Our move reminds me of every single website launch at Matrix Group. When a Project Manager reports that he or she will be done with a project when it launches, I warn that there could be weeks of tweaks and that we should just expect it. Here’s why:

Sometime, you just don’t don’t know where to put something until you’ve lived with it a while. I wish I could say that our information architecture process is perfect and we account for every piece of content, but it’s not and we don’t. Clients often have to live with a site for a few days or weeks before they figure out where everything should go. In the meantime, content doesn’t go up or it gets stored under some generic navigation called Resources. I feel like Resources is like our garage; there’s a lot of great stuff in there but it’s hard to find what you’re looking for and you know you need a better organization system.

The little tweaks can make all the difference in the world. The new master bathroom in our house is wonderful but it had a few problems. You had to walk inside to reach the light switch and the towel bar was several feet away from the shower. We were unhappy from the beginning but we didn’t know what we wanted or how to fix the problem. Then one day, my husband came home with a wireless outlet that he attached to the wall. Voila! We can now turn on the light before entering the bathroom! And a hook added to the wall just outside the shower solved the towel problem. Same with a website. We often need a few days or weeks of real users road testing the site before we can make the slight improvements to the flows and paths that make the site really great. For one client, we added a Google map link to a calendar application; it was amazing how much happiness 2 lines of code created.

You can’t finish decorating right away. Our new house is laid out in a very similar manner to the old house but nearly everything had to be re-arranged. Bookshelves got moved around the house, we re-arranged the closets, and the living room is completely different, even though the dimensions are the same and we didn’t buy new furniture. With website redesigns, small changes to the navigation sometimes means a total rework of the content and CMS. And clients often can’t conceive of how to “dress up” pages with images and formatting until they are live.

You’ll get more done if you throw a party. My mom always says that if you want your house to look good, throw a party. You’ll get the boxes unpacked, the pictures hung and the furniture arranged – just in time. When a client picks the launch date for their website, we ask if they will be unveiling the site at a conference or event. I love having a deadline tied to a conference because conferences don’t move, which means everyone hustle to get things done and it’s amazing how much content gets written right before the event and launch.

Anticipate the tweaks. At Matrix Group, we know that it takes time for clients to get comfortable with the new site, use its new functions and figure out what’s working and not working. Leslie Blum from Carolinas AGC calls them “iron outs” and she’s right on. It generally takes between 2-4 weeks to get the help text just right, all the new content loaded, and the integration use cases all worked out. So rather than fight the tweaks, we anticipate them and plan for them in our schedule. I will caution, however, that tweaking past 30 days can get counter-productive. You run the risk of the team losing steam and experiencing launch fatigue.

In the last 30 days, we’ve launched new sites for the Ironworkers, the American Society of Addiction Medicine and the Washington Building Congress. Although the sites look great, we’re still tweaking. :-)

In case you hadn’t noticed, the world is going mobile. Check out these amazing statistics:

• There are 5.3 billion mobile subscribers; that’s 77% of the world’s population.
• In the US, 25% of Web users are mobile only, meaning they only they use their mobile device(s) to access the Web.
• Global tablet sales are expected to top 80 million by the end of 2012.

Which is why I think every organization needs a mobile strategy. Here are my top recommendations for getting started:

Include Mobile in All Of Your Marketing and IT Activities

Over a dozen years ago, I urged clients to be the person in the room who always said, “what about the Web?” Today, appoint yourself as the person who says, “what about mobile?” Know what tools you have available in your mobile toolbox, including mobile stylesheets, mobile sites, text messaging, and apps. Talk to your customers and ask them if, how and when they access your website and e-mails on a mobile device.

Budget for Mobile Initiatives

I believe mobile needs its own line item in your budget or it needs to added to your marketing and IT activities. For example, do you have the hardware you need to view your website on an iPad, Android phone, iPhone, iPad or Android tablet? Be sure to ask your Web partner (like Matrix Group!) to help you budget for mobile, whether it’s developing an app for your convention, designing a mobile version of your website, or using text messages to generate traffic at your exhibit hall.

Planning a Website Redesign? Plan for a Responsive Design!

Here at Matrix Group, we’re really excited about building websites that look and behave differently depending on the size, platform and orientation of the device, including widescreen monitors, standard size monitors, tablets and smartphones. Responsive Web design uses a mix of flexible grids and layouts, images and javascript to customize the experience for the device. For example, if I’m looking at a website on a smartphone, the large branding area could disappear and the horizontal navigation might turn into vertical text navigation. If your organization is thinking of redesigning your website, please consider a responsive design. You will spend more time and money on wireframes and design, but the results will be worth it. Just imagine: less pinching and squinting for smartphone users and lots of gestures and swipes on tablets.

Pay Attention To Your Mobile Stats

As always, pay attention to your usage reports. Google Analytics has a whole, new set of reports that tell you what your mobile users are doing and what devices they are on. I’m using our usage reports to figure out what functions to include in a new mobile version of our MatrixMaxx software since we don’t believe mobile users want to use ALL database function.

How about you? What’s your organization’s mobile strategy? How are you getting started? What kind of results are you seeing?

Why so late to the YouTube game? As I’ve explained before in previous blog posts and webinars, I believe that it’s important to create a layered experience across different media. In other words, don’t just post the same stuff to Facebook, Twitter, your website, YouTube, your blog, etc. Have an overall strategy, but take advantage of each site’s capabilities and culture to maximize followers across all platforms.

Until recently, we didn’t have a clear idea of how we wanted to incorporate YouTube into our marketing, sales and client engagement strategy. We had videos from Matrix Group staff events, but we had reserved our Facebook page for information and posts about the project we’re working on and corporate culture. I didn’t want to use YouTube as another place to promote corporate culture. And until we hired a new Marketing Coordinator, we didn’t have the bandwidth to staff an active YouTube channel properly.

But this past week, we launched The Matrix Minute, which is a series of interviews with in-house and outside experts who discuss web technologies, mobile technologies, social media, design and web development. Occasionally, we’ll feature local CEOs who will talk about leadership and what their organizations are doing to stay relevant and vibrant.

Here’s how the Matrix Minute fits into our overall sales and marketing strategy:

• As a company, we’re extremely committed to ongoing education for staff and clients so content-rich interviews make sense for us.
• It’s a way to showcase the expertise we have within the staff.
• It’s a way to leverage the expertise of our clients and partners.
• It’s a way to continue demonstrating thought leadership.
• We get to show off our video production capabilities.
• YouTube is owned by Google and Google favors keyword-rich videos and descriptions so the channel is good for search engine optimization (SEO).
• It’s a way to layer YouTube into our strategy in a way that’s new and different from what we’re doing on our website and social media.

The Matrix Minute has also been a lot of fun.  So far, I’ve been doing all of the interviews and I’m learning a ton. Ray Stankiewicz, New Biz Manager at Matrix Group, is the producer and Melissa Bader, Designer at Matrix Group, does the video editing.

We’ve got a half dozen interviews already online. For example, Jill Foster of Live Your Talk talks about videoblogging. Jennell Evans of Strategic Interactions shares her tips for managing remote teams. And Sherrie Bakshi of Matrix Group talks about why 2011 is the year to start a corporate blog.

BTW, we call it The Matrix Minute, but the interviews are usually 2-3 minutes long. 1 minute just didn’t provide enough time for a meaningful interview and Matrix Minutes sounded goofy.

I hope you’ll check us out on YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/MatrixGroup) and you’ll rate, comment and subscribe. Tell us what you think of our latest initiative!

We called Boombah to complain that we ordered shirts with a sublimation process, which, incidentally, is what our e-mail receipt says. The Boombah sales rep said something to the effect of “the sublimation process is only available for the white and gray shirts. Our receipts say sublimation as part of the template, but it’s wrong. Our website is very clear that you can’t get sublimation with the black shirts.” (Don’t get me started on what happened when I asked to speak with a manager or the owner. It was not good.)

Okay, forget that the invoice says sublimation. Boombah violated what I affectionately refer to as JP Rule #3: Never let your client make a mistake. In my mind, if we had called asking for black shirts with logos, the rep should have made sure we were crystal clear on the concept that sublimation, which is the nicer printing method, is NOT available for black shirts. Knowing that fusion on black makes for a crappy shirt, the rep should have at least tried to prevent us from making that mistake. Yes, we ultimately placed the order and we take responsibility. We paid for the shirts and promptly ordered a batch from another company.

Whether it’s shirts or websites, clients rely on their service providers for expertise and recommendations. It’s up to us to educate our clients, make sure they understand the options, make recommendations, and warn them if we think they’re about to make a mistake. Yes, clients ultimately need to make their own decisions and they are big boys and girls, but if we hold technical knowledge they don’t, shouldn’t we at least make sure they are aware of the impact of their choices?

Case in point. A new client was implementing MatrixMaxx, our association management software. Our main contact told us that the association didn’t need any company demographics as part of the setup. We questioned this decision several times and he maintained that no, the organization did not need to collect company data outside of contact information. Knowing this is wrong and a waste of an opportunity to gather member data, we took the issue to the VP. Without making it seem like we were going over the manager’s head, we let the VP know that we thought the organization could benefit from collecting additional data as part of the member profile and membership application. We even suggested a package of fields. Sure enough, the VP, who has a bigger picture view, agreed on the demographics. We *could* have dropped the issue after confirming with the manager. We would have had tons of documentation showing that the client rejected the additional fields so that if the client came back to us a year later, we’d be perfectly justified in charging extra money for a change order. But that behavior would have violated Rule #3.

We try to live Rule #3 and we don’t always succeed. There isn’t always clarity about what’s absolutely right and what’s absolutely wrong. We don’t always realize a decision will be the wrong one in the long run. And clients don’t always agree with us. BUT, I believe that we have an obligation to our clients to at least give it the old college try and help them not make mistakes.

How about you? Got any stories of a vendor who let you make a mistake or saved you from making a bad decision?

P.S. I have a total of 23 rules. I’ll try to blog about them all in the future. If you’d like a copy of the list, let me know.

For every 100 youth who join scouting

• 1 will use his Scouting skills to save a life
• 1 will use his Scouting skills to save his own life
• 18 will develop hobbies that will last throughout their adult life
• and on and on

Who are Boy Scouts?

• 72% of Rhodes Scholars
• 65% of the US Congress
• 65% of male college graduates
• 26 of the first 29 astronauts were Boy Scouts
• and on and on

Wow. With statistics like that, I’m keeping my son in Boy Scouts forever and I’m giving them money every year!

Here’s another compelling statistic I heard recently. I’m a member of Vistage, which is a membership organization for CEOs. Vistage says that their member companies consistently outperform non-member companies. Based on the coaching and resources I get from Vistage, I believe it. Vistage is a big commitment of time and money, but totally worth it.

How about you? What compelling statistics or facts can you share with your prospects to make them join your organization, become a customer or donate money?

• If you’re an accrediting body, can you point to the top organizations that are accredited and how accredited companies have better safety/graduation/success rates?
• If you’re a trade association, can you point to the top companies in the field that are members, your legislative record, and the success rate of your companies?
• If you’re a professional society, can you point to the job rate and salary levels of your members, your contributions to the profession, and your profession’s rank as a top career?
• If you’re a charity, can you point to your success in changing systemic problems?

In thinking again about the Boy Scouts, what was effective about the pitch was this: I wasn’t being sold on the activities of the Boy Scouts, I was being sold on the outcome. The message was clear: Enroll your son in Boy Scouts and this is what he can become. I’m sold.

It seems everyone is hawking a good deal lately.

A recent article in the Vancouver Sun reports that “frugality (is) the top consumer trend in 2011.” After this long recession and with many people still feeling uncertain about the economy, it only makes sense that we’re all trying to make our dollar go further by looking out for sales and coupons.

I think that most people are looking for savings and value everywhere: when they’re shopping for clothes, booking travel, buying software, or registering for meetings. How does frugality affect your organization and what are you going to do about it? Here are some ideas:

• Offer more for the same price. If you’re loathe to discount, I don’t blame you. But since most people are looking for a deal or extra value, what extra thing can you offer? Last year, when we announced the Matrix Group webinar series, we offered four webinars for the price of three to people who registered for the entire series. It worked really well for us because we got a lot of registrations to all four events and clients got a deal.
• Create lightning deals. Most organizations offer an early bird registration fee. But what if you offered a steeper discount during just one day? Market the heck out of the deal, create some buzz and capture registrations early in the game. I call this the groupon strategy (I’m going to get sued for saying this, hope not).
• Offer discounts for PR. When I got my haircut at Salon DeZen the other day, the stylist offered me 10% off my bill if I checked into Yelp. Owner Maria Burns knows that a check-in or a great review are worth way more than the few dollars off she’s giving away.
• Create social deals. This idea isn’t new. In fact, it’s a classic campaign: refer a new member, registrant or purchaser and get a discount off your next bill. Encourage your clients and members to register for a meeting as a group and give them a break.

I have a feeling that frugality is going to get even more chic and popular. How will YOUR organization take advantage of this trend? What’s your discount/value strategy? What’s worked for you?

• Why I should give
• What my money supports
• An easy way to make a donation, preferably without having to create a login
• If using a third party payment gateway or network, make it really clear to me what I’m going to see on my credit card statement
• A statement that you won’t rent or sell my information to other charities

Instead, what I usually find is a simple e-commerce form that simply asks me for my credit card information! What a waste of an opportunity to make the case for giving!

So I scoured the Web and looked for effective donation pages. Here are some I love:

Johns Hopkins Giving – This is a microsite devoted entirely to giving. I like the navigation: Why Give, Where to Give, How to Give, Calendar. I also like the branding area, which has great stories about Hopkins students and professors and doesn’t rotate too quickly.

United Way – I like the chart on the left that shows the percentage of a donation that goes to administrative costs vs. program costs. I like this label: Our work in education, income and health.

Red Cross – Instead of one big form, the first page of the Red Cross donation form lets me designate where my donation will go, e.g., disaster relief, military families, local chapter, unrestricted funds.

Humane Society – I like how the donation process starts on the home page through a simple form, then continues to a larger form. I think it’s effective to call donors heroes who stand up for animal rights.

How about you? What are your favorite donation pages? Got any examples of donation page disasters?

I’m having a baby tomorrow

The answer to the first question (how much time are you taking off?) is not clear cut.  When you’re a small business owner, you can’t exactly just disappear for a few months. When you’re the owner, the business is your baby, it’s part of your life and your identity.  That said, I’m giving myself the flexibility to work as much or as little as I want, come in when I feel I need to, and decide when I’m ready to come back to the office full-time.

The answer to the second question (how will the office survive without you?) is “Just fine, thank you very much.”  In fact, just like the last time I was out with my first son, I expect the office to thrive. Here’s what I’ve done to prepare myself and the office for my absence:

What Is It That Only I Do, or Can Do, At the Office?

When I first announced to my management team that I was going to have a baby, the questions I asked of myself, the Directors and Project Managers was: “What is it that I do, that only I can do, that you rely on me to do?”  Then we got to work documenting the list and figuring out a plan for getting those tasks done in my absence.

For example, I review the monthly billing reports after the Project Managers (PMs) have reviewed them to double check that we are properly marking work as billable or unbillable.  Over a period of a couple of weeks, I went over dozens of reports with the PMs, discussed why I question certain items and provided suggestions for how to handle ambiguous items and make sure clients are never surprised by their invoices.  The Director of Client Services will also now review invoices in my absence.

Documenting What’s in JP’s Brain

When you’ve been in the Web business for as long as I have (since 1994 but please don’t try to calculate my age!) and when you’re responsible for landing a lot of the company’s business, you just accumulate a lot of knowledge about clients, process, and projects. Even though I use our intranet religiously to document all of my communications with clients and prospects, there’s just a lot of knowledge that I carry around in my brain.

So over the past few months, I worked with my team to document the strategies, best practices, and potential land mines I’ve encountered while working on myriad projects. I paid special attention to the project components that I tend to spearhead, including Goals and Personas, Content Strategy, Integration with a Back Office CRM (customer relationship management system) or AMS (association management system), CMS (content management system) reviews, and Social Media.  These are now called PM Guides and they live in our wiki. All staff are encouraged to modify them as needed.  The guides are reviewed before the start of each project, and the PMs are loving the sample agendas and notes for running meetings.

Letting Staff Shine

When I took time off with my first son, a great thing happened: the vast majority of my staff rose to the occasion, took on more responsibility and did a great job. Some of them said they wanted to do a great job so that I could be at home with CJ and rest easy knowing that the office was in great shape.  Others saw the time as a terrific opportunity to show what superstars they are.  Still others ran with projects, figuring they should act first, apologize later.  The results were great.

This time around, I’m trusting that the recruiting, training, practices, guides and team process that we have in place will ensure that my stellar staff can do what they need to do, not encounter bottlenecks while I’m out, and do a great job for clients.

Getting Rid of Overhang

Once we all realized I would be out,my team and I identified tasks and initiatives that had been hanging out for a while and didn’t have any movement. We either abandoned them, moved the deadline or completed them.  For example, we got cracking on our mobile strategy, updated the Meet Your Team page on our client extranet, set-up our new data center in Chicago, and moved the deadline for redesigning our demo site.

Protocol for Contacting JP Re: Urgent Items

No matter how much I plan, I know the office is going to need me for certain things, like complex contract negotiations and developing a strategy for responding to big, hairy RFPs (requests for proposals).  So I’ve alerted the admin team that after a few weeks, I will call once a day; whoever needs to speak with me needs to be ready with their list.  And to help me wade through the mountains of e-mail that will collect in my inbox, we selected a codeword that staff will enter in the subject line to indicate that a certain message is urgent and needs my attention. This way, if all I have is 10 minutes to check e-mail on any given day, I can filter by the code word and see the most important and urgent messages of the day.  No, I’m not divulging the code word here, but suffice it to say that it involves Star Wars.

There Will Be Hiccups

Are the plan and system perfect?  Absolutely not. In the end, I will rely on my sterling staff to do a great job while I’m out, which I know they will do.  I’ve warned everyone that there will be hiccups, errors and crises, but if they keep the interests of their clients and staff in mind, overcommunicate, and stay on top of deadlines, they’ll be great.

How about you?  How has your company prepared for an extended absence of your CEO or any key staff member for that matter?  What worked?  What did you learn?  Please share!

Now, I’m off to have some spicy food and go for a brisk walk.  I have a baby to birth!

A recent article in Ad Age explores how some of the top consumer brands have Facebook pages with a fan base and interactions that far outstrip that of their official Web sites. Starbucks has 12.9M fans; Coke has nearly 11M fans; Oreo has 8.9M fans.  Of the companies in the article, only Starbucks has steadily increasing Web traffic.

All of this got me thinking:  What happens when an organization’s blog, Facebook, Twitter or other social media page gets more traffic than the official Web site? Is this the ultimate goal for marketers?  Is traffic on a social media site worth as much as traffic on a company Web site?  Does this increased traffic ultimately lead to more customers and sales?

I have clients who worry about redirecting traffic to social media pages, for fear of losing control over the conversations, not owning the Web property, or that the interactions are not quite official enough.  Others hold their social media stats in the highest regard.  Most of us  wonder what it really means when somebody chooses to “like” our fan pages.

How to make sense of all this?  Here are some thoughts:

• If your Facebook page is getting increased traffic and interactions, while traffic on your regular Web site is on the decline, ask yourself, “What is it about my Facebook page that’s working?  What’s making people “like” us, click through to articles and comment?  What are the lessons for content and opportunities for interaction on our official Web site?”
• Your goal should be to have your Web site, Facebook page, Twitter page, blog, e-mail campaigns, microsites, etc., all be part of an integrated strategy where each Web property is complementing the others and encouraging cross traffic.
• Ultimately, the goal should be conversions, whether that means more sales, more subscribers, more members or more donations.  Your goals should never be about traffic on specific platforms; that’s just a tactic.
• You need a way to track the effectiveness of followers, likes, clicks and fans across the different platforms.  Use tracking codes, cookies and marketing codes to determine which platforms are really helping your business to thrive.

Getting back to Matrix Group, here’s what we’ve learned:

• Traffic to our Web site has not declined.  On the contrary, traffic has increased as we have expanded our social media efforts.
• Our most valuable interactions still come from the Web site, where visitors get a chance to look at our work AND, most importantly, make a decision to call or e-mail us for more information or request a proposal.  We get several, high quality leads from our Request Information form every week!
• Our social media pages have proven to be valuable outlets for showcasing our work, sharing tips and resources with a wider audience, and demonstrating our expertise.
• The social media pages have also been a terrific way for clients, prospects and job applicants to make inquiries, give us feedback and comment on our work.

How about you?  What trends are you seeing across your Web and social media pages?  How do you value fans and interactions on Facebook and other social media sites?

The Background

Matrix Group has had a Facebook fan page for a couple of years now and we had been slowly building up our fan base. We did all the usual things to generate new fans: we let our customers know about our Facebook page, we linked to it from our Web site and blog, we asked staff to invite their friends to “like” us, we included the link in staff e-mail signatures, and we asked our Twitter followers to fan us.

I had recently read an article about how the Weekly World News got to 40,310 fans in 4 days (up from 3,244 fans!) and got inspired to launch our own campaign.  Weekly World News offered an exclusive video, they changed their ad daily, they did A/B testing on their ads and they leveraged their huge user base.  But what kind of incentive could we offer?  Unlike Snapfish, the photo printing site, which recently offered a coupon for a free 8 x 10 photo collage for “liking” its fan page, Matrix Group doesn’t have products to offer.  And we don’t have a customer base of tens or hundreds of thousands of people.

The Campaign

We decided to use good, old-fashioned corporate philanthropy to incentivize people to “like” us.  The campaign was incredibly simple:  we would donate $10 to a specific charity for every new fan we got between June 21 and June 30.  We selected the National Park Foundation’s (NPF) Disaster Recovery Fund in the Gulf to be recipient of our campaign.  NPF is a Matrix Group client and the entire Matrix Group staff, like the rest of the country, is upset about the Gulf oil spill.  Selecting this fund only made sense for us.  BTW, we put a time limit on the campaign because we know that people are more likely to act when they have a deadline; hence the June 30 end date for the campaign.

We promoted the heck out of the campaign over the past 10 days:

• We posted regular updates to our Facebook fan page
• We tweeted regularly about the campaign
• We asked our staff and friends to update their Facebook and Twitter pages
• We actively asked for retweets
• NPF promoted the campaign to its Facebook followers
• We promoted the campaign on our Web site

The end result is that we’ve exceeded our goal of 500 fans and we’ve raised nearly $3,000 for a good cause. BTW, in case you’re interested, funds raised by the NPF Disaster Recovery Fund until September 1st will go to National Park Service efforts in the Gulf Coast region including park enhancements, education and environmental monitoring.  No funds will go towards mitigating BP’s responsibilities.

How about you?  What are you dong to generate fans for your Facebook page?  What kind of campaigns have you launched?  And with what results?  Please share your experiences!

I got an iPad last week and I’m already in love with it.

I find it fascinating that Apple has managed to capture the zeitgeist of our age and intuit our desires for computers and devices.  And yet, in a review of the iPad, Time Magazine reveals that, “(o)ne of the things that makes Apple unique is that it never holds focus groups. It doesn’t ask people what they want; it tells them what they’re going to want next.” 

So how does Apple know what customers will want?  And what lessons can mere mortal companies learn from Apple’s product development process?

A few years ago, the MatrixMaxx team at Matrix Group was developing the product road map for the coming year.  A couple of us were arguing for a total redo of the system’s user interface.  We also advocated a lot of new reports that basically repackaged data already available through exports.  The rest of the team argued that clients weren’t asking for these enhancements and it would be risky and a lot of time for little benefit to move forward with such a radical overhaul of our association management software.

After a lot of bargaining re: scope and timeline, the entire MatrixMaxx team agreed to a redesign of the system’s user interface and a new export/report framework.  The effort ended up  behind schedule and it introduced a lot of bugs into the system.  And yet, when the dust finally settled and we got the bugs under control, the end result was fabulous and clients loved it.  The new interface makes it much easier to find information and gave the product a new vibrancy.  The export framework has been universally applauded by clients.

In the end, we learned that sometimes, despite all the customer interviews that we conduct, clients can’t tell us what they want because they can’t even imagine it.  It’s up to us, the product developers, to learn as much as we can about our clients’ needs and wants and literally make stuff up.  Don’t get me wrong, once we make a decision to move in a certain direction, we get client feedback and buy-in, but it isn’t always client requests that drive the major decisions.

Today, some releases are dominated by client-requested enhancements, while others are packed with features that we have determined in-house will be fundamentally good for the product.  Some staff-sponsored features are a hit, while others turn out to be duds.  It’s the risk we take, it’s the risk we must take.

How about you?  What’s your take on Apple’s iPad strategy?  Do you have yours yet?  Or is the iPad a gadget you’ve decided you can live without?

Why do we get so upset when Facebook changes its interface?

In looking at some of the blog posts and news articles, I can understand many of the complaints. For my part, I cannot figure out the difference between News Feed and Live Feed. But I love that it’s easier to get to my Inbox and see which of my friends is currently online. I also think that Facebook generally does a great job of explaining why they have implemented specific changes.  I thought this Guide to the new Facebook Home Page was especially good.

Psychologists tell us that most humans are averse to change. With over 350M users, any change then to Facebook, no matter how small, is bound to upset some segment of the user base. And if just 1% is unhappy and vocal, that’s still 3.5M people.  If 0.1 were unhappy, that would be 350,000 people!

All of this got me thinking. Matrix Group is in the business of redesigning Web sites. We work with clients who want to redesign their sites for all kinds of reasons: name change, the navigation is not intuitive, the company’s focus has changed, yada, yada. But if Facebook users are any indication of how averse we are to change, no matter how rational, articulated or needed, there is always going to be a segment that is unhappy. This unhappy user base may be vocal about it, which I think is a good thing because then you have an opportunity to respond to the concerns.  If the user base is unhappy and silent, then you’re in trouble because you don’t know you have a problem.

If you know you need a redesign, here are my thoughts for managing the change:

• Let your user base know that change is coming and explain why.
• When the new site is live, announce the change multiple times and keep explaining it.
• Provide narratives and videos that explain how to get around the new site.
• Provide a way for your customers and members to provide feedback and suggestions for tweaking the new site to make it better.
• Log search results so you’ll get an early warning that visitors can’t find specific content and services.

How about you?  What kind of reaction did you get to your last site redesign?  What did youdo to prep your audience?

What do you do if you make candy, most of your sales in grocery stores are from the checkout lane, and RFID is poised to eliminate checkout lanes?

I attended the holiday reception of the Grocery Manufacturers Association earlier this week.  In addition to mingling with GMA staff and other sister association staff, I got to meet reps from several GMA members, including Tom from The Hershey Company.  I told Tom that Matrix Group has got to be the biggest buyer of the dark chocolate Hershey’s kisses (the dark chocolate kisses are wrapped in purple foil).  Purple kisses are a staple at nearly every Matrix Group meeting because a) they’re purple and b) meetings always run better when there’s chocolate involved.

Tom reported that Hershey’s chocolate is doing well because even during (or perhaps because of) the recession, chocolate is an indulgence most people can afford.  I asked him what’s new in the business of candy/chocolate marketing and he said candy makers are in for a rough ride in the next few years because the grocery store user experience is changing dramatically. Consider this:

• Most candy sales in grocery stores come from the checkout line. Why? Because most people avoid the candy aisle, especially if they’re moms with kids.  So the checkout line becomes the most important place to market candy.
• Grocery stores have been experimenting for years with self-checkout.  Shoppers Food Warehouse has had self-checkout for years.  Tom says we should expect self-check-out to be more common in the future.
• Even with self-checkout, there’s a check-out lane.  BUT, RFID promises an end to the checkout lane as we know it. Last year, for example, Microsoft announced a digital grocery cart that lets shoppers access grocery lists created at home, receive targeted coupons, and scan products as they go into the cart.  With the digital shopping cart, the checkout lane becomes a payment lane; no more waiting, no more scanning.

Yikes and wow!  So if you’re The Hershey Company, Mars or Wrigley, what do you do?  What kind of R&D and marketing initiatives do you start developing now — for the day when checkout lanes are gone forever or at least changed dramatically?

As I thought about candy makers, I realized that grocery stores and manufacturers have been significantly affected by the decline of another industry:  newspapers. Think about it.  Newspapers(especially the Sunday supplement) used to be the way consumers learned about store sales and coupons.  With fewer people subscribing to newspapers, how do they promote their products and promotions? Today, there are zillions of Web sites and mobile apps that will tell you about in-store promotions, offer you coupons and even comparison shop for you. Great for consumers, but a confusing landscape for marketers, for sure.

Finally, if candy makers are being affected by the demise of the checkout lane, what happens to the tabloids and magazines? I think the only time I pick up Southern Living or People is when I’m in the checkout line and passing time.  Ugh, another blow to the publishing industry.  (Hmmm…. did I really admit to my blog readers that I read People?)

How about you?  What technologies on the horizon could significantly impact your business?  And what are you doing about it?

Finally, do you buy candy in the checkout lane?  How will your candy purchases change if and when checkout lanes disappear?  Inquiring minds want to know…

So how come most organizations shy away from incorporating UGC on their sites?

I think it’s because most organizations are not equipped to deal with UGC, good, bad or indifferent.  And they are deathly  afraid of negative comments.  Here’s my take on UGC, why it’s here to stay and why most organizations need a UGC strategy:

• UGC can take many forms. A magazine site that allows visitors to rate articles support UGC.  A store that allows ratings supports UGC.  A blog that welcomes comments invites UGC.
• Sites that welcome UGC invite participation. And participation by the right people encourages more participation and more followers.
• UGC lets you tap into the expertise and experiences of your members, customers, and partners, which will enrich the content you provide.
• Supporting UGC on your site or application does not mean that you lose control. You can set up guidelines and moderate comments.  On this blog, for example, all comments are immediately posted but I get notifications and I spam (delete) all comments that look spammy. Yes, I get the occasional snarky or negative comment, but unless the post contains profanity, I leave it on the site.  The New York Times recently announced that Wikipedia, the site built on UGC, will soon impose a layer of editorial review on articles about living people.
• Celebrating UGC lets you tap into most visitors’ need for true interaction with you and your organization. I read every comment on this blog and respond personally when I get a request for information or assistance.  I believe these interactions have helped Matrix Group make followers out of readers.
• If your organization is suffering from criticism re: transparency and responsiveness, UGC can help you face your critics directly. The Direct Selling Association launched a blog 18 months ago to counter false perceptions about direct selling.  Although apprehensive about allowing comments in real-time, the organization decided it needed to make a strong statement about integrity and transparency.  The results have been great.  Negative comments are opportunities to address criticisms and myths.  More importantly, the negative comments have been few and far between.
• Supporting UGC is also a wonderful way to let your staff, clients, partners and friends network and share their experiences. I was moved by the dozens of memories that members of the Matrix family posted to our 10th anniversary microsite.  I didn’t know about some of the antics and every single post was a treat!

How about you?  What’s your take on user-generated content?  What are your favorite UGC sites?  Has your organization taken the UGC plunge?

Our communication/conversation strategy has several elements:

• Communication vehicles. We created an inventory of all the ways that we use to communicate with clients and prospects.  Our inventory includes: the Web site, e-mail newsletter list, blog, Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, and e-mail discussion lists.

• Communication schedule. We have mapped out a schedule that delineates what we will post or send out every day, week, month, and quarter.  For example, we strive to tweet every day, update our Facebook page twice a week, and post new blog entries twice a week.

• Content strategy. We believe that it’s important to NOT post the same stuff across all channels.  For example, on the Matrix Group Twitter account, we tweet about association/non-profit news, how companies and organizations are using the Web and social networking in interesting ways, cool sites, Web standards, site and application launches, job openings, Matrix Group events, and fun stuff going on around the office.  My personal Twitter account (@jmpineda) is different; I will post personal updates, sites I love, business news and trends, cool gadgets, blog posts and Matrix Group events.  You’ll notice that there is overlap in what we tweet when it comes to Matrix Group; otherwise, what we tweet between the two accounts is very different.  That’s intentional; we want our followers to have a different experience on each Twitter account.

• Tone and voice. Our Creative Director, Alex, says tone and voice are very important, no matter what the vehicle, so we have guidelines for the writing across our sites and pages.  Our updates are always professional, not formal but not too casual either, friendly and warm.

• Engagement and response. Since we seek engagement across the different channels, we strive to respond to every single e-mail, blog comment, direct tweet, etc.  We may not get back to folks instantly, but inquiries and comments get responded to within a day or two.  For example, when someone asks a question on my blog, I post a comment AND I send a direct e-mail.

You’ll notice that we don’t have a separate social networking strategy.  Instead, we have integrated the social network sites into our overall communications plan. All of this is working for us.  Leads from the Web site have increased by several hundred percent, the quality of the leads is amazing, we are getting good candidates for our jobs, and clients are interacting with us in new and different ways.

How about you?  What content and communication strategies are working for your organization?