As many fields, products, and services are becoming commoditized, it’s become increasingly important to plan and implement a great customer experience. Much of this involves planning and gauging how your business makes your customer feel. Creating those “wow” moments aligned with your strategy is key.

The role of prototyping in McDonald’s and Apple

Two key examples were explained and demonstrated in E-myth Revisited and Subject to Change: McDonald’s and The Apple Store, respectively. Both stories involve building physical prototypes of each business and refining them until they ran as smoothly and customer-friendly as possible. Steve Jobs had several versions of the Apple Store built in a giant warehouse so that his staff could test several possibilities. And whether you like McDonald’s or not, Roy Kroc worked with a prototype until he could perfect a McDonald’s business that works for franchisers.

Working on prototypes in a professional services environment

The heart of what I want to do is offer a service, and that’s a tad trickier because I don’t have a physical product or storefront to mock up and prototype. Also, offering a professional service in a creative and technical area is messy. Some efficiencies can be factored out into processes and procedures, but those same efforts can stifle innovation if taken too far.

Adaptive Path had a compelling solution to the problem of prototyping services, described in Subject to Change. They draw comics that mock up key touchpoints in the customer experience. These comics show what’s going on in the customer’s head, how the customer interacts with elements like the website and phone, and what’s going on overall in the customer’s “story.”

Balance between prototyping and execution

While this planning is helpful (and I encourage it), sometimes it’s best to jump in too. I plan on jumping in to some ideas and innovating on the fly more this year. I will try my best to plan as much as possible, but it is time for action in addition to planning and setting up all of my GI Joes.

I will be working for an actual customer or two, work with them to refine the service, all on the fly. It’ll be really tough, but if I play my cards right, much of the discovery will only need to be done a couple times.

We must balance planning and execution. Each is important, and each is really hard work. At some level, your execution is also a prototype that always needs to be refined, only if you’re willing to inspect it and improve it.

Working with both requires curiosity, insight, introspection, and creativity. Wish me luck.

Technorati Tags: adaptive path, book, books, business, ccm, chris peters, clear crystal media, design, e-myth, glass case, internet marketing, marketing, prototype, prototypes, prototyping, subject to change

Consider this example for ColdFusion on Wheels. There is a main feed with all site updates:
http://feeds.cfwheels.org/cfwheels

When I burned that feed, I signed up for “cfwheels” as my feed URL.

But if you want to subscribe to the blog only, you can subscribe to this feed:
http://feeds.cfwheels.org/cfwheels/blog

I signed up for “cfwheels/blog” as my feed URL in that case.

And here is the screencasts feed:
http://feeds.cfwheels.org/cfwheels/screencasts

Et cetera, et cetera.

It’s a very nice way to show the user what they’re subscribing to and where the URL resides in the information space.

Technorati Tags: ccm, chris peters, clear crystal media, design, feedburner, glass case, google, information architecture, internet marketing, mybrand, url, urls, usability

You’ll notice that they don’t really explain it. They show the info that you need to know and help you get to the next step, which is gravatar.com. And gravatar.com does a really good job of explaining how it works.

Sometimes the best way to explain something is to not explain at all.

Technorati Tags: ccm, chris peters, clear crystal media, design, github, glass case, gravatar, interface design, internet marketing, ui design, usability

This series has led to quite a few compliments, and people are watching and subscribing to the videos on our site, on YouTube, and on Vimeo. I think that limiting the length to around 5 minutes has helped keep viewers engaged. 5 minutes only requires viewers to digest one concept at a time, and it isn’t a huge commitment on their part.

Camtasia for Mac has been a wonderful piece of software for getting these up so easily. (There’s a Windows version too.) My first screencast was challenging, but it didn’t require too much effort to get up to speed with how the software works.

Technorati Tags: ccm, cfwheels, chris peters, clear crystal media, coldfusion, coldfusion on wheels, glass case, internet marketing, marketing, screencast, screencasts, Social Media, video, videos, vimeo, web 2.0, youtube

1. Silverback by Clearleft

They give us a sentence, 6 bullet points, and a dead-simple diagram showing what it does. They even show us a video demo that was created using the product itself. Brilliant.

2. iPhone by Apple

The product is so great that their TV commercials don’t do anything other than show the product in use. And it sells itself. When I first picked one up myself, there were no surprises on how it would work.

3. Getting Real by 37signals

37signals lets you read their book online for free. If someone really wants to endure the eye strain or read it slowly, it’s there for the taking. But those who love having a memento or reading a print version can buy those. This works especially well for 37signals because they have other products that others may want to check out.

Technorati Tags: Advertising, ccm, chris peters, clear crystal media, glass case, internet marketing, marketing

Don’t get me wrong: the words are important. They’re what search engines see. People still need to read some.

But in this visual YouTube generation, people need to see that your product or service meets their needs, not just read about it.

Technorati Tags: ccm, chris peters, clear crystal media, Design, flash, glass case, internet marketing, marketing, web marketing, Writing

A single web page addresses a single topic. As the amount of information on your site grows, each page’s ability to walk this fine line grows more important.

Include the right amount of information—no more—and give the visitor a clear set of next steps. (You may have heard of these next steps referred to as “calls to action.”)

Even as a writer, you are also a designer.

Technorati Tags: ccm, chris peters, clear crystal media, Design, design, glass case, ia, indexed, information architecture, information design, jessica hagy, Writing

I need to practice what I preach and eat my own dog food. Hypocrite alert!

Technorati Tags: Blogging, ccm, chris peters, clear crystal media, glass case, hypocricy, internet marketing, Writing

Here’s what happened on this here internet marketing blog in September, in case you missed any of it:

• Umair Haque on constructive capitalism
• Quote: What God thinks of money
• Getting started with HTML
• Becoming the authority

And here’s what happened on Polymorphism, my sister web development blog:

• Follow me on Twitter
• ColdFusion on Rails is almost here
• SuperPreview: Microsoft has done something good for a change
• Accessible links in printer style sheets
• Aggregating RSS feeds with Delicious, Yahoo! Pipes, FeedBurner and CFML

Technorati Tags: ccm, chris peters, clear crystal media, glass case, internet marketing

I’ve been finding myself in that spot over the past couple days. There are some different paths that I can take:

1. Keep trying to get to the top
2. Put down the guys at the top
3. Invent your own authority

I tried option #2 once, and it wasn’t the way to go. I feel really bad about it and won’t do it ever again if I have any choice.

#2 is also the fastest way to get attention. Go figure.

Lately, I’ve been looking to #3. I have decided that I’m not going to convince the other experts that my way is right. They have their own ideas, and that is just fine. We need that in order to foster innovation, after all. I need to create my own market.

One thing that I do swear to do is really get to know my industry better and know what the differences are. Your opinion only becomes stronger when you truly understand all of the alternatives.

Technorati Tags: authority, ccm, chris peters, clear crystal media, glass case, industry, internet marketing, marketing, Strategy