Articles

The 'Not-So-Brief' Brief

Mon, 14 May 2012 20:23:00 GMT

When anyone thinks about developing a new Website, or revamping their old site, they understandably come at it from the perspective of a Website user – from the ‘front end’, so to speak. Even if they have administered a Website in the past, they have usually experienced that administration through a ‘back end’ user-interface that was created for them, allowing them to do what they needed to do. So, when it is time to create the brief for their new Website, almost always, the brief tends to be written almost as if written by one of their visitors, offering opinion, advice and feedback.

‘Easy to use’, ‘professional look and feel’ and ‘must have feature X or Y’ are common requests in a Web design brief. Business considerations usually cover aspects like ‘must be search engine friendly for this list of keywords’ and ‘competitor sites A and B have such and such a feature and we want our site to have the same feature but better’.

Often the solution has already been decided upon, perhaps on the suggestion of another developer that the business owner may have already received advice from and quite often a budget has already been set. If a budget has not been set, then the typical request is to build the site with price as a major consideration.

Rarely does a potential client come to us with a platform-independent functional specification, that lays out the exact requirements of how the Website will work, what processes will be needed and specific details of the way the site will be, programmed, managed, integrated with the rest of the business (including the marketing strategy) and how a visitor will actually use the site. The supplied brief is almost always a high level overview of the kind of site it needs to be in terms of quality and style, but the technical details are left to the Web developer to simply make happen when they build it.

This leads to some potentially risky and costly problems:

It places all the responsibility of many of the strategic business outcomes on an external service provider who may not be experienced in anything more that design and programming
It ignores the potentially disastrous issues that might arise if the Website project is undertaken on the requested platform that turns out to be unsuitable for the business requirements
It assumes that a price and scope can be determined before the price and scope can possibly be determined
It leads to the business owner being provided with totally disparate proposals as each provider bidding for the project tries to second-guess the business requirements and budget in order to secure the contract
It leads to providers under-quoting in order to get the job or over-quoting to cover themselves for the huge risk of scope creep and cost blow-outs that will inevitably happen as the true scope of the project is realised through the development process.

This does not serve the business owner or the service provider well. Business owners, who are understandably none the wiser when they prepare their brief, expect quotes and proposals for Website development just like they might expect for printing or other production services. Web service providers are caught out either agreeing to take on a project at a price they can’t support or not getting the job at all, because of the under-quoting firms who convince the business owner that they can develop the Website cheaply.

It is difficult for a Web developer to risk losing the lead and throwing cold water on the business owner’s plans by suggesting that perhaps the brief is not enough information to provide a quote, when other firms are providing quotes. It is equally difficult to find a diplomatic way to suggest that perhaps the business owner is ill-informed, or simply doesn’t understand what they might be getting themselves into.

Business owners often believe that they don’t need to know the gory, technical details, as that is the job of the Web developer to take care of and deliver a user-friendly solution. To leave that responsibility in the hands of the developer and expect them to do it well, is the difference between hiring a builder to build your house, or an architect to design it and oversee the building process. When the brief is going straight to builders and implying that they also need to be the architect, without allowing for that process in the cost, or assessing the builder’s capability to do such a thing, the risk of disastrous outcomes is great.

The only way to ensure a Website – particularly a complex one, such as an eCommerce site – will be developed successfully in line with all of the business and technical requirements, is to start with a functional specification. Don’t go straight from an overview brief to a quoting process and straight into development by a successful proposal writer. Take the brief to someone who can develop a full specification that takes into account every aspect of a Website: How it will work, how it will be marketed, how every little detail will function, from form fields to product variations, postage and fulfillment.

Once you are certain that the functional brief addresses and considers all aspects of workflow, ongoing site maintenance, customer experience and any other consideration, then and only then should you take that detailed brief to potential developers to offer solutions and estimate costs. It is the only way to ensure the right technical solution, the right business outcomes and a realistic quote for the work that will be specifically and explicitly stated as being required.

Even if it is impossible to develop a completely detailed functional specification, because maybe some of the details cannot be determined until the project is developed iteratively, still one ought to do one’s utmost to detail as much as possible in order to ensure the best outcomes for the project and that as little as possible is left to chance.

The simple-complex Internet paradox

Mon, 07 May 2012 10:40:00 GMT

As the Internet evolves, two things are happening at the same time.

On the one hand everything is seemingly getting slicker, simpler, more elegant and easy to use. Just think of iPhones and iPads, where children can manipulate applications with the swipe of their fingers and where in a few short minutes an owner of a new device can have it fully configured to check their email, surf the Web, synchronize their calendars and contacts and perform any number of hundreds of thousands of tasks and games with instant app downloads.

On the other hand, the very fact that the hardware is able to be so slick and efficient is as a result of an incredibly complex world of programming, not to mention a totally mind-boggling level of complex interconnectivity. Behind the slick façade lies the operating system, network protocols, Wi-Fi, ISP accounts, servers and domain names all over the world and armies of the brightest minds of our generation getting paid stupendous salaries to make sure that it all works.

So when users experience the ‘front-end’ of this phenomenon, even though they may still encounter glitches and issues and varying standards of quality between Websites and apps, connections and configurations, one definitely gets a general feeling of satisfaction and ease. This is starkly apparent if you look back 10 or 15 years and recall the days of having to insert modem strings to make your connection work, pouring through untold other settings and crossing your fingers in the hope that it all hangs together, and once you got online, on your big old chunky computer with an 800x600 pixel resolution screen, having what could only be described as a mediocre experience on most Websites. We have definitely come a long way. HD video streaming, facebook updates, Soundcloud uploading and checking Google Analytics from bed while the office computer magically backs itself up without you even thinking is a pretty nice place to be.

Herein lies the paradox. When a business owner decides to switch from being a user of the Internet today and get involved as a producer, things take on a radically different dimension. Suddenly they are entering the world of the technology that runs everything. They enter this world with the mind of a user, often believing that what goes on behind the curtains is just as elegant and simple as what goes on onstage. It is a forgivable delusion, but it is still a delusion. Sure, there are products and services out there that enable people to set up basic Websites without any technical knowhow, and sure there are plenty of business tools available that are relatively straight forward – but almost always, the business owner ends up requiring customisations and integrations that immediately put them out of their depth in the technology whirlpool.

Elegance at the front-end involves a great deal of planning, strategy and architecture in the back-end, not to mention a consistent content creation process, to ensure all the text and images are formatted and fitting the layout and style of the delivery medium. Websites now need to work on desktops, mobile devices of all shapes and screen sizes, as well as tablets and even televisions.

Interactions and integrations between Websites and social media platforms are becoming commonplace, yet each one requires a certain level of control to ensure it is doing what the business owner wants it to do. Websites are not just information resources any more. They need to engage, call for action and response, share information from diverse locations, provide downloads or even videos, podcasts and webinars. They might require logins to secure areas, track usage, charge for access to certain files, hook into third party systems, allow subscription and account management or any number of other functions – all seamlessly and elegantly, as if the entire thing was dreamed up by Steve Jobs himself.

The bottom line is the bottom line – all of this takes time and costs money and is almost always unable to be done to a satisfactory level by a business owner, as it requires high levels of programming expertise and understanding. More and more we are receiving enquiries from prospective clients who are coming to us having seen all kinds of amazing things online and wanting to do those amazing things themselves. Almost without fail, their expectation of what is involved to make things happen is completely out of alignment with what is really involved. They cite Websites that might have cost $200,000 to launch and a further $500,000 a year in staff salaries and overheads to maintain, yet they expect that this could be achieved by one person for under $10,000 and half an hour of dabbling on the weekend.

This is the paradox: The more elegant and awesome the Internet becomes to the end user, the easier everyone thinks it must be to get involved, when in fact it is becoming more and more complex and more epic a challenge to create a real successful online presence.

It doesn’t help when we are being told by companies offering cookie-cutter solutions or simple package deals that you can do anything you ever dreamed of online for $15 a month! These people never seem to tell you what the limitations are, just that the product or service is totally amazing.

There are two ways to go here – 1) Accept the paradox, accept a compromise and make the most of what you have got in terms of money, time and tools or 2) Accept the paradox and plan your business accordingly with sufficient capital and resources to achieve what you hope to achieve.

If you ignore the paradox, you ignore it at your peril. Making everything look so easy is not so easy at all.

8 reasons why you should consider re-doing your old Website

Wed, 25 Apr 2012 08:51:00 GMT

The old phrase, “you don’t know what you are missing out on” is definitely one to consider applying to old business Websites. The Web has been around for long enough now that many businesses are starting to outgrow their Websites, without realizing it. Many Websites that were built in the early 2000s are still around.

Certainly, if you ask a business owner whether they want to outlay a large amount of money to completely rethink, redesign and rebuild their online presence, they might wonder why they should fix something that does not seem to be broken. The uninformed economic decision might always be to keep maintaining the old site, with the occasional update, rather than start again. They might have moved premises a couple of times in that time, replaced their car two or three times, replaced pretty much all of their computers and printers, phones, fax and coffee machine, but the most critical face of their business – their Website – sits there chugging away year after year without being given a thought as to how it might perform better, as all their other shiny new acquisitions have been.

So here are a few reasons to consider whether it might actually make good economic sense to invest in a new Website.

1) New standards
Website standards have changed significantly in the last few years. For starters, old websites were designed for 800 pixel wide screens. Now the base line is 1024 pixel screens. This a) makes old Websites look too small and b) gives new Websites a whole lot more screen real estate to deliver content to the viewer. The code behind Websites has evolved a great deal as well. With the release of HTML5 and CSS3, an entire new level of Website creativity and content delivery can be achieved.

2) Changing expectations
As we all well know, when we visit Websites on the Internet, we are getting more opinionated and judgmental about what we see. It is most likely as a result of information overload, but our tendency to hit the back button within seconds of seeing a Website is getting stronger. We also expect more of any Website that we have decided to spend more than a few seconds on. We want the navigation to be intuitive, the information to be comprehensive and the overall look, feel and style of the site to be professional, friendly and appropriate. Older Websites, which were often built on limited budgets, by people who might have been programmers rather than communications or business experts, may not be good enough any more. You may very well be losing business without even knowing it, as more people hit the back button a little bit too soon.

3) Keeping up with the Joneses
Each day you leave your old Website as it is, is another day that you give your competitors an opportunity to forge ahead of you and win new business from discerning clients. Sitting pretty might be a good strategy while your site is bubbling away in search engines and getting reasonable response rates, but over time – and without you knowing – you may start slipping down against other Websites. Web usage is surging, so if your site traffic is remaining flat, chances are your competitors are picking up the extra business with their more sophisticated, social-media savvy and dynamic Websites. When customers are comparison shopping (which we all do online as it is so easy), your site and your competitors' sites stand side by side in the visitor’s mind and they will most likely return to the sites they consider to be more user-friendly, more informative and more professional.

4) Mobile is booming
The statistics on people accessing Websites on their mobile devices are staggering, and growing every day. Old sites almost certainly are not very mobile-friendly, especially when many new sites now are designed with dedicated mobile versions. It is now possible to have a completely separate ‘style sheet’ to deliver your Website to mobile devices. Clearly you are going to be better off if the growing mobile audience is going to be able to view your site easily. Anyone using mobile Apple devices is not going to be able to view any Adobe Flash content by default, so if your old site has any Flash (and some old sites are all Flash), all your Apple-using visitors are going to be disappointed.

5) Websites are now part of the social media landscape
Old Websites were built as stand-alone entities. They might have had databases and other functionality, but they tended to be built without regard to the wider Web. Nowadays, Websites form a dynamic connection to the social Web, not just with like buttons and links to Twitter, but as conduits of content from all over the Web. You can be feeding the most relevant, live, dynamic content from a multitude of sources, both your own and from others in your industry and beyond, to enhance your Website’s information and appeal. You can also provide the tools so that others can easily spread the word about your Website. This amplifies your presence greatly and is another thing you are missing out on by hanging on to your old Website

6) You have evolved, why hasn’t your Website?
Many Websites are now only vague reflections of the actual business they represent. Someone many years ago, sat down and wrote a few pages of text about their company, grabbed a few images and asked a Web designer/developer to put it online. Meanwhile, their business has grown, evolved, expanded into new areas, re-defined, consolidated and changed their customer base and service offering. None of this is reflected in the Website, because it was all too hard to sit down once again and come up with a whole new Website full of content. This is verging on negligent. People make up their mind about your business when they see your Website, yet you are telling them that you are the same business you were 8 years ago! No wonder you are not getting the right kind of leads from the Web. Websites define you and they also qualify leads. Your Website must be brought up to date to re-define your current operation and attract the customers you want now.

7) It’s not that expensive
How much has your Website cost you? Not much, if you haven’t touched it for years. The original cost would have amortized many times over and no doubt with just a few new leads it would have paid for itself years ago. However, the thought of spending a big chunk of money right now may not seem that appealing. It seems strange, but many businesses, even when they know their Website has been a big asset to them, still baulk at forking out the investment for a new one.

Perhaps it is because Websites are so virtual and their benefits seem intangible. In fact, the benefits are both intangible and highly measurable. Branding, positioning, reputation, communication… all of these more intangible functions are performed by a Website. To achieve the same things without an online presence is very expensive. Printing, print advertising, point of sale, expos and conferences all cost a great deal more in total than a Website. Their impact is even less measurable, too, yet many business continue to sit on their old Website and spend far more money on traditional media and marketing.

When it comes to tangible benefits, Websites are unbeatable. With tools like Google Analytics, every single visit is tracked, every search term used to find you is logged and over time a massive amount of rich, interpretable and informative data is collated to help you continually improve your Website and measure the effectiveness of all your marketing activity. The value a modern Website can bring you far outweighs the setup and maintenance costs

It is hardly surprising that larger companies invest millions of dollars into their online marketing, including setting up entire teams of in-house staff to manage the assets. They are not doing it for fun, they are doing it because it makes economic sense. Smaller businesses need to realise the cost benefit of online marketing and invest proportionately to get the desired returns. It won’t happen if you don’t do anything, but it will definitely happen with the right help and support from a speciality service provider and consultant, combined with a little bit of time, effort and investment on your behalf.

8) It’s not as hard as you think
Just like any project, a new website is just a process that needs to be embarked upon with a clear vision for the desired outcomes and a methodical step-by-step approach. It may seem daunting, or you may be remembering last time you did it and shuddering, but with the help of professionals who know how to manage the process, it really is quite easy, once you break down the steps and address them one by one. There are many elements to a successful modern Website and you will have to spend some time thinking about your business and defining what you do and what you want. This can be a lot of fun and is actually an awesome opportunity to take stock and think about where you are going and where you want to be.

Your Website can become your tour guide for your business into the future as it defines where you are going, what you want and how you are going to get there. With great design, content, navigation and interactivity, your multi-dimensional, multi-media presence can become a beacon, lighting the path and guiding people to your door. All you need to do is bite the bullet and do it. Just like it is easier to sit on the lounge eating chocolate than it is to go to the gym, it might be easier to keep your old Website than create a new one, but as we all know, in the long run, we are all a lot better off if we get off that lounge chair and hit the exercise mat. The long-term gain of doing something far outweighs the short-term gain of avoiding what you know is the right thing to do.

If you want to find out more about taking the big step and rebuilding your online presence strategically, professionally and wisely, contact us. We can show you, as we hope this article explains, how valuable a decision it could be.

Just Google It!

Fri, 11 Nov 2011 09:19:00 GMT

By Stefan Sojka

In some ways it is hard to believe I am writing this post, but there seems to be something very strange about human nature that we keep needing to be reminded of the most mind-numbingly obvious things.

Google. A single text input field and a button. You don't even need to click that button, just hit your "Enter/Return" key. It is probably even sitting there in your browser, so you don't even need to go to Google's Website.

Type in anything and hit "Enter/Return". Google's multi-billion dollar infrastructure and programming code developed by the world's most brilliant coders and evolved over a decade or more, will come right back at you, in an instant, with millions of results, including maps, adverts, images, videos, tweets and PDF files. In fact BEFORE you even finish typing, Google has already started guessing what you are searching for and making a bunch of suggestions to help you.

By any measure, this experience is phenomenal, bordering on miraculous. Google is so ubiquitous it has been added to the Oxford English Dictionary as an official verb in the English language.

So why do we keep asking each other so many questions? What is it in human psychology that forgets the existence of Google just when we need it most? People seem to prefer ringing up their business supplier or associate to ask questions that they surely must know Google will be able to answer far more effectively and comprehensively than the poor victim of their enquiry at the other end of the phone.

"I'm getting an error message 'XYZ876765463543', do you know what the problem is?" No I don't. Just Google it.

"Can you suggest a good solution for problem X?" Maybe I could, but maybe I am not the world authority on anything and my solution might not be ideal. Just Google it.

Even if I did know that particular error message code, or solution, I would have to spend 15 minutes explaining it to you – 15 minutes that you will be outraged if I billed you for – when you could have found the answer in less time than it took to dial my number. You could have read all about it yourself and actually learned something while you are at it – for free. Through Google's search results, you could access entire communities of solution providers, consultants and advisers who are more than happy to go to great lengths explaining the subtleties of email program version compatibility issues on their Websites to anyone who stops by.

Not only that, but the more you Google, the better you get at it. You can even Google how to be a better Googler! There are many tricks to help you zoom in on more accurate results or dig deeper to discover hidden resources that might not always come up on your very first search.

We are all guilty of not Googling when we should have. We simply keep forgetting that Google is there when we need it. We sit there agonising over some issue or other, rather than realising that someone else has not only done the agonising for us, but they have posted it all on their blog. We wonder if we should embark on a new business venture with a brilliant idea we just had, without taking the very first step of checking to see if it has already been done.

Google may be in the dictionary. It may provide instant access to an infinite array of information, but we still haven't evolved Google as a reflex action to our thought processes. It is perhaps a simple behaviour change, to pull ourselves up when we find ourselves faced with questions and problems and ask whether we will get a better answer from the humans in our immediate real-world vicinity or from the 2+billion crowd of helpful strangers online.

Make it a new affirmation, a mantra or simply write it on a post it note and stick it on your forehead – "Just Google it!" It will be the ultimate 'win-win'. You get your answer and the person you were about to call will be left in peace... : )

Think inside the square

Tue, 20 Sep 2011 23:39:00 GMT

By Stefan Sojka

In the age of ideas, creativity might be a little overrated.

I’ve been suffering a bit of performance anxiety lately, when it comes to creativity. It seems everywhere I look I am being told to unleash my creativity, ‘Think Different’, stand out in a crowd and think outside the square. It’s like I am not a complete person unless I can revolutionise an entire industry, transform society or claim responsibility for one of those emails with all the Photoshopped animals morphing into vegetables.

What makes it worse is that I am bombarded daily with thousands of examples of other people doing just that; effortlessly manifesting their creative genius and splashing it all over my screen. My own inadequacies are being hammered home with every news story about the latest viral sensation, dot-com billionaire and amazingly simple but absolutely brilliant business ideas I wish I had thought of. Then comes the slick new gadget advert, telling me that it has unlimited potential in my hands, if only I will buy it and swipe my fingers all over it.

If I zoom in, however, I find a slightly different story. Sure, there seems to be an explosion of creativity on the planet, but it is being done by millions of different people – each individual only coming up with a tiny sliver of inventiveness, if not simply recreating what already was and giving it a slight twist.

Most apparently brilliant ideas are just rehashed and adapted versions of what already was. Before FaceBook, there was MySpace and before Twitter, there was SMS. People were uploading videos of themselves doing all kinds of things, way before YouTube came along. Look at all the latest design trends in the so-called ‘creative industries’. The same design themes and styles are popping up everywhere. Musically, there hasn’t been a song like ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ in the charts for over 30 years... despite the ridiculously powerful creative tools everyone has had at their disposal recently.

Perhaps that old adage about 99% perspiration and 1% inspiration is true. Thinking outside the square is not something to be done that frequently. In fact the more time I’ve spent in creative La-La Land, the less actual work I got done and the harder life became. I have to fight that urge (and all those marketing messages) to be more creative than everyone else in the entire world and focus on getting stuff done. Who knows, that might just leave me relaxed and comfortable enough, one magical moonlit evening, to allow that 1% spark to kick in.

Small business, particularly online business, depends so much on mundane activities to prosper; technical implementation, keyword analysis and optimisation, mailing list management, spreadsheets, link building, regular maintenance and updating, proof reading, file management, administration and processing…. you couldn’t be any more ‘inside the square’ by renaming 100 photos from DSC0003456.jpg to keyword1-keyword2-keyword3.jpg, but that’s what has to be done.

As I surrender to this mechanical reality of my day-to-day life, I am actually enjoying the process of building the systems, habits and infrastructures I neglected when I believed being creative was the only way to go. Now I am not only freer to be more creative in my down time, but I am much more prepared to do something with my ideas when I get them.

I can also do what all the other ‘creatives’ have been doing for centuries; borrowing and adapting from those around them who continue to be seduced by the enticing and rather unproductive realm that exists outside my humble – but very effective – little square.

There's no business like show business

Tue, 20 Sep 2011 23:39:00 GMT

By Stefan Sojka

It’s time to add Writer/Producer/Director/Actor to the résumé.

I got my first answering machine somewhere back in the late 80s. I’ll never forget the horror of hearing my own voice on that micro-cassette tape. I re-recorded that message at least 50 times before I was happy. It was the first step on a long and slippery slope into business-oriented media production.

Before the answering machine, the only people who spoke into microphones were Shakespearean actors. There was no purpose, nor facility for the average person to lay down their voice, let alone film themselves. Humans had only barely gotten used to using phones – and not very well at that. Without the feedback loop of listening to ourselves speak, or seeing ourselves on video, we were oblivious to how ordinary we all looked and sounded.

Fast forward a few decades and media production tools are everywhere. By the age of three, most kids have been filmed more than any actor from the golden years of Hollywood, photographed more than Marilyn Monroe and laid down at least a few dozen answering machine messages and karaoke tracks. Everyone is now expected to be a multi-media artist. Every computer (every phone, just about) is a recording studio, movie production house and photo lab.

So why don’t more businesses use audio and video to communicate? Why is it so easy to film baby’s first steps, but a guided tour of your offices with a few valuable insights into the services you provide hasn’t been made yet?

We might have the recording tools, but what about the lighting, audio engineering, script-writing, voice-over style, storyboard, green screen and a dozen other elements of good production that don’t come packaged with every laptop sold? Making quality media is not that easy and putting in a great performance does not come naturally to most people born before the video age.

The only way to overcome your fear is to just have a go. Write a script, rehearse it, film it, watch it back, cringe with utter embarrassment, then do it all again, slightly better each time, until you begin to like what you see. Experiment with lighting and sound, posture and pace. Before too long, you will learn how to look and sound great.

Without fail, anyone who actually perseveres will transform into a more appealing media-friendly version of themselves. With a little experimentation on the technical side of things, using reasonable quality gear and the awesome editing software that is available these days, you can cut a perfectly respectable piece of promo in no time.

If it all gets too hard, get some training; voice, TV presenting, script writing and video editing. No one really has a good excuse anymore for not picking up all the skills necessary to become a savvy and sophisticated spokesmodel for their own business.

We all know how effective great multimedia is – we consume it every day by the Gigabyte. I know if I am researching a product or service, I will devour whatever media I can find. Your customers are doing exactly the same thing. You really would do well to get your personalized message in front of them. If you have a particular expertise or specialist knowledge, the world is hanging out to hear about it.

Every businessperson is now a media performer and producer. You just need to decide, right now, that you are going to be a really good one. Lights… camera… mouse… action!

Easier said than done

Tue, 20 Sep 2011 23:38:00 GMT

By Stefan Sojka

It takes a lot of hard work to make everything look so easy.

I had a potential client call recently, excited about a new e-commerce Website they wanted to launch. The domain name sounded great and they had plans to go viral and generate big sales.

In one short phone call, they described their idea. They had clearly been thinking about this for a long time. I filled an A4 page with notes, as they proceeded to describe their vision; a totally customised, world-class, elegant, classy, beautiful, powerful, enterprise-level entity with enough bells and whistles to form an orchestra.

It was our first phone call, so I asked: “Have you prepared a brief?” The answer? “No.” “Do you have a budget?” “Uh… no… as small as possible, please, because I am just getting started…”

There is nothing wrong with starting off small and dreaming big – most successful businesses do – but it suddenly dawned on me that I was the first person to ever put pen to paper on this project. It was a big idea without an ounce of actual work put into it. These plans were hatched during a few months of daydreaming and Web surfing, dictated over the phone to me, who was now expected to make all those daydreams come true. Easier said than done.

If you want to start any business, you usually put a lot of planning into it – why would an online business be any different? In fact, a Web-based business often requires more planning and preparation than most ‘real world’ businesses. This is due to the additional layers of complexity, combined with the inherent risks and costs of getting things wrong. There are awesome e-commerce packages available and countless other great resources. There’s a rapidly maturing industry of Web professionals too, but time is money. The more time you can put in yourself, the better.

It is understandable, I guess. Websites that generate millions (if not billions) of dollars all look so elegant and simple. Everything has been carefully engineered (after 1,000 iterations) to look fresh, clean and effortless. Add to that the use of the word “free” and “easy” in just about every online advert and one would be forgiven for getting the impression that Web enterprises were a piece of cake. Getting ‘something’ online might be easy, but getting exactly what you want could involve a few hard yards.

Everything you want to happen on your Website needs to be told to happen that way …in code. It is often just as hard making a site elegant and clean, as it is to make it look messy and clunky. When you bring e-commerce into it, things can get complicated. You are engineering an experience that ends in people handing over their credit card details. It’s like running a shop with no shopkeeper – it has to be pretty special to get someone to willingly open up their wallet and serve themselves.

Even static Websites can take a lot of work to get right. One site we recently launched took 7 people 266 hours. Fortunately, the site owner put in a huge chunk of that time, saving money and delivering a far better end result.

So, if you have a great idea for an online business, write it down, make a plan, do your research, set aside as much time and money as you possibly can, define everything in intimate detail – then seek out professional help to make it happen. That way you’ll both be on the same page and have a far greater chance of making your dream come alive.

Details, details

Tue, 20 Sep 2011 23:38:00 GMT

By Stefan Sojka

Look closely… attention deficit creates disorder.

How strange our brains are. Organic supercomputers, with 80+ billion neurons and as many as 1,000 trillion synaptic connections, capable of rendering total immersive live 3D video and surround sound, controlling an entire eco-system of organs without us hardly noticing and practicing such diverse skills as architecture, astrophysics and lead guitar – yet we always forget the milk!

It seems our meat-based computer operates rather differently than our silicone-based cousins. They can recall everything perfectly (if you tell them to) yet find it a lot harder to be nuanced and subtle, poetic or virtuosic. Everything our mind does seems approximate and even vague, depending on our focus and requires a lot of repetition to forge the desired neural pathways. There’s the old musicians’ joke; what’s the difference between a drummer and a drum machine? You only have to punch the information into the drum machine once.

So what happens when silicone and meat supercomputers meet? The brain realizes the immense power of the chip and begins pounding instructions and content in until the cows come home (on well-worn neural pathway-like cow-tracks). Highly focused people – lawyers, marketers, programmers – have filled our digital world with unfathomable amounts of information that they expect us to read and understand, while we seem much happier giggling at cute kittens or piglets wearing gumboots.

We now have a bit of a problem. I believe we are all beginning to suffer from attention deficit disorder. With a supply of information so vast that we can never hope to absorb a fraction of what we would like to, we have all become habitual skimmers, scanners and non-readers. When was the last time you actually read and understood the terms and conditions before ticking the box saying that you had? How often do you triple-check your important emails before sending them off? How many days did you spend analyzing every phone plan on offer, before confidently choosing the right one? What about software licence agreements? Insurance policies? “What, no flood cover!!??”

Closer to home, what about your Website? Did you write and review every single word, or just leave it up to your Web Designer? Whose business is it? If you can’t take the time to write and review it all, why would anyone else bother? What about the “thank you” page when someone registers? What does that say? It is a perfect opportunity to do a bit of PR and build relationships. Ditto any confirmation emails and even invoices. Which is best, a dull “Message submission received” or “Thank you for registering with our new service, we look forward to getting to know you…”?

We need to accept that it is becoming increasingly difficult for all of us to keep up. Our minds work best when they concentrate, so we have to take the time to do just that. One less YouTube video, one more re-read. My business partner, thank heavens, is one of those people who naturally double-checks everything, while I admit I am more the ‘creative’ type who tends to skim, because I am always thinking of the next big idea, but I am learning. Skimming is asking for trouble. Missing important details, making costly mistakes and missing great opportunities, creating embarrassing misunderstandings and often making more work for myself than I thought I was saving by rushing. A short cut is often a long cut.

It’s time to recognize the inherent limitations and great power of our biological computer. Take time, concentrate and get the important stuff right. It makes very good business sense.

Right of Refusal

Tue, 20 Sep 2011 23:37:00 GMT

By Stefan Sojka

The worst experiences can often deliver the best lessons.

Anyone who has been in business for more than a few nanoseconds has likely encountered at least one difficult customer. Something about certain people and money trips a short circuit in their brain, where logic, decency and empathy get replaced with desperation, anger and a sense of entitlement to the right to be not very nice. We’ve all seen it – maybe we’ve been it, on occasions. The customer is always right, right?

In most cases, that maxim works well as a guide to good customer service, but what about those nasty characters, who make it their business to become your business’ worst nightmare?

One reason why large companies pay lawyers small fortunes to write reams of disclaimers is that they are inoculating themselves from bad customers. Small businesses are not so lucky. We often risk people walking right through our front doors and creating havoc.

One of the biggest mistakes I made when I set out in small business was to presume that everyone had the same ethics and values as I do. Of course they are all open, honest, fair, easy-going and like to resolve any misunderstandings amicably. Yeah, right!

Every small business owner has a story. I’ve had my fair share. Clients who refused to pay, just because they didn’t feel like it. Clients who blamed me because they hired the wrong person to head up their project, then sat back gleefully and watched it implode just so they could unleash their anger at me, the same way they do with all their suppliers. Then there are those who invest their entire existence into something so that the tiniest issue becomes an utter tragedy, leading to midnight phone calls to sort it out after they’ve polished off two bottles of red.

I can laugh about it now, but these customers took their toll. I have associates who have faced far worse; threats of violence, screaming, humiliation and huge financial losses, even bankruptcy from unpaid accounts. Bad customers might be 1 in 100, but that one can ruin everything – at best they can sure suck the fun out of what should be a passionate and joyful pastime, operating a small business. My worst clients have taught me two things:

There is no obligation to serve every customer who comes along

“We reserve the right to refuse service” is a powerful statement. Taking on the wrong customer is simply not worth it. Even though a budding small business might feel a necessity to take on everything that comes along, the opportunity cost of picking up the wrong client is too high. Trust me, there are plenty of awesome customers out there.

Recognize the early warning signs.

With hindsight, I should have listened to the alarm bells. At the first meeting, they told me about a terrible experience they had with a previous supplier (was it the supplier’s fault?). They wanted me to help them take the world by storm, but they didn’t have any money right now. There was just something about their demeanor that I knew was dodgy, but I didn’t listen to my instincts, or my wife, when she said, “I don’t like them. They’re trouble. Don’t do it”.

I would have preferred to have never had any bad clients, but they sure cured me of my innocence and taught me that I deserve better. Life is too short. I want to spend it taking care of all my cool clients who share my values and want a fun, exciting and rewarding ride. Don’t you?

Anchored in reality

Tue, 20 Sep 2011 23:37:00 GMT

By Stefan Sojka

Don’t throw the real baby out with the virtual bathwater.

There is something about online business that tends to set us up for a huge amount of misaligned expectations. With everything just one click away, the hidden complexities of Web functionality lead people to believe that it all happens auto-magically. Some coder just copy-pasted in a few lines of recycled PHP and ‘whammo!’…instant global success story! I have had people seriously enquire about replicating eBay and/or FaceBook for $5K and honestly believing that should do the trick.

It’s kind of understandable. Most of the hard work is hidden in scripts and files and thanks to the limitless talent of a planet full of awesome GUI designers, everything looks so slick, clean and simple. The Internet is the most complex entity in the known Universe, yet its astounding success is due to its belying simplicity. If it didn’t look and feel easy to use, it would still to this day remain the bastion of computer scientists, hackers and brainiacs.

As a business owner, I still need to contend with the complexities. If my business model is almost exclusively an online model, such as selling downloadable software, I am going to need a team of coders on hand to manage the high level of sophistication involved; security, functionality, payment, membership management. Imagine; a Website as deceptively lightweight as Twitter requires 140 employees to keep it running – at a loss!

The big growth area now seems to be hybrid businesses, with one foot in the online space and one foot in the real world. Think of pizza delivery. You need a complex online system to manage and process customer orders and an efficient off-line operation to get the pizza to my door within 30 minutes. Similarly, sites like Groupon rely enormously on the online component delivering deals and getting online exposure to billions of users, but without the real-world participating businesses delivering on those great offers, Groupon’s image could turn sour real fast.

Then there are your businesses that most of us are engaged in, that operate primarily in reality but use the Web to promote products/services and attract new business. Even the simplest of “brochure-ware” sites need to be created to a high standard to reflect the quality of the business and to have some basic technical expertise applied, even if it is just for contact forms, updating content and measuring the site’s performance.

There is no avoiding the fact that I have to get the technical stuff right. But what will really make or break the operation is everything else. If I expect that the code will magically solve all my business problems and make me an overnight squillionaire, it will be at my peril. Technology alone will not cut it. Why does software keep on getting upgraded? Because it will never be perfect. It’s what we do with it and how we integrate it into our business that counts.

Here’s what I focus on; customer service, communication, quality control, administration systems and processes, accounts, building relationships with valued associates, ensuring (not assuming) that I am on the same page as my customers, diarizing everything, keeping time-sheets, keeping my desk tidy, my files organized, and my inbox manageable. You know, all the stuff that prevents my life and business from descending into a chaotic nightmare and will only get worse the more things grow.

Every business now must have a layer of technology surrounding it and you have to get the right solutions and systems in place. But as technology pervades our lives and the lives of our competitors, it’s the fundamentals of off-line business practice that will determine our ultimate success.

Defragging the world

Tue, 20 Sep 2011 23:36:00 GMT

By Stefan Sojka

The growing global movement to redistribute and reorganize resources presents unlimited untapped entrepreneurial opportunity.

I was defragging my hard drive the other day and it got me thinking – as one does, sitting there staring at a little colour-coded progress bar for three hours – perhaps it’s time to defrag our civilization. If my hard drive runs faster and more efficiently when all its files are organized into nice neat contiguous sectors and clusters, surely there is a big opportunity for improving off-line efficiency if we apply the same process.

Defragging is going on all around us already, of course; airline ticketing systems, car-pooling, off-peak hot water, express checkout lanes… but we are surrounded by so much complexity and so much inefficiency, that the opportunities are endless. It’s only a matter of identifying them, then working out clever solutions.

Many of our off-line systems have evolved over hundreds, even thousands of years, including the economy, transportation, communication and our public institutions, often with outmoded rules that have, like the inefficient way data is written onto hard drives, forced us poor humans that are lumbered with them, to endure a mountain of inconvenience and waste. Within all that inconvenience, some people make out like bandits (think of currency traders, recruitment companies or 1,000 other types of agency), but if we want long-term sustainability, we must look for ways to profit from making things better, not capitalizing on keeping them the same.

Rachael Botsman and Roo Rogers’ eye-opening book “What’s Mine is Yours – The Rise of Collaborative Consumption” documents an online movement of peer-to-peer sharing and reallocating, and identifies the new drivers and motivations that make phenomena like www.airbnb.com and www.zopa.com take off. The Web not only facilitates better resource and service allocation, but it has built-in personal reward incentives for participants in the form of social interaction, validation and relationship building.

Here are a few of my pet defragging projects I would love to see get up and running: House-swapping so everyone lives within walking distance of wherever they commute to every morning. A register for all your unused musical instruments/tools/books/stuff, so needy local kids can drop in and borrow them. Something (anything!!) that will permanently eliminate the need for filling out forms. A map/database of unused backyards that can be made available for suburban farming. A site for locally-based freelance experts who are happy to come to my place and show me how to use all my gadgets and software properly. Any niche or industry-specific version of existing Websites and businesses, where unused resources and people-power are made available to others.

If only this column was a two-pager, I would keep going!

Everywhere I turn and look, there are systems, processes and things being mismanaged, underutilized or overburdened. So, put your thinking caps on, register a domain name and start offering your brilliant solution. No one ever went broke identifying a need and fulfilling it perfectly. Build in the social media marketing component, so everyone tells everyone else about your idea and you have yourself a start-up!

Before you begin, spend some time checking out what others are doing in this area, try a few sites out that swap things, introduce opportunities, facilitate microloans, sharing, group investing and matchmaking and you’ll find a defragging movement so diverse it almost needs defragging itself!

We might be a fair way off the Utopian vision of Jacque Fresco’s Venus Project – www.thevenusproject.com – where all resource use is optimised by computers, and humans spend all day marveling at how clever we all are, but it’s nice to think we are at least heading in the right direction. If you look closely, you’ll see the path along the way is paved with fragments of gold.

Sitting Pretty?

Wed, 09 May 2012 04:31:00 GMT

By Stefan Sojka

Complacency was once a desirable state of the masses – a place where we could raise families and live nice quiet lives. Progress was someone else’s problem. The networked world has pushed us all into the rapids, sink or swim.

Before we all plugged in and turned on, most advancement in society, economics and life in general was pursued by scientists, policy-makers and big business, running their own agendas of discovery, vote-winning or competition. The rest of the world moved at a fairly steady pace; birth, childhood, school, work, marriage, procreation, retirement, death. Our ambitions were modest, our scope narrow and our acceptance of our position in the scheme of things was never an issue.

One forgets how recent the global travel phenomenon is, or the notion of having more than one vocation (or partner) in a lifetime, mature age university education or reality TV. All of these activities have opened our eyes to a broader, deeper, richer life (except, perhaps reality TV!)

I would argue, however, that there is an innate part of us that actually likes being complacent, that could spend our entire lives chasing nothing, kicking back and watching the world go by. It’s the part that yearns for a sea-change and a house-boat.

The irony is that the only way we’ll ever afford a sea-change is if we work real hard. Yet, we wage an eternal battle against that voice inside that thinks we are already there, sitting pretty. “I have a Website. I’m in Google. I use email and have a fancy smart phone – I’ve made it. In fact I’ll go on FaceBook and tell everyone how awesome I am.”

How many Websites do you see that haven’t been updated for five years? News pages with ‘news’ from 2006? Websites that are still 800 pixels wide, reflecting a screen size standard that has long been superseded? Coming soon? Under construction? Page not found? Each instance is a shining example of complacency. Isn’t the Internet supposed to be a revolution in communication and the opportunity of a lifetime to be seized by one and all? What’s going on?

I am always amazed at how many people’s entire business plan for their Website is to have accidentally managed to get on page one of Google for a couple of good keywords five years ago, or to sit on a pay-per-click campaign they haven’t reviewed since it started. See the panic set in when a few other Websites start pushing them down the list, or begin bidding against them for paid listings until they drop off the page completely. Sitting pretty is no way to survive on the Internet. Getting busy is.

Do I want to be a distant memory, locked away in the deeper recesses of the Web, or an uppermost thought in the world’s collective mind? I have to stay fresh and keep up to speed. However well I might think I am doing on-line, I can always do better. However hard I might be working to stay in front, someone else is working harder, to re-make, re-model and re-invent themselves and their market – my market.

I may not like it, but things are moving very fast. Everything is feeding back on everything else in an infinite evolutionary loop. Keep up, or risk being left out of the loop altogether.

I would love to be sitting pretty, but now is not the time. No house-boat this year. There’s a lot more kayaking to be done, thrashing about with the paddle, trying not to get overturned, mid-stream. I’ll have my sea-change… someday. It certainly won’t happen by itself.

A Long Time In Cyberspace?

Wed, 09 May 2012 04:31:00 GMT

By Stefan Sojka

The recent 15th birthday celebration of eBay has got me all misty-eyed as I ponder my own 15-year on-line odyssey, the next 15 years and how to reconcile Internet time with the growing awareness of the inevitable limitation of my own human lifespan.

How old were you when eBay started? I was in my early 30s. 1995 was the year I first went on-line. I had a few Internet friends who were in their early 20s who thought I was the ‘old guy’. Now they are mid 30s, heading on that slippery slope to the big five-0. Scary, huh? 15 more years and I’ll be a pensioner! I have nephews who are finishing high school this year, who were just out of nappies when Craigslist, MSN, Yahoo and Match.com were being born.

15 years in human terms is pretty significant; a full demographic shift, a career or two and long enough for your hair to turn grey or disappear. Yet light from our sun has only traveled as far as the closest 50 star systems in that time – out of a total of 100–400 billion in the Milky Way alone. 15 years is at once an entire generation and the blink of an eye. Long enough for Google to go from an idea for a PhD project to arguably one of the most influential organisations on the planet, with 22,000 staff and astronomical cash-flow. Short enough for me to still have to-do lists from 1995 with things still not ticked off!

For a quick flashback to 1995, try this video: http://waxy.blip.tv/file/752713/

‘Internet Power!’ There were 35–40 million people on-line in ’95 – there are now almost 2 billion. Average PC RAM storage has increased a thousand-fold. Interestingly, even though so much seems to have changed, that old video shows that the essential elements of today’s Web were all there back in 1995. It was slow and clunky, but you could watch video, download music, images, chat, email, upload and download. Most of the groundwork had been done. It just took 15 more years of coding and cabling to bring it all to life.

If we take the long view, 15 more years might go just as quickly as the last for you and me, yet the next Google might still be someone’s PhD project. Yours, perhaps?

While it seems all the great Internet ideas might have already been done, consider Chat Roulette, FourSquare, local start-up, Envato, or the many other start-ups featured in this very publication, who are expanding exponentially with no sign of slowing down. In fact the more I think about it, and how frustrating many aspects of my on-line life still are these days, the more massive opportunities seem to remain untapped or not even dreamed of. The next 15 years could make the last 15 look like the dark ages.

To those born in 1995, the Internet-enabled world is the only world they know. While we email and Google-search for Web pages, they are hard-wired to 3D surround-sound gaming environments already and will no doubt prefer to do business that way, once their parents stop feeding them.

Will we pay bills by stabbing them to death? Invoice clients by lobbing a hand-grenade at them? Purchase products by shooting them? Hire new staff by challenging them to a Kung Fu fight? It could get very weird... Or it could go in a completely new direction and catch us all by surprise the way it has done consistently for the last 15 years.

Whatever happens, I want in. I’ve got at least 15 good years left in me. Come on kids, 2025 is just around the corner – let’s get busy!

The Road Less Clicked

Wed, 09 May 2012 04:32:00 GMT

By Stefan Sojka

It’s easy to believe that the Web has transformed over the last few years into a high tech Grand Slam, where the only contenders are the mega-corporations with Internet superstars providing the pre-match entertainment. There’s still plenty of action away from centre court.

I was a huge Deep Purple fan when I was about 14. Please keep in mind hip-hop, electronica, R & B or grindcore had hardly been invented. Three choices: Rock, Pop or Country & Western. Besides that, I was trying to learn guitar and Smoke on the Water enabled me to instantly play a hit song with no lessons …or practice!

In those days, Rock superstars were about as inaccessible as today’s celebrities, not because they had a wall of agents and publicists protecting them, but simply because there were no means of communication. If you didn’t find them in the local phone book, they were out of reach. You could join the fan club, but that meant becoming the pen friend of the band’s single most obsessed and deranged follower and still never meeting the band.

This could become a column about how to follow your favourite artists online, but I only have one page, so I’ll get back to my point: I recently contacted the bass player and keyboard player from Deep Purple and they both emailed me back personally. This got me thinking…

According to www.internetworldstats.com, there are almost 2 billion people using the Internet. If you can imagine applying any ‘bell curve’, or ‘long tail’ graph to this population, you will find a massive swell around the YouTubes, Mashables and Lolcats, with thronging hordes milling around Internet superstars like Ashton Kutcher, Justin Beiber and Community Channel. These destinations are largely one-way streets, more like mass media. Huge audiences eliminate your opportunities to interact personally with the object of attraction. It’s out in the ‘burbs where the real action is.

Every has-been, wanna-be, could-be, also-ran, did-run-once-or-twice and going-to-do-it-again is out there – you and me included. We don’t get a million hits a day to our blogs and videos, but maybe 10s or 100s, even 1000s. We get a couple of emails a day/week from people who stumbled across us while Googling something else. Think about it – everyone is out there! And the ones who aren’t being bombarded with attention are more than likely quite happy to get some.

Scientists, musicians, sportspeople, business owners, charity workers, teachers, inventors, builders…. need I continue? Whatever you want in life from the Internet is available and it is extremely likely that it is not happening in a high-traffic supersite. Network science dictates that, like the deeply profound and effective work our subconscious does all night (and all day, for that matter), the less clicked regions of the Web are where we are going to find the answers, make friends, collaborate, instigate and activate.

Think of exactly what you would like to know, do and become in your best-lived life and I bet you will find the people to help you if you start looking and asking. For me, it begins with old rockers like Deep Purple’s band mates and probably ends with me inviting a whole bunch of them to guest-feature on my concept album by simply emailing me their contributions to my tracks as MP3s. For you, it might be a super-talented 3D artist who can render your invention so you can win your pitch to those venture capitalists to get it made. Or perhaps a massive niche market in a non-English-speaking country accessed via a local bi-lingual micro-blogger.

Your ultimate personalised network is out there. Get off the beaten track and start clicking.

Groundhog Day is a Good Day

Wed, 09 May 2012 04:32:00 GMT

By Stefan Sojka

As technology intertwines itself into my existence, information moves at the speed of light and everyone is either offering or expecting instant solutions, I realise the necessity of taking the long view; the download of a lifetime.

It’s not often a movie title makes its way into common use to describe a phenomenon, the way “Groundhog Day” has. I can’t imagine anyone is going to feel very “Twilight” or “Avatar” and it’s been a while since I had my last “Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels” moment.

Danny Rubin’s idea of an endlessly repeating day has landed him a gig teaching screen writing at Harvard. Such a clever and powerful concept and so well executed, wrapped as it was inside a romantic comedy. For the sake of this column, I hope you have seen the movie. You’ve had 17 years to get around to it; don’t tell me you’ve been stuck in your own Groundhog Day that long!

Ever since I bought a ticket on the digital media express, time seems to have hit the fast forward button. I simply can’t get everything done in one day that I want to. Every gadget has a 200-page instruction manual, each software program needs a 12-month college course, while my music and book collections remain un-listened to and unread. I haven’t caught up with friends and family for years. It’s hard enough keeping the email inbox from overflowing. No wonder it feels like Groundhog Day!

Even though the movie’s title entered the vernacular to describe the hellish vortex Bill Murray’s character found himself in, the true message of the film is that he got out. It took him many years, but he did it – and it all started with a decision to live life right. It has even become a self-help book – “The Magic of Groundhog Day” by Paul Hannam. The key to getting out is the decision to make every moment count and realise that small daily steps lead to big life transformations.

I have decided to turn that corner and start getting it right. From here, now that I'm seeing everything in bite-sized chunks, everything looks so much more palatable and easy to swallow. I can gradually chew my way out of the abyss.

I'm unsubscribing from any newsletters that are not in line with my plans and subscribing to more that are. I'm using good old-fashioned RSS feeds to send me relevant news and insights. I'm subscribing to on-line video tutoring sites to learn how to use all my software. I'm using as many of Google’s tools as I can (Insights, Alerts, Analytics, Webmaster Tools, Picasa, etc.), to help me get things done, filter information and manage my life. I'm bookmarking the best blogs that seek out and compile everything I am interested in, so I don’t have to. I'm spending a few minutes each day updating my Website, writing a little blog post, following up a few leads and researching powerful new productivity tools. Above all, I am eliminating all those on-line activities that, let’s face it, are doing nothing more than locking me into an eternal cycle of underachievement.

With an optimised, focused online regime, my perfect day is within reach. Maybe soon I will have more time to relax, exercise and nurture relationships. I'll throw in a bit of piano practice and before too long I’ll be rockin’ the house, just like in the movie. Tomorrow I might even wake up to a brand new day. Until then… it’s happy Groundhog Day.