Reading (online) is for Neanderthals

Words - the stuff with which dreams are written.

One of the core elements of modern society is our ability to say and write down our feelings, opinions and gripes. To create meaning where none exists, or shine a light on that which does.

Those who are good at crafting words even get paid, by the word - although it costs none of us to use the self-same words whenever we wish.

Words are also the bane of modern existence - too many words, thrown at us from all quarters, overwhelming us with details.

Few of us have time to listen and read all the words presented to us each day. Many of us deliberately go out of our way to avoid words, seeking synopses, précis, executive summaries, briefs, briefings and elevator pitches.

Having satisfied my own word bug, let's get to the point.

Government websites are full of unnecessary words, frequently using jargon, bureaucratic terms and marketing speak.

If we want our audiences to absorb what we say, we need to use fewer, shorter and common use words.

This was reinforced by a recent Alertbox (from usability guru Jakob Neilsen).

Here's the summary and link - I'll leave it up to you whether you want to encounter more of Jakob's own words.

Summary:
On the average Web page, users have time to read
at most 28% of the words during an average visit; 20% is more likely.

Full article: How Little Do Users Read?

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eGovernment has failed citizens

Deloitte has released a report suggesting that eGovernment has failed to reach it's potential due to an over-reliance on technical delivery and failures to change Public Sector business models or adequately consider the customer at the centre of transactions.

A summary of the report's key findings is at CIO magazine entitled Governments Urged to Learn From Businesses

The report concludes e-government to date has largely failed to transform government service delivery as its original architects imagined it would. During the race to go online, public managers rarely stopped to consider such basic questions as who their customers were and what they wanted, impeding their ability to service those customers effectively and efficiently.

Customer-centred transformation goes well beyond automating Industrial Era business processes, the report says: it requires first stepping back to understand the end-to-end experience from the user's perspective and using those insights to improve the experience offered to customers.

The report also makes some strong points regarding the cost and efficiency savings of pursuing a customer-centric approach.

It's a thought provoking read.

The full research report is available at Deloitte's website entitled, One Size Fits Few: Using Customer Insight to Transform Government (PDF 2.7Mb)

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Post-it online - Make a note of that

This is a fantastic online campaign for a paper-based product.

It's an example of how organisations can use the tools that are already freely available on the web to extend their brand.

http://www.youtube.com/postitnotes

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Explaining digital media to beginners

One of the most difficult tasks for anyone working in the online industry is to bring along an internal audience who are not 'digital natives'.

This often includes the people who control the purse strings in organisations, who do not quite get how these newfangled digital toys work - or that they are business tools and not toys.

Fortunately people are now beginning to realise that the internet isn't simply another hula hoop fad, but actually sparking that 'AHA!' moment remains a challenge.

A tool I find useful are the Commoncraft series of videos, which use simple concepts and physical objects to demonstrate digital concepts.

If you've not yet discovered Commoncraft, visit their Youtube channel and take a look.

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We built it - but why do they come?

April was a record month for the Agency website I manage.

We've been on an uptrend for awhile, but this month saw the traffic (measured in visits and unique visitors) jump north to an extent I did not anticipate.

It's definitely a nice surprise and gratifying to be able to claim that the website is growing faster than the average website growth rate in Australia (using Hitwise to prove this).

However how much is due to the work of my team and I, or that of the ICT team who actually code and deploy the site?

Websites are at an unusual end of the marketing and communications spectrum.

While they exist in a public (albeit virtual) space, there's realistically little passing trade who can stumble upon them.

Websites rely on people discovering about them through other means such as word of mouth, advertising, search engines and other websites.

Without these discovery approaches any individual website is virtually invisible except by lucky chance.

If your role is to manage a website, but you do not have influence over the communications going out from your organisation, you have to really consider whether you have much impact on the website's success.

Certainly the content can be kept timely and accurate, the navigation well-thought out and the design superb.

But if you built a shop in the middle of the Nullarbor Plain you'd probably get more passing trade (though they might glow a little).

So how does a website manager solve the audience drought problem?

If you listen to an SEO enthusiast, the secret is in optimising your search engine listing - Search Engine Optimisation (SEO).

This involves a collection of techniques to ensure that when someone is searching online for appropriate keywords your site is up the top of the results list.

It can also involve paid search advertising, where you place paid ads next to search terms that may lead someone to your site. The bonus is that you only pay when someone clicks on the ad, making them a very cheap option.

There is also link exchange - where you agree to link to someone else's website if they link to yours. This works well if the other site already has the audience you want to attract, otherwise it can be a waste of time.

There's online advertising - banners, pop-ups, spots, and all the different shapes and sizes available. This is less targetted, but can still deliver good results if ad sites are well selectd.

Sponsorship and social marketing are also possibilities - sponsor another website or post your web address in appropriate topic forums and blogs.

However there's a vital ingredient all of these online tools lack.

1. They're all online tools and don't reach your audience when they are not online, also
   
2. if your audience doesn't know they need to visit you, why would they click on you in search results, a banner ad or a sponsored site anyway?

So what's the best way to get an audience to your website?

Your comms
My role as Online Communications Manager means that besides looking after the website and intranet (and advising on online advertising), I also poke my nose into any Agency communications or marketing activity just to make sure that our website is front-and-centre.

To ensure that my nose doesn't take any damage in all this poking, in return I give the people preparing the material the one thing they cannot get on radio or TV, in print media, in our own printed materials or in any other form of communications outside the web - unlimited space for their messages.

• You're restricted to a 30 second spot on radio?
  No problem - tell the audience to come to the website and we can provide a home page item and 50 pages of background material.
  
• Your new printed customer publication is restricted to a 64 page fold (due to print and envelope stuffing costs)?
  No problem - let's convert the document into a 120 page website section, which includes all the detailed information you really, really need to tell customers but cannot fit in a shorter form.

When people visit a website they've made a conscious decision to do so. That makes them more engaged than if the material simply arrives in the mail or is blasted at them from the car radio. This opens the door to tracking what they really want - which pages do they/don't they visit? How long do they stay? Do they email us? Do they post about us online?

I've found this kind of tit-for-tat trade a powerful tool to both ensure that the website gets the coverage it needs to be found and help reinforce in peoples' minds that the web isn't simply another distribution tool for the same material.


Your staff
The other very powerful and influenceable way to get your site into customer minds is via your call centres and other staff. This involves communication within your organisation.

To get your staff to recommend your website you must first convince staff that your site has something of value for customers.

To do this you must first identify and provide appropriate tools and content. This includes material of high value to your customers as well as content that staff find difficult to explain over the phone, or tools that allow them to complete calls faster.

Once the tools and content are in place there needs to be an ongoing commitment to educating staff that your website is the place to go. Call centres often experience higher turnovers than other areas of an organisation and staff can only keep so many things in mind at once, so a once-off campaign won't deliver lasting results.

So how do people find your website?

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