Category Archives for "Purpose"

2 Your Website is not an Advert

It is important to know and understand the purpose of your website and to do that you need to understand your organisation’s purpose.  If you assess your organisation’s needs, you may find your website develops in unexpected directions.  In this post, I address the third issue that tends to cause organisations to lose sight of their website’s purpose.

Many people think of their website as an advert because they are not aware of what they can do for their organisation, . They have a website because everyone has one and it offers credibility. They can give people their website address where they can go and find out more about the organisation.

This may be all a small businesses needs. However, it is one option available after considering all the options and must not be your default option.

So, why do organisations fail to consider all the options?  A lot of it is about mindsets.  People have seen and want to copy certain sites, perhaps belonging to organisations similar to theirs.  This perpetuates poor designs across dozens of sites.  Finding a new direction requires investment of a lot of time and can be threatening, particularly if a lot of time and money has been already been invested in a poor design.

There’s No Point in Advertising

If you are in a competitive market, you will need to do more than simply advertise your presence. Even if you mainly drive business through off-line means, eg business cards, flyers, announcements at meetings; your competitors can still do better if they offer more through their sites.

The issue here is traffic and conversions. An organisation in a competitive market that drives the most relevant traffic to their site and then get visitors to respond will do best.

Websites are not like traditional advertising hoardings, where many people walk or drive past and see the advert.  Very few people see most websites unless they take steps to drive people to them.  What they find on arrival will decide whether they maintain contact and return to your site.

Not all sites are designed for new visitors.  Some sites are for members; they correspond with members and add content for the benefit of members.  A local group, for example, might do most of its recruiting through personal contacts and needs a site to aid communication.  They may be a community group whose members need information about their neighbourhood for example.

But the type of site that simply tells the world some organisation exists is not going to recruit members or attract subscribers.  A lot of time and energy can go into sites that drain resources from the organisation.  How many organisations use their site to effect change and not to simply tell the world they exist?

Not a Load of Old Minutes

Some organisations seem to think there is interest in their old minutes. There isn’t. Neither are visitors interested in mission statements or arcane discussions about the area the organisation covers or such matters.

If you need to share these things with your members use an email list, a members’ area or perhaps a blog post. Definitely keep this stuff well away from the home page.

Your website is not a filing cabinet. It is a communications tool and you need to learn to use it for that purpose. Why do you think your filing cabinet’s content is what visitors want to read?

What we see on such sites is a design failure. Yes, I know its content but content is a part of your design. Whoever designs your site, be it in-house or external really has to understand the purpose of the site. It is never a matter of bunging up a template and hanging a few baubles on it.  Your content needs to be good copy that will draw people to your site.

The Second Visit

The question many organisations need to ask is: why would anyone visit this site for a second time?

If there is no reason then the question becomes: why do you invest time and effort into something that is not designed to attract return visitors? For a few organisations there may be a positive reason but that is not an excuse for poor design.

Brochure sites aim to add credibility to an organisation and perhaps to enable a once and for all response. Even that limited ambition requires design. If someone visits because they’ve got your business card, what do you want them to do?

If you’re selling wedding dresses you may not expect people to pass through your site more than once. But you still have competitors and need to persuade the visitor to decide to run with your organisation.

You need good content including social proof and you need a strong call to action. The potential to improve your site’s performance is there even for this type of one-off business.

Where you do need return visits you will need to do more. To work out what you need to do you must understand your organisation and what it needs to achieve online.

Know Your Purpose

These are three examples showing what happens where organisations do not think through their purpose and default to thinking of their site as an advert. Knowing your purpose is central to good site design and next time I shall explain why.

0 You Don’t Need Coding or Mark-up

Last Wednesday, I challenged the idea organisations are not the website designers’ job. To make that claim implies you don’t need coding or mark up.  The expert is perhaps redundant.  Whilst this is something many people accept it is still not widely understood.

Two reasons you may still need coding or mark-up

1. There are occasions where you need coding (because you want your website to do something and there’s no suitable plug-in for it) or mark-up (because you want a special design for your site).  This is when you might need the services of a web developer.  They develop themes, plug-ins and platforms to their clients’ specifications.  You will not need these services unless your site needs a distinctive appearance or you want to do something and cannot find a plug-in or application that does it.
2. Even with a standard theme you may want to make a few changes and knowledge of html and css may be an advantage.  Whilst you may not know how to do this yourself, it is a small part of the work of a web designer or consultant.

So, most of the time you don’t really need this expertise. Most of the time the issue is understanding your organisation’s needs and not the technical side of web design.

With a robust content management system (CMS) such as WordPress, with thousands of plug-ins, you can do pretty much anything. But like any other walk of life you need to choose to do the right thing and to learn how to do the right thing properly. These days the problem is choosing, from a number of viable options, the one that works for you.

Beware the Rush to a Solution

The temptation is to rush to a solution. Sometimes clients will approach a designer or consultant with a solution before they have described the problem. Often there is more than one solution and the rush to a favoured solution can prove to be a major disadvantage.  You wouldn’t walk into a doctor’s surgery demanding he remove your appendix on the spot.  You expect an interview where you discuss the problem before moving onto considering possible solutions.

A feature that a few years ago was too expensive or too difficult is easy today. For example, videos are relatively easy to make (perhaps easy to do badly but still easy to do). Many people walk around with the means to film live action videos in their pockets and never use it.

They don’t know that for a few hundred pounds they can download software that will enable them to edit a professional  looking video from recordings. Of course there are pitfalls but they exist because the technology has advanced so much.

If you need a professional video you can still find businesses that will help you produce it. But for most purposes you can easily produce something usable.

So, you have many more options at your fingertips at lower costs. This raises many issues but my point is this: these issues did not exist a few years ago and for many the power and potential of working online is unexplored territory. They simply have no idea about what is possible.

To build a website without this awareness is a big mistake. There are still many designers out there who will do you a website and never mention the potential of modern content management systems. These designers are not interested in organisations and design to the abilities of usually one contact person. This is why so many organisations find their websites a liability.

1 Is Your Organisation the Web Designer’s Job?

It can be difficult to explain the web consultancy role to clients. The client wants a website and may not have a clear image of what their website will be for; its purpose or what they can do with it.  If they want to market a product, service or cause, they need to consider how their organisation will use their site and this will have implications for the organisation.  This is the first of the five main reasons organisations lose their sense of purpose.

When their website consultant starts to ask questions about their clients’ aims and objectives and other details of their organisation, they are sometimes seen as stepping outside their role.  So, it is important to be clear from the start, why it is important to ask these questions.  Many clients do not appreciate the central role a website can play in the life of their organisation.  It doesn’t have to play such a role.  Organisations that are not in business may not have a marketing mindset and strongly hold to the view that their website has no implications for their overall practice.  Some businesses may share the same mistaken beliefs.

Some of this can be accounted for by not understanding what websites can do for organisations.  Many people’s beliefs are simply out of date although they can be strongly held.  Others have a stake in their organisation that overrides the new website.  The costs of a website that doesn’t work for them, that is a liability, may not be as great as the perceived loss of power to the people who run the website.

Many organisations see appointing a consultant or a designer as analogous to appointing Michelangelo to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. It does not change the chapel’s function. The life and routine of the Vatican are not affected by the artwork in the chapel.  Of course that is not strictly true.  The Sistine Chapel is a tourist attraction because of the ceiling and so does affect the life of the Vatican.  If this is what the client wants, then they don’t need a consultant.  They’re looking for an old-school website designer.  Their website is a badge and they can be blissfully unaware of the costs in time and money such a site will have for them.  There are many such sites and perhaps some organisations are happy with them.  They might still be happy if they were aware of what the site could do for them.

It is acceptable to have a brochure type site if it is used as a paper brochure would be used, simply to display the organisation’s credentials.  Potential clients, partners or customers can be directed there for more information.  What is not acceptable is to charge the client for a site built on an obscure platform, with limited potential functionality.  Organisations change and can find they have to scrap the old site entirely to bring in new functionality when they do decide they need more from their site.  Bad decisions are not so serious when they can be easily remedied.

The consultant’s role is perhaps more analogous to an architect. Asked to design a chapel, the architect will need a lot of information from the client to find a design that meets their requirements. The architect will ask a lot of questions the client might not expect. That is the role of any consultant, to ask the questions the client has not anticipated, to make connections the client has not made. The more the client can take part in planning the website, the better the finished website will be. A good architect may be an artist but unlike Michelangelo cannot work without a strong relationship with the client.

I’ve already pointed you to my previous sequence about non-directive consultancy.  Consultancy is usually understood to be about bringing in someone with knowledge and skills absent within the organisation.  Non-directive consultancy understands the consultor or client has more knowledge than the consultant.  Whilst I think non-directive consultancy is most appropriate for website consultancy the reality is more complex.  The consultor has unique knowledge about their organisation and business but the consultant also brings in knowledge absent within the organisation.  The skills they bring are as much about online marketing as they are about website design.  Indeed many claim the consultant needs no technical knowledge to build a website that works for the organisation.  Nevertheless consultant and consultor both bring unique knowledge to the table.

Developing your website implies changing the ways you do things. A simple example is newsletters. They are often a benefit offered to members of third sector organisations. Many organisations send their newsletters by email. The reasons for this are usually cost related.

However, if they set up a website and want to seek new members through it, a common approach is to enable visitors to subscribe using an email list. This keeps them in touch with the website and over a period they can be encouraged to become a member.

This is a big advantage, especially for local groups who can promote their cause and recruit members this way. The question is what they offer to subscribers. The newsletter is an obvious answer. It is a reason to be in regular contact with subscribers and if it is worth reading, may be exactly what they might sign up for.

But then the knock-on question is, what do you offer members? If subscribers get the newsletter, what is the advantage of becoming a member? The organisation may depend upon the members dues for its income.

There isn’t a single solution to this problem. Some organisations will be able to offer something beyond the newsletter to members, whilst others will find some other incentive for subscribers. Whatever they decide, they need to review their membership arrangements.

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2 Knowing Your Purpose

So, now to the main theme of this thread, where I shall look at the issues third sector organisations face. We need to face up to it, not knowing your purpose is likely to be a problem your organisations faces from time to time.  The reasons for this are complex.

Third sector organisations share some issues with businesses and government bodies whilst some are peculiar to third sector organisations.  Many small organisations find their resources restricted and time limited. Without paid staff organisations are dependent upon volunteers. Paid staff means volunteers need to track down finance or manage staff; it can be tough for unemployed people who manage paid staff.

Some people enjoy it because their small organisation becomes their personal purpose. Organisations can take on a life of their own; they take on a reality in the minds of their members, beyond the mundane reality of their resources . To create a website that works for their organisation, they will need to understand how others perceive their practice, as they strive to express it to the outside world.

Why Websites Need a Purpose

Let’s face it sick organisations produce sick websites. No-one can rescue a poor website if the client organisation is sick. A healthy organisation will not want to put up with a poor website for long. Many designers and developers find their clients frustrating. You can see why if you understand the problem may be with the client and not the machine. Woe betide the designer who has no people skills and does not understand organisations.

Here are five issues that lead to organisations losing their sense of purpose.  They don’t:

This is a work in progress for me and I shall expand on each in turn over the coming weeks. If you think I’ve missed something do let me know.

0 From Publicity to Marketing

Last Wednesday I wrote about the change in web design from coding to plug-ins. Like all change, it is gradual and builds upon foundations laid in the past. There is a still a need for designers and developers of course but the context in which they work has changed. The implications of this  depend upon the logical type of the issue you are struggling with.

So, if you have a landing page which draws a lot of traffic and your conversion rate is low you may need a designer who can test your pages for conversion.  But if you are not clear what you want from your site, you do not need the same type of designer.  You will need someone who can understand your organisation’s needs and help you work out the approach to meeting them online

No-one ices cakes any more! This is the type of naked fruit cake I mean. pixel1 / Pixabay

My mother was a cake decorator. She noticed no-one ate her Christmas cakes because they didn’t want to spoil her beautiful design. So, she started to ice a polystyrene dummy for Christmas alongside a naked Christmas cake that no-one hesitated to eat.

Too many organisations see their website like icing on their organisation. It is fancy decoration but not really at the centre of their activities. What many have not understood is websites can be the cake, they can be at the heart of your activities.

Publicity is a part of your wider marketing strategy.  It is simply a means to tell people about your organisation and its activities.  Marketing is the strategic approach you have to deploy your publicity to best effect.  It should inform what you offer as much as how you promote your offer.  Base your marketing upon understanding your market and delivering what it needs.

Some organisations may find marketing unacceptable because they believe it is about trade. Marketing is not necessarily about trade. It is essentially about getting your message across. How do you reach the largest number of relevant people and persuade them to take the action you want, eg sign up to your mailing list, attend an event, write to their MP?

But it isn’t only trade that is unwelcome for many of us. This summer in 2014 we have seen the effects of extremely malevolent postings that have nothing to do with sales. These have been immensely effective and are entirely deplorable. I haven’t seen the videos and have no intention of seeing them and yet they have a place in my thoughts.  Terrorist groups understand how to get their message out and are very effective at it.  Don’t we need to understand what they are doing and insist upon an ethical approach to working online?

Trade is not always negative. If you have a problem and find a solution for sale, assuming it is the right thing for you, why should you not pay for it? Someone is trying to make a living.   Your contribution may encourage them to continue to develop their product and so offer you further benefits in the future.

The thing I find frustrating is the attitude that “we want a website but we don’t want it to take up any time”. I don’t deny time is an issue but websites are machines and they need maintenance. If you really don’t want to do it, fair enough, so don’t have a website.  You are not buying a website, you are buying what the website can do for your organisation.  That is you are buying a machine that will help you market your organisation.  You can’t do this without some expenditure of time and money.

If not having a website is not an option then you may need to talk to a consultant who can help you work out how to run a website with the resources that are available to you. Ideally you will find the time you spend on looking after your site helps you meet your wider aims.

We need to move away from the idea of a website as a snapshot of your organisation as it was 3 or 4 years ago when your designer locked down your site, to the idea of your website as central to your organisation’s strategy. It is the most powerful tool a community or voluntary organisation could hope for.

2 From Coding to Plug-ins

There is a philosophical tradition, popular among some radical atheists, called reductionism. At its most extreme it contends everything can be explained in terms of its constituent parts. So, if we understand the chemical reactions in brain cells we understand human behaviour. Someone could tell from the chemical reactions in my brain that I have fallen in love.   Presumably they could also tell whether I was really in love or just having lustful thoughts. Or perhaps they would find love and lust are the same thing.

I don’t deny there are chemical changes in my brain when I fall in love. But will those chemicals tell the observer who I have fallen in love with? If I fall in love with Gill will these changes differ from if I fall in love with Susan? And would you be able to tell from examining these changes, which chemical means Gill and which Susan? If I’m in love with Gill and you inject me with Susan’s chemical, will I be in love with Susan?  The point is chemicals are an inadequate account of humanity’s tangled emotions; just about anything is!

As a response to reductionism, some people talk about qualia. These are qualities that cannot be described. Describe the colour red without saying it’s like something that is red. Gill and Susan are distinct beings and my feelings for one or the other cannot be reduced to a chemical (or mixture of chemicals).  The distinctive characteristics of something as simple as a colour or as complex as a person, cannot be reduced to something else.  The chemicals in my brain that interact when I see red, are not themselves the experience of the colour red.  They may always accompany the experience (do they?) but they are not the experience.

I prefer the term ‘logical type’. There are levels of complexity (called logical types) and you need the right tool for each level. Chemistry is not the right tool for researching human relationships. No-one is denying there are chemical reactions in my brain when I fall in love. What is dubious is the view you can explain love by studying chemistry.

What Has This to do with Website Design?

When people think about web design they think of languages such as html, css, php, JavaScript, etc.  They are similar to the chemist’s tools. Essential to a functional website surely but by no means the only tool the web consultant needs.  These are the tools a web developer uses to build new programs such as plug-ins.  They are not tools the consultant needs although the consultant might benefit from understanding them.

With content management systems (CMS) such as WordPress you can get by without them (not necessarily something I recommend) because you can use plug-ins.  Nevertheless, you still cannot get by without organisation theory (though many try).  The focus has moved in recent years from building your website to building your organisation using websites and other online and offline media.  You cannot do this if you don’t understand organisations; you can do it if you don’t understand html.

So, if you want your website to work for your organisation’s purpose, you need to understand your organisation. How else can you possibly hope to create a website that works for your organisation?  The web consultant’s role is to help you build a site that transform your organisation.

0 The Anatomy of Organisations

Organisations imply greater complexity than, for example, sole trader businesses. So, it’s worth considering how they work and the implications for their web presence. The anatomy of organisations, whether they are businesses or other types, implies managing four things:

Projects

Projects are the organisation main activities, its reason for existing.  The web designer must understand the organisation’s purpose to design something that helps the organisation meet its needs. Furthermore the designer needs to be sensitive to how their decisions can have an unintended impact on the organisation’s purpose. Their role is to discuss these issues with the organisation. It is certainly not to introduce changes on their own whim or that of their client. The client will not necessarily understand the impact of online changes for their organisation.

Staff

Employment of staff is the obvious difference between an organisation and a sole trader. The designer needs to find out who will be responsible for the organisation’s web presence and the time and skills they will devote to it. Do they know more or less than the client about how websites work? A significant part of the designer’s role may be training the staff who will be responsible for site maintenance.  But it goes further than that because the site is likely to have an impact on the work of all staff.  The organisation may need help to anticipate consequences for staff and to instruct staff about the changes.

Resources

The website designer needs to understand the financial resources and time available to maintain and develop the organisation’s web presence. There may also be practical issues about equipment to consider. Outdated equipment might seriously limit what can be done by the organisation. And always a business will be aware of its bottom line – just how beneficial to the organisation is their web presence?

Information

Information is the life blood of any web presence and whatever form it takes the organisation will manage information through its web presence. As well as identifying the main sources of information and how they need to be managed, there are also a number of issues such as privacy and security that will apply. Remember important information will include things like email lists as much as information relating directly to the purpose of the organisation.  Even if the organisation produces physical objects or activities, available locally, there may be potential to market them through information.  The designer needs to help the organisation identify the information and work out how to market it effectively.

All of these can have significant implications for an organisation’s web presence. However, you may still not be convinced this is a part of the web designer’s role. This is one reason I prefer the term “web consultant” because organisations these days need more than a designer. I’ll explain more next time.

3 Organisation Theory

It may at one time have been enough to be a techie, to understand the subtleties of mark-up languages and other coding. But the reality is the days of amazing flash animations are almost over. There may be a few designers doing this stuff but it is not what most organisations need.  Arguably, you will find knowledge of organisation theory more helpful than website development.

You see, only a few years ago web design was peripheral to most organisations. A website was an extra something you had because … well everyone else had one.  Whilst many organisations, especially in the third sector, haven’t understood the revolution happening around them, the trend is relentless and anyone who doesn’t get it will lose out.

Why You Need Organisation Theory to Explain Why Websites Don’t Work!

The fact is, if you are not going to take your organisation’s web presence seriously you are better off not being online at all. For many groups that may be the best solution. Why waste time and effort maintaining some online system that you don’t really need?

I know of many organisations whose performance would be enhanced without their current online presence. There are various reasons for this. May be:

Pulling out of a significant investment of time and money can be difficult even if it is in the organisation’s best interests.

Many groups don’t understand what websites can do for them and perhaps experience websites as millstones around their necks; websites as burdensome creators of unnecessary work and not as helpful tools.

This sequence will look at how your web presence shares in planning your organisation’s purpose. I shall explain why technical skills are less important than organisational skills in future posts.

So, what’s most important?  Web skills or understanding your organisation?

0 Conversations Online: Skype Hangouts etc

Finally, in this review of ways to hold conversations online, I turn to media that enable perhaps the closest to real-life conversations, Skype Hangouts etc.

This is the type of phone we imagined before mobiles and Skype. OpenClipart-Vectors / Pixabay

When I was a child, the videophone was more than science fiction. Television and telephones existed and so bringing them together was obviously a fairly straightforward technological advance.  I can remember wondering why no-one had thought of doing it.  Of course, there would be risks, getting out of the bath to answer the phone!

It is interesting the videophone seems to have happened almost as an afterthought. They have never taken off as stand-alone devices. The mobile phone perhaps dominates this market and video is not practical when the phone is on your ear!  You would need a camera and a phone; it’s not going to happen. (You can use ear phones and look at your phone but the other person would need to do the same.  It’s not impossible but it is impractical.)  This left the humble PC to take on the role.

Talk to just about anyone who is ICT sceptical and they’re likely to except Skype. They have discovered the value of worldwide communication at no cost apart from the fee they pay to their ISP.

So, let’s look at the advantages.

0 Conversations Online: Social Media

Many people argue social media is the most effective way of holding conversations online. They certainly have many advantages. If you are looking for new people to sign up to your email list, then social media is a good place to start. The trick is to know when to point your social media to your website.

It is important to remember your friends, likes, followers, etc are the property of the social media application. You have to follow their rules and if they change their site structure or their rules, you can lose your work on that particular application.  This is why you will want your social media contacts to sign up to your email list.

How do you make best use of social media for your organisation?