Here’s a question for you. I know you know the answer. Who is your website (or web app or message on whatever social media you’re using) for? That’s right: the user. The user is whoever you have in mind that’s going to use the website or web app or follow you through social media.

So, if the user is who we’re creating a website and everything else for, then why is most of the information on a website what we think is important for the user? In other words, if we were only to think about the user and what they’re coming to our website for and what they want to do when they use our web app, would our website or web app be what it is now?

This sounds so simple and most people think they are designing their website or web app for the user. But, when it comes right down to it, most websites and other technologies have an agenda and it’s not [really] the user. If it was about the user, a lot of what we see on websites, would not be there.

Here’s a great example: many websites have the organization’s mission statement on it. Often it’s on the About Us page. Sometimes it’s prominently displayed on the Welcome page. Who is the mission statement for? Is it for the user or is it for the organization? Is the user coming to the organization’s website to learn about the mission statement or is the user coming to the website for another reason? What do the website analytics tell you a user is searching on to find your website? It probably isn’t the organization’s mission statement.

The most important discussion around a website or web app or technology strategy is spent figuring out exactly what the user wants to do when they come to your site. Do you sell products? Then your goal is to make it easy for the user to find the products they’re looking for and easy for them to buy them. Really, you want to make it easy and engaging, but we’ll have to cover what makes something engaging in another blog post.

Let’s say you’re a museum. Your goal is to get people to come to your museum. What does your website need to have on it to help someone make a decision, and then come, to your museum? Once you start to break down the components of what a user needs in order to make a decision, and follow through with a specific action, you are well on your way to creating a good user experience!

photo credit: CHRISTOPHER MACSURAK

When did Fashion Week become such a big deal for the rest of us? No doubt it has always been a big deal for those who follow fashion and are in the fashion industry. But the tech world?

The New York Times app has been promoting a Fashion Week app for a couple of weeks now. Online articles are posturing to be your web source for all things Fashion Week. No one wants to be left out getting your eyes on them and if it takes promoting Fashion Week, all the better. Maybe I’m missing something, like geeks having a secret fashion fantasy, but I don’t think so. I do, however, think we can learn something from Fashion Week.

1. Design draws attention. There is a huge build up of what the big design houses are debuting as fashion trends for the upcoming season. Model after runway model showcase each designer’s masterpieces. The designs, and accompanying accessories, are elaborate and creative. Commentary and critiques hail the genius (or failure) of the designer.

But the unasked question lingers: Who would wear that?

2. Quality does matter. Designers care a great deal about the quality of the textiles and other materials used in their designs. Even when paper clips are used, the expertise of crafters following the designers direction sells the outfit over what you or I could probably do.

Another unasked question surfaces: Is quality worth paying for?

3. Hair and makeup complete the look. I’m sure you’ve noticed how each model’s hair and makeup compliment the total look the designer wants to achieve. The model, including her hair and makeup, act as the canvas to showcase each designer’s art.

The next question: What is needed for the whole design to work?

So what does Fashion Week have for us who reside in the real world of business, websites, and web apps?

1. Design draws attention, but it must be practical and usable. A well-designed website or web app will draw the user in, but the real genius is in giving the user a delightful experience in accomplishing what she came to do. The site or app may have the most awesome visual design on the planet, but if it doesn’t provide the user with what they need or want, then it’s no longer awesome. It becomes a complete annoyance and the user will not be back or will not use the app. Successful websites and web apps are useful.

2. Quality does matter and it is worth paying for. Quality is determined by the expertise and materials used in the crafting of the website and web app. Very often it’s the stuff no ones sees, but you know if it’s not there. Good web development and well-written content are essential.

3. Websites and web apps don’t need hair and makeup, but they do need good hosting services and the ability to work across multiple platforms and devices. The mobile platform (mobile devices using mobile browsers) is surpassing computer internet usage. Most small to medium sized organizations can’t afford two separate websites, mobile and non-mobile. It makes better business sense to have one site that can work on all platforms. One size fits all never works in fashion nor business.

January has been a busy month of Cloudtippers’ blogs: thirty-one days of technology and business goodness for your business or organization. This was barely the tip of the iceberg of what you can do or may need. We hope there were some helpful nuggets, that you’re updated about technology, and that you’re considering some new ways to use technology in your business or organization. Here’s a recap of the Monday through Saturday January 2012 daily blogs. All Sunday blog posts were reminders to take the day off!

Five Notes In this day of all things digital, a handwritten note stands out.

Clean Out Your Email Inbox Cleaned out, controlled email inbox(es) actually make you more productive.

Update Your Browser Websites and surfing the web will be much more pleasurable and more likely to work as intended with an updated modern browser.

Email Signatures Email signatures are like professional letterhead from the olden days. Some dos and don’ts for both professional and personal email signatures.

Prune Your Address Book The goal is to have a mostly-current, manageable, and useful address book at the end.

Empty Your Downloads Folder It’s like taking out the recycling; the stuff that comes in, gets used, and is ready to now be disposed.

Take Out the Trash Sometimes it’s the easiest tasks that are forgotten.

Personal Passwords Develop a secure and fool-proof system for all of your personal passwords.

Passwords and Users Taking a look at the issues around user names and passwords a business owner needs to consider.

For Your Health Cellphones, which come into contact with mouths and hands, are far dirtier than toilets! Time to clean ALL of your electronic surfaces.

Digital Inventory Create a digital inventory for your business equipment and make sure one location is filed in the cloud.

Going Paperless The best benefit is having what you need when you need it on whatever device you have with you.

Clean Out Your Readers Today’s task is to clean out each and every place you collect stuff to read from the web.

Click Away Today’s mission is to click on everything clickable on your website. Are you taken to where you’re expecting to go and does it work?

Read ALL the Content Content is how people find and why they’re coming to your website. We give you some things to look for as your read through ALL of the content on your website.

Usability Testing This task is to see what someone does do when they come to your website. It’s called usability testing and we’re going to conduct a simple, scaled-down version.

On Last Test Do you know how your website looks on other browsers and devices? Time to find out.

Data Doesn’t Deceive It’s time to face the truth you’ve uncovered about your website from the data you’ve collected this week.

Apps and Services We use apps in our every day lives, yet we may be resistant to use apps in our business. How can you bring your business more in to the 21st century?

File Not Found When someone lands on the 404 page, the last thing you want is for them to leave frustrated. Here’s an opportunity to have some fun, extend goodwill, and help your webpage sleuth find the page they’re looking for.

Backup, Sync, or Access By understanding what these common terms mean – backup, restore, sync, and access – we can then better evaluate what we need for what we’re trying to do. We’ll also understand the possibilities and limitations of each, very important factors in our decisions. This post focuses on backup.

Syncing Syncing is a great solution when you have multiple places (or devices) by which to access your data and you want the same data in all of those places.

Accessing Your Data How certain questions are answered will help inform the best solution for making the data accessible later.

Communicating with Clients or Customers There aren’t many businesses or organizations who are communicating regularly or even using the social media tools effectively. Puzzling through the issues, learning from your experiences, and listening to what your clients are telling you will set you apart from all the rest.

Get the Marketing Out of Your Email It’s time to get email marketing out of your email. That means using an email campaign tool.

Think Different If you do nothing else but offer an incredible user experience, you are already thinking different.

Our goal for the daily January blog posts was to help the small to medium-sized business or organization take control of their technology. Sometimes we don’t know what’s available or where to go for current information. Cloudtippers can be that resource. We will resume our regular weekly blog schedule, keeping you up-to-date and informed. Be sure to subscribe and you will receive the posts right to your reader or email!

To help you jump start the new year, we’re posting thirty-one technology and business treats, one for each day of January.

Apple launched the Think Different campaign when Steve Jobs returned to Apple in 1997. Iconic individuals who forged new paths in their fields were selected. Amelia Earhart, Albert Einstein, Mahatma Gandhi, Miles Davis, Martha Davis, and Cesar Chavez were among the twenty-nine selected.

Apple’s success formula is creating devices we want before we knew we wanted them and providing the content we want too. New thinking.

If you’re wondering if that applies to the rest of us, look at the struggle established businesses are having finding their way in a changing world. Print media, television, movies, telephone service aka landlines. These industries are pushing back and pushing back hard because they don’t want to listen to what the rest of us want. One example: we want to watch network programs when we want to watch them, not at a certain time (7:30 pm) on a certain day (Monday) only over a certain device (a television).

So if the big companies are struggling to get it right, where does that leave the rest of us small businesses and organizations?

Good news! You can be the business or organization that thinks different and becomes the business or organization that creates value, offers products, or sells services that matter to the people who use them. If you do nothing else but offer an incredible user experience, you are already thinking different. Businesses and organizations think they’re offering a great user experience, but they’re usually just doing what they think is different and it’s really the same thing everyone else is doing.

A business usually has an objective they want to achieve with their customers. Let’s say it’s selling something. Everything they do is toward selling their widget, usually pushing information and incentives to make the sale.

What if that same business turned it around and planned everything from the perspective of the buyer.

• Who is the buyer? Create a personality for each buyer.
• What experience would that buyer want to have when buying? Create a start to finish buying universe.
• If the buyer needs or wants to exchange their purchase, what is that experience? Create a perfect customer service universe for that buyer.
• Pay attention to every single detail because they all are part of the total user experience.

For Apple, Think Different was more than an ad campaign. It really was part of the Apple culture. Think different was infused in their DNA. They think different in everything they do.

The paradox is that it isn’t anything new and yet it’s everything new. Think about that.

To help you jump start the new year, we’re posting thirty-one technology and business treats, one for each day of January.

We all hear about how important it is to communicate with our clients or customers. Most of us may even have an idea of what and how we’d like to communicate. There are all sorts of technologies out there to facilitate communication: telephones, cellphones, email, email marketing tools (i.e., MailChimp, Vertical Response), social media (i.e., Twitter, Google+, Facebook), mail, websites, face-to-face, events (i.e., workshops, conferences). But, can we articulate what we’re trying to accomplish with our communication?

I know. Why did I have to go and spoil the feel-good moment by asking a question that’s really hard to answer. Even if you can answer what you’re trying to accomplish, it must be followed up with:

• how you’re going to accomplish that communication and why you’re choosing that particular communication mode;
• who is going to own that communication and makes sure it gets done and is managed;
• how will you measure outcomes to know your communication has been effective.

Another way to look at it is:

• what is your communication strategy;
• what is your message;
• what is your communication infrastructure.

I know this is hard, but as with anything worthwhile, if you put in the effort, you’ll have better results. There aren’t many businesses or organizations who are communicating regularly or even using the social media tools effectively. Puzzling through the issues, learning from your experiences, and listening to what your clients are telling you will set you apart from all the rest.