| 6 December 2004:Why so many potty decisions? |
In this issue
Featured article Why so many potty decisions?Last month I ranted about e-conveyancing, which I see as a disaster waiting to happen. The important question to ask is why do large organisations occasionally spit out decisions that are so potty you wonder what has got into them. I have a theory. I haven't done a survey, and I don't have any data to back this up, just a few decades in and out of the corporate world. Management styleThe first factor is that managers in corporates are selected to be uninterested in detail. This is hard for software people like us, and designers like you to understand. You and I don't have much in common other than:
I have never met a designer or a computer programmer who wasn't into detail in a big way. But in large corporates it is different. Interviewers and even psychometric testers for senior managers specifically look for people who are not driven by a need to get into the detail of everything. Instead, they are selected for interpersonal, negotiating, and general political skills. How many times have I sat in meetings where a junior peon starts listing 12 reasons why something is a really bad idea? The manager's eyes visibly glaze over at reason number 4 and eventually decisions are reached by negotiation with other members of the group. This system generally works OK, but doesn't have much in the way of checks and balances. The person who sees all the detail and understands the risk is often negotiated out of his/her position with a promise that nothing is set in stone and it will be reviewed later. But when later comes, the idea has become a groupthink myth. GroupthinkGroupthink is a phenomenon that was developed by Irving Janis in the early seventies. He observed that in a small group that is under some pressure there is a tendency to uncritically accept the apparent views of the group as a whole. They will
Putting it togetherSo an initial potty decision approved by a manager who doesn't have a real grasp of the detail becomes a groupthink myth that eventually grows until the inevitable disaster. Thus the famous seven phases of a typical project:
Business intelligenceWhite paper enthusiasts now have a forum to chew the fat about everything white paper-ish. http://www.whitepapersource.com A review of b2b purchasers suggests that over 90% of decision makers would use the internet to research a purchasing decision. Search was used by the majority of these, the proportion using search varies from 72% for small purchases to 60% for larger ones. A survey recently found that 94% of web-using Britons had purchased something on-line. What does web-using mean? Your guess is as good as mine, but I would treat this item with a large pinch of salt. A recent news story gives an insight into the world of the spammer. Jerey Jaynes operated out of a low rent office, but pumped out 10 million emails per day. Although the response rate was only one if 30,000 he was able to pull in $400 - 750,000 per month. Technical tips - keyword researchWhat keywords to useThere is an old story about an xxx (you put in the cultural reference) recipe for chicken soup. It starts First steal a chicken! Sensible advice, because cooking doesn't start in the well stocked kitchen with every ingredient to hand. You have to go out and find the ingredients first. Search engine advice often starts with 'what keywords do you want to optimise for?' This is a very good question, but difficult to answer. Getting to the top of a google search is simple. Search for Textor and lo - we come to the top of the list. Hardly a big deal. We really want to come to the top of the search for phrases like Content Management or E-commerce. That is much harder. Keyword research is a balancing act. You don't want generic words like profit or benefits. Coming to the top of the google search for words like this is like winning the lottery - the odds are about the same. Get too specific and no-body is going to use them. Probably not the latest in-phraseWe used to have a client who was big in project management. But as with all disciplines they are subject to fashion trends, and at that time the phrase everyone liked to use was change management. So their web site was change management this and change management that. The only problem is that when people search, they don't conveniently use the marketing terms that are today's fashion. They use what they have always used - in this case project management. Our client was missing out on traffic. Finding a shortlistFirst look at the web traffic logs analysis for your site. This will tell you what search words in google and yahoo are being used to find your site. Then find out what terms people are actually using on the search engines. Check prospective search terms here http://inventory.uk.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/. Type in a simple search word and it will give you a list of related phrases used in the previous month on Overture. Search on Altavista for a single word and check the related searches on the right hand side of the page. This gives you frequently used phrases on Altavista. Your search engine consultant will have access to even better tools than this. And those technical terms that you can't even pronounceAlso important are very specific technical terms that don't show on these tools because they are used by a small community of experts. They will naturally appear in your web site in specifications and so on. You don't really need to optimise for these because you are not in competition with many sites for the traffic. But you do need the information there - don't just stick to marketing fluff - put in hard data as well. Plumb the soul of the searcherThis is only the start of the quest for the best keywords. Experts look into the soul of the searcher and ask themselves 'what question will searchers use. They also look at the meanings of words. A recent set of notes on a conference on the subject brought up some interesting ideas. Then whatOnce you have your search terms you can start building them into your site. Where? That would be another technical tip! News from the web Microsoft has launched a new version of its search engine beta. Version 1 of the new open source browser Firefox is here. Download it from www.mozilla.org it's a great product with good features. I particularly like the ability to open several sites in the same browser window, with tabs to switch between them. The developer tools such as the Javascript debugging window are good too. The new browser is causing a stir, and Microsoft may respond by issuing enhancements to Explorer - but not a whole new release until next year. IE is down to less than 90% of browsers now. Tesco have launched a music download site. http://www.tescodownloads.com/. I took a look at the classical section, but as there was absolutely no sub-classification, browsing wasn't an option. You can't search by composer only artist; and searching for Bach only came up with 38 items - (including Bach Street Prelude by someone called Vanessa-Mae, whoever she is). I will stick to Tower records for now. The good news is that the samples are good - ultimately the reason for using this sort of site once someone sets up a decent inventory. The Bach cello suites are a little slice of spine-tingling heaven. Cahoot got hit by a software bug that nixed its security. It is fairly shocking that anyone would release software with a huge hole in it like this, but it is a fairly regular occurrence in the computer world. No matter how small the change to a piece of software you have to retest everything. AOL is pulling out of broadband supply in the states. Earlier this year they stopped selling it, now they are telling customers who have AOL broadband that they will revert to a dial-up service in January. AOL is a dial-up Internet Service provider in a world where dial-up has a limited shelf-life. My guess (and its only a guess) is that we will be moving over to broadband for speech (using VOIP) and data over the next 5-10 years. For AOL not to be in this market could mean that they face a slow death. T-Mobile is moving towards being market leader in the provision of wireless broadband hot spots. But I question whether this business has a long-term future. For a few hundred pounds anyone can have a broadband connection and a wireless router. Its so cheap that coffee shops and filling stations can offer the service for free. So why would I pay T-Mobile? This year maybe the model works, but in a few years time - I wonder. A study by consumer advocacy group Consumer Webwatch criticises search engines such as Yahoo for not distinguishing paid entries clearly enough. Their study showed that 60% of US Adult internet users were not aware that search engines accepted fees to list sites prominently. You may think e-commerce is relatively new, but in fact big corporates have been doing business electronically for decades using a technology called EDI (electronic document interchange). There are massive neworks and proprietary software that is long-established and stable. Now a new player pops into the arena. The UBL (Universal Business Language) is a set of XML standards for things like purchase orders and invoices. Boring stuff - and it has taken six years (count them) to develop the standards. Is the EDI world about to be turned upside down? Flash is great for web sites and animated banners, but tends not to be very search-engine friendly. Now some people in the States are investigating ways of fixing this. And who is the most spammed person in the world. Bill gates of course - 4 million mails a day! A Wacky subculture on e-bay this month was the sale of the image of the Virgin Mary in a grilled cheese. Soon they had all sorts of copies, and finally - the blessed grilled cheese Virgin Mary kit, which now makes holy tacos, quesadilla and tortilla as well. |