I recently decided to check out Audible, a service that supplies audio books for portable audio devices. They are a regular advertiser on my favourite podcast, Security Now,  so after hearing a recent offer on this podcast for a free Audio Book, I decided to give it a go.

The initial free trial page is friendly and attractive, and simply asks for your name, email address and country:

This is all fair enough, so I entered my details and then I was presented with this page:

As you will notice, there is a payment section here requiring my credit card number to continue with the free trial. You may also notice the small link just above the credit card payment form titled “Why do you need my credit card information for a free trial?”. Clicking on this link presents the following pitch:

Our free trial offer is valid to customers new to Audible. Entering your credit card ensures that your AudibleListener® membership service will continue uninterrupted. In addition, it helps prevent abuse of our special offers. Cancel your trial within the trial period and your card will not be charged.

I have a problem with providing my credit card details for the following reasons:

Internet Security

I never give out my credit card online without a very good reason. In this age of internet fraud and identity theft any provision of my credit card to an online provider is made with due dilligence. A provider has to earn my trust first.

I am not willing to provide my credit card to get access to a trial version of a service that I may or may not choose to continue after the trial.

If a vendor has confidence in their offerings, they should not need this reassurance upfront. I also don’t like vendors storing my credit card details at all I would prefer to manually enter them at the time of payment and not have any online systems keeping a record of them in some possibly vulnerable database.

I am forgetful

I may sign up for trial version now and then forget to cancel it, even though I have no intention of using the service. With some vendors, if you do not cancel it before the trial verison is over, you suddenly start getting charged for the service you are not using. I think this is the real reason these vendors want your credit card upfront - because it gives them the ability to start billing you the moment they can. (I don’t know whether Audible is one of these services, as I did not proceed with the trial verison specifically because of this matter).

I think this a fundamentally unethical approach to earning revenue and I would encourage vendors not to ask me for my credit card number at the start of a “free” trial. I would even go further and encourage vendors not to store customer credit card data at all - there are other approaches that do not risk your customers credit card data.

Over the past week there has been a bit of buzz online about Rupert Murdoch’s plans for the future of News Limited’s websites. In a recent interview with Sky News, Rupert said he was thinking about removing his websites from Google and placing his news articles behind a paywall, available only to subscribers of his websites.

The main reason he gave for this was because he felt that there was very little value for the websites (and their advertisers) gained from visitors coming via a search on Google to News Limited websites. He claimed that visitors from Google would click through to an article, read it and leave. If this is true, perhaps it speaks volumes about the websites content, or usability. Perhaps they could benefit from some multivariate testing and a redesign?

But that’s not what’s got my curious mind spinning. Murdoch only seemed to mention Google in his interview. If Google traffic is of such poor quality, why does News Limited competitively spend to get traffic from Google? See in the screengrab of the search below, where I searched for “Australian News” - www.news.com.au (a News LTD website) appears second in the paid listing. News Limited is actually paying for Google traffic!

Could Murdoch be trying to wedge Google? After all, now is the best time. Microsoft is spending big trying to reposition its new search engine “Bing” (having just recently announced deals with Twitter and Facebook). Perhaps Murdoch will withdraw from Google, switch to a subscriber model and then strike a lucrative search deal with Bing, forcing Google to put money on the table for access.

It’s interesting to see how this all plays out.

Ok, so I might be drawing a long bow to say that this post has anything to do with web design and development, but bear with me.

I’ve been banking with the same regular, normal bank since I was a child. There’s never been any real  incentive to change banks, no matter how frustrating the bank behaves, because, well basically, you still end up using another bank. Its kind of like voting. It doesn’t matter who you vote for, you still end up with a politician! In this case, it doesn’t matter who you bank with, you still end up having to deal with a bank.

Well that’s all changed.

I recently opened an ING DIRECT savings account like so many people before me. What I soon discovered was that they also offered an everyday banking account that doesn’t charge fees, in fact they actually pay other bank’s fees for me (if I draw out more than $200 from a bank’s ATM, they pay the “other bank’s ATM” fee). Compare that to my old bank that charged me $60 a year ($5 a month account fee) for allowing me to bank with them!

I should thank my old bank though. Banks have done such a great job training us to not come into the bank. Over the last few years they’ve trained us to use ATMs, they’ve trained us to use internet banking.

They trained me. Too well.

There was something very satisfying about going into the bank, for the last time, to close my account. Of course, I had to stand in a queue in my lunch time for nearly 15 minutes, but that was ok. It gave me time to reflect. A chance to think about how things are changing for old world businesses like the old banks, and how the internet has provided the opportunity for modern, progressive businesses to provide services and new choices for consumers. Intelligent businesses can now offer products and services and leverage the the power of the internet to turn reluctant customers into vocal fans.

There is a lesson here for all businesses. In the age of the internet, you can’t stick to your old ways, hoping that consumers will just put up with you because there’s no alternative. Your competitors are innovating. You need to keep up, or get out of the way. The internet is changing people’s expectations of business.

Now if only the internet could help us vote for someone that wasn’t as frustrating as a politician!

Anyone who has used Google Analytics knows just how awesome and useful the software can be.  Anonymously tracking users to your website, gathering data on site usage, discovering traffic trends, Google Analytics is a wonderful tool for any business on the web.

After doing some Analytics work for a website today, I started thinking about how brilliant it would be if businesses could use the same data in the real world. Some kind of geo-tracking analytics that could give real-time, real world feedback to businesses.

Could this be the future?

Location awareness

There are now more location aware phones than ever before. The trend looks set to continue that location awareness in mobile devices will soon be as common as the mobile phone is now. If there was software installed on all of these phones that could anonymously track users movements, a lot of interesting and useful data could be gathered.

Yeah, Yeah. Big Brother

I know, nobody wants to be tracked. Just like nobody wants to openly divulge personal details of their life online. Oh wait! The younger generation already are. Twitter, Facebook, MySpace etc.

Just like social networks, giving the mobile phone user a reason to want to divulge their location is the key to making geo-tracking successful. It could be a tool to find your friends, or recommend places to go in your current location.

Emerging Ideas

There are already emerging phone applications that are starting the geo-tracking trend.

Brightkite is a location-based social network website that is available on any mobile device. Users “check in” at places by using text messaging or one of the mobile applications and they can see who is nearby and who has been there before.

Foursquare is a location-based social network website, software for mobile devices, and game. Users “Check-in” at venues using text messaging or a device specific application. They are then awarded points and sometimes “badges.”

Social Benefits

By removing the need to manually “check in” and instead use an anonymous, continuously or regularly  updated “live feed” of everyone’s location, we could get some amazing real-time, real world data.

Think of just some of the social benefits, like…

• Live traffic reporting (both road and public transport)
• Geo-trends (discover events)
• Geo-trends over timeline (popularity of places at different times of day/year etc)
• Find popular venues (restaurants, pubs etc)
• Places to avoid (if you hate crowds!)

Business Benefits

Imagine if your business could use this data in the same way that you can currently use Google Analytics on your website. You could …

• track visitors to your business premises.
• monitor the busiest times of the day.
• track time clients/shopper spent in your business.
• track trends for your business (could help scheduling staff, best time for deliveries etc).
• track frequent visitors to your business.
• track where people have come from or went to afterwards.
• monitor traffic growth trends during an advertising campaign.

Could geo-tracking data gathering be the next big thing on the web?

There’s been a lot of buzz about Twitter recently in the media, so its natural to want to know what all the fuss is about, and learn more about how Twitter might benefit you, both personally and in business.

I thought it might be a good idea, to put together a quick beginners guide to Twitter for our clients, and a list of my top 10 tips for using Twitter in business, to help you understand the basics of Twitter, and how you can use Twitter to help your business.

So what is Twitter?

Twitter is a social communication network that asks the question: “What are you doing now?” Users can answer via the Twitter website, sms, mobile phone application or a desktop application. Twitter updates (commonly referred to as ‘tweets’) have to be under 140 characters in length.

Its natural to think that you couldn’t possibly say anything meaningful in 140 characters, but the quality of communication is actually quite surprising, once you become familiar with using Twitter. Unlike writing a blog, Twitter is a great place to tell the world what you’re thinking before you’ve had a chance to even think about it.

I think its universal, that when someone joins and uses Twitter for the first time, there is a slow start. It takes a while to understand and see the benefits of using Twitter. Commonly, people ask…

• why would I want to tell everyone about something I’ve just done?
• why would they care?
• why do I want to hear all about the mundane things that other people do?

But after a while, once you start following enough people, the right people, and have people following you, you have an “A-ha!” moment. Conversations start to build with people and information is shared.

Quite simply, Twitter is many things, including…

• a multi-directional conversation.
• micro-blogging.
• social.
• like an internet nervous system.
• real time search engine.

Tweeting is being social

Through the use of links in your tweets, you can share almost anything, making Twitter the “social everything” network.

• Social Updating
• Social Media
• Social News
• Social Browsing
• Social Networking

Social Updating
At its core, twitter was primarily designed for and is perfect for keeping up-to-date on what your “real-world” friends and family are up to.

Social Media
Share links to videos on youtube, photos on flickr and other photo sharing sites such as twitpics.

Social News
As something happens, you can often see trending topics on twitter as people tweet about it, 15 to 30 minutes before major news sites report the breaking news.

Social Browsing
You can share links to blog posts and stories that your friends and followers might find interesting. Twitter works best, not when you say “I had toast for breakfast”, but when you say “did you read
this great article?”.

Social Networking
Meet new people online who are in the same industry as you, or share the same hobbies and  interests. If you play guitar, follow other guitar fanatics and they will hopefully post links to interesting guitar websites, guitar tutorials, videos etc.

Complimenting Old Media

Twitter is a new form of media that compliments old media. TV didn’t kill radio and radio didn’t kill off the newspaper. Its unlikely that Twitter will harm old media in any way, in fact I imagine it will enhance the old media experience. There are signs that this is already happening.

When watching a sporting event on TV (eg, the recent Bathurst 1000 motor race), doing a search at the time, on Twitter for Bathurst reveals instant feedback from fans of the race. People sharing their thoughts with everyone about the day’s events as they unfold.

The same thing happened when radio station Triple J aired the hottest 100 songs for the year. People tweeted their thoughts on whether they agreed or disagreed with the song selection. New media giving instant feedback to old media.

It can also be useful at live events. Go to a conference and people will be tweeting feedback about the speaker, about the points the speaker is making, and tweeting links to websites containing useful information relating to particular point in the topic of the speech. There are even journalists tweeting Question Time live from Federal Parliament.

Twitter for business

When used in the right way, Twitter can be a great tool for business. It allows you to engage with your potential customers, and gain feedback from existing customers.

If you are selling a product or service, twitter can be used as a great way to promote a product offer, or marketing message. While its not the revenue channel, it can be a good  lead generator.

Build a sense of community around your business/product/service. If you have a great reputation with your customers, they will often retweet (the act or resending your tweet to all of their followers) your message, acting as a respected testimonial.

10 tips for businesses starting to use twitter

1. First up, present yourself well.
   When you follow other people, they receive an email telling them that you’re following. Naturally they will click through to your twitter page to find out who you are, to see if you’re worth following back or not. Present your twitter page and profile professionally (otherwise they could think you’re a spammer). Create an avatar (an image that represents you or your business – company logo perhaps?). Write a genuine profile. Even design an interesting looking background for your profile page that suits your company’s branding.
2. Be active, engage and be genuine.
   Communicating on Twitter should be no different from the real world. It might seem hard, but it is possible to be genuine and engaging in 140 characters. Following people and tweeting often helps people to find you. This might sound like the opposite of everything else I’m about to say, but don’t worry about how many followers you have. Be genuine (Tweet as if you were talking to real people, face-to-face) and tweet regularly and people will follow.
3. Crowd Source - Ask questions.
   Ask your followers questions (crowd sourcing), its a great way to start a conversation, it creates an excuse for your followers to interact with you, you’ll get feedback, and see who is actively following you.
4. Share, don’t spam!
   When you do promote your own product or service, don’t spam! Try to tweet about something unrelated but interesting/useful first to get attention. Write your tweets so they don’t sound like ads. If there’s something new or interesting, a new special offer, or useful information about your product or service, then share that information. Tweeting the same advert every hour will drive followers away fast!
5. Use a desktop Twitter application.
   There are a few good twitter applications (my favorite is Tweetdeck) that allow you to get organized. Once you start following a lot of people, it becomes harder to keep up with everyone. With an app like Tweetdeck, you can organize the people you follow into groups. Place people you really want to keep in contact with into smaller groups. Use the application’s search function to create several searches relating to your business.
6. Search and monitor.
   Search on Twitter for people tweeting about your company, product or service. Search for people tweeting about your industry, and your competitors. Following these people is a way of introducing your business to someone who may not have heard of you. Monitor the searches for feedback (both positive or negative) about your business. Observe trending topics. If a topic related to your business or product is trending on twitter, and you use the term in your tweets, chances are your tweets at that time will be seen by a lot more people.
7. Respond.
   If someone has a complaint, try to respond in a quick and helpful manner. People will often use twitter to vent, not expecting a response. So the simple act of trying to take care of the problem personally is a great gesture. Try to make contact publicly, then fix the problem privately (direct message, email or phone), and then follow up publicly on twitter again. If someone compliments your business, reply and/or retweet.
8. Consider timezones.
   Nobody sits in front of twitter 24 hours a day, so rewording and sending the same message later will help you reach more people. If your market is worldwide, you need to think about timezones. Send tweets when you think your local market would be in front of the computer, but also rewrite the tweet to say something similar to send later (don’t resend the same tweet – no one likes spam!). If you are rewording and resending your message, try to intersperse them with other tweets, to avoid them looking like spam when a new potential follower visits your profile page.
9. Share Multimedia.
   Use links to videos and photos demonstrating your products (Tweetdeck and other Twitter apps make this very easy to do). Link to other people’s positive blog posts about your business/product, it’s a testimonial.
10. Retweet and Give credit.
    Retweet interesting tweets that other people have sent. It costs you nothing, your followers might find it informative, and the original person who posted the tweet will appreciate you spreading the word. Retweeting is also very handy when you have tweeters block (can’t think of anything to tweet about). Give credit when retweeting someone else’s tweet. Apart from it being a nice thing to do, your retweet shows up on their twitter stream (as a “mention” - you mention their name in your retweet). If it’s someone that’s not already following you, you’re (in a way) introducing yourself to them.

I recently read a post over at 37 signals about why the designers there skip Photoshop in the design process and I found myself agreeing with most of the conversation. There are some good reasons for designing this way, along with some good counterpoints.

The Photoshop mockup just isn’t a website.

A while back I used to always fully develop a design in Photoshop, with all the polish and finesse that could possibly fit into a flat two dimensional image and present the design to the client for approval.

This worked reasonably well when the only real interaction was the click of a hyperlink or perhaps a drop down menu. You could explain the functionality, describe the interaction and hope the client had the imagination to perceive the concept clearly enough to approve it.

Of course, we could always create several designs to demonstrate the different phases of the interactions, which took more time. In the end though, the mockups just never looked or felt like a real website, so we were always left relying on the clients imagination.

While I’m not suggesting that we shouldn’t use Photoshop in the design process at all, I do recommend an agile approach of starting in Photoshop and moving to code the design as soon as possible, and then presenting the client a website concept rather than a Photoshop mockup.

No matter how good the Photoshop mockup is, it isn’t the same as a real website. In a Photoshop design concept the client can’t …

• click the links.
• see hover effects.
• see image transitions.
• see javascript transitions and effects.

In modern web design and web applications, the interactions can be just as important as the design itself and can only really be demonstrated as a web page. These interactions are ultimately what the end user experiences, and having this in mind at the start of the design phase can only help to create a quicker, seamless development path.

Photoshop concepts don’t look like web pages.

Above all else, the text in Photoshop is just not the same as text on the web. When clients see a Photoshop mockup, they can get a certain expectation of how the text will look. Photoshop text appears completely different, the sharpness, the font size, the spacing.

Designing the site in code, can show the spacing of the text and paragraphs better than in Photoshop, demonstrating a more realistic, finished design.

Code early and speed up the design process.

Don’t repeat yourself.

Designing in Photoshop first and then recreating the design in HTML/CSS is extra work. You can spend a lot of time polishing a Photoshop mockup, present it to the client and then still have to code up the design and tweak it to suit the web. Start in Photoshop and move to code quickly, its a real time saver.

Use code snippets to speed up the coding of the design process. All good web designers/coders should have a collection of code snippets that they can reuse.

Design with SEO in mind

When designing in Photoshop, your main focus is aesthetics. By designing in HTML early, you’re immediately thinking about the search engine optimization of the design.

You start to be concerned about how to treat headings and the flow of text on the page. You think about maximizing the SEO opportunities from the start of the design. All of this is important when designing for businesses – the SEO is just as important as making the site look appealing. After all, the SEO helps bring the traffic that appreciates the design.

Listen to the client

Some may argue that it could be a waste of time coding a site and presenting the design, only to have the design rejected and start designing and coding again. The key is to really listen to the client from the very first meeting.

Most clients will have an idea of what they like and what their end users will like. If they don’t, guide them early, ask the right questions and prepare them for your ideas. If you take care in the preparation, you should only ever have to code a design once.

Agile design.

Once you present your design to the client, its common to need to make minor style and layout adjustments. Again, its much easier to do this in the code and send the client a link to the design, rather than have to rework a Photoshop design. And you’re a step closer to having the project finished, no need to re-tweak the Photoshop design, get final approval and then start coding the concept.

Moving from a Photoshop concept to coding a site as early as possible, speeds up the design process and gives a more realistic result.

The only real downside to the agile approach is that the client might start thinking that because they can see the website concept functioning as a website, the project must be almost finished. Its important to explain the design process early on, so that the client understands whats involved.

In the end though, it comes down to the client. How good you are at listening to them and how well you can communicate your ideas with them.

Many traditional advertising agencies are, by neccessity, now moving into the web design and web development space. This makes perfect business sense considering the large amount of money which is being refunneled from traditional advertising methods into online advertising and marketing.

An unfortunate side-effect of this is that graphic designers with a background in print are now passing themselves off as web-designers without doing the requisite study/training/self-education to move to the new medium. The problem with many print designers is they do not understand the intricacies of working within web browsers. They are used to their design being exactly represented when it comes out of the printing press.

In traditional design you have a set area to work within….let’s say for example an A4 sized brochure. The designer builds their design to a pixel perfect ratio in their design tool of choice. They then proof it, send it to the printer and go to bed happy in the knowledge that what they designed will come out exactly the same when it is printed.

In web design, you are not designing for a known set area. The size (and shape) of monitors, different screen resolutions, the way different monitors render shades of colours, different web browsers, alternate internet devices, user preferences, and many other variables mean that there are going to be many subtle differences in the rendering of a given design.

This is one thing many print-designers often have trouble letting go of when moving to the web - there is no such thing as “pixel perfect” rendering. As web-designers, we understand that each computer (or device) in going to render a design slightly differently. We have let go of the idea that we can dictate exactly how a website will look and instead design for relative consitency.

Another common theme with print designers, is that unless specifically instructed not to, they will invariably design a “splash page” for your website. There are many reasons not to use a splash page, but to a print designer, a website is an electronic brochure and all brochures need a cover page! It is often difficult to convince the designer of the redundancy of what may have taken over 50% of their time in the design process!

Other issues with print-designed websites that crop up frequently are: the use of non-standard widgets, extensive use of obscure fonts which can only be rendered in a browser using images or complex font-replacement techniques, excessive use of eye-candy such as drop-shadows etc.

These devices all have their place in web-design, but excessive application of them in a flat design, makes the task of coding them into HTML templates that much more difficult and time consuming and opens up more opportunity for cross-browser compatibility problems.

It makes more sense to employ a web-designer who is knowledgable and experienced in design for the web to perform the design work for your web project. A web designer is thinking about browsers and screens right from the first pixel. A clever web-designer will start the design in Photoshop but will very quickly move into the browser where design considerations such as rollovers, visual animations, user interactions and other web-specific design elements can be incorporated into the design process.

It just makes sense to use a web-designer to design your website!

Disclaimer:

These are all very generalised claims and of course there are many print designers who have successfully made the switch to web and have come to understand and accept the different approaches required when designing for the web as opposed to print.

However, over the years we have experienced the situation where we are supplied with designs from print-designers for translation to the web and the experience has often been frustrating for both us, and the designers, who get upset when any element of their design is not represented pixel-perfectly in the browser.

If you get the error “Call to undefined method BasesfGuardUser::addsfGuardUserProfile” when using a custom sfGuardUser profile, you need to add the following method to the file /plugins/sfGuardPlugin/lib/model/sfGuardUser.php

  public function addsfGuardUserProfile()
  {
    if(!$profile = $this->getProfile())
    {
      $profile = new sfGuardUserProfile;
      $profile->setUserId($this->getId());
    }
    return $profile;
  }

I know it sucks to hack a core plugin file, but sometimes we must pragmatic!

A quick tip for those getting incorrect record totals (and thus broken paging) when using the propel pager in Symfony:

Add the following method to your pager object:

$pager->setPeerCountMethod('getGroupedCount');

Then create the following method in your peer class:

    public static function getGroupedCount($c)
    {
        $copy = clone $c;
        // this should be the intended grouping column
        $copy->addGroupByColumn(parent::ID);
        return parent::doCount($copy);
    }

Your pager will now work the way you want it to!

We recently recommended to a client that they set up a page on their website promoting themselves (and optimised for their name) so that people searching for them in Google would get this page as (hopefully) the first result.

The client expressed some concerns about putting themselves out on the web as a personal brand, and we thought some of the issues that were brought up were worth a mention here.

This was the clients response to our suggestion:

Can people blog derogatory things about me if I take that step and market myself or are they risking a law suit for defamation?

How is it that famous people can have pages on themselves and you never see a bad word written about them? How do they block negative media and gossip?

The reason I ask is that there are people out there who will do and say what they can to make others look bad.

This was my response to our client, and I think it nicely sums up the pros and cons of marketing oneself as an online brand:

Dear Client (obviously I put their name and not “client”),

To answer your questions:

Yes, people will be able to blog derogatory things about you if you decide to market yourself. You shouldn’t see this as a threat to your business - you should see this as an opportunity to demonstrate the quality of your service and product. How companies respond to customer complaints, negative comments and criticisms is a true test of their attitude towards customer service.

If someone says something bad about your product on a blog, they are just expressing an opinion and people who read the blog will understand that; and not necessarily form a judgment of you or the product based on a single opinion.

You could take the opportunity to respond in the blog comments (politely), asking if they have actually used the product.

If they haven’t, you could point out in the blog comments (again politely), that perhaps they should give it a try before forming an opinion and offer them (and their readers) a discount to try out the product.

If they have used the product and they write something bad about it, it is a chance to get some direct honest feedback about your product/services which may help you refine it moving forward. Either way, if you have a polite and honest dialogue with the blogger who has made claims about your products, it will demonstrate to the visitors reading the blog that you value feedback and deal with any problems or criticisms in an open and honest manner. This will improve the perception of your brand, even if the initial catalyst was a negative blog post.

There will always be nay-sayers and people with negative attitudes and opinions. People who use the internet to research purchasing decisions will generally not take a bad review from a single source as the basis for a final purchase decision.

Of course there is always the issue of personal attacks where someone online is making personal  claims about  you. If these claims are libelous or defamatory, then the normal avenues of legal recourse are available to you (if the poster can be identified). In most cases however these kind of attacks are best ignored. Not many people give any credence to anonymous online personal attacks.

There are plenty of sites which have nasty things to say about celebrities (try Googling for “britney spears sucks”), however the authoritative sources tend to rise to the top in Google. In the Britney Spears example, when you search for “britney spears”, the first two results are her official site and her Wikipedia entry. The sources of quality information are what tend to show up first and the “Britney Spears Sucks” pages are hidden deep in the results. So it is not a case of celebrities blocking negative media and comments (in fact this is not possible), it’s just that the quality information ends up being linked more often and thus rises to the top of the results.

If you create a profile of yourself on your own site, this will naturally become the authoritative source for information on you and should rise to the top of the search results for a search on your name. This gives you the chance to decide the narrative that will be presented.

Managing your image online is all about understanding that you cannot control what other people say about you or your products, but the way you react is what defines your company.