How well do you know your customers?

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The best way to learn about your customers is to conduct a case study. A definition of a case study according to Wikepedia online says, “A case study is a research methodology common in social science. It is based on an in-depth investigation of a single individual, group, or event to explore causation in order to find underlying principles.” In plain English it means conducting research to find out what the problems are and offer a solution. Sounds easy right?

You want your customers to be able to relate to your products/services, right? You want to show that you have something to offer them, kind of going to “what’s in it for me?” question.

There are many types of case studies that you can do, but today I will talk about a technique you can use to present information, called personas. In a few words, persona is a model of your company’s most important customer.

Personas are archetypal users that represent the needs of larger groups of users, in terms of their goals and personal characteristics. They act as ‘stand-ins’ for real users and help guide decisions about functionality and design.

Personas identify the user motivations, expectations and goals responsible for driving online behaviour, and bring users to life by giving them names, personalities and often a photo.

Although personas are fictitious, they are based on knowledge of real users. Some form of user research is conducted before they are written to ensure they represent end users rather than the opinion of the person writing the personas.

How to create personas

• Interview business stakeholders that interact frequently with users. These people have had hundreds if not thousands of interactions with end users and are already conscious of users’ behavioral patterns. Respect the wealth of knowledge your business stakeholders hold and get them involved early on in the persona research. This helps to build their buy in to the persona technique.

Start writing the personas by adding details around the behavioral traits. Select details from your research, such as working environment, frustrations, relationships with others, skill level, and some demographics. Give each persona a name and a photo, unless your organizational or team culture is better suited to the more generic personas.

• Review market research and interview your organisation’s market research specialists. Once again these people have frequent interaction with end users and are trained to pick up patterns in attitudes and behaviours. They may not have created personas before, but if you ask the right questions you’ll gather useful information to add to your research data.
• Survey users and business stakeholders using quantitative methods. This is a good way to gather large amounts of demographic data and to identify trends in skill levels and tasks performed. However it cannot replace direct interaction and observation with interview subjects as there is no way to tap into the users’ subconscious beliefs and attitudes.
• If you are designing a web site, talk to friends and family that are users of the current website or potential users of the new website. Chat to people over dinner parties or at the pub. This is not rigorous research, but some research is better than none.

Personas are a useful tool to use throughout the project, from deciding upon the functionality to include in a release to evaluating the end product. Teamed up with other user-centered design tools and techniques, such as task analysis and usability testing, personas will place you in good stead to deliver a useful and usable solution.

For real life example of personas, CLICK HERE

If you need help doing research and creating personas, please contact us www.miiaweb.com

How to create interactive training videos?

If you want to engage your customer and get them to learn something about your products or services, get them more involved. Creating interactive training videos is a great way to introduce your products to the world. You can make it a fun, hands-on activity. For instance, if a company designs software, they would want to create a demo on how to perform a certain task using the software. Along with showing them how to do it, have your users actually do it. Maybe a fun quiz at the end of the training video will engage the user more by allowing them to test their knowledge.

Here how you do it. You are probably wondering what tools to use. Like with everything, there are tons of tools to choose from, some are open-source, and some you have to pay for. But if you want a good tool with lots of features you want to go with Adobe Captivate. The reason why I recommend Adobe Captivate is because I’ve used the tool myself and I like it. The only tough thing to do is to figure out what you want your training video to contain, sort of build a storyboard first before you start creating the video. When you have everything in place, download the tool http://www.adobe.com/products/captivate

I am not going to lie when I say that this tool is expensive – $799 to be exact, but before you dismiss the idea completely, download a trial version and play around with it to see if you really like it. If you are in a business of building creative demos and interactive simulations, you should invest in a good tool such as Adobe Captivate.

If you are an educator or  a trainer, this tool is for you!

Here are some frequently asked questions from Adobe’s website regarding Adobe Captivate:

What is Adobe® Captivate® 5?

Adobe Captivate 5 software is a rapid eLearning authoring tool that lets almost anyone create and maintain complex content like software demonstrations, interactive simulations, branching scenarios, and quizzes, without programming. Its intuitive user interface and extensive feature set lets users craft richer content, be more productive, and deliver their eLearning virtually anywhere.

Who should use Adobe Captivate 5?

Adobe Captivate 5 is ideal for eLearning professionals, educators, trainers, technical support managers, and sales and marketing professionals who need to rapidly create and conveniently maintain a variety of training materials and demos without learning programming or having to outsource the task to professional developers.

What kinds of training content can I create using Adobe Captivate 5?

You can create most types of simulation-based or interactive eLearning content with Adobe Captivate 5, from simple SWF versions of slide-based presentations to complex scenario-based, soft-skills training, and from software simulations and demonstrations to quizzes.

What are the new features in Adobe Captivate 5?

The new features in Adobe Captivate 5 include an intuitive and highly productive user interface consistent with popular Adobe applications; support for popular video formats like AVI, MOV, MPEG, and FLV; the ability to create rich animations; Object Styles and Master Slides for global formatting; the ability to host projects on Acrobat.com, an Adobe CS Live online service*; and more.

For more information on new features, visit the Adobe Captivate 5 features page.

Enjoy!

The Naked Writer – Truth about documents revealed!

So you own a company and you have employees working for you. You are happy that you’re making money, and you feel like you don’t have anything to worry about. But have you ever stopped to think how much you are ACTUALLY spending?

Say for example, you have an employee (let’s call her Jenny) who works as an administrative assistant. Her hourly pay is $12 per hour (plus benefits). You ask her to write up a Policy & Procedures document since you now have a total of 5 employees now, you want them to be aware of all the company policies. Jenny is not too familiar with writing policies and procedures and takes 4 hours to write the document. She gives you the final rough draft and you find a lot of mistakes – misspelled words, inaccurate information, etc. You give Jenny back the document and she spends another hour correcting it. All in all, she spent 5 hours creating the document. At that point you have spent $220 paying Jenny in salary & benefits, spending 1 hour reviewing the document yourself (let’s say you earn $50/ hour yourself – at least), and having Jenny edit the document.

Then you give the finished (or what you thought) document to your HR person Linda, and she spends another hour correcting the information.  You pay Linda $24/hr (plus benefits).  So then Linda approves the document and gives it to your web designer Ray to publish to the Intranet website (whom you pay $19/hr, plus benefits).

You proudly go back to your office and happy that you just saved a ton of money by writing the policies and procedures document in-house. Where in fact, you have spent $304 in salary fees !!! But if you would’ve hired a professional to write the document, it would only cost you $200 bucks – a savings of ($104). But since you made your employees write the document, they had to shift their other projects, thus costing you more money – can we say thousands of dollars?

Miia Communications prides themselves in creating great policy and procedures documents, contact them today for a FREE price quote info@miiaweb.com

The good, the bad, and the ugly

Well, not necessarily the ugly, but you get the idea. I recently ordered some new business cards for my business from this vendor Vistaprint.com. The best store ever, IMHO! They got some great products like business cards, postcards, calendars, stationary, etc. They have this “free products” sections, it’s almost free though. The business cards are free only if:

1. There is a Vistaprint logo on the back

2. You are not planning to use your own logo and graphics

3. You don’t mind the plain paper

So if you wanted shiny instead of matte cards, that’s extra. If you wanted to include your own logo, that’s extra. If you wanted to have text printed on the back of the card (in color), that’s extra. Not to mention you pay $6 for shipping (cheapest and slowest).

I also ordered a magnetic car decal from them and the quality was very good. The size is kind of on a smaller side – even if you choose a Large, but the colors and graphics looked great.

I highly recommend these guys if you are on a budget and just starting out your business.

P.S. I am not promoting this company by any means, just wanted to share my personal experience!

Happy shopping!

User Experience – My product is better than your product!

Let me tell you a little story. There is this guy Danny, he lives in Denver, CO. He is 44 years old and married with 4 kids. For the last twenty years he has worked in the corporate world, clocking in and out each day. His real passion is to have his own sports equipment store. So, he quits his job, gets a bank loan, and open the shop. He “thinks” his customers want the cheapest sports equipment to save money. He said that because the economy is bad, people are looking to save money and therefore if it was him, he would try to find cheap sports equipment. So he opens the doors to his store and to his dismay nobody shows up. Two months go by and he’s barely making enough money to pay for rent (which by the way is $3,200/mo).  One gentleman just happened to be passing by and decided to stop and look around the store. He also happened to be a User  Experience Expert. He offers Danny some advice. “You’ve got to learn more about your customers and what they really want,” he said. Danny got his business card and the UX guy left the store. After another few weeks of struggle, Danny called the UX guy, they got together and the UX guy started to interview the customers. He found out that they were looking for good quality sports equipment because they wanted their kids to be safe when they played sports, instead of using cheap equipment that could break easily. Once Danny fixed his business approach, he had a 135% increase in sales.

Think about the products that your company sells. Are they full of bells and whistles? Are they so “cool” that people talk about them non-stop? If that’s so, then how come your business is slow? How come you’re not making as many sales as you like? Maybe it’s not you, maybe it’s your product. Have you asked your customers what THEY prefer to see? Did you do research to see how emotionally connected your customers are to your products? When was the last time you visited with your customers face-to-face? These sound like tough questions – and they are!

What you want is a User Experience professional who will help you analyze your customers and find out what they REALLY want to see in your products. What drives (or what motivations they have) to make a purchase?

This might be the right step in the right direction for your business. So why wait?

Customer Dilemma (solved) – Help, how do I design a survey?

Each week, we will post a question from people that we receive via email. Hopefully, this will answer your questions as well.

Yesterday, I received an email from a woman who says she wants to create a survey, but doesn’t know where to start. She is not sure what questions to ask, what tools to use, how to go about setting it all up.

We have put together a tutorial on survey design. Download this helpful tutorial and email us with any questions you might have.

Five Grammatical Errors To Avoid – when blogging!

Do you write your own blog entries or website content? If so, then these tips are for you.

One thing blogging and good copy writing share is a conversational style, and that means it’s fine to fracture the occasional rule of proper grammar in order to communicate effectively.

There are other mistakes that can detract from your credibility. While we all hope what we have to say is more important than some silly grammatical error, the truth is some people will not subscribe or link to your blog if you make dumb mistakes when you write, and buying from you will be out of the question.

Here are five mistakes to avoid when blogging and writing web copy.

1. Your vs. You’re

This one drives me insane, and it’s become extremely common among bloggers. All it takes to avoid this error is to take a second and think about what you’re trying to say.

“Your” is a possessive pronoun, as in “your car” or “your blog.” “You’re” is a contraction for “you are,” as in “you’re screwing up your writing by using your when you really mean you are.”

2. It’s vs. Its

This is another common mistake. It’s also easily avoided by thinking through what you’re trying to say.

“It’s” is a contraction of “it is” or “it has.” “Its” is a possessive pronoun, as in “this blog has lost its mojo.” Here’s an easy rule of thumb—repeat your sentence out loud using “it is” instead. If that sounds goofy, “its” is likely the correct choice.

3. There vs. Their

This one seems to trip up everyone occasionally, often as a pure typo. Make sure to watch for it when you proofread.

“There” is used many ways, including as a reference to a place (“let’s go there”) or as a pronoun (“there is no hope”). “Their” is a plural possessive pronoun, as in “their bags” or “their opinions.” Always do the “that’s ours!” test—are you talking about more than one person and something that they possess? If so, “their” will get you there.

4. Affect vs. Effect

To this day I have to pause and mentally sort this one out in order to get it right. As with any of the other common mistakes people make when writing, it’s taking that moment to get it right that makes the difference.

“Affect” is a verb, as in “Your ability to communicate clearly will affect your income immensely.” “Effect” is a noun, as in “The effect of a parent’s low income on a child’s future is well documented.” By thinking in terms of “the effect,” you can usually sort out which is which, because you can’t stick a “the” in front of a verb. While some people do use “effect” as a verb (“a strategy to effect a settlement”), they are usually lawyers, and you should therefore ignore them if you want to write like a human.

5. The Dangling Participle

The dangling participle may be the most egregious of the most common writing mistakes. Not only will this error damage the flow of your writing, it can also make it impossible for someone to understand what you’re trying to say.

Check out these two examples from Tom Sant’s book Persuasive Business Proposals:

After rotting in the cellar for weeks, my brother brought up some oranges.

Uhh… keep your decomposing brother away from me!

Featuring plug-in circuit boards, we can strongly endorse this server’s flexibility and growth potential.

Hmmm… robotic copy written by people embedded with circuit boards. Makes sense.

The problem with both of the above is that the participial phrase that begins the sentence is not intended to modify what follows next in the sentence. However, readers mentally expect it to work that way, so your opening phrase should always modify what immediately follows. If it doesn’t, you’ve left the participle dangling, as well as your readers.

Good luck!

Courtesy of http://www.copyblogger.com

Proofreading: is it really necessary?

A lot of people ask me, is it rally necasary to prooveread my docments and website contant?

As you can see, proofreading is VERY important. True story, I was once browsing this event planning website. I was interested in what type of events they planned and what type of services they offered, so I decided to look around their website. I clicked on the About us page and was shocked to see so many misspellings. Words such as “conference, meetings, consultation” were all misspelled. How embarrassing for them! If I needed an event planner I would want one that could spell – at least. Why would I want to trust someone with planning a party for me if they can’t even spell the word “consultation”? What if they make mistakes on the paperwork or on the invoice? Or order invitations with misspelled names on them?

Having error-free documents and website content is crucial!!! Many people ignore it. But they don’t realize that this hurts the company’s reputation and as we know a website is the face of the company – you only have one shot to make a good impression. Having grammatical errors in your documents and on your company’s website makes you lose credibility. It’s not only embarrassing, but also a big distraction for the reader. If they stumble while reading, they are more likely to get frustrated and leave your site for good.

So think about it, proofreading is not very expensive. Take the time to hire a professional to edit your documents/website and save yourself and your company from humiliation.

Free business advice, really?

“Beyond The Permit”

For new businesses

So your business is setup, you got your Tax ID, your licensing, and your bank account. Now it’s time to get customers and make some money! But wait, have you considered the following questions:

1. Did you send out a Press Release to let everyone know of your new business?
2. Did you setup a Website for your business?
3. Did you write up a Policies & Procedures document (especially important if you hired staff)?
4. Did you create a Brochure, Flyer or a Newsletter to send out to your potential clients?

……just to name a few.

When you start your new business, you know what to do, get a permit, get a tax ID, but no one tells you what things you need to grow your business.

We offer a FREE 20-minute consultation (valued at $100). We sit down with you and tell us about your company, and we put together a plan for you and tell you what the next steps are.

With so much competition out there, you want to be ahead of everyone else.

For existing businesses

If you are currently in business, you need to make sure your documents are up-to-date. Have you updated your Operations manuals or Policy and Procedures in the last year? Does your website contain updated information on your products and services?

Visit http://www.miiaweb.com/consulting.html to register for your FREE 20-minute Consultation!!!

Website content – how do I know what to put on my site?

You know your company better anyone else does. You have goals and ideas on where you want your company to go. You need to convert that knowledge into text. Sounds easy, right? But you have no idea how many people struggle out there. They either put too much information or not enough information on their website. What you need to do is create a plan. The plan needs to have sections with categories of what type of information you want to include on your website. What do you want your customers to see when they visit your site? Do you want them to buy a particular product, or do you want to have more of an informational website with case studies and frequently asked questions?

Some of the categories that you can include are:

• Layout – how many columns do you want your site to have?
• Colors – what colors do you want the site to have? It’s a good idea to incorporate your company colors such as from your company logo.
• Content – how many pages do you want/need to have? A standard website contains at least 5  pages – Home / About  / Services  / FAQs / Contact
• Dynamic or static website – do you want HTML or a Flash site with animation – research to see which one is best for your type of business

It’s easy to get lost, so the best thing to do is to create a plan and stick with it.

If you need help with website content, please contact us –

Typical Mistakes in User Guides

Creating a user guide is a meticulous job. Grammar mistakes, inappropriate style, wordiness and unclear instructions are considered by users as defects of the software product itself, which produces a negative impact on the credibility of the product and the company that made it. Editors and bloggers may give such programs negative reviews, swaying potential customers to competing products.

So, what mistakes are common in user guides?

1. Unclear description of a procedure

Write procedures as clearly as possible, so that the user understands what to do at first glance. First, tell where a procedure takes place and then what the user needs to do (click, open, select, close, etc.).

For example:

Wrong: Select Open from the File menu.
Correct: In the File menu, select Open.

2. Describing multiple steps in a single sentence

Too often writers describe a complex, multi-step procedure in a single sentence. To keep the description of a procedure clear, you need to separate a complex sentence into steps.

3. Failure to define steps properly

A complex procedure consists of several steps. Each step must describe an action and result. However, there are user guides where action and result are divided into separate steps. It is a common mistake.

4. Button titles in quotes

In many user guides you can see button titles in quotes. Nowadays this method has become obsolete. Quotes were used back in the days when typing machines had no other option to format text but use quotes or underscore. Now it’s best to write button titles in bold or use upper-case characters.

5. And / Or

Do not use ‘and / or’ in sentences. It makes your text harder to read and understand, so that the reader has to read sentences over and over again. Instead of ‘and / or’, use ‘… or… or both’.

6. Misuse of terms

An inexperienced writer often makes mistakes in terms.

For example:

Wrong: Press the New icon to create a new project.
Correct: Click the New icon to create a new project.

The verb ‘press’ means pressing a key on the keyboard, while ‘click’ means clicking on an icon in the program window using the mouse.

7. Future tense

There are many user guides where the result of an action is expressed with a future tense. For example: ‘When you click the OK button, the program will start the conversion’. That’s a mistake. Because of the future tense the reader feels uncertain and may want to ask unnecessary questions.

Wrong: When you click the OK button, the program will start the conversion.
Correct: When you click the OK button, the program starts the conversion.

8. Jargon

Technical writers should stick to neutral style. The use of expressive words distracts readers and is considered to be a stylistic mistake that should be avoided.

For example:

Wrong: Kill the app.
Correct: Close the application.

9. Abbreviations

User guides should not contain abbreviations and other word reductions.

For example:

Wrong: approx.
Correct: approximately

Conclusion

User guides are all about clarity and accuracy. To achieve these attributes, one needs solid knowledge of grammar and stylistics. Poorly written documentation can backfire and cause users to feel discomfort and irritation which may lead them to making a choice in favor of your competition.

Critical Steps to Writing a Business Plan

Writing a business plan can be an overwhelming task. These feelings often translate into confusion as to how to start the business plan. Starting a business plan begins with the first step:

1. Audience & Funding Type: When writing a business plan, you must determine who will be reading it. This decision will shape the business plan. Each form of funding for your business has pros and cons. For instance, the venture capital market can be very time consuming and competitive. Do you have the time to write the business plan for investor funding and to network within the community?

Writing a business plan for investors is 15-30 pages with in-depth analysis and full details of facts and figures to support assumptions of the market. Writing a business plan for the bank is 10-15 pages and focused with the bank’s concern with risk. A venture plan presents the upside and potential return on investments, whereas a bank plan reduces the risks and sells the ability to repay the loan.

2. Business Plan Outline: A business plan outline is the second most important starting point once you’ve pre-determined your audience. The business plan outline should be prepared before the actual research and writing of the business plan.

3. Research & Information Collection: Once you have made the decision of the type of funding your business requires, it is time for the research. Business plan research covers several key areas:

• Insight from your experience working and observing the industry you will enter. This data will have to be backed but by the next two sources.
• Published information from library, Internet, and paid database services will provide information on the market growth, overall industry perspective, and customer profiles.
• Field research covers interviews with customers, suppliers, competitors, and industry experts. This provides the real insight behind all the published facts.

4. Collection Files: The easiest way to go about collecting all your experiences, interviews, and research is to create files for each section of the business plan. These files can be: paper-based, computer files or set-up using business planning software. As you start the research and collection phase of planning, fill your files with notes and printouts.

5. General Industry Overview: Begin the research process with an overview of the industry; uncovering industry and association reports. By having a general understanding of the industry, you will avoid embarrassment in contacting experts with basic questions. Begin the field research once you have a good grasp of the industry fundamentals and need answers to the hard-to-find information.

6. Analysis: Once the bulk of the data has been collected, the process of analysis begins. Look at building a competitive profile, contingency plan, risk assessment, etc.

7. Financials: Start the financials when you have found some average industry ratios for your business. Work closely with your accountant to develop realistic projections. Being overly optimistic will raise eyebrows with your investors or banker.

8. Executive Summary: Save the first section for last. When you have thoroughly, completed all sections of the business plan, write the summary. Highlight the key points and include the return on investment or loan payback requirements.

9. Review & Editing: Remember, you only have one shot at making a good impression. A well-written business plan that opens doors and wins the money is a plan that has been revised and reviewed. Do not forget this important step. Ask others for feedback. Make certain to edit, proofread, proofread, and proofread. Better yet, hire a professional to do it!

Business planning is not easy but by following these critical steps to writing a business plan, you will ensure your business has a chance at funding and success in the future.