketing, PR and sales strategies

Clearly Define Business Goals

As you can see by looking at the different web presences for Kmart, they all support the overall organizational sales goals. I have no doubt that, internally, the corporation is measuring the ROI of each part of the overall web strategy. Otherwise, why invest?

Segment & Target

Kmart is making it easy for target audiences to interact and/or buy by understanding their preferences, where they hang out on the web and what messages buyers want to hear.

Audience-Driven Design

Kmartdesign.com is customized for the design audience, not only in it’s visual appearance but also in the content strategy of the web site. The site’s content strategy focuses in on sharing the unique personality of the brand’s designers, including many videos to reach the site’s young audience.

Mobile Design

Each website for Kmart is not only optimized for the web but also for mobile platforms. Considering the 65% annual predicted rise of mobile commerce by some analysts, this is likely to be a very smart move even if the analysts are overly optimistic.

Strategic Social Media

Kmart is using social media outlets like Twitter, YouTube and Facebook to augment their existing, traditional marketing & PR strategies. The use of Social Media supports the goals of the web strategy by making it easier for buyers to shop while on Facebook. Enter ‘Shoppable Videos’.

Shoppable Video

What is it and why do we care? I haven’t personally seen ‘shoppable video’ previously but now I’m keeping an eye out for it. It’s an evolutionary idea for video. Users can watch a video about a particular design line and, by a single click on the video, browse the product line in Kmart’s online store. The video was created by AboutFace, a content marketing agency that makes short form video documentaries for brands, and then optimizes that content for use within social media.

While I think the web strategy will likely increase sales and have a positive impact on brand, it will likely have a larger impact on buyers that have little, if any, previous experience with the brand. The initiatives on the web from Kmart appear to be competitive reactions to Walmart’s in-store pickup service, released in 2007, and Target’s Style Boutique.

So what do you think? Will any of Kmart’s web strategy change the way you perceive the brand, making you more likely to shop with the company?

Sam Palmisano opens up the letter with the usual rigamarole about “superior performance” and “strong EPS growth.” In past years, my inner geek could never get past all that strutting and statistical voodoo. However, on the next page, these letters get far more interesting as he talks about the IT industry, marketplace & future.

In this year’s letter, he writes about the last decade in which IBM promoted the “Smarter Planet” concept as well as refocused it’s business around services & software, shedding many of its commodity hardware businesses. From the review, he looks ahead to the future for our industry. This constitutes growth markets, analytics, cloud & next-generation data center, and smarter planet initiatives. Not much to learn about growth markets other than that IBM works in 170 countries and sees plenty of stimulus money being earmarked for development.

The analytics section is the most interesting. IBM describes analytics as mathematical models that turn information into insight. He cites stats such as IP traffic expected to reach half a zettabyte in three years (that’s a trillion gigabytes). Another interesting stat is that thirty percent of data in the world today consists of medical images. All of this data is being connected. He refers to this enhanced connectivity from computers to phones to cars to appliances to objects as the Internet of Things and says we’re heading toward trillions of connected objects (and Taoism only thought there were 10,000) and hundreds of millions of individuals (thanks to social media tools). Mathematicians and economists will clearly have good opportunities for employment in this decade!

An interesting analogy that he makes in the review of last decade is the application of “advanced engineering and management principles of the sort that prior generations had applied to manufacturing.” This idea is brought up again in the discussion of cloud and next-gen data centers as “the industrialization of IT.” This is utility computing which moves the servers out of the server rooms and data centers and into the services arena. He briefly addresses the pros and cons of this development. It’s clear that IBM will continue to invest billions into this future.

The concept of a smarter planet is no longer an if but a when. IBM plans to work with its customers to address their desire to learn how to create smarter cities, businesses, governments, health care services, etc. Let’s hope some of this knowledge can be applied to the environmental impacts all this globalization and development is going to cause as we put more and more pressure on our planet’s systems.

As you’d expect, the letter closes with the usual optimism and shout-outs to employees. Want to read the letter for yourself? As a public company, IBM makes its report available at http://www.ibm.com/annualreport/2009/.

Claiming a business name on social networks is an important part of a strong marketing strategy because it creates a permission-based channel to market to potential buyers. These are the people that want to be updated on what your business is offering. Creating a business name on these networks also protects your corporate brand by preventing other individuals or organizations from claiming the brand name and misrepresenting the brand on these networks.

One of the first networks to start claiming the business brand name is Facebook.com. As of March 2010, Facebook has over 400 million active users. More than 100 million active users are currently accessing Facebook through their mobile devices. Fifty percent (50%) of Facebook’s userbase log on to the network in any given day. No matter your business size, your buyers are most likely on the Facebook network.

Setting a business up on Facebook is quick and easy. We’ll assume that you’re already registered on facebook.com. If you’re not already registered on facebook.com, visit the website’s homepage to register. Once you’ve completed that step, read on to setup your business page.

Setup a Business Page on Facebook

If you don’t already have a page setup for the business on Facebook, log into Facebook and setup a new Facebook page. When you create a new Facebook fan page for a business, you can select either the “Local Business” or “Brand or Product” option (unless you are an artist, band, or public figure). Choose the option and associated category that best fits your business need. Use your associated business name, brand or product name for ‘Name of Page’. For now, we’ll assume that you’re using the business name for the page.

During page creation, you can choose if you’d like to publish the page or keep it unpublished until a later time. If you don’t already have a plan in place for your page, we suggest you keep it unpublished while you research what your page will contain. You can publish the page when you’re ready.

Setup a Vanity URL

A vanity URL is a URL or domain name, created to point to something to which it is related and indicated in the name of the URL. For example, www.facebook.com/yourbusinessname. Facebook started offering vanity urls in the summer of 2009. Facebook offers vanity URLs in the form of usernames for pages. For business pages, you need to have at least 25 fans to claim the vanity url.

You’ll want to claim the vanity URL (a.k.a. – username) for your business for at least two reasons.

• You’ll want to make it easy to find and share your Facebook Business Page.
• You can prevent others from taking the brand name in the network. (See my earlier comments about protecting your brand.)

Claiming your business vanity url on Facebook is fairly simple. However, be aware that you will not be able to edit or transfer this username once you set it.

• Visit Facebook’s username page to setup a vanity url on facebook.com.
• Click the link in the page to ‘Set a username for your Pages’.
• Choose the page you’re setting up the url for from the dropdown.
• Enter your desired username for your business page (e.g. – yourbusinessname) and click the button to ‘Check Availability’.
• Once you find an available and appropriate name, accept the username for the page. You’ll be presented with the shortened url for your business page.

Were you able to successfully setup your fan page? If so, post your link in the comments below.

Take a look at your current website and consider the following questions:

• Does your website support your business goals?
• Does the sales team need more leads? Would they have more leads if your website had more traffic?
• Does the website help your sales process?
• Is there an opportunity to gain market share by being perceived as a market leader or offering better online service?
• How are you currently gathering leads online and is the approach working?

When Mallard Creek Polymers, a specialty latex manufacturer, considered these questions, the answers led them to Knowmad Technologies.

The management team at Mallard Creek Polymers recognized changes in the marketplace that could be advantageous for their company. Their sales team needed more good leads to achieve their sales goals. To take advantage of the newly found opportunities and meet their business goals, the company hired Knowmad Technologies to help create a web strategy and redesign the corporate website.

The refreshed site incorporates strategic lead capture tools and delivers qualified leads to their sales team. Thirty days after launching the new custom web design, the company received a 33% increase in web leads. How has your site performed over the last 30 days?

One of the features we’re most excited about is called ‘Annotations’.  The reason we’re excited about this feature is because this feature will make it easier to share information about traffic changes with all users on any analytics account. If a marketing manager releases a new print campaign, for instance, they can make a note directly on the time graph. This means less time hunting down the reason for the traffic spike or dip for other account users.

“A simple note from a colleague can save hours of real work (and
frustration) for an analyst who is tasked to explain a usually dry set
of numbers.” – Google Analytics Blog

How to use Annotations

Below is a video from Google on how to use Annotations.

Custom Variables

Google is also rolling out changes to an existing feature called ‘Custom Variables’. Custom Variables were originally released in Oct. 2009 and were only available in the “Custom Variables” report in the Visitors section. You can now use custom variables in custom-built reports. In addition, you can use custom variables to create advanced visitor segments.

What does this mean? It means that it’s easier to track visitor behavior that is specific to your business. For example, a registration-based web site can track a ‘Registered
Member’ to see how the behavior of a registered user differs from an anonymous user. These two types of users often behave quite differently. Previously, it was very difficult to differentiate between
the two. Using this information, we can now more easily track and understand each experience separately.

New Analytics Tracking Code Setup Wizard

The Analytics Tracking Code Setup Wizard promises to make setting up tracking code easier for all users, technical or not. The expectation is that this will make tracking easier for campaign tagging, multiple sub-domains, mobile traffic, etc. You specify the options via the wizard, then the wizard will provide the appropriate code that can be pasted where needed.

Analytics API

A new version of the Analytics API is also pending release. There aren’t a lot of details on API additions with the exception of Advanced Segmentation support.

Once you click ‘Continue’ you’re presented with a slightly confusing screen to configure new privacy settings. Your old defaults are unselected by default.

Upon seeing the new screen, I found myself just accepting the new settings and then refining the privacy controls using the ‘Settings’ link. Several settings were set to ‘Friends of a Friend’ and ‘Everyone’ where I didn’t want this type of access. I found the most important settings under the ‘Profile’ and ‘Search’ link.

Rafe Needleman has written an easy to read article on refining Facebook privacy settings on his CNET blog.