Strategy. You hear about it all the time. One must have a strategy/work on a strategy/follow a strategy and so on. Business types like to say “strategy” a lot as it sounds big, complicated and important.

And it is important, but there is no need for it to be complicated. Quite the opposite.

At the heart of it all “strategy” is just about having a plan for the thing you are working on. Or as Wikipedia puts it “a strategy is a plan of action designed to achieve a particular goal”.

Getting the Strategy Right

If there is ever a time to look at what’s important in a project, it is early on, in the strategy stage.

Let us assume that your client doesn’t have a strategy for their next web project.

Before you build, design, code or write anything you need to think about what the project needs to achieve.

This is in part because strategy can mean almost anything, depending on the needs of the client, the size of their audience and ultimately the goal of your client. And it will mean different things at different times during the life-span of a project: you may have one strategy to launch with, another for the ongoing management of the site and so on.

Thinking the project through, seeing how one thing leads to another on the way to the project’s goal is a very healthy thing to do.

The one thing all strategies must have in common is that they tie in with your client’s overall business goals. (You’d be surprised how often clients themselves forget this simple fact!) If it doesn’t, the client will never be happy with your work even if they were the ones who ignored the business goal connection.

That’s why you should be thrilled when a client asks for your help in developing their web project strategy (or asks you to help them find someone who can create it for them).

It is an excellent opportunity to make sure that you, or the people you choose to collaborate with, create a to-the-point strategy that helps the client reach their goals and in the process makes you look like an absolute star who deserves lots more commissions.

Strategy as a Sales Tool

Before we continue, you may wonder if you really need to bother with all this strategy stuff. The answer is yes you do, especially if the client asks you to help craft it.

A strategy, even one that is just a paragraph in length, shows that you have understood the task at hand. It shows the direction you will take the project, and it is an effective way to put your client’s mind at ease.

How to Do It

A good web strategy should always cover the following five points.

1. What you are doing
2. Who you are doing it for
3. Why you are doing it
4. How you are doing it
5. When you are doing it

Here is an example:

Your client, the Think Vitamin Dairy, tell you they want to sell more of their orange flavored Think Vitamin Milk.

To make sure you have enough information to cover the five points above you ask the client loads of questions, including:

• Who currently buys the Think Vitamin Milk?
• Why and how do they buy it?
• When do they drink it?
• What do they think of it?
• Have the sales changed over the past year, if so how and why?

The client tells you that Think Vitamin Milk is mostly gulped by web people who like the energy kick they get from it. They buy it online in crates of twelve bottles and according to their tweets some of them have started drinking it when they go hiking in the Cotswolds on the weekends.

After a spot of thinking you come up with a plan, a strategy, which suggests the client invest their budget in creating a smartphone app to reach a new audience instead of buying advertising. You flesh it out with a few pointers:

• Think Vitamin Dairy should build an iPhone app aimed at ramblers to help them plan hiking trips – The Think Vitamin “Think Hiking” app. (A new audience, with existing customers mixed in is golden.)
• The app lets users plan hikes and share them with their friends to get everyone ready for the excursion (virality – always a good thing!).
• The app would show where along the trail the energizing Milk can be bought and plot the local independent dairy farms who provide the cow juice. (If you like hiking you probably care about food sustainability too.)
• The app is supported by a small teaser and signup site that, after the app has launched, displays tweets from hikers and shows where the most popular trails are.

Instead of throwing money at advertising, the client’s milk brand would be known for a very useful app that is associated with good friends, good times and days off in the country.

There it is, a good simple and easy to understand strategy tied to the goal of selling more orange flavored milk.

In Conclusion

Strategy is important, but it’s not rocket science. It is really just about having a plan.

The more you work with strategy, the more you learn and the more you will want to learn. You will find new ways of approaching old problems, and it can be just as addictive as the work you are already passionate about.

This post was all about the basics, but to be honest that’s where many clients and us web creators go wrong. Get the basics right, and keep your eyes open and you will become an even better web professional in no time.

Best of all, the more comfortable you get with the strategy portion of your work the better you will be at understanding the client’s needs and the more valuable you will become to them.

Editors Note: In his first article for Think Vitamin Matthew Smith, Principal Designer at Squared Eye Design, discusses the benefits, risks and infrastructure required to work effectively with fellow freelancers.

Working Alone

Working alone can be great. There’s a pleasant autonomy of knowing exactly what you’re  doing and when. There are few unknowns. You work directly with the client and don’t have to worry about managing others.

In the past I’ve done everything from branding, strategy, IA, design, front-end dev, and CMS integration on a single project. These days, if I’m working alone, its usually providing PSDs to a client who has an internal dev team or something similar. I love it!

These projects are less complex than my collaborative projects, so life is simple. But if I limit myself to the size  and quantity of projects that I’m able to complete all on my own, my business will stagnate. If I am unwilling to pursue entrepreneurship and management, I will forever remain a technician.

Be a Jumbo Shrimp

Growth isn’t for everyone, but for me it’s a matter of defining my future. I want to be a Jumbo Shrimp — a big presence in a niche area. I don’t want to simply design interfaces for the next 30 years; I want to change the world – even if only in a small way. Growth can magnify my ability to directly affect positive change.

Working Together

By partnering with other professionals, I can grow my business and take on projects that can’t be harnessed by one man. A huge beer one man can tackle, but a huge project is another undertaking all together. Forming partnerships with others can be overwhelming at first.

But with the right team and a poorly paid talented project manager, you can take on more challenging, higher paying projects. Bolster the success of your partnership (and avoid massive cardiac arrest) by setting the stage with a healthy understanding of the risks and the infrastructure required to harvest the bountiful benefits.

Risks

As with any great opportunity, you’ll find an inherent level of risk involved. The normal stuff applies — what if someone gets sick, eaten by a whale, or discovers that working for you is a level of ass pain they never before imagined? What happens if you have a different work ethic than others on your team?

No one to manage the project

A project lacking management can quickly descend into the hells of scope creep. When that happens, you may be forced to nominate someone Survivor-style to run point. Managing might not be their strong suit or even what they want to be paid for. This can lead to real frustration within your team, and if combined with alcohol and firearms – there will be blood.

Your team is flat

It doesn’t matter if its soda, tires, or teams – flat is bad. If you don’t know who’s in charge of your project, it’s destined for confusion. If you prefer stress and direct path to insanity, then I highly recommend no leadership whatsoever.

No consequences or incentives

If you don’t have a clear set of consequences and incentives to encourage your team to stay unified and on target, you’re likely to end up with a wayward child on your hands (I want those sweeties!). Recovering from team disunity or distraction costs valuable energy, which distracts from the project goals.

Infrastructure

There are a few areas that aren’t quite risks, if they are well defined and everyone has a clear understanding of them, they are as follows:

Choose a project manager

Once you’ve chosen the right PM, does everyone agree that he has the authority to tell them what to do, and when? Making sure that everyone is ready to receive instruction from your PM and that everyone trusts the PM is critical to keeping the project’s flow. If my PM told me to stop enjoying beer, I’d fire him, so your PM’s authority should have some boundaries.

Give your team a hierarchy

A flat system will cause confusion and delay. It’s important that there is clear delineation of responsibility and authority. Sometimes this may coincide with who brought the project to the table, or it may be defined by who is the better leader.

Whatever the case, make sure you have a clear chain of command. Let your PM define the workflow of your partnership. Ideally everyone has moments of overlap and involvement in every stage of the project so that you aren’t simply running a relay race.

Choose incentives or consequences to govern your team

Finding the right incentives and consequences helps you cover your risks properly to ensure that everyone has the right level of stake in the project and their reputation. Done well, this is a document that everyone can sign on to, so that if the project goes south because of someone’s error, it’s their agreement with the document that hands out the punishment – not one of your team.

For our partnership, one incentive/consequence is very simply the ability to be re-hired on the next project, or fired from the current one dependent on whether you’re meeting the project expectations or not. We also spank, though for some in our coworking office that’s an incentive, so we use it sparingly.

Benefits

You can now safely move about the cabin, you have a project manager on duty

A PM’s responsibilities and authority can give you room to breathe. It will also allow you to do what you do best — whether that’s IA, design, tweeting, or development. It also bears mentioning that your clients will experience a higher level of care and organization. And if you depend on word of mouth like we do, this is one of your greatest assets.

Organizational clarity leads to total work nirvana

Okay, that’s overkill, but you and your clients will notice the efficiency that grows from a clear structure of authority. It allows your team to operate as a congruent force with a head, rather than an unruly band of independent freelancers.

Great incentives and real consequences keep the house clean

I hate conflict as much as anybody. If you put together a solid document with both incentives and consequences, you’ll find your projects and your team keep clean and free from unmanageable conflict. Everyone on your team wants to succeed, make money, and have a big party when every project’s done – this will make it so much easier.

In Summary

Bringing a team of freelancer’s together to provide a solid end product to a great client is profitable adventure and a joy. The Blue Sky Resumes project was the most ambitious foray into collaboration for our team.

The experience had a high learning curve, some of which I’m hoping to spare you from. If you move in this direction, you’ll see failures along the way; it’ll be as tough as it is fun. But the work you’ll get to engage in, and the great people you get to work with are worth every moment.

Resources

To Read

• Army of Davids (Good business oriented abstract read)
• Noded (I’ve not read this, but ought to)

Other Collaborative Freelancers

• Sidebar Creative
• Analog

Coworking Is a Good Place to Start

• Coworking on Wikipedia
• Coworking Site

Does design of a sales page matter? Traditional reasoning says that the product always remains the same no matter how you dress it up on the sales page. So, one should focus on making the product more awesome rather than investing time to make it look awesome. Well, the reasoning sounds plausible in theory but the data says it is not well grounded.

Case Study

This post is about a recent A/B split testing case study where a redesign of a sales page resulted in 20% increase in sales. AquaSoft is a leading software company in the area of digital photo presentation. They have a complete portfolio of (desktop) software products related to photos – slideshow creation, desktop publishing, photo books, etc. Their software products can be downloaded for a free limited duration trial, following which a customer pays for the full version.

AquaSoft undertake more than 10 A/B tests per month using Visual Website Optimizer, an online A/B testing tool. They recently finished a test in which they tested their existing sales page against a new redesigned sales page. Note that this page wasn’t the free trial download page; rather it was a sales page where customers visit to actually buy the software.

Here is the control version of the page (click to view full version):

And here is the (final) redesigned version (click to view full version):

What’s different?

The pages are in German language, so let me point out a few key differences between the new and the control version:

• The new design gave a modern, fresher vibe on the page and had better contrast.
• The old design had two calls to action per product – one for instant download and other for purchasing software in a shrink wrapped box. The new design reduced the choice to primarily one option (instant download) and the call-to-action was also transformed into a snazzy button (as compared to a simple text link in old design).
• The new design was optimized to build trust in the customer. The sidebar in new design contained different kinds of guarantees:
  • Free lifetime updates and bonus software
  • Lifetime guarantee on the software
  • 24h/365 days support
  • Free customer login id
• The new design also incorporated a seal made out of their logo to provide authenticity to the guarantees

A key point to note is that AquaSoft did not change their product features neither their guarantee policy. The details were simply not present (or highlighted) on the old sales page.

Two phase testing

AquaSoft carried the A/B test in two phases. In the first phase, old design was pitted against a variation of the new design. Improvements started with about 50% but settled on about 35-40% after some time. They were very happy with the result but craved for more details because in this test they were measuring clicks into the shopping cart, not the actual sales.

So they measured the sales which showed an increase of 17.7% of actual sales. It also showed that the bounce rate within the shopping cart was somewhat higher in the winning combination but the overall increased click rate outtakes the bounce rate.

In the second phase, AquaSoft refined the winning variation by doing minor changes such as reducing whitespace and placing software names above their respective box shots. This resulted in a further increase of 10% in clicks on shopping cart button and the overall increase in sales settled to about 20% (up from 17.7% in previous phase). All results were statistically significant, so the 20% increase in sales is real.

What can we learn form this?

This case study has several lessons for all of us who are serious about optimizing online sales:

1. Design matters! If your sales page has a boring design, expect boring sales.
2. A/B split testing is totally worth it! AquaSoft invests time, money and effort into doing as many as 10 split tests per month. And that is because they understand what impact a successful A/B test can have on the bottom-line.
3. Some customers do abandon the checkout process! The next logical step for AquaSoft would be to optimize their checkout process but their payment system is integrated into a third party so it won’t be easy to set up a split test there.
4. A/B testing is best done in phases. Small improvements in multiple phases ultimately add up to give a significant boost to conversions.

AquaSoft summarized the key take-home lesson from this A/B test:

“Don’t think your website is good as it is. Always test, always improve. It’s a slow process but worth doing. Our concrete test results show that a clear modern design improves sales. Especially in the sales process, trust building is very important.”

For AquaSoft, A/B testing required one-time investment of design resources but the 20% increase in sales will hopefully continue for months to come. If AquaSoft can manage to get such a fantastic ROI, so can you. Think about it – is your sales page optimally designed? What elements can you test on it?

Beta Invite

To try out Visual Website Optimizer enter invite code ‘carsonified‘ when signing up.

Editors note: In this edition of “5 Questions for” Kevin Hale, co-founder of Wufoo, talks about how Wufoo came into being, their approach to new features, why they moved away from the Valley and how to bring personality into your web app. Kevin will be presenting a intimate workshop, “How to Change Free Users Into Paying Customers“, at Future of Web Apps Miami. Buy your tickets now.

Wufoo originally started out with funding from YCombinator. For those who might be considering the seed funding route could you share some of your experience and offer some insights into the process?

I have nothing but good things to say about YCombinator. It is no exaggeration for me to say that it transformed the lives of the founders pretty completely. They gave us introductions and opportunities that we would have been hard pressed to recreate solely on our own and it’s also been a gift that just keeps on giving.

The growing network of knowledge from the founders we interact with and have access to just by association is staggeringly resourceful and amazing. I actually try to do whatever I can to help give back to the program including giving free workshops or providing design reviews whenever we go out there and visit the newly funded batch of YCombinator startups.

The blessing of that program was that we were able to hole up in an apartment together and do nothing but craft Wufoo into existence. I think a lot of people forget the importance of just getting a chance at getting away from distractions. No girlfriends, no regular friends, no anything else.

Because it’s YCombinator and because it’s Silicon Valley, we met some pretty amazing people out there (CEOs, Investment Bankers, other entrepreneurs, Google/Yahoo employees, other young founders, plenty of reporters, etc.) and it lead to a round of Angel Investment in the end, which is what got us to launch and eventually profitability.

Ironically, one of the reasons we moved back to the east coast in April, was because we ended up making too many friends and were spending way too much time in meetings. We went back to Tampa to basically hole up again (for much cheaper living costs) and get our baby launched.

For anyone on the fence, it’s totally worth it and I hope you at least apply, because the application process alone is insightful (if not a wake up call) in terms of helping teams rehearse and focus their company’s message, product and direction.

Introducing new UI (user interface) elements to an app always involved an element of risk. How do you, as the person responsible for the Wufoo UX (user experience), go about introducing new features and responding to feedback from users?

Like most software teams, we do love making new features and releasing them to our users. Our goal, however, is not to create code that just checks off items on a feature list. Just to be clear, while I am the first person to jump start how an interface will look and feel, and for the most part, the last person to polish the details before they’re released, everyone on our team participates in the direction of our application, the testing of those new features, and maintaining them from a support point of view.

Because we’re a small team that desires to stay a small team, everyone has to wear multiple hats in our company and that includes manning the inbox and doing customer support every single week. One of the interesting side effects of having a company where everyone has to answer support emails, is that everyone has a stake in making sure application is as easy to use as possible. We actually call this approach to designing software Support Driven Development and it’s been really great for us.

The priorities and desire for simplicity and clarity are actually the result of people wanting to make their weekly support interactions as few and positive as possible. Getting a feature into Wufoo that adds unnecessary complexity is a big no-no in our company. In fact, we make adding any element to the interface the hardest thing possible in our design process. Every button, every word, every link, every switch is scrutinized to make sure it’s absolutely necessary and won’t generate a future support request.

Additionally, users are also really bad at both explaining what they need and what other people need. It’s just part of human nature to justify biases rather than consider needs objectively from the vantage point of what’s good for the community and the future of the app itself. This is not to say you shouldn’t bother with your users (or your designer’s intuition) when you’re building your product or considering new features.

I sincerely believe that users are the key (and intuition does help), but you have to realize that user interface studies have shown time and again that what you have to trust is what the users DO and not what they SAY, which is why getting an interface out there quickly and used in an observable way is crucial. After that, it’s all just successful iterations based on feedback from those on the ground.

Wufoo now integrates with many of the big name web apps out there. For those creating web apps today how important is opening up your data via APIs and offering quick and easy integration to popular apps?

First off, providing an API to users shouldn’t be put on the back burner because it’s difficult. Any good development team is going to be designing their app around some sort of structured framework or API system internally and so the logistics of providing public access, from what we’ve seen, usually revolves around jumping over the hurdles of semantics and documentation.

To me, what makes creating web applications really exciting and much more interesting than creating traditional desktop software is that it’s built on a foundation (The Internet!) that is inherently primed and geared towards generating vibrant ecosystems regardless of distance. I believe it would be a terrible mistake (not to mention a rather ironic tragedy) to spend time creating software that is literally built on top of networks and then isolating yourself from everyone around you.

With Wufoo, we’ve been doing our best to leverage that potential as much as possible and it’s worked out really great for us. So many of the services we integrate with like PayPal, Campaign Monitor, FreshBooks, Highrise, MailChimp and Twitter are valued brands to our users. Because they are run by really incredible companies, one of the nice side effects of that is when those products improve our products are essentially improving by association.

One of the methods, we’re most excited about is our new WebHook implementation that will allow any developer or application to make a Wufoo form forward a HTTP POST of all the variables collected to any web page they specify. The idea behind WebHooks has been around since 2006, but they’re really starting to take off now because of how easy the spec is to make the magic happen between two services.

The Wufoo interface is very fun and playful (in terms of the typefaces, logo, design, language etc). Was this a very conscious decision or just a reflection of it’s creators?

Definitely, a bit of both.

We knew that we were not the only form builders in this space, so it was really important to us that the difference come out in the personality of the product in addition to its ease of use. In the beginning, we tried to look at other interfaces for inspiration, but we realized quickly that we weren’t going to learn much about how to make something easy from Microsoft Access or Infopath. I actually still don’t know how to use either software to create a form.

The inspiration for our color palette, though, did come from our competitors. Everyone else out there at the time was using either some variation of cubicle blue or corporate gray to brand their product or service. It was really depressing to see so much software out there designed to remind people they’re making databases in a windowless office and so we immediately knew we wanted to go in the opposite direction and use a lot of vibrant colors.

My goal was to design Wufoo to feel like something Fisher Price would make. We were determined from the get go to make sure Wufoo wasn’t just going to be excellent at what it does, it was going to be fun, too.

As far as reflection goes, my background is fine arts-based, so my perspective on the Web is a bit different from most designers in the industry. I studied Digital Arts and Modern American English Literature at a very small private liberal arts college on the east coast of Florida.

The digital arts program was an interdisciplinary fine arts amalgam of computer science, art and music. Out of college I was into creative writing and electronic art. Graphic design, software interfaces, digital photography, video installations, sensor research, online storytelling, conceptual weirdness ‚ all of it excited me.

I initially was only interested in the Web as a medium for my art work, as an expression of myself. CSS was just a tool to help me express my ideas better. Yes, it separated my design information from my structural information‚ but I was mostly interested in the fact that it was easier for me to layer 57 pictures of robots on top of each other (I was very weird in college). To me, Wufoo was an opportunity to extend my experiments in that space–eliciting real emotions and the feeling of friendship through software.

As a subscriber to Treehouse (a downloadable web magazine) back in the day, I have always wondered why it stopped and if you have any plans to bring it back?

Well, you can thank Y Combinator and Wufoo for its discontinuation. Our goal with Treehouse was always to be a means to an end. When it was just the three of us and before there was even any hint of funding in the air, Chris, Ryan and I knew we wanted to make a company and make software around the ideas we had experimented with on our web development blog, Particletree. The problem was time and money.

Because I had a background in publishing and served as Editor-in-Chief of my college newspaper, I pitched to the guys that we could probably create a monthly PDF magazine about web development and use the revenues and time (I figured it should only take up 2 weeks a month to produce the thing if we developed the process correctly) to then make the software we always wanted to make.

We didn’t have a lot of money saved up at that time and so only Ryan and I quit our jobs to work on it full time while Chris kept his job in the government and split his paycheck with us. I worked out our editorial direction and design and Ryan built the digital download system.

All three of us had to solicit writers and write reviews and articles to fill up the 60 pages of content that we planned for each issue. I was responsible for the design content, Ryan was responsible for the programming content and Chris was responsible for the business content. It was actually a really scary and exciting time for us because it was a total gamble.

However, half way through our second issue, we found out that we were accepted by Y Combinator and that changed everything. What most people don’t realize during that period is that while we were working 16 hours a day building Wufoo out in California and trying to solicit funding, we also had to simultaneously create 4 more issues of Treehouse to fullfill the 6 month subscription obligations we promised to our readers. We were so exhausted by the end of it all that something had to give and it was, unfortunately, Treehouse.

We do, however, still have high hopes for the format and content we formulated with Treehouse and maybe, one day, it’ll be resurrected. You never know.

Think Vitamin is looking for an enthusiastic volunteer news editor to help contribute to the site on a weekly basis. The aim is to publish two weekly articles (Monday and Thursday) rounding up the hot news stories in web design, web development and web business. Essentially a list of hot articles with your opinion as to why they are important.

There will also be the opportunity to contribute feature articles and conduct interviews at Carsonified events. Ideally you will be based in the UK but it’s not essential.

In return for helping out here’s what we can offer:

• Free pass to Future of Web Design (London and US) and Future of Web Apps (London and US) events. Travel and accommodation not included.
• Entry to our event speaker dinners
• Option of writing feature articles for Think Vitamin

The ideal person will:

• Subscribe to far too many RSS feeds on web design and development
• Keep stupidly up to date on all things web
• Have an attention to detail
• Be opinionated on the important topics of the week

If you are interested, serious and are willing to contribute your time please e-mail thinkvitamin@carsonified.com outlining why you fit the bill. If you already have a blog or contribute to other sites please list examples.

Dan Benjamin recently blogged about his decision to venture into full time podcasting. We love to hear about anyone branching out and trying new things so we wish him all the best with his venture.

Two of his new shows solo shows are The Pipeline and The Conversation:

• The Pipeline, an interview show talking with designers, developers, writers, and entrepreneurs. Episode one featured Jeffrey Zeldman and upcoming shows will include Kottke, Storey, Vaynerchuk, Coudal, Mann, Siracusa, and many more.
• The Conversation, a live-streamed talk show featuring topical discussions, reviews, special guests, news with Christina Warren from Mashable, and, your calls, all live.

For his second episode of The Pipeline Dan interviewed our own Ryan Carson and discussed how he works, his inspiration, how he’s built such a strong personal brand, the Carsonified 4-day work week and unique offices, and more. You can check out the episode online: http://5by5.tv/pipeline/2.

We always try to bring you links to new and interesting content, let us know what you think in the comments.

Last week we published a review of Paul Boag’s new book “Website Owner’s Manual” and offered readers the opportunity to win one of six free copies courtesy of Manning Publications. To enter all you had to do was leave your best website owner’s tip in the comments. With over 50 tips by the deadline Paul’s job wasn’t easy.

Here in no particular order are the six winning tips for website owner’s chosen by Paul. If you have won please forward your full name and mailing address from the email you gave when entering your comment to thinkvitamin@carsonified.com.

1. Jackie
   My tip is – sometimes it’s OK to ignore tips :) But first, you have to do your research and know what you want to accomplish and who you are doing it for.

   Otherwise you won’t know which tips to ignore and which to follow in your particular project.

2. Glennette Clark
   My number one tip for web site owners is to have a content strategy.

   Oftentimes, content gets the short stick in lieu of design, when it should really be the other way around.Web site owners should know their audiences, know what they want to read, and know how to present it to them.

   Without some kind of upfront discussion about content, the web site becomes a place for pretty pictures and not an effective tool for building brands and building businesses.

3. Greg Wolkins
   My #1 tip is *Be Responsive*. Be eager to engage with your readers/customers/viewers. If someone leaves a comment, starts a discussion, has a question, etc, be sure to respond quickly. Let them know that you are paying attention and are receptive to their input.

   Even if it’s just to say “I don’t know, let me look into that and get back to you”. A site that appears to be abandoned will quickly be forgotten.

4. Cornelius Bergen
   My tip would be to never assume that once the site or a feature goes live it’s done. Your site will require regular attention like a garden.

   Every feature launched on the site is like a seed and without nurturing, it will die. And sometimes you’ll need to pull out things that are just wasting space.

5. Dan Millar
   My number one tip for website owners is don’t over complicate your site. Spend time at the start planning your content and functionality. Then sit back, read through, and strip out anything which isn’t absolutely necessary.

   Once the site is launched keep reviewing your analytics, if features aren’t being used either investigate why and adjust your architecture (if business critical feature) or strip it out.

6. Jeff
   My Tip is always keep the goal and the purpose of your website in mind, especially when adding features.

   If you keep your content good, and your site simple and easy to use people will come back again and again.

Ed: You can learn more about how to run a successful web app business at Future of Web Apps Miami in February 2010 – buy your ticket online today!

Recently I received a copy of  “Website Owner’s Manual” by Paul Boag. Unlike other books that deal with the technical aspects of web sites this one is aimed at those who project manage, run and maintain web sites on a daily basis.

Paul is the host of the popular web design podcast Boagworld and is also one of the founders of Headscape, a web design agency based in the UK. He’s passionate about helping those involved in websites, be they designers or “owners”, communicate better with their clients and stakeholders and this shines through in the book.

In each chapter Paul offers “website owners”, i.e. those responsible for the running of the site, proven strategies, crafted from his ten years in the industry, for dealing with the web site process from start to finish.

Much of the book focuses on the non technical aspects of owning sites and covers issues such as how to tackle “design by committee”, creating persona’s for your users, community and dealing with feedback effectively. For me this is one of it’s main strengths and a welcome change to the more technical books I usually read.

One nice touch is the way in which each chapter concludes with “next actions”. For example at the end of the chapter “Ensuring access for all” Paul advocates the following three actions:

1. Get your team on board – The first and most important step is to ensure that your developers and content providers understand the importance of standards and accessibility
2. Create an accessibility policy – Begin by writing a rough draft yourself. Don’t worry too much about specifics at this stage, but concentrate on creating a skeleton for discussion
3. Finish what you start - After you’ve completed these actions, consider your long-term strategy for ensuring accessibility

If all you do is read these pages, you should obviously read more, then you will be left with a solid strategy for your next web project.

What’s covered?

The book is broken down into 12 manageable chapters which take you through the journey of starting your web site right through to testing, promotion, user engagement and beyond.

1. Secrets to a successful website (Download chapter as PDF)
2. Stress-free planning
3. The perfect team
4. Differences over design
5. Creating killer content
6. User centric design
7. Ensuring access for all
8. Taking control
9. Decoding technobabble
10. Driving traffic
11. Engaging your visitors
12. Planning for the future

Is it for you?

If you are involved in any aspect of the web design process then you will learn some valuable lessons by reading “Website Owner’s Manual”. It never hurts to understand more about the process from a non technical aspect and there are a lot of ideas and strategies that will improve how you create your web sites.

It’s definitely the kind of book I wish I had been able to leave on my managers desk when I worked on web projects in a large public sector organisation a few years ago.

Win a copy

We have 6 copies of Paul’s book to giveaway. To be in with a chance of winning a copy all you have to do is leave your best “website owner’s tip” as a comment. Paul has kindly agreed to pick his top six.

Any entry up to 6pm GMT Monday 14th December 2009 will be entered.

Readers offer – 30% off

Thanks to the lovely people at Manning Publications Think Vitamin readers can get 30% off any version (print or ebook) of Website Owner’s Manual.

Simply use the checkout code “tv30” at www.manning.com/boag to redeem your offer. Offer valid until December 31, 2009

Ed: Paul has spoken at a number of industry events including our own Future of Web Design New York. Here’s a video of his presentation “Getting client’s to say yes”. A full transcript is available.

Ed: In this article Alex Hunter discusses why web developers and entrepreneurs can not afford to forget about their brand. Alex will be hosting an in-depth online marketing workshop at Future of Web Apps Miami in February 2010 – buy your ticket online today!

Brand is one of those things that often falls by the wayside with developers. Developers are constantly creating amazing technologies and incredible platforms that are fundamentally changing the way marketing and branding works.

Applications and platforms, i.e. social networking, now exist that allow consumers, i.e. users, to connect with brands for the very first time. Consumers today have the power and the tools to research, get feedback and participate. Today as a result of the platforms and technologies that YOU’VE created, and that’s beautiful irony, users have a really loud voice.

Why is brand important for web applications and products? Well, there are thousands and thousands and thousands of web apps out there. You’re in direct competition with them, every single one of them. You have to stand out in the crowd and get people coming back to your site.

If you’re developing a competing application to an incumbent you’re going to have to work ten times harder to get people to change. As sites start to use even more social currency, points systems, giving more “value” to a user, it will be harder and harder to bring them over. Bottom line: you’re going to have to work your ass off.

With this in mind here are some quick DOs and DO NOTs for building and managing a successful web brand:

What to DO

DO: Define your values

What are you? Your values are going to be the foundation of what you are, and more importantly, what you will be – now, tomorrow and in ten years time. Set them early and set them well because they will define you for the rest of your existence. It’s really, really easy to half-ass this. Don’t, because it will come back to bite you if you do.

The convenient thing would be to dump all of your “values”, your product, and brand name into a blender, dump out the contents and proclaim “There, we’re done!” It’s not that easy and more importantly, what comes out won’t be an accurate representation of what you are.

So to do this right, take the best of what your team, vision, and product represents, in appropriate doses, and create a whole new identity. Remember, this is NOT something a single person (e.g. founder) can do on their own. Involve the team, involve friends, involve advisors. Stop trying to do it yourself, take a step back and get people involved.

P.S. Everyone wants to be “fun”, “ethical”, “challenging” and “revolutionary.” Skip those values from your brainstorming and consider them as given.

DO: Be emotional

How are you going to get the public to love you? How are you going to get people to have that emotional connection with what you do? And let’s be clear this IS about emotion, so please BE emotional.

This is your baby, your blood sweat and tears that you’ve poured into your project. Your users will be able to connect emotionally if they sense the emotion, a key ingredient of loyalty, that you’ve put into your creation.

DO: Be transparent

Transparency, especially at the beginning when you’re building something or when it’s just an idea, is really beautiful because it brings people into the journey. It’s why reality TV is so hard to look away from.

The development cycle IS dramatic, emotional and painful with “4 o’clock in the morning” caffeine-induced coding frenzies, the wins, the losses, the highs and the lows. Bring people along on that journey.

But remember, when things go wrong, hold your hands up and admit to it – be transparent, be human. Don’t hide behind a brand name or a product name. People will engage with that. You don’t hear people talking about Spotify’s massive data leak very often, do you. No because they came clean, notified users, fixed it and busted ass to continue making a great product.

DO: Extend your brand

Despite what you might think, your app is not the be all and end all. Don’t believe this “if you build it, they will come” mantra, that is “weapons-grade bullonium”. It’s just not true. You have to extend the reach of what you do with content and engagement, physical and digital engagement. Build up a voice and personality around your brand.

Consider Digg, who are masters of brand extension in the web world. Their blog is written by the people who are responsible for rolling out new features, managing the database, marketing the site, not just the founder or the VP of PR. Real names, real faces, real people that we as users can connect with.

Whenever they roll out a new piece of technology or a new development, the person responsible blogs about it, explains what they did and asks for feedback. That breeds loyalty. They take it further with Diggnation, Digg Meetups, and DiggDialog.

DO: Bridge the gap between online and offline

Bridging the gap between online and offline with real world events breeds loyalty. There are a lot of web companies that are getting really good at hosting real world events where users meet up and are rewarded on a macro level, for example Digg or Qype here in Europe.

Both introduce users to each other and to the people that curate the community they’re involved in at events that are tailored to the users’ interests. Launch parties and regular user meet-ups get people talking and get people connected. That really breeds loyalty. It’s astounding what that can do in terms of competitive advantage and brand awareness.

What NOT to DO

DON’T: Ignore your brand

As web developers, application creators and programmers, we don’t think about brand nearly as much as we should. We don’t care. We don’t think it’s important. We’re busy building our apps. We’re not focussed on brand, it’s not our core activity. But you cannot afford to ignore your brand at any point in its existence.

Brand loyalty is getting harder and harder to gain and, ironically, easier to lose. As marketers get savvier and people are convinced that the same product is better just because it has a certain brand, the harder you’re going to have to work to build a loyal user base.

DON’T: Half ass your brand development

You have to put the time and energy into this that it deserves. Do this and do it well. So many people think that brand is about product name. Cute name, great brand, done. WRONG. So wrong it hurts. And besides, we can’t even get that right.

So many web apps out there have thoughtless names. There’s no rationale or logic behind the names at all, they just think it is cute and memorable. It’s oh-so-fashionable to drop a vowel here and there or misspell something and be done with it. That doesn’t mean anything and it’s lazy. Don’t do that. Or if you do, have a reason for it. Give your brand development the time and energy it deserves.

DON’T: Put your interests ahead of your users

I know this is hard because, ultimately, you have to pay the bills. But a reputation of looking after your users, being ethical, will put you head and shoulders above anybody else.

I often cite the example of Amazing Tunes, a site for unsigned artists. Sure, there are other unsigned artists sites out there, but not that give 70% of the profits back to the user and not that have a DAB radio station that artists are featured on. THAT is looking after your users. That’s the definition of an ethical web company.

DON’T: Be Precious about consistency or message

People often say to me “The more people I give the message or brand to, the more watered down it becomes and the less consistent the message is”. Big brands are especially scared of losing the refinement of their message. But realistically, they’ve been doing it for the last 30 years because the person who answers the phone in the call centre is the first point of contact that a user has with their brand.

The call centre employees are representing your brand. The receptionist is representing your brand. So giving someone an account on Twitter to do the same is no different, it’s just a little bit more of a public stage. But, that’s a GOOD thing because people can see you responding to positive comments and negative comments and reacting and helping people and participating in the CONVERSATION in a very public forum.

Ultimately, you’re giving people the tools to go and evangelise your brand and product – don’t fight that.

Ed: Need further convincing? Check out the video of Alex’s presentation at Future of Web Apps London 2009

Ed: In this article Ben Bodien from Neutron Creations recalls his experiences of naming his new web company. You can learn more about running a successful web company at Future of Web Apps Miami – buy tickets online today!

Starting a company around an exciting idea will be one of the best experiences of your life, as any entrepreneur will tell you. Company ownership is a roller coaster of a ride, and the infancy of the business will bring you some of the best of times as you charge headlong into your new world with unbridled optimism and vigour.

One of the first decisions you will make as an entrepreneur is the label to be proudly stickered onto your new venture – the company name. Of course you can plan your business model, carry out market research and put some other pieces of the puzzle into place first, but if you’re anything like me then the question of the company name will bug you until you’ve decided on one.

Selecting a name is an arduous process, as you have to find something that meets a whole bunch of selection criteria. You want a name that suits your business, ideally goes some way to describing what it is you actually do, is snappy and memorable, and isn’t a rude word for a part of the human body in a foreign language. Beyond all these basics though, you’ll also need to make sure that nobody else is already out there doing what you are planning to, using that name or one very much like it.

When names clash

With everyone so passionate and naturally protective about their businesses, it’s quite understandable that you won’t make any friends by starting up with a name that’s similar to one used by an existing company, particularly if you operate in the same industry.

When we started our company, we were eager to register our company with our chosen name of “Nucleus Creations” and get started with making a name for ourselves. We did a bit of research into companies with similar names, checking Google, domain registrations, the company registration database for the UK, and then we were off. Had we been a bit more thorough at this stage, we probably would have spotted the company who we would receive a letter from a few months later.

The letter in question was a cease and desist order from a company with a similar name, which smugly pointed out that they’d been in business for decades and had a huge client base of multinational, household brand names, and that we’d better abandon our use of the name unless we wanted to taste their metaphorical legal steel.

Our reaction

After a lot of deep breaths and cursing at the sky (mostly out of inward “how could we have been so careless?” frustration), we started thinking. After verifying that their claims were valid, and realising that we had indeed made an oversight, we worked out our plan of action. A simple cost/benefit analysis that fitted neatly on a post-it note made the picture clear:

• Launch what would surely be a suicidally expensive defence of our rather tenuous legal position
• Realign our branding, which would only be a minor headache given the early stage of our business

Since we were bootstrapping the company rather than taking funding from investors, we simply didn’t have the money to fund a legal battle so there was really only one option. We had recently paid good money for the design of our logo and our website which was based on our chosen particle physics theme, so we switched from Nucleus Creations to Neutron Creations (http://neutroncreations.com), allowing us to keep our designs, changing only the text in the logo.

In total, the cost of the re-branding amounted to less than £100 (new domain registrations, business card printing, and an admin fee with the UK company register), plus a bit of paperwork for our bank, and an hour’s worth of renaming accounts for web apps we’d starting using like wikis and issue trackers.

Note to web app owners and developers – please make sure it’s possible for your customers to rename their accounts completely (usernames, subdomains, etc), as it is very frustrating to get stuck with an account in your old name that has all your data in it!

How to avoid the problem

Nobody wants to get themselves into this situation, so here are a few tips for avoiding it in the first place

1. Select a name you can claim some rights to. It’s a lot harder for someone to claim they have more rights to a name than you do if the company name is your name, so naming your company after yourself or its founding partners is solid strategy. You could also go for a name based on your company’s principal location, such as a street address. Of course it helps if your offices have a catchy address like “101 Super Avenue”.
2. Check with your legal jurisdiction’s intellectual property (IP) registration directory to see if your chosen name is in use as part of a trademark or patent registered by another company operating in the same industry sector. In the US, check with the Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) (search forms: http://www.uspto.gov/main/profiles/acadres.htm), and in the United Kingdom you can search the Intellectual Property Office (IPO) (http://www.ipo.gov.uk/).
3. Search for your chosen name on your country or state’s company registration database. In the US, each state has its own register, and most if not all have online search tools. In the UK, you can look up companies using Companies House WebCHeck (http://www.companieshouse.gov.uk/info). Make sure you look up subtle variations and alternative spellings of your name, as well as the more distinctive component words of it, if it’s made of two or more words (for example, “Nucleus” in “Nucleus Creations”).
4. Do your Google homework, searching for existing organisations’ brands which may not necessarily be registered as companies. If they aren’t legal corporate entities themselves, they’ll have a hard time making a case against you, but you’ll still have to shoulder your way past them for position in search engine result pages, if organic search traffic is important to your business model.
5. Once you’ve identified a safe name, plant your flag. Register domains (optionally including foreign market domains that you may want to expand into later, but this is by no means necessary), apply for trademarks on your logo, sign up for accounts on Twitter and any other social media or web applications that you will use to operate and market your business. The earlier you create all these records of your existence the better, as who came first is one of the big questions when it comes to name ownership.

What to do if this happens to you

Should you find yourself on the receiving end of a challenge over your company name, remain calm, don’t lash out, and try the following.

1. Research the case – Make sure their claims are valid by reading up about their business, and that they aren’t just squatting the name. If they haven’t provided proof that they own a particular piece of Intellectual Property (IP) and you can’t find any evidence either, ask them to send you copies of relevant registration certificates.
2. Consult a legal professional – Unless it’s a clear cut case (as ours was) in which the only sensible option is to back down, you will need to seek the expertise of a lawyer who can give you case specific advice. A case review consultation won’t cost a ton – you’ll only face the infamous legal fees if you actually retain their services to take up the defence case.
3. It’s probably better to re-brand – Unless you have a really well established name and re-branding would be devastatingly painful, as the saying goes; once it goes to court, only the lawyers win.