Kristin Colier

Archive for the ‘User-Centered Design’ Category

Hi Friends – I have been trying to explain how exactly I can help companies improve their products, marketing and customer rapport with an effective internet presence.  I talk a lot about user experience and integrating social media… but I think this story may help illustrate what I do best.  Enjoy.

The Story of The Three Small Business Owners

Once upon a time there were three small business owners. They all sold party supplies and all decided they must build a website.

The first small business owner was not very smart. He hired his nephew to build his website for $300 and a case of Budweiser. He launched his website. He made a some money. He was pretty happy.

The First Small Business Owner was Not Very Smart...

The second small business owner had a little more business sense. He invested over $2000 with a web design company. He used professional graphics and created an online catalog. He went even further and bought Google ads every month to drive lots and lots of people to his website. He spent more money, he made more money. He was happy.

The third small business owner was the wisest of all. She hired me.

I asked the business owner lots of questions about her products and her business goals. I researched the industry and her target customers.
I did keyword research, monitored blogs, twitter streams, social sites and other online forums and learned a lot about her customers.
We discovered that most party planners are women between the ages of 25 and 45. We learned that the buying habits for professional party planners are different than people that plan parties once or twice a year. We figured out that party planners often need information on caterers, rentals, entertainment, recipes, party games, house-cleaning services and venues. We learned that some party themes were timeless and some were trendy – and could find out what trends were on the rise and which were fading out.

Since the small business owner learned so much about party planning and party supplies she provided great advice to her customers too. She became known as “The Party Queen.” Her customers looked to her for answers and she delivered. They even told their friends about her. One she built her website, it became a one-stop shop for party planning, tips, resources and supplies.

She invested some money, she made lots of money. She was happy AND her customers were happy.

But that is not the end.

One day…. Along came the BIG BAD ECONOMY.

The Big Bad Economy Huffed and Puffed...

The Big Bad Economy visited the first small business owner. He huffed and he puffed and blew … Well, since his prices were too high, and he didn’t have very many customers to begin with, it didn’t take much to knock down the first small business owner. Soon he was back to flipping burgers.

NEXT, the Big Bad Economy visited the second small business owner. He huffed and puffed… but since the Second Small Business Owner had more customers, he bought in bulk and was able to offer lower prices than some of the other online party businesses. He lowered his prices, decreased his margins and though he wasn’t exactly “rolling in it,” for now, he was still in business.
The Big Bad Economy was perplexed, so he called his brother. His brother was called “A Fundamental Shift in Consumer Demand for Cheap Unsustainable Plastic Crap Made in China.”

Together they huffed and puffed…
The business owner increased his advertising, he decreased his prices even more, but still he found his customers kept disappearing. Finally the Big Bad Economy and the Fundamental Shift in Consumer Demand for Cheap Unsustainable Plastic Crap Made in China put him out of business.

His fate was worse than the first. He went back to an unsatisfying middle-management job and blamed the hippies for ruining his business.

Now, I am sure you are wondering what happened to the Third Small Business Owner.
When the Big Bad Economy came along, she didn’t lose customers. Her customers were loyal. In fact, she picked up some of the first small business owner’s customers. Her customers didn’t go shopping around for lower prices because she added value, she gave her expertise away for free. She saved them time and money by putting everything in one place. Plus, everyone liked doing business with the Party Queen.
And when the Fundamental Shift in Consumer Demand for Cheap Unsustainable Plastic Crap Made in China came along – she was ready. She had seen this trend coming for months and had already started offering greener and eco-friendly party products.

She was Happy AND Her Customers Were Happy.

They called their cousins: “Product Recall,” “Fabricated Sex Scandal” and “Unauthorized Biography.” It didn’t matter. Her customers loved her and continued to recommend her website to their party planner friends.

Her business thrived. Her customers thrived.

And They All Lived Happily Ever After

I was recently reminded of this classic parable of the difference between Heaven and Hell and naturally it made me think of innovation and business.

A man spoke with the Lord about heaven and hell.

The Lord said to the man, “Come, I will show you hell.”

They entered a room where a group of people sat around a huge pot of stew.
Everyone was famished, desperate and starving.

Each held a spoon that reached the pot, but each spoon had a handle so much longer than their own arm that it could not be used to get the stew into their own mouths.

The suffering was terrible.

“Come, now I will show you heaven,” the Lord said after a while.

They entered another room, identical to the first – the pot of stew, the group of people, the same long-handled spoons. But there everyone was happy and well-nourished.

“I don’t understand,” said the man. “Why are they happy here when they were miserable in the other room and everything was the same?”

The Lord smiled. “Ah, it is simple,” he said. “Here they have learned to feed each other.”

So, the point of the story is – that selflessness in the short term leads to the overall greater good for everyone in the long run, or that interdependence is the only true way to happiness or that greed will lead to suffering.

Whichever. The point is not my point.

My point is all it would take is ONE person in Hell to figure it out – to INNOVATE, to say “Hey guys, I have an idea – Let’s Feed EACHOTHER.” And they’d all slap their heads and say “Of course! It’s so obvious. Let’s do it!”

But it doesn’t work that way, does it? No. More often the innovator hears “We are fine the way we are, thank you very much.” and “Who let the do-gooder in?” or “Keep your Socialist agenda to yourself!”

This point was brought home, when I watched the first episode of Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution. His mission is to educate children and families to make better food choices and fight obesity. He went to Huntington, West Virginia, the unhealthiest city in America and was met with scorn and resistance.

(Mind you, it did help underline my “buy-in strategy” theory. He could have gained a lot more ground by getting the lunch ladies as allies outside the school with a free cooking class, or a church picnic – before jumping in and trying to ‘innovate’ their current system.)

I’m optimistic it turns out well in the end – because, well, I’ll be too damn depressed if it doesn’t… and unhappy endings don’t make good television.

The bottom line: Next time you propose your obvious and innovative solution, be prepared to withstand a little heat.

Cheers!
-Kristin

What is Search Engine Optimization and how does one do it effectively?

The goal of search engines is to match the “Searcher” (he who types a phrase in a search engine) with content (those most relevant websites to the search phrase.)

As soon as this concept was realized, there have been attempts to “trick” the search engines. Starting with white-on-white text, stuffing keywords and duplicating content – all in the name of higher rankings. These “Black hat” approaches are usually thwarted in the next Google or Yahoo search algorithm – and don’t make for a good net citizen regardless. So, if you don’t actually give away “free beer” – don’t put it in your meta tags – at the least it just pisses people off and at worst could get you blacklisted from Google.

So anyway – what are good, “White Hat” SEO practices?

1. First do your keyword research and find out what terms related to your product or service people are looking for. Be creative. I have one client that sells Gourmet Butter. This butter makes delicious sauces really easily for anyone that can melt butter. But – do people search for Gourmet Butter? No, more often they look for “easy recipes.” In fact, according to Google, over 1 million people searched for “easy recipes” in February and only 8,100 searched for gourmet butter. Another factor to consider is competition, of course – which leads to your KEI or Keyword Effectiveness Index. This also needs to be considered when selecting keywords, but I’ll get into that more another time. Let’s just assume for now you’ve picked your best keyword phrases to optimize on.

2. Put your keywords in your Meta Tags: these are your page title, page keywords, and page description. It is best to use separate meta tags for each page if you have significantly different content on each page.

3. Put your keywords in your H1 and H2 tags. Rather than have an H1 tag called “About Our Products” – instead use “Butter Ingredients” or “Recipes using our Butter” – this gives the spiders (search engine bots) some idea of what content is to follow and whether it’s relevant to the search query.

4. Put alt tags on your images with – you guessed it, keywords. Now might be a good time to get into the nature of spiders. They are blind. When they index your site (yet another term to be defined later) they crawl without seeing table structure, or images, or flash, or cool graphics… they just look for text. So put alt tags on your images that say something other than “foodpicture5.jpg.” Try “Balsamic and Shallot butter is great on steak, fish and pasta.” That way even a blind person (or spider) can read what you are trying to illustrate.

5. Use a CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) based web design. Back in the old days, everyone put their style formatting right there with the content. Try reading this: TABLE: BOLD:LARGE:FONT=TIMES:MY BUTTER IS BETTER:END LARGE:END FONT:END BOLD:END TABLE.
Where’s the Beef? (as anyone my age might appreciate). It’s hiding between the buns. So – the beauty of CSS, is that it moves all the styling away from the content. Not only does this make it W3C compliant (the web standard), more accessible for mobile and specialty devices (blind readers), easier to update your look and feel (see csszengarden.com) but also more spiderable based on actual content not style text. More Beef, Less Bun.

6. Use meaningful keywords in your links. Stop with the “For More Info Click here…” That is a wasted opportunity. Try “More Simple Sauce Recipes.” Use keywords in the link, linking to more relevant information for the user.

7. Use keywords in your content.

Change: Our products are really good. You should try them. They are delicious and so easy to use. Even you can impress even the most judgmental of in-laws.

To: These Gourmet Butters are terrific and enhance any recipe. Try the Wasabi-Soy on Mahi Mahi, Steak, Pasta or Chicken. Break out your “Kiss the Cook” apron and impress your mother-in-law with these simple recipes.

(Add links on Gourmet Butters and Simple Recipes for bonus points.)

Well – that’s it for now. I haven’t even touched on Link-Building yet. (Maybe next time).
Hint: Posting a link back to your site on every blog, twitter or other Social Media outlet is not the answer.

Until next time.
Cheers.
-Kristin

Oh, and by the way if you want some Delicious Gourmet Butter…

1. What is the purpose(s) of the site?
Here are some possibilities.

• Drive Revenue / Reduce Cost.
• Generate leads.
• Sell stuff online.
• Brochure for your Product or Service.
• Provide Customer Support.
• Go-to site for a Special Interest Group.
• Raise your profile

2. Who is your target audience?

• Potential Customers
• Existing Customers
• Only people you invite
• Authorized users only
• Anyone who can find it
• Only prequalified customers

3. What is your budget? Consider cost of both initial design and development and the cost for on-going maintenance. What’s your Return On Investment (ROI) goal?  Be realistic. If you are creating a family reunion website – you probably don’t need to hire a graphic designer to create a template or logo.  If you are growing your own business, you may want to invest in a unique brand and design.  Some costs to consider:

• Branding/ Logo / Unique Design required
• Payment Processing required?  Usually an additional monthly charge.  What kind of volume? What kind of payments (credit card/ paypal, etc).  Refund policy?
• Bandwidth and storage requirements.  Will customers be downloading large video files from your site?   Do you have a growth plan as your site grows? (Most hosting providers have different billing plans based on bandwidth/ storage usage.)
• Site Maintenance.  Who is going to update your site?  Budget for training if necessary or for paying a consultant to make changes when needed.
• Marketing/ Link Building/ Keyword Analysis.  If you want to drive qualified traffic to your site through natural search engine optimization, you will need an expert to help determine the best keywords to use on your site and ensure that your target audience can find you.  This too can be part of an on-going maintenance plan.
• Pay-per-click.  If you have a high sales ratio (ie. percentage of people that get to your site and buy) you’ll want to consider a pay-per-click strategy.  Cost depends on the popularity of the keywords you bid on among other things.
• Custom Development.  Many times businesses have unique requests that require custom development.  The good news is most websites allow open-source add-on solutions.  Be sure to match your expectations of what a web site can do – with what you are willing to spend.  Many big name websites that you see on the internet have huge budgets and large teams working exclusively on them.  As a small organization creating an internet presence – I suggest starting with the basics, and grow as the business grows.

4. What is your domain name?  Do you own it? Who is it registered with? Who has the username and password?  Do you have the .com, .net or .org of the same name or possible misspellings?  These may seem like simple questions – but many times have I seen a website completed, only to have the launch delayed because no one knew who manged the domain names or the domain name was already taken.

5. What is your email plan?  Will you be creating and managing company email through the new domain name – (ie. kristin@kristincolier.com) or keeping another email provider. (kcolier@gmail.com).  Again – simple question, complicated answers may come at launch time.

6. Can I do this myself cheaper?  The answer is – yes.

Just about anyone can create an internet presence practically for free.  There are two problems with this though.

1. There is a learning curve which is usually not cost effective for most entrepreneurs.  It draws your time and effort away from your own core business.  And unless that business is designing websites – it tends to be obsolete knowledge by the next time you try and update/ create a website.
2. Your website is like an employee of your company.  It represents you. It answers questions about your business 24/7.  It is an invaluable tool in making a positive impression on your target audience AND turning those site visitors into customers, subscribers or fans.  A web presence alone cannot do that for you.

A well-designed, well-planned and well-executed website will work harder for you than most any other investment.

Come armed with these answers and your next project will be a success!
Cheers,
Kristin