If you are a WordPress fanboy or simply want to learn more about the software that powers nearly one-half of the world’s websites, then attending WordCamp is a good place to start. The event is online this year and you can attend for free.
To celebrate this wonderful event, I have shared my thoughts on maximizing your online experience, and you can read the article here.
Traditionally, when I think of volunteering, two general themes come to mind. First, I think about opportunities to physically assist someone or some organization, such as volunteering at a homeless shelter, cleaning up a highway, or staffing an event at your child’s school. Second, I think about local opportunities, such as what groups nearby need my help. These two themes are intertwined, of course. Because, when we think about volunteering, we typically think about volunteering locally through a nonprofit, religious organization, or otherwise.
These are all very noble endeavors. There is no doubt in my mind that these organizations need help.
But sometimes we cannot help. Be it because we, ourselves, are limited in some way that precludes us from helping. Perhaps we have a physical, mental, or economic challenge we are dealing with that distracts or even prevents us from lending a hand. Maybe volunteering in person is just not the right fit for who we are as an individual, or our skillset.
Some people have a lot of money and very little time, so they choose to write “checks” to organizations as a show of support. That’s okay too.
I’m here to say that all of this is perfectly okay.
Philanthropy is not about a benchmark – you give what you can – and it doesn’t matter if you cannot give a lot compared to your neighbor.
But, there’s another way to give, and it’s called digital philanthropy. Instead of volunteering on your feet on the side of the highway or along the sandy shores of beach doing cleanup, you can contribute to something that is also impactful – open source software.
Now you might be thinking that contributing to software is not volunteering and should not be equated to volunteering at a hospital visiting sick children. I’m not here to opine on what is equivalent to what. Draw your own conclusions, if you must and I will not judge you. But open source software, like WordPress, can empower individuals through the freedom and democracy of publishing. That’s a fairly noble cause (I have bias, of course, because that’s where I contribute some of my time.)
The foundation of open source software is the idea that it “belongs to the community” and that the power of community produces something better (when compared to a closed and proprietary system). By drawing on a global community of volunteers to create a software product, it benefits from broader perspectives and skillsets.
If you want to learn more about what open source software is and why it is so important, here are some great introductions, both using Legos (I have two kids who are into Legos, so this is very relevant to me right now.) If Legos are not your thing, go to YouTube and type “open source software” and you’ll find more than a dozen great primers on open source software.
Open source as explained by Socialsquare using Legos
Open Source explained via Legos by Danielle Thé
Here’s an article by Google entitled, “Why Open Source” which goes a bit deeper.
And finally, here’s a verbatim excerpt from my employer, Automattic, that sponsors my time spent contributing to the WordPress open source project and community:
We believe in democratizing publishing and the freedoms that come with open source. Supporting this idea is a large community of people collaborating on and contributing to this project. The WordPress community is welcoming and inclusive. Our contributors’ passion drives the success of WordPress which, in turn, helps you reach your goals.
WordPress.org
But now to my actual point (sorry it took so long to get there – but I wanted to catch you up.) Anyone can contribute to open source software, especially WordPress. You do not need to be a software developer! You can be a designer, a user experience expert, an accessibility specialist, a writer, a site creator, a publisher, or a translator. Certainly I’m missing something here, but you get the idea – you don’t need to be a programmer and you don’t need to know programming languages. If you do, good for you! If not, you can still volunteer your time in other ways.
For example, in the WordPress project, we power more than 40-percent of the world’s websites (as of 2021). That’s a lot of websites. To get there, WordPress has been translated into more than 70 languages (90% or more) and another 40+ languages have been completed at least 50-percent or more. Many of the contributors that work on translating WordPress are not programmers, they just happen to know more than one language (usually English plus another language).
So, if you want to become part of one of the largest open source software projects in history, even if you do not have programming skills, you can.
And, if you happen to speak more than one language, there’s a great opportunity awaiting you with WordPress. If you are interested in learning more, check out WordPress.org or send me a message. If you would like to help translate WordPress, there’s a call for contributors right now.
Recently, I was the benefactor of a handsome NFLShop.com gift card, courtesy of a promotional credit card offer. So while this post may seem a nit-picky, I am using it to illustrate how a powerful brand has decided to go against established e-commerce practices. Is it paying off? We’ll have to wait and see. In the meantime, here’s the back story so you can decide whether this is a smart move.
Historically, handling fees have not been charged by e-commerce vendors. One has to look no further than the “big guys” – Amazon, Walmart, Target – to see that these e-commerce stalwarts do not charge a handling fee. In fact, the big guys seldom charge shipping fees, provided you make a minimum purchase amount, typically somewhere between $25 and $50 dollars.
Sure, the big guys can absorb the costs. Making it up by volume, as they say. They have enormous buying power and therefore can offer very low prices. Even on items that have extremely low margins or high shipping costs (due to weight and/or size).
In fact, the only vendors left that charge handling or processing fees tend to be the ticket sales vendors such as StubHub and Ticketmaster. Consumers have no choice but to purchase tickets from these platforms, so they are forced to pay these extra fees.
But let’s get back to NFL jerseys for now. The actual cost of manufacturing a jersey is under $20, typically done overseas in a place like China. The vendor then has to pay expensive licensing fees to the league which are eye-popping on a per unit basis – several dozen dollars. From there, they then wholesale the jerseys to vendors (at a 100% markup) and then the vendors sell them to the consumer at 100% markup. That’s how a $20 jersey becomes $350. Don’t forget tax, too.
Start eliminating steps along the way by manufacturing jerseys and selling directly to consumers, and the vendors can keep the prices the same, but double profits.
Simply put, the jersey market is extremely profitable. There are downsides too, such as manufacturing too many jerseys of a player who then retires, gets injured, is traded, etc… those jerseys become difficult to sell. Manufacturers have become very smart though, printing jerseys on-demand or “shells” where they can then apply the name and number locally once ordered. This costs a bit more to do, but limits production waste.
So, needless to say, when I recently went to NFLshop.com use my gift cards, I was surprised that after purchasing two jerseys for about $250 (these were not the game jerseys, but a cheap quality version), I was not only charged $4.99 for standard shipping, but also $1.99 for “handling”. Now, again, I’m not going to complain. Not only did I have gift cards, but I also had a coupon code. So I’m quite happy with my purchase, and the price I paid compared to the Buccaneer’s stadium shop (which I get a 15% discount at as a season ticket holder), was still better. I’m simply perplexed that these were two line items on such a high-margin sale. I probably would not even be here writing this article had the e-commerce site simply rolled the handling charge into the shipping charge and just charged me more for shipping. Charge me $6.99 and make an extra penny while you’re at it. I would not have known the difference.
So I decided to tweet the NFLshop.com to see what would happen.
Of course @OfficialNFLShop charges a $1.99 processing fee on top of tax and shipping and high margin jerseys. LOL. Had a gift card, so I cannot really complain. Just a poor e-commerce practice that is at the bottom of the customer-friendly list.
So I DM’d them my order number and got this response very quickly:
Thank you for that. Our apologies. Upon review of your order we see you weren’t charged the processing fee. Can we assist you with anything else?
This surprised me, so I took a look at my order confirmation email which shows the fee:
And then logged into my account on the NFLshop.com to review the order invoice (yes, I told you I had a lot of gift cards and a coupon – I’m not complaining about the price, just the practice and customer experience):
And viola, interestingly they combined the charge post-haste. That’s extremely odd. I cannot recall ever seeing a vendor do that.
So for fun, I’ve loaded up my cart with two more jerseys, and here’s a screenshot of my cart. Notice the $1.99 handling charge. The “i” icon, when clicked, shows this text: “Handling Fee is applied to your order to help cover the fulfillment costs of storage and packaging.” in a pop-up bubble. Also note, that the site is running a free shipping promotion, but in fine print excludes the jerseys.
So, I replied to the DM tweet thread and explained that I was, in fact, charged the fee and would be happy to show them the screenshots (which I then included.) The next day I received this note:
We see, and we are so sorry about this issue. Normally, there is a flat rate incurred for shipping & handling. We greatly appreciate you bringing this to our attention, and we will escalate this feedback to the appropriate department for further review.
Again, I wasn’t demanding a refund or being unruly, and I give props to their team for timely replies. I think they should have simply refunded the $1.99 fee, plus the shipping and handling since I took the time to point this out. Nonetheless, I’m moving on.
Ultimately, this whole experience seems a bit shady and easily avoidable. If they need this extra $1.99 on top of their high margin items, they should roll it into shipping. But I think you can win a lot of favor among fans and customers by implementing more consumer-friendly e-commerce practices. When the major e-commerce experience is a certain way thanks to the big guys, other vendors need to hop on that bandwagon or risk alienating customers further.
Update 12/1/2020
While unrelated to the shipping and handling experience I wrote about above, I’d like to share another experience worthy of a few moments. The jersey I ordered in the above post in August, five months ago, still has not arrived. When ordered, I was told it would be shipping in September. Obviously, COVID messes up things, and their off-shore supply chain was likely affected. A couple of months ago they sent me an email apologizing for the delay assuring me that it would be express shipped to me as soon as it was state-side in December, and that should be no later than 12/17. I was offered the opportunity to cancel, but I did not. Then, two weeks ago, I received a call from them offering me a $50 refund or a gift card. Since I paid via gift card, I simply requested the gift card.
Both of these gestures were nice, given the situation, and I appreciated them. I used the new gift card, and a black Friday sale, to purchase a jersey that was in stock. To my surprise, it arrived two days later. That obviously exceeded my expectations. The quality of the jersey however, did not. I’ll save that for another day.
With all the attention spent on conversions, micro sites, landing pages and retargeting, have we neglected our home pages?
Think about it.
Have you really looked at the analytics behind the user interaction with your homepage? Do you have more than 10 links? If so, what if one of those links receives only 2% of the click through traffic? Is it still worth including it on the page?
These questions and more might (and should) be on your radar. In fact, do we even need these relics of the web one-point-oh? How do we understand what should go into designing and possibly reinventing these cornerstones of our websites? And, is it possible to use customer data, market research, web analytics and thoughtful design to turn a clunky, overlooked page into a useful tool for our customers that adds value to our marketing strategy?
I believe that we haven’t paid enough attention to designing intelligent home pages. But, I also believe the keys to deciphering the ingredients that are needed to make great pages (great depends on what matters most to your organization) are well within your reach.
This past week, The Donald made headlines when it was uncovered that his company owned thousands of domain names that are simply being parked in what it deems as a defensive move.
Says Trump’s son, Eric, “For a company like ours, it’s incredibly important to protect ourselves, and it’s incredibly important to own our intellectual property.”
Here’s why this doesn’t make financial sense, and why it also a futile effort:
Yahoo lists some of the domains owned:
DonaldTrumpSucks.com
TrumpCorporationSucks.com
TrumpOrganizationSucks.com
It typically costs anywhere from a few dollars to about $15 to keep each domain per year. Let’s say it’s $10. And let’s say they have 50,000 domains. That means they are paying $500,000 a year to park these domains. Chump change for a billion-dollar corporation, right? Well, after 20 years, that’s $10 million. Not to mention the lost return on capital the $500,000 would generate on a annualized basis.
The Trump organization is probably also (over)paying an agency to manage these domains on their behalf… perhaps another $50,000 – $100,000 per year.
When asked, I have never recommended purchasing domain names to thwart potential slander. And I’m asked this same question at each company I work. The reason is pretty simple, you just cannot purchase all the combinations of potentially scandalous domain names. In fact, there are 36 to 245th power which is basically a 2 with 381 zeroes following it. That’s a lot more than a google, and a lot of $10 bills each year. For example, here are five domain names I could purchase that they haven’t yet:
DonaldTrumpSucks1.com
DonaldTrumpSucks123.com
DonaldTrumpSucksABC.com
DonaldTrumpSucksNYC2016HellYeahEveryone.com
DonaldTrumpSucks3000.info
See my point?
Not only is this a waste of money, it’s a waste of time.
Proponents of this futile activity will claim “it’s worth it if we even thwart one attack!” But you won’t. If you know search engine optimization, you don’t even need Trump in the name of your website to talk about the organization. I’m talking about them now, and if I had good content and SEO, then I won’t need a Trump-specific domain name to spread my word.
And, let’s say you are slandered, if another person is using your trademark and/or slandering you, there’s a really good chance you can shut them down through the legal system – and it’s typically not a big company fighting you, but an individual that lacks sufficient legal resources to counter attack.
So save some time and a lot of money and stop buying domains you don’t need.
Website relaunch projects don’t have to take a year (or more). In fact, when executed properly by skilled teams, you can rapidly deploy (or redeploy) a new website. Here’s how I recently relaunched the website for my school, Ultimate Medical Academy:
PREP PHASE (12 weeks prior to project start; or launch minus 24 weeks)
My web team (consisting of two employees) tested out some concepts for the new website by piloting the technology and styles on smaller projects ahead of time. We knew we wanted to push the envelope quite a bit with the school’s site, but we didn’t want the site to be the first time we tried all the new bells and whistles. Like any good web team, we have and actively manage a project backlog or road map that goes out about a year. This helps us understand what’s ahead and manage our time effectively. It also enables us to pilot some new techniques ahead of time. So, beginning about six months earlier, we had two very small websites to build for other projects at UMA. In each of those builds, we tried a few new things. Some worked, while other ideas didn’t pan out as we had expected. These sites served as a proving ground for new ideas.
RESEARCH PHASE (week 1)
First, we formed a steering committee that included the following members of the marketing team: web manager, web developer, copywriter, brand director, creative manager, search marketer, and me (the VP). That’s it. This group would make all the decisions, with the VP (me), holding veto power and general oversight of scope. The web manager would be the project manager and oversee development and the day-to-day project plan. Next, we asked each member of the steering committee to spend a couple hours looking at and documenting sites they felt were “great.” It didn’t matter what your definition of great was; just that you came back the next day with a good list and could present it to the team. More on that in a moment. The other task we completed early on in the first week was to discuss the results of a brand perception study we had completed months earlier which helped us understand what our customers really wanted out of their experiences. During this phase we met pretty much daily to discuss all the features and aspects we wanted to include in the site. We reviewed everyone’s wish list, sample sites from their research, competitor sites, and so on. The end results was a ranked list of features into a couple of buckets: things our site must do at the launch, and things we wanted the site to do eventually. While we knew that a success project needed to have some elasticity to accommodate unforeseen needs along the way, it was also important that we minimize scope creep to hit the 12 week goal. At this point in the project we did not worry about “how” to do something, just whether we wanted to do it. Later, during the development process, we would tackle how to address items that were excessive in development time and light on ROI. The goal was to come out of the week with a solid list of features. Additionally, during the first week (and carrying into the 2nd week), we identified every major department at our school (about 10) and met with each stakeholder group’s leadership for about 60-90 minutes. During these meetings we explained the project’s goals, set expectations, and solicited feedback/input into the site. The questions we asked were fairly basic:
Does the current site meet your needs?
Do you use the current site? If no, why not?
What would you want out of a new site?
What other sites do you like and why?
Who can we work with on your team to help update your section’s content/copy?
DEVELOPMENT & DESIGN (weeks 2-12)
Now the sprint begins. We kicked off three separate initiatives at once because we knew that if we ran the three parts of the project in serial order, we wouldn’t hit the 12 week goal.
Our copywriter began rewriting what would become nearly 200 pages of copy
Our designer began mocking up the different templates for various site sections
Our developers started work on the templates and sandbox config by having the three teams work in concert, we had to communicate daily to ensure pieces fit together, especially with how copy was to be produced. For example, our copywriter had to work with the other two teams on headlines to ensure there was enough space for various copy elements incorporated into the template designs.The designer had to work closely with the developers to ensure that his designs could be easily reproduced in the code.As the VP of marketing, I had to ensure that project requests outside of the web reboot were minimized in order for the teams to be able to focus primarily on the website project. We set aside 20% of our week (about one day) for other projects, but ultimately were able to reduce that a bit further. We did have to supplement our 12-week schedule with a few late evenings a couple weekends, but nothing too dramatic. We wanted to use the extra time mid-project rather than wait until the end and scramble. This gave us a much more predictable finish date, as we did our “long hours” mid-project and then glided in. Though, I don’t want to underscore how close of a finish it was. But more on that later.
COMPLIANCE & REVIEW (weeks 4-12)
The majority of public-facing content marketing produces is reviewed by an independent team to ensure that what we are saying is legal and compliant with a score of very specific regulatory requirements governing advertising and communications within the post-secondary education space. This means that everything we write needs to be reviewed. To ensure the compliance team was up to the task, our steering committee met with their team early on to set expectations. We shared the site concept to generate excitement and provide context. We also checked in regularly and developed a good system for sharing feedback, collaborating and obtaining sign-off efficiently. The web developers used draft copy for development, with little formatting or editing, as much of the content would have to be replaced. In other areas, they simply used lorem ipsum types of placeholders, since we knew the copy was going to change during the review. I also reviewed all the copy to ensure the messaging was consistent with my objectives for the new site. This meant that I had to provide a very fast turnaround on the nearly 200 pages of copy; so scheduling the requisite amount of time and attention to this project was key.
WEEKLY COLLABORATION (weeks 1-12)
Early on in the project, the steering committee met almost daily. As week three approached, meetings were scaled back to 2-3 times per week. The meetings were used to:
Review progress
Allow team members to ask questions about features/specs
Address issues in real-time
Make on the spot decisions
Discuss new findings and limitations
Review features and scope to reevaluate the two buckets (must have and nice to have)… ultimately, a few items that were found to be heavy in development time and low on ROI were pushed from must to nice. At this point, we began keeping a list of post-launch features that would go into weekly “agile sprints” where we would release new features over time.It was important to understand that we wanted to launch a core website in 12 weeks, not a site that had 100% of everything everyone wanted. So, working with the web manager, we discussed whether certain features could wait, and adjusted the project scope as necessary.
LAUNCH PREP (weeks 9-12)
To set expectations, the actual launch window I provided the school’s leadership was much broader than our target. This would allow me to squeeze a few more weeks of work if needed. So, when communicating out to the organization, I provided a month-long window, with emphasis on the end of the month. However, internally, we were managing to the early-to-mid part of the month.Additionally, I began speaking with members of the leadership team about the site, and even provided “sneak peaks” to a select few individuals, mainly the senior leadership team at the Academy. It was important that I provide them a brief overview of the site so they knew what to expect. I also wanted some feedback, to ensure we were not missing anything critical on the site. During these meetings and demos (about 3-4 took place), we also gauged feedback and excitement to understand where we might want to focus a little extra last minute effort.Since we had planned so well, and sought early input from each department, we found that the site delivered on everyone’s expectations (often exceeding it when it came to look and feel). A couple minor items came out of the demos and the team quickly adjusted what was necessary without losing too much steam.
QA / TESTING (weeks 10-11)
While testing was on-going throughout the project, we expanded the testing efforts around week 10 by bringing in a couple of additional team members for a few hours to help test on various devices (tablet, iOS, Android, IE, Chrome, etc…) This helped us find as many issues as possible in the shortest amount of time. Issues were funneled directly back to the development team and tracked accordingly. The copywriter reviewed all copy once again; and I personally tested a wide variety of devices and stepped through the majority of the site.
GO/NO-GO (week 11)
With about one week remaining in our sprint, we had a go/no-go meeting with the steering committee to understand what was still remaining on the project list and why so we could work through those last roadblocks efficiently.
THE LAUNCH (week 12)
I opted for a soft launch on a Wednesday. This meant that we would coordinate with the information technology team that controls the DNS settings and make the switch in the afternoon after one final go/no-go call between myself and the web manager. Once the switch of the DNS was made, the QA team did another full walk through of the site across their devices and platforms. This revealed a few last minute items that needed to be addressed. Believe it or not, our old site was not heavily used by staff or students (mainly only prospective students), primarily because it was simple and didn’t include a lot of information. So we knew we could do a launch without communicating it widely to everyone at the academy. And, those few extra days of being live and testing; and collecting feedback from the few people that new the site was live, would be extremely valuable. The good news is that there were no major issues. That following Monday, we did the full launch which included an email to all staff, an announcement to our students through the online student portal, posters throughout the building, and information on the staff intranet. We also created a scavenger hunt, with five questions… Staff had to find the URLs for specific items, such as “what page features a picture of an employee dressed as a Rubik’s Cube?” Anyone who answered the questions correctly got a souvenir school pennant and was entered into a raffle for a school sweatshirt. This contest, along with the email announcement helped drive awareness about the site and all the new features.
So what worked and what didn’t?
Overall, the prep and collaboration really proved to be the cornerstone of our success. I cannot underscore how important these processes were. It was equally important to have full buy-in from senior leadership and to protect the team from competing priorities/projects.
Of course the team would have liked more time. That would have yielded minimal differences though. Of course more time would allow for more scope, but we’re releasing new features weekly. It was important to launch a new site quickly with a solid foundation, and then focus on additional features. So more time would not necessarily have yielded a higher quality site – just more features. It may have reduced stress a bit, or eliminated a few of the extra days we spent across a couple late nights and weekends. But I have a feeling we would have used those late nights and weekends even if we had more time.
I owe the success of this project to the steering team (especially John Klingler, the project manager for this endeavor.) It was a lean team, that continues to meet to this day looking at new features and specs to make the site even better. They did the hard work and were successful; I’ll bask in the moment of accomplishing a great feat and then jump into the next project “business as usual.”
My esteemed colleague, George Fox, recently shared a fantastic article with me on this very topic. Essentially, what authentic design boils down to is creating interfaces where design isn’t forced, but rather a product of function and natural utility (of what ever it is you are creating). The post discusses various periods of history drawing comparisons to architecture and materials engineering.
Hands down, it’s one of the best articles on designing for the web I have come across.
Here’s a fantastic video I recommend sharing with your web team (and executive team) on understanding the importance of making your website more usable. It is by HFI (Human Factors International).
Today I will be at the Site Executive User Conference, “Empower” in Baltimore, MD. This conference is free to all existing Site Executive customers.
I will be a panelist on the keynote panel, “Creating an Excellent User Experience” along with Dan Greller – Legg Mason (@dgreller); Ken Nakata – Director Accessibility Consulting Practice, HiSoftware; Jeanne Ivy – D.C.D., Web Consultant, Systems Alliance (@jivydesign).
Following the keynote panel, I will be leading a session along with John Mohr (@johntmohr) entitled, Web Effectiveness Strategy Track: Social Media – The Value of a “Like”.
Landing pages are living canvases in the world of direct response marketing. We’re always testing, tweaking, refining and even full-scale redoing them to achieve the perfectly optimized and conversion experience.
Consumers crave information, and unless your conversion point is a coupon or freebie, you’re going to need to work at convincing the consumer to complete your form.
That’s why you might need a micro site. A micro site simply let’s you string together a few extra pieces of content to tell a story or help the consumer understand your value proposition a little bit more before they convert.
I’m not going to dive into how to create a micro site today. Instead, I want to simply encourage you to think beyond the stereotypical landing page that only has a headline, image, paragraph of text and a form. Start thinking outside the page. What else can you do to convince the user to convert? Is it a social signal? Visual impression? Navigation to other content? Testimonials?
To help you understand that a landing page is not limited to a single URL, here’s a great article by Scott Brinker on “Landing Pages 3.0”.
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