Tips for Your New Web Site Redesign
17March 2010 |
First of All Ask Why? Don’t just redesign because you want it to look different – but define some specific things that a new redesign is going to achieve. It might be to generate more leads or revenue. Or, it might be to save money on customer support issues. Or, it might be a new business altogether. The key is to define a set of strategic goals that determine the compelling reasons for why the site will be redesigned. Once you’ve thought this through, consider developing an “official” document which will explain the project and its desired outcome in detail. This Project Definition will be your requirements document as you gather all of the desired outcomes and new capabilities, and start to map them against a set of features, functions and services that you’ll require from your chosen solution. Many larger organizations choose to outsource the Project Definition phase to consultants with either vertical expertise and/or previous site design experience. * The Scope of the Project: What this project will entail (wholesale change or design tweak). Once you have developed the Project Definition, there will typically be a natural prioritization in terms of the features, functions and services that your organization will require. Separate these, both in the document and in your selection process, into “product features,” and “services/vendor” requirements. For example, you may have a strong need for implementation services, because your IT team has limited bandwidth or, in the case of some smaller organization is non-existent. Or, you may have strong product feature requirements such as workflow and auditing needs because you are in a regulated industry. When You Hire Your Vendor – Get Ready to Do It All Again Most web design vendors will want to walk through some version of what they call “discovery.” This will be a very similar process to the one you’ve already been through internally. But it’s good to do it again for a couple of reasons. The first is that you’ve missed something – guaranteed – and the design agency will help you find it. The second, is that you’re about to embark on a long journey with your new partner – and making sure that you are 100% on the same page is a sure way to make sure your project is successful. The deliverable from this process will be a final statement of work, timeline and budget estimate from your vendor. This shouldn’t be a 500 page document – but it should be an agreed upon framework of solutions and tactics for how to get there. It should detail the breadth of scope and priorities for phase one. Don’t Skip the Information Architecture Phase There is a very large tendency to skip the Information Architecture phase in any redesign project. The thinking typically goes “well, our current content works now, so we can just apply that to the new design.” Don’t. It’s key to developing a site that scales well, can be implemented into a CMS well and that performs well over a long time. You certainly wouldn’t redesign your house without researching construction permits, or hiring an architect to draw out the blueprints for the renovations. The information architecture is a key piece of a web redesign project. Find out what’s going on with your web site traffic. Examine the traffic patterns and look at your content. Match up the IA with your business goals and don’t skip this very important step. Develop a Close Relationship with Your Content. It’s Quality not Quantity A website redesign is the best time for a content audit. Once you know more about your users’ expectations and needs start to review and reorganize your website content. After you start auditing your web content, you’ll be able to assess the gaps between the current state of your website and the information architecture that will best serve your users. Don’t Try to Launch Everything the First Time Learn from Google, and launch small, iterative functions for your site frequently. New features and ideas will come up during the design process, and resist the urge to add to the scope at this stage. Get something up and live – and then go back and start to work on the next iteration. Plan for Life After Launch A well-implemented, but poorly maintained web site redesign will lead to a bad Web site over time. For sites that change frequently, this can happen quickly. It’s sadly ironic that the reasons for the web site redesign – to be more ef¬fective and easier to manage can also be that site’s eventual degradation. Imagine an IT department who has a dedicated group of web experts; always ready to respond to any request by a Web site manager to adjust the CMS, fix the lead management, adjust the SEO, fix the design, and so on. Unfortunate¬ly, in most cases, this simply isn’t possible. Having an expert integration firm hanging around and writing a new scope of work for every system change can be untenable as well – even if you can find one willing and available to work on a site over many years. An internal service is often used, but as we’ve said, it can be difficult for an internal group to develop expertise in the application and find free developer time, especially when rapid changes are required over and over again. But wait, didn’t we just say it’s a requirement to have good support and maintenance, of course, these problems are solved to a great extent by the software as a service (SaaS) model. But most organiza¬tions haven’t moved in that direction yet, and need to find a balance between internal service levels and cost/resource availability. All too often web site redesign projects are taken way too seriously. This should be a fun and interactive process for everyone – and can be extraordinarily successful for the organization. If you set expectations early, manage the project closely – and make sure everyone communicates – the process can be a really enjoyable one. Choosing the software and services solution will truly strengthen your business. It will not only create efficiency for the Web site management process, but (depending on your business) provide you with a number of opportunities to create competitive advantages, revenue opportunities and new avenues for customers and partners to communicate with you through your Web site. This article was posted by wakensys28 |
Which CMS Is Right For You?
16March 2010 |
The content management market has exploded in size in recent years with the availability of platforms like Open Source and SaaS giving way to scores of solutions in a variety of sizes and complexities. While companies are spoiled for choice, the unprecedented volume of solutions makes selecting the right content management system (CMS) for an organization an increasingly difficult task. one of the main points we want to highlight is that there is no one-size-fits-all approach because content management is a process rather than a product. Understanding what your internal business requirements are as well as the basic pros and cons of each type of system will give you a starting point in understanding which CMS is right for your organization. Why a Content Management System? The subject of why you might need a CMS in the first place is the logical starting point before even considering which type of CMS you might need, however, that online marketing revolves around the Web and the Web revolves around content. This now makes every company’s Web site it’s most important public face, and companies that do not efficiently manage their public face get lost in the sea of marketing noise that fills the Internet today. Making the Selection This article was posted by wakensys28 |
Delivering CRM platform
15March 2010 |
A tremendous amount has changed in the enterprise applications market over the last10 years of development that has had a direct impact on mid market organizations today. As is the case with many technology advancements, what was once costly and difficult becomes more refined and accessible over time. Evolutions in open standards, Web technologies, and development environments are now benefiting the mid market segment. A new wave of CRM solutions has recently arrived on the market that should be of significant interest to mid market managers because these systems have been designed to bring greater affordability to companies that are mandated to keep a close watch on their monetary resources at all times. These new solutions for managing customer relationships offer a codeless development environment in which the customization process for modifying an application is considerably simplified and consistency can be achieved for easier IT management. A CRM solution that has been custom-tailored to fit a company’s exact business needs and goals can enable the company to increase its sales as well as its product distribution. A customized solution that affords innovative features and deep Functionality for further increasing user productivity can allow a company to deliver superior business results. Moreover, when a company embeds its own best practices into its CRM applications and this is extended outward, it can realize far greater consistencies in its business processes throughout its own operation as well as in its interactions with external constituencies. Using CRM as a Management tool When analytic tools are integrated into CRM as now can be found in the new, modern solutions, the bottom-line benefits can be substantial. Analytic applications help guide strategy formulation and operational improvement. Using these tools, a company (and its partners) can conduct analytic activities such as market segmentation and forecasting, budgeting and planning, and sales analysis and optimization. Analytics provide the foundation for understanding the way that customers interact with the company. They have the ability to track customers’ every move, track campaign effectiveness, and identify the most valuable customers. While large and enterprise class organizations have the luxury of being able to employ business analysts internally for this insight, this capability has been far outside the resources of the mid market organization. However, with analytics built into these new CRM solutions, mid market customers not only have access to the capability, but it is delivered within the context of the business process. When companies can more accurately forecast outcomes of customer behavior and analyze alternative actions, they are better enabled to increase revenue and profits as well as contain costs. Analytic applications are of tremendous benefit to mid market companies because they can identify more ways for companies to save money. Since mid market companies have fewer resources available to them compared with larger rival corporations, business intelligence tools can help them gain an added competitive edge. This article was posted by wakensys28 |
Software-as-a-Service
12March 2010 |
Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) is a growing phenomenon in worldwide business today. From the original ideas of outsourcing the data center and having third parties manage the software. SaaS also referred to as On-Demand is not “same old software as a service.” It represents a breakthrough in technology delivery, serving as a powerful catalyst for changing the value proposition and economics of business management. SaaS in the Market Today Business solutions delivered as service are a rapid and substantively growing presence today. Researchers IDC and Merrill Lynch forecast close to an $8 billion dollar spend on SaaS solutions in the Americas alone in 2008. Thinking strategies have found that enterprises of all sizes are rapidly adopting SaaS to overcome the hassles and costs of implementing traditional packaged applications. Businesses today can spend a huge amount of their budget on the software packages that they use to manage their businesses. They also spend an even larger amount on the hardware, networking, and operating software infrastructure that is required to support those applications. But they spend even more than that on the staff to service and manage them. Companies considering their software spend often forget or ignore the cost of user training, and more importantly, the long-term cost of software maintenance upgrades, integration expenses, and the cost of conducting these tasks over and over again. The Business Benefits of Software-as-a-Service Experts agree that there are many very distinctive business benefits to running a business via Software-as-a-Service. These include lower cost of ownership, access to state of the art versions of your application, faster time into production, and access to a superior computing environment than most customers can provide for themselves. Equally compelling, however, is the concept of focus within your company: the ability to focus on your business and not be distracted by the upheavals of managing a technology infrastructure and the IT staff to keep it under control. Let’s look at what research tells us are the principle benefits of the SaaS model for accessing business management applications. Cost of Ownership The cost of initial start-up may be the most well-known in cost savings with SaaS. Because the subscription model for licensing provides predictable costs (not possible with licensed software), budgeting and planning is easier and more reliable. In addition, with modular product availability, companies do not pay for functionality they do not need or want to use. Faster Time-to-Production The time to deploy an application determines just how quickly the organization can benefit from it. Unfortunately, large and complex implementations can take months or years to complete, especially when IT professionals are in short supply, users are located around the world, and disparate new business units must be brought on-line. Organizations often find that are they simply cannot upgrade infrastructures, adopt and deploy new technology fast enough to keep pace with their business needs. And protracted in-house implementations consume already limited IT resources that could be used to pursue more strategic business goals. The impact of time-to-production correlates with productivity loss in terms of personnel unable to do their jobs at maximum efficiency until the new system is deployed.
Companies expand and decrease in size over time; witness the compression in employee counts with the dot.com bust at the start of this century and the following expansion. While most proponents of the SaaS model talk about the ability to seamlessly add companies, employees, higher volumes and transaction counts over time, it is important to note that both business expansion and contraction is accommodated easily in the SaaS model. The on-demand model is designed for rapid scaling; applications are immediately available to new users when they are required, giving organizations the flexibility to expand operations without waiting for their IT infrastructure to catch up. Organizations can simply “turn on” new applications, as they are needed. This guarantee of flexibility is not possible in any other business model today. This article was posted by wakensys28 |
Social CRM Software
11March 2010 |
For businesses of all sizes, acquiring, retaining, and supporting customers is more challenging than ever before. But the rise of social media blogs, social networks, etc. offers a wealth of consumer data that businesses can leverage for client retention. More than 80% of Americans aged 18-55+ use social networks and tools monthly, which means two things: 1) there is a wealth of customer information on social networks/conversation platforms that businesses cannot afford to ignore, and 2) businesses will benefit by reaching out to existing and potential customers through these social platforms. Social CRM systems (previously referred to as “CRM 2.0”) have emerged as a way for businesses to consolidate customer-related processes across functional areas as a traditional CRM platform would but with the addition of social media management and monitoring. Within the Social CRM space, there are many types of solutions, each having their own flavor, and each meeting different business needs. What is Social CRM Software? Social CRM is a process for monitoring, engaging in, and managing conversations and relationships with existing and prospective customers and influencers across the Internet, social networks, and digital channels. Social CRM is very much supplementary to traditional CRM processes, as it aims to engage communities and foster the creation of content for a targeted market, converting content into conversations and collaborative experiences that will hopefully build meaningful relationships with customers. In many ways, Social CRM is traditional CRM with the bonus of social media / conversational data analysis and management. Does My Company Need Social CRM Software? Businesses of all sizes and in all industries can derive value from a Social CRM solution. The increasing number of users on social networking sites is a testament to that, and the data created on these sites can prove invaluable. Traditional CRM is still relevant: it focuses on contact management, and manages the processes, services, and technology that marketing, sales, and customer service departments rely on. However, the growth in social media usage has led to a shift in customer behavior consumers expect personal interactions with their favorite brands and leveraging social media for customer outreach is become crucial. And as social media makes customers more accessible, a Social CRM platform that manages and monitors social media campaigns and communities is a no-brainer. Common Social CRM Features Social CRM is intended to help businesses monitor and execute campaigns and outreach initiatives to engage customers in collaborative conversation, and such platforms come in various forms. Important Note: There are two basic Social CRM models. The first is what many major CRM vendors are offering: social media management capabilities in the form of modules that integrate with their existing CRM platforms. Modules can range from simple (just a Twitter integration) to complex (complete community management) depending on a business’s outreach goals. The other route: there are a number of Social CRM vendors whose platforms focus almost exclusively on customer relationship management through social networks. These Social CRM products were developed with community engagement and online communication in mind, and are less process-centric than the aforementioned Social CRM platforms. Some of these products are standalone platforms, but nonetheless they are usually integrative with major CRM platforms. This article was posted by wakensys28 |
Factors selecting WCMS for your Enterprise
9March 2010 |
For organizations looking for a WCMS to manage their website, intranet, or portal there are literally over a thousand potential solutions from which to choose. WCMS solutions vary significantly in price, design, functionality, and in many cases, provide far more than just content management capabilities. A WCMS will typically serve as the foundation of an integrated e-Business or e-Information delivery platform. As such, there is more to consider than just how content is managed. The goal of this whitepaper is to provide industry insight that will help organizations to effectively evaluate and differentiate WCMS solutions and ultimately make better informed decisions. Identify Business Drivers The first step is to clearly identify the core business objectives driving your organizations need for a WCMS solution. The key business drivers behind why you need content management will play a significant role in identifying potential WCMS solutions. Get Help from A Content Management Specialist Define Your Base System Requirements In identifying your WCMS solution requirements, you need to include both business requirements and technical requirements. In defining your business requirements, begin by asking the internal stakeholders that will be using the WCMS what they need the system to do. In defining your technical requirements you will need to work with your IT team by making sure that your solution aligns with your organizations IT infrastructure and long-term strategy. Identify Potential Vendors Evaluating WCMS Vendors WCMS vendors vary hugely in price, design and capabilities. We have often said that WCMS products are 30% similar and 70% different. They all have the same bullet-point list of features, but it is how they work that makes the difference between success and failure. Evaluating WCMS Products While WCMS evaluation often focuses on a checklist of features and functionality, this rarely leads to the best selection. In most cases, a typically deployed WCMS solution uses less than 30% of the out-of-box features and functionality available in a WCMS solution. Every organization has unique needs and business processes. As a result, our experience quite often has been that out-of-box features and functionality do not match the clients individual requirements, thus, custom solutions have to be developed. Technology platform Many organizations have a single coherent IT platform such as Microsoft, Linux or Oracle. If this is the case, it should be specified as a precondition in the evaluation or tender. The same goes for the corporate-wide database standard, and it is reasonable to expect that the WCMS will use this database to store its content repository. WCMS Usability
WCMS Solution Costs When evaluating the cost of a WCMS solution, you need to consider all the costs of deploying and maintaining a CMS solution including the following: *WCMS software licensing This article was posted by wakensys28 |
What Are Social Patterns?
8March 2010 |
we have watched the proliferation of Internet technology spread These electronic connections and social tools are changing the way we interact with one another. We believe that these tools can be designed and simplified to help normal peopleexpand their online experiences with others. These social patterns of behavior and theinterfaces to support them have emerged and continue to evolve as we find better ways to bring people together. Social patterns are the components and pieces of interactivity that are the building blocks of social experiences. They are the best practices and principles we have seen emerge from hundreds of sites and applications with social features or focus. They are the emergent interaction patterns that have become the standard way for users to interact with their content and with the people who matter most to them. This article was posted by wakensys28 |
Deciding to use open source
4March 2010 |
Open source is about freedom not simply the ideal of freedom, but the commercial reality of freedom. Open source software does not carry licensing or subscription fees. Although the initial attraction of open source software may be the fact that it is free of charge, you are likely to find very quickly that the long-term advantage of open source lies in two other characteristics: The code is accessible. Unlike many commercial products that not only hide their code but also forbid you from modifying it, open source code is visible and you are free to modify it to suit your needs. Open source protects you from being tied to a specific vendor. If you adopt an open source solution, you can partner with the developer of your choice to assist you. If you deploy a system such as Joomla!, which is based on popular and common technologies, you need not dread having to change vendors in the future because finding people who are familiar with the system and have the skills needed to work on it is easy. Taken together, the initial cost advantage plus the long-term benefits of having access to the code and your choice of vendors create a compelling argument in favor of open source. However, you should also consider the disadvantages in the course of making your decision. If your firm has existing software deployed on a proprietary system, you may want to continue with those systems rather than introducing different products or platforms into your business. Support can also be an issue with open source products. If your firm requires a high level of support, you need to select an open source vendor that can offer you an appropriate service-level agreement. Determining whether open source is right for you Although open source provides a welcome alternative to commercial software and it will work for the vast majority of people, it is not necessarily the right answer for everyone. Whether open source is right for you depends upon your situation and your tolerance for business risk. The advantages are: Cost. Open source is cheaper to obtain and studies show that implementation costs can be significantly less than for closed source solutions. Open source can be vendor agnostic. You are not tied to a single vendor and cannot be held hostage by that vendor. Open source presents less risk. Studies consistently show that open source development process produces better code and that many eyes make for more secure applications. Moreover, when problems are detected, open source produces patches at an extremely fast rate. Open source is easier to install, configure, and customize. Open source promises more rapid innovation. This article was posted by wakensys28 |
Importance of a sitemap to an SEO-Friendly Website
2March 2010 |
The first step is to ensure that your site can be found and crawled by search engines. This is not as simple as it sounds, as there are many popular web designs and implementation constructs that the crawlers may not understand. As far as Google is concerned, they might as well not exist—great content, good keyword targeting, and smart marketing won’t make any difference at all if the spiders can’t reach those pages in the first place.
Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft all support a protocol known as XML Sitemaps. Google first announced it in 2005, and then Yahoo! and Microsoft agreed to support the protocol in 2006. Using the Sitemaps protocol you can supply the search engines with a list of all the URLs you would like them to crawl and index.
The first step in the process of creating an XML Sitemap is to create an .xml Sitemap file in a suitable format. Since creating an XML Sitemap requires a certain level of technical know-how, it would be wise to involve your development team in the XML Sitemap generator process from the beginning. <?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”UTF-8″?> </urlset>
An XML Sitemap generator This is a simple script that you can configure to automatically create Sitemaps, and sometimes submit them as well. Sitemap generators can create these Sitemaps from a URL list, access logs, or a directory path hosting static files corresponding to URLs. Here are some examples of XML Sitemap generators: • SourceForge.net’s google-sitemap_gen Simple text You can provide Google with a simple text file that contains one URL per line. However,Google recommends that once you have a text Sitemap file for your site, you use theSitemap Generator to create a Sitemap from this text file using the Sitemaps protocol. Syndication feed Google accepts Really Simple Syndication (RSS) 2.0 and Atom 1.0 feeds. Note that the feed may provide information on recent URLs only. What to include in a Sitemap file When you create a Sitemap file you need to take care to include only the canonical version of each URL. In other words, in situations where your site has multiple URLs that refer to one. Where to upload your Sitemap file Google and the other major search engines discover and index websites by crawling links. Google XML Sitemaps are a way to feed the URLs that you want crawled on your site to Google for more complete crawling and indexation, which results in improved long tail search ability. By creating and updating this .xml file, you are helping to ensure that Google recognizes your entire site, and this recognition will help people find your site. This article was posted by wakensys28 |
Content Management and Online Marketing
25March 2010
Marketing is a conversation you have with your customers. Key to a good conversation is your ability to listen and respond efficiently, appropriately, and in a manner that enriches the consumer’s experience of the conversation. So let’s take these trends and apply them to some specific online marketing activities and look at how a CMS can help us solve some of the problems.
One of the key points of effective communication is content consistency. As an organization’s online presence grows and spreads, the primary challenge it faces is not only providing appealing and accessible content, but also ensuring that every bit of content delivered to a customer contributes a comprehensive, cohesive, and well-coordinated picture of the organization.
This is another obvious online marketing activity that centers around content and the ability to easily manage it. Atom and RSS (‘Really Simple Syndication’) are two of the primary syndication standards. They allow your customers to subscribe to your content – and have it delivered to them. The CMS will enable you to set up a plan that makes constant, automatic updates of syndication files from your site data. Syndication also means that your content will now be available not just on your site, but on others as well – automatically increasing placements in search engine results. For example, if you have your content on other sites as articles, press releases or news items, the first page on a Google search may display only two links to your site; but it may have several links to your content on other sites. RSS feeds have proven effectiveness in boosting traffic, and search engines are paying increasing attention to RSS feeds. What’s more, it’s easier to find better placement in feed directories than from regular search engines.
Search Engine Optimization
Being search-friendly is one of the primary criteria for a successful Web site, and good content is useless unless it found. This may be one of the most under-utilized ways a CMS can help your organization get better visibility on the Web. Whether an organization relies on Pay-Per-Click or organic search (or most likely both), it pays to improve content hygiene and make a site more search engine-friendly. With organic search, a CMS permits the institution of a number of SEO best practices.
Email Marketing
While Web content management systems typically do not have email campaign management systems built into them, they are still instrumental in their success. With single-sourced, centrally managed content, it becomes easy to publish directly into an integrated email system. The CMS will also allow content creators and marketers to create, manage and test the landing pages and micro sites that may be part of the call to action in the email. With style sheets and templates, the CMS can also ensure that your marketing teams need not wait for designers or technical staff to help with this process – they can publish when the need arises and not worry about branding inconsistencies or design gaffes.
As user behavior and marketing techniques continuously evolve, companies could easily get left behind. However, with the growth of crucial technologies such as the CMS, adapting to new scenarios and challenges does not carry with it a large technological burden. It only remains to organizations to have a finger on the online pulse and move fluidly with the audience.
This article was posted by wakensys28