Raised Eyebrow Blog

Last month I ran a very successful workshop for writers/journalists on the topic of setting up a Wordpress.com portfolio site. I’m running it again later this month (November 21-22), here’s the description:

As a writer, you know you need a website-something clean, professional and easy on the eyes. You also know it can cost serious money to hire a web designer to do it for you.

This two-day workshop, led by Emira Mears of Raised Eyebrow Web Studio, will guide you through the basics of setting up, configuring and customizing the look and feel of a Wordpress.com website. In two four-hour sessions, you will create an outline for your site, configure the features you need — a blog, categories, pages, images, links to related information, etc. — and select and customize a design. You’ll also learn how to update content and make changes yourself over time. All for the affordable rate of $140.

Dates: November 21/22, 2009, 10 am – 2 pm

Cost: $140, plus GST (receipts available)

Location:
Endswell Room at The Flack Block
163 West Hastings Street
Corner of Hastings and Cambie

To register or for more information contact workshops [at] raisedeyebrow.com

Seating in this workshop will be limited to 12 participants on a first come, first served basis. Please bring your own laptop.

There’s a great piece on the Drupal and the current White House website in today’s New York Times. Worth a read for Drupal users/fans or Open Source keeners.

Once again we have space available for sublease in our office. We’re going through some changes here at the office which mean we’re now offering a slightly different configuration from what we’ve offered in the past. We have two options available: either individual desk rental in our larger office space, or, if it suits your purposes better we also have an enclosed office available which would fit up to two people.  Details are below. I can’t say enough about how lovely this building and the people in it are (plus we’re kind of swell folks to be around too).

For Rent in Shared Space:

Single Desks in Common Area: $400/month each
Raised Eyebrow has two desk spaces available for rental in our bright, spacious office in the newly-renovated Flack Block in Gastown. This five-story heritage building has just been renovated to top-notch environmental standards (LEED Gold, for those in the know), and features high ceilings, original brick walls — and our favourite feature, windows that open and let in the fresh outdoor air.

Your rent includes high-speed internet, a phone line, access to two different fully kitted out meeting rooms, a beautiful kitchen and eating area that’s decked out with energy-efficient appliances, secure bike storage and showers, and lots of opportunities to interact with some of Vancouver’s brightest sparks of progressive change — our neighbours include Renewal Partners, Penner & Associates, Forest Ethics, Tides Canada, Bullfrog Power, Octopus Strategies, and Rainforest Solutions. The building is highly secure, with fob access at every entrance, and alarms on both our floor and within our suite.

We’re located on the corner of Hastings & Cambie, with fantastic transit access, great lunch & coffee spots all around, and right across the street from the greenery of Victory Square Park.

On single desks we require a minimum 3 month commitment.

Or if you’d prefer:

Contained Office Space in Raised Eyebrow: $850/month
Raised Eyebrow has one self contained office available for sub-rental in our bright, spacious office in the newly-renovated Flack Block in Gastown. This self-contained office has a sliding door glass door to block sound/for privacy and features a long window along one other wall. The office is large enough to fit two people. The five-story heritage building has just been renovated to top-notch environmental standards (LEED Gold, for those in the know), and features high ceilings, original brick walls.

Your rent includes high-speed internet, a phone line, access to two different fully kitted out meeting rooms, a beautiful kitchen and eating area that’s decked out with energy-efficient appliances, secure bike storage and showers, and lots of opportunities to interact with some of Vancouver’s brightest sparks of progressive change — our neighbours include Renewal Partners, Penner & Associates, Forest Ethics, Tides Canada, Bullfrog Power, Octopus Strategies, and Rainforest Solutions. The building is highly secure, with fob access at every entrance, and alarms on both our floor and within our suite.

We’re located on the corner of Hastings & Cambie, with fantastic transit access, great lunch & coffee spots all around, and right across the street from the greenery of Victory Square Park.

On the office space we require a minimum 6 month commitment.

Contact:
Contact us at turningheads [at] raisedeyebrow.com if you’re interested.

I’ve written before about the cost of websites, which is really hard thing to nail down. Like building a house, it depends how big/how fancy that house/website needs to be before a price tag can be attached. That said, we’ve been doing this a long time now, and recently we’ve been talking about rethinking our development model at Raised Eyebrow, which has some ramifications for our pricing and would allow us to answer the “what does a website cost anyway?” question a bit more directly.

On the development model side, we’re moving towards more of an Agile Development framework, which aligns really nicely with our company approach and philosophy quite nicely. For those of you that aren’t familiar with Agile development I do recommend following that link, but in a nutshell I can tell you that it means a more nimble process, more responsive to needs (in our case our clients’ needs), and generally means slower growth over time all of which fits really nicely with our vision of the web, community building and organizational/business sustainability.

I’ve written before, and waxed poetic over many a cocktail about new shiny features in the world of the interwebs taking priority over actual use value. Often we have clients coming to us, enticed by the latest cool new web tricks, and wanting to implement them — an understandable impulse. Often, we talk our clients down a notch when we know that they don’t have the internal resources to support said cool trick, or that their (let’s face it often limited) funds could be better spent elsewhere. In an Agile development model we’d be helping our clients focus on a smaller and defined set of features, rolling those out initially and then working with them to monitor the value and strategic impact of those features before we undertake further development. We already pride ourselves on having long term relationships with our clients where we’re happy to act as their trusted advisors when it comes to all things web, so tying that consulting relationship to a plan for a phased feature rollout is not a big new step to take. The new part, is the scaling back of initial specifications.

You may ask, why would a business (that is looking to make some money afterall) want to scale back specifications and features off the top? For us, it’s about doing our best work and supporting our clients to do their best work. It’s about making sure that clients are spending funds wisely so that they have something left over for features and consulting they’ll want in the future. Websites are fantastic in their ability to evolve and change, making sure our clients approach the work we do with them as a starting ground for a longer conversation, rather than a race to the finish line is one way that we feel we can better serve our clients and the non-profit sector we work in.

So what does a website cost under this model anyway?

For the first time ever we feel like we really truly have an answer to this question. In our case $15,000 (plus GST if you’re in Canada). And what do you get for that?

• You get a website. Not just any old website though. A website designed and birthed by a team of experts with many, many years of experience in this field.
• You do get an original design process.
• You get a rock solid Content Management System (Drupal), with an integrated search, that can be extended to add all kinds of cool features in the future.
• You get a site that is optimized for SEO both in its overall structure and its technical framework.
• You also get Information Architecture/Interaction Design consulting and ongoing strategic advice throughout the project.

You also get two features, things like:

• A basic events calendar, kind of like the one you see here at the Chan Centre.
• A standard publications/resources catalogue like this one at Pivot Legal.
• A news listing like this one for the Ending Violence Association of BC.
• A customized blog.
• An image gallery.
• A video carousel like the one on CaroleJames.ca.
• Something else that your organization needs specifically (that can be defined within a basic scope) like the integrated custom Job Applications form we did for Covenant House.

Why only two features? Well two features fits within our budget limit of $15,000 (obviously if you have more budget, we can expand the features), and two features is a great place to start. With two features up and running on a website we can work with you to make sure that they’re actually being used by the organization and users (through statistics monitoring), and we can then create a roadmap for building out new features or further customizing the existing ones to do even more for you.

The idea is, that we start with $15,000, get you an excellent and useful website that helps to meet your short term needs and helps you build on your long term communications goals. And then, ideally, we set up a retainer contract with you to have regular check-ins (quarterly, bi-annually, etc whatever works for you), and we help you plan out future feature roll-outs, strategies for enhancing the website and your online communications in general. We play an ongoing role in your communications strategy by regularly monitoring your website statistics and usage patterns, and we help make sure your budgets are being wisely spent over time.

But what about Social Media, is that a feature?

Yes, and no. Adding a link to your Twitter profile or integrating your latest Twitter posts into the website is easily done, and would be included in the project price. Ditto for adding Facebook links or integrating an RSS feed from the site into your Facebook Page/Group/Profile. By default (where applicable) we can include a Social Bookmarking widget that allows people to bookmark, repost, or email your site to a friend/social networks. Ditto for adding an existing email list signup box. Actual online strategic planning is another story. If you need help with creating a strategy for online communications, we’ll do that with you as well, but that would be a separate project.

In preparing an upcoming presentation for a client I found myself leafing through notes and google searches to get an exhaustive list of the different between Facebook Pages and Groups (I know the general difference, but wanted to make sure I was 100% prepared to answer all the ins outs of each, and always like to check in on the latest happenings at evolving beast that is Facebook). Here are two great posts that outline the differences between the two, if you’ve found yourself wondering which is best for you organization/cause/business:

• Search Engine Journal’s post includes a comparison table that is handy dandy. I would point out, however, that while it is true you can “message all members” with both as they say, there is a notable difference between messaging your Page’s fans vs. your Group members. With the former, the message goes out in the form of an “update” which can be easily ignored by users (if I’m any indication, they can in fact be routinely ignored). The latter, offers direct inbox sending options, though only for groups under 1,200 members (or perhaps 5,000 I’ve found conflicting info on that number).
• Advergirl’s post lists out the pros and cons of each, playing champion and devil’s advocate for both options.

The summary seems to be that for a long standing, more engaged approach with a community you want a Page, not a Group, but check out the comparisons and decide for yourself.

(As a side note, you can turn an existing Facebook Group into a Page, but you need to be the admin contact for the original group, and you need to contact Facebook directly to do it. No sense of what the ETA on turn around time for that is).

I came across Matt Haughey’s post This is How Social Media Really Works via a friend’s blog this afternoon and it’s finally got me focusing a whole mess of thoughts about Social Media that have been floating around in my brain for the last several months about strategic use of Social Media as a part of your larger communications or marketing plan.

To summarize Matt’s post, if you haven’t already headed over there to read it, he describes a recent purchase he made and how he came across the company he ultimately bought from. Matt was looking to upgrade the swingset in his backyard, his path to purchase went something like this: follow friend on Twitter > one day that friend happens to tweet about the Obama’s buying new swingset for Whitehouse > Matt, because he’s currently interested in swingsets, checks out friend’s blog post that contains more details about the swingset, including a link to the manufacturer of said soon to be presidential swingset > website for swingset vendor is particularly well designed and easy to use > Matt buys swingset.

Matt’s conclusion for this is that, well I’ll just quote him here:

“there are thousands of people all over twitter and blogs that think throwing thousands of dollars at people that describe themselves as a “marketing guru” is the way to increase their company sales. I’m here to say I think that may very well be a waste of money, time, and energy.”

He goes on to conclude the article with the following:

“So maybe instead of getting your company on twitter, paying marketers to mention you are on twitter, and paying people to blog about your company, forget all that and just make awesome stuff that gets people excited about your products, hire people that represent the company well, and when your stuff is so awesome that friends share it with other friends, you may not even need “social media marketing” after all.”

And I agree. Wholeheartedly. But does that mean I think you shouldn’t participate in Social Media as a marketing pursuit be it for a company, a non-profit, a campaign or what have you? No. I do think however — and I’m really not alone in this — that you should see your participation in Social Media — Twitter, Facebook, etc. — as a way to extend your reach, build your community and engage in conversation with customers. And, as you do that — and do it well — you will find that you start getting good Earned Social Media and it will pay off in droves in sales, participation, supporters etc. That means not using Social Media to just let people know directly about your products, sales, fundraising campaigns etc. In fact, you should probably limit how much of that you do through Social Media channels altogether as it detracts from the community building side of things.

I’ve been advocating for clients to get earned online media for many a year now. I think it is by far one of the most effective online strategies to boost sales/supporters/donations etc. and lucky for you it is pretty easy to get. Easier to get than earned media offline anyway, as the barrier to entry is really low. A review on a blog, or an interview with a blogger is a great entry point to earned online media. Obviously, depending on the reach of the blogger or an online magazine, the impact will vary widely, but much like offline earned media it tends to be the kind of thing that builds and grows overtime. With Social Media you’re looking for the same thing. People retweeting a useful resource you post online, or perhaps even better people tweeting links directly to a blog post you’ve written on a company or organizational blog, or another page on your website will help drive pre-qualified (already interested) traffic to your website. As Matt’s scenario displays, that one pre-qualified lead — he was already particularly interested in swingsets — will be far more valuable than thousands of curious folks who just happen to click on a link from your Twitter feed.

The final piece from Matt’s blog post that I want to point to — and I’m aware I’ve got a huge bias here — is a comment he makes about the vendor having “a great website” which, combined with a local lot where he could test out the playground in person, ultimately helped to seal the deal. If when he followed that link he hadn’t been able to quickly and easily get the info that he wanted, he probably would have clicked away and this story would never have been written. When you’re investing in Social Media — be it dollars or simply the valuable time of staff used to tweet and updating Facebook — you are ulitmately investing in driving traffic to your website. If your website isn’t in top form, you may want to spend those Social Media marketing resources on fixing things up at your primary online communications point first.

As providers/builders/magicians of technology it is natural for our clients to come to us when they want to add new features to their websites. And while it’s kind of our job to get the job done, I often find that I start out a conversation about adding “new feature x” with investigative questions about what the reasoning behind the new feature is and how it will be supported with internal resources. Sometimes, I even end up talking clients out of adding some new feature (which ultimately would give us money and business) in favour of redirecting them to pay more attention to content/people time spent on what they’ve already got. This article looking at how too many features can harm your online community hits the nail on the head on this topic, and can be broadened out to include most online applications not just those in community websites. The biggest take away comes near the end of the article with this paragraph:

Don’t be tricked into thinking that members demand certain features and functionality. Members aren’t really interested in the technology behind a community – they are far more interested in the people and human activity taking place there.

I’ve been compiling notes from the various conferences I’ve been at over the last few weeks and plan to post them up here, many centre around the common thread that the technologies available to us today are ultimately there to support larger visions, they are not in and of themselves the final prize. Whether that translates into pouring resources into supporting people over new technology, or using social media to support and enhance campaigns but not as a campaign itself, the technology can’t be the leader in the equation however shiny and cool it may be.

One of the questions that came up in a Usability Testing Session at the NTEN Conference this week was one that our non profit clients ask us all the time: “How do we involve our board in gathering feedback?” The implicit question there, and no offense to board members here, is “How do I involve my board but not get overly swayed/pushed by their feedback?” The further implied statement is that often boards don’t represent the target audiences for an organization and yet by priviledge of their positions they can really influence the website design and development process.

While there’s no magic bullet solution for this issue, one way to mitigate potential problems is to ask your board for very specific feedback. Re-articulate the website and communications goals and ask for specific feedback on those goals. Don’t ask “Do you like how it looks” ask “Do you think this website communicate the following: a sense of engagement, a sense of leadership, a sense of authority on issues, etc.” (But of course replace those feelings with whatever the goals for your project/your organization are). Then ask them questions based on other communications goals that were set out for the website like “Does this design make it easy to find the email sign up button?” or “Are you able to quickly see the latest information from our organization?” etc. We always help our clients draft these goals as a part of the initial design process, and reusing them to guide feedback from other stakeholders is a great way to get targeted feedback.

Of course there’s no way to guarantee that you’re not going to get feedback along the lines of “I really hate the colour green” or “The woman in that photo looks too much like my evil Aunt Mabel” but hopefully that helps you to get more targeted and useful information as well, which is the feedback you can focus on.

Another framework to try to apply, but I’ll warn you this one is really tricky, is to remind your board (or other stakeholders) before they give you feedback who the target audience is (assuming your board doesn’t match your target audience). And, if you’re comfortable enough with your board you may want to even explicitly remind them that they are not the target audience, or that they are not exclusively their target audience. A quick, gentle reminder along the lines of “Remember our website is one of the primary ways that our core program users, who are youth between the ages of 13-19 who typically access the internet from home on highspeed connections…” etc. is a great way to just help get people thinking about more than their personal preferences.

Smaller organizations often shy away from Usability Testing for fear of the big budgets that can be associated with it. One of the sessions I attended at the Non Profit Technology Conference today addressed this constraint and had some great suggestions for ways to incorporate usability testing on a small budget as well as some ways to simply reframe how you think about usability testing. Here’s a summary of some of those ideas:

• First off, if you have website statistics/analytics already installed on your website then you are (or can be) doing usability testing now. Looking at stats like “500 people visit our donations page each week but only 4 are donating”, “our website is getting 1000 visitors a week, but only 5 email newsletter signups”, or “of the top 5 pages being visited on the website only 2 lead to the content that supports our mission/vision/campaigns.” Evaluating these statistics regularly — or to make a plug here, having your web firm evaluate them — and watching for trends and then looking at what you can do to make iterative changes is a great way to do some low risk/low cost usability testing.
• Usability testing is about asking your audience/representative audiences questions. Why not ask them now rather than waiting to invest in a big usability testing process. Include a link to a basic survey (3-4 questions max) at the end of an email sign-up, donation process, volunteer form, etc. to ask them if their expectations were met, with simple “yes/no” type questions and then a link for people to email you with further comments and thoughts. Again, incorporate what feedback you can as budgets allow, but track and gather the information on an ongoing basis.
• When rolling out some new features, use Social Media to get usability testers. Post a link to the feature/design you want feedback on and link to a basic survey and get feedback via Twitter/Facebook/Email Newsletters etc.
• It’s also ok to launch your website and make some small mistakes. Websites can be tweaked and it doesn’t need to be perfect when you launch it. Listen to what your users are telling you (which means asking them) and then evolve your website over time based on feedback.

The big takeaway from the session for me was that yes usability testing can be expensive, especially if the feedback means overhauling your design/functionality, but don’t be afraid to ask the questions. Then you can start to figure out what kind of a budget you are going to need to evolve and improve your website, rather than flying blind.

One of the sessions I attended at the Non Profit Technology Conference today focused on the impact of visitor satisfaction to a website.The primary message: the more satisfied a visitor is the more they are likely to engage with your organization. A no brainer? Perhaps, but when you think of engagement as impacting your capacity as an organization in it leading to more donations, volunteers, more people recommending and distributing your information it becomes vital to pay attention to user satisfaction.

So how do you find out if site visitors are satisfied? Satisfaction can’t really be measured in straight up website statistics (even with the magic of Google Analytics). The best way to find out how satisfied your users are is to ask them. Asking your users how satisfied with your current website they are, is a particularly great time investment to undertake if you’re looking at redesigning or redeveloping your website. Our clients often ask us what kinds of questions they should be asking when they survey their website users, so here’s a great framework to use to develop your own survey.

Questions you can ask your users to measure satisfaction:

1. Content. Some sample questions to ask: How does the quality of information you present measure up? How up to date isquality of info, how up to date is it?
2. Functionality. How useful is the website? Does it increase convenience for the site visitor? Is there a sufficient variety of features available on your website?
3. Images. Does the image of the organization presented online match how they think of you offline? Does it match how you want to be perceived?
4. Look and feel. Does the mood of the website match how they perceive your organization?
5. Navigation. How easy is the site to use? How easy was it to find things?

There are many specific questions you can fill into those top level categories to match your organization and your users, but hopefully that’s a useful starting framework.