Photographing The Castle

Last weekend I got my new drone up and took some photos & video of Inverary Castle. This was done whilst Best of the West Festival went on in the background and with the permission of The Duchess of Argyll.

This wonderful picture of Inveraray Castle was captured on Sunday whilst @BOWFest went on in the background. pic.twitter.com/kO3MBJ4e9i

— CalMac Ferries (@CalMacFerries) September 16, 2015

Hunting Scottish Unicorns

A couple of days ago I posted an article up to Linkedin about The Search For the Next Scottish Unicorn. This mentioned the two Scottish Billion Dollar tech start-ups (Skyscanner and FanDuel) and asked the question about which would be the next. Both, according to sources online, are now worth over £600,000 and so qualify (at the current exchange rates) as tech unicorns.

It will be interesting to see which Scottish tech start-up is the next to reach the 10 figure sum and how that fact will be measured & proved - quite possibly by the investment amount and the percentage taken.

So which ones will be next? Here's some suggestions on who this could be:

Mallzee
Described at the 'Tinder for Fashion' Mallzee is the shopping app that lets you browse and shop over 100 stores from the comfort of your own device.
Having recently raised $4 million (£2.5 million) from a handful of investors including the Royal Mail, the start-up is poised for big mCommerce growth.
Worth:
The exact percentage taken for the £2.5m injection is not clear. However, give that CEO and founder Cally Russell turned down £75,000 for 15% equity from Peter Jones on Dragons Den (therefore potentially valuing the company at £500,000) so one has to assume that a similar or better deal has now been agreed.

Clear Returns
Clear Returns is a Scottish firm that produces clever software which helps retailers by identifying which goods are sent back by customers and more importantly why.
Worth:
Founder Vicky Brock raised £110,000 from Angels Den and Angel Academe a couple of years . It's exact valuation is unknown, but it has a decent client list including Scottish-based high street retailer M&Co.

Have I missed anyone?

Scottish eCommerce Charges Are Unfair

If you are a Scottish resident in one of the Highlands and Islands regions, then you'll be only too aware that a lot of eCommerce sites charge you more for your delivery.

Well this fact hasn't gone unnoticed by Citizens Advice Scotland, who a published a report this week on this subject. They found that although fewer online retailers now charge additional fees for delivery to the Highlands and Islands... those that still do are unfortunately charging more than they did in 2012. On average Islanders are now paying 15.8% more and Highlanders have to pay an additional 17.5% for their goods to be shipped to them.

Citizens Advice Scotland identified that only 3.8% of the surveyed retailers now exclude some part of the Highlands and 10.9% exclude some of the Scottish Islands from their delivery offering.

Whilst it is understandable that there's more effort involved in getting a parcel to the remote regions of the UK, has it really become harder in the last 3 years? Or are these retailers (or their fulfillment parrners) using unfair ecommerce delivery pricing to increase their profits?

UK is now mobile first

Smartphones have now taken over as the preferred device for going online in the UK.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-33777168

Yes, for the first time the phone has become the device of choice, overtaking the laptop as the primary means of connecting to. Meaning that the UK has joined a select list of countries that are mobile first.

Once regarded as the 'second screen', mobile is now the main screen for a lot of users. They don't use a desktop or laptop as their principle device and sometimes use their smartphone... they consume content and use online functionality on their phone by default. Your customer now expects to connect to whatever they want, wherever and whenever they want.

And yet still so many companies are catching up. They have either got no mobile compatible presence or have a very poor one. And some have just mobile optimised their campaign landing pages, but not the rest of the customer experience (perhaps hoping that the user will be so surprised that the landing page worked correctly on their phone, they would forgive the company for a poor subsequent experience).

Is this as a result of a lack of foresight, poor investment, slow development or just plain ignorance? 

eCommerce Must Put Mobile First

In my mind there's no doubt that the main device to design a company experience for (both now and in the near future) is the smartphone.... especially as far is eCommerce is concerned. This is what Forrester calls "The Mobile Mind Shift" - the customer need to browse, buy and engage with a retailer vie their device of choice. And these days this is typically their mobile phone.

Consumers are increasingly demanding online experiences that work on any device at any time.  But with smartphone decision making and purchasing on the increase... the mobile web must now be the primary concern of any retailer. 

It's my observations that:

• Regardless of where the customer is (at home, at work, on the go, in a store, etc.) they use their smartphone to shop. Sure, they may still use a tablet or desktop & laptop PC, but the mobile is what they have immediately to-hand... literally.
• The customer is often either cautious about downloading retailer apps or doesn't update them often when they have them. This is different for essential apps they my use day-to-day (e.g. Social Media platforms) which preoccupy their mobile time.

So where does this leave a retailer that doesn't deliver a site that works correctly on the small screen?

Lagging behind.

Smileys, Emoticons and Emojis

Using just words to convey your thoughts or ideas can be difficult. It's even more tricky when you only have a small number of characters, such as when you send a text message or when you tweet & post to your favourite social network. How are those reading to know when you're being serious and when you have your tongue firmly in your cheek? 
Because you intersperse additional icons and images into your words. A smiley, an unhappy face symbol or something more complex. 

Back in 1963 Harvey Ball invented the smiley in an attempt to improve employee morale at The State Mutual Life Assurance Company in Massachusetts. Harvey was only paid $45 for the 10 minutes of work it took to create the design, but neither him nor his employer copyrighted the design. The idea blossomed and the little yellow smiling face he created have been used for many things including the symbol for the acid house dance music craze of the late 1980's (apparently by adopting the smiley face badge image from the 1986 graphic novel 'The Watchmen'). 

emoticons are a digital way to create Ball's smiley online my using plain text (they don't need a specific font or even a high resolution screen). 
Their use first occurred in September 1982 when Scott Fahlman a computer scientist using the Carnegie Mellon University message board first proposed that the two symbols :-) and :-( could be used online to distinguish jokes from serious comments.
The emoticon theme has been extended over time into creating other well-known symbols, such as one winking, one poking out its tongue and one being sick.

Despite looking similar, emojis are different from emoticons in key ways: 

- they are not created by using plain text to represent a face or other icon
- they are created when technology companies agree on a reference for an image
- they can be implemented slightly differently by each technology platform or smart phone operating system builder

Emojis haven't been around as long as emoticons. They were created in the late 1990's by the Japanese communications firm NTT DoCoMo. However according to a study from The University of Bangor, the Emoji is now the fastest growing language in the UK and evolving faster than ancient forms of communication, such as hieroglyphics.

News Corp Blames Digital Again

News Corp's CEO Robert Thomson has been out attacking Google, Facebook and Linkedin once more, this time accusing them of "Kleptocracy, Piracy and Zealotry".

Yes, the organisation that: breaks into voicemail, publishes fiction as truth and plays politics with its publications...has claimed that online social networks are spammers that help themselves to content without paying for it.

He also publicly stated that “The words Intellectual Property don’t appear in the Google alphabet."- but far be it for me to tell a journalist that you can make any words from the alphabet.

Thomson went on to further attack the new media sector by saying "None of them actually create content, and they certainly have little intention of paying for it, but they do redistribute the content created by others – they would argue that such redistribution is a natural extension of their role as social networks. I would argue that much of the redistribution is an unnatural act”

All this smacks of hypocrisy... especially given News Corp in 2005 bought MySpace, then a leading social network that in June 2006 surpassed Google as the most visited website in the USA... before watching over its decline and its sale in 2011 for less than 8% of its purchase price.

Also... given that News Corp has only recently decided to change the direction of its WSJ and Dow Jones publishing sector to focus on digital media efforts and that its own Social News Agency Storyful is responsible for finding and redistributes news stories (and apparently hiding Rebekah Brooks in their offices)... methinks they need to keep their insults to themselves.

Full story here:
http://mumbrella.com.au/news-corp-ceo-lashes-google-for-piracy-zealotry-and-kleptocracy-at-lowy-institute-event-312252 

Finding Google Tag Manager a little hard?

I've worked with Google Tag Management System (also called GTM or Google's TMS) on several different client implementations and still admit to being a little confused by some of the more complex functionality. It seems that despite setting up a Google Tag Manager Fundamentals online training course and certification, it is still pretty hard to do anything beyond the basics.

Furthermore, with the recent introduction of GTM Version 2, things have been moved & renamed in the user interface.

Luckily Google seems to have appreciated this too and have got the people behind the product to star in a couple of short videos about it.





Hopefully these short resources will help.

Can a car have too much technology?

I'm a gadget fan and love my in-car audio or 'infotainment' systems, especially when they have a decent user interface.

However, the new Audi TT comes with some of the most impressive and also unnecessary computer technology I've seen... including a virtual cockpit that changes between views of dials to a full screen Google maps overlay.

It does therefore beg the question of whether a motorcar can actually have too much technology.

That’s Not My Digital Strategy

Those readers who have read with their children may well be familiar with the “That’s not my…” series of books. 

For those who have not had this privilege, the repeated concept of every book is a series of pages that all say what something is not, in an effort to explain what something actually is.

e.g. “That’s not my Dog…(to a sheep)... it is too fluffy” or “That’s not my car…(to a space ship) it is too shiny”.

Given I have spent a fair amount of time on this blog, consulting and in other ways attempting to explain what Digital Strategy is and how to correctly implement it… I thought I’d adopt a different (and slightly more childish) approach and explain what Digital Strategy is not.

A New Website:

That’s not my Digital Strategy, because it is just the implementation of a customer-facing front end to your organisation.

A Business Transformation:
That’s not my Digital Strategy, because a business transformation programme has responsibilities beyond the implementation of the projects or work streams that deliver a digital strategy.

A Digital Platform:
That’s not my Digital Strategy, because although a Digital Platform can have the capability to provide online functionality across your organisation… it is not the thought & business case preparation beforehand nor the subsequent use and commercial measurement of that activity.

A Digital Marketing Strategy:
That’s not my Digital Strategy, because it is just focused around the acquisition and retention of online customers, not the whole concept around the delivery of useful features such as self-serve functionality.

Who Digitally Mentors Your Board?

I see a growing trend in many organisations (both large & small), where an increasing number of staff are becoming digitally savvy and utilising their online knowledge in their daily roles. But who is providing the necessary board-level guidance to a company? Who is equipping your senior team with the skills and advice necessary to drive forward the digital change?

It's not just a case of showing your CEO how to Tweet (her teenage daughter has probably already shown her how to do that) . It's a case of making sure the board and other executives have the capabilities & understanding to be able to seize the power that digital change can deliver.

In my experience & opinion there are four different approaches to providing these skills and experience directly into your C-Suite (A Chief Digital Officer, A Digital Non-Exec, A Change Director or External Consultancy). However each situation is different and in reality your solution to this may be a combination of two or all of them.

Whatever route is chosen, this injection of senior level capability typically has to help the company leaders through a fast-paced delivery of new products, services, processes and technologies.

Apple Pay looks to boost UK Digital Payments

Back in October 2014 Apple launched Apple Pay in the US as part of its iOS 8.1 update. The Cupertino giant then saw 1 million American activations in the first 3 days.

However over here in the UK we have been awaiting news of a similar launch. Many blogs have been written about getting Apple Pay in the UK and false hints & rumours that Belgium may be the first European country to get the new digital payment service haven't helped. But on 8th June at Apple's WWDC 2015 the silence was broken and the announcement was made that Apple Pay is to launch in the UK, making us just the second country to adopt the service... ahead of Canada and other candidates.

More surprising was the news that we'll get Apple Pay in a matter of weeks, as plans for a July 2015 launch are now underway. Meaning that key UK retailers such as Marks and Spencers and Waitrose will offer you contactless / NFC payments via your iPhone this Summer. Furthermore, TFL will also offer Apple Pay across its network.

However, if you can tap in & out on buses and tube trains around London from next month using both your iPhone and your NFC-enabled credit card... does this spell the beginning of the end for the Oyster Card system?

A New Role to Lead Digital Business Transformation

Corporate change isn't a new thing. Businesses have always had to assess, re-think and re-invent themselves as the world changes around them.

In the past this was a lot easier though. Organisation had years (or sometimes decades) to change their ways. But more recently the cycles of technical innovation have increased, which means the speed of digital change is much quicker. In fact, those in market sectors which were first to be affected by online (e.g. Retail and Travel) had longer to transform their businesses than those being disrupted now - such as Financial Services and some parts of the Transport industry.

So how are some businesses dealing with Digital Transformation & change and how are they setting themselves up to understand and embrace the effects?

1. Create a Chief Digital Office role
Whilst just creating and hiring another senior role in the business might not be everyone's cup of tea, a fair number of organisations have hired (or promoted from within) a CDO to lead up their digital change.

2. Use a Digital-based Non-Exec Director
Although similar to taking on a CDO, a digital-centric NED provides their experience and skills to guide a company board. This role is usually filled by a new Non-Exec Director who has previously had a senior role in digital transforming another business. 

3. Creating a Director of Change

Whilst not exactly a direct comparison to either a Chief Digital Officer or a Digital-based Non-Exec Director role, some company's decide to wrap up their adoption of online tools and processes in a more general senior change position

4. Alternatively they could hire an agency / consultancy.... and most large & well-respected management consultancies are unsurprisingly only too keen to state how they've always been involved in digital transformation and have all the answers....

Do not curate, create

Four years ago I wrote a blog post that Content Curation Sucks. Since then I've seen more and more people try to establish themselves as specialists in their field by collating and distributing the same stuff online over and over again. It's boring, repetitive and not at all interesting to most users to see the same stuff published vie social media ranging from Instagram to blogs... but still the legions of 'me to' curators of constant content churn out the same crap.

Why? It baffles me.... really.

Recycling is not the same as original production of thoughts and concepts. It also doesn't make you an expert, just because you repeat and re-tweet the thoughts of others day-in & day-out as if they are your own.

So stop it!

Instead of considering how you are going to republish someone else's work, think about but how you are going to interpret it and develop it with your own ideas and approaches.

Digital Leadershift - get ready for a BIG BANG

Transforming your organisation from an analogue dinosaur to a Digital First one is hard, very hard. You not only need the right team of people, the right technology and the will to change internal processes, you need this change understood & supported at the senior level too.

But this isn't about getting the CEO to blog or the Managing Director to Tweet (they should know how to do that already), it is about having the right drive from on-high to correctly sponsor and if necessary push through the required changes that a digital transformation needs.

In short, it needs a shift in the mindset of the leaders to a digital way of working... or a digital leadershift.

However different market sectors and industries are affected by the disruptive effects of digital in different ways. And to illustrate this best, a recent report from Deloitte Digital depicted a 'Disruption Map' that shows the extent to which 17 industries are affected across two dimensions: Degree of Impact (The 'Bang') and the timing (The 'Fuse').

As we know... some industries are already in the middle of their shift. Sectors such as retail (High Street eCommerce has been a beacon of online innovation for the last few years) and Leisure (The consumer travel sector has both blossomed and suffered as online acquisition, customer self-service and aggregation has affected airline travel, etc. - and just look what the likes of AirBnB and to a certain extend Google are doing to the hotel market).

So it is probably no surprise that the leaders in those industries that have already been affected are nearly all digitally savvy. But what about other sectors where the fuse is much longer?

Well in a lot of cases key individuals from shorter fuse industries have moved across to help other verticals understand and manage their way through this disruption. For example, senior staff from tech start-ups are now finding roles in Financial Services and Professional Services.

But other senior managers in those where the disruption hasn't really hit yet are less aware and prepared for the changes that are bound to come. Some may know the Big Bang is coming, but for others it could be a big shock.

Sports thinking is Digital Strategy

Think about all those qualities that make a great football, rugby or other team and you will reoccuringly come up with the same things....
Speed
Agility
Skill
Teamwork
Coaching
Communication

Aren't these the same things you want in your digital strategy and transformation plan?

Should we really bother with personas?

I've been a huge advocate of UCD (User Centred Design) for around a decade now. I've implemented large multi-device websites and specified & delivered major digital platforms based on this approach. However quite recently I've been thinking that just basing the user interface and functionality of digital services around a few key personas might not be the entire story.

My reasoning here is that although a selection of personas may map to the profiles of key website visitor stereotypes, when you start to look at them in more detail you find that your users are all different. So whilst at the very highest level your personas are very different, at the lower level (e.g. the completion of a certain task) a subset of these have alternative needs. And to confuse matters, these alternative needs are shared with users in other personas.

Let's just consider 4 different personas of a typical online service and overlay a few different user profiles over them. As you can see, the personas can cover the main functionality a service provides, but each user has a place in one or more of them. And in the case of some really important users (such as those who need accessibility compliance) they could be present in all 4 personas.

Or put another way... there is no point creating specific personas for each user type. You'd end up doubling your persona numbers just accounting for accessible users if that was the case.

No, that doesn't make sense.... and in this way the developing of personas really doesn't map to something you actually need on your digital project. An understanding of what functionality you need to prioritise over other functionality.

Sony's eCommerce Site Needs Work

I've just used Sony's eCommerce Site to try and make a purchase using my mobile phone.

This surely can't be an unusual practice, but the experience was less than optimal from start to finish. With two key issues...

1. The site is not mobile compatible.
It actually looks like the interface was designed for a large monitor. Last I checked, the major Japanese technology manufacturer still made mobile phones.

2. The transaction didn't work
Despite progressing all the way through the process, I get an unhelpful error message at the end.

Come on Sony, you can do better than this.

Content first - Design second

The user experience of websites (desktop,  tablet,  mobile,  whatever) has had a bit of a shake up recently and I think we need to reassess how we approach the development of online content.

Back in the old days of web design and development things were a lot easier. You created a single set of user personas & wire-frames, created a set of designs for the optimum desktop resolution and then coded it up for a handful of recently released browsers.

But that's all changed now and website owners now have to consider a multitude of devices and specifications to gain the most compatibility. In fact, 'mobile first' is now the new mantra for a lot of agencies and in-house teams, who recommend that you get the experience for smallest screen worked out first and move on from there.

But I think they also have missed a trick....It is not just the user experience of your site you have to make sure is usable for all devices, it is the content too. Yes, I am referring to the humble old words and pictures that a lot of digital projects leave to the very last minute, before cramming into a few templates that 'sort of work'.

If we just took more care over the actual content of our sites and planned the user experience around it, rather than considering what we are actually saying and showing to users only towards the end of the process, I think things might be somewhat different. And I'm not just talking about the typical content sites (news, publishers, etc.) here but also brands, eCommerce vendors and other companies with online functionality.

So before you start to plan how your new site will be designed, consider that:
- content has a key role to play in Search Engine Optimisation
- users with low bandwidth (e.g. with a mobile device) will usually have text downloaded first
- having readable text is a major accessibility feature
- introduction, help and error messages can significantly affect your conversion rate

In other words: Content first - Design second 

Do you optimise for organic conversions?

I read recently that on average 70% of website traffic comes from the results that are obtained from online search engines.  This aligns with with my own experience and means that site owners really need to make sure they are making the most of their organic website traffic.

Conversions are the common industry term for a task that ends in success, a goal. And it is about time you ensure your search engine optimisation efforts are focused around conversions generated by the organic results you get from Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc.

But if your site exists to generate online leads or actual sales for your company, then you shouldn't just be optimising your site for visits, you should be optimising your site for conversions.

But how do you do this?
1. What if you don't know what search terms are actually landing and converting?

2. What if you have no control over which pages are actually displayed in the SERPs (search engine results pages)?
3. What if your SEO efforts are more 'suck it and see' than structured?