Archive for October, 2007
October 23, 2007
Stikipad Losing It’s Stick
I have recommended Stikipad as an inexpensive host wiki service for the last few years. As far as I can tell, the owners of the service have abandoned it since June and it’s performance is degrading. If you are using it I highly recommend migrating your stuff to another site before it goes away. Such is life with using start-up web-based services.
Here are a few alternatives:
- Google Docs (free, wiki-ish, web-based, Office clone)
- PB Wiki ($500/year for up to 5 users)
- Wikispaces ($50/year for one wiki, unlimited users)
- Confluence ($500/year for up to 15 users)
- SocialText (Free for up to 5 users, call for pricing otherwise*)
* Come on SocialText! At least put entry level pricing online.
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October 22, 2007
Crediting Your Web Designer
I have been following a listserve discussion about crediting your web designer with a link at the bottom of your web site template. This link then shows up on every page of your site. This was far more common in the 90s but you still see it now and then.
My opinion: In almost all cases it is wildly inappropriate.
Your organization’s web site is there to support and build your own brand and drive your web site visitors toward the actions you wish them to take online. It is not there to guide traffic to your designer.
These links to the designer are also much more valuable these days because Google will use them as an indicator to enhance the designer’s placement in natural search results. Links like this appear to me as, at best, amateurish or, at worst, an opportune grab at some Google link equity.
If you do allow this (you shouldn’t), it should be part of a deal that recognizes the huge value of the links to your design firm. Get a discount, get some free services, something. Also, if you use or adapt a free template, including the original designer’s link on it is appropriate.
If you want to acknowledge the designer who created your site for you, a good way to do so is by creating an ‘about this site’ page that provides a link to the design firm on that single page. This gives acknowledgement for a good job done without pasting the link inappropriately across your entire site.
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October 19, 2007
When Data Crunches You
My most recent post on the We Have Always Done It That Way blog appears to have made a direct hit on the pitfalls of being too data-oriented: When Data Crunches You. Several comments so far and counting.
My co-authors and I are working on a new edition of the book, which was originally developed via collaboration on the blog. The current edition is available from both Lulu and Amazon if you haven’t read it yet.
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October 17, 2007
Internal Search Stats Coming to Google Analytics Soon
Google announced new features for Google Analytics this week. One of the best is the addition of internal search reporting. This will allow you track queries on your internal search engine in pretty great detail. Here is a nice preview of the feature and how to use it effectively.
Tracking your internal search traffic (searches within your own site) is excellent data for understanding what your site visitors are looking for and where they may be having problems finding content.
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October 2, 2007
Effective Ecommerce with a Login
The screencast I created of the effortless ecommerce process for Coda prompted several questions about how to best incorporate a login to the online sales process. I’m going to address that issue via a normal blog post rather than a video.
Every additional step in an online process usually costs you people who don’t want to go through that extra bit of effort. Depending upon the situation, the abandonment rate can be quite high for each step. Exceptions are when the goal of the process has a very high perceived value by the customer.
The Coda example does not use a login. They have no need for it. All they care about is selling an individual product to you. However, some organizations offer discounts to certain classes of customers (members, rewards program, etc.) and they need some way to identify them in the process. They may also wish to capture data about the individual purchasing a product for later analysis.
Here is the deal: you can incorporate a login to the ecommerce process if it provides sufficient apparent value to the customer to go through the extra steps required. Here are some potential reasons a customer would perceive value in logging in:
- Repeat customers can save time not having to re-enter their data and billing information.
- Certain classes of customer receive a significant discount or savings if they identify themselves to you by logging in.
- They want the product enough to jump through the login hoop. (This is obviously not a good reason for a login, however.)
Look at your process for selling online. Is there any value to your customers to login for each sale? If not, you are going to hurt yourself by placing a login between your customer’s money and your bank account.
What should you do if you have both customers who can benefit from a login and those who won’t? Provide the option to login but do not require it. A number of sites offer this where you can login to retrieve shipping and billing data or go to a simple form for entering it. Providing the option allows your customers to self-select the process that is most appropriate for them.
Your database administrators may be pushing you to implement a login to reduce the occurrence of duplicate records in the database. You must analyze this requirement for the actual value to your organization. Is forcing data maintenance onto your customers the most profitable tactic to take? It very rarely is from a online sales perspective.
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October 1, 2007
What is Web Strategy?
A lot of work I do with clients involves developing a strategy for their web efforts. But what is web strategy?
I picked up one of the better definitions for overall strategy that I have seen from Alan Weiss, who got it from Benjamin Tregoe and John Zimmerman in Top Management Strategy:
“We define strategy as the framework which guides those choices that determine the nature and direction of an organization.” (Page 17.)
The rest of the book discusses the framework they recommend for guiding strategic decisions. They identify 9 strategic areas and suggest that a company has to identify one of them as their driving force, which then determines their markets and products more than any other factor. It is a refreshingly concise yet powerful framework.
So what does this imply for your web strategy?
Tweaking their definition a bit, your web strategy should be a framework for guiding the choices that determine the nature and direction of your web site. It should determine which audiences you are going to address. It should determine which content and service you chose to offer online. And as a framework, it should help you to rationally assess and deal with both opportunities and challenges as they arise.
Ultimately, your web strategy should driven by your overall strategy. If your overall strategy indicates that you will serve certain markets with specific products, your task as a web strategist is to develop supporting strategies to execute that vision online.
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