An all too common complaint from web managers is that their website does not enjoy the support from executives it deserves.

 

But is lack of support the fault of the executives who fail to grasp internet value, or the web manager who fails to talk their talk and present the website value in a concise, impactful way that will motivate executives to support the web?

 

The fault lies squarely with the web manager, according to a practical, helpful white paper “Best Practices for Creating a Web Strategy: What Web Managers Need to Know,” produced by J. Boye, a vendor-neutral analyst firm.

 

“The key is to make the problems tangible enough, so they can be understood by executives who generally have little web understanding,” say the report's authors Dorthe R. Jespersen and Peter E. B. Nissen of J. Boye. “It is crucial to speak the language of top management. Focus on high-level business problems, rather than low level problems and technical details. Such details may be problematic in the everyday life of the web manager but they are of little importance to the organisation’s key tasks.”

 

In addition to the helpful suggestions on how to present the strategy to executives in a meaningful manner, the report provides many practical ideas and examples on how to avoid the six common pitfalls of developing a web strategy, which the authors identify as:

1. Creating the strategy without documentation on users
2. Not involving internal stakeholders
3. Not understanding your executives as an audience
4. Not following up on whether the strategy brought results and revising the strategy accordingly
5. Describing the strategy in abstract and vague terms
6. Making the strategy too operational

 

The document makes a strong case for the benefit of utilizing the services of neutral, third-party expert to assist with the strategic plan, but it emphasizes the importance of having the web manager take responsibility for developing it.

 

“We don’t advise that you let someone else write your web strategy,” the authors observe. “You need to go through the process yourself, involving stakeholders along the way. If not, you will probably have a hard time implementing it because of lack of buy-in across the organisation and lack of knowledge of the strategy process inside the organisation.”

 

While most strategy books are targeted at the CEO-level, this 35-page report guides the web manager in creating a solid web strategy that speaks to the executive suite. Although the report is targeted mainly at the web managers for public websites, much of the advice will also apply to intranets.

                

The report is supported by research gathered from interviews with 19 European organizations—including governments, for-profit enterprises and NGOs—and draws on collected experiences with web strategy from several conferences and a European community of practice with 250+ members facilitated by J. Boye.

 

Download the report Best Practices for Creating a Web Strategy: What Web Managers Need to Know.

Talk about how social media is gaining traction often focuses on the hard data that prove business value, or focuses on case studies and research that demonstrate best practices or key trends.

 

In my role, I’m privileged to interact with people from across North America who are thinking about how best to evaluate and deploy the new social media tools, which provides a useful set of anecdotal experiences to complement the data.

 

And three recent exchanges demonstrate very encouraging signs about how people are using the efficiencies of social media to create value; how consumer applications are revealing business value; and that grassroots knowledge is receiving support by enlightened leadership.

 

Social value

One of the truly exciting features of social media is that it provides easy-to-use technology that enables people to be much more efficient at interacting with one another. It’s a simple concept, but every day brings a surprising new example of how it works.

 

For instance, the other day a colleague showed me Trapster running on his iPhone. Trapster is a mobile application that lets you see and share the location of speed traps right on your mobile phone or GPS device. When you see a trap, users report it by pressing a button on their phone, or calling a toll free number. Other user's phones will alert them as they approach the trap. Trapster incorporates crowd sourcing principles by learning the credibility of traps based on how many users agree. It also learns the credibility of each user, over time.

 

Is this a new way of interacting with one another? No, motorists have flashed their headlights to alert fellow drivers to speed traps for decades. But now a socially-minded driver can reach potentially millions of other drivers rather than a handful.

 

It also demonstrates how social media creates a value proposition that vastly exceeds the older technology it replaces. In this case, Trapster is not only more effective than a radar detector, it’s also tolerated by the police. The application’s website quotes Bill Johnson, Executive director of the National Association of Police Organizations, as saying: “If someone slows down because of it, it's accomplishing the same goal of trying to get people to obey the speed limit."

 

Consumer apps reveal business value

One of the genuinely fascinating aspects of our projects that focus on bringing social media into the enterprise—often called intranet 2.0—is observing how consumer grade software is challenging organizations to improve internal functionality for their employees.

 

Last week, I conducted a business requirement interview with a Vice President of one of our clients, a multi-national financial services company that is assessing how to improve their intranet. “Building in the capability to add widgets is smart,” he observed. “I would take advantage of that, but I have an iPhone with 24 apps. If we advertised internally that there are 24 apps, that would engage staff, even if it was a simple weather forecaster or what’s for lunch in the cafeteria.”

 

Not that along ago, a common complaint from younger workers was the executives don’t “get” new technology because they don’t use it. Increasingly, executives are starting to use the technology, and rapidly perceive how it can add value to their businesses.

 

Grassroots knowledge, enlightened leadership

Successful social media deployments require knowledge and commitment at the grassroots level to understand the technology and put it to good use. My experience, supported by data, suggests that the grassroots is often ahead of the organization’s leadership, which causes that important energy to be dissipated.

 

Last week, I met an IT Director with a large healthcare organization that is developing a new web strategy to support an important development in the organization’s direction. Healthcare entities often perceived to be trailing their users in the utilization of innovative online technology, but this Director was already anticipating how the organization’s clients would want to interact with them using mobile technology, and showed me how he uses Digg on his iPhone to follow the Linux community in which he participates.

 

The organization was also experiencing a common phenomenon for large entities: an employee had started a Facebook group in which employees were discussing the organization’s new direction.

 

A new, 50-something CEO had just come on board, and there was curiosity about what tone he would set for the web strategy. The questions were answered when he requested a blog on his first day, and joined the Facebook group.

 

A boomer CEO of a supposedly conservative organization participating actively in social media is an anecdotal data point that promises we are about to see some exciting new developments in the deployment of social media.

 

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Measuring Intranet Success in the Real World. April 30^th, 12 EST. Register today.

The Motrin Moms crisis sparked by a controversial Motrin ad on their website has provided some interesting lessons on how companies must learn to adapt. In short, Motrin ran an ad that summarized said, “Take Motrin if you wear your baby in a sling or carrier.” A number of mothers were highly offended and started a firestorm on Twitter and on the blogosphere. The protest erupted and began to garner media coverage. Motrin eventually pulled the ad – then they took down the entire website! In summary, a bunch of very vocal mothers on Twitter and blogs forced Motrin to its knees within 3 days. Motrin apologized... but what are the lessons learned?

See the Motrin ad & read the full article Motrin suffers Web 2.0 headache.

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Flash is a wonderful and cool programming tool for any cool website. Flash can be used to present dynamic content such as video, other multimedia, and interactive tools. 

 

The trouble with Flash, despite its flexible and dynamic presentation, is it has until now been unpopular with anyone looking to get indexed by Google, and virtually all search engines. Until now Google and the other search engines didn’t index Flash content. As of this summer Google is now able to index most Flash (.SWF) files. Web developers rejoice!

 

Though the celebration in the developer community has been forstalled…

 

Read the full column and the potential impact on your web development plans: Google now indexes Flash; rejoice or refrain?

Aside from an entertaining observation that “French hotel clerks and young American women learn non-verbal communication at the same place,” Mike Schaffner’s recent article in Forbes.com, “Why Companies Need Web 2.0,” provides a brief but helpful overview of Web 2.0 technology and quick thoughts on how to utilize it. Schaffner, who directs IT for the Valve and Measurement Group of Cameron, suggests applications such as:

 

• Have employees use a MySpace- or Facebook-type site to introduce themselves to the company. These can also be a resource to help employees find a potential car-pool mate, someone with a background in product design or specific experience on a product you are thinking about launching.

·        Mashups can bring together production and operations data from a variety of sources, allowing a production manager to get a good overview of her operations.

·        YouTube-style videos can be used for training or distributing important messages, such as the CEO announcing a new product launch or Joe, the IT help desk guy, receiving an award.

More significant than the “how” of Web 2.0, however, is Schaffner’s observation about the “why”:

The point in all this is that there is a new generation of potential employees and customers that are accustomed to a variety of technologies being available, and they expect to see and use them in the corporate world. Whether and how we deploy these technologies likely will have an impact on our ability to attract new talent to our companies and to find and retain customers.

 

Give me Facebook or give me a new job

His observation about the expectations of a new generation to have access to this technology is strongly reflected in Prescient Digital Media’s intranet consulting services. Executives, right up the CEO level, are showing increased interest in bringing Web 2.0 technology into their environment in order to meet demands from younger employees.

 

A recent survey of a 1,000 European office workers reveals that this concern is well founded. Conducted by IT services firm Telindus, the survey found that:

• 39 per cent of 18 to 24 year-olds would consider leaving if they were not allowed to access applications like Facebook and YouTube.
• A further 21 per cent indicated that they would feel ‘annoyed’ by such a ban.
• The problem is less acute with 25 to 65 year-olds, of whom just 16 per cent would consider leaving and 13 per cent would be annoyed

 

While the varying adoption rate of Web 2.0 technology between consumers and corporations is well documented, the Telindus survey reveals that this delta is becoming a business challenge that organizations must start to take seriously.

 

If you need to get started on your adoption, ideas from Schaffner and others will assist  in planning your strategy, as will  Prescient’s Social Media Adoption Checklist .

“'Time Leadership' is my philosphies and musings on leading SYNNEX Canada, a billion dollar wholesaler of computer equipment,” says SYNNEX Canada CEO Jim Estill when describing his blog. “I call it CEO Blog - Time Leadership because of my keen interest in time.”

 

Recently the author of a book and audio CD called Time Leadership Audio, Estill writes about many subjects as it relates to his work and days. Personal subjects are not taboo on his blog and he in fact talks very little talking about his company (a home page disclaimer reads: “This blog represents my personal views and not those of SYNNEX or any other company”).

 

Estill’s most recent postings include:

 

• Managers and Leaders - Are They Different?
• The Importance of Sleep
• The Perfect Day
• Inventoritis - Don't love your Baby Too Much.
• More on Success Habits
• Lunch with Tony Blair and Time Vs Energy

Though he clearly is not a shy leader and communicator Estill decided he needed to communicate more with his constituency – including staff, customers and vendors. Authoring a blog is but one tool Estill has seized in enhancing these communications. Today, he communicates with all of those constituencies and more through his CEO blog that he’s authored since the Spring of 2005 (he presents this case study at the upcoming 2008 Social Media Summit Canada Conference in Toronto, ON from March 31 - April 2, 2008).

 

Broken down by percentages, Estill’s CEO blog audience is comprised of:

 

• 25% staff
• 50% suppliers/customers/industry
• 15% personal development/bloggers
• 10% friends/contacts

Though the blog is an external one on the public Internet (at http://www.jimestill.com), a principal audience of the blog are SYNNEX employees (up to 25% of the readers).  Estill says that the blog is of interest to employees because it “humanizes” him as CEO and provides a forum for 2-way communications (that isn’t always possible given the demands on the time and schedule of a busy CEO).

 

At the ripe age of 19, Estill started a computer distribution company - EMJ Data “from the trunk of his car” in 1979. The company grew to $350,000,000 in sales and then sold to SYNNEX in Sept 2004. Estill remains as CEO of the company that now sells  about a $1 billion in computer products in Canada.

 

“We sell all the brands you would recognize like HP, Apple, Intel, Lexmark, Acer, Sony, Microsoft etc through computer resellers and retailers from Future shop and Zellers to Bob's computer store.”

  

Among the reasons Estill cites for starting a blog:

 

• To keep in touch with:
• Staff
• Vendors
• Customers
• It will get read by your staff
• It helps personalize you
• It adds to your influence
• Good for laying out strategy
• To dispel mystery
• To share opinion

Estill dedicates about 2 hours per week to blogging and admits, “It requires commitment and thought.” Though he points to his own success and recommends blogging to others, he does suggest that blogging is not for everyone and shouldn’t be undertaken “if you do not like to write.”

 

Estill offers a number of tips for blogging:

 

• Have a few “in the can”
• Use other people’s material
• Use guest bloggers
• “Not perfect is good”
• “Careful of being too safe, but legal is real”
• Keep a paper archive
• Learn how to write an article in 20 minutes
• Use or cite book reports
• Re-use your past material including your blog material
• Post by email
• Keep posts short (400-500 words) or even a paragraph
• Avoid politics, religion and ghost-written articles

 

--

 

Learn more about this case study and other social media / Web 2.0 case studies at the upcoming 2008 Social Media Summit Canada Conference (hosted by the Advanced Learning Institute) in Toronto, ON from March 31 - April 2, 2008). Three days of Web 2.0 best practices, case studies and learnings for which you can Register Online.

 

 

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The business value of blogs

Blogs waste trillions$$$!!!

Blogging flexes its killer muscles

 

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It is said that our ability to create Web content vastly outstrips our ability to digest it. Consistency in how content is structured, catalogued and managed is consistently inconsistent, to say the least. The problem also persists in the world of digital signage.

 

Digital signs are the electronic or digital signs that you find in elevators, in lobby kiosks, or even the billboards in Time Square. It is believed that China already has more than 100,000 of these digital signs.

 

Cisco® today announced the development of a new qualification program for those creating content for digital signage. The Cisco Academy of Digital Signage (ADS) will offer a specialized curriculum focusing on the three vital areas of digital signage:

 

• content creation
• content management
• content distribution

 

Continue reading "Content is the focus of new Academy of Digital Signage" »

“A do-everything site with the potential to devour the whole Internet,” according to Christopher Beam of Slate magazine (see How Facebook could crush MySpace, Yahoo!, and Google).

 

Facebook started as a college alternative to MySpace, but has exploded in popularity and will soon overtake MySpace as the most visited social networking site. According the ubiquitously accepted Alexa.com website rankings, Facebook is now the 10th most visited site on the Internet – up 6 places since the rankings were last updated (MySpace is unchanged in the 6th spot).

 

“MySpace, if you ask me, is a spam-infested state of nature,” writes Beam. “The average user page comes with a crapload of embedded music and video players, some seizure-inducing wallpaper, and a bunch of friend requests from "models" who want to "get to know you." Facebook, on the other hand, is much less customizable but also a lot more reassuring. The interface is comfy, sturdy, and attractive without being showy—the kind of social network you'd bring home to Mom.”

 

Read the complete article The Facebook Revolution (Content Matters).

 

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The tragedy at Virginia Tech is a horrific, unforgettable event. My heart and prayers go out to all the family and friends affected by the hell they are going through.

Earlier this week, Tim O'Keeffe and Michael Clendenin both talked about VT’s response to the crisis and mused about the use of a second website or ‘dark site’ for crisis communications. The killings and the ensuing confusion of fearful parents and family was accentuated by the loss of the school’s website in the immediate aftermath of the shooting. One only hopes that VT was only not prepared for the potential spike in traffic and that the crowds of concerned visitors crashed the website (for it would have been an extraordinarily bad decision to have made the conscious decision to pull down the website voluntarily during such a crisis).

In short, there were likely many tens-of-thousands of concerned people attempting to access the VT website for more information on the tragedy – and likely were hoping to glean some information about a loved one. The website though was not available.

A secondary or ‘dark site’ that could be published quickly in a crisis to communicate breaking news and information would not have solved this dilemma. Proper infrastructure planning and hosting could only have prevented a site collapse. If the university lacked the ability to publish information to the home page and therefore decided to turn-off the website, then shame on them. With modern content management and near instantaneous publishing capabilities for even the lowest-tech luddites, VT wouldn’t require a special dark site to communicate details of the unfolding tragedy. The university would merely publish information to the website as it became available and provide links from the home page and media center. For example, after I write this column in MS-Word, it takes about 60 seconds to publish it live (but I could do it in as little as 20 seconds).

Dark sites have their place and purpose, and are particularly valuable in large, planned and complex events (such as a merger or acquisition), but the use of a dark site for crisis communications has largely been supplanted by modern publishing technology and the advanced content management system. Every organization should have a crisis communications plan, and every organization should be able to publish very quickly as the need arises. Furthermore, in the event of a crisis and a landslide of unexpected traffic, it is wise to plan in advance with your website host to ensure they can accommodate large spikes in traffic should the event arise.

How pervasive are social media tools (such as blogs and podcasts) becoming? Here are some of the numbers (taken from my CNW seminar series Social media (Web 2.0): are you in?):

  

·         There are approximately 55 million English language blogs – 45,000 new blogs created every day

·         44% of web users in the U.S. read political blogs

·         20% of Canadians say they read blogs on a regular basis

·         Three of the top 8 most trafficked sites on the Internet are social media sites that didn’t exist a couple of years ago (e.g. YouTube.com)

·         13% use RSS (real simple syndication ) for reading

·         29% of U.S. adults who own MP3 players have downloaded podcasts (The Pew Internet & American Life Project)

 

Listen to the complete webcast of my and Brent Holliday’s presentation Social media (Web 2.0): are you in?

 

Also includes a link to the Social media checklist handout and the presentation slides.

 

Tips for adoption

 

James Robertson has a number of tips for adoption:

 

• Create a prototype or pilot.
• Use stories to articulate (and capture) needs.
• Build on existing platforms.
• Use case studies from similar organisations.
• Be passionate about the right things.

 

See James’s complete list of tips for adopting enterprise 2.0.

 

My own tips for adopting social media tools:

 

• Social media is reinventing the Internet, creating a space where your audience can talk about you in a whole new way. On a regular basis, monitor the social web to see what is being said about you.
• Ensure you’re aware of which community websites (e.g. YouTube) are growing in popularity and evaluate how they might change the way people talk about your organization.
• Planning is an essential requisite for success. Develop a plan that is based on a thorough assessment and contains measurable success indicators.
• Leadership must set the tone. Your executives must be leading the dialogue and controlling the message.
• Relevant, up-to-date and valued content that supports, promotes and details your products, services and competitive advantages.
• Know the link between your website, sales and customer service. What is your website worth?
• Understand the ingredients of a good blog. Benchmark and cherry-pick from the leaders (e.g. Boing Boing, IntranetBlog.com, etc.)
• Keep pace with the trends and best practices, technological advancements and latest developments. Subscribe to newsletters from leaders such as CNET, eMarketer and Prescient Digital Media.

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A 3,600% surge in page views on the day a new website debuts would certainly qualify as a success, and validate a decision to perform a comprehensive revamp of the site. That success is what the Town of Banff and its partners enjoyed last Thursday when it unveiled its new website.

 

As anyone who has even a passing familiarity with websites knows, a comprehensive site redesign is a process not an event. They also know that visits, while critical, are only one success indicator for a site.

 

In Banff’s case, the process that culminated in its successful launch began a number of months ago when it set out to improve a site it knew was not working. In tackling this project, Banff had to achieve a goal that few other municipalities with under 10,000 residents would require: bringing a unique experience online.

 

Prescient was fortunate to be chosen as the partner to collaborate with Town and its partners on this project, which let me experience first-hand the qualities that had to be captured on the site.

 

That experience can best be summarized by the first day of one trip. Walking down Banff Avenue, I had a 360-degree view of the spectacular Canadian Rockies which, because the town sits in a national park, were unobstructed by commercial development. I paused to watch some kids from the local school playing soccer on a pitch by the school before bumping into several people I’d met on previous visits. And at the end of a meeting, I was invited to go canoeing, rock climbing and running. I opted for the run, after which I dined on Buffalo cheeks in a terrific restaurant.

 

Banff, in other words, provides unmediated access to one of the world’s most spectacular environments, which makes it an exciting place to visit. It also attracts residents who have a passion for enjoying that environment. They have a deep-rooted respect for the values of the national park, and are happy to disclose their knowledge of how to enjoy the Rockies. They also appreciate that sharing the town and park with visitors is a reality of living in one of the world’s premier tourist destinations.

 

Research on the old website resulted in a number of key findings, with one emerging strongly: visitors wanted to understand what made Banff special, and residents wanted to see their experience of the town and park reflected on the site.

 

This research played a vital role in driving the process that resulted in last week’s launch. In addition to the spike in visits, Banff’s webmaster Kevin Elliott cites a number of features that have resulted in the site’s positive reception by town residents:

• There’s a lot of information on the site, and it’s easy to find thanks to an intuitive Information Architecture and other navigation aids.
• The look-and-feel incorporates many images of Banff and conveys the Banff experience online.
• The acquisition of a Content Management System (CMS) means town staff can up-date information in minutes instead of hours.
• There’s good information for visitors, but residents can still find the information they need easily.
• The weather appears prominently on the home page.

 

Another excellent feature, one that enables the residents to share their passion for enjoying the Rockies, is “what the locals do”. It means one doesn’t have to step into a Banff watering hole to learn the best way to experience the town and park from the people who know it most intimately.

There was no missing the unveiling of Apple's iPhone last week. It electrified the media and had the audience at Macworld whooping. Almost eclipsing the phone itself was Steve Jobs, and his vision for applying ease-of-use and aesthetic design principles to every device his company produces.

 

A cult of personality was not evident in the presentation by Bill Gates in the same week at the Consumer Electronics Show, however, and the media reaction to Microsoft’s flagship announcement, Vista, had little of the delight that greeted the iPhone.

 

Microsoft’s new operating system has generated interest, but not enthusiasm. While there are passionate exchanges among a certain set whenever Microsoft does anything, the mainstream emotion has been one of resignation about the software giant’s ability to brute force its OS into the market.

 

The contrasting appearances by two giants of the technology world provides an excellent opportunity to think about the role that vision plays in a company’s strategy, and a leader’s responsibility to establish and maintain that vision.

 

The Globe & Mail’s Simon Avery picked up on this opportunity to offer a useful discussion on the styles of Jobs and Gates. In the article, he quotes Roger Kay, president of Endpoint Technologies Associates Inc., a research firm in Wayland, Mass. who observes that: “Microsoft has a certain cult of personality. Gates is thought of as a special guru, and people sit at his feet trying to understand what he’s thinking. That’s totally different from Steve Jobs. He’s an autocrat. He’s a sun king. He’s very capricious, autocratic, and creative and charismatic. He’s all kinds of good things, mixed with some pretty strange things. It’s a totally unique formula.”

 

Where Jobs sets a strategy based on a vision of innovation and elegance, Gates has positioned Microsoft to be a “fast follower,” letting Netscape or Google develop a market and then moving in to dominate it.

 

Famously, before it followed Netscape, Microsoft pursued and then overtook Apple. This story is told in the remarkable PBS documentary “Triumph of the Nerds.” The series not only documents the birth of the rivalry between Jobs and Gates, it also reminds us that the vision on display from both men was present when they conceived their companies decades ago.

 

Consider this statement from Jobs: “The only problem with Microsoft is they just have no taste, they have absolutely no taste…I don’t mean that in a small way I mean that in a big way. In the sense that they don’t think of original ideas and they don’t bring much culture into their product… if it weren’t for the Mac they would never have that in their products and so I guess I am saddened, not by Microsoft’s success - I have no problem with their success, they’ve earned their success for the most part. I have a problem with the fact that they just make really third rate products.”

 

According to Apple’s ex-CEO, John Sculley, Microsoft succeeded because, “The problem was the industry wasn’t measured by who has the best selling personal computer or who has the most innovative technology. The industry was measured by who had the most open system that was adopted by the most other companies and the Microsoft strategy ultimately turned out to be the better business strategy.”

 

The unique qualities of Jobs and Gates could foster admiration more than emulation. But while few of us possess the intelligence, ego, insight, charisma, and drive required to transform industries, the success of both men teach valuable lessons about vision and strategy that we can all apply:

• First, a strategy requires a vision, and it’s the leader’s responsibility to ensure it exists, whether she creates it or facilitates her team to do so.
• Second, it requires a commitment to sustain the vision even when the external environment changes. The same focus on design principles that drove the Mac is guiding the iPhone today, just as Gates is promoting a world of networked entertainment.
• Third, the leader can’t allow the organization to deviate from the vision, especially by trying to emulate a competitor’s strategy. Jobs may begrudge Microsoft its success, but stays focused on inventing products with culture. Gates may admire the elegance of the iPhone, but he’s not going to be first to market with one.

 

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Respect the competition

Most business people understand that they can never stop learning and seeking new ideas for their business. And the most successful ones grasp the need to seek those learning opportunities from expected sources—such as conferences and business journals—as well as from unexpected ones, such as other industries. They also know that in today’s economy, the Internet will play a vital role in that learning process.

 

I was reminded of this lesson while preparing my presentation for last weeks’ International Prepress Association’s Technical Conference in Chicago. In a session called “Leveraging Technology to Grow Your Business,” I’d been asked to provide business owners and senior technical managers with ideas on how to do exactly what the title suggested. That could sound like a challenge, if one’s understanding of the growth opportunities for output service providers stops at the headline: “Print is Dead! Long Live the Internet!”

 

To help prepare for the session, I dusted off the March, 2005 copy of Harvard Business Review, which contained an article called “MarketBusting: Strategies for Exceptional Growth.” The article featured a small case study on a printer called Madden Communications. That company had pursued one of the article’s suggested strategies—changing its unit of business from selling a product to selling a product-service mix—and had achieved great success.

 

The magazine described how Madden used a combination of customer insight, strategic planning and operational execution to make the transition and achieve impressive business results: “Madden’s revenues grew from $10 million in 1990 to $133 million in 2004, in an industry thought by many to be hopelessly mature.”

 

The last line, of course, is an elegant way of saying “Print is dead.” But HBR was able to look past that simple statement and see a company that had a lesson to offer for any businessperson willing to learn.

 

And anyone who wants to learn more about Madden can check out their website, which offers a strong example in how to connect a company’s online presence to their business strategy, notably the core competencies page which states: “Madden has transformed what were transactionally siloed steps into an integrated retail solution that we manage better than anybody else. This integrated solution process is our service.”

 

With attendance up 30% from last year, the IPA Conference clearly appealed to a membership that is committed to learning how to manage their technology more effectively. The IPA, in turn, is committed to delivering those learning opportunities and has recognized that its members expect to find that knowledge in an expanding number of ways. At the kick off session, the organization launched its new website, which features an expanded set of online learning tools such as webinars.

(Washington, DC) The inaugural Transformation + Innovation finished here yesterday. The event, organized by Nathaniel Palmer, promised that “participants will learn the most up-to-date strategies, techniques, and technologies for SOA, Leveraging Open Source, Enterprise Architecture Modeling and Modernization as well as Best Practices for BPM and Process Optimization.”

 

Given the event’s strong attendance, that promise resonated with its audience, and more importantly, it was delivered according to the attendees with whom I spoke. They also credited Nathaniel for ensuring that the senior IT staff attending the event had the opportunity to understand the management implications created by collaborative technology like blogs, wikis and RSS.

 

Attendees could learn about these issues in my presentation, “Leveraging Social Software and the Technologies of Web 2.0.” We enjoyed lively interaction in the session, especially around the generation gap relating to the usage of social software.

 

A number of heads nodded when I put up the famous quotation by Max Planck, father of quantum physics: “A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.”

 

Planck’s observation is relevant to social software, because as Prescient’s President, Toby Ward, has blogged: CIOs don’t respect social media. Their adoption rate and, more significantly, personal usage of these tools trails that of the MySpace generation, who now spend an average of 1 hour and 22 minutes a day using their computer for social networking. This usage contrasts to the 51% of CIOs for whom social networking has “no interest/not on radar screen,” according to the CIO Magazine study that Toby references.

 

A participant in the session provided an excellent reason for why this generation gap must be taken very seriously by the senior IT people who decide what technology an organization’s employees can use within its environment. Not only was she a senior manager in a large high tech firm, she also lectures at an engineering college. Each year, she hands the graduating students a form they can use to evaluate prospective employers, with a key criteria being the technology they make available for online learning and social networking.

 

Every manager is, or should be, aware that winning the competition for talent is a critical success factor today. It would be a shame for an organization to lose this battle because its CIO is ignoring the world outside her server room.

 

Credit goes to Nathaniel for keeping social networking on the radar screen for attendees at his conference, and to the participants in my session who are deploying the technology to good use in their companies, but always looking for ways to do it better.

The NY Times has redesigned their website to make it more like the paper version (credit to Tom Marciniak ).

 

Famed Canadian media guru Marshall McLuhan, called the "Oracle of the Electronic Age", coined the phrase and book title, The Medium is the Massage (not ‘message’ but massage… though it’s assumed that this was a carefully crafted pun). While this quote has largely been bastardized and misinterpreted, McLuhan espoused that the medium or channel that conveyed the message shapes the message (or alters it). In other words, the complete message or meaning of a story on TV could be different than the same story communicated in, for example, a newspaper.

 

 

The NY Times is attempting to make the website look and feel more like the newspaper with a five column layout, less color, etc. However, a website is not a newspaper and shouldn’t be mistaken for a newspaper. People read very differently online than they do when actually holding a physical newspaper. When reading a newspaper you can be sitting in almost any position with no screen glare, no animation, no up-to-the-minute stock quotes, etc.

 

However, I must admit, there are things that I really do like about the new site… and the more I look at it the more I like perhaps better than any other newspaper site.

 

The home page is rather busy with its five columns – I don’t know quite where to start reading. But I like the white space. It looks clean. I very much like the three column layout they use under the Today’s Paper tab which includes an enlargeable JPEG of the actual paper version.

 

When reading an article, the page offers the reader a number of interactive options including E-mail, Print, Reprints, Save This and Single Page (though I’m not sure what this option actually does except strip out one or two ads). Also presented a tabbed box called Most Popular. It lists the top 10 most e-mailed articles, the top 10 most blogged articles, and the top 10 most searched terms (top searches were ‘immigration’ and ‘Colbert’ (as in the very funny current affairs comedian and talk show host).

 

 

 

I like the new site; it works for me. What is agreeable to me though is not necessarily agreeable to the masses. (In fact, I guarantee you the NY Times get a handful of both complaints and kudos.) Users generally like a far more simple layout and less cluttered look. In addition to it hugely effective search engine, there’s a reason why Google is so popular. The Google home page is simple to digest and fast to load. The trend to simplicity is more than just a trend – users demand simplicity.

 

Should you consider a five column layout or try to emulate a hard copy publication? I certainly wouldn’t do it. The medium is the message. However, more important than media theory, is an intimate understanding of the needs and expectations of your users and delivering flawlessly.

Content should be at the core of your internet strategy. Yes, think about balancing sales channels, connecting the site’s goals to your organizational objectives and getting your look and feel right. But content remains king, so knowing how to effectively deploy and manage it will be critical to your online success.

                                                    

Before presenting at the Gilbane San Francisco conference, I was able to take in a few of the sessions, and two in particular provided excellent insight into the role that content can play in achieving business objectives and the business considerations that must go into being able to manage content.

 

Actionable content

Gilbane Consultant Bill Trippe discussed this useful concept in a presentation to the CM Professionals Spring Conference, which started the day before the Gilbane event.  Bill explained that Forrester originated the phrase “transactional content,” which Mary Laplante and Bill Zoellick from the Gilbane Group have defined as:

Transactional content can be defined as shared information that drives business-to-business processes. It is the content that flows through the commerce chain, initiating and automating processes such as procurement, order management, supply chain planning, and product support. Transactional content is shared in the sense that it is exchanged among partners, suppliers, customers and distributors who each can contribute to it.

Bill and Gilbane colleague David Guenette have taken to calling it “actionable content,” and Bill provided some eye-catching stats explaining why the concept is so important:

 

• Less than 10% of users will contact a supplier whose Website does not provide detailed product and service information (2004 Content Solutions User Needs)
• 91% of industrial buyers rely on the Internet to collect information and 90% of industrial buyers visit the Web and eliminate potential suppliers before they even consider calling (Outsell, Inc, ICR Research, others).

While understanding actionable content is critical, implementing it is complex and difficult. As Bill notes, it requires multiple media, multi-platform integration, and cross-functional teams.

 

In our experience, many companies are beginning to recognize the important contribution content makes to their business goals, even if they are not yet familiar with “actionable content.” And, once they accept the need to tackle an important business challenge, they recognize the importance of developing an effective plan.

 

Managing content

In his outstanding tutorial called “Web Content Management Systems: Architecture & Products,” Tony Byrne of CMS Watch provided a comprehensive overview on the topic. Among the key messages that emerged was that acquiring and implementing a CMS is not a straightforward business decision due to:

 

• Complexity of choice. Tony estimates that there are approximately 2,000 systems available, although about 1,600 are “consulting-ware” that have only been implemented a few times.
• Wide variance in price points. With Enterprise Web CMS solutions starting at $250,000 and Open Source options beginning at $1,000, assigning a budget prior to searching for options may prove virtually impossible.
• Estimating Total Cost of Ownership. TCO can be summed up with a simple question: what does a free dog cost? Open Source provides a great example of why a TCO model is very important for a CMS. As Tony pointed out, these “cheap” solutions often require extensive integration, a cost for which many companies fail to budget. He suggests that for every $1 spent on software, you allocate between $2 and $8 on services.

 

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(San Francisco) There are three certainties in life: death, taxes and, if you manage a website, you will acquire a content management system. Attendees at this week’s Gilbane San Francisco received in-depth information about how best to make this inevitable purchase. They also received an important reminder: content still ends up on paper.

 

For the first time, the session featured a track on automated publishing. The sessions were organized by Gene Gable, with assistance from Thad McIlroy, who are well known in publishing circles for their work in documenting the digitization of the production value chain.

 

The track provided the opportunity for participants to learn how the printed page can best be managed in a broader content management plan. It also enabled them to understand how new publishing technology can benefit all players involved in creating and distributing content.

 

For example, I presented in a session called “Accommodating creative needs in content management.” The key message was that when planning to implement a solution that will have a profound effect on the way an organization communicates—whether it’s a CMS or automated publishing system—success depends on understanding two phrases:  who is “in the tent” and who has put “skin the game.”

 

In the tent

Prior to beginning to evaluate new technology, the project manager needs to determine who to put on the project team. In other words, who should be in the tent? It sounds like common sense, but we still see too many examples in which one department acquires a system and then starts approaching other groups to gain their support. The required buy-in is often secured, but at the expense of precious time and energy that delays the implementation of the system. Or worse, the company discovers the system is missing critical functionality.

 

 

Putting skin in the game

Aside from not putting the right people in the tent before initiating the search for a new solution, another common problem is allowing an individual or a department to develop and implement the acquisition plan on their own. Not only does this approach mean that there’s no load balancing of the work, it also creates the impression that it’s “their plan” not “our plan.”

 

There are many reasons why people don’t get behind other people’s plan. Some are negative, like if the plan fails you can preserve the ability to say it’s not my fault. Some are benign, like you don’t understand it and can’t see why it should be a priority. Once it becomes “our plan,” however, we take partial ownership for its success. In other words, we’ve put skin in the game.

 

The approach is important when evaluating any major content management system, but so is remembering that content still ends up on paper. Frank Gilbane deserves a lot of credit for bringing Gene and Thad into the conference and making sure that paper stays in content’s tent.

 

 

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Tuning in the right employee communication channel

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Building a brand is tough. And it’s getting tougher. Advertising Age numbers reveal that, for example, the number of brands on North American grocery store shelves has tripled since 1991 from 15,000 to 45,000 products. At the same time, the number of your competitors with websites likely has grown ten-fold (or perhaps even greater) since 1995.

 

On the Web, the power of Google has leveled the playing field between the haves and the have nots – big brands can’t necessarily spend their way to a better brand, and new kids on the block are constantly emerging from seemingly nowhere.

 

A recent McKinsey article (Better Branding; subscription only) highlighted the dilemma for marketers: “Building strong brands isn’t getting any easier. An explosion in the number of brands—as well as a proliferation of ways to communicate them, from hundreds of cable channels to the Internet, product placement in movies, and even mobile-phone display screens—has made it tougher to get messages through,” writes McKinsey’s Nora A. Aufreiter, David Elzinga, and Jonathan W. Gordon in Better Branding. “In addition, converging product-performance and service levels in many industries have made it more difficult to sustain existing brands. Meanwhile, the economic downturn has hamstrung marketers by cutting their budgets.”

 

All of that clutter and competition makes it harder to stand out in a crowd. Cash fueled advertising campaigns may create awareness and recognition, but not necessarily build a ‘better’ brand. The brand is all encompassing – from product to service to perception. Understanding your target audience, your users and their expectations and needs, and delivering accordingly, is tantamount to success.

 

Easier said than done.

 

Understanding the user audience requires an analytical approach to consumer research. Although research itself cannot build a brand, the adoption of both old and new analytical approaches to understanding customer behavior and preferences can build sounder strategies for enhancing the corporate brand and winning the hearts and wallets of consumers.

 

“The solid analytics at the heart of the new approach may not only require new skills in the marketing department but also highlight steps that other parts of the organization—from product development to operations to customer service—must take to help deliver the brand,” say Aufreiter et all. “Moreover, some marketers may worry that adopting more quantitative techniques will compromise their creativity. In our experience, though, getting analytical about customer needs and the brand identity helps channel the imagination into areas in which it makes a difference. And the ability to avoid costly trial and error and to build a better brand more efficiently is too compelling to pass up, particularly in challenging economic times.”

 

The good news, however, is that the web is still a relatively new media, when compared to, for example, the ultra competitive retail world. Yet the Internet, as we are coming to know by experience, can propel no names and young kids working in garages into branding superstars.

 

Brand building

 

It goes without saying that building a web brand is far more complex than marketing. A number of key contributors must be carefully mixed and executed to create a valued resonation:  

 

• Site design
• Usability
• Site layout
• Content quality
• Product value
• Order fulfillment
• Customer service

 

Of course these are not the only contributing attributes to the web brand. Some attributes, what Mckinsey calls “antes”, are auxiliary or added benefits that some customers might, for example, expect from a competitor. Think of Amazon.com’s free deliveries – now commonly offered by many of its competitors. Or a hotel website that offers 360 degree pictures of their rooms and property.

 

Successful brands deliver on both customer expectations and also differentiate from the competition.

 

 

Those web brands that have high relevance and a high degree of differentiation from the competition include Ebay, Google and MySpace.

 

Understanding your users

 

Notwithstanding more complex methodologies such as pathway modeling (see Successful Brand Repositioning: Aspirations vs. Achievable Strategies) and conjoint analysis that you may not be looking to digest in a 45 second blog read, there are a number of key measurement tools you should know and use…

 

• One on one interviews
• Customer surveys
• Focus groups
• Usability testing
• Call center tracking
• Market segmentation
• Benchmarking
• Etc.

 

A multiplicity of tools is recommended using both quantitative and qualitative tactics. Depending on your site’s position in the evolutionary curve, some tools and tactics are better than others (see When to use what research tools and Measure your efforts).

 

Moments of Truth

 

Brand is built and reinforced at web touchpoints or moments of truth. Moments of truth would include the initial impression of the site (color and design), product information, checkout process, search engine use, etc.

 

It goes without saying that there are a lot of touchpoints in a standard web transaction – whether or not e-commerce is involved. So, to leave on a practical note after many wasted paragraphs on Mckinsey influenced brand theory, here are some practical suggestions for reinforcing you web brand:

 

•         Prominently display your organization name/logo (upper left corner is now considered standard)

•         Organization’s “tag line” or “value proposition” should also be prominently featured

•         Design that differentiates from competitors

•         Emphasize the most frequently used and high-priority tasks/information

•         A single “Home Page” that is clearly distinguishable from all other pages

•         “About Us” and “Contact Us” sections are clearly labelled in the global navigation or footers on all pages

•         Sections and categories designated with customer-oriented language

•         Site offers multiple navigation paths to priority content and tools

•         Primary navigation area is prominently situated and similar items are grouped closely

•         Straightforward, informative language

•         Succinct grammar, with consistent capitalization and design standards

•         Concise instructions for necessary tasks

•         Search engine optimization (strong page titles, active links, keywords, etc.)

•         Clearly communicated and supported customer service and privacy policies

•         Deliver on your promises

 

Last word of note: branding is not a one-off exercise. Web branding is a continual, fluid journey that requires constant attention, tweaking and care.

 

Here is some additional reading (all the articles are more than a year old but all have offer good lessons – both implicit and explicit):

 

Don't Shout, Listen (Fast Company)

On the Web, Branding Is Back (Business Week)

Web branding is more than skin deep (Gerry McGovern)

A common issue unites all companies, regardless of size and industry: there is never enough money to throw at every opportunity or threat. That fixed budget means investments in one area of the business come at the expense of others.

 

For Small and Medium Sized Businesses (SMBs), those budgetary decisions are especially difficult and visible. By definition, there’s fewer dollars available than in large corporations. And when there’s less than 100 employees and a relatively small customer base, it’s very apparent where resources are going and where they aren’t.

 

As result, investments are made in the areas that offer the most obvious return, and for many SMBs that is not perceived to be their website. Research indicates that 57% of SMBs are making money from their websites, either online or via offline sales. While it’s a growing percentage of revenue, it’s not yet reached the level where every SMB can quantify the benefits of investing in their website.

 

Every company can calculate the benefits of adding salepeople or investing in improved supply chain management systems, however, so it’s easy to understand why the website can lose out to other areas of the business.

 

This question of how to justify website investments was an important part of a seminar we presented to a group of business owners this week. Their companies ranged across a variety of sectors. Their websites, in turn, varied widely in functionality, content quality and visual appeal.

 

We reviewed ROI models that quantify the company-wide benefits created by a site that strongly links to organizational objectives. While each company worked with numbers that were unique to their business, there was one measure they all factored into their plans: 1/20^th of a second.

 

That’s the amount of time in which viewers judge your site, according to researchers in Carleton University’s Human-Oriented Technology Lab. They reached their conclusion by flashing websites for 50 milliseconds and asking study participants to rate them for visual appeal.

 

“Unless the first impression is favorable, visitors will be out of your site before they even know that you might be offering more than your competitors,” says Carleton’s Dr. Gitte Lindgaard. The research, which is reported in E-Commerce Times, suggests that the first impression forms an initital bias that dictates long-term opinions.

 

A positive first impression carries over to other features of the site, such as content. Since people like to be right, Lindgaard reasoned, they will continue to use a website that made a good first impression.

 

It’s an eye-catching stat, and one that certainly captured the attention of the business owners. While the benefits of a well designed site are difficult to quantify, the risk of creating a negative impression in a fraction of a second can be quickly understood.

 

And with that understanding comes an obvious justification for improving the design of a website.

                                                 

 

 

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Which comes first: resource allocation or strategy?

Design I: Making your site pretty can get ugly

 

 

“While companies might have an intended strategy, the strategy that actually emerges can be very different.”

 

There’s no arguing with this statement, made by Harvard Business School professor Clark G. Gilbert, especially when applied to Internet strategy. An extensive body of literature addresses how to ensure that an organization’s intended strategy is executed. Gilbert, along with professor Joseph L. Bower, have contributed to this important topic in a new book they have edited, From Resource Allocation to Strategy.

 

Gilbert and Bower’s book examines how strategy is developed and implemented in multinationals, but their insights should be of interest to any size of organization that is developing a strategy.

 

In particular, this is a topic that gets to the core of developing and executing an Internet strategy, because the functionality of web resources should play a fundamental role in determining the strategic possibilities that exist for an organization. Unfortunately, as Gilbert and Bower discuss, the disconnect between the strategic process managed by senior leaders and the resource decisions made at the operational level can result in a strategy other than that described in the official plan.

 

Organizations are becoming increasingly aware that they must understand and manage the resource allocation process because it can get in the way of the strategy. But the authors point out that those allocation decisions, which are most often made at the operational level, are important because they are also where the ideas often come from in the first place.  

 

In an interview with HBS Working Knowledge, Gilbert and Bower provide an example that probably sounds uncomfortably familiar for too many organizations:

 

Operating managers often constrain strategy adaptation in ways that are very powerful. We have seen this in the response of print media organizations to the Internet. For example, senior management at a U.S. newspaper company says, "We need to get into the Internet, we need to prioritize this and make a big investment." But then at the operating level of the firm you have a sales rep who is used to selling a display ad for $40,000. The new business has a lower gross margin, the customer who is buying it isn't the rep's traditional customer, and the price point isn't the same. And so that sale rep says, "Well, I can sell a $40,000 display ad, or I can go out and find one of these new customers and sell them a $2,000 banner ad." Every day as that sales rep comes into work he makes a resource allocation decision at the operating level—how to allocate his time and attention—which de facto keeps the investment from happening, even though financial resources have been procured.

 

The solution to eliminating the disconnect between strategic formulation and resource allocation is clear: conduct a thorough assessment and planning phase prior to strategic development. Ensuring this phase includes input from customers as well as key operational stakeholders ensures the good ideas are captured in the strategy, and early buy-in is secured at the operational level. In particular, the organization can determine what resources to allocate—not just for technology, but for change management initiatives to ensure behavior changes to support the strategic intent.

 

Why doesn’t this obvious step happen more often? Lack of resources. Either leadership doesn’t know to budget for it, or the operational level doesn’t request it in their budget proposals.

 

So what do you think should come first?

If your website is delivering true value, it’s no longer just a communications channel.  The website is a subset of the business that includes communications, customer service, sales, fulfillment, vendor relations, etc. Treat your website as if it is your business.

 

In a BusinessWeek Online article (Businesses must learn to let go) Linda Sanford, an SVP with IBM, recommends “focusing on core expertise and collaborating with partners in innovative ways are the keys to growth.” While specifically speaking about the businesses, the same is true for the website in a competitive environment.

STAY FOCUSED.  Companies outperforming their peers today -- and not teetering on the edge of the flattened globe -- have adopted an approach to building the 21st-century business in which they find their place not by strengthening their command and control posture, but by focusing on core expertise, collaborating with partners in innovative ways that drive value and growth for all participants, and strategically sourcing the rest. I call this philosophy: "Let go to grow."

Here are a few examples:

Leaders in many industries are embarking on projects involving collaborative innovation -- opening up their borders to work with others -- in a profound shift from the past. Procter & Gamble (PG), for example, now has an entire division devoted to collaborating with external partners on new products and technologies.

That was the genesis of the Mr. Clean Magic Eraser, a household cleaning tool that has flown off the shelves since it was introduced in 2003. P&G CEO A.G. Lafley has declared that half of all new P&G products should originate outside P&G. Talk about letting go to grow.

TAKE IT OUTSIDE.  As P&G understands, no company today can corner the market on innovation. For the first time ever, we have the luxury of a global market for brainpower -- largely because of the Internet -- and this talent does not have to be on the payroll for a company to leverage it. U.S. pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly (LLY) has set up the Web-based InnoCentive to build a virtual talent pool of more than 50,000 scientists in 150 countries. Lilly posts R&D problems any scientist can tackle if he or she has the right expertise. The success rate has been far higher than in-house performance, at around one-sixth of the cost of doing it all in-house.

To let go to grow, the first step a company must take is to zero in on the things it does well and that are differentiating -- and identify functions that can be done more effectively either through process change or partnerships. This analysis is done by componentizing your business -- breaking it down into interchangeable building blocks of functions, processes and services.

The components in which a company excels should be used companywide. If there's no advantage in continuing to perform an activity in-house, that component should be passed to an outside specialist or sold. This allows the company to devote its energies to enhancing its core differentiators, where it can demonstrate true innovation.

THINKING AHEAD.  Even BMW, which is built on its reputation for exceptional engineering, has found value in opening up various elements of car design and manufacturing to partners. BMW recently formed a relationship with Magna Steyr, an Austrian company, to handle all aspects of manufacturing for the BMW X3 sports utility vehicle, including a pioneering four-wheel-drive system.

This move freed up BMW engineers to work on designing new vehicle models. The relationship has allowed BMW to add a new model every three months; five years ago, BMW experienced gaps of three years between models.

It's a mistake to think "letting go" is just another way of saying "outsourcing." Collaboration takes many forms. Not only can it lead to new innovation in product design but it can create entirely new business models that drive organic, sustained growth for leaders willing to let go.

THE RIGHT RELATIONSHIPS.  Take Li & Fung, a Hong Kong company that supplies apparel to retailers in the U.S. and Europe. It's interesting to note that it doesn't make anything. Instead, it draws on a web of 7,500 suppliers to orchestrate the manufacture and delivery of apparel to meet quickly the specifications of its 350 customers around the world. In a low-margin trading business, Li & Fung has parlayed its role as master collaborator into remarkable business performance, doubling revenue and tripling profits over the past three years in an industry with a 2% growth rate.

The common denominator in all these examples is enlightened leadership. The leaders who understand the implications of a flat world are changing their business models and their company cultures to let go of some control, opening up their organizations to work with external partners in new, deeper ways than traditional supplier relationships.

In our collaborative age, this is the right formula for creating breakthrough innovation, which will ultimately drive growth for all successful companies in the flat world.

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AOL’s success not failure

AOL has always been one of the great Internet success stories. It’s on the same tier as Yahoo!, Google, Amazon, and E-Bay.

 

Tom Grubisich, a former AOL editor, has written a piece in the USC Annenberg Online Journalism Review criticizing Steve Case for ‘fumbling’ the company. From Who 'shackled' AOL - and when?...

 

Aol.com was supposed to throw off those shackles and offer compelling new content, according to Case's strategy. But it never happened. Case let AOL retreat from his ambitious plans and the company failed to develop high-speed content and platforms that it could test with its potential new audience that was exploding on the Internet. Aol.com wound up becoming nothing much more than a docking station where AOL members could read their e-mail at work and where non-members could sign up for AOL's Instant Messenger service, or try to join the invitation-only ICQ social network.

 

So why didn't Case follow through on his pledge to let AOL grow beyond its walled garden? I believe the answer is embedded in the company's need to continue producing solid quarterly financial results that would keep the stock going up -- results based on membership, not on edgy content. In 1997, subscriptions for the main service were pumping more than $1.5 billion annually in AOL's coffers -- 80 percent of all revenue. Case and his top decision-makers did not want to tamper with the Wall Street-pleasing metric of subscriber growth -- even though they made public gestures toward a revenue model more balanced by advertising. (We now know, of course, that a lot of that advertising was a phantom).

 

In one sense, you couldn't blame the Case team. AOL's numbers seemed invincible in 1997 -- a third of all Internet users in the U.S. were AOL members at that time. Throw in the existing placeholder site, aol.com, and AOL controlled 50 percent of Internet traffic. If you had an office on the fifth floor of AOL's headquarters in Dulles, Va., you could imagine you were on top of the Internet world.

 

Alright; I’m sure Mr. Grubisich is a fine person, but if he’s going to step up to the soapbox he better understand the maxim “live by the sword, die by the sword.” The article is well written, but Grubisich shouldn’t quit his day job as an aspiring screenwriter (his byline says he is a screenwriter though a search for published work did not reveal any published scripts… though he maintains an MSN email account – the hallmark of screenwriter superstardom).

 

Firstly, this article on AOL makes references to shackles, fumbles, and blame. Is there anyone on the planet that thinks of AOL as a failure or a case study for losers? AOL is a massive success story. AOL’s success is so massive (28 million subscribers and billions of dollars in revenue) that only a fool would intimate that AOL has somehow “fumbled.”

 

Yes, AOL has been overtaken by others in terms of total revenue and eyeballs. Much blame could in fact be laid at the feet of Time Warner that has done almost nothing with it since acquiring it years ago.

 

However, Grubisich blames AOL’s ‘fumbling’ on Steve Case and a failure to invest in content. Talk about sour grapes from a former disgruntled employee.

 

Did I mention that he was a former, AOL editor who was paid to write content for AOL?

 

Grubisich claims AOL’s failure stemmed, in part, from a lack of investment in high-speed content. Good lord; please name for me one high-speed content site that makes significant money?! The answer is none. The vast majority of users are not willing to pay for it and most get if for free. AOL’s strategic focus was never content – it’s not a newspaper nor a magazine nor a video channel. To the contrary, AOL’s success has come as a result of its strategic focus on subscribers.

 

I mentioned a few leaders in my opening line: Google, Yahoo!, Amazon and E-Bay. Each of these companies built successful strategies based on a principal focus – to be the very best at their core expertise:

 

• Google – the top search engine
• Amazon – the top e-commerce site
• E-Bay – the top auction site
• Yahoo! – the top integrated portal

 

AOL’s focus: be the top ISP subscriber. AOL stuck to its focus and found massive success. Had it invested in content it would have failed miserably. Just ask Yahoo! who only recently got cocky enough to hire its own dedicated writers to cover current affairs with underwhelming results. Grubisich lays blame for allowing Google and Microsoft to overtake AOL. Google is a search company, with a lightning focus on search; Microsoft is a software company. AOL is neither a search company nor a software company. AOL’s primary focus is being an ISP. (And of Microsoft, ask them how their stock price has been for the past seven years trying to be an Internet company and how their Internet revenues compare to their software revenues).

 

Note that I say ‘primary’ as every large company diversifies and AOL is no exception. However, the primary focus continues to be that which has made them a success: subscribers. Not subscribers of content, but subscribers of ‘access’ (to the Internet). I am not suggesting that AOL should never invest in any content. They should, but only as a means to an end, not as a primary strategy.

 

Here’s the lesson that I will underscore using the first and most important of the 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing penned by the great Al Ries and Jack Trout:

 

Law #1: The Law of Leadership

It’s better to be first than it is to be better.

 

To quote Ries and Trout: “It’s much easier to get into the mind first than to try to convince someone you have a better product than the one that did get there first.”

 

AOL would fail horribly if it shifted strategies to focus on content – it’s not a newspaper, magazine nor video channel. And the paying public would never fail to mistake AOL for anything but an ISP. Others focused on content and beat them to it. Despite Time Warner’s meddling (or lack thereof), AOL has enjoyed massive success because of its primary focus on adding and maintaining subscribers. For AOL, content is not king.

Spamming is killing us. Well, death may be overstating the problem, but spamming is frustrating users and marketers alike and its financial impact on legitimate marketing can’t be understated.

 

Read rates of marketing e-mail is in serious decline. More and more users hit delete before they even glance. DoubleClick reports a 24 percent year-over-year decrease for all mail in its Q2 2005 E-mail Trend Report. That means a dramatic downturn in average campaign revenue and an industry loss of tens-of-millions of dollars compared to previous years.

 

The problem is spam. Spammers give all marketers a bad name. The good news is that the law is now starting to hammer some of these e-mail bandits. An Iowa judge pounded a Florida spammer, awarding $11.2 billion in damages to an Iowa ISP after it received millions of unsolicited e-mail. Yes, billion. You probably received some of the wicked e-mails from the notorious hood in question advertising mortgage and debt consolidation. Damages were calculated at $10 per illegal e-mail.

 

An increasing challenge, compliments of the trend wrought by spammers, is that more and more users are turning-on image blockers that turn-off images in an HTML e-mail. While spam e-mail images are turned-off, so are legitimate e-mail images.

 

To overcome these challenges you have to build trust with your readers which requires their permission and a transparent relationship with synchronous (two-way) communications.

 

Here are a few tips for overcoming these challenges:

• Get their permission.
• Double opt-in is strongly recommended.
• Opt-out option on all correspondence.
•  Privacy Policy is a must .
• Write succinct, punchy subject lines.
• Strong opening body text (non-image) emphasizing the buyer benefit.
• Third-party lists are strongly discouraged; ditto for sharing.
• Provide links to back issues and related information.
• Ensure a strong offer in every e-mail.
• Call to action should have short deadlines.
• Measure response to e-mail offers; tailor campaigns based on response.

Ultimately your e-mail success will depend largely on how well you know and understand your readers and how well you tailor your efforts based on their needs and expectations. As such, don’t be afraid to ask for feedback and to undertake surveys. Heck, try phoning a few with a polite telephone survey – you might just further strengthen a valuable relationship.

 

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Web marketing 101

CHICAGO, IL – There are sins, and there are deadly sins. My colleague Shel Holtz and I presented some of our favorite website sins (and the salvation or the answers to each) during our conference keynote this morning at the 2005 Ragan Web Content Management Conference. Here are some of our favorites...

 

#1 Deadly Sin – “Who are you!?”

 

If a user has to ask “who are you?” or “what do you do” upon entering your site, then you need to go back to the drawing board. It should be immediately self-evident (within 2-3 seconds) what the site is for and who it represents from the moment a first time user visits.

 

Sinner: www.Colette.fr

 

 

I still have no idea what this site really is for... I can’t even read the text on it and this is their home page!

 

Salvation: www.canada.gc.ca

 

#2 Deadly Sin – Scrolling to eternity

 

If they are at the specific content they want, users don’t mind a bit of scrolling.... maybe a few screens (3-4 or so). But don’t make your home page one big scrolling tome. Break it up into several pages and label them.

 

Sinner #2 – www.Amazon.com

 

 

Not surprisingly I’ve been challenged on this one.... “But Amazon is so successful they’re obviously doing something right!” Yes, they are. They had first mover advantage, a killer brand and an innovative development team. Amazon may get away with this but you won’t. Five screens of information, two dozen images and two hundred or so links on a home page is WAY TOO MUCH!

 

Salvation #2: www.HP.com

 

#3 Deadly Sin – Confusing checkouts

 

When a user has decided to buy something from you don’t hammer them with yet more sales pitches. Make it easy for the user to actually pay you the cash. If you swamp them with more sales and promotions then you can confuse and irritate an otherwise happy customer that may be chased away.

 

Sinner #3: www.Amazon.com (sorry despite your success you are again a big usability violator)

 

 

This is an example of a Sony Camcorder purchase and moving to checkout. Most of this checkout screen is more sales pitches and promotions... for Visa, for another camcorder, a charger, a bag.... it takes a while to realize your checkout item is hiding off in the right hand column, nearly halfway down the screen. Grrrrrr....

 

Salvation: www.Indigo.ca

 

Indigo.ca (Chapters.ca) gets it. The process is laid-out before the user with linear steps, shipping information, the item being purchased, access to help and resources, etc. Indigo wants the sale and is making it easy for you to pay them.

 

 

#4 Deadly Sin: Clipart craziness!

 

Clipart and stock photography just plain sucks. Use real photos of real employees, real products, real customers. It has meaning, relevance and resonates well with customers and employees.

 

Sinner #4: www.orangesoftware.com

 

Check it out for yourself... not only do they use some crappy art and choices they don’t just have one corporate logo, which in itself is clipart, but two crappy logos!

 

Salvation #4: www.WalMartStores.com

 

Wal-Mart gets it. They use real employees in their ads and real customers. And guess what? It works.

 

 

#5 Deadly Sin: Unavailable and under construction

 

Do I really need to say that your site should not be down at all, ever?! Unavailability for a few minutes a year because of maintenance is acceptable... nothing more.

 

Sinner #5: www.Georgia.gov

 

 

If you can believe it the State of Georgia website was down for almost three days over a weekend. And it was planned! Unbelievable!

 

Under construction... I don’t even have to say it but I will... if you have key information that is not available then don’t advertise it unless you absolutely have to. Don’t just throw up a cheesy under construction icon that is the bane of many, many users the world over. A great riff mocking under construction signs is offered by the School of Computing at the University of Utah (a hilarious read).

 

Salvation #5: http://www.jeffcomo.org/

 

If you must advertise that you’re under construction because there is vital information that is otherwise expected by your target audience then provide a short explanation, some context behind the absent content, and contact information as an alternative source to the web version.

  

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If you’d like a copy of the complete Sins & Salvation presentation then please post a comment below with your e-mail address or contact me through the Prescient Digital Media corporate website (Contact Us).

One always has to be careful when using the word “never,” but I can say with confidence that our clients never initiate an Internet strategy without considering how they will manage the groups of people who will be affected by the initiative, particularly the team developing the plan and the users of the sites.

 

Given the wealth of information about the role people play in developing the Internet—notably usability studies and the detailed metrics generated by all sites—everyone understands the need to factor the human element into their Web strategy. Likewise, books like The HR Scorecard: Linking People, Strategy and Performance have ensured that very few organizations undertake any critical strategic process without incorporating people into the equation.

 

But while all organizations think about managing groups, the Internet is increasing the need to think about managing individuals. Organizations must be aware that a single customer can spark a raging customer service firestorm with one well-written blog. They must also challenge and engage each knowledge worker, who works on a computer linking her to the addictive wonders of the Internet or, even worse, job search sites.

 

Whenever we talk about individuals, of course, we have to start with ourselves, which Peter Drucker did when he wrote his excellent article on managing oneself. In it, he puts the Internet into humbling context for those of us who make our living by singing its praises.

 

“In a few hundred years, when the history of our time will be written from a long-term perspective, it is likely that the most important event historians will see is not technology, not the Internet, not e-commerce. It is an unprecedented change in the human condition. For the first time—literally—substantial and rapidly growing numbers of people have choices. For the first time, they will have to manage themselves. And society is totally unprepared for it.”

 

After frightening us in the opening lines, Drucker offers reassurance by providing insights into how to become prepared for the challenge. And interestingly, one piece of advice forms a strong backbone for initiating an Internet strategy, because it describes how to combine both the effective management of human resources with the opportunity to challenge smart people with the phenomenal appeal of Internet technology.

 

“Effective organizations put people in jobs in which they can do the most good,” writes Drucker. “They place people—and allow people to place themselves—according to their strengths. The historic shift to self-management offers organizations four ways to best develop and motivate knowledge workers:

• Know people’s strengths.
• Place them where they can make the greatest contributions.
• Treat them as associates.
• Expose them to challenges.”

Like most great business advice, this is simple to say and hard to do. But we can only hope that after receiving this counsel, organizations never initiate an Internet strategy without considering how they will manage the groups of people who will be affected by the initiative, but also understanding how best to follow Drucker’s four tips for developing and motivating knowledge workers when creating the plan.

 

For anyone who likes a great story about strategic achievement, the tale behind Motorola’s Razr phone has a lot of excitement: single-minded focus on one goal, a small team of passionate innovators, timely high-level intervention, clandestine development and a product that an industry thought was impossible. It even has a great ending: sales that exceeded total lifetime projections in three months, one million units of the US$450 phone sold within six months and an iconic product that revitalized Motorola’s image.

 

This yarn unfolds in an insightful article in a recent Harvard Business School Newsletter describing Motorola’s strategy for producing the Razr. The article also provides a great example of how reinventing the strategic process is critical for achieving success. While not as sexy as the topics described above, managing the process intelligently is important in any strategic development, and critical when developing an Internet strategy.

 

Scott Anthony, the article’s author, notes that Motorola’s new product development process allowed representatives from the major sales regions to assess the concept and then develop a forecast which helped Motorola decide whether to invest in that phone. “It was a complicated dance,” writes Anthony. “If a development team ignored features that a specific region deemed critical, that region would project low sales for the phone. The lowered forecast would make it tougher to get approval to move the project forward. Design teams knew they had to appease each region or their projects would die on the vine.

 

“Obviously, this system has pluses and minuses. On the one hand, it ensures that products reflect some critical in-market feedback provided by the regions. But, it can force designers to develop compromised products that end up being acceptable to everyone yet delightful to no one. More distressing still, the process can systematically stamp out highly differentiated, counterintuitive innovations such as the Razr.”

 

Early on, the Razr development team realized that the usual process would prevent it from maintaining a singled minded focus on one goal, which was simplicity. While they respected the rules of the game that governed product development, they knew the system wouldn’t work for them. So they invented new rules, positioning the product as one that didn’t need to produce high revenue.

 

“We kept on playing the icon card,” explains Roger Jellicoe, a director of operations who managed the Razr development project. “This product was represented as this iconic, image-leading, low-sales-volume program. I think the Razr got by all the internal processes because it was characterized from the outset as an exception.”

 

A web site isn’t a product, but the Razr story offers some important lessons for developing an effective Internet strategy. First of all, successful Internet strategies require a small, committed team and visionary high-level support. They also call for the correct process. Frequently, organizations fall into one of two traps when developing an Internet strategy. The first trap is insisting that the Web team adhere closely to established processes for project development, which may impose creativity-destroying requirements on the site. The second trap is assuming that because the Web isn’t a product, it doesn’t need a process, which results in no connection to business goals and no measurable objectives for the site.

 

Avoiding these traps requires a process that enables the complicated dance described in the Motorola case. To be effective, an Internet strategy must include the perspectives of all stakeholders and users, link to organizational goals, incorporate best in class lessons from other Internet sites but still allow the Web team to innovate, which often means challenging long-held assumptions within their organization. For this reason, Prescient’s approach to strategic planning emphasizes process. The methodology is a collection of tools and techniques that enable each project to benefit from previous experience, successes, and leading best practices. Key advantages of our methodology include consistent terminology across projects, streamlined and repeatable processes, and most importantly, predictable results.

 

Of course, we love a great story about strategic achievement, and hope that if you have one you’ll share it. We like yarns in which they said it can’t be done, by the way.

 

 

 

We’ve come a long way since a business leader could pin a poster on the office wall displaying a picture of a lion sitting atop a line of text reading “the customer is king,” congratulate himself for creating a customer-focused culture and stroll off for a three-martini lunch.

 

All businesses now grasp that exceeding customer satisfaction has become the table stakes for staying in the game, and appreciate the intense effort that must go into truly understanding their customers in order to surpass expectations. They also know that the combination of sophisticated databases and web-based technology allow for unprecedented customer knowledge.

 

We’ve also learned that phrases like “exceeding customer satisfaction,” “table stakes,” and “unprecedented customer knowledge” have become mandatory in Internet strategies, and may occur more frequently than correct punctuation. And we also know that the powerful technology is frequently under-utilized. Despite ubiquitous statements professing the desire to know customers better, and the unprecedented technical ability to truly analyze their needs, it’s still rare to see companies which genuinely execute a web-enabled customer satisfaction strategy, and illuminating to witness the positive business improvements when they do.

 

A “cool” strategy

A recent case study in CIO Insight provides an excellent example of how Ben& Jerry achieve terrific results by using its site to execute a simple task: ask their customers what they want. Author Edward Cone observes that the site promotes brand consistency, important for such a “cool” brand, but in addition collects data that is critical for managing operations.

 

“The Web site also supports Ben & Jerry's hippie-licious brand image with prominent links to an anti-global-warming page, and another page that promises ‘50 ways to support peace,’” writes Cone. “But however altruistic the corporate culture, the site is built to sell ice cream. The Flavor Locator, which uses scanner data from Information Resources Inc. to track inventory in real time, is the most popular customer-service feature.”

 

The latter feature enables customers to find stores in their area that stock particular flavours, and in turn, allows the company to forecast demand for product and plan production. Anyone who has had to manage a supply chain based on the vagaries of sales forecasts will instantly appreciate the implications for cost and efficiency, and we can all relate to the customer satisfaction that results when a popular product is available. And students of Peter Drucker will recall his observation that the essence of marketing is having the right product in the warehouse at the right time.

 

In our experience, clients that retain Prescient Digital Media to provide strategic planning services are all seeking to link their Internet strategy to their overall business objectives, they all know that they must incorporate customers’ feedback into their plan and they know that executing the strategy requires hard work and dedication.

 

Because they often lack specific methodology for collecting user input on their web sites, however, they are always impressed by the detailed feedback we gather through a comprehensive heuristic evaluation of their existing sites, for example, which provides invaluable data regarding how customers rate the usability of the site.

 

Such strategic insight ensures that when the Internet strategy is presented internally, it contains phrases like “exceeding customer satisfaction,” “table stakes,” and “unprecedented customer knowledge,” but the phrases have genuine meaning and the strategy is supported by a thorough execution plan.

 

By the way, if anyone has ever had a three-martini lunch, please let me know. From my experience, they exist only in legend, along with marketing budgets too excessive to deplete and executives who don’t expect a return on their marketing investment. Of course, three-martini customer appreciation events, after official business hours, are another matter and I don’t need to hear about those.

Respect the Competition

 

Andre Agassi’s run at the U.S. Open has provided a topical reminder of a key strategic lesson: never underestimate your competition.

 

In an interview, Agassi recalled preparing to meet a then-19-year-old Pete Sampras in the 1990 U.S. Open Final. Having beaten Sampras easily in their previous encounters, the brash Agassi told his coach: “I feel sorry for him. I’m going to keep making him hit balls until he implodes.” As all tennis fans know, Sampras demolished Agassi to win his first of 14 Grand Slam titles. And as even casual sports fans know, Agassi has since lost that cocky attitude, along with his mane of hair, and is now an intense competitor, but one who always respects his opponent.

 

A Safe Little Experiment?

With Steve Jobs announcing the new iPod nano and Motorola Rokr E1 cellphone, we have another topical reminder of the same lesson, but this time from the business pages.

 

In a useful discussion on Apple’s strategy, Business Week On-line notes that: “When Apple unveiled its first iPod in Oct. 2001, the market was a smattering of little-known devices used mostly for playing songs illegally downloaded off file-sharing Web sites. That's one reason why the music labels agreed to CEO Steve Jobs' plan to sell their music for just 99 cents a song. Besides, with Apple's anemic 3% PC market share, few record execs figured Jobs would be able to win over anyone other than his loyal base of Mac buyers. It would be a safe little experiment, letting music execs learn about the market while Apple picked up most of the tab.”

 

To paraphrase Business Week: Ooops.

 

Apple has sold half a billion digital songs and now claims 85 percent of the world market for digital music sales. As a result the record executives are suffering from the inflexibility of the 99 cents pricing model and cheering for other players who might be able to knock Apple off its leadership perch.

 

It’s easy to understand how a cocky young athlete could dismiss a competitor, especially one he’s easily handled in the past. But should we be surprised that seasoned executives would make the same mistake? Not really, because it happens all the time.

 

In the case of the record executives, it’s easy to understand how the error happened. Apple wasn’t a traditional competitor, so they lacked the insight into the computer manufacturer that they would have regarding players in their own market. For example, they did not grasp the significance of Apple’s strong competencies in usability, elegant design and great advertising, and the impact that strength would have in a market dominated by hip, tech-savvy consumers. Instead, they took a cursory look at easily accessible data—i.e. marketshare—and dismissed Apple as a threat.

 

Gain the tools to evaluate competitors

Unfortunately, we constantly see examples of business leaders who either fail to analyze their competition at all, or only give them a superficial glance. It’s a surprising error, especially when developing an Internet strategy, because competitors make all the necessary information readily accessible on their own sites!

 

Much like the record executives who lacked the methodology and knowledge to assess thoroughly the risk posed by Apple, many companies don’t have the tools necessary to properly evaluate competitors when developing an Internet strategy.

 

The thorough competitive benchmarking methodology and SWOT analysis that form the basis for our strategic recommendations, for example, consistently elicit positive feedback from our clients. They not only receive valuable insight about how they stack up, they often appreciate the reminder that they need to evaluate the competition.

 

For example, The Ontario Realty Corporation (ORC) strategically manages one of Canada’s largest real estate portfolios: over 6,000 buildings, comprising more than 50-million square feet of space, and 95,000 acres of land on behalf of the Ontario government. ORC has moved away from providing direct services to becoming a strategic manager of services with web-enabled communications being a key enabler. Therefore, their website needed to be able to fulfill this mandate, and they retained Prescient Digital Media to assist with the strategy.

 

ORC saw tremendous value in our competitive benchmarking strategy, which enabled them to make improvements to their strategy and incorporate valuable enhancements to the resulting site. Their Internet strategy has played a key role in attaining their overall objective  of becoming an innovative, service-oriented and customer-focused organization; in essence, becoming a “digital enterprise.”

 

For organizations like the ORC, the intent came before the methodology. Unfortunately, too few organizations have the intent and, unlike Agassi, learn to respect and truly analyze their competition. This is surprising when you consider that they don’t have the option of staying fit and waiting for their nemesis to retire, an approach that has allowed Agassi to continue his remarkable career. Along with his mature respect for the player across the net, of course.