fXceed

Following excerpts are not as structured as a serious composition should be, merely combining the selected sentences I took from the book and translated back to English.

• Chapter 1: Emergence of Social Web Era
• Chapter 2: Framework for Social Web Development

<< Previous Chapter 3: Sincere Conversation

Selected excerpts from Chapter 4: Bringing people to sign up

The users who consider the web service to be useful, they will show appreciation toward the developer who invested so much time and energy.

Usually it takes only 8 seconds for a new user to make a decision to sign up.

Even for the already signed up users, the continued process to keep them interested and persuaded is crucial.

The issues about persuading people to sign up:

• First impression doesn’t change easily. Decision to become a loyal user is done when he or she saw the web service for the first time.
• So many questions without opinions. Answering to their questions is the opportunity to talk about the web service.
• A watchful latent user is becoming an active user at this point
• The critical decision is made. To the general users, decision to use your service is not as important as success of the service.

The categories of users:

• The users who are ready to use the service. They know the value of the service and willing to accept some difficulties in using the service.
• Interested, but not assured users. They need to have an opportunity to find about the value of the service.
• The fact-finders. They want to examine the service objectively based on the opinions of others. Provide them with the good instructions for using the service.
• Skeptical users. Show the proof that many users are satisfied using the service.

The well designed sign-up page can make a visitor to be an user of the service.

Must for well designed sign-up page:

• Give clear description of the features of the service
• Convince the users that this is an useful service
• Provide answers to the obvious questions
• Challenge the unreasonable criticism or provide the facts of the service
• Let the users to try the service to finish a task
• Let the users to contact the other users of the service
• Give an idea what kind of relationship the users and the service provider can establish

The essential questions:

• Who will use the service?
• What will the service do?
• Where will the service be used?
• When will the service be used?
• Why the service is important?
• How to use the service?

Using the pictures or the icons, explain what the service does concisely.

Complicated interface means complicated service.

Show people how to use the service.

The technical people are interested in the efficiency of the service.

Adopting the social influence idea, people care about who uses the service. It’s hard for the general public to resist the general trend.

People find it easier to sign up when their friends are already using the service.

Show the recommendations from the respectful personnel, and even from the competitor.

Specify the target users. The specifically defined service is effective.

Provide the user stories about how the service is successfully being used.

If the number of the users or usages is significant, show it to be visible to bring more attention.

Utilize the authoritative figures, their presence in the service.

Let the visitors try or use the service for free without any limitation.

Reciprocity is powerful. Give something for free to make the receiver to react in some way to return the favor to get out of the sense of being indebted.

Unless it’s necessary, build the service without needing to create an account.

Ask only for the necessary information from the user.

Next Chapter 5: Keeping the users constantly satisfied >>

Following excerpts are not as structured as a serious composition should be, merely combining the selected sentences I took from the book and translated back to English.

• Chapter 1: Emergence of Social Web Era

<< Previous Chapter 2: Framework for Social Web Development

In this post, there are a few sentences came up by myself while translating.

Highlighted excerpts from Chapter 3: Sincere Conversation

The company must communicate with the customers directly.

Web service developers are easily get estranged when they are not good enough:

• Because they don’t face the customers; or the users face to face.
• The dissatisfaction is very hard to notice.
• The support for the service is also the product, or at least a major part of the service.

The long term benefit of active and sincere conversation is far surpassing the temporal pain of negative statement.

The sincere conversation will lead the users to have interest in your service.

How to become the better service:

1. Listen to the public opinions.
2. Conversation will allow you to have more information without spending much on research.
3. Those who give positive feedback are the enthusiastic users, worthy enough to record the conversations with them.
4. These enthusiastic users are not only good users but also potentially good partner in application development. For this to be possible, open the sources

There must be more than selling. Servitude must become the priority of one’s service.

Aiming for the buzz marketing, the service must  take good care of the users more than necessary.

Ten steps for building trust:

1. Don’t wait for the conversation to be started.
2. Spread the story of  your company. People with the same idea will be gathered together.
3. Clarify what kind of relationship you want to establish with the users.
4. Prove that you are listening to the users very seriously.
5. Let the user to learn about the service on their own pace.
6. Expose the communication channel clearly to the users and respond to the messages as soon as possible.
7. Give the users multiple options.
8. Delegate the right and the responsibility for communicating with the users to most people in the project.
9. Expect the changes and prepare for them. Take good care of the enthusiastic users.
10. Hire the community manager. It’s preferable to hire the currently active member of the user community.

Experiencing the website itself is the purpose of providing service.

Building community doesn’t necessarily mean adding more functions.

The big name web services are started from satisfying needs of small communities.

If possible, try to develop it by and for oneself. This way one can know the aspect of being a user.

Most people are passionate about what they made by themselves.

Let the users contribute to the service. They are the best supporters.

Release the updated version as frequent as possible. Keep letting your service to be known. And fail as much and quick as possible, so one can know and minimize investing on what’s not working.

More failure means more experiments, finding the right solutions from the wrong solutions.

Fast cycle of development will gather more data which will support the argument against forceful pestering.

Entertain the users by presenting the whole process of development to them.

Respond positively to the negative opinions.

Someone will come to help when you sincerely admit your failure.

It’s impossible to avoid bad evaluation. Use it for your beneficial development.

Next Chapter 4: Bringing people to sign up >>

Following excerpts are not as structured as a serious composition should be, merely combining the selected sentences I took from the book and translated back to English.

<< Previous Chapter 1: Emergence of Social Web Era

Highlighted excerpts from Chapter 2: Framework for Social Web Development

The biggest disaster in project development is feature creep.

Not knowing what is really important, adding unnecessary feature instead of focusing on the essential one.

And this will cause competition among the features within.

The elements which the service developer cannot control:

• The competition among the interest groups: taking each element to the different direction will diminish the effort to go to the common goal.
• Political dispute, opinions or arguments that don’t concur: clash of different characteristic of the team members?
• Lack of understanding about the users: clearly understood the need of users?
• Ambiguous strategy: is strategy responsibility of only the strategy department? adopting outside strategy will change the way how the team works?
• Absence of vision or goal: what’s the definitive measure of success?

Find the value of features and set the priorities:

• For which task should our team invest time and energy?
• What features must be added or deleted?
• Are these feature work with or for the whole strategy?
• How can avoid political dispute or argument about opinions and focus on the questions about the strategy itself?

AOF method(Activities, Object, Features):

1. Focus on the most important activities: Always think about how to answer what the users do?
2. Find the social objects: What social object will motivate the users to be active?
3. Develop the essential features: What people do with social objects? How can the web service support the activities with the social objects?

The most important question: What does people do with the service?

People take interest on the service which does one thing so good.

Purpose if the final state the users try their best to get. Activity is the collection of methods to achieve that purpose.

If the activity were clear and specific, there wouldn’t be any need for a service to organizing it.

Profit or property are the auxiliary result out of the activity.

Research:

• Interview: Focus on what they do, ignoring what opinions they have.
• Usability test: Observe the users to know what activities they do, if they are satisfied or not with the activities.
• On-site observation: Becoming the users themselves. Contextual research is getting information by actually observing the process.
• Self-observation: For it’s almost impossible to be objective about oneself, it’s better to do it as a pair.
• Listening to the reviews, using feedback forum

Don’t be afraid to change the ideas of own.

Identify the social object; the social medium or the social interactivity that connects the users. The object, the topic or the idea that is shared by the users.

What people want to do to achieve these purposes? Answering to this question will identify the essential features that must be developed.

Adding more features will cause conflict. Introduce the new feature to the users, actually operate it, and modify it make it more usable and useful.

Develop the most unique feature as possible, not imitating the others.

Next Chapter 3: Sincere Conversation >>