Posted under Latest News, News on May 11th, 2012 by Philip Allen / 4 Comments

If you have encountered Open Source as a software product or Website CMS platform, you’ll know that the literal meaning is free distribution and access to the products design and implementation.

I am pleased to see the principle taken on by a local business group, where I recently became a member.

Last month I was offered the chance to introduce myself to the PLATO group through a brief talk on a subject of interest, and then the group would vote on whether I could provide value and fit in comfortably with the other members.

I have to confess I am sceptical of business groups and business networks.

I have dipped my toe in over the years and my feeling is people looking for an easy route to new business because their existing marketing structures aren’t working usually frequent these type of networks.

If they were working, they’d be back in the office managing the colossal pipeline their activities were generating.

These people all seem to be less intent on contributing, and more intent on seeing who can give them the next bit of business.

Sceptical though I was, this particular group is chaired by a long-standing client who is very successful and enigmatic to boot.

So I took up the invitation and chose to talk about the three phases of search behaviour. The talk went down well and a few of the members started to think differently about how they were approaching search.

I also learned a lot about the problems people are facing making decisions relating to Web.

One member paid several thousand pounds for a Website two-years ago that he had propagated and organised himself..

He knew he needed to optimise it for search engines and had received two quotes. One quote was a few thousand for SEO but not on his current site (because the vendor couldn’t work with the platform), and the other was a quote for £800.00 to build a brand new Website with full SEO.

In the members’ own words, “How am I supposed to make sense of all of this?”

Moving on, I was pleased to receive an Email from the chair the next day stating I was in.

I looked forward to attending my first PLATO meeting.

So the event went down yesterday and what an interesting experience it was.

Eight attendees, sitting casually around a boardroom table, drinking tea and eating cakes.

The agenda, is each member taking it in turns to share the details of a subject they are currently experiencing in their respective businesses.

Phil spoke about his experiences with a type of psychometric testing.

Tony spoke about his progress on a distance learning business management course.

Danny spoke about his problems with insurance renewal hikes (which set Dean off on a very passionate speech about the hidden problems of buying through comparison sites)

Dave spoke about his need to go to the next level of ISO accreditation and the challenges that bought, and Paula talked about the exploitation of discrimination laws by jobseekers on the gravy train.

I spoke about how Digital Agencies needed to become more agile and explained what we were doing to meet the fast changing needs of our customers.

The meeting lasted 2 hours and we all learnt something useful that would contribute to our own businesses.

We wrapped up by chewing the fat, discussing the prospect of a BBQ at the Chairs new house, and wondering if we should take Tony up on his offer to get us up in his glider.

So why do I find this concept so productive:

Well firstly, the environment was relaxing and open.

I didn’t have 30 people thrusting business cards in my face, and I didn’t waste an hour eating a three-course meal whilst watching the tone of conversation go down as more people got smashed on the free wine.

I didn’t feel obliged to trade services, in the style of, “Ok, so you need your Website, I suppose I have to buy some insurance.”

I also wasn’t asked to pay a membership fee.

What I did do, was learn some valuable information about subjects I didn’t previously know about.

I learnt more about where different businesses underutilise the online channel, and I learned more about the real challenges facing companies who are trying to make sense of digital.

It was the  “Open Source” philosophy in action and I can’t wait for the next meeting.

Thinking Of Setting Up Your Own Open Source Style Business Group?

If you fancy a setting up an Open Source Business Group in your region, here are a few Do and Don’ts based on what I have seen so far:

• Do have a business chair that has the energy to keep the group moving in the right direction.
• Do select your members carefully, because sometimes you are sharing sensitive information about business issues you might not air in an open business network.
• Do make sure you have members whose first priority is to contribute, and not to gain.
• Do make sure you all gel – you don’t want stiffs standing on their own at the next BBQ.
• Do keep the numbers manageable, 20 is probably a realistic maximum and this means 12 to 15 will normally attend each meeting.

• Don’t consider this approach if your primary focus is winning new business.
• Don’t consider this if you have nothing useful to contribute.

If you do start an Open Source Business Group;

• Don’t open it up to all and sundry, it will loose its focus.
• Don’t try and monetise it.
• Don’t use a Hotel for a venue – you don’t need free wine and a three-course meal to make this work – tea and cakes is fine.

Have you any experiences of similar groups or have got something relevant to comment on? Feel free and fire way.

Posted under Best Practice, Project Success on May 2nd, 2012 by Philip Allen / No Comments

Historically, Content Strategy is a component of best practice used for high-end brand savvy Web projects where adequate budget means best practice can be followed to the letter by a multi-disciplined team with all the right skills in all the right places, 

However, Content Strategy is fast becoming recognised as a critical component for success in the SME and even large enterprise arena, creating a new core job function with a dedicated skill-set.

So What Exactly Is Content Strategy?

In simple terms, Content Strategy is the process of maximising the commercial impact of content to achieve business goals.

It follows a simple six-step process:

1. Defining the business goals for the site and individual pages
2. Defining the type of visitor who will land on each page
3. Defining the phase of the search cycle the majority of visitors fall into when they land on each page
4. Delivering content to generate a user experience that will resonate with the visitor
5. Defining how to influence the outcome of the visit
6. Defining metrics to benchmark performance over time

It also assumes that you have completed a detailed Key Phrase research project to define the language your audience is using, and hence, have a completed Meta Strategy in place.

So Why Does It Matter?

Because without a Content Strategy, content is nothing more than a general guess at what someone might be interested in reading on your Website.

There will be no relevant structure, no business logic, probably no relationship with your underlying compelling value proposition, and most importantly of all, very little to suggest a visitor should trust you with their time and money.

If your competition has a Content Strategy, they will undoubtedly be relishing in higher numbers of page visits, longer time on a page, more pages per visit as well as higher goal and conversions.

How Can I Create My Own Content Strategy?

You can use this simple template to help. Just complete one of these tables for each page on your Website.

Bear in mind that this table will summarise your strategy for each page logically, but you will still need to create the content and meet the following objectives:

• The content must be relevant
• The content must be compelling
• Copy must be professionally copy written and designed for Web use, not print or editorial
• The architecture (layout and presentation) of the page should aid easy viewing and reduce eye stress

Philip Allen is a Content Strategist and Interaction Designer at mwa Digital. His job is to make Web pages more engaging and the content more relevant.

He can be contacted on 0844 544 9553.

Posted under Best Practice, Project Success on April 30th, 2012 by Philip Allen / No Comments

Evidence suggests the rolling dice method of assessing the time and relative cost to build a new Web based project is used more than any other method.

Before you take this statement with a pinch of salt, lets look at some interesting statistics:

• 30% of Web development projects will be delivered late, over budget or will fail altogether (Source: Outsourcing Today)
• 21% of projects fail to meet stakeholder requirements (Source: Outsourcing Today)
• The figure rises to 50% when using offshore contractors (Source: Aberdeen Group)
• 4 out of 5 projects we tender for are rescue projects from other vendors (Source: mwa Digital

According to a study by Bamboo, the top three factors influencing project failure are:

1. Changing requirements (known as change requests feature creep)
2. Inconsistent stakeholder demands
3. Insufficient time or budget

The Aberdeen Group research goes on to claim that 76% of vendors grossly underestimated the effort they needed to contribute to the process and 51% claimed that outsourcers didn’t perform to expectations.

Now lets look at some vendor scenarios some readers may have encountered:

Scenario 1

You produce an outline Web design brief and get quotes from three vendors:

• Vendor 1 quotes £5,000
• Vendor 2 quotes £15,000
• Vendor 3 quotes £50,000

You are left scratching your head as to why this could be.

Scenario 2

• You produce a slightly more detailed brief, and collaborate with vendor 1, who produces a summary proposal supported by a few eye-catching assets such as a design concept and maybe a PowerPoint or Keynote:
• Vendor 1 comes back with a quote for £50,000
• Common sense tells you to get a second opinion so you provide a summary brief to Vendor 2 who comes back with a quote for £30,000
• You take that back to Vendor 1 who is somehow able to adjust their quote to £35,000

Scenario 3

• You see a Website that has similar design parameters, features and a visual quality you want your project to aspire to:
• You track down Vendor 1 who designed and built the project and they quote you £20,000 for a similar project
• Secretly, you only have a £5,000 budget so you get a quote from Vendor 2 who quotes £10,000
• Still out of reach, you keep going until you find Vendor 3 who claim they can do the same job for £5,000

You will quickly realise that the issues giving rise to heightened failure rates and vendor-agency dissatisfaction are inherent before a project even begins.

Web Design & Development Project Costs As A Constant (C)

If we look at look at Web design costs using a few logical constants (C), it’s hard to see where so much disparity can occur in the pricing:

• If the specific skill-sets of each vendor’s team are C, then their wage rate will be C
• If the infrastructure of each vendor is C (studio, hardware, software, fixtures, fittings), then the proportional overhead will be C
• If the project management and development process (Agile or Waterfall) is C, then the delivery time to complete the project will be C
• If an agency is based in Central London its relative cost should only be +20-30% (London wage weighting and infrastructure overhead)

Using these constants, a £30,000 quote from one vendor should only ever be quoted at either £36,000 or £25,000 from another vendor but NEVER BOTH.

The Reality Of Web Design Cost In A Nutshell

• If the scope of your Web development project was guessed, the quote is unlikely to be realistic.
• If you expected some things to work one way, but the vendor assumed they would work in another way, it may well cost more to do it the way you want.
• If you suffer from inspiration overload and keep adding new requirements as you go, the project will cost a lot more to complete.
• Five different skill-sets are required to deliver a Web project successfully. If your vendor uses multi-tasking team members, you may pay for this with lower standards and production inefficiencies.
• If you use the terms “just” and “only” frequently in your conversations, you are heading for trouble because there is no such thing as just and only in Web development.

6 Top Tips To Help You Receive Consistent and Accurate Proposals from A Choice of Web Design Vendors:

1. Be upfront if you have a target budget. The outcome isn’t going to change if you drop this out at the end of negotiations.
2. For smaller projects, use a simple template such as mwa’s Vendor Comparison table to make sure each vendor is quoting on a like-for-like basis.
3. For larger projects, pay an agency to complete a Functional Specification. This is a detailed document that benchmarks the top-level requirements and detailed functionality. Each vendor will then be quoting on a like-for-like basis and because a Functional Specification is a fundamental requirement for larger projects, each vendor should give you a discount equivalent to what you have spent.
4. If the project cost is way above your expectations, try and modify your expectations or look at completing the project in phases over time.
5. Don’t forget 50% of stakeholders don’t get what they expect from going offshore. If you are considering this (or your agency uses offshore for some of its services) talk to an expert like mwa and get advice on the hidden issues.
6. Lastly and most importantly, ask to see a breakdown of the internal calculations and documentation Web designers use to scope projects and if all they have is a pair of dice, give them a wide berth.

The Golden Rule Of Web Design and Development Project Costing

Remember that if a quote is arrived at by rolling dice and not based on a detailed understanding of the requirements, then either:

• The job is over-quoted and the client receives poor value, or
• The requirements were underestimated and the client receives less than they expected for the price, or they will be asked to pay more money.

Philip Allen is Content Strategist and Interaction Designer at mwa Digital. If you would like to order a pair of dice to calculate the cost of your next project then give him a call on 0844 544 9553.

Alternatively, why not ask him about mwa’s Smart Toolkit. It’s a range of FREE templates, and documents designed to help Web Design & Development get scoped and costed accurately.