Jun

26

How to *really* know your blog is successful (or not)

Filed Under Blogging, In the life, Social Media, Web | 2 Comments

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How to *really* know your blog is successful (or not) (image: 256)Hey! How’ya doin’!
There are many ways to define your blog’s success; Hits, Links, Trackbacks, Comments, PageRank, Subscribers, etc.

These are all good indicators of activity. Your blog is busy. You’re getting a lot of pageviews. People are hitting and reading and crawling the pages and posts of your blog. All is good, according to the numbers.

But those are only numbers, not people with goals and needs — your visitors and their reason for visiting your blog. How do you measure up in the Visitor metric? I bet you won’t find that one in many analysis textbooks.

How to *really* know your blog is successful (or not) (image: 256)Did you find what you’re looking for?
Good question! Because short of receiving email or comment posts telling you about a problem or concern, you have no idea if the 30 unique visitors to your blog today managed to achieve their goal for visiting! You just know that they visited.

Current analytics platforms like StatCounter, Google Analytics, Microsoft AdCentre Analytics, or even the new live analytics Woopra (more on that in another post), can’t really tell you if any visitor actually read and learned something from your latest post. They can only tell you what that visitor did while they were on your blog. Period.

Ask the question.
’s Analytics Evangelist Avinash Kaushik recently launched a free, little (4Q) that will allow you better understand your visitor behaviour by presenting them with a friendly and polite ‘exit survey’ when they leave your blog.

The way it works.

4Q employs a two-stage invitation process. When visitors arrive at your site, they will be presented an invitation to participate in a survey after their session. If they accept, a second, minimized window, which contains the survey itself, will be launched and will wait in the background for the visitor to complete his or her session. 4Q surveys are designed to be collaborative brand building exercises, not annoying browsing interruptions.
(from the FAQ)

How to *really* know your blog is successful (or not) (image: 256)What’s in it for me?
Knowledge. Direct feedback. 4Q survey results enable you to know that the sampled visitors said they’re happy, or unhappy. You know that they’ve said they’ve achieved their task or goal. And you’ve asked them for specific feedback so you can improve. All benefits for anyone who cares about improving the visitor’s .

So, to really know if your visitor was satisfied, you need to ask them. Nicely, politely, but ask them. It shows you care about your visitor’s .

Now you know, and you’re much better off that simply guessing based on the numbers. Oh happy day!

*** Update ***
Apologies for the images not showing up. Bad formatting for Brad.

As well: as I noticed when replying to Margaret in the SocialMediaToday version:

…Also, one thing I neglected to mention in the post, the survey doesn’t
appear for every visitor. You can scale the sample rate in the
. The default sample rate is 10% of the unique visitors, so
one in ten will be asked to participate…

Technorati Tags: , , , , , ,

Jun

23

Tweaking your FeedBurner / FeedSmith plugin to support Wordpress 2.5+ tag feeds (easy!)

Filed Under Blogging, How to, Social Media | 4 Comments


FeedBurner Logo (© FeedBurner, Inc.)
Creative Commons License photo credit: magbag

Sorry for the uber tech in this post, but I thought this was a simple fix that anyone running a Wordpress 2.5+ blog could do if they wanted to enable ‘Tag Feeds’.

Before I get into the how, let’s explore the why briefly.

Some background:

The current incarnation of the FeedSmith / FeedBurner plugin doesn’t support the new feature of RSS Tag Feeds. No big deal if you don’t care about allowing your visitors to subscribe to your based on Tag. But you’re missing an opportunity to allow your readers to better filter the if that’s the case.

For example, lets say a visitor is only interested in receiving my posts on photography. They don’t care about all this , , usability, or search engine optimization that I may be about. They only care about my photography posts. 2.5+ allows you to subscribe to any Tag Feed or Category Feed. But not if you’re using an unmodified FeedSmith plugin. Fear not, I’ve got a fix for you in a moment.

The way the current FeedSmith plugin works is that it takes all my feed subscription requests (comment, category, tag, etc) and returns only the main blog RSS feed, which is the main feed at Feedburner. Not good if you want to have an RSS Feed of only my photography tagged posts.

The workaround is quite simple and requires slightly modifying your FeedBurner / FeedSmith plugin. Here’s how:

  1. Navigate to the main Plugins page. Scroll down until you find the Feedburner / FeedSmith plugin. Click on the Disable link in the right-hand column. When the page refreshes, scroll back down and click on the Edit link.
  2. The Plugin Editor screen will open. Scroll down in the edit window until you find the function function ol_feed_redirect()
  3. In that section you’ll be adding text to a line of code. Change the text that reads
    is_feed() && $feed != 'comments-rss2' && !is_single() &&
     to read
    is_feed() && $feed != 'comments-rss2' && !is_single() && !is_tag() &&
  4. Scroll to the bottom of the page and press the Update File button.
  5. Then, go back to the main Plugins page, and re-enable the FeedBurner / FeedSmith plugin by clicking on the Enable link.

Congratulations, you’ve just re-enabled Tag RSS Feeds for your 2.5+ blog whilst maintaining Feedburner compatibility for the main feed.

Bonus for the advanced student: Since your Tag RSS Feeds are now separated from the main blog feed, you can set up discreet Feedburner feeds for select tags. Unfortunately the little above won’t automagically redirect RSS Subscriptions to Feedburner for you, as the FeedSmith Plugin does. You’ll have to manually publish the Feed URL, thusly:
<a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/BlogbradgriercomWordpress">My tag feed hosted on Feedburner</a>

Which would render thusly:

My Wordpress tag feed hosted on Feedburner.

Jun

20

How has the Logitech G15 (v2) fared after 6 months?

Filed Under In the life, Review | Leave a Comment


How has the Logitech G15 (v2) fared after 6 months? (image: 300px-Logitech_G15_v2)You may remember that I went through a rather interesting guarantee replacement with Logitech over the wearing paint on my original G15 keyboard. The short version is that they happily replaced it with a new, Version 2 G15.

I thought I’d take a moment and update my thoughts about it.

  1. I miss the three-key wide layout of the original G15. for , the bank of keys laid out three wide were much better than the existing single bank vertically aligned.
  2. I miss the blue key lighting. Amber is neat, but I still like the blue.
  3. The LCD display is a bit smaller. I may have to get reading glasses (not yet) to read my custom LCD Studio display…and that’s a neat thing.
  4. LCD Studio works fine with it. This allows for custom displays that you can configure for anything from in-game messages to current ammunition levels.
  5. USB Ports seem more stable. On the original G15 the seemed to draw more power, causing my computer to give me issue. With this the V2 G15, they’ve all gone away.

And as for the key paint? I’m getting a bit of shine on the space-bar and other commonly use keys, but the paint isn’t wearing through. I’m keeping my fingers crossed (which makes typing darned difficult!).

Jun

19

Key Messages from the Gerry McGovern Masterclass, Ottawa, May 5-6, 2008

Filed Under Blogging, How to, Review | 1 Comment


Wild Abandon
Creative Commons License photo credit: dandy_fsj

To wrap up this interview series with Krista Vieira, we’re featuring the Key Messages generated by conference attendees.

If you missed the interview series read these:

Key Messages from the Gerry McGovern Masterclass, Ottawa, May 5-6, 2008

  • We need a clarity of understanding of what our website is for.
  • To much choice = no choice.
  • We must focus on what our customers want. Why are they coming to our website? What task are they trying to complete?

Customers

Customers are:

  • Harsh, demanding and difficult
  • Skeptical and cynical of authority
  • Have the power on the - not the organization
  • Dictators, not kings
  • Impatient
  • Quick to use they’re favourite button - the Back button

reality #1: The takes the power to control information away from the organization and gives it to the people.

The is about giving real information and facts. The allows people to get to know a subject better or make a better decision. People can comparison shop; read reviews; find out what other people think, etc.

The is the land of A.D.D. We live in a money rich, time poor economy. Time is our most valuable resource. We measure our website’s success by the time it takes users to do something; the quicker they perform the task, the better. The sin of the modern economy - though shall not waste my time.

reality #2: Using the is not a planned activity; it’s rushed, impatient and hurried. People are searching the in between commercial breaks, after they’ve put the children to bed, when they’re tired. Accept this: the is ALWAYS fitted in between something else.

Building Trust

  • People trust people like themselves, not authority figures. They will trust the factory worker more than the CEO.
  • Give the truth on the not PR or marketing. This will build trust.
  • No one believes an organization is perfect, so they don’t expect it.

Importance of Simplicity

  • We read on the like we’re riding down an escalator.
  • needs to be direct and to the point. Think speed of action and clarity of message.
  • The is an active doing medium, so use the language of action. Don’t talk about what you’ve done or what you’re going to do. Don’t become the passive communicator, become the active facilitator of the .
  • Every time you add to your website, you complicate things. There is always a trade-off with simplicity. To make something more simple means something else will be more complicated. Focus on doing your top task well, then worry about the rest of the website.
  • Something that’s easy is immediately doable. Show by doing; don’t talk about it. For example: doesn’t have to explain to you how to search. The simplicity of it immediately makes it usable.
  • Don’t talk about an form, let people use it.

Remember, are built from, and function, on words.

The is Self- or Having a Customer-Centric Website

Only having information on the is the greatest mismanagement of a website. People are not coming to looking for information. Do you go to an information booth and just ask them to give you information? People come to the to solve a problem.

Information only has value when associated with a task. Identify the most important tasks and make sure your customer’s can find them and complete them quickly.

reality #3: Sometimes we spend so much time doing things wrong, that we don’t have the time to do things right. The best focus on their top tasks and keep improving them. They find out how people are reacting.
3 core rules of self-:

  1. Convenience
  2. Speed
  3. Price (the is the land of the cheap deal)

If you can’t do price, you’d better do the other two really well.

reality #4: Having a customer-centric website means the focuses on what the customer wants. When an organization doesn’t know its customers or what they want, they end up with a put-it-upper website: can you put this up for me by Thursday? The 20,000 page website is built by put-it-uppers.

Economies that aren’t successful put numerous steps in the way of their customers. For example, in Peru it takes 289 steps to set up a company.

We measure success by the amount of time it takes people to do something.

To have a customer-centric website:

  1. Identify the top tasks
  2. Speak the language the customer is using. Don’t make them use the organization’s language.

The is where you go to do stuff. In order for a person to do something, a website must be useful. We must potty train our so we get rid of the we-we’s: We did this; we launched that.

We must focus on what the customer wants to do.

Additional Resources:

Jun

18

How to install Firefox 3 without borking your Firefox 2 installation (it’s easy!)

Filed Under Doing, How to | 1 Comment


Download Day - English
In my work I need to view as my audiences do. Which means I need to have various browsers and configurations available to me. This is a -only How-to, as my work environment is not mine to design.

Yesterday Mozilla released Firefox 3 after a robust public beta period. On my production machine, I try to avoid installing beta , lest any untoward issues pooch my pay-generating-device :)

So I need to run Firefox 2 and 3 off the same machine. I needed to install Firefox 3 without breaking my Firefox 2 installation.

Here’s how I did it.

  • Launch Firefox 2 from the command line using the following:
    /path/to/firefox -profilemanager -no-remote
    This will open the FireFox 2 profile manager. Remember that ‘-no-remote‘ parameter, we’ll need that again later. It isolates each running version of FireFox from each other.

  • Create a new profile for use exclusively with FireFox 3. I called mine ‘Firefox3′ . Make sure you uncheck the ‘Don’t ask at startup’ box to ensure you are presented with a choice when you launch FireFox. The idea with the second profile is to keep your settings, tweaks, extensions, and all other customizations you’ve made in Firefox 2 from being changed by Firefox 3.

  • Rename your ‘default’ profile to Firefox2. This is the default profile you’ve likely been using up to now. Renaming will make it easier to differentiate profiles.

  • Install Firefox 3. You’ll need to select the ‘custom’ installation option and create / select a different directory for Firefox 3. This is to prevent the Firefox 3 installation process from overwriting Firefox 2. Also Uncheck the Use Firefox as my default browser box. DO NOT start Firefox 3 as the last step of the installation procedure. Uncheck the ‘Launch Firefox now’ checkbox and Finish your installation.

  • Find the Firefox 3 shortcut and view its Properties. Select the Shortcut tab. Add -no-remote -p firefox3 to the end of the text in the Target: box. It should read something (not exactly) like this:
    "C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox 3\firefox.exe" -no-remote -p firefox3
    You’re telling Firefox 3 to launch a new instance and use the profile named ‘firefox3′

  • Find your Firefox 2 shortcut and repeat the step you just did for Firefox 3 — append that text to the Target: box text making changes where appropriate (IE: Firefox3 becomes Firefox2. This will keep Firefox 2 and 3 from noticing each other allowing you to run both at the same time, if you wish.

  • Note: Now when you launch Firefox 2 or 3, you may be alerted that the version you’ve just started is not the default browser. That’s ok and to be expected. Depending on your need, you can make one the default browser and have it automagically launch when you click a link in email, or through other . I’m leaving Firefox 2 as my default browser until I am very comfortable with 3.

My observations:

  • Firefox 3 is new, fresh out of beta. Expect the unexpected

  • Not all plug-ins and extensions are compatible.

Your turn. What do you think of Firefox 3? What works and doesn’t? Did this installation walkthrough help?

Hat Tip to Chu Yeow and Angus.

Jun

18

Gerry McGovern Masterclass — essential content for content managers (part three)

Filed Under Doing, How to, Web | 1 Comment



The Novelist
Creative Commons License photo credit: iDream_in_Infrared

Part three: The good, the bad, and the developer.

This is the third part of an interview with Krista Vieira, my co-worker and recent attendee of Gerry McGovern’s Masterclass for professionals. Part one focuses on knowing your . Part two is about keywords, carewords and focus. In this part, Krista speaks about the role of the manager / developer.

Q: You’ve worked as a developer and professional for quite a few years now, was there anything at the masterclass that shocked or surprised you?

I wasn’t so much surprised as disappointed by the number of that don’t focus on the . Obviously I am aware of this, but it really sunk in seeing example after example after example. This is not just a North American problem it’s global.

Gerry has a knack for pointing out the absurd on a website and getting participants to see the page with new eyes (along with showing us it’s OK to laugh at ourselves). I found it interesting that in each example he sited, the organization completely missed the mark when it spent to much time focusing on them and not enough time focusing on the . Each website that made improvements did so by focusing on what their particular wanted.

I find it funny that in traditional advertising, marketers take the time to get to know the demographic they are selling to. They find out what motivates a particular group, then build an ad campaign around what will best speak to the they are trying to reach. People seem to forget that the is really just another marketing tool. Marketers forget that they still need to focus on the and deliver a message in a way that will reach the people they are trying to reach.

For some reason I have still not figured out, a lot of people working on the take it really personally. They create something and it becomes all about them, so it’s difficult at times to recommend changes or improvements.

The is a really fun place to work, but at the end of the day it’s not about the team or the organization the website if built for, but the . Something not working on the does not automatically translate to being a poor communicator or being bad at your job. I think of it like a teacher. When you become an educator you learn that people have different learning styles. Some people respond better to hands-on learning, while others respond better to textbook or traditional lecture style learning. A good educator understands the need to teach to all styles of learning during class time. Each class will be different, so the teacher needs to identify the learning styles of each class then adapt their teaching to suite the students’ needs.

As communicators, we need to understand that our may not behave on the as we intend. We need to take the time to learn how they are using our website, what’s working for them and what isn’t, so we can adjust our style to best suite their behaviour.

It should be obvious but it isn’t. As communicators, we are producing a product for a particular . How is it we even need to spend any time discussing the importance of finding out who a particular is and what their needs are?

Q: Gerry spoke for two days, and there was a lot of information delivered, but if you could have a second part to the masterclass, what additional information would you like to have heard, or explored in even more detail, if any?

I would like to have a hands-on session that gets participants to start analyzing to see what is working and what isn’t. As I mentioned earlier, Gerry has a knack for pointing out the absurd on a website, things we may notice about a site, but be blind to on our own.

I think it would be beneficial to analyze and break down what makes them good and what makes them bad. At the end, participants could be required to analyze their own . The fresh perspective may allow professionals to step back and clearly see their for what they are. I think as professionals we need to be able to maintain a distance from the we support, so we can continue to see it the way our does.

In the final part of this series, we’ll review key learnings from Gerry McGovern’s Masterclass for Content Managers.

Jun

17

Gerry McGovern Masterclass — essential content for content managers (part two)

Filed Under Doing, How to, Web | 3 Comments



Pure Minimalism
Creative Commons License photo credit: Thomas Hawk

Part Two: Words, Carewords, and Focus

This is the second part of an interview with Krista Vieira, my co-worker and recent attendee of Gerry McGovern’s Masterclass for professionals. Part one focused on knowing your (good advice for any communicator). In this part, Krista talks about carewords and focusing on the really important tasks.

Q:Gerry talks about Carewords, does that resonate with you?

Definitely. I prefer the term carewords to keywords. Carewords focus more on the and what the wants. Keywords is more about the organization and the words the organization wants it’s to use; the words that are important to the president of a company or the head of the marketing/ department.

Carewords ties in to the key messaging we received over the two days - get to know your . A website is built to reach a particular and whether the purpose is to communicate an idea or to sell a product, the purpose is still to reach an . If you don’t use the words the intended uses, you risk not reaching them at all.

By focusing on carewords (the ) and not keywords (the organization) I believe professionals better remember who they are creating the website and the for. Who the is and what they want should always be at the forefront of anything a teams does.

Of all the concepts that Gerry spoke of over the two-day conference, what do you think will be the hardest for most developers to implement? The easiest?

I think the hardest concept for most developers to implement will be to get large organizations to focus on the top tasks of a website regardless of which department those tasks may come from. So often large organizations create large that are arranged in the classic organization-centric manner of departments. Each department is fighting for their position on the website and their portion of the revenue. It’s all about them and not about the .

I think most specialists would like to get large organizations to accept that an doesn’t care which department a particular task or piece of information comes from; to them, the website represents the organization as a whole. Each department needs to work with the others to create a finished product that benefits the . By focusing on the and creating a user-centric website, the revenue will come, the brand will be recognized and the organization’s reputation will be established.

The easiest concept should be to start with the words the is using. This is at least one step in the right direction of focusing a website on the . Some organizations may not support user , but even small teams can track their stats and see which terms are being searched for most. They can then begin to use those search terms in their and check the stats again to see if improvements have been made. This small step may help to support the need for further user . It’s a small step, but a first step non-the-less.

In part three, Krista will look at the role of the content manager / developer.

Jun

16

Gerry McGovern Masterclass — essential content for content managers (part one)

Filed Under Doing, How to, Web | 4 Comments



PyCon crowd
Creative Commons License photo credit: David Ascher

Recently a colleague attended the Gerry McGovern Masterclass on website .

For those of you not schooled in the esoteric yet not-so-obscure art of website , Gerry McGovern is an industry-leading Guru. People tend to listen to what he has to say, even if they can’t convince their organizations to see the light.

Since I couldn’t attend, I thought the next best thing was to eat my colleague’s brains and steal her knowledge, but then realized that wouldn’t work, as I’d be left to do her work as well as my own. Closet Zombies are lazy.

So here’s the next-to-next best thing, an interview with Krista Vieira, my willing victim:

Part One: Getting to know your .

Q: In your mind, what was the strongest, most meaningful point Gerry made and why?

Get to know your . He couldn’t stress that point enough. It was the most repeated message of the two days we spent with him.

As creators, we need to know whom we’re for. We may think we know who is coming to our website, but unless we actually talk to those people, we won’t know for sure. We need to be familiar with our primary audience as well as our secondary audience. Our first priority should be to our primary , but we need to be aware that a secondary - that we maybe didn’t anticipate - exists so over time we can address their needs as well.

Getting to know our will make it clear why they’re coming to our website, what tasks they are performing and how much time they spend using our site. As creators we need to know if our is accessing our website during commercial breaks of their favourite TV show, or once the kids have been put to bed, the dishes have been washed, the bills have been paid and the garbage has been put out. After all of that, how much energy would that person have to spend on our website? Probably not very much.

Knowing our makes it easier for your team to know what to include on the site and what to remove. This knowledge will focus the website and will enable the team to maintain that focus because feedback will constantly be received about what is working and what isn’t.

Doctors or moms?

Gerry cited an example of a pharmaceutical company that sold products to doctors. They created a website and wrote for the medical , using language understandable to doctors. The problem was, doctors weren’t using the site because a sales rep would come and see them. A large portion of the turned out to be mothers. Now, the company’s primary focal point is to sell to doctors, but patients are becoming more educated and better informed about their health and often make suggestions to their doctors. This secondary was using the site so needed to be created to address their needs, presented in a language they could understand. The company decided they needed to include a section that addressed the needs of this particular .

When dealing with two distinct audiences, Gerry stresses to focus on the primary first because that’s the bread and butter of the website. You definitely want to include messaging for a secondary , but you wouldn’t want to focus on that group so much that you alienate the primary . By trying to satisfy everyone you end up satisfying no one.

Managing the managers or defending your actions.

Getting to know our also lends support when making requests to or making decisions about the website. It’s harder for to steer the website in a particular direction if specialists have conclusive support that the doesn’t like a particular feature, etc. It also works in favour of the team. By knowing the they can make suggestions to about what is working with the website and what isn’t.

Tied into knowing your is the reality that the isn’t an event, but a journey. There is no quick fix for knowing your other than taking the time to get to know them. As people, we need to talk to them and see them interacting with our website. Then, we make some changes to the website and find out how our responds to the changes. The response may be good, mediocre, or poor; if improvements need to be made, we go back and tweak some more and gauge the response again.

The misconception is there is a quick fix. Very often teams think they know who the is and they make assumptions about what they want. But, to know what your wants, teams need to actually get to know their . I don’t believe any organization could spend too much time on user and it should be a regular scheduled event for any team.

Coming up in Part Two: Carewords and other million dollar concepts.

…this multi-part interview continues!

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