Blog entries categorized under Random internet related https://www.essenteewebdesign.co.nz/blog/categories/7-random-internet-related 2015-04-13T01:53:51+12:00 Joomla! - Open Source Content Management 2014-10-03T16:26:20+13:00 2014-10-03T16:26:20+13:00 https://www.essenteewebdesign.co.nz/blog/entry/7-random-internet-related/142-website-moments-of-truth Sandra Newton [email protected]

<p>A 'moment of truth' in customer service circles refers to a critical moment at which time a person will make a decision – usually to decide to do business with you – or not.</p> <p>Google uses the phrase 'Zero Moment of Truth' (or ZMOT) to refer to the online decision-making moment.</p> <p>I use the phrase 'moments of truth' to refer to the small almost instantaneous and sometimes unconscious decisions that a person makes that contribute to the big overall decision.</p> <p>The overall decision (or ZMOT) is of course whether they will buy from you, talk to you, sign up for something you offer or contact you in some form.</p> <p>These small moments of truth are influenced by the experience that person has on your website. If they are positive it builds to a positive outcome. If they are negative, it means that the visitor is less and less likely to do what you want.</p> <h3>What makes for these moments of truth?</h3> <p>On a website these moments of truth are influenced by:</p> <ul> <li>The overall feel of the site – is it cheesy, cheap and obscure or professional, impressive and inspiring?</li> <li>The images – do they resonate with the visitor? Do they illustrate a point or are they just for decoration? Are they good quality or out of focus, low quality images that you took with your iPhone?</li> <li>The font – is it too big or too small? Quirky, formal or relaxed?</li> <li>The design – is it easy to find out what to do?</li> <li>The content – is it easy to read and does it contain all the information they need? Is it compelling or is it incomplete and obscure? Does it contain grammatical problems or spelling mistakes?</li> <li>Jargon – every time you make a visitor wonder what a word of phrase means they experience a negative moment of truth</li> <li>Functionality – does the site work as expected? Are there broken links, do the buttons and forms work?</li> <li>Do your social links make it easy to share good content or are they just there for decoration?</li> <li>Do you provide enough information about who you are to prove you authentic and can be trusted, or are you hiding behind feel good vision statements and unsubstantiated promises?</li> <li>Are you just trying to be clever – this usually leaves people confused and frustrated.</li> </ul> <p>I'm not suggesting that businesses agonise over every word or pixel. We are (sometimes painfully) aware of how hard it is to get it right. We don't always understand what those moments of truth are for different visitors. Sometimes you have to test out things and be ready to make a change if it doesn't work.</p> <p>And of course everyone makes mistakes. We are after all, only human.</p> <h3>What I wish businesses would do</h3> <p>I'd like it if businesses understood that they should care about these moments of truth.</p> <p>That a good website will make the difference between someone doing business with them – and choosing a competitor instead.</p> <p>I'd like people not to make decisions about their website based on what's easier for them or who can do a year's hosting in Uzbekistan for $3.50 a year and a free set of steak knives. It <em>should</em> be about what will be easier for their customers.</p> <p>I'd like people to appreciate that good web designers and developers are worth the money because they know how to create positive moments of truth – and they're worth the investment.</p> <p>I'd like people to realise that the cheap website slung together with little care by the inexperienced and uncaring <em>will</em> hurt their business.</p>

<p>A 'moment of truth' in customer service circles refers to a critical moment at which time a person will make a decision – usually to decide to do business with you – or not.</p> <p>Google uses the phrase 'Zero Moment of Truth' (or ZMOT) to refer to the online decision-making moment.</p> <p>I use the phrase 'moments of truth' to refer to the small almost instantaneous and sometimes unconscious decisions that a person makes that contribute to the big overall decision.</p> <p>The overall decision (or ZMOT) is of course whether they will buy from you, talk to you, sign up for something you offer or contact you in some form.</p> <p>These small moments of truth are influenced by the experience that person has on your website. If they are positive it builds to a positive outcome. If they are negative, it means that the visitor is less and less likely to do what you want.</p> <h3>What makes for these moments of truth?</h3> <p>On a website these moments of truth are influenced by:</p> <ul> <li>The overall feel of the site – is it cheesy, cheap and obscure or professional, impressive and inspiring?</li> <li>The images – do they resonate with the visitor? Do they illustrate a point or are they just for decoration? Are they good quality or out of focus, low quality images that you took with your iPhone?</li> <li>The font – is it too big or too small? Quirky, formal or relaxed?</li> <li>The design – is it easy to find out what to do?</li> <li>The content – is it easy to read and does it contain all the information they need? Is it compelling or is it incomplete and obscure? Does it contain grammatical problems or spelling mistakes?</li> <li>Jargon – every time you make a visitor wonder what a word of phrase means they experience a negative moment of truth</li> <li>Functionality – does the site work as expected? Are there broken links, do the buttons and forms work?</li> <li>Do your social links make it easy to share good content or are they just there for decoration?</li> <li>Do you provide enough information about who you are to prove you authentic and can be trusted, or are you hiding behind feel good vision statements and unsubstantiated promises?</li> <li>Are you just trying to be clever – this usually leaves people confused and frustrated.</li> </ul> <p>I'm not suggesting that businesses agonise over every word or pixel. We are (sometimes painfully) aware of how hard it is to get it right. We don't always understand what those moments of truth are for different visitors. Sometimes you have to test out things and be ready to make a change if it doesn't work.</p> <p>And of course everyone makes mistakes. We are after all, only human.</p> <h3>What I wish businesses would do</h3> <p>I'd like it if businesses understood that they should care about these moments of truth.</p> <p>That a good website will make the difference between someone doing business with them – and choosing a competitor instead.</p> <p>I'd like people not to make decisions about their website based on what's easier for them or who can do a year's hosting in Uzbekistan for $3.50 a year and a free set of steak knives. It <em>should</em> be about what will be easier for their customers.</p> <p>I'd like people to appreciate that good web designers and developers are worth the money because they know how to create positive moments of truth – and they're worth the investment.</p> <p>I'd like people to realise that the cheap website slung together with little care by the inexperienced and uncaring <em>will</em> hurt their business.</p> 2011-12-04T17:20:00+13:00 2011-12-04T17:20:00+13:00 https://www.essenteewebdesign.co.nz/blog/entry/7-random-internet-related/45-new-zealand-online Sandra Newton [email protected]

<p>The 3rd <strong>World Internet Project New Zealand</strong> survey was conducted in July/August 2011 by AUT.</p> <p>This survey asked New Zealanders about their use of and attitudes toward the Internet as an indicator of New Zealanders as a whole.</p> <p>Result highlights:</p> <ul> <li>86% of New Zealanders are online - 96% of them access the internet from home</li> <li>91% of users with a connection at home have broadband</li> <li>Email is still popular - 98% of users check email, 77% of them daily</li> <li>69% rate the Internet as an important source of information ahead of television, newspapers, radio and other people.</li> <li>64% of Internet users say they belong to a Social Networking Site - Facebook being the most popular</li> <li>72% of Internet users buy things online</li> </ul> <p><a title="NZ internet use statistics" href="http://www.aut.ac.nz/research/research-institutes/icdc/projects/world-internet-project" target="_blank">Read the full report</a></p>

<p>The 3rd <strong>World Internet Project New Zealand</strong> survey was conducted in July/August 2011 by AUT.</p> <p>This survey asked New Zealanders about their use of and attitudes toward the Internet as an indicator of New Zealanders as a whole.</p> <p>Result highlights:</p> <ul> <li>86% of New Zealanders are online - 96% of them access the internet from home</li> <li>91% of users with a connection at home have broadband</li> <li>Email is still popular - 98% of users check email, 77% of them daily</li> <li>69% rate the Internet as an important source of information ahead of television, newspapers, radio and other people.</li> <li>64% of Internet users say they belong to a Social Networking Site - Facebook being the most popular</li> <li>72% of Internet users buy things online</li> </ul> <p><a title="NZ internet use statistics" href="http://www.aut.ac.nz/research/research-institutes/icdc/projects/world-internet-project" target="_blank">Read the full report</a></p> 2011-02-10T15:06:00+13:00 2011-02-10T15:06:00+13:00 https://www.essenteewebdesign.co.nz/blog/entry/7-random-internet-related/46-15-google-search-tricks-and-tips Sandra Newton [email protected]

<p>It surprising how often people say "I didn't know you could do that!" when they see us search for stuff in Google.</p> <p>But you need to know these techniques because to be honest there is a lot of rubbish content published by people who know how to get their site high up in the search results.</p> <p>One of our favourite sites, <a title="The Social Media Guide" href="http://thesocialmediaguide.com.au/" target="_blank">The Social Media Guide,</a> posted their list of 10 Simple Google Search Tricks. We thought there were a couple missing, so have added ours here.</p> <p><img src="images/easyblog_images/google-search-results.jpg" alt="google-search-results" height="63" width="300" /></p> <p>First I'll summarise Social Media Guides list. <a title="Google search tricks from the social media guide" href="http://thesocialmediaguide.com.au/2011/01/04/10-simple-google-search-tricks/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+thesocialmediaguide+(The+Social+Media+Guide)" target="_blank">Check out the entire post</a> if you want to read them in more detail:</p> <h3>Ten tips for getting more from Google search</h3> <ol> <li>Narrow your search by using double quotation marks eg "cat food" so you get results with the exact phrase you are looking for rather than results with any one of the words. You will get much more relevant results this way.</li> <li>Search within a site ie site:essentee.co.nz hosting. Useful when you think what you are looking for is on a particular site.</li> <li>Search for specific file type ie report filetype:pdf</li> <li>Spell Checking. Not sure how many people <em>haven't</em> noticed this one, but if you spell a word incorrectly, Google will suggest the correct spelling - politely!</li> <li>Use Google as a Calculator - just enter 356*24 and you'll get the result</li> <li>Find out the time eg Time Auckland</li> <li>Find out what the weather is like by typing in weather and a city ie weather London</li> <li>Exclude results using Not. Put a minus sign in front of a word you don't want to include eg Apple -fruit and you'll get results that include the word Apple but not ones that include fruit.</li> <li>Get definitions of a word by entering define:sneeze</li> <li>Click on the 'similar pages' link to find sites with similar content not listed in the first few results.</li> </ol> <h3>And now ...more Google Search Tips</h3> <ol> <li> <h4>Quick currency converter.</h4> <p>Type in "100 pounds in NZ dollars" and you will get a list of currency converters. Since more than one country uses the same currency name (eg dollars) you might need to specify the country as well. Thanks to Simon Mackie of <a title="Gigaom" href="http://gigaom.com/" target="_blank">Gigaom</a> for this one.</p> </li> <li> <h4>Limit to recent results.</h4> <p><img style="float: right;" src="images/easyblog_images/google-search-tools-filters.jpg" alt="google-search-tools-filters" height="154" width="75" /></p> <p>When you get your initial set of results there is a list of search tools on the left hand side with a drop down called 'More search Tools' that has some handy extras.</p> <p>One of the tools we use most often is to filter by time - usually Past Year.</p> <p>This means you don't get results from three or four years ago that are no longer relevant or are out of date</p> </li> <li> <h4>Filter results to places.</h4> <p>If you only want to find images or news, you can select your desired option. Particularly useful is the Places option.</p> <p>If you are looking for something with a presence in the real world like a retail business, restaurant or the like then filter by Places and you'll get those businesses that have a Places listing with a place holder on a map to show you where it is.</p> <p><img style="float: right;" src="images/easyblog_images/google-preview.jpg" alt="google-preview" height="166" width="200" /></p> </li> <li> <h4>Use the preview tool.</h4> <p>The small magnifying glass next to the title will show you a preview of a site.</p> <p>This is handy when there are a lot of results that look similar but you don't want to go through to each site.</p> <p>You get a small snapshot of the site from which you can see if it has the kind of information or quality you're after.</p> </li> <li> <h4>Fill in the blanks.</h4> <p>If you add a * (known as a wild card) into your search term Google treats it as 'any unknown term'. For example, you may want recipes that have apples mixed with some other ingredient, but you don't know what.</p> <p>Put apple and * recipes into Google search and you'll get results for apple and cranberry, apple and carrot, apple and rhubarb etc etc.</p> <p>Got any more you'd like to share? - Let us know!</p> </li> </ol>

<p>It surprising how often people say "I didn't know you could do that!" when they see us search for stuff in Google.</p> <p>But you need to know these techniques because to be honest there is a lot of rubbish content published by people who know how to get their site high up in the search results.</p> <p>One of our favourite sites, <a title="The Social Media Guide" href="http://thesocialmediaguide.com.au/" target="_blank">The Social Media Guide,</a> posted their list of 10 Simple Google Search Tricks. We thought there were a couple missing, so have added ours here.</p> <p><img src="images/easyblog_images/google-search-results.jpg" alt="google-search-results" height="63" width="300" /></p> <p>First I'll summarise Social Media Guides list. <a title="Google search tricks from the social media guide" href="http://thesocialmediaguide.com.au/2011/01/04/10-simple-google-search-tricks/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+thesocialmediaguide+(The+Social+Media+Guide)" target="_blank">Check out the entire post</a> if you want to read them in more detail:</p> <h3>Ten tips for getting more from Google search</h3> <ol> <li>Narrow your search by using double quotation marks eg "cat food" so you get results with the exact phrase you are looking for rather than results with any one of the words. You will get much more relevant results this way.</li> <li>Search within a site ie site:essentee.co.nz hosting. Useful when you think what you are looking for is on a particular site.</li> <li>Search for specific file type ie report filetype:pdf</li> <li>Spell Checking. Not sure how many people <em>haven't</em> noticed this one, but if you spell a word incorrectly, Google will suggest the correct spelling - politely!</li> <li>Use Google as a Calculator - just enter 356*24 and you'll get the result</li> <li>Find out the time eg Time Auckland</li> <li>Find out what the weather is like by typing in weather and a city ie weather London</li> <li>Exclude results using Not. Put a minus sign in front of a word you don't want to include eg Apple -fruit and you'll get results that include the word Apple but not ones that include fruit.</li> <li>Get definitions of a word by entering define:sneeze</li> <li>Click on the 'similar pages' link to find sites with similar content not listed in the first few results.</li> </ol> <h3>And now ...more Google Search Tips</h3> <ol> <li> <h4>Quick currency converter.</h4> <p>Type in "100 pounds in NZ dollars" and you will get a list of currency converters. Since more than one country uses the same currency name (eg dollars) you might need to specify the country as well. Thanks to Simon Mackie of <a title="Gigaom" href="http://gigaom.com/" target="_blank">Gigaom</a> for this one.</p> </li> <li> <h4>Limit to recent results.</h4> <p><img style="float: right;" src="images/easyblog_images/google-search-tools-filters.jpg" alt="google-search-tools-filters" height="154" width="75" /></p> <p>When you get your initial set of results there is a list of search tools on the left hand side with a drop down called 'More search Tools' that has some handy extras.</p> <p>One of the tools we use most often is to filter by time - usually Past Year.</p> <p>This means you don't get results from three or four years ago that are no longer relevant or are out of date</p> </li> <li> <h4>Filter results to places.</h4> <p>If you only want to find images or news, you can select your desired option. Particularly useful is the Places option.</p> <p>If you are looking for something with a presence in the real world like a retail business, restaurant or the like then filter by Places and you'll get those businesses that have a Places listing with a place holder on a map to show you where it is.</p> <p><img style="float: right;" src="images/easyblog_images/google-preview.jpg" alt="google-preview" height="166" width="200" /></p> </li> <li> <h4>Use the preview tool.</h4> <p>The small magnifying glass next to the title will show you a preview of a site.</p> <p>This is handy when there are a lot of results that look similar but you don't want to go through to each site.</p> <p>You get a small snapshot of the site from which you can see if it has the kind of information or quality you're after.</p> </li> <li> <h4>Fill in the blanks.</h4> <p>If you add a * (known as a wild card) into your search term Google treats it as 'any unknown term'. For example, you may want recipes that have apples mixed with some other ingredient, but you don't know what.</p> <p>Put apple and * recipes into Google search and you'll get results for apple and cranberry, apple and carrot, apple and rhubarb etc etc.</p> <p>Got any more you'd like to share? - Let us know!</p> </li> </ol>