User Interface: How big is YOUR screen?

Nothing is more nerve-wrecking than having to scroll on a website. In fact it is a key factor for me to leave a site the instance I arrive.

Avoiding this is obvious to most of us, but hardly anyone knows the majorities screen resolution.

The pie-chart on the left points out a blue, 44,46% big field which indicates 1024×768 pixel resolution. This trend is continuous throughout a significant amount of the websites I follow.

But don’t be prejudiced about your users. An older demographic will most likely tend towards a higher resolution because the appearance of the site will conceivably be bigger. While younger users will most likely tend towards a smaller resolution because of the billions of other applications they will have to monitor aside from the website they are currently reading. Furthermore, we have to think of national issues in reference to visitors from less wealthy countries, who will most likely not have access to high resolution displays.

The ultimate compromise would seemingly consist of creating a variable width template which would take care of these issues once and for all, right? Wrong, because you (or your designers) will experience devastating limitations in terms of creativity and enriching your web site’s content with appropriate imagery. This resulting out of the fact that the images would either be not wide enough for big displays or too small for mobile devices.

The conclusion and only way to be least screwed is to take a fixed width design which is under 1000px of width and to provide barely enough content to make it obsolete to scroll vertically.

Did we forget something? Oh, yes… the constantly growing amount of mobile users. The simplest way would be to create an alternative template or landing page for them with browser recognition.

Now we’ve got pretty much everybody served and happy

5 Factors To Significantly Increase The Success Of Your CRM Campaign

In my fairly short time as a consultant I have seen about 2 dozen CRM campaigns fail because of a variety of factors which I found to be “common sense” not being implied.

Here are some of the most crucial mistakes being made:

1 DON’T start with Step 2!
Step ONE of every successful CRM campaign is determining and documenting the business processes inside your organization. Although you are one of several dealerships in the USA, your business and the things taking place are unique. And this since the first hour! The processes you have developed have to be figured out and have to be brought to paper.
This could include the “free oil change coupon” your customers get for their birthday, the special newsletters they receive if you have sales on vehicles or units they prefer or whatever else is going on.
Thinking about changing something in your work-flow to improve customer satisfaction, etc.? The time is NOW! Because after the CRM is in place the effort to do so will be incomparably higher and more costly. So things you my consider are, whether you also want to include the next generation of customers. See 5. about what I mean.

2. Choosing the right CRM system AND! vendor
Now, that we’ve invested this considerable amount of time into jotting down how our business works and interviewed every staff member about what they do all day long, it’s time to interview even more people. The CRM vendors. Each and everyone will promise you heaven on earth. So you have to evaluate which product suits your business best. Talk to colleagues and which system they have and then place your decision wisely. Why is the vendor more important than the system you’re going to install? Simple: the vendor offers you the support you need if you don’t have the tech-staff in-house to solve immediate problems.

3. Fill the empty shell
Sitting in front of a system with no content is depressing. And has other downsides like the question you’re going to get from your employees:”How does this thing work?”.
Since you have already invested a lot of money into the system the best way to go is to drop the change to have someone import or manually create the existing customers your company has. This will most likely lead to a higher acceptance of the system by your staff and thus to a higher ROI. Trust me, if your staff is motivated they will figure out how the system works.

4. Motivate the team to contribute
Now that we have filled the shell with information about customers we have to convince our team to continuously contribute to the system get them to understand the value of information.

5. What information is valuable – or: See the customer behind the customer
Birthrates are rising again. So a constantly growing amount of households you call your customers has kids. Seriously: do you know when they turn 16 and get their drivers licenses? Why not make the information available with a follow up. Even if it’s not for you it’s for the success of the sales person which follows in your footsteps. And of course mandatory for the success of the whole organization.
Another example would be customer’s birthdays and using this opportunity to generate business. This could very well a coupon for discounted or complementary oil-change or whatever you prefer to give away to loyal customers. Have a customer with a special birthday? Give them a special present.
And why not write down which type of vehicle your customer prefers? Whether it’s a sedan, suburban/truck, sporty limousine. You thus generate tons of opportunities to re-establish post-sales contact opportunities to these people!
Bottom line: the more valuable information you have about your most valuable assets, your customers, AND! the people they know, the more likely it is that you generate business out of it.

Thank you and I hope to see you here again soon

Lars Hilse (download full resume here)
Web Strategist | Speaker | Social Media Expert | Entrepreneur
USA +1 206-203-5212 | UK +44 (0)870 9749050 | Germany +49 (0)1801 5557775788 |
For other contact methods please click here.

E08: Is the mass media lying about McCain’s percentage?

When it comes to political elections I personally trust no one and – like pretty much always – base my opinion on the independent media sources, which are primarily internet based.

When I was looking into who was going to make the race in the US presidential elections I was upon my search on Google, directed to a German news site of a conceivably free television station.

I was presented with the result that McCain was supposed to have around 46% or the electoral votes as of October 18th.

Having been made aware of the Islandic project “If The World Could Vote“, which is in part managed by my good friend Hjortur Smarason, I also checked there, expecting that the results would be at least similar. The project, by the way, assumes that anyone of the over 6 billion citizens of the world could give their vote, electing the next president in the USA.

Rolling my cursor over the USA revealed a staggering 18,8% of the voters who had given their voice to McCain.

The initial question which arose was whether one of these sources had somehow miscalculated the information because of the massive discrepancy between the results found.

Investigating further sources on the mass media presented similar presentations of the percentages while looking more into the independent media scene showed a clear trend towards McCain’s opponent Obama.

Of course we have to consider that “only” a small minority of the US citizens had voted on the independent platform. Maybe these, apparent internet users, are the more educated because of their web access?

Have a nice weekend

Lars

Creating Platform Independence For Email, Calendering, Tasking, Etc.

Those of you who are on Mac and PC, on Mac and Linux, or any other exciting constellation will definitely know the hassle of keeping data synchronized. Yet also the poor souls who regularly use more than one computer are aware of the hassle.

For me, both applies and I have been trying to figure out a way to keep my data synchronized. And this the term to generalize the problem… Making my email, calender, tasking, twitter, documents, etc. available not only on multiple machines running several platforms. But also considering that I want to have most of my stuff available offline to be able to work in planes, trains, or where ever.

The solution(s) I implied:

What we want to make available:

• Email - This calls for Gmail(GO!) and it’s awesome and constantly increasing storage capacity. And of course the tremendous amount of nifty features involved like sending from other addresses you own. Using the IMAP protocol you can access your constantly synchronized email from every platform and even make it available offline when using a client like Thunderbird(GO!) . (why Thunderbird? We’ll get to that later)
• Calendering - Google’s Calender (GO!) app scores big time in this case… Multiple calenders, multiple permission settings on what who can read and where.
• Tasking - This is where it gets a bit hairy – since Google Calender does not support task synchronization we have to find a workaround for that one. So we end up using the free version of Remember The Milk(GO!) which we will then integrate into Google Calender later on.
• Twitter(GO!) - Some will refer to it as a useless necessity… but I live there – Hey, be tolerant! And this also calls for some integration obstacles. You can very well use the web based version from pretty much any platform and your cell phone to keep people up to date. But how boring is that please? We want the big boy’s stuff! So we’ll use TwitterFox(GO!) which integrates seamlessly into your Firefox browser.
• Documents - I pretty much have my famous brain farts all day long. Remembering my thoughts always presented a big challenge. Not that my brain capacity would be overrun – but it’s just the mass of things. And of course the desire to make my letters, etc. available anywhere. Hey, who want’s to run around with a laptop all day long? I don’t.
  So this is where we go to Google Docs(GO!) and use their great Google Gears(GO!) (which is by the way is also available to Google Reader(GO!) )
• IM - Something no one really needs. But a great deal to stay in touch with Friends and business collegues. Just make sure that you don’t spread your handles too far as it can very well become a pain in the ass being available all day.
  The problem with IMs though was that in the past – if you’re running more than one system – you had more than one log stored in several places depending on the system or VM you were on.
  The directions we want to go to solve this issue is Meebo.com (GO!) Meebo unifies all your IM accounts to a web based platform and stores logs with all conversation server sided. The consequence being that you have all the data available in one place.
• RSS Feeds – Who can live without them? But the more important question is, who has time to read them while online?
  Google Reader (GO!) takes care of this issue in a very simple way, utilizing Google Gears(GO!), making the last 2000 articles in your favorite feeds available for offline reading.

Putting it all together requires a bit more detailed documentation.

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD a detailed, and illustrated 12 page PDF file which will show you step-by-step how to make yourself free from commercial software, costly services and operating systems.

Video: How to beat the recession using the Internet in 9 Minutes

I made this video just as I was heading out the door in regards to the tons of questions I received about the recession and how to beat it.

Using the internet (not only) as a point of sale can be one way.

Have fun and a nice weekend and feel free to call me if you have questions.

Die 5 einfachsten Verkaufschancen durch vorhandene Kundendaten

Was hat der Kunde bisher gekauft?
Wenn Sie mit einem Bestandskunden Kontakt aufnehmen erkundigen Sie sich vor einem Gespräch, was er bereits bei Ihnen gekauft hat. Dies gibt Ihnen die Möglichkeit Tendenzen über Präferenzen erkennen, vielleicht sogar über sein Budget.
Lösung: Verlauf über das Kaufverhalten des Kunden.

Geburtstage und andere Ereignisse?
Nutzen Sie diese Gelegenheit nicht nur als Verkaufschance aber auch um Ihre Daten abzugleichen. Schicken Sie Ihrem Kunden einen Geburtstagsgutschein. Etwas, was Ihnen nicht weh tut. Ich denke hierbei eine KFZ-Werkstatt die zu runden Geburtstagen einen Ölwechsel verschenkt.
Lösung: Stetig aktuelle Wiedervorlage.

Kinder und Verwandtschaft?
Ich erinnere mich an ein Autohaus, was Luxusmarken vertreibt. Wir evaluierten die Möglichkeiten der Absatzsteigerung mit Hilfe ihres exzellent geführtes Kundenmanagementsystems. Der Datenbestand hatte sogar die Namen und Geburtsdaten der Kinder des Kunden gespeichert.
Wir beschlossen, den Kindern zum 18. Geburtstag einen Präsentkorb zu schicken, bei einigen Kundenverbindungen sogar persönlich zu überreichen. Der Aufwand hatte sich bereits nach dem zweiten Korb bezahlt gemacht da es zur Realisierung einer Verkaufschance kam.
Lösung: Beziehungen zwischen Kunden verknüpfen.

Beständiger Kontakt?
Obwohl wir einen langsamen Trend zurück zur Qualität erkennen ist Geiz noch immer geil. Regelmässige Mailings nur mit Sonderangeboten werden häufig als SPAM identifiziert. Nicht aber, wenn Sie den Mailings ein Coupon beifügen… z. B. Mit einem 10%igen Nachlass auf jeden Einkauf der einen Wert von 20 EUR übersteigt.
Lösung: Emailadressen Ihrer Kunden pflegen.

Vollständige Kundendatenbank?
Die größte Herausforderung besteht darin Ihren Kunden die Daten zu entlocken. Hinzu kommt, dass sich diese Daten, zum Beispiel durch Umzüge, verändern. Nutzen wir aber eine Zufriedenheitsumfrage, in welchem wir ein Trendobjekt, wie beispielsweise einen iPod, verlosen und in dessen Anschluss wir den Kunden fragen ob die von uns gespeicherten Daten noch aktuell sind, gewinnen wir wiederum neue Absatzchancen.
Lösung: Möglichkeiten suchen, die Kundendatenbank durch regelmäßige Aktionen zu aktualisieren.

Dieses ist nur eine kleine Auswahl von Möglichkeiten. Und natürlich hängen diese auch von der Branche ab, in der Sie operieren.

Sie brauchen Hilfe bei der Findung von Lösungen? Dann erreichen Sie mich werktags unter 01801 5557775788 von 8:00 bis 12:00 und 15:00 bis 23:00 Uhr. (max. 12ct. aus dem Dt. Festnetz – Mobilfunk möglicherweise abweichend)

Alltop.com – Really all top? The 10 pros and cons

Alltop (self description) is similar to the countless web-directories out there. Alltop is owned by Nononina, which again belongs to Guy Kawasaki.

The primary differentiators of Alltop in context to known web-directories are

Read more >>

Looking for advice on a social site systems

as always, it depends on the budget. The most successful portals out there were not built on pre-packed solutions but are unique systems which focus solely on the group of people it was intended for.

Furthermore, you may want to invest a lot of time into determining what your group wants and how they want it conveyed to them. I am addressing issues like usability, etc.
Read more >>

A CMS: many or few buttons?

You have to consider more than just the general opinion for this one. Reason being: if your targeted group of website visitors focuses upon an older generation you definitely want to go more towards usability. Same of course applies for inexperienced users.
Read more >>

Who has developed a wiki?

The problem is not setting up the wiki. Further more, it’s not about designing one. Any web designer with poor knowledge can set up a wiki in about 30 minutes.

The problem consists of designing the policies by which the information is to be entered into the system Read more >>