Calendar 2011

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Chennai TAMIL

“Trust yourself. You know more than you think you do.” -Benjamin Spock

Recently I’ve been grappling with some major decisions about what to do professionally going forward. There are a number of roads that I can take, as there generally are for all of us. I’ve been looking for every possible reason to find an answer outside myself.

I’ve considered what people want from me. I’ve considered what’s the path of least resistance. I’ve considered what would be the most immediately lucrative. But what I didn’t ask myself until recently is what I really want.

This is the question we need to answer at any given time, and then we need to trust that what we’re feeling pulled to do is what’s actually right for us. We need to believe that we know the best course, even if we don’t yet know the way, and then give ourselves permission to take it.

If you also need to make a major decision, take a little time today to peel away the layers of what you think you should do. Let go of everything that’s suffocating what you know inside to be true. And then allow yourself to access it, without fears or judgments.

Simply sit with what you know. Then take that into the world and follow it. Miraculous things can happen when we decide to trust ourselves.

Perception

THE SITUATION

In Washington , DC , at a Metro Station, on a cold January morning in 2007, this man with a violin played six Bach pieces for about 60 minutes.

During that time, approximately 2,000 people went through the station, most of them on their way to work.

After about 3 minutes, a middle-aged man noticed that there was a musician playing.

He slowed his pace and stopped for a few seconds, and then he hurried on to meet his schedule.

About 4 minutes later:

The violinist received his first dollar. A woman threw money in the hat and, without stopping, continued to walk.

At 6 minutes:

A young man leaned against the wall to listen to him, then looked at his watch and started to walk again.

At 10 minutes:

A 3-year old boy stopped, but his mother tugged him along hurriedly.

The kid stopped to look at the violinist again, but the mother pushed hard and the child continued to walk, turning his head the whole time.

This action was repeated by several other children, but every parent - without exception - forced their children to move on quickly.

At 45 minutes:

The musician played continuously. Only 6 people stopped and listened for a short while.

About 20 gave money but continued to walk at their normal pace. The man collected a total of $32.

After 1 hour:

He finished playing and silence took over. No one noticed and no one applauded. There was no recognition at all.

No one knew this, but the violinist was Joshua Bell, one of the greatest musicians in the world.

He played one of the most intricate pieces ever written, with a violin worth $3.5 million dollars.

Two days before, Joshua Bell sold-out a theater in Boston where the seats averaged $100 each to sit and listen to him play the same music.

This is a true story. Joshua Bell, playing incognito in the D.C. Metro Station, was organized by the Washington Post as part of a social experiment about perception, taste and people's priorities.

This experiment raised several questions:

*In a common-place environment, at an inappropriate hour, do we perceive beauty?

*If so, do we stop to appreciate it?

*Do we recognize talent in an unexpected context?

One possible conclusion reached from this experiment could be this:

If we do not have a moment to stop and listen to one of the best musicians in the world,

playing some of the finest music ever written, with one of the most beautiful instruments ever made . . ..

How many other things are we missing as we rush through life?

Enjoy life NOW .. it has an expiry date!

Content is KING !


“People don’t read, especially when it comes to web and mobile” – I said that!

Content is important:

• Content adds value
• Content is part of the user experience

With ‘Mobile First’ design philosophy coming into power, content is increasingly gaining importance, but ironically much of the mobile first design philosophy fails due to one big reason: CONTENT. Content failure is not a new phenomenon and can be seen even in web specific designs. If, we address the root cause of the problem, it can be attributed to difference in user behavior towards content for website and mobile.
Keeping this in mind, here are some guidelines to create effective digital content. These guidelines are applicable for both mobile and web content strategy:


1. If the first 160 characters of content do not sound meaningful, rest of content cannot be useful!
With the ever reducing attention span of readers, you need to ensure that the audience is impressed with the first 160 characters of content you write. If an idea cannot be told succinctly there will be no one listening to it, and if there is no one listening, the idea is useless. Hence, it makes more sense to put in all the skills and make those first 160 characters impressive!




2. If everything is useful, then everything is useless. True or False?
True. If you think that all the content is useful for a website’s target audience, then you are surely mistaken. We usually tend to fill in so much content that everything seems to be useless and the user tends to drift away.




3. Use scan-able keywords
Every user opens a site with something in mind. If that something is not scan-able or searchable, it is highly unlikely that the user will stay for more.




4. Start with conclusions and recommendations
‘Inverted pyramid’ style of writing is the key for good content on web and mobile. People want to know quickly about everything; no one has time to read a novel




5. Attention grabbing headings, meaningful subheadings
Headings are used to grab attention and sub-headings are used to further utilize that attention span. Keeping the sub-heading simple without jargons and to the point, helps to gain the reader’s trust as well. Jargon, complex terms, clever lines are meant for the main heading. Keep them out of the rest of the content!




6. A picture is worth 1000 words, but we don’t want 1000 words. Do we?
The intention is to keep it simple, neat and easy to download. A picture may seem to be the best option for visual appeal and representation of an idea, but it increases the size of the content. With download speeds varying unpredictably, pictures sometimes are a blot to user experience.

Comedy  - Comedy - Comedy !

8 great questions to answer before starting a web design project

Without question, a new website is a big investment in effort and money. If you want to kick the project off in the best way, here are eight questions you should already be able to answer at the initial meeting with your web designer.

1. Why are you building this website?

All too often a web redesign is planned because the site “just feels old” or “it’s not working as well it should for us.” But what do you mean by that? Why are you really going to all this effort? How does your web strategy align with your overall business goals?

Possible answers might include:

• We want to grow advertising revenue, so we need to increase our page views.
• As a not-for-profit, we rely on donations. We want to increase the number and size of donations we receive online.
• The site should become a “lead generation machine” for our business, and should also help convert leads into customers.
• Our mission is to raise awareness about the issues that are important to us, so our primary online goal is to increase the influence and reach of our organization.

Your answer(s) will directly affect your website’s design strategy.

2. Who will use the website?

Your web designer will likely spend time reviewing the kinds of people who come to your site, so as to better understand your visitors’ needs and habits. It’s very important to structure your website to entice your visitors to take the specific actions you want them to take.

One method is to create user personas, which represent the types of people you’ve identified as having some specific interest in your organization. Before your web design kickoff meeting, segment your site visitors into representative “types”:

• What are their goals and aspirations? Their key issues?
• What media do they read, watch and listen to (magazines, TV, music, books, websites, blogs)?
• Is it possible to segment your site visitors by gender? Age? Income? Geography? Education level?
• Are your visitors technologically sophisticated? Are they early adopters?
• Are they on social networks like Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn? Are there other more targeted communities (online or offline) where your visitors can be found?
• What words or phrases (lingo) do they tend to use? What sorts of imagery or language appeals to them?

Think about what you want each user persona to believe or learn about your organization. What actions do you want them to take?

3. Where is the content?

As web standards maven Jeffrey Zeldman quipped, “Content precedes design. Design in the absence of content is not design, it’s decoration.”

Is your content ready? In part? If not, who will create it? How quickly and frequently can new content be developed?

Do you have a “content matrix”, which can simply be a spreadsheet that lists every piece of potential content on your site, along with where it will be located and who will be its owner?

You may consider developing content specific for each of your user personas.

Beyond just text, do you also have photos or video you want to include? Are there “non-web page” elements you might think to include, like white papers, e-books or webinars?

In their best-selling book “Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die“, Chip and Dan Heath describe six attributes that make for great (online) content:

• Simplicity — Prioritize what ideas you want to get across. By trying to prioritize everything, nothing is a priority.
• Unexpectedness — Use surprise to grab people’s attention.
• Concreteness — Avoid speaking in abstractions.
• Credibility — Is your content believable?
• Emotions — Tap into emotion rather than just intellect.
• Stories — We get people to act on our ideas by telling stories.

4. Which keywords are important for search engine optimization?

We all want to show up #1 in Google search results for relevant search terms. Before you start writing your content, it’s critical to identify the keywords you want to optimize your site for.

Good search engine optimization starts by putting yourself in the shoes of somebody actually looking for the kinds of products or services you are selling. Brainstorm the keywords that you think would bring you the best traffic, not necessarily the most traffic. If you are an attorney, trying to optimize on the keyword “lawyer” is pretty pointless. Currently, that keyword brings back 404,000,000 results. Anybody who promises you they can get you a first page ranking for such a generic term is going to have some trouble delivering without resorting to black magic and legal grey areas.

It’s much more relevant to optimize for something like “real estate attorney new york city” (assuming you are a real estate attorney in New York City). Also, any traffic you get on that term is much more likely to actually become a paying client, since clearly this was a visitor searching for something quite specific.

Your web designer should be able to help you create a more robust keyword plan, but it’s enormously helpful to start the process having already brainstormed a dozen or so relevant keyword phrases.

5. Do you have an established brand identity?

Some organizations have done a tremendous job of creating a brand identity and visual identity system. A website design for such organizations is a relatively straightforward process.

However, without a strong grounding in an established brand identity, web design becomes more ad hoc, frequently resulting in extra guesswork, increased cost, and poorer results.

Sometimes when we’re first starting with a new client, they tell us that they are going to be a fantastic client because “the sky’s the limit.” They tell us that they have no preconceived notions about how the design might go. There are few constraints.

We quickly explain that, while exciting, this provides a larger challenge. First, before we start doing any actual web design, we first have to engage in, at the very least, a short branding exercise to develop a design palette. Without the constraints of an agreed-upon design palette there is just too much uncertainty, and getting to any kind of consensus on the final design becomes much more difficult. In addition, creating a “Brand Book” (a document that defines the guidelines for all design work for the organization) enforces a design consistency throughout all marketing materials.

If you don’t have an established Brand Book, Creative Brief, or similar document, at the very least it’s helpful to walk into the kickoff meeting knowing your:

• Logo and tagline – Do you have a final one that you’re happy with? Does it need any change?
• Color palette – What is your primary color? Do you know its Pantone or hex value? What are your secondary or accent colors?
• Fonts – Do you have a set of standard fonts? There are best practices for web fonts that are not always entirely in sync with standard corporate fonts (for example, conventional wisdom would suggest that body text is preferably sans-serif). Will this be a big problem?

Your web designer will walk you through all of this, plus a number of more advanced design issues. However, your project will get off to a smoother start if you already have some of these answers ready.

6. Are you prepared to invest in the site post-launch?

Even as you first get started, it’s important to understand that there will be lots to do post-launch, including:

• Create and post new content
• Analyze what’s working and not working
• Testing (A/B)
• Optimize the site based on what you learn
• Add new features
• Participate in social media
• Build inbound links
• Support promotions and offers
• Distribute email newsletters
• Etc., etc., etc.

We addressed this in a former blog post, “A Website Is a Process, Not a Project“:

“It’s fine for a company to fund an initial web build-out in a capital budget, but companies are really sabotaging their web investments if they don’t put together significant operational budgets for the constant changes and improvements that a compelling and effective website requires.”

7. What is your competition doing?

Make a list of your competition, or others that do something similar to you. Check out their websites.

What do you like about them? Hate?

What features would you like to mimic?

Does every single one of your competitors use some shade of blue as a primary color? Do you want to do the same? Or would you prefer to differentiate yourself?

If you’re a bit more technologically inclined, it’s also useful to create a spreadsheet of your competition, tracking metrics such as their Alexa ranking, their blog URL, the number of pages in Google’s index, the keywords they’ve optimized for (if any), and the number of inbound links to their websites.

If you’re unsure how to do this, your web designer should be able to get this information for you.

8. Have you reviewed your analytics?

Google Analytics is a free website analytics package that seems to be ubiquitous. Most of our clients use it as a way to track important information about their website traffic. As a starting point for your web design kickoff meeting, at the very least you should know:

• Where is current traffic coming from? (Social Media? Ads? Google? Blogs?)
• Which content is the most popular?
• Are your site visitors sophisticated technologically? You can get a sense of this by looking at metrics such as browser version and screen resolution. For example, if a significant percentage of your website audience is still using Internet Explorer 6.0, you do not have a technologically sophisticated audience.

9 intranet content types that add value to your organisation

Everyone knows that intranets are a great way to collect and distribute information and content throughout an organisation. But exactly what types of content should the intranet be used for and how does this content add value to an organisation?

Research from the Worldwide Intranet Challenge (WIC) has shown that those intranets that make it easier for people to do their jobs are the most valuable.

Indeed, how an organisation does things is what separates one organisation from another. It is a critical ingredient to success. Does a bank manager call you back to discuss your loan application or does she send you a computer generated letter? Does an inquiry about your phone bill result in you being offered additional services or do you simply receive an answer to your question? Do you add one slice of tomato or two to that cheeseburger? 

Every organisation has hundreds, maybe thousands, of decisions to make about the way it operates. These decisions combine together to comprise business activities and policies and ultimately determine whether an organisation succeeds or not. And the most efficient way for these practices to be dispersed across an organisation – particularly organisations with many employees - is through the intranet.

An effective intranet can be viewed as the ‘brains’ of an entire organisation – it describes how an organisation functions and ensures that all employees are ‘singing from the same hymn book’.

Bearing this in mind, the following list of 9 intranet content types will help your staff carry out business tasks more effectively (8 of them at least!). Use this checklist to make sure your intranet is capturing and delivering content that will add value to your organisation.

1. How to

This type of content describes how the different business tasks within an organisation are performed. Examples include how to process a sales order, how to invoice a customer, how to identify new customers, how to order a new laptop and thousands of other possibilities.

On most intranets this is a collection of web pages, policies and procedures. New organisations will create a lot of this type of intranet content as new tasks are identified and created. For existing organisations, this content is updated and changed as new processes, systems, practices, innovations, ideas, products and services are introduced.

Potentially all staff may be the creators and also the end users of this content. The value of this type of content to an organisation is that it ‘de-skills’ many tasks and spreads the knowledge throughout an organisation, effectively making it less expensive and more efficient for organisations to operate as more staff are able to complete more tasks more quickly and more consistently.

2. Forms, templates, tools, applications       

This is content that supports the ‘How to...’ content. Examples may include templates, websites, online forms and web applications. This can help staff complete tasks more quickly and accurately, eg. a template (or online form preferably) for claiming expenses ensures that this task is done consistently and correctly with a minimum of hassle to the staff member.

3. Re-usable documents

This consists of documents that can be modified and then re-used again. Examples include sales proposals, funding requests, project plans and presentations. This can be a great time saver for many organisations and can also improve the quality of the document.

Imagine that you have a 100 page sales proposal that you have already done for an organisation previously (which was successful!). It is much easier to re-use and modify this sales proposal for a new client than to start again from scratch.         

4. Structured content      

This includes content that has a consistent structure and has many occurrences of the same item. Examples include staff lists, customer lists, service and product lists, business unit descriptions and other ad hoc lists (eg. list of recommended training venues). This type of content will also support the ‘How to...’ content and can be added and updated on an almost continuous basis, potentially by all staff.

The more items and the more comprehensive the information, the more useful this content will be. Imagine that before meeting a customer, you are able to read a description of the customer that is the sum of all knowledge of everyone in the organisation.

5. News, blogs, staff status updates   

This is content that staff may or may not choose to read. It is not critical for the completion of a task but will highlight areas of the business that are important to staff. This content may be managed by a central group such as the communications team and may be used help spread the culture and values of the organisation as well as helping to engage employees. Examples of this type of content include news stories that highlight other categories of content, eg. a change in the way a task is done, staff profiles, a new customer, a successful proposal bid or a relevant external news story.

6. Reference material     

This can includes case studies, white papers, other research and articles that can help your organisation in some way. It is content that does not change and can also help support ‘How to...’ content.  This type of content helps develop the skills of staff and can also improve business processes. For example, you may read an article about using social media more effectively for marketing and this may change your marketing processes as a result. This type of content can be added to over time, potentially by all staff.            

7. Collaboration, discussion

This is content that is ‘under development’ or ‘in-progress’. It requires less governance than the other content types and typically does not require ‘approval’ or ‘sign-off’. It may include documents you are working on with other people, new product ideas, suggestions, discussion forums, project sites and other general purpose team sites.

Collaboration areas may be used on a daily basis. Output from collaboration type content may eventually find its way to the other content types. For example, if you post a discussion question about the best place to run a workshop in New York, the resulting answer would be logically placed as ‘structured content’ in a list of ‘Workshop Venues’. In future, if a staff member is looking for a place to run a workshop in New York, rather than reading a discussion topic which could potentially have dozens of comments, they can simply refer to the ‘workshop list’ (which will be referenced from a task called ‘Conduct a workshop’).

8. Reports, performance measures

This includes content that provides feedback about how the organisation is performing – in other words, how effectively tasks are being performed. This may include the share price, customer satisfaction levels, sales figures and a host of other key performance indicators.

9. Archive, records

This content is anything that is kept simply for historical purposes (for example old product descriptions or details of staff who have left). By default, some intranets end up acting as an archive, however this is not the best place for this type of content. Over time, the more content that is added to the intranet, the less effective searching becomes and the less trusting staff are of the content. Imagine a staff list where most of the staff have left! The intranet should be a place where staff can access current, accurate and relevant information.

Alternative approaches to records management and archiving are more appropriate.