I wasn’t paying attention (big surprise), but this came across my RSS feed: SharePoint + SilverLight. Looks like a good read. The original post is over at the SharePoint Product Blog.
Well, not really. But this white paper covers a lot of the technology and it’s a bit techy for my taste, but you get a pretty good idea how to create a Social Networking feel to MOSS pages.
I sit in a lot of pre-sales meetings, going over requirements. Clients always say the damndest things, and this was actually a discussion that I was having with a friend of my that just started a chiropractic business, also, on Tuesday.
The conversation went a little like this:
“Bob (I won’t hide the names of the innocent), you aren’t charging enough.”
“But I want my services to be affordable, and I want the right kind of clients.”
“What are the right kind of clients?”
“Clients that will value the services that I provide, I want them to show up to appointments, and work on their personal health.”
“But do you really care if they are about their personal health or not? Isn’t it more profitable to take clients with health insurance, instead of providing services to only those that don’t want to go through their insurance?”
“Yes, but those clients cost more because of the paperwork, and a lot of those clients don’t really appreciate the services. They just want the massage, and won’t take steps to help themselves.”
He’s taken a step to providing services for a particular market segment. He might not make as much money, but he’s carving out a niche in his market that he hopes will make him successful in the long term.
That’s a decision that we all have to make at some point — I’ve tried the “lower price, to build a relationship” route, and in my experience in the tech industry, it doesn’t work. My feeling is that those are the same people that will threaten to take their business to China or India or somewhere else, and they’ll never be happy, so I choose to stay in a high priced category. Because of that (whatever rate you are charging), the clients seem to value you more because they know they are paying a higher rate.
Whatever you do, all successful businesses pick their target audience — not trying to be everything to everyone. Apple does it. Microsoft does it. MySpace and Facebook do it. Why should you?
Thoughts, comments?
I’m a print guy, and I’ve always felt that typography, because of the limited nature of what you could use, was actually harder and more valuable on the web. One of the favorite blogs, i love typography, agrees, and they published a great entry of some examples of effective web typography and design.
The biggest lost art in building websites is building content.
There have been quite a few times where I invested a lot of time coming up with a web design or an information architecture, and at the end of that, the response was, “you’re supposed to come up with the content, right?”
The last thing I am, other than coming up with a few catchy headlines and some grammatically incorrect copy, is a copy writer. There should be a dedicated person to this, and there seldom is. Additionally, good writers that can influence are not only hard to find, but paid well — much better than most people are willing to pay, but not as much as their true value.
My advice to clients: great sites have great content. Create great content, and you’ll get more traffic.
By the time most clients get to the point of writing the copy after struggling with the information architecture and the design they just want the site to be done; unfortunately, that’s usually when the real work begins. If they care about doing it right, they’ll care about putting content out there that isn’t marketing speak but that really speaks to the user. Users can figure out when they are being talked down to. Or, as this article points out, passion sells because it connects.
Yeah, yeah, it’s political season, so there should be a few political sites, right? Freedom Speaks is a for-profit political forum that lets you send letters to your political representatives across the board. It has all the bells and whistles for a social website, and seems to be getting some traction, generating a few thousand visitors a month despite being launched just recently.
One of the best features is when you click on a profile, you can see all of the representatives for that person. Very cool.
I’m going to start reviewing the applications of MySpace I come across that I think have some value. Most of them have a serious fun factor — did you really think any of them were going to be actually useful — but there are a few of them that truly extend the profile.
Truth Box — this is a “me too” application, because it’s easy to build, and there’s quite a few other applications just like it.
The whole concept is that people can comment on your profile anonymously, and you can review the comments without making the public right away. It’s an application that appeals mostly to the teen set, I guess, because you can tell someone of what you think of them without having to reveal who you are.
While this particular application isn’t particularly attractive, it’s fairly easy to use, and most of the functionality is easy to find. The viral functionality works the best (of course), and one of the interesting issues with it is somehow people were able to submit comments about a profile I had before I had the application, so I could view them from the storage area.
The is purely a page views application, so the targeting for advertising is almost nil.
Application rating (1 to 5, 5 being highest):
QuickTip: Label the not-so-obvious, giving some kind of indicator what it is with help text and or a label.
Metroblogging is a great site — localized blogs in 54 cities around the world, and they have a map that shows where the cities are. It would be great if i actually knew what the cities were if I hovered over them.
That’s really easy to fix: just add a label next to the city ball, and this would become a much, more usable Flash map.
Even with icons, there should always be some kind of label that indicates what the item is. Users don’t want to have to guess what it is, and even obvious items like folder items aren’t so obvious.
Usability Counts is run by User Experience and Product Management expert Patrick Neeman. He's had many, many job titles (Information Architect, Product Manager, Program Manager, V.P. of Marketing), but now Patrick works for speakTECH, a Microsoft Gold Partner based in Southern California that specializes in MOSS, Custom Development, and Open Social MySpace engagements as a Principal Consultant, User Experience and Product Strategy. He's been working the web for over 13 years -- don't hold that against him.
Ha Phan is a Business Analyst/User Experience Consultant in San Diego, California. Ha has worked for Hasbro, NPR Music, Fisher Price, KCRW Media Player which received an Honorable Mentions from the Webby for Best Practices. Ha has also designed games and Business Process Applications.
