Kindle2

I thought the new version of Kindle2 was worth noting. If you’ve not seen this yet, take a look. You may not be able to wait until Christmas.

If you track time and projects try MyIntervals

Let me begin with a confession. I’m constantly looking for the silver bullet in project management software. It’s been an off-and-on obsession of mine since about 2001. And while I fully understand that there are always trade-offs, it seems that I am too often forced to either go with complex tools to get the features I need or sacrifice functionality for slick interface and ease of use. Well, those days are over.

About a week ago, I went on yet another search for a solution and stumbled upon this jewel — Intervals.

I signed up on Friday and by Sunday had migrated most of our projects from Celoxis. Now, I must confess that I really like Celoxis. If you need all the traditional PM features such as task dependencies, resource leveling, forecasting, Gantt charts, etc, I highly recommend Celoxis. It does a tremendous job and I’ve used it since 2005. But it’s a very complex tool and I may need those elements once out of every 15 projects.

What I was looking for in a hosted solution is a perfect blend of time tracking (since we bill hourly) and project management. I also need simplicity. One of the biggest downsides of Celoxis is that you have to spend a lot of time learning the system. Practically speaking that meant that we had gaps in our tracking because designers will not be motivated to track a project and our developers are so focused on coding solutions that they viewed the tool as a hindrance to productivity. Truth be told they were right.

Celoxis seems most effective when a team has a dedicated PM that drives the project, whereas Intervals gets everyone involved. We still have designated PM’s but it’s much easier now to allow the team to track their time for a given task and collaborate with discussion and documents in a centralized location. Personally, I attribute that ease to the excellent user interface.

The Intervals development team has put a lot of effort into making sure users aren’t consumed by the tool, but are able to incorporate it into their daily routine very easily.

Reporting is the icing on the cake. If you do your part and remain diligent to track your projects, you will get huge rewards by having access to a whole suite of meaningful reports.

So if you’re looking for a way to improve project management and time tracking for your team, take Intervals for a spin. You can view the video demos here or just peruse the site.

Thank you anonymous user

This morning I received this form submission from our site:

Results From: SystemTrends Contact UsSubmitted By: Unauthenticated User IP: 74.9.190.130

Name:

Anon

Email:

anon@anon.org

Phone:

123-456-7890

Interest:

Web Solutions

Comments:

I think someone stole your process that you posted here: http://www.systemtrends.net/OurProcess.aspx, and published it in a book: http://www.web-redesign.com/

You should sue.

While I can only speculate what this person’s intentions were, it did surface for me the fact that I left off the source footnote on those two graphics. I do apologize to Kelly and Emily for that oversight. It was not intentional. I have rectified that omission and want to publicly thank this anonymous user for pointing it out.

Project Management Solutions

For years I’ve searched for the silver bullet in project management software. I’ve used close to a dozen. I have evaluated more than twenty and I’ve researched many, many more. At one time, we even built our own, in an effort to get exactly what we needed.

I don’t claim to be an authority in this area. But I have managed projects that lasted anywhere from a few weeks to over a year. I’ve worked as a lone ranger. I’ve managed small teams and I’ve led multi-vendor teams located in several states and across three countries. For me, a solid and simple project management solution can be the difference between success (on time and within budget) and missed deadlines or even project failure.

If you are still using Outlook Tasks, or Excel to manage your projects, I encourage you to at least consider a browser-based solution. There are just too many cases where you’ll work with tele-commuters, sub-contractors, multiple vendors, or off-shore teams that specialize in one facet of a project. Virtual teams are fast becoming the norm in many sectors, and online applications allow for the the most effective collaboration and project tracking.

You may think that online applications are too complicated but believe me, there are some very nice tools that are not only affordable but will have you running in minutes and productive in a few hours. Some also offer many of the formal project management processes that larger organizations require.

My point isn’t to critique these applications, or even to present an exhaustive list. For a more comprehensive list you can check out this link to web-based project management software. I simply want to give you a starting point of what I think are some of the best solutions for the price. You have to weigh costs and features based on your needs. Any one of these five applications could work for any size organization.

1. Ace Project – A very good all around solution. My only complaint is that they don’t have sub-tasks. That’s a deal breaker for me.
2. Basecamp - If you’re looking for a simple solution, check out Basecamp. I tried using it but it just didn’t meet our needs. Still, it’s a perfect solution for some. They also have tight integration with a few time tracking solutions if you find that you need that as well.
3. Celoxis - This is what we use though it can be overkill for some organizations. But the reporting is tremendous and it is extremely powerful. It’s my personal favorite though it is a little more for my “low end” solutions list. But for the amount of features, it’s much less than comparable applications.
4. Gemini - We use this for incident tracking. It’s also promoted as project management but I personally think the reporting and time tracking isn’t as good as Celoxis.
5. Zoho - I might consider moving to Zoho if it had better reporting and time tracking capabilities. If you don’t have complex needs in those areas, you should give this a try. It’s similar in vision to Basecamp, but I think they do a better job. This is my second favorite, next to Celoxis.

This is just a sampling. You may have other favorites.  But these will certainly give you incredible bang for your buck and not require a degree in engineering to use.

As I said in the beginning, I’m constantly keeping a sharp eye for the silver bullet in browser-based project management software. Deep down I know that it doesn’t exist. But I believe that if you can find one that gives you 85-90% of what you’re looking for, you’ll still be more productive than using a locally installed solution like Excel or Outlook tasks.

The Importance of A Site Map

The site map is a visual representation of the various content areas of your site. It shows the content levels and how they relate to one another. In other words, it’s a snapshot of the site as a user would want to see it to get an overview of where things are and how they will find what they need.

I’m convinced that if folks would take the time to create a site map, they would alleviate a lot of future headache.

It doesn’t matter the size of your budget, when it comes to developing an effective site structure for your redesign project, the site map is a key component. It will become the backbone of your new site. Yet I am amazed how often folks want to jump right into the look and feel of a redesign.

You can go all out to draft your site architecture by using one of any number of tools like Jumpchart or Protoshare or Axure. If you’re a Mac user, there is a nice tool by The Omni Group called Omni Graffle. But you really don’t have to spend a lot to get it right.

You can sketch out your wire frame on paper and build it out in PowerPoint if you like. The main thing is that you think through your site architecture from an end user’s point of view. If you do, you will save yourself a lot of headache and your users will navigate your site easily.

10 Redesign Tips

Everyone loves lists. While this is not a “top ten” list, these ten redesign tips will help you as you begin the process of your next site redesign.

1.	Plan Ahead – I recently completed a list of changes for a customer site. The changes were needed but the way they approached it resulted in more effort on our part and a less effective change process. If you think you need to revamp your site, think through what you need and why. That may sound very basic, but I’m surprised how many people jump into a redesign without a plan.Part of planning involves all facets of your business. Well constructed marketing plans will mesh seamlessly with your Web presence. A monthly organizational theme that corresponds with products, services or perhaps mission and vision is a great way to maintain centralized messaging and often will make it very easy what marketing needs to happen on the Web side of things.
2.	Have Clear Goals – Make a list of what works on your site and what doesn’t. If possible, conduct usability tests to see where customers might get confused or bail on your site. You need to be clear about what issues you have with both design and function rather than assuming you know or simply changing for the sake of change.
3.	Remember Project Management – This may seem like a repeat of the first two, and it is related. But what I’m referring to here is a bit more involved. With any project you need a process. Web development/design has its own nuances. You should have an appointed internal contact that is dedicated to the project and will work closely with your vendor, if you outsource.There are many processes you can follow such as (Pre-production, Production, Maintenance, Evaluation) or (Define, Design, Develop, Launch). At SystemTrends, we’ve munged three different project management processes into our own flavor. The key isn’t “what” process you use but to have a process and use it.
4.	Consider Cost of Ownership – As you think through what you want to accomplish with a redesign, you will undoubtedly identify many cool features you can add to your site. But as you do, remember that with each new feature you will have to maintain it. The most common example I run across is a blog. Many customers ask me about adding a blog to their site. My first question is, who’s going to maintain it? Same thing with news, announcements, a library or pretty much any new content area. One of the reasons people have gravitated toward news feeds, and user-generated content is that it keeps their site’s content fresh with minimal effort. But content isn’t the only area where you need to consider cost of ownership. New applications can potentially require updates and developer maintenance and that new banner advertising will eventually get old and need replacing. If you don’t have internal graphic resources, you need to plan to spend a little money here and there to keep the eye candy fresh.
5.	Remember The Developers – When people think of a site revamp, they often forget the technical aspects that will make the cool new design a reality. I was once brought in on a project late because the designer, who was primarily a print designer, wasn’t able to take his vision to the web. We had to rework a lot of items and do most of the site with JavaScript roll-overs. Had we been brought in early on, we could have taken a different approach and saved us all tremendous headache.
6.	Analyze Your Competition – Visit your competitor sites, honestly and objectively, to see what is working for them. You might discover more effective ways to lead potential customers through your sales funnel. Competitors may be using a particular service that you can add. You might even notice something that you need to avoid with your redesign.
7.	Design With SEM In Mind – If you’ve not done so already, plan to incorporate Search Engine Marketing into your next revamp. As competition stiffens, SEM will become more of a standard and if you neglect this area, it could impact traffic and your ultimate bottom line.
8.	Design For Users – The old marketing axiom “know your audience” rings true in Web design as well. If your users find it difficult to navigate your site, or if you have organizational pressures forcing you to make certain decisions about advertising placement or content that cause confusion to your customer, you may lose potential sales.Another common mistake is to structure a site to mirror the internal organizational structure. Think about what a user needs to know who is not familiar with your company. Then lead them through the clicks or pages you want them to see and read.
9.	Manage Expectations – If you are part of a company any larger than 1, you need to manage expectations. I’ve seen projects get totally derailed because of lack of communication between vendors, project teams and stakeholders. If a project is longer than 6 weeks, I try to have weekly status calls with clients to review issues, iron out scope changes and generally manage expectations. Your project management process will work wonders here if you let it. When you set clear goals, you can always point to them and explain that these are the agreed upon objectives and anything beyond them will require scheduling and resource changes. With any Web project, you will always have more that you want to do than what you can do in the allotted time or budget. Consider a phased approach to introduce important features. It’s a great way to stay on task and still account for needed future additions.
10.	Allow for On-going Evaluation – Once you launch, your job, in many ways, is just beginning. If you’ve done your planning and execution well, you’ll be in a mode to monitor what is working on the site and be able to make quick tweaks to adjust as things pop up. You’ll also want to conduct post launch analysis of Web logs to see what pages get the most traffic, where customers are bailing on your site, etc. That will help you make informed decisions about what needs changing.

I’m sure you can think of many more but these are ten of the most common tips I keep in mind as I work with clients.

The long hiatus

There’s nothing like travel to quell momentum. I’ve been out of town a lot lately, but thankfully I am back in full swing. So I will be more consistent with post throughout the rest of the summer.

SEO Demystified: On-going Evaluation

This last step seems so obvious, I hesitated to even include it. But I’m surprised how many people view SEO with the same attitude they do about building a house. There really is no end. Just as with your site, there should always be on-going evaluation to see how well you are doing with your keyword terms, your page optimization and content generation.

Your vendor should not only keep you appraised of your PageRank, but also be suggesting ways to improve it. You should also be tying your increased traffic to conversion. How well is your site’s sales funnel leading visitors to purchase, subscribe, register or whatever the call to action is? Should you now combine your SEM strategy with a Pay-Per Click (PPC) campaign? These are all valid questions that should be asked and monitored over time.

Final thoughts

As a business owner or decision maker, you do not have to know all the techniques or the technical nuances of Search Engine Marketing or Web development. But you should be armed with enough understanding to keep you from spending a lot of money for very little return.

In my opinion, if you are selling a product or service or if you have a community or informational site, you should be doing SEO. I hope the SEO Demystified series has given you enough information to help you make wise decisions as you proceed with selecting a vendor and engaging them in an SEM campaign.

SEO Demystified: Getting Indexed

In today’s world of sophisticated search engines, you’d have to try real hard not to get a site indexed. The easiest way is to simply do a good job with SEO. If your site is easy for spiders to crawl and has decent link popularity (sites linking to your site), then spiders will index your site. It’s pretty straight forward really. However…yes, there’s usually a “however”. However, what if your site isn’t showing up on Google? What if you’re not being indexed?

Well if that is the case, don’t blame the search engines. Instead, look at your site. Was it developed in a way that is easy for spiders to find and crawl it? Have you been penalized for search engine spam? Often the unscrupulous will attempt to get past a search engine’s guidelines. I’ll describe the main ones, though I’m sure there are others I’m not aware of yet.

Content Spam – This occurs when a site attempts to deceive search engines through manipulation of content on the site. It can include keyword stuffing, misuse of meta tags or deliberately creating misleading content.

Link Spam  – This is any deceptive scheme created to boost link popularity artificially. This could be hiding links from users or search engines or creating artificial domains to manufacture links.

Domain Spam – This is when someone registers multiple domain names in order to boost search engine ranking by obtaining multiple directory listings, creating cross-links between the sites or by putting more pages in the index to increase the odds of having a page ranked.

Redirect Spam – This is when a site redirects search engine visitors to a page other than the one that was ranked. Many spammers will create doorway pages that rank well, and then will redirect a user to another page or conceal the ranked content behind a pop-over element.

Cloaking – This is probably the worst form of spam from a search engine’s perspective. Cloaking is when optimized content is delivered to a search engine and different content to users. All search engines tell you not to cloak. If you do and get caught, you will be banned from their index.

So why did I included all these forms of search engine spamming? Well, unfortunately, there are still those out there that want to deceive the search engines, thinking that they will “one up” the competition.

Personally, I think that besides the obvious ethical and legal problem, the amount of energy one has to spend to stay ahead of the search engines is greater than what has to be spent to accomplish better results legally and ethically. It may be worth a few questions to your SEO consultant to see what techniques they use. You may not understand all the technical jargon, but you should know enough to discern if they are “white hat” or “black hat” in their approach to search engine marketing.

SEO Demystified: Link Building

One of the most important factors in determining your ranking in search engines is the number and quality of in-bound links to your site. Link building can include directory submissions, advertising, even link exchanges. But the most effective long-term strategy is to simply create great content.

Search engines will spider or crawl your site more frequently and spider more pages if you have a lot of good links pointing to it.

Before we proceed further, I want to address reciprocal links vs in-bound links. From time to time, I will receive a form email from some entity that wants to exchange links — that is, they’ll link to us if we link to them. That simply will not help you and in some cases may even hinder your efforts to get better positioning in organic search results. As a rule, I always suggest that our clients turn this down unless they are exchanging links with strategic partners.

You should also be mindful where an in-bound link appears. Well placed links from authoritative sites will not only help with your page rank, but they will also bring in a steady stream of quality visitors to your site. That will, in the long run, result in more conversions than if you simply go after random links from anywhere.

Linking to keywords

In the best circumstances, you’ll be able to control where and how your in-bound links appear on a site. For example, in directories, you can be sure that you’re mapping your in-bound links to your keywords. However, that isn’t always the case. If sites find your content useful, they may simply refer to it with the domain name or perhaps some “click here” text. You cannot control that. But wherever possible, try to have the hypertext of the link contain some of your target keywords.

SEO consultants will have all sorts of techniques for accomplishing this. Often, they will submit content to article directories (ezinearticles.com, easyarticles.com, articledashboard.com, etc) with signature links back to target landing pages on the site. This not only promotes you as a subject-matter expert, but also provides in-bound links.

Bottom line…it takes time

As you discuss link building with your SEO consultant, they will likely tell you that it takes a while to build solid in-bound links. There are somewhat dubious shortcuts that you can take but in the end you will fare much better to build slowly and steadily. Next up…getting indexed.