News from the world of business repositioning

I've repositioned.

I was about communications, from leaflets to e-newsletters. I'm now about user friendly websites.

I've got web designers and programmers ready to collaborate with me. I've written a website planning template which I'm giving away to my clients. I'm working on my packages, there's going to be a basic, regular and 'bells and whistles' option. I've got clients. I've got my own website in production. Go go go.

Planning for my own website.

I now live with huge bits of mahjong paper on the floors and walls. Each is covered in plans for arranging and rearranging info on the current client's site.

These beautiful problems stay up until solved.

It all feels like how it should be.

My business has morphed...

I love creating user friendly web content. This is probably why most of my recent work has been on web content projects. It feels like the business has morphed and now it's time to officially reposition myself.

I've already changed my response to, "what do you do?". I now reply, "I help small businesses create user friendly websites."

Now you might have noticed how I started the post talking about web content and now it's about websites. It seems to me that there's really no point having user friendly content if the fonts are hard to read, the pages difficult to navigate and the general feel completely at odds with the businesses' personality.

If you're Amazon you'll have your User Experience Team making sure every element of the site from search to shopping carts is user friendly. Small businesses don't need a team of people. But, they might need someone, inside or outside the business, who knows about user experience and can drive the project of making a user friendly website.

If they don't have someone who can do this, or someone who has time to do it, I'm going to be the person they can hire.

So that's the idea so far. I'm on the hunt for web designers who share my passion for the user's experience. This way we can offer clients a package of content, design and project management.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on what businesses need, what they already know and what they want from their websites. Add a comment or for in-depth chats I'm always free for a cup of tea, tasha.golding@gmail.com.

Checking a website is user friendly is really important

(This was an email to a client but it wanted to become a blog post too...)

We'd like to think, well I would, that there'd be some rules that we could follow to guarantee everyone can get around our websites easily. There are some rules, but not enough. For the bits that we can't follow rules for we have to find another solution: testing.

Here's an article about user testing for you to take a look at. As a small business working for small businesses I'm very aware that we need to be mindful of resources. But convincing people to do something fun, like test a website and share their opinions, may not be that hard.

You could ask your current/past clients to help you. If you said "we're really keen to get some intelligent, savvy people to share their opinions about our new website and we thought we'd ask you" they may say "we'd love to". Of course they'd have to pick people from their teams who didn't work with you last time, people who know enough to behave like a potential client but don't already know what you do.

An ode to user experience

In the world of website design there is this lovely idea of 'user experience'. I've become quite interested in user experience. Personally, I've always been very definitive about sites I love to use and those I don't. My opinion on how a company relates to me has been heavily influenced by the way they let me experience them.

As I've worked with clients over the past few months I've felt like this idea of the user's experience is the thing that I've been driving at, I now have a handy phrase for it. I love the way the web has driven us to discover these ideas and make them part of our everyday experience.

There's an interesting article here from a company that help businesses create amazing user experiences on their websites - they've helped some of my favourite sites so I think they know their stuff. Flow Interactive - What makes us happy what makes us stupid

What do you want to use your phone for?

Still on the subject of the E27 Unconference, I was at a session on Mobile Platforms. Aside from lots of techie conundrums, the discussion centered around how people actually use their mobiles, what they mean to people and the iphone.

Since then I've been thinking about what I want to use my phone for. Here's my list so far:

• Phone calls, taking pictures and listening to my music. I'd want to upload pics straight to Picasa too.
  
• SMS - With option to SMS ideas I have and things people tell me into my email inbox.
• Check my Google account for calender and contact details. I'd want to be able to upload info back to these places too.
  
• Request recommendations for near-by restaurants, hotels and bars from reviewers who like stuff I like - I'd want a short description, with the option to SMS the place to get directions and make bookings. Oh and I'd like it to be able to translate the message into the local language!
  
• Street maps specific to my location with nearest public transport info included.
• Location of nearest public toilet, decent coffee, post office, ATM for my bank and perhaps news on whether any of my mates are near-by.

With the right handset I can probably do a lot of what's above already. But the tricky bit for everyone seems to be about how businesses will communicate with me. I was wondering about a website that acted like your settings. So you go in and tell it what services and info you want to receive. For example, do you want Starbucks to tell you where their nearest shop is when you click their icon on your mobile home screen? You could even select the types of ads you want to see. So if you have to show me an ad whilst my map loads, I'm seeing info I'm interested in.

What do you think? What do we want to really use our phones for? How do we want businesses to talk to us?

I'm plotting interface designs now...

It all starts with a great idea

Yesterday I was surrounded by geeks. At the E27 Unconference for web start-ups I got over excited about the amount of good ideas and clever people there are in my community. Here's a list of the most interesting groups I saw.

Homespace- Beautifully easy to use website for finding homes. Map based, it also includes a price comparison so you can see how much people have been paying for similar property.

ZopIM - Chat with the people who are currently visiting your website. There's no need to log into Messenger, it's integrated into your site. The businesses' end also collates data about your visitors.

GoThere - Another beautifully functional website. Type in any two places to get maps, directions and public transport info (including cost and journey duration).

Facts and Feelings

Is communication just about facts, figures and information? At a recent press conference I listened to people launching a really lovely product. The ideas behind the product were fascinating, but they were being devalued by the way they were delivered. The organisers thought the event was about telling us what to think. They forgot that if they themselves were the essence and spirit of what was being launched we’d get it without being told.

The product being launched was a major art exhibition with the title ‘Wonder’. Art and wonder are pretty ephemeral; they are experiential. We weren’t given experiential, we were told about ephemeral in a pretty conventional, dull and predictable way. A panel behind long tables communicated how credible the experts were. An intro video with everyday people caught on camera in candid moments talking about ‘Wonder’ communicated that the exhibition would reach out to the community. Then came the urgent and vital information about why, when and how.

When the distant experts, the curators of the event, started talking we got a glimpse of the interesting insights and ideas that were at the heart of the exhibition. Behind the table, muffled by poor acoustics and an awkward atmosphere of urgent uncertainty, their message about what it is to feel wonder - to be awed - was half lost. What they did say felt contrary to the reserved, political, practical focus and the lack of creativity.

I wondered what it would have been like if it was all a bit more real; if we’d been able to hear about and connect with the spirit of the exhibition. The feelings that reside in the minds, hearts and occasionally the words of the people who are making it happen.

The thing that’s really difficult for me is that these guys have a great product. I went to their last exhibition. I was moved, challenged, confronted, comforted, inspired and awed because art lets us experience our own humanity. But this energy, this exceptional and unique aspect of the product, was not given a confident airing. It was all facts and figures and not enough feelings.