Link round-up (6/7/07)
• Putting Out Fires
• How to Deal With Crisis—and Defend the Brand
• When Observing Users Is Not Enough: 10 Guidelines for Getting More Out of Users’ Verbal Comments
• Pricing a Project
• Don’t be a hero: Giving up is good
• 12 Breeds of Client and How to Work with Them
• Protect Your Brand and Your Customers
• 8 Tips for a Stronger Call to Action
• Design Questions
• US Privacy Update: Experts Offer 6 Strategies to Build Consumer Trust
- Putting Out Fires
“Fires are an inevitable part of the modern workplace. By fires of course I mean unforeseen projects or tasks that tend to come from nowhere. Fires can sometimes be a destructive force in moral, adds to stress, overwhelming people with seemingly random assignments. But I find there is always a problem that needs solving beneath the flames. While it isn’t always obvious, its usually there. Here are a couple of tips to put out fires before they begin, control them once they are started and avoid getting burnt.”
- How to Deal With Crisis—and Defend the Brand
“How companies deal with negative experiences is just as important as creating positive experiences. […] Reacting immediately and proactively is not an option: It’s the right thing to do from both a humane perspective and from a brand-sustainability perspective.”
- When Observing Users Is Not Enough: 10 Guidelines for Getting More Out of Users’ Verbal Comments
“A usability test implies, among other things, a relationship between two people—an interviewer and a user. The way an interviewer interacts with users influences the outcome of test sessions greatly. Drawing conclusions from only observation is risky. You must elicit verbal comments from users in a way that enriches your observations and helps you avoid biases. To make the most of your user interviews, convey confidence and empathy, adapt to users’ personalities and rhythms, get users to talk about their own experiences and the reasons behind their comments, explore users’ comments in depth, and follow users’ flow.”
- Pricing a Project
“Today we are going to break an unwritten rule for agencies, we are going to reveal an important page from our playbook on how we price a project. What is somewhat ironic is that we think it’s a pretty bad rule, that one of the last things we think anyone should hide from a potential client is how your pricing works.”
- Don’t be a hero: Giving up is good
“Here’s the problem: You agree that feature X can be done in two hours. But four hours into it, you’re still only a quarter of the way done. The natural instinct is to think “but I can’t give up now, I’ve already spent four hours on this!”.”
- 12 Breeds of Client and How to Work with Them
“There are loads of different types of clients out there and chances are at some point you’ll get to meet all of them. So let’s take a look through some typical clients and see if you recognise a few of your own in there!”
- Protect Your Brand and Your Customers
“In the internet age, the stakes are higher than ever. Consumers increasingly form their opinions of a company through its website. But a good-looking, efficient web presence isn’t enough. Companies must protect it or risk losing control over their hard-earned brand to criminal activity.”
- 8 Tips for a Stronger Call to Action
“As a command, “click here” is beautiful in its simplicity, but it falls far short as a call to action – the trigger to launch the customer on the complicated path to conversion – because it doesn’t tell your email readers what you really want them to do.”
- Design Questions
“[…] the initial direct contact with clients during the discovery meeting is likely the most important moment in the life of a project. While most of my previous reference in this regard has been toward the establishment of designer competence and development of fellowship with the client, there is another vital aspect to this initial meeting: the specific questions asked.”
- US Privacy Update: Experts Offer 6 Strategies to Build Consumer Trust
“With 30% of the online population wary of giving out their personal information due to privacy concerns and 51% not trusting search engines to keep their search data secret, it’s an understatement to say that privacy is still a hot-button issue — for consumers and marketers alike. […] We talked to a former Federal Trade Commissioner and a privacy expert about collecting cookie data, ways to build consumer trust and five privacy failures. Plus, three marketers’ policies you should emulate.”
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