Sarah Samplonius

I've decided to move my blogs due to a campaign / work persona I decided to start up. I am now The Builder of Tomorrow! And can be found at builderoftomorrow.com and @buildrof2morrow on the Twitter. Follow me there! 

It's been a busy couple of weeks at 4Point with the launch of a new offshoot company, FormDriven. We decided to launch FormDriven to handle the quality conversion of forms for our customers at a really competitive rate. 

Off-shore form conversion has often won the day with the customers, with reason. Many of our customers can have thousands of forms to convert and the process is daunting enough without adding the cost of conversion into the mix. Paying our expert consultants to convert forms doesn't make sense. 

Not to mention that our experts are form experts. We need them to be working on complex forms, dynamic and interactive, that require scripting and back-end integration. Not on basic form conversion. 

But our experience (and by extension our customer's experience) with off-shore conversion has not been smooth. Time lags and language barriers are only part of the problem. The other problem is that when converting forms you can run into "line crossing" moments. Where a form may or may not cross the line into complex. Experience and best practices matter at those moments.

As well, forms have to be built with the big picture in mind. What are they being used for? Are they going to be passed over the wall for further integration to a company like 4Point that will be posting them online or adding additional functionality? In those cases a form needs to be built with a big picture vision. Again, something that experience and best practices can give.

To address these issues and ensure the smooth conversion and long-term functionality of our customer's forms we've introduced FormDriven. It'll handle the the basic form conversion under the watchful eye of 4Point experts. If they hit a wall, have a question, or need some insight into best practices, the 4Point team is but a phone call away. 

Our goal is to give our customer's a great experience. And we believe that FormDriven will help with that. Our customer's can get great rates for form conversion confident that it's all taking place under the umbrella of the 4Point team. 

Check out the FormDriven site to get a sense of the company and what forms they will be converting. We're proud of our "little sister" company. Welcome FormDriven! 

I wrote a new blog posting. I did. But it was "stolen" by an Adobe gremlin and posted on their site. So here's the link: The Science of New Marketing. Enjoy.

Your customers want you to turn up the heat. 

What is "cold marketing"? That's the new fixation on analytics and targeted marketing. Not that there's anything wrong with that. It's great to be able to pull analytics, review what your customers are looking at, what they've bought, what they're interested in. And then use that to offer up dynamic and targeted messages. I personally love analytics and have a slight addiction to tracking pages, content, time on the site, etc. So I'm all about that. BUT....

We can't forget the beauty and joy behind basic human interactions and finding something unexpected and new. And as marketers we have to remember to offer these things to our customers as well. We have to remember to do warm marketing....

Just finished reading some articles on Rocketfish's recent Liminal report. I'm about to read through the report itself (and I'm sure I'll have something to say about that too), but for now, I've got something to say about the coverage and a long-standing opinion of mine. 

In particular, MediaPost's article entitled: "Razorfish: Facebook, Twitter Don't Make Customers Feel Valued" starts off with the sentence: "While marketers have flocked to social platforms like Facebook and Twitter, consumers still don't view them as important ways to engage with the brand...." and goes on to state that most people still prefer to engage via email, word-of-mouth, or websites. Stating that the reason for that is because that's where the value is.

Great. I agree. Customers want value. So what's the big irritation for me? That we're surprised (as marketers, as businesses) when we treat social media as a big piece of collateral and then don't get results. Hello? When has yet another piece of collateral ever delivered results? That social media EVER was seen as a piece of marketing collateral is frustrating but perhaps not so surprising. 

Collateral has become king in organizations as a way of communicating what a company offers, static websites continued this trend as they are also just one big brochure.

But social media and online interactions have changed the game. And we've taken an old response (marketing collateral) and used it to address a new medium (it worked for websites....so....).  

But, as Ben Watson's post "Consumers don't want to engage with brands on Facebook and Twitter" points out: 

My take on this is that social media engagement itself has to have a reason....

No kidding. It's not a touchpoint in a campaign, it is not another piece of collateral. Watson goes on to state:

Treating it as an experiment or side project makes it even harder to integrate down the road. We need to accept and embrace that we live in a multi-channel world and a multi-screen universe and that each one has strengths and weaknesses, but more importantly that each one needs to be able to 'see' the other.

Yeah Watson! Exactly again. We've got options here: interactivity, multi-channel chaos. It's fun. Finally being online is not a static store front...now it's the body and soul of your store. This is good news. Embrace it. 

Social media is part of who you are as a business. It is a way for your customers to know you and you to help them when and if they need it. It is no different from a customer opening up your door and walking in to your bricks and mortar store. You say hello. You ask them how you can help. Do they want information? Find it for them (and please let it be as clear and simple as possible). Do they need help? Help them. If they say they're just looking. You let them look. AND you let them leave when they want. You never just shove marketing collateral at them over and over again. Over time you'll get to know the regulars, what they like, what they need. You'll reward your loyal customers. Maybe kick a couple to the curb. That's business.

We've let marketing collateral and a static relationship become how online businesses communicate with customers. But times have changed. It's no longer a face-less static relationship. Technology has opened the door. 

We're back to the beginnings. Where people walked into our stores and talked to us. We've got to stop being afraid of talking back.

Okay, before anyone else points it out, full disclosure: Often I don't even know the rules and yet, I still happily break them. But, I would like to state that as a general rule, I do try to know beforehand what they are, so that I can act in an informed, rational manner when I ignore them. 

But I digress. What I'm talking about today is websites. Why? Because it's overhaul the 4Point website time! 

With a rip and replace dangling from my fingertips like a diamond necklace, all sparkly and shiny, I've undertaken a radical review of our content over the past two years and how people navigate our site. Extended

We're not quite snowflakes. But all the same, we're unique. (Some of us more than others, as my co-workers point out to me). 

This unique nature of humanity also makes the delivery of a satisfying online customer experience complicated. When you don't have the privilege of a direct interaction with your customer, but still want to deliver them personal service, what do you do?

Looking at an example of an ebook like Alice in Wonderland on the iPad immediately makes me go "duh". 

In the early 90s I covered ebooks and wrote an article that said, at that time, that ebooks wouldn't go anywhere. The technology was, to put it bluntly, lame. And I was right. It went nowhere. I mean who'd give up a book to stare at a computer screen? 

But the times have changed. Or more appropriately...the technology has grown in leaps and bounds. eInk is nothing short of a great leap in the right direction. 

And while I think the iPad is too heavy for what I want in an ereader (I'm still embarking on the path and after reading my first three ebooks on my my iPhone I have my Kobo on pre-order. I'll see how it goes.), where it excels, and I hope the publishing industry is on this....is those bloody kids' books for preschoolers that are 20-50 bucks due to the pretty illustrations and minimal words. 

I hope the iPad wipes out the market and replaces it in the next five years. Cause it should.

(Sorry, I had tone there...probably cause of flashbacks to working in a book store and shelving and shelving, and reshelving, and reshelving again, and then sorting and reshelving again and again and again all those mismatched and oddly sized hardcover books.)

Why again would anyone ever produce a hardcover book for preschoolers? Get an iPad and download the best of illustrated stories...with action. It's a no-brainer. Kids will love that shit. It's brilliant. 

And I'm guessing they can deliver the hardcover monstrosities for a lot less than the going rate today. Print runs are small in hardcover kid books and pricey. Kids Can Press...are you listening? Do it. Do it now. 

Even better, as an Aunt, I can just send off ebooks as gifts to my far-flung nephews and nieces and be done with it. I like it. I like it a lot. 

Of course please remember that we need to find a way to make them have the smallest footprint possible....the challenge is on.....publishing companies...go forth and conquer......

It's easy (particularly for those of us who live in urban centers) to believe that the wireless world will continuously allow bigger, better, more. 

In the early days of the Internet, and the pain of dial-up, the focus was on making access easier and faster. But nowadays with high speed access, it seems like websites are trying to outcompete for how much they can ramp up the content...and often this acceleration in graphics and gizmos is also correspondingly rich in resources. Add to that the proliferation of mobile users who are accessing the Internet and it's no surprise. We're eating up our broadband infrastructure (figuratively) by breakfast. 

This is not unknown. The FCC Chairman today announced that the Mobile Broadband was a priority (and its current status a concern). And the U.S. is certainly not alone. The proliferation of users has created a high-level of traffic congestion and seriously strained the existing infrastructure. 

I am sure that many countries are talking about building up their infrastructure and the push is on for technology to fill the gap: by adding better data transfer capability, blah, blah, blah. But they're should be, and can be, a double pronged solution to the problem. 

Consider roads. Initially it too was a good idea. Zipping along from A to B was brilliant. And unlike the Internet, you could even laugh at the losers who didn't have cars as you blew past them. But then a whole lot of people started driving. Zipping around became a thing of the past, and in urban centers congestion became the norm. 

The answer? Well....we'll just build more roads. And then again more roads. And again. Why? Because building roads is a temporary fix. Congestion returns. And with it a nasty side effect: pollution. 

Now, many urban centers are starting to look at alternate solutions. They're pushing mass transit and considering building communities not around the car, but around other means of transit. One of the biggest reasons? They can't afford the infrastructure costs. And thankfully, people are trying to scale back. Minimize use and footprint. Companies are responding and developing options: hybrid vehicles, smaller vehicles. 

We need to consider the same thing with the broadband infrastructure. Rather than blindly following the technological answer that is a bigger, better, more infrastructure to match our over-use, we need to consider being sustainable and responsible. 

This includes being responsible in the development of Web applications. The Internet is an environment too. And we need to think about it in a sustainable manner. If we focus on developing Web solutions that keeps one competitive eye on how small of a footprint we can make....we're being ecologically responsible towards our Internet.

Of course, we as humans can't seem to manage sustainability for important things like clean water, clean air, clean food.....so it's hard to imagine we'll approach the Internet any differently than we've approached the rest. We may wait until things are so bad and perhaps even at a complete standstill/breakdown before we make a change. 

But one can hope. 

So....Web developers....it's our Internet Environmental Future. Why not show the rest of the world what sustainability means? 

I learned a lesson this week: it's called good manners when it comes to the subversion repository. Apparently it does not like it when you just randomly delete files on your local system, add in new ones, and then try to check them in. It throws up its hands in horror and red flags go up everywhere. Go figure. 

It all started when I started working on a revamp of our website. I copied my local website on my laptop, and then working from there, created an entire new website structure and design on my local machine. Fired it off back and forth with a design company working on our new home page and menu bar, and never gave a thought to my existing website that was merrily being checked in and out of subversion (using Coda). 

When it came to uploading the new site and flipping the switch...I simply deleted the old site using Finder and added the new. 

This was really the wrong thing to do. Really wrong. For a couple of reasons:

First of all, in doing this, I also deleted the .svn files (hidden). The removed files also had not been correctly deleted in the repository...so it thought they were still there, but had red flagged them as missing. 

Secondly, about five months previously some other changes had been done to our site by another website company and the changes had been made on the server. I did not get a list of changes made to the site and I was unaware that certain folders and files had not been downloaded and committed to subversion, because I did not know they had been changed or added. 

This means that when I copied my local folder to work on recreating a new website, I then missed these files. The local copy I handed off to the new website company for further changes and we all merrily went on our way not realizing that certain folders and files had not been downloaded and checked in. 

In short, the entire thing was a mess and took about three hours to clean up in the subversion, plus another five hours tracking down the previous changes that had been lost in the process. 

Lesson learned. Real good.

In the future, I will treat my subversion repository with a lot more respect. I hereby decree that from now on, I will:

• not allow anyone to make server side changes without letting me know what they've changed and what I need to download and commit
• download the entire site, if server side changes do occur and i'm unsure whether or not I've got them all, and carefully commit all changes into the subversion
  
• I will no longer delete folders and files in my local copy using Finder
  
• If I delete files and folders I'll do it in Coda, and appropriately delete them in the subversion
  
• I will carefully monitor my subversion repository and address any red flags when they arise
  

  

In short, I promise to understand how subversion works and treat it with respect. I swear.