Mobile Apps for the Uninitiated

June 22, 2011 1 Comment

Last week I gave a presentation at the Web Managers group in London, giving a general overview of what is involved in getting into mobile apps, and some of the key considerations involved. I was a little surprised that of those who were not agency-side, none had yet created an app. Whilst this might be interpreted as a lack of appreciation of the importance of mobile, talking to the web managers it was also clear that this could be seen as a sensible caution over getting into a new platform just for the sake of it.

You can get the content of my presentation from here.

How mobile fits into a broader content strategy is a difficult question to answer – it depends on  the nature of the content that an organisation is providing. In order to have any kind of ongoing usefulness, a mobile app needs to be focussed on making commonly undertaken tasks more convenient to complete or on providing rich and entertaining interaction that has some possibility for progression. Given the propensity of users to offer feedback freely, creating an app with a contrived need runs the risk of negative reviews and damage to the corporate brand.

  • If your audience have a frequent engagement with your services, such as maintaining an account, ordering, obtaining guidelines or updated materials, or engaging in communication, then there is probably a case for creating an app.
  • If you provide regular content updates to your audience, but only in small volumes, then an RSS feed, or a mobile friendly site is more likely to be a good means of engaging your mobile users.
  • If you do not have regularly updated content, or news about your services or events, then a mobile friendly site is probably the answer.

Depending on the precise needs of your audience and your business, there are a whole range of options available for reaching out into the mobile space:

  • RSS feed
    not mobile specific, but can be consumed easily by smart phone users
  • Mobile friendly site
    a good starting place, but remember, just creating a mobile-skin for your site is not enough – your content and navigation must reflect the specific needs of mobile consumption – your content must be bite-sized and succinct
  • Site in an app
    brochure ware for the mobile – effectively a website wrapped up as an app – quick to produce, you can say it’s an app, but if you don’t do it well, your audience will be disappointed
  • Cross-platform HTML5 hybrid app
    implemented using a cross-mobile framework such as PhoneGap, AppCelerator, RhoMobile, AppMobi (and many more) – good for multi-platform, provides access to some of the phone’s underlying functionality, allows reuse of code – these frameworks keep getting better, but they are still not as slick as a native app
  • Native app
    created separately in the native language for each platform – provides the slickest experience, but at a price

There is no one-size fits all approach to success in mobile. The mobile space is fast changing, and there are lots of options for getting involved – mobile apps being only one form of engagement. The important thing is to be clear about your aims and your audience – reach out to them early, get user groups involved in appraising prototypes and get plenty of feedback before launching.

 

Filed under Design and Technology, Mobile, Technologies Tagged with , ,

What should you expect from your CMS?

March 22, 2011 Leave a comment

Content is key to raising your profile on the web, and having good quality, relevant, accessible content is essential to attract good search ratings. Good quality content is time consuming to author and approve – so being able to reuse it is important for increasing the returns, in terms of visits, revenue and long term interaction, that it can help to generate.

Implementing a web site using a Content Management System (CMS) is a major undertaking. The end result should be a platform that will facilitate the growth of relevant services and channels of communication for your key target audiences. A good CMS should make it both quick & easy to author content and to reuse it.

Adapting to new online behaviour

In the digital age, users expect content to be up-to-date and relevant to their needs. What is relevant at one point in time may not be relevant at another. Patterns of engaging with content are also changing rapidly with the explosion of mobile internet. The market for smartphones and tablets has already surpassed the sales of PCs[1]. Already 90% of mobile phone subscribers have phones that can browse the web[2] – but the actual use of mobile internet will eclipse that of the fixed internet within the next couple of years[3].

With mobile internet rapidly becoming the primary means of accessing the web, users will naturally expect content to be provided in a form that is appropriate for mobile devices. More and more users will be accessing your content directly from search, or from links in recommendations in social media.

In order to maximize the returns from your online presence, your strategy will need to adapt to accommodate these changing patterns of usage. Your online strategy will need to support these changes in patterns of usage and your CMS platform should enable you to easily adapt your existing content, with little modification, to use in these new channels.

The end result of a successful CMS implementation is a platform that enables you to keep up with your users by providing these key benefits:

  • Easy to author and maintain content
  • Easy to reuse and repackage content across different site areas and web browsing platforms
  • Easy to re-theme content where required, keeping content but changing its appearance
  • Easy to make content searchable and findable
  • Easy to set up new data captures and communication channels with your users
  • Clear APIs extending CMS and storing data within CMS structures
  • Easy to upgrade your platform and take advantage of new features

There are no doubt many CMS systems that can offer these benefits – but the best ones are those created by a development team that are focussed on their clients with a clear roadmap and vision for the future. Fortunately for my agency, these are things that have been abundantly provided by our chosen CMS supplier – Kentico.

Filed under Content Management, Design and Technology, Internet, Opinions, Technologies Tagged with , ,

KISS with CMS!

February 25, 2011 Leave a comment

KISS – “Keep It Simple Stupid” – is often mentioned in relation to technology, but not very often observed. User Experience may be well established now as a discipline, but many systems are still woefully lacking in due consideration for users, requiring them to jump through lots of hoops to achieve their everyday goals.

Content management systems (CMS), including intranets, are an increasingly important kind of technology, one that more and more corporate staff are expected to deal with. Given its expanded role, it is vital that users should feel comfortable using their company’s system whenever they need to. For some users this will be an every day experience, and for others once a week, perhaps. Some users may access the content over the web on their PCs, others on their tablets or mobiles.

However frequently it is used, and on whatever platform, it is vital that users find their system intuitive and engaging – they should only be presented with the minimum level of complexity required to complete the task at hand, any extra complexity should be accessible in the background, but neatly tucked away. The tasks that take up 80% of your time as a user shouldn’t be slowed down by the ones that take up 20% of your time.

Being Useful Means Being Usable
It may be a tautology, but it is still one that is worth spelling out: a system is only useful if it is used, and it will only used if it is usable – hence careful interface design has a major role to play in the effectiveness of information systems. In an age when organisations are expected to produce a constant stream of timely and appropriate content, it is in their interests to decentralise the creation of content and the sharing of knowledge, to avoid the ever present problem of content bottlenecks. It is thus also in the interests of organisations to make their systems as easy to use as possible.

I have witnessed many different CMS systems in use, of all shapes and sizes, and some of them prove to be difficult to use because they employ inconsistent or unclear metaphors for interacting with content. I have sat through training sessions on some of the market leading CMS systems, where most of the time seemed to be spent explaining away idiosyncracies of the interface. The success of such systems often reflects the fact that sales are sometimes made purely in the boardroom, rather than with reference to everyday users.

A CMS system may in itself be excellent, but if the agency implementing a website or intranet is lacking a deep understanding of its inner workings, and best practices, you can be sure that users will have a hard time getting to grips with the implementation. On a number of occasions I have had to pick up projects where an agency has thought that a CMS just means editable text, rather than structured content, meaning that users were expected to user HTML in their editing process, when properly implemented the users should only need to worry about their own content.

The Influence of Software as a Service (SAAS)
If there is something that the explosion of Software as a Service has demonstrated, it is that given the right kind of intuitive interface, users can be up and running in moments with doing what they need to do, even if the more complex side of their activities may require some extra training or research. It should be just the same with a CMS system – get up and running in minutes, while you find out more about the advanced features as and when you need to. A good CMS system should be effectively invisible to users – if it is working, it should not draw attention to itself, the focus should be the creation, the curation and the consumption of content.

Kentico CMS – Easy and Effective
There are no doubt many CMS systems that could be used to achieve the appropriate mix of simplicity, engagement and sophistication for users, but my own personal preference is Kentico. Ever since I chose this as my agency’s preferred CMS platform, I have been consistently impressed with its mix of features and simplicity – when properly implemented, users find it so easy to get to grips with that they hardly need any training. At the same time, it can do anything it needs to, as well as being easy for developers to extend in any way required. Whichever tool you use to manage your organisation’s content – don’t forget to keep it simple!

Filed under Content Management, Internet, Intranet, Technologies Tagged with , , , , , ,

Roundup of the Week (w/e 20/02/2011)

February 21, 2011 Leave a comment

Last week’s tech headlines were filled with the endless stream of model releases and general hullabalo of the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. To mobile vendors and resellers alike it was certainly a key event, but remarkably little news of substance emerged – predictably given the difficulty in getting one’s message heard above the noise.

No doubt about it though, Google’s made a huge impression with their sushi-bar style display with Android handsets passing tantalisingly by the assembled journalists, the mainfold shapes and sizes of Google’s challenge to Apple. Whilst this year will continue to be Apple’s in mobile and tablet terms, something tells me that next year will be Google’s.

Market News

  • Mobile Subscription Wars – Apple Demands 30% Share of in-App Purchase Revenue, Google asks for 10%
    Apple is now demanding a 30% cut of any revenue passing through its market place (gross, not net). If content providers want in on Apple’s platform, they can’t offer their content cheaper anywhere else. The predictable reaction from content providers suggests that many of them will simply look for alternative platforms…In a direct counter to Apple, Google announced it’s One Pass subscription model with a more modest share of 10% going to Google and the user data passing to the content provider – a deal that is clearly going to be much more attractive than Apple’s for publishers and the music industry. Over the long term, I can’t help thinking Apple have got this badly wrong. For the analysis in full see https://takenobabble.wordpress.com/2011/02/21/that-30-revenue-cut-subscriptions-and-the-end-of-apple%E2%80%99s-empire/.
  • This Weeks Punch-Up – Mozilla v. Microsoft over IE9
    Last time round Microsoft received a savaging from Google over the ownership of search results and Bing. This week, Mozilla suggested that IE9 was not a truly modern browser, given its poor support for HTML5 and its second-rate CSS compliance. Anyone in the web design business could tell you a tale of woe about time, effort and money wasted on the non-compliance of IE6/7/8 – let’s all pray that in practice Mozilla are wrong – and certainly this hasn’t put off the 2 million who downloaded the release candidate within a week of being published.
    http://opensource.cbronline.com/news/mozilla-attacks-microsoft-claims-ie9-not-modern-170211

CMS / Knowledge Management

Web

  • IE9 Offers “Pinning” to the Task Bar in Windows 7 as a Key Traffic Builder for Sites
    With the advent of IE9, it is now possible to have your site, rather than just the web browser, pinned to the task bar on Windows 7.  This is already proving a major traffic booster to sites that are using it, even though IE9 is still only in Released Candidate.
    http://news.cnet.com/8301-10805_3-20031845-75.html
  • Google Nearing Completion of Google Native Client for Browsers
    Anyone who attempted to use Microsoft’s ActiveX client plugins for delivering complex functionality to the web in years gone by may well have some apprehensions about the complications of using a similar platform. Google, however, assure us that the new Google Native Client will have none of the complexity and security concerns of Microsoft’s aged technology. If Google pull it off, it will herald the advent of full-powered low-level code running at high speed as proper apps within browsers – let’s hope they succeed.
    http://www.engadget.com/2011/02/20/googles-native-client-almost-ready-for-takeoff-ready-to-make/

Social Media

  • Twitter banished UberMedia, then readmits them
    Twitter doesn’t often make the news for reasons other than growth or potential mergers and acquisitions. This week, however, Twitter suspended use of its API by UberMedia’s popular Twidroyd Twitter app, citing irregularities in manipulation of user posts for money. This caused somewhat of an outcry, as it immediately led to the blocking of access to Twitter, through the app, of a large number of users. Twitter has relented on the basis of reassurances offered by Ubermedia – though this will require an application update to be released by the publishers.
    http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/androidcentral/~3/pbRCEttK-W0/ubermedia-responds-twidroyds-suspension

Tablets

Android Market Growth Outstripping Apple Store

  • The App Genome Project by Lookout Security compared in detail the development of the Android Market with that of the Apple Store, highlighting some eye catching trends. Over the period since August last year, the Apple Store has grown by 44% and the Android market by 127%. The proportion of paid apps, and particularly paid apps over 99 cents in the Android Market has also markedly risen. As one might expect, as a more mature market, the Apple Store is nearer to saturation – but if these comparative rates of growth are sustained, the Android Market will surpass the Apple Store at some point mid-2012.
    http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/219780/app_genome_project_finds_android_apps_outpacing_ios.html

Mobile

Desktop

  • Mac App Store off to Good Start – Microsoft an Early Publisher!
    The launch of the Mac App Store is yet another significant move for Apple, bringing the tendency of users to buy fragments of functionality, rather than major app suites, to the desktop.  To a lesser degree this experience already exists in the form of Browser Plug-ins, particularly on Chrome, but the move by Apple is sure to be duplicated on other platforms, thus changing the dynamics, not to mention the economics, of the purchase of desktop software. Ironically, Microsoft were in on the game early, providing a Mac based version of software to connect to Windows 7 mobile.
    http://feeds.arstechnica.com/~r/arstechnica/index/~3/KOHgUntq_N0/ios-developers-making-leap-to-the-mac-thanks-to-mac-app-store.ars

This Week I got Excited About

  • Evernote
    I have tried all manner of personal knowledge management tools – but have only recently tried Evernote – and I’m mightily impressed – specifically because the variety of apps and browser plug ins available means that you can capture virtually anything you are up to on the fly, and have it synced via a web account with all of your devices. For a good overview of what you might want to do with it, see http://www.openforum.com/idea-hub/topics/the-world/article/14-practical-ways-to-use-evernote-guy-kawasaki

Filed under Google, Internet, Market, Mobile, Technologies, Twitter, Weekly News Tagged with , , , , , , , , ,

A “Marriage Contract” for Successful Projects

February 17, 2011 Leave a comment

When a client engages the services of an agency on a major project – an intranet or major web site for instance – the important elements of the contract are not necessarily those written on the paper to which the signatures are added. Given the high level of mutual dependency, intense frequent contact and joint expectations, this relationship can often feel like a marriage.

If it is going to work, the relationship must be fair,  the “marriage contract” must allow for trust and understanding on both sides. The agency, for its part, must undertake to keep the client’s goals firmly in mind, offering a good level of flexibility and understanding, as well as a commitment to a high quality outcome without trying to pump the price up every time anything changes. On the other hand, the client must understand that not everything can be known in advance – there will be human, organisational and technological challenges that crop up along the way, delaying the project, or requiring more effort and resources. The client must also understand that the agency is a business, that work costs money and that changing decisions costs time. Most importantly, perhaps, they should be willing to listen to informed advice and accept that any agency worth its salt will have some useful insight into what works and what doesn’t work in their own particular medium.

Like all marriages, the one between agency and client must involve mutual empathy and respect – liking each other helps too. Working in an often very exposed position, dealing with the high and often conflicting expectations and desires of the many and varied project stakeholders, the client Project Lead needs the agency to understand the pressure to deliver, they need to be know that when their neck is on the line, the agency will pull out all the stops to make good on promises made. Similarly, on the agency side of the fence, the project manager knows the importance of regular praise and thanks for their team – designers and developers work best when they know that the pride they take in their work and the time they spend debating the minutiae of interface design is being appreciated by the users.

Let’s be honest, we all spend a vast amount of time at work. When we are working hard, when we are putting our all into a joint enterprise, we need to enjoy ourselves, to feel fulfilled, to receive encouragement and positive feedback when it is deserved, in the client and agency alike. When the relationship goes well, when everyone feels liked and fairly treated, when everyone is looking out for each other, that is when great things happen, when the ideas flow.  At the same time, just like in any other marriage, there will also inevitably be some habits that may annoy each from time to time – but such is life – sometimes we must all bite our tongues.

Now the project is over, just one question remains – who gets the bouquet?

 

Filed under Opinions, Project Management / Process, Uncategorized Tagged with , , , , ,

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