Jon Samsel

I’ve been working in online marketing or e-commerce since the late-1990’s. Heck, I still own my first Mac PowerBook 5300 (and it works!). Technology, software, Internet connectivity–everything has pretty much changed over the years. But one thing I can tell you that has not changed much is the relationship between online marketers and web developers.

Like two star-crossed lovers meeting in the night, these two disparate groups are intricately intertwined and dependent on each other. But like oil and water, togetherness is sometimes a four letter word. The result: Bruised egos, project delays, blown budgets, finger-pointing, and soured relationships. Worst of all, it’s bad business to let interdepartmental issues impact a company’s bottom line. Frankly, it’s unacceptable.

In looking back on my dealings with IT development managers over the years, I am struck by the fact that nearly all of my interactions have common threads that include ALIGNMENT, QUALITY, and COMMUNICATION issues. I’ve identified nine specific pains points common to marketer/developer relations that, if improved early on, can really boost a company’s web productivity. An added benefit is improving interdepartmental relationships BEFORE they spiral out of control.

Mutual SLA(s)

1. Deadlines: Are deadlines being met? Are key milestones being hit?
2. Quality: What is the caliber of the deliverables? Are they meeting or exceeding expectations?
3. Value Add: Assess the subject matter expertise of the people we’re interacting with. Are people thinking outside the box? Are we getting any value add?
4. Trust: Do we respect our partners? Do they have our back? Can we take them at their word or do we need to document everything up front to cover ourselves later?
5. Teamwork: Does the other party have a shared desire to help us achieve our goals? Is it easy or difficult to resolve unexpected challenges?Are people listening?
6. Flexibility: Can our partners adapt to changing market conditions? Will they put in the extra effort needed to be successful? Are they working at web speed or legacy software development speed?
7. Surprises: Do we encounter frequent surprises or changes in direction? Are delays common?
8. People: Are we dealing with like peers or is their disparity in skill sets and maturity levels? Do we have weak links that are dragging us all down?
9. Support: How effective is the quality & style of communication? Is the other party easy to work with? How accessible are they in times of urgency?

Monthly Relationship Scorecard Review

One technique I have used over the years in a monthly relationship scorecard, or mutual SLA review session.  SLA stands for Service Level Agreement and serves as a contract between a service provider and a customer that specifies what services the service provider will furnish, and how those services should be measured. A mutual SLA simply applies the terms of agreement to both the provider (web developers) and customer (marketer).

The way a mutual SLA review session works is for both sides to rate each other (monthly) based on the nine variables mentioned above. Typically a marketing manager and web development manager sit down face to face to compare scores and review feedback. As uncomfortable and contentious as the first few review sessions usually go, the ensuing sessions using turn into effective get-togethers that resolve problems before they get too large to solve.

The goal of these sessions is to close the gap between self ratings (perceptions of our own performance) against partner ratings (how are peers actually rate us).

Challenge Resolution Sessions

A more professional and systematic approach to problem resolution can be attained via regularly scheduled Challenge Resolution Sessions. Rather than resorting to emotionally-charged finger pointing exercises (as if often the case after unresolved issues boil over), a challenge resolution session can be a healthy and effective way to air dirty laundry while solving critical impasses.

Sessions topics to consider include:

• What went wrong
• Impact the “challenge” is having on the business
• Why this issue is important to us
• How this “challenge” is making us “feel” (feelings, if left to fester, are like a cancer within)
• Root cause of the problem
• Recommended solutions
• What we’ve learned
• How we can prevent this type of situation from happening in the future

Conclusion

There are several ways that marketing professionals and their web development partners can have a more effective and productive working relationship that can help a company attain its online goals less arduously.  Mutual SLA(s), monthly relationship scorecard reviews, and challenge resolutions sessions are three ways I have personally actualized better relationships between marketers and web developers.

Communication is never easy. Neither is love; Ask any married couple. Perhaps my suggestions for documenting, discussing, and resolving online development and communication issues will prove helpful to both marketing professional and e-commerce/web development teams as they work together to improve their mutually-dependent relationships.

Ain’t love grand?

Recently, I wrote a blog post titled, “Which SEO Agencies Practice What They Preach?” The article generated a lot of comments from professionals within the creative agency world–most of them lukewarm. Respondents fell into two camps: 1) Those who disagreed with the methodology of utilizing a free site grading service to evaluate and compare SEO companies, 2) Those who were embarrassed by the results. After rereading my post, I not only stand by my words, but I have decided to expand the concept of comparing leading class companies by WebsiteGrader Score into a regular feature on my blog.

Why compare firms by WebsiteGrader Score? Because looking under the hood can tell you a lot about what companies are doing to promote their brands–both on site and off site.

So which category would I zero in on next? Well, it didn’t take me long to decide. I stumbled across an interesting article by Linda Tischler published on FastCompany.com on Feb 11, 2009 titled, “The Fast Company 50: The Most Innovative Companies in Design” that purported to profile extraordinary design enterprises across the nation, part of a larger article looking at firms across various industries.

Prepping the List to Grade

I had only heard of two of the design companies profiled by Fast Company, so I looked up each company on Google and verified the corporate URL for each firm. Then went to Websitegrader.com and evaluated each site.

Here are the top 10 design firms ranked by Fast Company along with their WSG score:

1. Ideo 98.3
2. Marcel Wanders Studio 71.0
3. Rockwell Group 77.0
4. Pentagram 97.3
   
5. Whipsaw 53.0
   
6. Ammunition 71.0
7. Frog design 95.0
8. Fuseproject 88.0
9. Smart Design 93.0
10. NewDealDesign 59.0

Big Ah-Ha’s

Ideo had the highest WebsiteGrader score and they were also ranked #1 design firm by Fast Company. That’s a fairly compelling confirmation that this firm is as good as they appear to be. Pentagram, Frog Design and Smart Design each scored above 90%, so my takeaway is that they each made a respectable showing and deserve some props.

Most of the other firms on the list scored lower than I would have expected. These are not big dumb brands…these are cutting-edge design companies. It just doesn’t seem acceptable that any of the firms on this list score below ninety percent, yet 6 out of 10 did!

The two design firms that scored that lowest were Whipsaw and NewDealDesign. Yes, it’s true both sites were built using Flash. But in 2009, there are plenty of ways to optimize a Flash website in a way that makes them accessible to humans, search engines, and social media sites. These two firms, for whatever reason, chose not to put the extra effort in to make their online content and code up to par. Tsk, tsk.

Digging under the hood at NewDealDesign.com, you will see that basic SEO best practices were not performed at all. According to WebsiteGrader, meta descriptions and keywords were missing from the NewDealDesign website. Images on the site were missing ALT text. There were a surprisingly low number of pages indexed by Yahoo: 26. One of the most important measures for a website is how many other sites link to it. The more links the better. NewDealDesign had only 577 inbound links, and the domain is 9 years and 9 months old. One would surmise that a leading design firm would have many, many more inbound links. No blog, no RSS feeds and no contact forms were detected on the site either.

In Conclusion: There May Be A ‘Return On Awesomeness’ After All

To be fair, NewDealDesign appears to be an offline design firm (packaged goods, industrial design, etc.) and doesn’t appear to offer web strategy & design services. Their client list is impressive: Puma, Samsung, Microsoft, Epson, Dell, HP, Kensington, Nokia, Logitech, SAP, Sun, Toshiba, Verison, and more.

But some of other design firms included on The Fast Company Most Innovative Companies list appear to do a fair amount of web strategy & design work. It seems fair to expect a design company’s website and online brand strategy to be deployed professionally and thoroughly. It surprises me when this is not the case–and the Fast Company list of innovative design firms did not disappoint.

So while many of the design firms profiled in this post failed the ‘practice what you preach’ smell test, they appear to be lauded by the press for their exceptional creative abilities nonetheless.  And the fact that they are being hired by the world’s top brands to transform the ordinary into extrordinary–through design–may be proof positive that generating a ‘return on awesomeness’ is possible after all.

1. Apple’s design process revealed!
2. Hilarious video about ‘Death By Committee’ group decision making processes. Love the logo designs!
3. Naming tools to help get your creative juices flowing.
4. The Components of a Writing Business Plan.
5. Website up-time tool.
6. What every web designer needs: A handy Lorem Ipsum generator!
7. An online font tester!
8. 100 things on the Internet that might be of interest to you.
9. Type in a word to find rhymes, synonyms, definitions, and more.
10. Life of Pi - Interactive promo. The mood that this creates is almost like a movie. Awesome.
11. The website is down: Sales guy vs. web dude. Funny!
12. ZeFrank’s song about social networking
13. Good site for hiring freelancers to work on social media gigs or web dev projects.
14. Quantcast - Free, competitive website analytics.
15. See every mouse movement and every click on your website. Record & more.
16. Fun brain teasers and exercises.
17. Need to quickly translate text into another foreign language?
18. Nice gift idea - give a personalized book to your child or relative.
19. SEO tool. How many desired .edu or .gov links does your site have?
20. Over 1,500 stories about coffee’s impact on real lives. Very cleaver marketing.
21. Social search engine. Pretty cool.
22. Where’s WaldObama? 1,474 mega-pixel picture of the Inauguration. Wow.
23. Mint or Rudder - which is best online tool to manage your money?
24. Runners. Track your distance, pace, progress & calories with this cool NIKE tool.
25. Looking for the perfect Web 2.0 domain name? Try Dot-o-mator.
26. Download free Web 2.0 logo designs!
27. UGC traffic to triple by 2012, according to Cisco.
28. UGC / user reviews are critical. See latest Nielsen findings.
29. “The Crying Game” of viral marketing. So well done. Click till you see the surprise ending!
30. U.S. real estate prices from 1980-present plotted to a roller coaster ride!
31. I just love Howcast - learn about almost anything!
32. Creepy girl. Watch as her eyes follow your cursor.
33. Amazing interactive simulation by Motorola.
34. Heatmap simulation for any image you upload. Sweet.
35. Design for Emotion and Flow.
36. Website User Journeys, Needs, and Trust: A Volkswagen Case Study.
37. Very helpful usability blog site by Craig Tomlin.
38. Net Promoter Score: Pro’s? Con’s? Full of bologna?
39. Get Elastic’s landing page optimization webinar recap.
40. Consumer purchase preferences by zip code.
41. Free version of the Word of Mouth Manual Volume II.
42. Social media marketing case study: Will It Blend.
43. Free 34 page ebook - The New Rules of Viral Marketing.
44. Social Web Analytics eBook 2008.
45. Introduction to Good Usability - Free PDF Ebook.
46. How to think virally w/ Jeff Benjamin, the creator of  Subservient Chicken.
47. Customer Feedback Usability Insights.
48. 5 new skills for the future of marketing.
49. Bring Holistic Awareness to Your Design.
50. Long live the Cluetrain Manifesto! 95 theses ahead of their time.

Source: http://twitter.com/jonsamsel

The Internet and its colossal impact on businesses worldwide is something I like to refer to as the Web Effect, a precept that Laurie Windham and I first postulated nine years ago in our book, “Dead Ahead: The Web Dilemma and the New Rules of Business.” The Web Effect loosely plays on Edward Lorenz’s chaos theory principle known as The Butterfly Effect.  The Butterfly Effect has become a popular metaphor for describing the chaos theory, the notion that the flapping of a butterfly’s wings in China can send ripples of effects throughout larger and more complex systems, causing say –– a hurricane in Florida.

Following this analogy, the Web is a true “phenomenon” that has impacted nearly everyone.  The “complex system” that’s been impacted by the Web is our global economy.  Much like the ripples in a pond which repel from a center point and then move outward, the Web effects businesses in ways that cannot be entirely predicted, and that will continue to impact organizations in this unsettling way for many years to come.

The ripples in the Web Effect demonstrate the various stages of impact:

• The Web Effect begins with access.  People with access to the Web quickly develop a preference for the Web as a vehicle for performing many business and leisure tasks.
• This access quickly led to preference to do business and expand relationships on the Web in every market.
• As consumers and business customers develop a preference for using the Web, they now demand that all companies service them online.

The result of the Web Effect is that it has created an empowered customer. Control of the transaction has shifted from the seller to the buyer, from the vendor to the customer.

Now that there has been this monumental shift in control to an online user, that control cannot easily be taken away.  More than a demand––it can be said that the Web has become a prerequisite to doing business with a company.

What type of website experience causes visitors to come back repeatedly? Great ones! Oh, if creating awesome website were only that easy, we’d all have one. Right?

While tactical approaches to designing websites vary widely, successful web strategies are based on a few simple principles –– something I first wrote about nine years ago in a book I co-authored with Laurie Windham about doing business online. In that book, “Dead Ahead: The Web Dilemma and the New Rules of Business,” Laurie and I warned businesses that they needed to fulfill the demands of their site visitors, or face their wrath.

The four demands of the empowered customer are:

1. Give me what I need when I need it
2. Don’t waste my time
3. Give me meaningful content, not fluff
4. Don’t exploit me

When you factor the demands of the empowered customer together, you realize that people want a Holistic Experience that is based on their interpretation of the rules. Playing on that concept, a Holistic Website integrates marketing, sales and customer usage activities to enable shopping, buying, receiving, and consuming –– in one cohesive site. It puts the user in the center of the universe, anticipating, stimulating and facilitating their behavior. It fulfills the promise of the company’s value proposition by satisfying user needs.

Companies who can combine these holistic insights with solid user centric design and testing will find themselves much better prepared to develop a website that truly delights their customers.

Doing business in multiple languages requires a company to rely on qualified internal resources and expert consultants to translate and localize their content. By managing the cross-cultural language mix in their global corporate communications, firms can increase their chance of success while avoiding common communications bloopers.

Below is a link to an article on localization and translation that JBI Localization’s Jacques Boulanger provided to me several years ago for a CD-ROM project I was producing for Apple Computer. The information is still very relevant today.

Translation and Localization: Managing the Language and Cross-Cultural Mix in Global Corporate Communications

After several requests, I have decided to publish my eight stage website planning process. If you are a web designer or developer tasked with building a new website, or if you are a web executive contemplating a redesign of your corporate site, think of this outline as a handy checklist for each stage in the web planning process–from discovery through optimization.

I have also included a PowerPoint version of the 8 stage website planning process here.

Stage 1: Discover
Purpose of site
Top 5 business goals
Top 5 user goals
Approximate page count
Style, tone & brand positioning
Top 5 unique features
Traffic sources
Onsite advertising
Calls to action / lead routing
Domain name / URL
How site complements current strategy
How site augments current strategy
Websites this site might emulate
Competitive sites
Timeline / launch date(s)
Definition of successful launch

Stage 2: Plan
Project team & roles
Financial overview
Marketing overview
Communications overview
Project management process
Key project phases
Content requirements
Assumptions & dependencies
Visitor personas & task paths
Major site features & functionality
Design, navigation & architecture
Publishing platform/CMS
Databases, integration & technologies
Tracking & reporting
Natural search & ADA requirements
Hosting & service level agreements

Stage 3: Build
Wireframes & design mock-ups
New content / rights clearance
API’s and RSS feeds
Prototype pages
Usability testing
Searchability testing
Source codes & phone #’s
Landing pages / transactive pages
Legal & compliance
Change control process
Quality control
Staging & user acceptance testing

Stage 4: Publish
Article creation / RSS feeds
Asset management
Publishing sign off process
Syndication
Publishing calendar
Subject matter experts / moderators
User generated content
Multimedia publishing
Publishing platform/CMS
Legal & compliance sign off

Stage 5: Maintain
Up-time requirements
System administration
Software/hardware upgrades
Hosting/security
Documentation
Capacity
Page load times
System performance tuning
Back-up/archiving

Stage 6: Market
Paid campaigns
Natural campaigns
Inbound link building
Landing page overflow
Inter/Intra site linking
Syndication of content
Campaign tracking & reporting
Integrated / stand alone
URL promotion

Stage 7: Measure
Analytic packages
Tagging, tracking & reporting
Cookies & logic
Campaign set up / mods
Natural vs. paid breakout
Tracking to goals
Social / delayed response
Banner performance
LP funnel performance
Site load time / up time

Stage 8: Optimize
Direct response testing
Multivariate testing
Landing page testing
Banner ad testing
Best practice sharing

So you need to create, design or develop a landing page that converts  visits into sales–where do you begin?

First, let’s define what a landing page is. Typically, a landing page is a web page that supports an online marketing campaign and is designed to capture leads or convert visitors into sales. Often, landing pages are separate and distinct from a main website, have unique website addresses, and allow for end-to-end campaign tracking (via unique phone numbers and/or source code tracking appended to the URL).

Typical landing page elements are:

1. Header masthead (logo, tagline, phone number)
2. Hero shot (a graphic representation of the benefit of the product or service you are selling)
3. Headline text and supporting text
4. An offer (50% off your first order, free shipping)
5. A time ticker (limited time offer with an expiration date) to create a sense of urgency
6. Calls to action (call now with a phone number, fill out this form with a form on the page, engage in live chat with a link to start a chat session)
7. Direct response elements (red arrow that directs the eye to a specific action, yellow highlighter effect that draws the eye to an offer of benefit, big bold 1-800 number, etc)
8. Customer testimonials or product reviews (to build trust and re-enforce visitor’s purchase decision)
9. Trust marks such as BBB, McAfee or VeriSign
10. Product or service comparisons

Studying your competitor’s landing pages may seem like a logical place to start, but keep in mind that other companies may have created their landing pages with entirely different goals in mind. This may not be a simple apples to apples comparison, as your goals may be different than those of competing firms. It can’t hurt to know what your competitors are doing, just don’t copy them.

Additionally, competitive landing pages you identify may not be performing very well. The visit-to-lead ratios, for example, on company Y’s landing page may be 2%, far below your target goal of 7%, so copying what others are doing in not always the smartest move.

When you are ready to start a new landing page design and development process, I recommend you start by identifying of few important elements having to do with your goals and objectives.

10 step landing page development process:

1. Identify the baseline visit-to-lead ratio you are trying to beat (ie: 3%)
2. Spell out the desired mix of lead transaction type you want (ie: 70% phone, 30% form)
3. Name the optimal product mix (ie: 50% premium brand dogfood, 30% animal toys, 20% grooming products)
4. Recognize your desired customer mix (ie: 90% repeat/existing customers, 10% once-and-gone customers)
5. List the source of the traffic to your landing page (ie: paid search, banner ads, etc)
6. Identify the time of year this landing page will be used (to gauge whether or not this could/should impact the design)
7. Name your color choices such as background, accent, fonts, images, etc (evaluate brand must-have colors vs. those colors that we know stimulate user response online and consider new combinations)
8. Form placement: Place the entire form on the page vs. a multi-part form vs. a form that is one click away (any combination of which can radically impact results)
9. Smart forms & on-site help: Certain form elements, for example, are known to impact conversions
10. Think of additional ancillary elements you may need, such as live chat, audio, flash animation, video, calculators, click to call, collapsible design elements using AJAX or the like–which are all elements that can impact landing page performance

Once each of these steps is performed, design several new landing pages, varying the tone, style and layout. Then test your new pages. Only testing with a live audience will reveal the winning landing page design. Online visitors are a funny breed. Often, the ‘best’ design perform poorly and ‘ugly’ designs yield great results. From a brand perspective, try to find a landing page that you are proud to display to the world, yet one that fulfills your sales goals.

I encourage you to consider a wildcard design now and again that breaks all the rules. This is one way to radically out-perform, or lose to your control landing page. But breakthrough landing page designs often come about by trying something different. Good luck and happy testing!

Some people know Carl Bressler as the memorable character, Saul Berg from the feature film, The Usual Suspects (1995). Others will recognize Carl as one of the most prolific social networkers on LinkedIn, number 275 (most globally connected) out of 23 million + people on LinkedIn, as of September 1st, 2008.

I’ve known Carl for many years–back in the day when Carl was an actor, agent and producer and I was shifting careers from Hollywood Agent to Multimedia writer and business entrepreneur. I had the good fortune of catching up with Carl recently via email and I asked him a few questions about the power of social networking.

Q: How many LinkedIn connections do you have?

A: 6,613 and counting. I started migrating my contact database online back in March of 2004.

Q: Why the dedication to LinkedIn as opposed to Plaxo, Facebook or other social networking services?

A: Well, I have always been a power networking kind of guy. Plaxo couldn’t handle my 10,000+ contact list and Linkedin was the right solution when I started wanting someone other than me to keep track of my contacts. I am dedicated to FaceBook as well.

Q: Are there any benefits to being so well connected?

A: Interesting people ask to meet me. And I get to help people.

Q: What would you like people to know about you that may not be apprarent until someone gets to know you?

A: Always coming from mutuality.

Q: What’s your number one personal goal for the year?

A: A personal goal for 2009 is to get in better physical condition. Professional? Get in better financial position!

Q: In your opinion, can companies benefit from social networking?

A: Sure, all companies can benefit. From generating sales leads to conducting free market research to finding new sources of funding.

Developing a bug list can be a great way to uncover unmet needs that you may want to solve in your organization. Not only does it help document known issues, but the process of creating a bug list can also serve as a release valve for frustrated employees. Think of a bug list as a modern day suggestion box that’s a bit more open and interactive than the time-honored approach.

Ready to give it a try?

Spend a few minutes jotting down “things that bug you” in your daily work life. What annoys you? What could be fixed if people only knew it were a problem? How might productivity be boosted if a particular issue were revolved?

Here are a few ideas to get you started. These are some thing bugging me right now:

• Our e-commerce department takes too long to update website content
• We have to follow a cumbersome legal process to get content approved
• Visit to lead ratios on landing pages need improvement
• There is too much chatter and lollygaging around the copy machine

Now that you have your short list of bugs, it’s time to do some solution sketching to come up with ways to eliminate the bugs from your life. This type of brainstorming session may not solve all of the bugs on your list, but they will most certainly stimulate healthy debate (and possibly identify a few good solutions) if your team is asked to participate in a debugging session.

So what are you waiting for?  Click the image below to see a larger solution sketch template I created for some things that are bugging me right now.