Posted by Krish Sreedharan in Technology on July 29th, 2008
Some time ago, while I was chatting around with the rest of the group, a comment from one of them set me thinking — How would I want to experience Information Technology ? Should it be loud ? Should it be subtle ? Should I know that is really happening back there when I click a button ?
Just like in my previous post about the Blind Men and the Elephant, different people have different ideas on how Technology should work for them. Some of them would like to wear it on their sleeve, where it would be visible to all, while others could not be really bothered about IT as long as their their work got done and their targets were achieved.
The world is a mixed bag where different people would like to do things differently — in their own way. Some of the users of technology, who consider themselves tech saavy, would probably want Technology to play a “visible” role in their day to day life. However, there are others to whom technology is more a support service and such people, would normally want technology to play an active role, but from the background.
For most part, such people get turned off by technology. They consider technology as a force that could possibly curtail their natural tendencies. Intelligent use of technology, on the other hand, would make such people feel at home with adopting new technologies, for most part without even noticing technology playing a part in their lives.
At Comwerks, we believe that technology is one of the key drivers in what we do, but we would also like to believe that Information Technology = Invisible Technology: where technology delivers results from the background.
Krish Sreedharan |
Technology |
Posted by Gul Khan in Measurement, News on July 23rd, 2008
Finally, I’m getting around to posting the pictures from my Creating Usable Website training workshops which I conduct at PR Academy.
Starting first with my workshop on the 15th of July:
Ranjini, Raihidaya, Amanda, Melanie, that’s me, Chiew Leng, Margaret, Ion, June, Ismiati and Joann.
Here’s the picture for the June 25th Workshop:
Teow Gay, Christina, Anna, Wendy, Vanesa, Shumin, Seck Leng, Wee Chyn, Shamsiah, Kelvin, Kian Pin, Peggy.
Thank you all for your participation in the workshop. I enjoyed both sessions thoroughly and I hope I get a chance to catch up with each and every one of you in the near future 
Gul Khan |
Measurement, News |
Posted by Gul Khan in Measurement on July 7th, 2008
While I was writing my previous post about the PetrolWatch Customer Satisfaction Survey results, the text editor kept prompting me that the spelling was “web site” and not “website”. My first reaction was to get on to Google Trends or Googlefight and find out how the rest of the world was spelling it. Here’s how it works:
STEP 1: Go to www.google.com/trends and key in “website, web site” into the text box
Step 2: And the winner is…
If you look at the two lines above the time line, you will see more people search for “website” compared with “web site”. End of argument. I’ll just add “website” to my dictionary. On occasion, we do use this technique in our website development work, especially in areas where we need fast customer insights about which is the most appropriate label to use for navigation, page titles, links and so on.
Why is this important?
Well, if you care about your search engine rankings, you do want to make sure that your keywords match the most popular keywords that your customers are using. For those of you who have had experience designing and managing websites, you will know that finding the right label and wording can sometimes be a nightmare task:
- “Should we call it “cheap flights” or “low fares”? (This example was used by Gerry McGovern in one of his web seminars which I had the pleasure of attending)
- “Point and shoot camera” or “point and click camera”?
In the past, we were in the dark about what is the correct label to use. Now we have free tools at our disposal that give us instant insights.
Read the rest of this entry »
Gul Khan |
Measurement |
Posted by Keith Tan in Marketing, Web 2.0 on July 4th, 2008
Here’s a different (and pretty long!) spin on the Long Tail theory from Anita Elberse, associate professor at the Harvard Business School. Armed with online sales stats from Nielsen VideoScan and Nielsen SoundScan, her article seems to persuade marketers not to take their eyes off the big hits, which is still highly profitable and very much in demand. Interestingly, Chris Anderson, who coined this theory back in 2006, replies with his thoughts as well.
Read article
Keith Tan |
Marketing, Web 2.0 |
Posted by Keith Tan in Marketing, Web 2.0 on July 1st, 2008
In between booth manning duties, I managed to squeeze in some time to attend some of the conference sessions. The ones I went to covered topics such as widgets and mobile marketing, and the new darling, social media. The one thing which resonated throughout most of the sessions were these 2 words: Relevancy & Social.
“Hangin’ with da big boyz”
Relevancy refers to how information will be presented to you, the user. It means having a website “customizing†or “personalizing†your surfing experience, only displaying information which you will find useful/interesting.
Social refers to the connections and interactions which you and your friends share online. This could be done via email, instant messaging, forums, groups, and social networking sites, to name a few.
Interestingly, in his keynote speech, Brad Garlinghouse, SVP, Yahoo! demoed some screens on how the future My Yahoo page could look like. It would sort your mail and display it accordingly by your social group, for e.g. family, friends, co-workers, etc. It would do this based on “connections†which you may have specified on your list of contacts or perhaps by studying your previous communication behavioral patterns.
Your network of friends belongs to you, not Facebook.
Currently, users that migrate from one social networking site to another have to re-build their network of friends from scratch. This process can be extremely tedious, especially when history has shown, users’ loyalty to social networks isn’t exactly built on solid ground.
In the future, it is envisioned that websites will be connected to a single source to access your social network. By doing so, this would not only make your network portable, it would enable you to enjoy richer experiences across multiple sites. For e.g. On your iTunes page, you would be able to see which new track that Julian, your jazz cat pal, bought yesterday. Julian and you could be connected in Facebook as sharing similar musical tastes. Hence, by only showing you relevant information, iTunes would stand a higher chance of you downloading the jazz track as opposed to just showing you the latest hip hop tracks.
Cha-Ching!
This presents a great opportunity for marketers to provide even more targeted messaging to consumers. Beyond just behavioral targeting, now there is this vital layer of “relevancy†& “social†which could provide just that extra motivation to make that sales purchase.
Rise of Social Media
Most of the speakers couldn’t reiterate enough the importance and relevance of social media today. When used properly and skillfully, it provides an extremely cost effective method of marketing. Classic examples sited were the Diet Coke/Mentos video contest that got massive viewership eyeballs.
Leap of Faith
When dealing with social media campaigns, marketers also advise agencies to encourage their clients to take a leap of faith to do radical or unique ideas. It may bomb or score. But if it scores, it usually scores big time. (Think GoDaddy’s Superbowl ad campaign). What is most important is that these campaigns still continue to reinforce your branding and image to consumers in a positive manner.
Don’t get stuck in between
In the session on “Widgets in the Media Mixâ€, Derek Callow, Marketing Manager, Google SEA, sketched a simple bell curve to illustrate the point that on the web, both extremely bad or good ideas get viral. The in-between usually just fizzles and sometimes doesn’t even float. A good and bad viral campaign would reap you many times more in terms of publicity and awareness. But of course, not all publicity is good publicity.
image source: http://www.davidmeermanscott.com
Power to the People
Some companies have embraced users’ input in shaping their products and services. Several case studies were mentioned on how users were involved in determining what features should be built for a new mobile device. Or how users were polled to decide how a movie should end.
In short, we will continue to see more instances of how companies will embrace social media to provide their customers with relevant and greater experiences. This will in turn provide new opportunities for them to build, create and maintain long-lasting relationships.
Keith Tan |
Marketing, Web 2.0 |
