Extra! Extra!

The more I work with clients and manage relationships, the more I appreciate the importance of setting accurate and appropriate expectations. This is a crucial component in keeping a client happy. And I think we can all agree that in general a happy, satisfied client will come back for repeat business. So, what can we do to make sure we consistently meet or exceed client expectations?

1. Clearly Outlined Scope – Make sure the scope of a project is clear and comprehensive. You cannot set expectations if you do not have a solid understanding of what it will take to complete the task.

2. Validate the Requirements – Review functional specifications, or relevant project documentation, with the client to validate our mutual understanding of the project requirements.

3. Identify Dependencies and Assumptions – Make sure to identify and communicate any dependencies or assumptions that may be associated with a task – so there are no surprises if these things impact the task.

4. Explain the Process – A misconception about what it takes to technically implement something could lead to problems. Explain the process in language the client will understand.

5. Be Real – Think rationally about what it will take to complete a task. Don’t let what you “think” the client wants to hear influence your assessment. A minor disappointment early on will be out-shadowed by a successful launch.

6. Adjust Expectations ASAP, if Needed – Unanticipated stuff happens. When it does, and you know there will be an impact to the schedule, budget, or overall outcome of a task, quickly adjust expectations with the client. The sooner the better.

The effort we take to set appropriate expectations up front will be greatly appreciated by the client when we meet or exceed their expectations in the end. It shows them we know our stuff and meet our commitments – that we are the kind of quality agency they want to work with again and again.

Extractable, the leading West Coast interactive agency, today announced it has won eight awards at the annual Web Marketing Association WebAwards.

Awards Extractable took home include:

* Best Credit Union Web Site - SAFE Credit Union
* Financial Services Site Standard of Excellence - Schwab MoneyWise
* Investment Site Standard of Excellence - Contango Capital Advisors
* Medical Site Standard of Excellence - Merit Medical
* Medical Equipment Site Standard of Excellence - Merit Medical
* Pharmaceuticals Site Standard of Excellence - Victory Pharma
* Technology Site Standard of Excellence - Network General
* Technology Site Standard of Excellence - IDT

The Web Marketing Association was founded in 1997 to help set a high standard for Internet marketing and development of the best web sites on the World Wide Web. Staffed by volunteers, this organization is made up of Internet marketing, online advertising, PR, and top web site design professionals who share an interest in improving the quality of online advertising, internet marketing, and web site promotion. Now in its 11th year, the WebAwards is the premier annual web site award competition that names the best Web sites in 96 industries while setting the standard of excellence for all web site development. More than 2,400 sites from 40 countries were adjudicated during this year’s competition. Entries were judged on design, copy writing, innovation, content, interactivity, navigation, and use of technology.

“We are very pleased to receive this recognition from our peers,” commented Craig McLaughlin, Extractable’s President and CEO. “These awards further validate Extractable as the leading provider of interactive services to financial services, life sciences, and high technology firms looking to leverage the web as a core component of their overall customer experience strategy. Our primary focus is creating business results for our clients through the online channel. The sheer number of awards we won this year is a testament to the quality of our people and their commitment to consistently delivering the best to our clients. We are lucky to have such a killer team.”

Extractable is pleased to announce a new hire within our Strategic Services group: Mathew Quilter.

Mathew Quilter joins Extractable as a Web Strategist. He previously worked at Walmart.com, Logitech.com and Xerox.com. He has managed content from initial development to global rollout, launched Web marketing programs across multiple geographies, and consulted to various start-ups on issues from Web lead-generation to globalization strategies.

We are proud to have Mathew on board!

Extractable is proud to announce the launch of the redesigned Cypress Semiconductor homepage.

The new Cypress Semiconductor homepage uses an interface that’s crisp and pleasant; well-organized and well designed. Start running your mouse over the page and you’ll realize that there’s a lot more going on than what meets the eye without user-interactivity and, at which point, you’ll appreciate its design even more because it maintains its clean form even with all that functionality.

Behind this nifty façade are the inner workings of a mix of CSS, JavaScript and Flash. The Cypress Homepage redesign project came with UI Development challenges that were unprecedented, never seen before on the web, and later provided stepping stones for other projects.

The official Cypress press release is posted here.

Congrats team!

We are proud to announce the launch of our first project with McAfee. We designed a Flash-based product demo with voiceover to market McAfee’s Secure Internet Gateway appliance. The Secure Internet Gateway provides small and medium-sized businesses a strong line of defense against web and email threats, including spam, phishing, viruses, and spyware.

Nice job, team!

The demo is live at: www.mcafee.com/us/smb/products/promos/sig/index.html

Extractable is pleased to annouce the launch of the Schwab MoneyWise web site! Kudos to the Extractable team for a solid inital project, resulting in site launch during Financial Literacy Month. The team is excited to continue enhancing the site with additional activities, tools, content, and a community forum! More information regarding the site’s charter can be found in the official Charles Schwab press release.

The site is live at: http://www.schwabmoneywise.com

Congrats to the Extractable team on the launch of the redesigned Merit Medical website.

The site is live at: http://www.merit.com

According to story in Reuters, “wiki” has now been proclaimed a real word by the Oxford English Dictionary.

I find this somewhat troubling. I have been treating “wiki” as a real word for many years. I find it used in news and magazine articles constantly. Anyone who works in any web-related field certainly understands its meaning. And all this time we have been using an unofficial word.

So it has been a long journey for this collection of four letters to become a real word, but it has been worth the wait. When someone says “wiki,” there is a strong shared meaning. Others either know the word or do not, but do not mistake if for something else.

There is a bit of power in inventing a term for something new, rather than just pulling together terms already in existence (I know, I know. “Wiki” is a derivative of “wikiwiki.” But being a derivative, it is new.) A wiki could also have simply been called “an open page” or “collaborative web” or some other combination of existing words. If that had been the case, imagine the chaos that might have insued as various companies and factions tried to include their own sites under such an umbrella term.

If someone says “wiki” we generally agree on what that means.

This is in sharp constrast to other ideas which have been expressed in terminology that is just a recombination of existing words. Take “user experience designer” for example. I know exactly what it means, and you probably do, also. But if you get eight web folks in a room and ask, you will get at least nine opinions about the exact meaning.

This same lack of common meaning is true of much of the vocabulary we have been forced to establish as the web has evolved to prominence. Remember “webmaster?” Luckily, that has fallen from common usage, because it was so vague as to be almost meaningless. And “web page” is becoming increasingly inaccurate, since what you are seeing in your browser is likely a set of templates used to display a collection of content objects and applications. The term “web page” is a just holdover from thinking about the web by relating it the more familiar idea of a book or magazine page.

But, I have hope. We eventually stopped using the term “horseless carriage” in favor of terms such as “automobile,” “car,” and “taxi.” And no one says “picture show” any more unless they are a Rocky Horror fan. I think new terminology will evolve to replace some of the interim descriptions we’ve been using, and it can’t be soon enough for me. Let the names begin!

Safe Credit Union’s web site wins praise in Friday’s netbanker report. There, Jim Bruene compliments Safe Credit Union’s Clever Homepage Comparison tool, citing it as “one of the best rate comparison tactics we’ve ever seen.”

Kudos to the Extractable team who made the Safe CU rate comparison tool and web site come to life!

Here at Extractable, we are embarking on a bit of work on our own web site. (I’ll skip the details for now.) We, of course, began with the process of ensuring clarity of business goals and identifying the business value of the site.

This essentially means forming something like a complex “problem” statement. We determine what are the desired outcomes before we start exploring possibilities and defining solutions. We held a meeting of all stakeholders to begin to gather this information.

Do you have any idea how difficult it is to sit in a room of people who spend their lives proposing solutions and ask that they state only the desired outcomes? Every idea about what should happen was accompanied by a method for making it happen. It was a very fun meeting.

It was a bit like conducting an orchestra made up of fellow conductors. The phrase “everybody’s an expert” was literally true.

Of course, since we all were speaking the same language, much progress was made quickly. But to me, one very interesting side effect of the meeting was getting an amplified example of one of the major traps of web strategy: getting to the solution before fully stating the goals of the site.

There is a very strong desire to quickly get to the solution phase. Having a defined solution is much more comfortable than not having one. The issue is that defining a solution too quickly can miss the mark by not allowing time to explore all possible outcomes and really get important details about the goals of the site.

For example, the obvious goal of many business web sites is to make money. That would seem to be a fine goal to achieve, so let’s get to the design, right?

Not so fast. There are different ways to make money. Designing an e-commerce site to increase sheer sales volume is different from designing one to increase margins on existing sales. And both are different from designing a site to grab market share to create future profits. Design of a site involves hundreds of small decisions, and a number of large ones. Understanding exactly the desired outcomes helps to keep all those decisions in alignment.

I guess the key point is to be willing to spend the necessary time and effort in exploring outcomes before defining solutions. It’s an obvious idea, but one that is very important. A full understanding of business goals is crucial to designing a successful site.

By the way, we were able to define our desired outcomes in detail and are progressing nicely on this internal project. We can’t wait to share the results.