Agile Web Design September 19, 2008
Posted by simarprit in Design, Web 2.0, Web 2.0 Expo, websites.Tags: Agile Design, Agile Software Development, Software Development Processes, User Experience, Web Design, Web Development
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Agile Web Design and User Experience in Web 2.0 Environment – Jackson Wilkinson’s session
- Agile web design developments core has to be building a window for failure, and a window for bypassing conventional software development process.
- Agile process has a lot to do with iteration a work cycle approach where you keep on entering and exiting the cycle as you tweak and tune. You handle challenges as you move on. Agile processes are largely collaborative.
- Embedding quality in agile processes brings a better product after each iteration cycle
- Time to do really good design work has no alternative, path of least resistance makes for decidedly inferior products which are likely to be similar to many around
- Cycle Zero must have defined receivables, mood boards or dummies should be handled during cycle zero or phase zero whatever you call it.
- User stories stage and cycle planning is critical to cost and time management
- Collaborative UX meeting and Collaborative UI meetings help in thinking out of the box and get everyone on the same page. Designers get a time to figure how the site is going to look like and what the challenges would be.
- Stand-up stage of just an update and plan for the day helps in monitoring agile development and measuring it over various stages.
- Testing, Validation and Public Demos are parts of the cycle and are looked at at-least once in eavery cycle/ phase
- Be rapid through your cycles and don’t justg et stuck at a point, move on, there are going to be other stages of iteration
Content Matters A Web 2.0 Perspective September 19, 2008
Posted by simarprit in Content, Web 2.0, Web 2.0 Expo.Tags: Content, Information, Web 2.0, Web 2.0 Content Issues, Web 2.0 Expo
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This session in Web Expo 2.0 on Content Matters is being coordinated by Liz Danzico.
Some of the facts as preamble to this discussion:
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Content Drives Traffic
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Users don’t read online
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The content now comes in various unexpected ways
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We aren’t writing, we are speaking in text, the internet looks like writing, but it is actually a conversation
Types/ Classification of content
- Navigation & Orientation content
- Labels and action
- Help
- Non textual
- Technical
Executive Summary:
You need a content strategy, and you need a content strategist to look after it. If you have lots of information flowing in from the UGC route, you would be better off dedicating an “Ïnformation Architect” to integrate it. Style Sheets and Content Guidelines are two of the few essential documents which you must have operational in any content development project. To cover against plagiarism, it is important to keep the background documentation and source for your creation handy.
For a successful content strategy you need the team to bring in Passion, Editorial Responsibility and Monitoring Responsibility. Sites which have a major flow of user generated content need to continuously evaluate content on multiple parameters.
A well attended but poorly presented session, too few takeaways from a very illustrious panel.
Search Engine Optimization Success Secrets September 19, 2008
Posted by simarprit in Advertising, SEO, Web 2.0, Web 2.0 Expo.Tags: SEO, SEO Secrest, SEO Tips, SEO Tools, Web 2.0, Web 2.0 Expo
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Best-kept Secrets to Search Engine Optimization Success: the Art and the Science Web 2.0 Expo Conference Session.
Stephan Spencer had his job cut – “I know my job, this is what I can give free comeback to me for business”. Which is fine.
- What’s your competition and why do they come on top, and why do they have a second link, and what can you do to bring there second link out and get your another link in or anyone’s another link in for that matter. He suggested title tweaking and cross link building to reduce competitors link value and get the sub-link out. Both are fine, but we must understand that “ït is a red hat approach with white hat techniques” nothing wrong about it though.
- rel=nofollow needs to be used very effectively to avoid your pagerank dilution, especially on your homepage, preserve it by avoiding it to be distributed towards disclaimers, privacy policy and other such stuff. Wherever you feel the page can do without just use rel=nofollow and make your PR go that extra mile. Smart usage of a tag which is live since 2005.
- Be wise in re-direction, be careful to use 301 and 302 properly, 301 would always pass the page rank and 302 won’t. Know what you are doing and just don’t let it be an accident.
- Google’s Directory allows your robots to visit and crawl it. Develop your spider to go to Google Directory crawl it and measure the page ranks of various sites, make a dump of high pagerank sites and work to get links from them. There are some merit based link selling sites which are not run of the mill, look at buying links from PR 8 sites. Also it is important to remember .edu, .gov and .org links always come on high pecking order.
- Sitewide links from left panel and bottom may not help. One good link from the homepge may be the only thing you may require.
- Do you have a matrix of your competitors links, you need it and you need it now. Chase and be there in that neighbourhood. Good neighbourhood matters and ensure that your links are in good neighbourhood.
- There are lot of absolutely free SEO tools available from Google/ Yahoo/ Microsoft and host of other players, choose your tools and integrate them with your daily tasks. Google Website Analyzer, Google Insights, Wordtracker, Server header checker, css zen garden, SEO title tag plug-in, keyword discovery etc…
- You must use these tools twice once to grow your sites and second time to reverse engineer your competitors.
Stephan knows his job, but for me there was not much new, still revising what you know and hearing what you believe is a good feeling.
Advertising in Web 2.0 September 18, 2008
Posted by simarprit in Advertising, Live Blogging, Marketing, Marketing Strategies, Online Advertsing, Web 2.0, Web 2.0 Expo, websites.Tags: Advertising, Blogging, Digital Advertsing, Indian Blog Writer, Online Advertising, Simarprit, Web 2.0, Web 2.0 Expo
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David Kidder is talking about Challenges on Advertising 2.0
- Automating of advertsing has to be multistage
- Analytic Vs. Creative Challenge
- Cost Optimization challenge has moved over to simplicity challenge and time optimization holds the key
- Decision making speed is rewarding
- Semantics hold the key to success
- Execution enabled but strategy focused approach is working
- Unified accounting measurements is mission critical
Panel Discussion Max Kalehoff, Jim Barnett, Mike Kelly and Tim Hanlon
- Forecasting accurately in digital world is a challenge
- Last 10 years have made things complex in advertising space, talking about simplicity is it real….
- Fundamentally machines just cant solve problems’, it is the quality of human resource which would continue making the difference, complex marketing needs would require complex marketing solutions and complex advertising solutions… so there is no easy way out Brands is a billion dollar issue and is bound to be complex, machines or no machines
- Objective of automation is and should be measurement of every single impression, strategic success rests with computing down to each and every impression released in the digital space.
- User experience needs to be measured to add value to any campaign
- Automation of cource leads to transparency, what is working and what is not, you can’t bull any longer. Transparency is what is creating to complexity and data overload
- Inventory is increasing every minute and new options are emerging simultaneously, which is adding to the complexity, at no point you have clue to the whole offering market has to offer
- Performance of fresh inventory available is very unpredictable, transparency is fine but what to do about the performance.
- Business models need simplicity too, complex advertising options for media buyers can create its own challenge
- Driving leads versus driving revenue, driving global traffic versus driving local traffic and linking them together is also a challenge
- Marketers dream is to make automation give a great flexibility, to ease moving around geographies and medias, and mediums
- Creativity can’t be automated, but at the same time the audience complexity and commonality pushes creative team to try it harder
- Advertisers have a choice and they know it, advertising agencies have a challenge in delivering to their expectations
- Interactivity and measurement would also strongly influence success
- Personal relationships have always driven advertising industry and automation doesn’t change that.
- Relationships are not replaceable but restructuring of relationships is bound to happen, better persons and better processes can be the differentiators
- Non premium inventory is growing and piling up, that is something which doesn’t require personal relationships that can be handled by automation very well
- Most of the automation are aimed at publishers making more money out of what they think is required, which maynot mean much to advertiser and marketer and the advertising company.
- There is a big talent gap which has emerged due to the digital challenge, new products in the market need new marketing approach
- Feature obsession may not be helpful, being choosy in mastering features for your own use is important
- Lot of inventory which has no buyers goes in for house ads, ad networks are not yet working to expectations, it may take some more time for action to happen.
The session concluded with couple of unexciting questions…
Reinvention of Marketing the Web 2.0 Way September 17, 2008
Posted by simarprit in Blogging, Business, Education, Internet, Marketing, Marketing Strategies, Web 2.0, Web 2.0 Expo, websites.Tags: Marketing Strategies, Online, Online Advertising, Online PR, PR, PR 2.0, PR Tips, Public Relations, web marketing
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Brian Solis on Web 2.0 and its role in PR and Marketing, my 2 cents are all over (Brian may or may not agree)
- Customers are moving online, PR and Marketing needs to move beyond 1.0 which it looks like it is stuck in’
- Are you an influencer, or do you know influencers, bloggers are influencers and they are at it
- Perception is important and social web has a role in how you are looked at
- Defining and measuring influence can help in decision making
- Are you everywhere… Traditional media, Events online and offline, New Influencers, Social Networks, Blogs and Comments, Forums, Content Creation & Curation
- Composite strategy can work for you, all encompassing approach to PR and Marketing would help
- Engagement is important in PR now, not just a look or a hit.
- You need to be hybrid PR professional in today’s world
- A PR professional needs to be all it takes he has to be octopus
- PR today all about Public
- A PR professional needs to be participative a good Press Release may not lead to anything
- Common Sense rules the day
- Rules of PR are influenced by rules of Blogging, which has no rules
- Relationship of trust with a lot of guys
- Be incremental in approach, keep sharing and communicating as you go on, let the story build up fast enough
- WOMM (Word of Mouth Marketing) is what every thing leads to.
- PR today has to be organization wide
- Are you everywhere, exclude none
- Do you know where-ever you are, you just have to be everywhere. Look at all of the key networks and measure your performance on all active networks
- Become a resource for people
- Participation is the key and not initiation
- Web Analytics holds the key to how you are doing
- Creating special landing pages for your various activities can help
- Quantification and tying the activity to sales helps
- WEB 2.0 is not frozen, there is a lot more to come so keep learning
- You are the brand you project
- Some resources – Future-works, SocialMediaClub, sncr.org, nowisgone
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