It sounds like I’m selling usability when I talk about the return on investment that applied usability can bring to a project. But it’s a fact that research has shown again and again. An article on the Bentley University Website says that a user-centred design approach will benefit an organization in at least three ways:  

• Reducing product development costs;
• Increasing sales (transactions or purchases);
• Improving the product’s effectiveness and efficiency.

Read our slideshow, Why Usability Matters. And yes, I guess I am selling usability.

Only a few years ago, most businesses felt the pain of being software licensees. The cycle went something like this: 

1. Issue an RFP, then pay big bucks for proprietary software.
2. Pay annual service agreement fees so the software company will provide tech support.
3. Assign IT resources in your company to install, configure, and customize it.
4. Pay for trainers from the software company to train staff how to use it.
5. Endure endless installs of patches and upgrades.
6. Find out, a year or two later, that another company has a better software product now that wasn’t available when you purchased the other software. But now you’re too invested in the original software to switch to another. 

Sound familiar? That’s why Software as a Service, or SaaS, has become so popular over the last few years. Also known as Cloud Computing, ASPs (application service providers) or On Demand Software, some say SaaS is just a trendy new tech term for something that’s been around as long as the Web has been around. In the last coupld of years, however, there has been a cultural shift in the way businesses evaluate their software needs. And SaaS is looking like a better option, especially for small- and medium-sized businesses that don’t have the IT resources and infrastructure of larger-scale enterprises. 

The principle behind this is an application service provider can take advantage of economies of scale to offer cheaper, more reliable, and often better applications than companies could afford themselves. 

One example of this is Web content management systems (CMS, which provide a platform to make Web content changes less technical and more manageable. Typically, large companies who want to purchase enterprise-level CMS software pay capital costs of anywhere from $20,000 to $200,000, not to mention implementation and training costs, followed by ongoing operational costs for support, training and enhancements.   

A Vancouver-based company A Vancouver-based company (with offices in Miami as well), Sitemasher (www.sitemasher.com), offers an attractive and award-winning alternative. Their Sitemasher platform enables companies to design, develop and host a Website on Sitemasher, which has an integrated content management system that makes it easy for even non-technical staff to make content changes to the site. And it’s all offered for a basic subscription price of $99 a month for three seats (users). 

Kevin Kinghorn, Director, Website and New Media with the Vancouver Canucks, says Sitemasher was a clear choice for the redesign, hosting and management of their GM Place site (http://generalmotorsplace.com/), which will be completed later this year. 

“We’re very excited about getting our hands on (Sitemasher) and really figuring out new ways to leverage the power of the SiteMasher environment, and possibly developing some new features with the team. 

“It was easy to see how Sitemasher would help us in an environment where several different users of various skill levels are relied upon to maintain a corporate website.” 

Of course, one of the challenges with SaaS can be the level of support you receive. Some services provide real-time chat on their Website, a toll-free number, a peer-to-peer forum for users to post questions and get answers from other users, or an email address where you can send inquiries. But with some SaaS providers, levels of service can be, shall we say, less than desirable. 

Not so with Sitemasher, says Kinghorn. When asked what advantages they saw in using an SaaS instead of buying content management software and running it on their own servers, he cited their customer service experience. 

“That’s easy: the support and the development,” says Kinghorn. “The SiteMasher team has really gone out of their way to help make the transition easy – including conducting on-site training. And where a purchased CMS might fall short of our needs, they’ve developed the product to suit. Not only that, but their hosting environment is second-to-none, which takes a lot of strain off our IT department.” 

Although the Canucks team Website can’t switch to Sitemasher because all NHL teams are being hosted on the NHL’s CMS, Kinghorn says  there are several different applications for a product like SiteMasher within their organization 

“The SiteMasher team has been unreal. We’ve got very specific needs on this project. Whenever we’ve run into an issue, they’ve simply developed the product to accommodate them. It sounds like a line from a marketing brochure, but they’ve really blown us away.” 

The main risks in going with an SaaS provider are when a company’s IT systems require extensive integration with an SaaS application, when a company requires a large amount of customization from the vendor, and also when an SaaS company becomes financially unstable i.e. what happens if the system you’re relying on goes out of business overnight? Or is sold to another company? Or what if subscription prices go up drastically when it comes time to renew the contract? Each SaaS provide should be evalulated with these risk factors in mind.   

SaaS applications are usually priced on a per-user basis, often with a small minimum number of users and scalable plans for additional users and extra bandwidth and storage.  The types of SaaS applications available on the market right is very broad (see this site to look up SaaS providers by category: www.saas-showplace.com/saasproviderdirectory/saasapplicationcategory.html), and here are some examples of popular SaaS applications in some of those categories. 

Office productivity and tools: Zoho (http://zoho.com/) is a reputable SaaS company based in India that provides a wide range of office applications online at cheap or reasonable prices. There’s an online Word processor, spreadsheet application, document management, customer relationship management, project management, business intelligence…the list goers on and on. Free versions are available with limited features, and prices for additional service levels start from a few dollars up. 

Customer Relationship Management (CRM): Salesforce.com (www.salesforce.com/) bills itself as “the world’s favorite CRM,” and it is indeed one of the leaders in providing a customer relationship management database to organizations for sales, service, marketing, and call center operations. The company offers a full-featured CRM for as little as $9/month per user for their Group Edition.  

Online Invoicing: Freshbooks (http://www.freshbooks.com/) takes the challenge of invoicing off your desktop and onto the Web.  It can create, manage and send invoices, track time and expenses, and even accept payments through PayPal. There’s a limited free version and after that pricing starts at $14 per month. 

Media Monitoring and Collaboration: DNA13 (http://www.dna13.com/) helps companies manage their communications, public relations and media management processes online. It was recognized last December by IDC as “One of 10 Canadian New Media Companies to Watch.” It’s used by RBC, Westjet, Scotiabank, City of Calgary, L’Oreal and Nestle, to name a few. Prices for the service are not available on their Website. 

Internet Payroll: Ceridian Canada’s Powerpay Web (http://www.ceridian.ca/)  is an Internet solution that allows employers to input payroll data and process payroll on the Web. Pricing details are not available on the Website, but there is a base charge per payroll run plus a nominal fee for each payment produced. 

Performance Management and Compensation: Salary.com (http://www.salary.com/) offers on-demand software for talent management and compensation data for personal use, small business and enterprise level organizations. Prices are not available on the Website.

This article was originally published in Douglas Magazine. Garth A. Buchholz (Garth@DigitalPractices.com) is the President and Chief Usability Analyst at DigitalPractices Media Inc.

Here are 5 quick tips on naming your business, from the experts at BrandNewPerfect.Name:

1. We want the perfect domain name.

In the beginning, everyone pined over what seemed to be the perfect domain names – the obvious ones like realestate.com, entertainment.com and internet.com (how would you like to own the ‘internet’?). Then some creative upstarts such as Amazon.com came along and proved what everyone in the advertising world knew already…it’s not what your name is, but who knows your name. So if your brand came first before the Internet you’ll want to maintain that as your domain name (e.g. Metro-Goldwyn Mayer is MGM.com), but if you’re a new company, why now develop your brand with an original name, the way Twitter.com and Zoosk.com did (visit http://www.go2web20.net/ to see the names of new Web 2.0 companies). Coining a new name often makes it a lot easier to get the dot com you want, too.

2. Hey, that’s our name!

In many cases the “perfect name” for your company is already being used by another business, or else they’re using a similar sounding name. Before you even try to register a new business name or domain name, do a thorough search of the Internet, which can help you determine whether there are similar names being used anywhere on the planet. Check different spellings of the name, too. And even if they are being used, that doesn’t mean you won’t be able to use your version. Find out if the name is trademarked. Are they in the same business as you? If not, it may not be a problem for you to call your business Purple Rose Florists if the only other similar company is Purple Rose Tattoos. You can also do a variation in the spelling of the name, or include other words in the name to distinguish it or make it more specific to your business, e.g. Great West Technology can be turned into Gr8 West Tech, or Halcyon Communications can be turned into Halcyon Wordsmiths International. Avoid trademark issues by consulting a lawyer so they can do a search for you in your own country and other countries as well, where the laws may be different.

3. We wish this weren’t our name!

Sometimes your current name and brand is a liability when it sounds too similar to something with negative connotations. Imagine if you ran a store in New York City called Twin Towers Photography? In a real life case, Greenleaf Marketing in Springfield, Missouri, decided to rebrand itself as Red Crow Marketing because their original name sounded too similar to Greenleaf Companies, a real estate company being investigated by state agencies. In those kinds of situations, it makes sense to go through the effort, expense and even risk of rebranding under a new name.

4. We need something that sounds edgy, contemporary.

Rebranding yourself with an edgy, Webby-sounding name doesn’t usually work unless you completely re-style your entire company, and even then it might just seem blatantly superficial and disingenuous to customers and business partners. If you’re a drycleaning company and you re-brand yourself as “e-Clean”, you’d better find a way that people can order drycleaning pickups online or some other Web-related services, otherwise you’ll risk sounding foolish. On the other hand, it doesn’t hurt to style yourself after what you want to be and where you want to be rather than where you are now. Should a name say something about what your business does? Not always. It helps if the name is intuitive to people so they can tell what you do, but once you build a brand you don’t need any further descriptors. For example, does the Coca-Cola Company need to be called Coca-Cola Carbonated Beverages? Instead of simply describing your company by what it is, e.g. American Glassworks, try creating a name that describes its qualities, what it does for the customer or client, or what kind of impact it will have. As a name, Yahoo! didn’t literally describe what the company was offering, but it did describe the exciting experience of finding new sites on the Internet.

5. We want to see our name up in lights.

Not every name will have a symbolic or visual quality, but that’s an important consideration because when it comes time to develop your brand expression – e.g. your corporate colors and logo – how would you like your graphic designer to depict your company. And is that going to be the right image for your company? The name Lion Security lends itself to an instant visual, and it suits that kind of company because it portrays power and strength, but would the same visual suit a retail story selling baby clothes? Perhaps, if it were visualized as a cartoon lion sitting beside a lamb. The point is that the way your name will be visualized is also important in the selection process, not simply the originality or availability of the name. Let’s not forget that a product or service can have its own unique name and sub-brand, too. Rather than just calling your new product “Digital Widgets,” to use a hypothetical example, find out whether your marketing experts or consultants suggest creating a sub-brand with a distinctive name (e.g. Widgetmania) that can be promoted both together and separately from your corporate brand. There are pro’s and con’s to sub-branding…but that’s another topic for another post.

Disclaimer: This article is offered for informational purposes as a free public service and should not be construed as legal advice. Consult your lawyer on all legal issues relating to domain names and trademarks. ]]> http://usabilitydesign.digitalpractices.com/2009/02/23/how-to-win-at-the-name-game/feed/ 0 http://usabilitydesign.digitalpractices.com/2009/02/08/a-comparison-chart-of-web-governance-models/ http://usabilitydesign.digitalpractices.com/2009/02/08/a-comparison-chart-of-web-governance-models/#comments Sun, 08 Feb 2009 19:00:07 +0000 Garth A. Buchholz http://digitalpractices.com/2007/06/08/a-comparison-chart-of-web-governance-models/ Establishing a Web Governance model can be daunting and fraught with internal politics and maneuvering. Once a major Website project is in operational or “steady state” mode, a governance model for content management should also be part of your overall Web strategy and governance planning.

For the operational side of Web governance, the following three models are compared side by side in chart format. Some of the details are generalizations, but nonetheless help illustrate the differences between fully Centralized, Decentralized and Federated (Distributed) models for larger organizations.

Download: Comparison Chart of Web Governance Models

With social media, the emphasis is on interaction, collaboration, and user generated content. Unlike broadcasting or publishing an ad, getting your corporate message out via social media requires an understanding of the technology, an embrace of creativity and innovation, and a willingness to launch your corporate message and your brand identity into the blogosphere (as the world of blogs has been called), then wait to see where it lands.

There are all kinds of “social media consultants” out there selling seminars and books about how your business can benefit from it, but businesses need to look no further than DailySplice.com, a one-year-old social media software startup in Victoria, British Columbia.

Founded in 2007 by a group of business and computer science students at the University of Victoria, the company has developed a product called Splice Station that makes it easy for organizations to record podcasts (a digital recording of an audio or video broadcast delivered over the Internet or downloaded to an iPod) then deliver them on their own websites.

The University of Victoria has two two Splice Stations, one for business podcasts and one that plays Software Engineering podcasts. Vancouver Island’s AbeBooks, recently acquired by Amazon.com, is also using Splice Station to channel audio and video content through a specialized player on its website.

“It’s innovative and easy to use.” says Richard Davies, PR Manager for AbeBooks.com, a Victoria company that was recently acquired by Amazon.com. “Book lovers can find the world’s most interesting book reviews and interviews by visiting the AbeBooks.com website and looking for the Shelfsound logo.”

As if those examples from the world of business and the world of academia weren’t perfect enough illustrations of how social media can be used, another type of organization in Victoria Island has also started podcasting using Splice Station.

The Saanich Police have become perhaps the first police service in Canada to use audio and video podcasts on their website at saanichpolice.ca. Click on “Podcasts” on the homepage and you’ll find links to news and information as it happens (such as a live report about Pat Bay highway traffic) to crime prevention, safety tips, unsolved crimes, media releases and media clips.

The department’s public information officer, Sgt. John Price, says “Podcasting is the fastest growing communication medium in history…the Saanich Police want to be part of that medium.”

This article was originally published in Vancouver Island Business. Garth A. Buchholz is the President and Chief Usability Analystof DigitalPractices Media Inc. (Garth@DigitalPractices.com)

1. The Web Strategy doesn’t follow the Business Strategy.

Whether you’re designing for a Fortune 1000 corporation, a SOHO business, a government agency or a non-profit, your organization has a direction and a purpose, and your Web strategy must reflect and support that purpose. Read The Chemistry of Web Strategy.

2. The Web Design doesn’t follow the Web Strategy.

Assuming your organization has taken the time and effort to develop a documented Web Strategy, your entire Web Design (or redesign) project must be aligned with the objectives of this strategy as it is aligned with your organization’s Business Strategy (see #1 above).

3. No one has developed a content strategy.

Among all the discussions about the site’s presentation design (graphic design), its tools and applications, and its navigational structure, has your Web Design team given any thought to developing a Content Strategy? If your team cannot clearly answers questions such as “How is all the site content being prioritized?” or “What is this content supposed to achieve for us? ” or “Who are the 2-3 target audiences for this content?” then you need to write a Content Strategy or a Content Requirements Plan.

4. Users are not consulted in advance about the Web Design.

Web analytics, surveys, focus groups, use cases, heuristic reviews — these are some of the tools of usability analysis. Often organizations will undertake a major Web Design or redesign project, then afterwards consult their users to try to confirm whether they did a good job designing the site. You can’t please everyone, but once you know how people want to use your site (task flow) and what content and applications are important to them, then you MUST consider these when developing your prototype Web Design.

5. Users are consulted too much about the Web Design.

Don’t be held hostage by user feedback or usability studies, either. When you continue to over-research what people want on your site, you can set up expectations on the part of your users that cannot be reasonably met. As well, you cannot possibly offer everything on your site that users want because the site has to align with your Web Strategy, which has to align with your Business Strategy. (See #1 again)

6. The Web Design is confused with “look and feel”, “colors” and “branding”.

Too often, early discussions about Web Design and redesign centre around “look and feel”. “How will our content fit the new design?” asks the marketing and communications staff. “Let’s not talk about Web Design yet,” say the developers. “Give us a few possible designs,” say the senior executives. If you are leading a Web Design project, one of your first tasks should be making the entire organization know that Web Design is not just about what the site will look like, but also how it will be constructed, how it will be used, and how it will be managed. Yes, branding is a part of Web Design, but it’s not all about branding, either.

7. The Web Design has no muscle.

Web sites that perform tasks for their users must have muscle to do it. That means not just search engines, payment processing, and other applications and databases that make the site work, but also the static content and how its information design helps users with the task of scanning, reading and interacting with content. Sites should be designed based on task analysis and task flow rather than by gathering heaps of content (focus on how it will be used to tell you what will be used).

8. The Web Design has no brain.

Web sites with muscle also have to have a brain that controls the muscle. The brain is the documented site architecture and interaction design — making the site logical and intuitive to most people through the application of best Web practices as well as a by thoroughly following how people want to use the site. The site’s critical navigation design has to be based on task flow so it will make sense to users.

9. The Web Design has no soul.

The soul of Web Design is the collective mass of human beings behind it that may hide behind the “Browser wall”, but nevertheless must imbue the site with humanity and human qualities. A Web Design has no soul if it doesn’t use the language of the marketplace. It will also have no soul if it does not provide ample means for users to contact the Web site’s owners and administrators. And a good Web Design also should have some images of the people who are behind that browser wall.

10. The Web Design is not scalable.

If a single generation of a Web Design cannot be sustained because it cannot accommodate new content and applications without distorting or mangling the original design, then it’s not scalable enough. A Web Design should allow for continuous improvement of the site, a kind of progressive evolution that allows for change as the rule, not the exception. While it’s common to implement minor site design changes through small variations, and to conduct major site redesign every couple of years or so, Web Designers should always be designing for the unforeseeable, the Black Swans, and should always design two years into the future. Not “what we are now,” but “what we will become.”

For more information on Web Design Strategy, contact Garth@DigitalPractices.com.

(click on thumbnail image above to view full size diagram)

For every rule of thumb about the Internet, there’s one “on the other hand.” In this case, creating a new site using a new domain name may be a good strategy for attracting new users to your parent site and for giving your stodgy corporate page a bit of edginess by way of association.

For example, Burger King’s highly effective viral marketing campaign had its own spinoff site at http://www.subservientchicken.com — a hilarious, interactive gimmick that was silly, but also linked to the Burger King corporate site. After seeing their Subservient Chicken site, it’s hard not to think of Burger King a little differently than you did before.

And of course, the campaign not only reached many users who might have never bothered to visit the BK.com corporate site, but it also gave them a way to tell their friends, family and colleagues about Burger King’s funny new promotion.

A spinoff site is not only a good marketing tool, but it can have a limited lifespan, too, after which you can just redirect users to your parent site. Think of these spinoff sites as W3 “special agents” that can be given a special mission and sent off into unknown Web territory to scout for new site visitors, bring back former site visitors, carry out specific assignments, convey information or other content, and then be recalled after their mission is completed successfully.

Home base is always your homepage, but these “special agent” spinoff sites can help you attain your Web objectives. They help you leverage the power of the Internet by using a new metaphor for your Web activities. Instead of being a virtual real-estate owner in a worldwide neighborhood where you wait for people to visit you, you can start deploying a virtual salesforce that visits other neighborhoods and knocks on new doors.

However, most people use more than one navigation choice during a single session search for content, and each choice during that session is determined, more often than not, by a specific task flow. For example, if you know what you’re looking for on a retail site, you’ll want to navigate by the product or service categories, but if you encounter problems, you’ll want to navigate by organizational structure (e.g. finding which part of the organization is responsible for a product or service) to seek help.

So in the first case, your navigation is driven by a scenario where you are purchasing something, and in the second case it is driven by a scenario where you are wanting to contact someone or some area of responsibility.  

The chart below outlines some general reasons users make navigation choices, although a more refined analysis can be done when one is looking at specific case studies or organizations. Keep in mind that at any stage of the search, depending on the user’ previous experiences, they may give up and abandon their navigation efforts altogether.

Rather than feeling that their own search/navigation methods failed, or are lacking the necessary skills, most people will instead feel frustration, resentment and even anger, and blame the site design or site administrators for their lack of success.