Posts filed under ‘Recommendations’
Twitter Tip: Create Your Follow Friday During the Week
Follow Friday is one of the best ways to engage people on Twitter. Simply tweet a list of Twitter users that you recommend others follow on Fridays with the hashtag #FollowFriday or #FF.
Lately, I have been neglecting to do so because I have been spending less time on Twitter. So I wanted to find a simple way to get back into the practice. My solution was to create a draft on Monday, schedule it for Friday delivery, and then add users during the week who shared valuable links. (I use HootSuite, but many other tools, such as TweetDeck, allow you to schedule your tweets)
It was quick to edit the tweet during the week, and then I didn’t have any additional work on Friday. In fact, my Friday ended up busy and I would have missed the opportunity entirely.
Another time saver is forgetting about creating a new, unique list every week. Too much cranium time for what should be a time-effective task, and no one’s keeping track. If I end up repeating users often, it’s because I like their feeds that much.
Do you have any tips that help you stay engaged?
My Shiny New Toy
Jumpscan is a service which provides you with a QR code for your contact info
, including a vCard. While you could create a similar QR code other ways (for example, use goo.gl to create a code which links to your flavors.me page), Jumpscan is quicker to create and easier for contacts to download your information.
I’ve signed up, and am admittedly over-excited to distribute my new QR code. I’ve inserted my shiny new toy in the right-hand column here and also in my email signature (we use Lotus Notes, and it took me a hack or two to get it right). Despite a few kinks to work out in the contact form, I recommend you check it out.
It has me thinking about services LinkedIn should be offering – maybe more on that in a future post.
In other social media news related to me, Posterous, which has been at the bottom of my toy box since the spring, is being discarded and de-linked. I have accepted the fact that I am simply a fan from afar.
Why did I stop using it? Its utility as a blog for me waned because I ultimately wanted something more robust, which is why I came to WordPress. After I moved my blogging here, I was occasionally using Posterous to post a photo and brief commentary, but Facebook and Foursquare both fulfill that need. Oh well. You can’t be everything to everybody.
"It's me. My fault. But we're still breaking up."
Proof of Usability Testing Would Help Both Enterprises and Vendors
Recently, we have been evaluating options for a new website feature, which can either be bought or built. If we decide to buy a solution, we can choose from a number of vendors with considerable, specific expertise in this area. Building it would require us to utilize the general expertise of a web agency to design, develop, and test ourselves. The former option, to buy, will require fewer internal resources, but give us less control over the final product.
Less control is acceptable if a vendor delivers unique value that we could not produce ourselves – outsourced expertise. While there’s a number of considerations, one question that we ask each vendor is “Have you conducted usability testing?”
So far, we’ve received perfunctory assurances that they do so, with generic examples provided. It’s leaving an uneasy, wanting feeling. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a more concrete way to evaluate whether vendors can deliver a better web feature than you could build?
I envision a trusted third-party certification that assures us that the product has been built incorporating satisfactory usability testing – like Truste does for privacy. It would be an easy way to help enterprises make data-driven decisions about resources and costs: “this certificate means they have done x, y, and z – are we willing to make that investment ourselves?”
There are two potential approaches:
- a certification that a website is acceptably usable or
- a certificate that acceptable usability testing has been incorporated into its development.
The former seems more immediately compelling, since it addresses results, not process. But the problem lies with defining which standards are acceptable. For example, is it up to the standards for people with disabilities? What about multi-lingual considerations?
Since there are fewer methods of usability testing than there are different needs of enterprises across the globe, let’s consider the latter: certifying the process. As I said above, this is an easy way for us to judge the costs of building versus buying. Without evidence that a vendor conducts good usability testing, among other practices, I’m more likely to think “Hey! We could do this!” After all, I can judge whether the features meets our needs, especially if I’ve done a good job assembling my requirements. I just want to be confident that our members are going to find these great features we’ve purchased for them and want to repeatedly use them.
How to establish this certification is a separate question, and I acknowledge finding a simple way to do so may be difficult. Who should certify? How much does it cost? How broad or narrow would our standards of acceptable testing be? I’ll leave you with those questions and address in a future post. Meanwhile, I’d love to hear your reactions.
Why Twitter Should Re-Name the Re-Tweet
Why would Twitter tinker with arguably its most powerful feature?
Let’s face it, the name “re-tweet” is an idiosyncrasy – one of many on Twitter (ex: “hashtag”). Idiosyncrasies are hurdles to new users. And Twitter has an issue engaging new users. It needs to overcome these issues to ensure it remains as powerful a conversational medium as it is a broadcast medium.
So re-name “re-tweet” what it really is: “like”. The reason we re-tweet is because we read 
something we like. Instead of working hard to educate new users on a unique convention, let’s teach them to hit the “like” button. Easy.
There’s no harm following a popular convention, as YouTube recently demonstrated. And there’s no bigger rival to Facebook than Google, so if they can swallow their pride to adopt a convention that Facebook popularized, Twitter can as well. The change would initially create hassles for the Twitter community, but we’ve survived changes before. And it will be easier to manage sooner, rather than later.
This seems to be a relatively simple way to make Twitter easier to use and maintain the power of the re-tweet. And that will lead to an increase in engagement that will serve all of us better. “Re-tweet” needs to go.
How Amazon Can Deliver More Value on LinkedIn
Here’s how Amazon could provide rewards to increase usage:
Do you use Amazon’s reading list on LinkedIn?
Selling Optimization
One difference managing a website at a non-web company versus a web company is vocabulary. I make sure to note which words work and which do not. One that clearly does not is “optimize”. While there’s no question about its definition among my audience, it isn’t immediately tangible for them how it applies to a website.
That was surprising to me. If you’ve been in product management, optimization feels natural. A recent post at On Product Management identifies optimization as a key component of a “Product Management mandate”. I believe the underlying difficulty for non-web audiences lies with the concept of continuous improvement. It’s a big shift to think that websites can – and should – be edited often. If web projects have always eaten up long cycles, that’s where your audience’s reference point will be
For me, the solution is to be as specific as possible. For example, I recommend “improving the display of the registration pages to ensure as many members complete the process as possible” rather than “optimizing the registration process”. Note the term “abandonment” is a bit foreign as well.
Below are the key hurdles to getting the necessary attention for the smaller improvements that, dare I say it, optimize your website’s performance:
1. Focus – Are stakeholders, such as content owners, incented by the website’s key metrics? If so, they’ll be receptive to learning how to best update the website. If not, then examine whether divisions of labor are clear. In this scenario, stakeholders will probably only update when they absolutely must (ex: compliance) and you will have to find another currency to get them on board.
2. Consensus risk– depending on your environment, it may have taken a great deal of consensus to get stakeholders to agree on what’s already been launched. Many will be weary of spending additional political capital on a decision they may not fully understand. To resolve, scope your changes so that a minimum number of stakeholders must sign off.
3. Credit – many may feel that a post-launch change, even a small one, is a criticism of their contributions. Ensure that stakeholders are receiving appropriate credit, be data-driven, and position your initiatives as “tweaks” not “surgery”.
4. Scope fear – stakeholders may not understand that optimization does not need to cost a lot. Be clear about timeframe expectations and expected impact. Don’t chew off more than your teammates can handle, even if it means curbing your desire to go fast.
5. “We did usability testing – it’s perfect” - Usability tests are incredibly valuable, but they certainly do not preclude future edits. Let’s say you brought in eight subjects to conduct testing of a recently launched website. What are the odds they’d all fawn in amazement over your perfect work? Or is it more likely that you’ll receive at least some additional insight?
6. Not sexy enough – Be data driven and have key metrics well-understood by senior leaders ahead of time. Make sure the key metrics are clearly connected to organizational goals. Then demonstrate the impact you can make on these key metrics. Highlighting web news from your competitors make never hurts, too.
7. Task-based vs. holistic approach - Many may be used to solving discrete website problems as part of project teams. Optimization contributes to holistic website management. I find that most people will be receptive to the big picture if you are clear about your approach. Clear metrics and executive-level engagement are big helps.
What are your organization’s optimization efforts like? What opportunities and challenges do you face?
My name is Adam Gross. 
