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Usability and Legacy Systems … Yuck!

Just the thought of the words “legacy system” conjures images of big companies using old, antiquated hardware running DOS-like interfaces to perform simple tasks inefficiently.  The problem for these companies is the technology changes so fast, by the time the systems they have planned, designed, and developed for launch, they become old, slow and outdated within 6 months.  It was a large investment to implement and time consuming to integrate into business wide  systems and procedures.  Outdated can often mean poor usability, which allows room for the competition to beat you out.   How on earth will they ever catch up without blowing their bottom line? Enter innovation.

So, we found a company who takes an innovative approach to theses big companies; many of which, if not all, are stuck on legacy systems.  Companies like  Circle K, UPS and Costco.  At the center of it all…customer experience.

Jeremy: Can you tell me a little about what Fuel Quest does?

Todd: Sure, we offer downstream fuel supply chain management software. (laughs) I can tell from the look on your face that didn’t help much.  Okay, our software manages fuel supply from the supply terminal to the gas station and from the gas station to the car.

Jeremy: So what is it you do exactly at Fuel Quest?

Todd: I handle business partner integration into our solutions, which might mean creating user interfaces or reports that help bridge our systems together in a way that is usable and optimized.

Jeremy: So how important is usability in what you do or for your industry, for that matter?

Todd: We are continuously dealing with older legacy systems designed at a time when usability wasn’t what it is today.  The companies we deal with have used these systems for so long that they are ingrained into the heads of the employees that use them.  I’ve noticed resistance or hesitation to integrate with Fuel Quest from some of these employees; not because it isn’t useful or a better approach, but because they are afraid of having to learn a new system all over again.

Jeremy: How do you overcome that?

Todd: You have to be a problem solver for these people.  These ARE the users.  It is their experience that I am trying to improve.  Usually, all I need to do is find out what their problems are and show them how our solution will make their lives easier.  Although, sometimes the feedback I get from them isn’t solvable by our current solution and a new custom one is necessary.

Jeremy: At the end of the day, that kind of feedback is extremely valuable in crafting better and better solutions.

Todd: Right. It’s complexity versus simplicity.  That’s at the heart of the designs I come up with.

Jeremy: Could you give some examples?

Todd: Sure.  I try to make the system work flows reflect the day-to-day operations of the users.  I identify what elements are most commonly used in their day-to-day operations and I design the solutions to make those elements accessible with the fewest number of clicks.  Using AJAX to give visual cues help decrease confusion, error messaging on validation and permissions based UI’s help me make sure that, what each user sees, is highly relevant to them and their work flow.

Jeremy: What kind of response or feedback have you been receiving with these designs?

Todd: We recently had our Fuel Quest Users Convention, which we call Grail.  We invited out a bunch of our clients and others in the industry to see what we were working on.  I had the pleasure of presenting at our technology showcase and seeing first hand the response.  People were getting gitty over some of this stuff. It was amazing to work so hard on something that seemed like such a no-brainer and get that kind of validation.

Jeremy: So what’s in your toolbox when you are banging out designs and user experience concepts?

Todd: I have found some really great open source tools that get the job done. I use Gliffy to quickly mock up layout.  Faststonecapture.org is a great tool for screen captures that you can quickly edit and make notes on.  Notepad Plus is my go to editor.  HTML Kit is a nice editor I use from time to time.  Obviously, Excel for data and report management.  Altova XML Spy is a must for me, we use XML heavily.  The only other thing I use is Gimp which is an image editor.

Jeremy: Lastly, what do you think the future holds for usability and UX?

Todd: I think there will be much less physical interaction with these systems to do day-to-day processes.

Jeremy: In what ways?

Todd: I think that the speech to text solutions our there are reaching a level of sophistication that make them viable for manipulating UI’s.  Permissions could be set based off of recognizing the voice of the user.  I read somewhere of a company that is going to start selling a device that allows you to manipulate systems with thought alone.  Emotiv was the name.  Supposed to sell for $300 dollar range.  That puts it in the ballpark for small businesses to afford and innovate with.

Jeremy: Maybe Fuel Quest will be one of those innovators.

Todd: No one would be more excited about it than me!

Todd Holt on LinkedIn

There are so many elements to marketing on the internet that I often find myself struggling to come up with a quick, easy to understand explanation of what it is I do.  I fumble over what I think needs to be said and end up spending way to much time talking about SEO or SMM and, before you know it, I start getting technical - Doh!  This can leave a bad impression, I’m sure.  Shame, shame, shame.

I decided to jot down some examples of pitches - each with a different emphasis - to help prevent me from committing the same sin over and over.  Interestingly enough, I noticed that as I wrote this post, I WAS STILL DOING IT! Delete, start over, delete, start over.  Damn you brain!

Feel free to leave examples of the pitches you use in the comments.

Person A: “Good Morning. What floor?”
Person B: “5 please. Thank you. Another wonderful day of work.”

(Elevator doors close)

Person A: (sarcastically)”Yeah, tell me about it.”
Person B: “No seriously, I love what I do.”

Person A: (shocked)”Well what the hell do you do!”
Person B: (insert pitch)

Pitch 1 - SEO Emphasis Pitch:
I build search engine friendly websites for businesses and get them to rank well in search engines by creating quality content, optimizing the site for highly searched keyword phrases and increasing the amount of inbound links to the site.

Pitch 2 - Various Methods Pitch:
I help businesses and organizations use their website to get more leads, prospects or clients by making their website
more visible on the web through search engine optmization, pay per click advertising and social media marketing.

Pitch 3 - Usability Pitch:
I help websites generate more traffic and, once they have that traffic, I improve the design of the site to help turn those visitors into clients, prospects or leads.

Pitch 4 - Brand Building Pitch:
I help businesses and organizations develop and grow an online brand by leveraging the internet to establish that brand in their niche and help them become more visible to their ideal customers, clients or prospects.

Pitch 5 - All-In-One Pitch:
(takes a deep breath)
I build search engine friendly websites for businesses and organizations that will build their brand and increase their visibility across the web through search engine optimization, pay per click advertising and social media marketing; which in turn, increase the traffic to their site. I then improve the design of the website to turn as many visitors as possible into clients, prospects and leads.

(Elevator arrives at 5th floor and doors open)

Person A: (Beaming with delight) That’s amazing! I’ll take 3 of everything you offer!

I’ve been researching this topic quiet a bit and I thought I would share what I have found.  This list is meant to be fairly comprehensive of what the current discussion points are.  This is not a “Live by these rules” list.  If you wish to leave comments to debate these points, real world examples of your experiences would be great. Enjoy!

1.  Hosting on a shared I.P. versus unique I.P.

On shared hosting plans, there could be hundreds of other sites getting their hosting on the same I.P.  Let’s say one of these sites gets flagged as a spammer in Google system - after all, you never know when you are sharing I.P.’s with gambling, porn or pharmaceutical sites.  Guess what?  The I.P. now throws up a flag in Google’s system and your website is on the same one! This can have an adverse effect on your search engine rankings.

2.  Hosting locally versus hosting anywhere in the world.

This one has two schools of thought. Some marketers believe that it doesn’t matter where you are hosted.  There will be no adverse effect on search engine rankings. On the other hand there are those that believe, as Google focuses more and more on personalisation, where a website is hosted will be one of the factors it uses to determine relavancy to each individual searcher.

If you are optimizing a site to a local version of Google; such as UK, it is in some people’s opinions better to register the same country TLD, host the site with a company whose servers are based in the same country and get some quality backlinks from the same TLD sites.

3.  Host using Linux Apache MySQL PHP versus windows hosting.

Linux hosting offers availability of free software, usage of htaccess and mod-rewrite and ease of community support. There is a general consensus on the web that windows hosting is much more restrictive and difficult for webmasters, especially bloggers, who are trying to get the most out of their websites on the search engines.

4.  Buying Year-In-Advance Hosting or more versus auto renewal every few months.

From a search engine’s perspective, buying hosting for a 1 year commitment tells them that you are probably not a fly-by-night spammer. If you plan on trying to achieve authority status in your niche, you might as well pony up 5 years worth of hosting.  That will surely send the message that you are here to stay and most sites are still kicking and screaming 5 years later anyways.

5.  Get Mod-Rewrite / htaccess

Google is funny about duplicate content caused by accessing a domain by www. and the non-www. version of your site. Google Webmaster Account addresses this issue by selecting a preference of either www. or the non-www.

Or

6.  Have your web host provide basic HTACCESS and MOD_REWRITE and write the following:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST}!^www\.yourdomain\.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.yourdomain.com/$1 [R=301]

7.  Make sure your site is hosted on a server with maximum uptime.

This one is a no-brainer.  ;)  You don’t want search engine failing to crawl your site because it is down.  They won’t be able to index your newly optimized pages that will cause you to rank higher in search results if your site is down.

Hope this was insightful.

A staple of successful internet marketing is a quality link building campaign.  There are many resources on the web on link building and I will not bother going into those details here.

As social media has grown and evolved over the past few years, it has become a new avenue for marketers and webmasters to execute link building campaigns.

This blog post is an attempt to list the social media sites that allow “do follow” links; which should have the potential to contribute to the search rank of the page being linked.

Contribute To This List
I am sure this list is far from being thorough and accurate.  The landscape of the social web will always be changing.  So, I invite everyone to leave comments recommending any “Social Media” websites that I have left off the list.  Some sites will be removed from time to time as well, as suggested by the comments.  Page Rank of the sites on the list will fluctuate over time.  They are meant to be a guide.

Guidelines for adding to the list

• Must be a social media site.
• Must allow for user submitted links that do not have the “no follow” tag on the link.
• Make suggestions as comments.

Guidelines for site removal from the list

• Must provide proof that “do follow” user submitted links do not exist on the site.
• Must prove that the site should not be considered a social media site.
• Make suggestions as comments.

Post by Eric Brantner

Copywriting. It’s the backbone of your website. If you don’t use the right words, you’ll never convert your visitors into paying customers. So, stop focusing on those keywords for a minute, and start focusing on using these 10 results-driven copywriting words.

1. You–This is the most important word in your website copywriting. Unfortunately, few websites use it. Instead of saying “we we we” over and over, use “you.” Why? Because consumers are selfish. They only care about how your product will benefit them. They don’t want to read website copy that is just your company stroking its own ego the whole time. Remember, copywriting is a conversation. So, talk with your reader rather than at them.

2. Free–George Carlin once had a bit where he talked about how you can get people to do anything if you give them some gadget, like a toaster, for free. The word “free” is intoxicating. People love feeling like they’re getting something for nothing. More importantly, people online are wary of losing something to a scam. If you offer something for free, you put them at ease and build some trust with them. Whether it’s a free consultation or a free e-book, consider having a free offer on your website. Just don’t overdo it, or you’ll come off looking spammy.

3. Guaranteed–Again, online shoppers are more cautious than traditional shoppers. And for good reason. Let’s face it, there are lots of scams floating around the internet. Using trust-building words like guaranteed can help potential customers feel as if they have nothing to lose. It’s comforting for them to know there is always an out should the product not live up to their standards.

4. Easy–Staples has built an entire brand based solely on the word “easy.” People love easy.

5. New–New has always been an effective buzzword. This is even more true in today’s technology-driven world. Customers are demanding the latest and greatest products. They want to be on the cutting edge.

6. Proven–Of course, new means nothing if it isn’t proven. So, if your unique selling point is that your product uses cutting-edge, new technology, you better make sure you let your visitors know it’s proven to work also. Some people are afraid of new, and it’s your job to prove how it will benefit them. Statistics help.

7. Results–This goes hand-in-hand with proven. Your potential customers want to know what results they can expect with your product. Don’t hide behind vague industry terms and meaningless jargon. Get straight to the point. Tell them exactly the results and benefits your product or services will deliver to them.

8. Save–Save is another buzzword that’s been thrown around forever. It can be even more effective today with the condition of the economy. But the word “save” doesn’t always have to be about price. Your product could “save” time for the consumer. It could “save” them from trouble. It’s not always about saving money, especially if you’re marketing yourself as a top-shelf brand.

9. Maximize–I like the word “maximize” because it creates the perception that your product achieves the maximum benefits possible. However, make sure you aren’t too vague when you use this word. Back it up with facts that show how your reader will “maximize” the benefit.

10. Benefit–Copywriting 101: tell your readers how they will benefit from using your product. What better way to accomplish that than by using the word “benefit?”

How many of these words do you use in your website copy? Would you add any to this list?