If you put ‘Is marriage out of fashion’ into Google, the statistics often quoted and the balance of comment suggests the commonly held view is that it is, indeed, ‘out of fashion’.

So, if, as the figures often state, the act of marriage is at its lowest since the 1800s it therefore follows that ‘the act of engagement‘ is also at its lowest.

If, as a society, we are resisting the process of committing to each other where does that leave the wider activity of engagement with, and commitment to, the world around us? My personal belief is that we have become even more non-committal.

This inherent fickleness is what gives me the biggest problem with the term ‘engagement’ and the way it is being used in the context of web content management and the broader ‘customer relationship’ environment. When I think of ‘engagement’ with regard to websites in particular, that wonderful phrase ‘herding cats’ springs to mind.

Regardless of the growth of social media, I still believe that the vast majority of online activity within the greater mass of websites  is goal directed behaviour. When you are focused on a goal, the overtone of ‘engagement’ is that it will take more time and commitment than I am prepared to give. I want the information that satisfies my goal as quickly and easily as possible – if you put any sort of barrier in the way or make me feel I’m being ‘sold to’ or ‘manipulated’ in any way – I’m out of there.

Now, I’ve been kicking around the web virtually since its inception and I know there are countless ways in which I could ‘personalise’ my online activities and experiences that, if I analysed it from a time management perspective, would actually make my life easier – so why don’t I? More than often it’s just one step too far in making a commitment to a process, application, site, or organisation. The thing is, I don’t think I’m alone in continuing to do things the hard way online and I don’t think I’m ever going to be persuaded to change. Sorry – I simply don’t want to get ‘engaged’ – thank you…

Sadly, my kids really like ‘Take Me Out‘ a UK TV programme where a hapless bloke is judged worthy of a date by a jury of women – ‘Paddy’s flirty thirty’. It’s the contemporary version of a long running favourite from my youth, Blind Date – only a lot more brutal and, in keeping with societal evolution, makes ‘men’ the main figures of fun. Its saving grace, other than it being similar to fantasies I’ve had in the past, is it sometimes challenges superficiality and pre-conceptions. This was something Blind Date did by hiding participants behind a screen so that they were judged on their personalities as opposed to their looks. Take Me Out often takes the opposite approach by sometimes revealing almost all of the male participants, especially if they have well honed six packs and prominent lunch boxes, it then takes delight in exposing these young adonises as shallow, chauvinistic mother’s boys – so that what started out as a full bank of approval lights from the ‘flirty thirty’, dwindles to just a handful who are clearly more interested in style over substance in their dating partners – “No Likey, No Lighty” is the show’s catchphrase.

Which brings me to the main subject of this post – ‘The Like Button’. I haven’t paid too much attention to social media over the last 4 months or so as it seemed pretty obvious it wasn’t going to go away and, quite frankly, I had better things to do. However, some recent experiments with Facebook advertising have dragged me kicking and screaming back into the arena and had me reigniting an FB profile that had laid pretty much dormant since 2007. On the surface, not much seems to have changed but then I went through the process of adding back in my interests and activities – which previously were just a text list – and realised that they were linking automatically to Facebook fan pages.

Now I know Facebook had been using these text based preferences way back in 2007 to serve up relevant advertising and it is this, at its core, that gives the organisation its market value and presents the only viable threat right now to Google’s Adwords dominance. However, I notice now that ‘The Like Button’ has gone into overdrive and is spreading across the web like a viral rash. It’s one of the those mechanisms that gives us the ‘Paradox of Choice’ described so well by Barry Shwartz in his book and TED lecture and also leads to his conclusions that ‘More is Less’. The speed with which it is spreading dilutes its impact and I’m already getting worn out making choices about whether I like something or not. You see, in the same way that Take Me Out and Blind Date challenge superficiality by not judging someone purely on what they look like and encourage those participating to ask questions that look deeper before deciding, I will avoid making instant judgements about things. I know that if I spread my ‘liking’ too widely, I’m going to get bombarded with wall posts and advertising and even if I do express a ‘like’ you can be sure I’m going to be asking a lot more questions before I make any further commitment.

The whole ‘Like’ concept also reminds me of the first psychometric test I did around 20 years ago when being interviewed for a job. Much to my surprise, I got the job and in my first meeting with the HR people, they gave some feedback on that test, that I’ve never forgotten. In their analysis of my answers, I had scored higher than average in Social Acceptability. Scoring high sounds good, but in this instance the questions were designed to test whether I would tell people what they wanted to hear and this was deemed ‘Social Acceptability’. In this instance I was young, keen, sharp-suited and had applied for a job in marketing, so having a higher level of ‘Social Acceptability’ was regarded as an attribute for the role. The terms ‘marketing’ and ‘social acceptability’ appear inextricably linked, so how much weight can you put into someone expressing a ‘like’ – has it been done through peer pressure, a desire to look cool, an affinity with the brand or a definitive expression of further interest? Does the motivation behind the ‘like’ really matter?

Well… faced with the cold hard facts of my trial Facebook campaign versus my Adwords campaign I think it does. Run over the same time period, at the same cost…

Facebook – click-through rate – an excellent 30% – product sold = 0

Google Adwords – click-through rate – a paltry 4% – product sold = 5

If  my ultimate metric is ‘cash in hand’ then Google wins. Should I give Facebook Advertising the thumbs up or thumbs down?  How would you vote on this?

Swedish Police rounding up violators

If someone was to ask me what the difference is between EPiServer Content Management System Versions 4, 5 and 6, the three words in this post’s headline stand out the most. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many ‘license violation’ warnings on a software install than our recent roll-out of EPiServer 6 and its associated add-on modules. At times, I’ve half expected the Swedish police to come crashing through the doors and windows as the latest black on yellow warning notice flashes up 😉

As commented by John Goode on Twitter and in his recent ‘Profit Imperative’ blog post, the reason for EPiServer’s significant changes to its licence model earlier this year became clear, with its acquisition earlier this month by IK Investments.

This prompted me to look back at previous comments I’ve made relating to EPiServer in this blog over the last couple of years that started following a visit to Stockholm. In doing so, the following comment, written after attending the 2009 UK Customer Day stood out…

As with many activities and tools where you spend a fair amount of your working life, ‘familiarity can breed contempt’ and I think the real test for me will be EPiServer and its partner bases’ ability to recognise and address key pain points and bugs quickly. If developing the latest and greatest functionality comes at the expense of improving the core web content management capabilities that make for a reliable, productive and effective user experience, then EPiServer will risk turning off established and loyal customers who are its best advocates and often help to do the marketing job for them.

hmmm… so having selected EPiServer based on very positive experiences in two previous projects, I have to say I’m disappointed with the direction things have been going with things in the last six months or so.

Over the years I think I’ve developed a bit of a gut feel when it comes to evaluating software and whether it represents value for money and will deliver a Return On Investment.

When I first used EPiServer, it exceeded my expectations. It was a user friendly, adaptable and flexible solution that was a solid platform for consolidating multiple international websites into one environment. There seemed to be some flexibility in the licensing model that helped keep the product affordable for achieving ambitious global goals and adapting to changing marketing demands. I was also impressed with the speed of innovation and the ability of the company to deliver some big chunks of development such as the community and ecommerce capabilities through smart partner/community development, acquisition and partnership.

Having started to use and experiment with open source content technologies in recent years, I think what also appealed to me a lot about EPiServer, as an organisation, is that it seemed to be evolving into a potentially powerful hybrid of a well established and proven commercial developer that was increasingly adopting open source philosophies and best practices. As there is a growing trend within open source towards commercialised operations ie; Drupal/Acquia I think it’s healthy to see commercial operators heading for the middle ground from the other direction.

Sadly then, other than some largely cosmetic changes to the interface, the only difference I’ve really noticed with EPiServer 6 are repeated ‘license violation’ warnings popping up all over the place. Whereas in the past, I’ve felt keen to experiment and stretch the solution in new business and marketing scenarios, the frequency and prevalence of these license violation warnings make me feel extremely cautious about planning subsequent phases of development as I get the sense they are going to come with bigger and bigger price tags attached.

A year ago, I wrote a piece about the ‘future of Web Content Management’ in which I emphasised the importance of user experience. A classic example of this is the layer upon layer of dialog boxes that you have to click through to undertake core content management functions such as adding images and links. These are things that impact productivity and ease of use, particularly if you have to remember where to click to achieve a particular task. In that post, I linked to this article on the age of user experience and I’ve summarised the key points below…

1. More features isn’t better:
2. You can’t make things easier by adding to them:
3. Confusion is the ultimate deal breaker:
4. Style matters:
5. Only features that provide a good user experience will be used:
6. Any feature that requires learning will be adopted by only a small fraction of users:
7. Unused features are useless and diminish ease of use:
8. Users do not want to think about technology; what counts is what it does for them:
9. Forget about the killer feature: the new killer app is a killer user experience
10. Less is difficult; that’s why less is more.

I particularly like the explanation of point 10…

Do well what 80% percent of your users do all the time (and don’t worry about the other 20% who want to do more) and you create a good user experience.

I’ll finish this post with a link to another recent article by John Goode, which emphasises the importance of ‘customer advocacy’ in software development and provides further illustration of the points above.

Like the Soccer World Cup, which thankfully only happens every 4 years, the CMS implementations I’ve been responsible for tend to come round in similar cycles – giving sufficient timeframes to move from phase 1, through the dreaded phase 2 and on to achieving longer term goals.

For me, the success of CMS implementations should not be measured by the initial launch and first phase activities but how well the longer term goals are addressed into the 2nd, 3rd and 4th years – and beyond. This was emphasised recently in an excellent article by CMS Myth-  ‘Your website is not a project’

Whichever way you look at it though, CMS implementations and ongoing web developments can be described as a series of competitive matches and play-offs – not unlike the World Cup tournament – that you are in a continual cycle of preparation and training for.  In fact I’ve already used a football term ‘goals’ in the previous paragraphs, without even thinking.

Having responsibility for eCommerce, setting up goals is something I’m doing regularly – only in Google Analytics rather than on a pitch. The only way we can ‘score goals’ is by having the right team players and tactics in place and having everyone focused on the task of winning.

Competition comes from all angles. In the early group stages, it is just as likely to be internal competition for time, budget and priorities than external factors. During this stage it’s important to test different players and strategies. You need to know when to have substitutes on hand and when to change strategies. Quite often I have a complete B team in training ready to step up to the main challenges, as and when needed.

In the knock-out stages the odds get higher. This is where the investment in the right players and the hours of preparation and training really start to pay off. The defence readies itself for a push forward, the mid-fielders open up space and opportunity and the strikers press home any advantage created to get the ball in the back of the net. In web marketing, my strikers implement the ideas at the sharp end that, when supported by the rest of the team, deliver goals.

Like the World Cup tournament, the further you progress, the tougher the competition gets.  The bottom line is that a rival for customer attention online can knock you out of the game through better performances and it can be tough going clawing your way back up the rankings. There are undoubtedly different leagues of competitors too, and if you are looking to take on a competitor who is used to operating in a higher league then you need the right team to do it.

My ‘dream team’ of players is illustrated below and includes those I have on the pitch all the time to the essential support team of vendors, system implementors and IT. I liken these to the coaching and physiotherapist staff that provide the knowledge, experience and capability to perform but are also there to help should things go wrong.

My dream team of players, coaches and support for winning campaigns

Does this analogy reflect your own approaches and, if so, what players and tactics are you using to score goals and beat the competition?

I’m sure there is plenty of scope for describing ‘own goals’, missed chances, hat-tricks, foul-play, penalties and the like 🙂

…absolutely nothing. Say it again! Say again????

I have a startling and somewhat unnerving confession to make. I haven’t used a company Intranet in any capacity for around 3 years now. The Intranets have been there, in a fashion, but haven’t been remotely useful or worth even thinking about. Why is this unnerving? Well, it’s made me question everything I thought and advocated about Intranets for many years.

The organisations I’ve been working for are all successful and, in many areas, bucking the trends of the recession in their particular markets. In each, email, IM (primarily Skype) and shared drives are the established ways of working. I have found myself becoming adept at navigating shared drives, learning about the organisations from them and pulling out the information I need. On the whole, the people around me are even more adept at doing this. It’s what they know, how they’ve done it for years and what they do every day.

In a time of ever tightening budgets and laser sharp focus on measurable results I have had to examine and continually reassess the Return On Investment any changes to the Intranet is likely to have and is there really any business justification for changing the way things are currently done – If it works, why try to fix it?

It’s a tough call at the moment. During the last 3 years, I have seen and experienced how internal communications, project management, CRM, HR and marketing communications can run more than adequately using the combination of email, IM, shared drives and Office documents. Whereas I have used SharePoint extensively on projects in the past, I’m fast coming to conclusion that a few simple interactive Excel templates in a shared folder can be just as effective.

I used to support the sort of observations you see around vendor, implementor and analyst websites like “An Intranet is an accurate reflection of the inner workings and ‘Corporate DNA’ of a company” but having seen businesses grow and prosper with barely a second thought given to an Intranet, I have to question this fundamentally.

If an organisation is practised at sharing and communicating information through long established methods and has evolved those as new capabilities, such as Skype, have come along are they really going to gain much more by spending a lot of time and effort on their old Intranets?

I’m fast coming to the view, that if you are ‘knowledge worker’ and have been communicating and sharing information for years – either online or offline, you simply adapt to the toolsets available. You apply the same underlying principles of simplicity, usefulness, context and lifecycle in a hyperlinked way but don’t necessarily need content to be sitting in a web browser under the banner of ‘Company Intranet’.

I’d be interested to hear how many people really believe their Intranet is so business critical that they couldn’t succeed without it? What am I missing here? Are there really killer Intranet apps that couldn’t be achieved in other ways?