How HCI and API design are similar

All software needs an interface. Having one makes it possible to use the functionality and consume the data that lives within that software.

Humans use interfaces for software all the time, with the World Wide Web arguably being the biggest interface there is (OK, perhaps some websites aren't the best examples of usefulness in this mass experiment).  But put basically... they allow human-to-system interaction, also known as Human Computer Interaction or HCI for short.

Human Computer Interfaces have the following principles:

1. They remove complexity:
   By making it clear what each function does (e.g. do not have two ways of doing similar things)
2. They follow standards:
   By following established conventions (hyperlinks, buttons, tick boxes, etc.) they provide consistency.
3. They make interaction easier:
   By enabling swift and efficient relationship with the underlying data & processes and providing feedback or a response when something happens.

And Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) play a very similar role, but in a slightly different system-to-system manner. They:

1. Remove complexity, by (hopefully) providing a single request & response for each individual function
2. Follow standards, usually in the form of an API specification, to allow consistent development against them
3. Make interaction with the underlying systems easier via a standard set of methods (GET, POST, DELETE, etc.)

Ultimately, whether interacting with a human or another system... a well designed interface benefits both parties.

6 Ways To Harm Your Business When Updating Your Website

Updating and redeveloping an organisation’s website is almost an inevitability these days. Whether the aim is to add new content sections, comply with legislation, provide a new ‘look & feel’ or because of business changes (such as merger & acquisitions)… a web presence is likely to go through some form of significant change or two in its lifetime.

But the way in which you upgrade and rebuild your site can have a big effect on your business, and more specifically how your rank organically in the major search engines. Organic traffic for most sites makes up between 30% to 50% of all visits and applying changes that affects this traffic means you get less visits, leads or conversions.

So here are 6 of the biggest ways to harm your online search traffic and therefore your key online business metrics in the process:

1. Change the domain
   Your organisation’s domain is a brand asset and changing it means losing all the search engine reputation it may have built-up over time. On the flip-side, if your domain has been significantly tainted by bad (black hat) SEO practices in the past, it may be best to start from scratch again with a fresh URL. 
2. Change the user experience
   A change in the site design, the navigation, the directory structure you use and many other factors can influence how your site ranks. 
3. Change the content
   Not all online content is created equal. The way your copy is written can have a major influence on how your site is indexed and then ranked online.. from its relevance to the search term(s) to the way the text is structured. However, a new web presence is an opportunity to review all of your content (including your images and the meta content behind the scenes). 
4. Change the hosting platform
   Migrating from one website host to another may seem like a simple task. But where and how you host your website can have an effect on how you rank in Google, Yahoo, etc. especially if the hosting is slow or not located in the country / region where your customers (and target search engines) are. 
5. Ignore web standards
   It takes hard work and determined effort to deliver a new website, especially if you have tight timescales to deliver to. And the area that can get compromised include: the quality of the code, the compliance to accessibility, the use of ‘alt’ tags for image alternatives, etc. In other words, a failure to follow web standards can have a negative impact on your site’s rankings in search engines.
6. Re-launch it incorrectly
   Sites fail to launch properly in all sorts of ways, from failing to cut-over all content correctly through to not getting the new site indexed in Google as quickly as possible… you are never going to get a second chance to make a first impression on the main search engines.

Forget creating a digital strategy

Digital Strategy, I hear & read the words repeatedly in the line of my business. It seems that it’s the current phrase to use within a company, which is annoying as I’ve been writing them for around a decade and a half now.

Now typically in this blog I would drill into the subject of the different aspects of creating and maintaining a digital strategy, covering things from a top-down perspective and giving my views on how to implement one.

But not today. I think I need to clear some things up first that have been on my mind.

1. What’s the point in having a digital strategy when there are probably a number of different online initiatives around your organisation that don’t know (or care) about the more strategic direction being taken?
2. Why even plan a digital strategy, when there are simple digital projects that have either failed to get off the ground or have subsequently turned out to be turkeys? (These don’t have to be monumental projects to entirely redevelop your online business, they could be something as basic as a quick microsite that has failed to comply to HTML standards)

Sure, planning an overall approach to all online engagement and interaction is a noble cause. But hoping to just lay this new lush green grass layer over the rubble of bad or missing quality standards or known gaps in your organisation’s digital capability is a recipe for almost certain failure.

Or in other words, forget creating your digital strategy, get your digital tactics right first!

Multi-channel digital attribution – what's next?

If you had read the recent eConsultancy report called‘Making Sense of Marketing Attribution’, you would know that the majority of websites are either not carry out any form of attribution or are still apply a last click approach. In this report the client-side marketers responding said that only26% were doing marketing attribution beyond last click … where the last channel used gains all the credit for the acquisition.

The online sector has been gradually moving towards digital multi-channel attribution, although it is still early days. The aim of these efforts is to understand the different online channels or touch points used by customers in their online paths to conversion on eCommerce sites, but:

• There is still little maturity of the attribution market, meaning there are several bespoke offerings and no real common standards between suppliers

•  The current attribution methods used are basic in their mathematical modelling

•  They are online-only, with no consideration for other non-digital channels (e.g. TV or outdoor)

In my experience, there is very little being done to look at the bigger picture that appropriately considers not just the journey and interactions across the disparate online channels, but also the offline ones…and it is here I think there is an opportunity.

I really think that businesses and their agencies need to move away from single channels of data (e.g. website analytics. TV viewing figures, etc.) and also beyond the basic online only attribution models. They need to understand the entire user journey that leads not just to a transaction, but to a longer-term relationship. Only then can business truly understand the influence that different devices, channels, proportional activity and other factors (such a peer recommendations) have on purchasing and subsequent behaviour.

10 things to consider when building a new website

We often get asked to provide best-practice advice to clients about their websites and I felt it was best to put this information in the public domain.

1. Before you start – Take time to understand the purpose of your site and who your users are


2. Build on good foundations – Get the site map and user journey right and the structure and navigation will become apparent


3. Content Is King - What is the message and is it conveyed correctly? Without engaging content people will leave and not return


4. Present the content in a coherent way – Web pages are often structured to be a familiar UI to the user, allowing them to instinctively know how to use and navigate to the content they want to find. Presentation and navigation needs to be clear engaging and guiding in a way that represents brand values correctly online.


5. A site is for life - Content is key to engagement but be sure there are people and processes in-place to keep it up to date


6. Compatibility – There is a growing number of browsers and devices in the market today, so check your site has cross-platform compatibility from desktop to mobile.


7. Don't Exclude – Ensure every visitor can use the site. Accessibility is increasingly more important with new legislation being written and passed all the time.


8. Standards should be followed. Wherever possible:
   a. Use text and not images (able to be read by screen readers). This also helps with SEO as search engines can search all the text on the page.
   b. Use web-safe fonts (or approved webfont rendering techniques)
   c. Make navigation and links accessed via the keyboard
   d. Make images and headings are appropriate to the content and use correct alternative text.
   e. Test, test and test again.


9. Less is more – A simple interface can say a thousand words, by minimising visual clutter a message and key points can be strengthened. Good use of whitespace to ensure the areas of the page are clearly set out and uncluttered.


10. Engagement – The web is becoming a more social arena having the ability to contribute, share and interact with the site will help to develop a community and a reason for return visits.
    Note: Special thanks to Ben Kilby for initially putting this list together

The standards for company influence

Who are the people that have the most influence on your company's brand, reputation and sales? How can you identify those that play the biggest role in the success of your business?
These are simple enough questions to ask, but need a lot of thought and information to answer correctly.

I've been looking at the role of customer influence now for a few years and have seen various ways of finding, showing and measuring influence, but have yet to see the definitive and 'industry standard' way of doing this..... I guess its for the reason that it is complex.

You see its difficult to agree on a standard for influence, not just because every product or brand out there has a different profile in the minds of the end-user, but also because different business people (your managers and stakeholders) will want different figures or metrics:

1. eCommerce department
They want to find out which influencers create the most revenue on your site, either directly: (actual customers) or indirectly (people they encourage to buy, via whatever means)

2. PR department (Brand / reputation)
They want to identify those that have a positive or negative sentiment (at a particular time, for a particualr product or service) or are more likely to pick up on what yoir company does and report / blog / tweet / etc. about it.

3. Marketing department (Search Engine Optimisation)
They just want to reverse engineer the whole Internet to track back links from other sites to yours and to then see the traffic and search engine "juice" this provides.

With each of these different bodies wanting different measures of influence, is it any wonder there's been no standard way of measuring it yet?

Writing for the web

Journalists should already be familiar with George Orwell’s 6 rules of writing (if not, then I suggest you take a look now) however Mr Orwell had [unluckily] never heard of the Internet nor had ever tried to read stuff off a back-lit electronic screen rather than the printed page he was used to.

I've been lucky enough to work with some great online copywriters, digital editors and web information architects. They have made my life so much easier and made the client (and me in the process) look very professional. And so, whilst I don't regard myself as having a fraction of their skills (or patience), I have learnt a thing or two from them. I'm therefore going to extend George Orwell's rules by 2 more, to make them '8 rules for writing for the web'.

1. Structure your content the way people want to read it, not the way you think you need to show it - kind of like a user-centred copy approach, if you will. So.... out goes huge lengthy paragraphs and in come bulleted lists and other such devices to make you content more scan-able and consumable.
   To put it another way, think of your end-user as an eater of words rather than a reader of them.
   Arrange your content into small manageable bite-sized chunks that are easy to digest!
   (Can you tell I once worked for an international food company?)
   
2. Make sure you have copy standard and stick to them! I have lost count at the amount of times I have seen a company refer to themselves differently across their own corporate website for no reason.
   For example:
   - us
   - we
   - Mega Corp
   - Mega Corp inc.
   - MegaCorp
   - MC
   - the company
   and the list goes on!
   
   It really doesn't take much to keep a central dictionary of common terms & titles, and its now even less effort to stick this document up on your company Intranet as a permanent reference.

I hope George Orwell approves of my additions.....

company website standards

Many of the world’s leading organisations don’t have formal brand and technical standards defined to govern their websites. Even those that do are apparently failing to effectively implement or enforce them, achieving full compliance with less than 20% of their own web standards. The websites of these organisations significantly under-perform or damage the brand as a result.

PAS 124 (Publically Available Specification 124) provides a framework to help organizations deploy website standards efficiently and harness their full potential.

It has four main sections:
• Defining website standards
• Implementing website standards
• Managing website standards
• Guide to the key categories of website standards

Here's the joint Press Release from Magus and the BSI:
http://www.bsi-global.com/en/About-BSI/News-Room/BSI-News-Content/Disciplines/Information-Management/PAS-124/

Standards have several key significant benefits. A company brand is reinforced by ensuring consistency of brand presentation and messaging, plus its provides a consistent & high quality user experience.

A brief overview is here:
http://www.magus.co.uk/pas124
(thanks to Simon @ Magus for the corrected URL)