« July 2007 |
Main
| September 2007 »
Technology is evolving. I'm sure you’re surprised to hear that one. Communication channels in the world are becoming faster, more robust (the big buzz word for today), and less costly. Before you give me the Nobel Prize in technology for my incredible insight, I'll throw something else at you. Today's technology is more confusing then ever. Blogs, myspace, podcasting, iphones, and any other new technology can give you a headache. It's hard to understand the terms let alone keep track of the impact on your business's processes and systems.
We're going to try to help you when it comes to your web solutions. We're currently working on Webplicity 2.0. The goal is to have it completed by the end of 2007. However, with the speed with which things are changing 3.0 may need to done by January 2008. Rest assured we'll do our best.
In a recent article, Emily Tan attributes a drop in media usage measured on a per person basis to the growing use of the web. Not since 1997 have consumers spent less time consuming media relative to the prior year. She shared findings from Veronis Suhler Stevenson (VSS) that the average person in 2006 spent 3,530 total hours, or an average of 9 hours and 40 minutes per day consuming media, which is less than they did in 2005. But the drop is due to people’s change in consumption of traditional media, such as broadcast TV, newspaper and magazines.
Not surprisingly, people have shifted their consumption to technology, or to the web—thus web usage is has increased, not dropped, and it is now considered by many as a mainstream medium. It’s is the leading medium used by people at work and the second most widely used medium at home behind TV. Even with TV, people now TiVo or DVR shows and watch them later only to fast-forward through commercials, or even fast-forward to the specific few minutes within the program that they want. Or through news aggregators and the like, they use the web to find broadcast TV news clips, or funny tidbits from Jay Leno’s opening monologue on ‘The Tonight Show’ from the night before.
Despite the fact that people spent less time consuming media in 2006, total media or communication spending in 2006 rose 6.8% to $885.2 billion dollars. Forecasts call for total spending to reach $900 billion in 2007 and as much as $1.2 trillion by 2011. But this will primarily be to the benefit of online/web spending and at the expense of newspaper.
Do you think traditional mediums such as newspapers and magazines are on the brink of extinction? Will the web ever replace them completely? If so, how long until we are truly a paperless media consumption society—to where we retrieve all of our news online? 5 years? 10?
What’s your take? Join the conversation and tell us if we’ll ever see a world without printed newspapers or magazines, or will there always be a hard copy consumer?
Excerpt from Webplicity - The Critical Guide to Successful Web Strategies by Bill Young
After you’ve completed your analysis and have a good understanding of the user’s behavior, the scope of work, and the technology options, you need to evaluate the content for your Web project. For our purposes, content includes text, graphics, pictures, and specific tools. Content is what makes a new site effective or ineffective. Quality content increases repeat visits and raises the level of trust with users. Content on the Web should be simple and concise. If you do not know what your visitors want, ask. A clear understanding of what your content should say (copy), and how pictures and graphics will enhance the presentation, will increase the success rate of your redesign.
Identifying Proper Content
Gathering and creating content can be one of the biggest challenges of a redesign. BMG had many user groups to which to match content, and the new content had to be in-depth and user-friendly. They knew that just utilizing the existing content and simply giving it a face-lift would be an ineffective solution. BMG’s content had to be straightforward, concise, and relevant. If the content for your Web project is unclear, don’t start your project. BMG knew where some of the new content would come from, but they had to match the user’s goals to specific content areas. This required user feedback, and careful consideration of the responses. By taking the proper steps, you will know what type of content should be created. Use the following guideline:
Step 1: Create a content outline
Step 2: Assemble the proper materials
Step 3: Brainstorm with your staff on content areas/categories (ex: customer service resource center)
Step 4: Think in terms of quick sound bites
Step 5: Prioritize ideas
Step 6: Create a task list
Step 7: Implement the proper content
Content Sources
If you lack key content research services, search for sites that provide content related to your industry or topics. These are often referred to as syndicated content streams. This type of content is provided by other sites, for use on your site. You can simply place a few lines of code and content is delivered. The linked service provides the content to your site automatically with no need for maintaining the code. The content provider either charges you a fee for using the content, or they receive traffic from your site via links placed directly in the content. Interestalert.com will pay you for adding a news feed to your site. There are many free services and budget sensitive options. For example, www.7am.com provides specific news content, while www.1afm.com provides free content. Another great resource is www.yellowbrix.com, providing industry specific news and updates.
Content Inventory
BMG identified what content would be important and created a content inventory. They utilized an excel spreadsheet (a database works well, too) to keep it organized. They created a check-list of the existing content, taking a hard look at each content area, and asked:
“What’s missing?”
“What still needs to be created?”
“How long will it take to create?”
“Who needs to create it?”
Web Copy
One of the most difficult and most important areas of content is the copy. It can be costly to create copy in time, finances, and resources. If you need to create content, designate a qualified internal staff member to do the writing or outsource the copywriting to a qualified copywriter. Poorly written copy reflects on your company’s professionalism. Don’t give your users any reason to doubt you. After designating the copy provider, establish a schedule to keep all personnel on track.
Writing copy for the Web is different than other marketing channels. There are several differences, but one thing remains constant – focus on the user. What will be important to them? What will improve their chances of making a purchase decision? What type of copy will bring them back for another visit?
According to one expert, you should only write 50 percent or less of the text you would have used in hard copy. Only give your user the most pertinent information. However, be detailed when necessary, and make sure your potential customers understand the products and/or services you’re offering. The Web is no place to display the full content of a book. Most users go to your site for quick, specific information -- not the history of the product. Providing quick bullet lists whenever possible keeps the eye moving yet highlights key points in your copy. Keep the following tips in mind for the text of your Web project:
Break pages up into short blocks.
Many users become frustrated when they must page down continuously. Under no circumstances should you allow your users to become frustrated. Use different sized fonts to show important comments, and hypertext to break up pages and split long sections or tedious information. Most pages should have similar formats regarding paragraph set up, font type and size, and overall text look and feel. If customers think they’ve linked to a different site, then they may not come back. Web pages should have a consistent amount of text on each page.
Double check, triple check, and have every resource at your fingertips look at the site for misspellings and errors.
One secret to decreasing misspellings is to copy all your Web text into a Word document and hit the spell check button. Misspellings and errors cause your visitors to lose confidence in your company; Proper grammar is also critical. It can’t be emphasized enough that your Web copy must be written by a qualified professional.
Focus the words on customers and how your service/product helps them.
Stay away from “I” and “us,” and concentrate on “you” and “we.” Keep text positive and forward-thinking, but not exaggerating. Offer convincing words that list the benefits and your company’s enthusiasm for the business.
Graphics and Pictures
The second category of content is graphics and pictures. First, utilize internal pictures/graphics only if they are of high quality and/or professionally done. New marketing material typically contains the right pictures and graphics. Make sure the ones you use for the Web match the offline marketing and branding packages (same feel, colors, look, consistency, etc.). Second, there are many types of libraries and online tools to capture the appropriate graphics/pictures to match your project. Perform a search on the Web with the key words “free Web graphics.” You’ll find plenty of libraries offering free or modestly priced graphics and pictures of the right quality. Also, invest in a subscription to an online library to purchase pictures/graphics, as you need them (www.corbis.com is a good example).
BMG realized through the blue printing process that quality content is important to visitors returning to their site and in creating the perception of expertise. There is a fine line between too little content and too much. Understanding your content needs during the Blue Print Phase will confirm whether the project schedule and timelines are realistic.
In our business we sometimes find ourselves in the following dialogue with a prospect as they explain to us why they went with a different web developer:
“Yes, we’ve elected to go with someone else.”
“Okay, not a problem. We would have loved to work on your business, but please keep us in mind should anything change in the future. Can you tell us why you went the direction you did vs. going with us—did we do something wrong?”
“No, no—you guys were great. You see the CEO’s nephew just graduated from college with some sort of IT or computer degree and he wants to give the kid the opportunity to build the new site. It will be a nice summer job for him, plus he’s going to do it for like $1,000.”
Sound familiar? Do you know a company or someone who has done this? Candidly, we can see the temptation, especially if it’s for a small company or a start-up. However, we don’t recommend it because we have also answered enough phone calls 3-6 months later with the prospect on the other end of the line saying, “Can you help us?”
When this does happen, we typically oblige and agree to help out, but we generally find one or more of the following on the “nephew” website that we now inherit. More often than not, the best thing to do is scrap the original website and start over, but the prospect—or now our client—doesn’t want to walk away from the $10,000 they already have invested in it. Remember it was only suppose to cost $1,000, but the nephew under estimated the hours it would take him and consequently there was a little cost overrun.
Amateur Features
The website has design features that scream amateur. This can include items like the use of a suboptimal color palette, or improper use of images/graphics. Either can result in difficult readability. Or there’s an awkward balance between the use of images and text and as a result, the website takes especially long to load. Or maybe there’s even a hit counter on the website. Or maybe the graphic elements are outdated. Or the website has ecommerce functionality, but a secure transaction can’t be made. The list can go on and on. Even the layperson can discern amateur looking websites from professional ones. Think of some you seen recently. You can probably picture a website that you’ve visited recently that fits this scenario.
Lack of Foresight
Either the nephew or company personnel (through no fault of their own, but while working with the nephew) mis-organized the structure of the website and subsequently developed a less than optimal information architecture. Let’s say the company is now looking to add new sections or new features to the website because they have a new division or something like that. The problem is no one thought about the potential for adding new sections/features back when the website was originally designed, thus expansion was not planned for and now things may have to be force fit. Unfortunately this can be a tough fix absent of re-architecting the entire website—i.e. scrapping the website and starting over.
Wrong Application Platform
We’ve seen instances where we learn that a company wants to integrate several internal systems on the back-end of their website in order to generate revenue or deliver more functionality to their customers, only to investigate and inform them that the application in which the website was originally developed cannot be integrated with one or more of the systems. It’s ultimately another foresight issue, just like the architectural issues mentioned above. It wasn’t uncovered or discussed upfront that the website would need to integrate with other internal systems at a later date and thus, the nephew built it in an application that can’t accommodate them.
Sloppy Code
Assuming the website was built in the right application to begin with, sloppy code can essentially be invisible to not only the client, but any visitors to the website. However, much like the foundation of a house, the original code for a website acts as the foundation to the site. If a house doesn’t have a good foundation it will affect the entire house, both now and in the future. The same is true for a website relative to its original code. Sloppy code will have implications when the company wants to expand the functionality and looks beyond the nephew—probably because he’s no longer around. Whoever the company brings in next is going to inherent the sloppy code and it’s going to take that much longer to 1) determine what the nephew was intending to do; and 2) clean up the code before beginning to build the new functionality.
No Guarantees or Warrantees
In the 3-6 months since the nephew finished the website, he has taken another job, moved to another city, gotten married—all exciting things for him, except he’s not around to trouble shoot any problems with the website. Websites are pretty durable once developed. However, like anything problems can arise. When they do, who better to tend to them than those who built it? They know the website and won’t have to spend anytime familiarizing themselves. Depending on the problem, they’ll likely even fix it for no charge. It’s kind of like taking your car to the dealership where you bought it vs. taking it to the mechanic on the street corner. There’s a comfort level with the dealership. They know your car. And, the problem might be covered under the warranty.
Low Priority
Sometimes the nephew doesn’t even get the website completed before getting another job or moving to another city as referenced above. Honorably, he still wants to see the project through to completion, but what priority do you think it is to him to finish? He’s trying to make a good first impression at a new job. Or he’s not only trying to make a good first impression, but he’s doing so in a new city and is now working long distance to finish the website? In this event, the project ultimately gets abandoned, or it gets completed—but extremely late.
Over-promising and Under-delivery
When we inherit projects like this, we hear comments like, “The website was suppose to do this, or suppose to do that but we aren’t sure if he really knew how to make it happen.” It’s the classic case of over-promising and under-delivering. The nephew told his CEO Uncle that he could do it all knowing that some of it he would be doing for the first time. It’s like if you needed heart surgery and the Doctor assigned to you was going to be doing the surgery for the first time. Do you think he’d want to volunteer that statistic? You would probably request a different Doctor if he did. You would want the Doctor who had done it hundreds of times. The same can be true with websites—you want the guy or firm who’s built hundreds of websites.
Landscaping Analogy
We have a friend who recently fell into the amateur trap in hiring landscapers to re-landscape his yard. For the front yard, he hired a professional landscaper who was a certified arborist, experienced, the whole nine yards. The landscaper tended to every detail, anticipated things like drainage problems—ensuring positive grades away from the house, or recognizing that plants wouldn’t grow in certain areas due to their lack of southern exposure, etc. The professional took a little longer to complete the project and cost a little more, but he was meticulous. One plant didn’t make it after the project was complete and he came out and replaced it with a new one—no questions asked. Thus, he did things right the first time, had great foresight and even guaranteed his work.
By contrast, when our friend went to have the backyard done, he approached it solely on cost. He went with a landscaper who could do it for half the price of the first guy and who claimed he could have the backyard project complete in 2 days—sound a little bit like “the nephew”? Since the project has been theoretically complete, the weeds from the old back yard are exposing themselves through the new sod and the home has taken on moisture due to a resulting negative grade that was built into the new yard. By the time our friend gets all the problems fixed he will likely pay more on the backyard than he would have had he hired the proven professional from the beginning.
The moral of the story, whether developing a website, landscaping your yard, or anything, it’s tempting to gravitate to the low cost provider, but resist the temptation because ultimately, you’ll get what you pay for.
By Kimberly Hill
Published: E-Commerce Times, July 12, 2007
In the e-commerce world, each day sees a revolution announced. Although not all purported revolutionary ideas and events are indeed so, some steps taken over the last decade of online activity have changed the way we live and work.
The Software and Information Industry Association (SIIA) on Wednesday offered its list of 10 developments in e-commerce that have created the most waves in the past decade, according to voting by industry experts and policymakers.
The advent of search engine giant Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) tops the list. Nearly half of the online searches conducted by Internet users in February were run through Google, according to the SIIA. Another technology popularized by Google -- the selling of keywords for advertising -- falls fifth on the list.
Because Google pioneered two of the most important technologies of e-commerce -- searching and targeted ads -- "it shouldn't be surprising that Google has had an outsized impact on the growth of e-commerce and merited two entries on the list," Ken Wasch, president of SIIA, told the E-Commerce Times.
E-Commerce on the Move
Some events happened in a moment: For example, the launching of online auction service eBay (Nasdaq: EBAY) in September 1997; its debut ranks third on the SIIA's list. Others happened gradually and then reached critical mass, like the penetration of broadband Internet access for consumers, which grew to 50 percent in June 2004 and ranks second on the trade association's top 10 list.
Two other mobile-Internet-related items appeared on the list: WiFi's development in 1997 ranks seventh, and the introduction of Research In Motion's (Nasdaq: RIMM) BlackBerry devices in 1999 ranks at 10th. This is a trend that will only accelerate, Josh Martin, analyst with Yankee Group, told the E-Commerce Times.
"As we move to a more advertising-centric e-commerce model," Martin said, "the ability to advertise in new a compelling ways will become more important."
The "holy grail" that many people use as an example, said Martin, is that potential customers would be walking by a Starbucks (Nasdaq: SBUX) , for example, and find an electronic coupon automatically transmitted to their cell phones to entice them to enter. More realistic, though, is that companies will purchase space through services such as mobile location searches.
Good Ol' Days Gone?
Perusing the list of top 10 developments (below), one cannot help but notice that seven of them occurred in 2000 or before. That was the era before the dot-com bust, when rafts of ideas were receiving venture capital support and e-commerce companies were popping up left and right.
Now, those that back Internet-based ventures are much more conservative with their funding, and some believe that innovation has slowed considerably.
Are the days of true invention in e-commerce behind us? No, says Wasch. "We at SIIA are particularly excited about the development of open standards as it relates to the open document format (ODF). This is the first real effort to liberate documents from the applications that create them," he stressed.
The production of interoperable documents, he noted, will allow a whole new round of innovation.
Mobility will be at the heart of the next wave of innovation, predicted Martin. "Personalization and accessing the individual instead of household or mass market" is his bet for the next push in e-commerce development.
The list was compiled as part of SIIA's observance of the 10-year anniversary of the release of the federal "Framework for Global Electronic Commerce." The 75 voters included federal officials, executives at Internet companies and related experts, such as lobbyists and former policymakers, said Wasch.
The List
SIIA's "Top 10 Most Significant e-Commerce Developments of the Last 10 Years":
1. Google (Sept. 1998)
2. Broadband Penetration of US Internet Users Reaches 50 percent (June 2004)
3. eBay Auctions (Launched Sept. 1997)
4. Amazon.com (IPO May 1997)
5. Google Ad Words (2000)
6. Open Standards (HTML 4.0 released - 1997)
7. WiFi (802.11 launched - 1997)
8. User-Generated Content (YouTube 2005)
9. iTunes (2001)
10. BlackBerry (1999)
Consumers Are More Efficient With Their Time, Thanks to Growing Web Use
By Emily Tan
Published: Advertising Age - August 07, 2007
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Media outlets may be increasing rapidly each day but consumption is another story. For the first time since 1997, U.S. consumers spent less time using media in 2006 compared to the previous year. Media usage per person declined 0.5% to 3,530 hours. This drop is mainly attributed to changing consumer behaviors and advances in the digital space, according to data by Veronis Suhler Stevenson.
VSS's forecast report projects internet advertising, which includes pure-play websites and digital extensions of traditional media, will replace newspapers as the largest ad medium in 2011.
"There's more and more media, and I don't think we really believe people are less interested in media," said Jim Rutherford, exec VP-managing director, VSS. "But one of the phenomena is the way people consume media is and has been changing for a while over time."
Web to replace newspapers
But in the VSS Communications Industry Forecast 2007-2011 -- its 21st edition of the report on media spending, usage and trends -- total communications spending in 2006 jumped 6.8%to $885.2 billion. This year's report projects this growth trend will continue over the next five years with internet advertising, which includes pure-play websites and digital extensions of traditional media, replacing newspapers as the largest ad medium in 2011.
Because of the high demand for quick updates and short news briefs readily available on the web, consumers now rely less on 30-minute broadcast or cable TV news shows and spend less time reading the Sunday paper, dropping time with ad-supported media 6.3%. But it isn't that consumers are no longer using media, they are just spending less time with it.
"Now they're consuming news through a faster means," Mr. Rutherford said. "They can download shows and watch shows on TiVo, or they might watch a clip of 'The Tonight Show With Jay Leno' instead the whole hour to catch the funny clip that everyone loves."
Even though consumers are spending less time with media last year, media usage on the institutional front -- including conferences, trade shows and business-to-business publications -- rose 3.2% to 260 hours per user. With its first-ever analysis of business and government media usage in the recent VSS Forecast, the bump in institutional sector is because more people want to search for knowledge about jobs rather than the new latest product release.
Knowledge economy
"The economy as a whole is more and more driven by knowledge than manufacturing," Mr. Rutherford said. "Knowledge is the key to success. Knowing this is a competitive edge. [People] need info that's as accurate and timely."
VSS categorizes the communications industry into four major end-user sections -- advertising, marketing, consumer and institutional -- as well as 19 different subsections where those end-users spend their money. According to the report, the institutional sector was the fastest-growing in 2001-2006 periods at a compound annual growth rate of 6.9% and made $226.9 billion in 2006.
Marketing became the largest communications sector, reaching $254 billion last year. However, advertising was the slowest-growing sector in the five-year period, as the rise in marketing and public relations came at the expense of broadcast TV, newspapers and general-interest magazines.
Targeted media
"In the overall advertising area, dollars are moving from advertising to targeted media," Mr. Rutherford said. "They're not willing to pay for broadcast TV advertising. Dollars have come into the targeted media, and the dollars shrink because the targeted media is more efficient."
At the rate that communications spending is going, VSS projects that spending in 2007 will increase 6.4% to more than $900 billion, and will grow to over 1.2 trillion in 2011. And with the rise of the digital space, VSS expects total internet advertising to reach about $62 billion in the next five years and will surpass newspapers as the country's largest medium.
|
|
