The Last Mile: Category web

Design as differentiator

Rob — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 19:32:00 -0500

We run into sales opportunities frequently who have no idea of the realistic cost of bad design. These business leaders have done cheap business cards or used family members who had some HTML skill and are left with the impression that web site redesign should be a quick turn project for minimum expense. Many of these businesses treat design as if it were a commodity – when it fact it is one of the few things left that should not be.

What does Web 2.0 really mean?

Rob — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 22:02:00 -0400

You would have been asleep at the wheel over the past few years if you haven’t heard how Web 2.0 ideas have engaged individuals and consumers with cool new possibilities. But the Web 2.0 moniker is still undefined to many corporate clients. What does it mean to their business?

The web has moved forward from Hypertext to a more rich ability to share information. Michael Wesch, a professor at Kansas State, made this great video that demonstrates the transition from text to Web 2.0. It is worth the 5 minutes of history if you haven’t already seen it.

Social networking, blogs, wiki’s, RSS, widgets and mashups have been all the rage on sites created by individuals. Facebook, MySpace, Googlemaps even personal pages from Apple generated tremendous media coverage as personal publishing took center stage in the ‘always on’ internet space.

The Way Things Look for 2007

Rob — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 21:39:00 -0500

The beginning of the year is a good time to rethink everything from personal finances to the extra stuff in your closets to your business plan. I looked at many of those things thinking through possible ‘resolutions’ for 2007.

There is growing evidence that visualization and “the way things look” effects all we do – especially now that we get a majority of our information through a computer screen. My wife has not been a heavy internet user, but she spent December researching her next vehicle using Edmunds.com and Consumer Reports info mixed in with manufacturers sites and actual test drives. She liked certain sites and hated others – because they made it easy to understand a lot of data about new automobiles. When it came time to decide – she was armed with more information than ever before and when her car arrives later this month I expect there will be no cognitive dissonance about the purchase.

Internet usage continues to grow at an unprecedented rate and people are actually choosing the usefulness – not just the self-publishing (MySpace, Facebook) and time-wasting (YouTube) features.

Sell more this Holiday season

Rob — Wed, 08 Nov 2006 14:10:00 -0500

People are buying more online every year and annual ecommerce is expected to top $200 billion for 2006. And Forrester predicts that holiday sales will top $27 billion. With all those potential online dollars, are you doing the right things to improve your online sales?

Vialogix has long held that the user experience improves ecommerce (Creatas, Picturequest, Hinrichs case study examples). Recent collaboration between Akamai and JupiterResearch shows that the average time an online customer will wait is 4 seconds! More than one-third of shoppers will abandon the site with a poor experience. And 75% were not likely to ever shop on that site again! Those are pretty hefty penalties for bad design.

Healthcare’s user interface

Rob — Sat, 23 Sep 2006 13:24:00 -0400

For more than a decade we have worked on web site development projects designing online applications and tools that make complex information easy to understand. No where is that more needed today than in healthcare.

The complexity of individual data alone is staggering. Claims information, deductibles, in-network vs. out-of-pocket, prescription vs. generic, health savings accounts and flexible spending accounts all confuse the average consumer.

The Last Mile

Rob — Mon, 07 Nov 2005 21:45:00 -0500

At Vialogix, our belief is that despite the enormous amount of money spent on Internet-enabled tools, the vast majority of web applications have under-served their users by not putting enough emphasis on ease-of-use.

Today the technology has become a commodity. Flavors change (Ajax, PHP, Ruby on Rails, etc) work gets shipped offshore and more companies try to push more info through the lower cost channel of a web browser. But the vast majority of “technology” companies still don’t value the Last Mile enough to make it actually work for the end users. Very few companies have studied the costs associated with NOT making a preferred interface.

Common Sense at the turn of the century

Rob — Wed, 29 Dec 1999 13:49:00 -0500

It’s not the New Economy. It’s not the Old Economy. It’s the economy: simple supply and demand. Success in business has always been about solving customers’ needs with services or products for which they willingly pay. But during the past five years, the markets forgot that simple principle. Demand was so inflated by fear, uncertainty and lack of knowledge that supply couldn’t keep up.

True i

Rob — Sat, 09 Jan 1999 13:50:00 -0500

True Internet Intelligence – circa 1999

true i \`trü-`i\ n 1: a thorough understanding of and genuine belief in the Internet as an industry and communications medium 2: a belief in the fundamental principles of service, quality, knowledge, relationships, commitment, innovation, individual respect and integrity. 3: a clear understanding that the Internet has fundamentally changed customer relationships forever.