Recently CBG Systems (formerly Colbeck and Gunton),  ATDC (The alcohol, tobacco, and other drugs council), High Performance (including AIM Tasmania), and the newly formed TasBiotech (a division of the University of Tasmania) have all been through our proprietary planning sessions.

A case study of the plans developed for TasBiotech can be found here – http://www.futuremedium.com.au/solutions/view_Social_Network_Plans_15135204/

Larger strategic work has also been undertaken for RACT in the format of a 2012 vision for member (user) engagement.

Future Medium have also developed a number of novel approaches to resolving Agent publicity in the Real Estate segment and have been working with clients to flesh out technical and creative proof of concepts.

The project represents an excellent demonstration of our ability to create a community hub using the open source WordPress technology.  A number of commercial plugins are being utilised to manage secure content for members and shopping cart functionality.

The user engagement strategy is case studied here in our site – http://www.futuremedium.com.au/solutions/view_User-centric_design_15135195/

“I can get someone to make me a website for $120 a month”, says the builder working on my kitchen.  “Good for you”, I thought.

Isn’t it great that the web industry has progressed to the point where traditional tradesmen are now thinking about the web as an important part of business?  More to the point, accepting ‘pay for use’ licensing rather than ‘build from scratch’.

What’s interesting is the level of sophistication you now get from pre-packaged web deals all over the place.

Every man and his dog, or should I say every willing designer working from home, can now offer pretty comprehensive solutions almost turn-key.  Others out in web-land are ready to take care of your hosting, your content management structure, support, and even customer relations issues.  Wow!

So what is this doing to the web market?  As richer core functionality becomes expected rather than a bonus it’s logical that the baseline has changed for web development.  What once was written from scratch is becoming modular and a commodity.  As we’ve adopted the internet, and value it so much, we expect a lot more from it.

Package sites have put real pressure on the price point of custom solutions.  Custom work is now vastly more expensive and the customer benefits aren’t as clear anymore.

So is a package template website going to work for you?  Well maybe.  Think of it this way – is your business unique?  Do you believe you have a unique offering that has to be communicated in a unique way?  If not, then a package is just fine for you.

If you don’t want to be forced into a mould then you’re going to have to think smarter.  I know most marketing people worth their salt will be standing up right now and saying that they want their client to have a unique offering.

So it stands to reason that if you’re really serious about the web then you need a custom built site.  Right?  Well maybe not.  Find a supplier that has a strong base of technology at an affordable price yet also focuses on identifying your ‘real’ needs and then customising to suit.  That’s a smart compromise.

I fear that as the web industry matures all prospective website owners will fall into the trap of judging solutions on features.

It’s not unusual for this to happen.  Look at Plasma and LCD TV’s.  A few years ago you’d be stoked just to have one – but now, how many HDMI inputs, what res., what refresh rate, contrast ratio…. etc. etc.

The market for those goods has matured and hence consumers think they need to know all this techno-stuff.  They’re buying on features under the guise that this equals quality.  That’s just not so in my opinion.

It’s also like the crazy remodelling of cheap sound systems back in the late 90’s.  Gosh!  They started making them look like something out of Aliens, sticking lights and blinking garbage all over them, and to top it off ghastly numbers to tell you how POWERFUL they were.  None of this made them sound any better.  The more discerning customers turned away and went back to proper component HIFI with as few knobs and whistles as possible.  And why?  Because those items did exactly what they wanted and exceptionally well.  Nothing more, nothing less.

So when it comes to effective web design, less ‘is’ more. But there’s a disclaimer around that.  Doing less has to be done better (which is harder) and that means proper strategic architecture to suit users and not the confines of some package.  Buying for features at the back end doesn’t equal a better user experience even if it costs less.

So you’re bound to get a great package website now if you look carefully.  My advice is to focus on what your users need.  This will pay dividends early.

I’m reminded of a dilemma that one of our clients faces now.  A six figure investment in a custom solution that plays to the hearts and minds of his target audience as effectively as it can.  Or, one quarter of the cost for an out-of-the-box solution that ticks all the features he wants.

I ask, if it doesn’t look the part and isn’t tuned to users specific issues, how much damage will it do?  What long-term value should you place on the reputation of your brand?

Great!  But who uses it, and how?

The number of times we come across poorly functioning websites that don’t meet user expectations is far too common.  There are some real shockers but some can get away with it.

If you’re selling a Widget online and it’s red or yellow, and does ‘stuff’, then you promote how ‘cool’ those colours are, explain ‘stuff’ and ask for the cash.  Easy right?

But what if you sell a ‘Widget’ and then an unrelated ‘Service’ alongside it?  Well your delivery is unclear.  Your users wonder what you’re really on about.  Do they trust you?  Will the Widget sell as much as it would in a dedicated site?  Probably not.

And, what if you have 10 different Services from different business units and each of these has a range of Widgets they also need to push?  How effective will that be?  There’s an overarching issue in having lots of users with contrasting needs and behaviour patterns.

We end up in a game of ‘steering chances’ as we’re not solving one problem, but many.

We can only aim to serve a balance and try and appeal to the triggers of each group of users.  We have to find a balance otherwise we’d be building 10-20 sites instead of one; creating a whole host of other problems.

So how do we try to do this?  We have to profile users, match products and services to their needs, understand how they want to interact and what they expect.  On top of this we need to understand if we can stick it all in one bucket without overly compromising on the delivery.  If we mess this up the whole site will be poor at delivering everything.  Oops!

Consider a commercial organisation with a range of business units.  These are sometimes well marketed and understood by the user even before they press enter.  So maybe consumers know your offering – in most cases, they have some brand association, some recognition in the back of their mind – if it’s a great brand it will be front of mind… Organisations that are well known offline have a much easier time dealing with their users online.

But sometimes a brand is not well known.

Take a large government department as an example.  They are often delivering multiple business units that sit together for ministerial reasons rather than consumer reasons.  What does a user expect of those sites?  They provide so many different services and products.  Consumers just won’t get it.

Government department sites commonly aren’t marketed clearly to the consumer in offline media either.  The user expectation isn’t set.  When the user lands on these sites they need the story to be told, there’s a message to deliver, they will be faced with so many different business units and initiatives all fighting for attention, and worse, there’s usually a bunch of policy and stale information that the government is obliged to push to them.  How on Earth can sites like that be effective?

The only way to get a result with a large and broadly complex site is to architect it from the ground up to meet user needs and behaviour, not those of the organisation or how it functions.

These large and cumbersome sites have often become so hard to manage and so distant from user needs that the only path forward to is take a lot of steps backward first.

Start with usability analysis, scope business needs and user needs, profile the users, develop a plan to service their needs and have a rationale in place to test EVERYTHING against it all the time.  When you’ve built it – go and test it – and then get ready to go back through it all over again whenever something changes in your organisation.

Are your customer relationships a critical success factor in your business?  If so, read on… 

Customers are evolving and their comfort with the web is changing daily.  Right now they expect added value functionality online, to be empowered to publish content, and to communicate with other like-minded individuals through online communities.  They demand personalisation and networking which in turn unleashes the amazing power of ‘collective intelligence’ whereby groups of users share, learn, and improve their capabilities together.

The web should be an essential part of your ‘customer engagement’ strategy.  Properly embraced, it will allow you to create a fantastic brand experience for all customer segments.  It will become an integral role in operations and strategy, in particular: customer service, marketing, market research and product development. 

Where are things going in the next few years?

Let’s look at the history of the web so far:

• ‘Web 1.0’ is now understood much as The Document Web. 
• ‘Web 2.0’ was agreed to have brought us richer functionality and user driven control of their experiences. 
• ‘Web 3.0’ is the DATA web – and it’s time to mash it up!

Web 3.0 carries the vision that all data will be consumable and open for use across numerous applications in mash-up’s.  The term ‘mash-up’ describes the merger of various data sources and web functionality scavenged from various sites to create ultimately powerful tools and useful experiences for users. 

Consider that you have a range of data available to you right now: financial transactions, investments, personal calendar, travel details, etc.  Plus you have access to various news media such as current events and natural disasters, weather, ASX announcements and currency market shifts.  Your health records are with your doctor but what if you could source them electronically.  You may even be on Facebook and have access to information about your friend’s … the list goes on. 

Imagine all these data sources being open and able to be reused in multiple ways in your own and other applications; mashed-up.

Imagine pivoting around a point of data such as a day or a bank transaction and observing what you were doing on that day… or where you might have been when you wrote a cheque.  You might see photographs of that location – they might be tagged to say who’s in them… or you might want to use Google Street View to have a look around…  You might see info about the companies nearby, their logos, and summaries of their services or their contact details.  Maybe this is useful in disputing a fraudulent transaction.

Imagine contributing your health data to doctors so they could track the emergence and movement of viruses and compare these to weather patterns, air travel patterns and demographics of the population.

The future of the web holds many possibilities and is very exciting.  In a Web 3.0 world your company’s services and data streams need to be available for customer consumption.

The challenge now of putting data on the web is that it needs to be available for all kinds of things – to all kinds of applications…  Users will come to expect this of you and your competitors.

Have you worked out how to improve customer stickiness and customer acquisition through the web?