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The A-Z of running your online business

At the the beginning of 2011, I made three predictions in another blog (My predictions for 2011). Here I reflect on them a year later and make new predctions for 2012.

‘People will start to recognise QR codes’

Well, there is still a long way to go before we can call them mainstream, but recognition has improved considerably. I have done my bit presenting at network meetings, exhibitions and businesses, and we’ve added some heavyweight customers (Scottish Enterprise, Mary King’s Close, Edinburgh Tourism Action Group) to our list as a result, but the real evidence is in the high street, magazines and newspapers.

At the turn of the year, you’d be lucky to see one in a magazine, and occasionally one in the high street.

Last week, I counted 42 QR codes in Stuff magazine. Yes, 42! And this is not the crazed obsession of one editor, a large proportion of them them were from advertisers.

But are they being recognised? Well the answer is yes. At a recent event in Edinburgh, where we spoke to a tourism audience, there was a waiting list after 45 people signed up to find out more.

And while it was true they didn’t all know how they build them into their business, they certainly recognised them enough to want to find out more.

‘Mobile web will become ubiquitous’

Smartphones are becoming commonplace amongst consumers and businesspeople

Smartphones are outselling PCs, mobile data tariffs are becoming more important than free minutes and touch-screen phones are the norm for today’s businessperson.

Mobile web is everywhere. But there is still much work to do. Mobile content is poor, mobile audiences are being neglected and misunderstood and Mobile devices are becoming increasingly more versatile.

If we look at the statistics, we will be accessing the web from a mobile device more often than from a desktop PC or laptop next year, so I think that’s pretty close to ubiquity.

‘Web developers would increasingly turn to WordPress as a CMS’

There are still a few luddites that claim WordPress is bloggers’ software, but that’s like saying Facebook is for kids.

WordPress, like Facebook, grew up a long time ago, and is now powering some world-class sites. In fact, it’s powering 14% of all websites in the world, and it is being used on 92% of those as a CMS (content management system).

This year, it has had two major upgrades that have sigificantly improved its functionality as a business system. I have no measurement as to how many developers are using it in comparison to last year, except that I would be happy to put money on it being more than this time last year.

So what do I predict for the coming year?

More mobile

Mobile web will become a serious concern for businesses of all sizes. Analytics will clearly start to show a drop-off in usability and conversions, and this will point to the increasing use of mobiles accessing non-mobile sites.

The focus will turn from an app culture to a website culture, with a particular emphasis on what is currently being called ‘responsive web design’ (because it responds to your device size) but will probably be called ‘one web’ by the end of the year, due to the fact that it is one website built for all devices.

Arguments will continue to rage in the web community about whether it’s the right approach and, for the record, Canary Dwarf actively supports the notion and will be advocating it in 2012, but will not be insisting that it is a panacea. We will approach each project individually and apply the solution that makes the most sense.

Social integration

I think we’re past the tipping point where businesspeople can get away with saying ’social media, Pah!’ and sticking to their old-fashioned tools.

But with those who are late to the game struggling to catch up with those who are actually benefiting from it, it will be increasingly difficult for newcomers to get to grips with the ‘gap’ as more seasoned users move beyond engagement and communication into strategy and integrating it deeper into everything they do online.

And so rather than social media being treated as an add-on, it will start to become more a ‘part’ of your business than a new thing you’re getting to grips with.

Social media ‘experts’ will not telling you how to get more friends, and to tweet more, but how to measure the effect of your social activity and how to use it as part of your business strategy and how much it is costing you compared to how much it is making you, otherwise known as ‘return on investment’.

Tabletmania

The cost of tablet ownership will come down in 2012

Tablets were scorned by many when they appeared in 2009. But the sales say otherwise.

The market has been interesting, but still dominated by Apple. This is all going to change this year with the advent of the Kindle Fire, a cut-price high-spec tablet that also has the one advantage Apple had over its competitors – easy access to content.

This will be good for tablets in general, and we will see them becoming part of business and home life more and more as the cost of tablet ownership comes down.

This will lead to more businesses seeking to make their content tablet-friendly, and will demonstrate that not only do these devices work significantly differently, and I mean emotionally, not technically, that businesses will become more focussed on content provision as a result.

What do you think will happen in 2012? Do you agree that mobile and social are important to your business? Is online activity becoming more important to you? What would happen to your business if the web went away? Tell us in the comments below, or share your thoughts on Facebook and Twitter using the buttons below.

Notably, the most significant is the new media uploader.

The sometimes confusing group of four icons for pictures/videos/audio and media has been replaced by a single media upload icon. But that’s just a cosmetic change. Users can now drag and drop their media straight onto the upload area for easier publishing. No more file upload forms and navigating through endless subfolders to find your files.

WordPress will detect what file types you’re trying to upload and adapt appropriately. What’s more, you can now upload .rar and .7z compressed file types for downloadable links.

This is a brilliant new feature that will not only make uploading pictures easier, but will also make training a much richer experience.

Dashboard

Regular users will instantly recognise a change in the menu layout. Where previously the left-hand menu system could be ‘exploded’ to stretch far deeper than your screen would allow, this has now been replaced by a fly-out menu, so that the depth of your menu will always be the same and in most screen sizes, all visible at once. Submenus will fly out to the right, making selecting them easier and quicker. Clicks have been replaced by hovers, adding to the speed of the management system, speeding up your workflow.

New toolbar

This area has seen much change over recent versions, but 3.3 combines what was the header into what was the admin bar. Now called the toolbar, this single strip across the top provides easy access to essential areas, and also key information about your website.

It’s responsive

The dashboard layout has been improved for better layout in tablet and smartphone devices.

Highlighting changes

Just foisting changes on users is never a good thing unless it comes with an explanation. New pointers will appear on new features to introduce them. Another usability improvement.

Additionally, a list of new features and changes will appear for anyone that’s interested in finding out just what has changed. And a welcome page will appear the first time 3.3 (and subsequent versions) is launched.

The dashboard home screen will have a Welcome area that only appears when a new WordPress installation is accessed for the first time, prompting the site owner to complete various setup tasks. Once dismissed, this welcome can be accessed via the dashboard home screen options tab.

Improvements in usability: The 'welcome screen', the fly-out menu and the toolbar are the main new features in WordPress 3.3

Other improvements

Editing alerts – WordPress more accurately identifies when others are editing the same post.
Tumblr import – Now you can import your Tumblr content
Widget memory – Widget configuration will be memorised if you change a theme, then go back

Development features

Flexible permalinks – performance improvements to permalinks without date info
Post slugs in plain english – no more garbled characters
jQuery – WordPress now includes the entire jQuery UI stack and the latest version, 1.7.1.

And that’s about it, although there are a few more features aimed at developers. Some really nice user interface improvements bring improved workflow and better usability.

Our opinion

We’ve been beta testing 3.3 and we really like it. The two biggest features are the media uploader and the flyout menu. both of these will save time for users and make training easier, and both have got to be seen as major improvements. WordPress is not resting on its laurels. It’s making serious improvements to the way the backend works.

WordPress continues to make its product better and better, and while 3.3 brings a raft of improvements, development of 3.4 will start as soon as the launch party is over.

There’s just no stopping it.

Do you have burning questions about your WordPress website. We are always happy to help. Just contact us.

The HTTP Archive has measured the increase over a year to be around 25%. In November, last year, the average size of a web page was 626k, in the same month this year, it is 784k.

Slow websites ultimately lead to a poor user experience, and whether you use a web designer or roll your own, it’s vital that you understand what can bloat a page.

So why are they getting bigger and why should we worry about it?

This blog at Pingdom has made the statistics much more digestible.

It’s true that broadband speeds are getting increasingly faster but, also increasingly, we are now using many different ways to connect to the internet, and speed of your website is not only a factor in search engine ranking, but, and more importantly, users are much more likely to give up on a slow-loading website.

With the massive uptake of mobile devices that connect to the internet and wifi in nearly every way we turn, we are more likely to be browsing the web away from our homes and offices than ever before, and while mobile connectivity is widespread, it is far from fast in many places. And this is where it will hit bloated pages hardest.

And there’s no excuse. Websites are not growing organically like mushrooms. It’s quite simply the people who build them, and unless we take heed of this fattening trend, we’ll end up with, quite simply, websites that are obese and ultimately dysfunctional. Now there’s a parody I won’t dwell on.

According to the data, the biggest culprit is JavaScript. Web designers use JavaScript for all sorts of behavioural niceties, and the code is often heavy and runs in the browser. Snippets that we pick up from services like Google Analytics, Trip Advisor, Twitter and Facebook, all use JavaScript to provide interactive content, and while a web designer would be conscious of overloading a site with scripts like this, a DIYer might not know where to stop.

CSS is the second biggest culprit and this is indeed an irony. CSS (cascading style sheets) were introduced over a decade ago to bring new, leaner layouts to web designs. CSS has indeed reduced a lot of the bloat that web pages used to have, but it is easy to abuse, and very easy to end up with far more code than you need. Again, snippets freely available on the web can be cut and pasted in by DIYers without a thought for the extra load it puts on a page. Even content management systems built by professionals, can have this added in by users unaware of the consequences.

That images are also cited as partly responsible for the bloat, can be attributed to two things, a lack of thought for those with lower connection speeds and a general trend towards large picture use as a striking visual.

Other culprits are content itself and Flash. The revolution in content management systems are helping website owners bulk-load content onto their pages without thinking of breaking it up, which again makes it more readable for your humans.

Flash? Well I’m genuinely surprised and aghast that Flash is on the increase. While it has it’s place, It really shouldn’t be on the rise. (in my opinion)

The solution is compromise and awareness. Know that page size matters and only use code, scripts and content that is required for good user experience. And if in doubt, leave it out!

Have you added loads of features to your website without realising it could be slowing it down? Let us know in the comments section below, or contact us if you think your website needs to go an a diet!

Many businesses are interested or concerned about the effect of the mobile web, and customers have been contacting us to find out what they need to do, if anything.

Well, the truth is, it depends on your type of business. Some of our customers have an anticipated mobile audience next year of 30% of all their traffic. That’s a figure which can’t be ignored. Others have as little as 4%, and the investment for them at this stage is probably not ‘returnable’.

We will be launching some new mobile websites for customers in early 2012, and it’s really exciting to be working with people who have grasped the concept that their customers are really starting to use their mobiles for more than just making phone calls.

Suddenly, we are being asked to build websites that work on mobile phones and tablets, and I mean ‘work properly’, not just shrunk. So we have invested time in making sure we can deliver the right product for OUR customers, based on the needs of THEIR customers.

So with six sites to launch before the end of this year, and three already booked in for 2012, our work’s cut out, and we’ve been actively looking for freelancers to help us fulfill new orders on time, and have just completed recent projects which have been largely handled entirely by our new connections.

And the good news is they’re local, and they know their onions. So we’ll no longer be telling customers to ‘come back next year!’

And although that may seem a little abrupt, it’s really important to know why you want to redesign.

Be ready for this, because most people will say something like: it needs freshening up, or you want to bring it up to date, or your competitor has just had a redesign, something along those lines.

These, quite frankly, are stupid answers. And they’re not even true. You want your website redesigning because it’s performing poorly, you just don’t know how to say it. No-one takes a well-performing website and decides to redesign it, do they?

And this is the reason you’ll be asked ‘why’, because redesigning a website for visual reasons alone will not solve any problems. It just makes your old problems nicer to look at.

Web designers who don’t understand this approach will often tell you that your website will benefit from a redesign, yet they will only adddress the look. But it’s as true here as in real life, that beauty is only skin-deep.

Maybe your enquiries have slowed down, or you just feel you should be getting more business direct from your website. Perhaps, you’ve added loads of new services or products, and no-one seems to be taking any notice.

This is the real reason you want your website redesigned, and by asking why, we can root out the core reason.

The whole web experience may need redesigning, the marketing strategy could need replanning. Your site may not even need a visual redesign, but may benefit more from changes to structure, usability, or calls to action.

Your redesign must provide a return on investment, and for that you must be able to measure its success. You can’t measure how beautiful something is, and being nicer to look at, doesn’t necessarily mean it it will work any better. So when considering a redesign, ask how your spend can be justified, otherwise you’ll just get a paint job.

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And I’m delighted that Canary Dwarf is to be involved in a project that will see it expand into the north and north-east and become truly Scotland-wide

Earlier this year (2011), Taryn Wallis (Phenomenoodle) from Edinburgh and Martin Young (Digital My Way) from Glasgow formed a group to bring together developers, designers and users of the WordPress content management system. And so WPScotland was born.

They hold meetings in their respective cities once every month and they extend an open invitation for developers and end users to go along and find out more.

In October (2011), they held their first nationwide meeting in Edinburgh, WordUp, based on the worldwide WordCamp model.

And it was here that we talked about spreading north.

And so WPScotland will now be holding regular meetings in Inverness, Elgin and possibly even Aberdeen as well as Edinburgh and Glasgow. Dates and venues will be announced very soon.

The meetings are social events that allows end users and developers to chat, learn and build a stronger community. It’s a great chance not only for like-minded individuals to have a blether, but also to thrash out problems and ideas where there wouldn’t otherwise be an opportunity to do so.

I am delighted that Taryn and Martin have given their backing to hold Local WordPress meet ups in Moray and the Highlands, and I look forward to the first one in these parts, and many more.

At Canary Dwarf, we’ve seen a significant interest in WordPress at all levels, and recent improvements have made it a viable publishing platform for businesses.

Are you interested in attending one of our local WPScotland meetups? You can join their group on LinkedIn, Twitter or get the RSS feed from the website, where you can also find out more about WordUp.

And if you have any questions, please email me directly.

Scope creep is a dangerous threat to any small business and we’re highlighting it here because we’ve experienced it first hand.

It’s when a project is unclearly defined or the specification changes from the original concept leading to uncharted work being provided without additional resources or financing. Even a written project guide can suffer from scope creep if the individual component parts of the project are not defined properly.

The scope is the boundary, if you like, of the project and what you are contracted to do. It creeps when the client asks for, expects or demands additional tasks without applying additional resources or financing. Sometimes innocently, sometimes deliberately.

So why is it so dangerous?

Having everyhting in black and white may sometimes seem unnecessary, but it's essential for both parties to know exactly where the boundaries are.

Thursday Bram at Freelance Switch suggests four ways to kill scope creep.

There are few businesses that won’t ‘do that little bit extra’ for their clients, some will ‘go the extra mile’ but that should be your choice, a reward perhaps for someone’s custom, or a bit of ‘give’, when there has been ‘take’, but as long as you stay in control, everything will be OK.

When scope creeps beyond the realms of reason, you have a problem. Maybe the client didn’t fully understand the specification and suddenly realised there was something missing. Maybe they like to think they hold the purse strings so can ask for anything they want. There are many reasons. But there is no excuse.

Scope creep can appear in many guises: small tasks that seem insignificant can push back larger, higher priority tasks, and that can lead to a missed deadline. An ambiguous specification is also a danger, because what is asked for may not be what is expected.

If there are other agencies working on the project, make sure it is clear what they will be providing or what you will need to provide to them. If you suddenly have to create something you were expecting to be provided, you’ve got scope creep.

Sometimes it can extend to communications. We can usually estimate the number of meetings a project will need. But few of us factor telephone calls and emails into a project, but reading, writing and talking do take time and if your client wants you to spend more time talking about the project than doing the project, it too can impact on the project timeline.

A scope document can be seen as an extension of a contract, but both are equally important to any project, and should clearly define it in case of dispute.

The upshot is that unless you renegotiate your contract or even the scope, you are going to spend a large part of the project working for nothing, and this is not good for either party.

Negotiate and renegotiate by all means, but prevention is better than cure, and a well-defined scope document will provide an added level of protection for you and clarity for the client.

These ‘WordCamps’ are held to bring together ‘the community’ that has built up around the former blogging tool, now used largely as a content management system..

Earlier this year, WordCamp UK was held in Portsmouth and as a result, seriously devoid of Scots.

But we love WordPress north of the border just as much as anyone, and thanks to a couple of developers in the Central Belt, WordCamp-style events are now happening in Scotland.

Monthly meetings have been held for a few months, but the vision was to host a larger event in the hope of building up to a full WordPress-authorised ‘unconference‘.

The first such event was WordUp, and held this month (October 2011) – the nation’s first major meet specifically for WordPress users, designers and developers

And Canary Dwarf was amongst the 50 who attended at the Royal College of Surgeons in Edinburgh.

Organised by Taryn Wallis of Phenomenoodle and Martin Young from Digital My Way, the event ’starred’ WordPress co-founder Mike Little, who came all the way from Manchester to share his expertise and insights on the publishing platform. Mike was the ‘resident’ expert, but it soon became clear that there was quite significant expertise all around him, as web designers have adopted the big W as their CMS (content management system) of choice.

Mike Little (right) co-founder of WordPress with developer John Adams at WordUp 2

The audience was made up of largely developers and designers, and between the speakers, the event covered a wide gamut of subjects including: Responsive web design, WordPress in the Enterprise, WordPress in the voluntary sector, theme building, vertical development and much more. We also heard from a selection of developers who had used WordPress to build some pretty cool sites.

While meets like this are nothing new for WordPress and other widely-used content management systems, none have ventured to make Scotland a finite group.

What the event proved was that WordPress not only has a very active, vibrant and passionate community in Scotland, but that the community is strong enough to form its own identity, which can only be good for the end users.

The popularity of the software is now so evident that customers are actively seeking to have their sites built on WordPress, and events like this serve to strengthen the community that supports it, nurtures ideas, and ultimately making it a ’safer’ choice for business owners to have a WordPress site.

Here’s to the next one.

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Read the Twitter hashtag stream for #WordUpEdin
WPScotland – official website

But customer service isn’t all about being great at what you do, it’s also about turning good or average into great.

No business is 100% perfect and in order to improve, your business needs one vital bit of feedback – It needs to know what it’s NOT doing right. And to find out, the bold step of encouraging negative feedback should be considered.

Asking customers to say bad things about your business is difficult. Nobody really wants to hear criticism about their business. Everyone loves to hear compliments, and while any business that is constantly commended is obviously doing something right, they’ve got nothing to improve on, and any efforts to better their customer experience can only be guesswork.

So by asking that one question, ‘what could we do better?’, you are opening up a world of opportunities to make tiny things more enjoyable for your customers. And often, it’s those small things that make so much difference.

The advent of social media has allowed businesses to openly deal with criticism in a way that gives its customers confidence.

When potential customers see how you are dealing with real people, they are assured that if they do have a problem, there is someone there that cares.

But you can also use the privacy of an email or survey to actually ask those all-important questions that gives new insights into what people think of our processes.

We’ve done it at Canary Dwarf and we’re building a good picture of one specific area we need to improve on. We don’t have to make it public, but we know that there are things we can do to make our customers’ experience better.

When we’ve fixed that, we’ll move on and find something else to improve on. It’s basically just an aspect of customer service, and having the best customer service separates your business from the rest.

So next time you ask your customers to rate your service, think of how you’re going to use the information they give you – to rest on your laurels or to make your business better?