Ambient and Transparent

Here at E-Nor, we recently completed a project for the The Learning Community (TLC), which happens to be a collection of links to informational websites, articles, and videos based on different subjects that affect child development.  Their mission - to provide that “children’s manual” parents never seem to receive with the baby!

The project initially started in December of 2007 as a conversion of their original pure HTML site to Dotnetnuke (open-source Content Management System), but ended up turning into a significant redesign and restructuring project.

The services we provided were:

• Basic online marketing consultation
• Creating a new, brighter aesthetic look.
• Implementing a different site-structure based on our understanding of their users flow.  (We also took some tips from their more successful and professional competitors, such as the commercial magazine www.parenting.com)
• Improving their SEO (Search Engine Optimization) by cleaning up their meta tags and recommending some content enhancements. Their site is now on the first page of Google for some keywords when previously it was nowhere to be found.
• Helping promote their videos on Youtube.
• Cleaning up their Google Analytics setup to properly track where visitors are coming from, which external sites they are going to, and which PDFs they are downloading.

Oh yah, I forgot to mention the project was done PRO BONO. We had a great working relationship with the client, in that any work we recommended, if they could find volunteers to implement, they did, which saved us time.  Any technical implementation we could throw in, we did, and they practically understood that since the work was pro bono, it would take priority accordingly with respect to our other projects.

E-Nor encourages our clients, partners, and blog readers to support non-profits.  Though altruism may already be inline with your corporate and personal values, a year’s worth of pro-bono work may scare even the most giving of companies and people.  However, here are some benefits you may not have considered (in no particular order):

1. Necessity is the mother of innovation. The nature of non-profits is that their revenue is limited yet they provide great services to the community. Thus, they may require strong functions for their site. You’ll be forced to learn valuable work-arounds when their budget may not cover high end modules or spending, giving you great ideas for options when you need to close a sale with those paying clients who are a little tighter with their money.
2. Practice makes perfect. Just like anything you do in life, the more you do it the better you will get. You can chalk this pro bono run as practice. For us, TLC being a year project, it strengthened and even expanded our research on techniques, functions, modules, etc, that we can now apply to all our sites!
3. A non-profit “word-of-mouth” could still lead to profit. We know that as technology evolves, so does marketing. If Google has taught us anything, free services and products actually go a long way in branding and exposure, and could result in lucrative opportunities in the future. Non-profits do have friends that could end up being your paying clients with the right referral. And because your existing relationship had no financial motives, the trust and rapport has already been built.
4. Had a bad day? They’ll pick you up. For all those clients who didn’t see the extra work you did for them and who complained instead of showing gratitude, you could expect the opposite for your non-profit pro bono clients. They can’t help but see the void you filled for them and be grateful for it.
5. Testimonials. Along the same lines as the above, a testimonial will virtually be an everyday occurrence if you’re doing your job right.
6. Pat yourself on the back.  You did a good deed! Because of the site you provided for a parenting non-profit or a domestic violence shelter, a lost parent now has a little bit of direction or a helpless victim is a little bit safer.
7. Experimentation (with the permission of the client). Since your client doesn’t have dollars riding on this project, they are more likely to allow you to do light experimentation on it, within reason of course. Not only are they more comfortable since no hard earned grant money is at risk, but that also means there’s a more flexible timeline for you to play with the site. For example, if you see a new module you wanted to try or your organization is new to analytics and you need a site to try it on, especially if the end result could possibly benefit your client, non-profit free sites may in fact welcome experimentation. Don’t forget to back up, though!

written by Farid Alhadi \\ tags: dotnetnuke, internet consulting, marketing strategy, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, tips for internet consultants, web design

We’re pretty happy to be included on Alltop.  You might be wondering what Alltop is.  Alltop is sort of like an online magazine rack or a blog of blogs.  You can use it as a starting point to explore groups or aggregates of topics.  It can save you the work of using an RSS aggregator if you are subscribed to a ton of RSS feeds and need the incoming information to organized and sorted.

Visit http://webanalytics.alltop.com/ for exciting web analytics news and visit http://www.alltop.com/ for top stories.

written by Rehan Asif \\ tags: rss, tips for internet consultants

My high school English teacher advised us about writing essays, “you have to assume the reader is an intelligent alien”. This was meant to say that they are smart enough to figure things out but we have to assume that they don’t know anything. Basically, to write a good paper, make sure you lay everything out but at the same time respect the reader and don’t patronize them.

This type of thinking forces you to balance giving enough information to cover any holes in your work while preventing you from putting too much extra fat that may bore or frustrate the reader.

Replace the word “reader” with “user” in the previous sentence, and I think you have an excellent philosophy for usability.

The internet is the fastest and most convenient way of getting information. In the small amount of time it’s existed, we’ve realized that the easier a site is to use - well…the more people will use it. In turn, as surfers we’re spoiled like this and now come to expect that a website will get your job done quick and dirty. So as surfers, we are on the hunt - frantically scanning pages. If we have to think too much - there’s no penalty for hitting that back button and moving on to the next search engine search result on the list - in hopes that maybe this next site “dumbed it down” enough.

It’s safe to assume that the user that stumbles upon your page is thinking just that, and that’s why it’s important that your site is as “dumbed-down as” possible - so even a smart Martian could use it…

Conventions

Continuing my reminiscing of high school (quick, someone pinch me with a 2 by 4 and get me out of this daydream nightmare), there were two mannerisms that I learned without being taught:

1) When walking down the hallway, there are two lanes - On-coming traffic and On-going traffic. When you want to go somewhere, you walk on the right side of the hallway in the On-going traffic lane.

2) When you open a door, you have to go that extra inch to swing it all the way open as an etiquette to the random student who may be following behind you coming through the doorway. This eventually is a reflex for everyone and is done in all instances, regardless of who’s behind you. In fact, after awhile it was so automatic you didn’t even check if anyone was behind you, you just swung that door wide open.

What the heck does this have to do with usability?

Well, Sociology 101 - a bunch of people doing something and consistently repeating it means everyone will end up doing it (almost naturally). No one explicitly instructed me to do these things. I just picked it up by copy-catting everyone else.

This is an important concept to take advantage of in Usability - standard conventions - understanding what EVERYONE has been trained to do and are doing.

The new laptop you bought is easy to use because it works just like all the hundreds of other laptops you’ve seen/used recently. The ‘on’ button is this circle at the top of your keyboard, there are a bunch of pretty lights indicating different things, you have external volume buttons on the outside, usually on the front bumper of your laptop, etc. In the back of your computer, most average Joe’s now know that, for my audio speakers, I plug the green plug into the green socket.

None of these conventions are mandatory - your laptop manufacturer could’ve put your ‘on’ button on the bottom of the laptop or your speaker plug could have been the color ‘orange’ - but the convention everyone uses is what makes it “natural” and thus, easy for everyone to figure out.

So unless you plan to be a trendsetter (”I’m going to wear my underwear on the outside of my pants until everyone copy’s me!!!!” - let’s see how far that one goes Superman), a good bet is that your website design will be usable when it copies conventions that everyone’s used to doing.

A good place to start, then, for design inspiration is looking at the big dawg’s websites that everyone uses which have now defined common usability conventions. For example, if you are planning to create a site that will be displaying a huge amount of videos, you may want to look at the video big dawg (we’ll call him “TouYube”) and design your layout that way - i.e. video display at the top left of the page, search at the top middle, “related videos” box on the right, etc. If you’re designing an email client or some sort of document creation user interface, the “compose”and “reply” are usually buttons at the top left. In your design, you may not want to have those as just hyper links in the top right corner then -use buttons and put them at the top left.

At this point, it’s unlikely you’d have to worry whether, “Hmmmmm…would the placement of these functions objectively be logical to the user?” They’ve already been trained to use this layout the millions of time they used the big dawg’s site. Your usability now has already been ingrained into the user’s skull by someone else.

If you insist on being original and innovative, at least consider the conventions big dawgs have defined, and make your site a combination of them or at least some sort of derivation based on them, as to still take advantage of the familiarity.

In conclusion, (large numbers of people) + (consistent repetition of an action) = a Social Standard. Take advantage of these standard conventions and apply common practices to the layouts of your website design.

Farid

Creative Director, E-Nor

written by Farid Alhadi \\ tags: usability

Last week I moderated a panel discussion organized by NSHMBA and hosted by Google at the Mountain View campus.

The event was well planned by NSHMBA organizers with a very impressive line of speakers:

Cisco - Guillermo Diaz, VP of Information Technology.
Oracle - Vince Casarez, VP of Product Management.
Google - Gonzalo Begazo Escobedo, US Controller.
Safeway.com - Michelle Marian, VP of Interactive Marketing.
Moderator: E-Nor - Feras Alhlou, President.

The panelist’s discussion was very insightful and offered some very practical advice to the audience. A few points that I really liked:

• Don’t be left behind! Even if you are in a non-technical field, embrace new technology and applications. Use them in your personal and professional life (blogs, social networking, wikis, etc.)
• Listen to the customer! Get end user input throughout your process. Don’t wait for your products/services to be “perfect” before you introduce them to the user. Gonzalo from Google pointed out how Google applies this a number of Google products that are released as “beta” to collect end user feedback/ideas/suggestions for improvements.
• Reach your customer where they are and again listen to their needs and wants.
• Use collaboration/connection technologies (hardware and software) to improve productivity and stay in touch with team members, especially those that work virtually in other offices or in different time zones.
• Mobile is big and will only be getting bigger… (this needs a separate post altogether!)

written by Feras Alhlou \\ tags: integrated marketing, marketing strategy, tips for internet consultants