What I learned during the past 100 days

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Blogg100 Logotype

The #blogg100 challenge is over, today is the last day. 99 blog posts later, this is what I’ve learned.

1. Writing takes effort

Blogging as a form of writing takes effort. It was strenuous at times to find the right thoughts to write (which is one of the reasons I shared several videos instead).

2. Writing takes effort

In order to get the worth of time you spend on writing, you have to perfect your skills. To become better, you have to learn to practise and practise to learn.

3. Writing takes effort

Every time I heard someone was a professional blogger, I was a little bit skeptical of it. Is it possible to blog full time, and better yet make a living by it? Now I know better. It is possible. If you are good.

Conclusion

So there you have it. After one hundred blog posts during one hundred days, I am taking a break from daily writing. I am not drained though. I will continue blogging on celareartem.com, continue practising and becoming better.

My brother is getting married, and I made him a site

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I’ve been busy making a wedding site for my brother. It is now live, but I am still polishing up the code. There are still some things to be done, but I am glad how it turned out. I’ve also posted a page, where I describe what I used to build the site.

Love Under The Tree - a wedding site for Erika and Arturs

Love Under The Tree – a wedding site for Erika and Arturs

Visit Erika & Arturs’ wedding site here.

Social media as a solution to bad customer service

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Exceptional customer service is among other things about being on equal terms with your customers and serving as a customer ambassador in your company. Yesterday, I received a question on Klout. Here it is: can businesses use social media as a solution to bad customer service?

While it is a valid question with a pretty simple answer, I think the problem causing the question lies deeper. The issues that I think are of bigger weight are these:

  • How is your business utilising different channels of communication to practice exceptional customer service today?
  • How do you manage bad customer service in other channels? Is there really a difference?
  • What causes bad customer service?

Bad customer service is not something that just happens, that you do not have any control over. It is very often a reflection of your company’s values, priorities and methods. Thus, while social media can be a solution to bad customer service (which really is the manifestation of your failing to spiking your channel strategy up a bit), it is most definitely not the solution to the root of your problem.

Analysing thank-you-for-downloading-[browser] pages: Opera

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This post is a part of the enterprise I have set out on—an analysis of how different web browser developers use words and images after you have decided to give their product a try by downloading it.

Opera logo

Opera logo

Web browser: Opera

Opera is the fifth and last web browser in my thank-you-for-downloading-[browser] page test. Opera’s thank-you page is clean and simple, with a clear headline, “Thank you for choosing Opera Browser, we hope you enjoy it.”

1. What is about to happen

By removing most of marketing-type of content and only having two sentences taking up the whole page, Opera are sending an unwritten message to the user. “If your download does not start automatically, please click here.” What’s about to happen? The download will start automatically! What’s the unwritten message? Downloading Opera Browser is easy.

Opera’s thank-you page in Safari on OS X

Opera’s thank-you page in Safari on OS X

2. What is required of user

Opera are making a point of ease of installing their browser, too—not just downloading it. The “please click here” bit does it graciously. True, both Chrome and Firefox included a link to force start a download on their thank-you pages. The big difference is though that Opera rely solely on that, without making any assumptions as to what operating system or browser you are using to download their product. The text is the same on both Windows and OS X.

Opera’s thank-you page in Internet Explorer on Windows 7

Opera’s thank-you page in Internet Explorer on Windows 7

3. How to get started

The only way for users to get a hint of how to get started with their new browser is a link Help in their secondary navigation. The link leads users to Opera’s forums, where they are encouraged to search, to see if their question has been posted before.

4. Spreading the love

Opera provide do not let users who chose to give their browser a try to share their choice (just like Firefox).

Other observations

Opera is the only company assuming publicly that users choose to give their browser a try.

Conclusion

My suggestion to Opera is to continue keeping things simple and considering how adding a way for people to share their browser with others might be of use.

How to include a hyperlink into a Google Spreadsheet cell

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Here’s a quick tip on how to include a hyperlink into a Google Spreadsheet cell. The function lets you insert a hyperlink into any other spreadsheet program.

Function:

=HYPERLINK(URL; Text to display)

Copy-and-paste example:

=HYPERLINK("http://celareartem.com"; "Take a look at this awesomeness!")

Psst! Google have started highlighting the cell containing a hyperlink, when you hover over it:

Google Spreadsheet highlighting hyperlink cells

A capella and vocal ranges

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From Wikipedia:

Pentatonix is an a cappella group of five vocalists, Scott Hoying, Kirstie Maldonado, Mitch Grassi, Avi Kaplan and Kevin Olusola, originating from Arlington, Texas.

Evolution of Music – Pentatonix is a video by PTXofficial on YouTube

I have a thing for a capella and vocal ranges. The combination of the two makes me speech- and breathless.

Analysing thank-you-for-downloading-[browser] pages: Safari

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This post is a part of the enterprise I have set out on—an analysis of how different web browser developers use words and images after you have decided to give their product a try by downloading it.

Safari logo

Safari logo

Web browser: Safari

Safari is the fourth web browser whose thank-you page I am testing. Both Internet Explorer and Safari are hard to find a download page for, since there are many ways to download these two browsers. Just likw with Internet Explorer, there is no Safari thank-you page to analyse. A single get-our-latest-web-browser page from Apple is also as hard to find—there are several. Let’s look at this support page instead of this one, for example.

1. What is about to happen

Just like Microsoft, Apple do not offer any overview of what is about to happen when you click, or have clicked, on their Download button. The only thing that suggests the coming action is the text on the button saying just that, “Download”.

2. What is required of user

Neither do Apple include anything that users are required to do during the download/installation. Very loose system requirements are present though: “Any PC running Windows XP SP2 or Windows Vista or Windows 7”. Both Apple and Microsoft seem to rely strongly on the ease of installation of their product.

Safari’s download page in Internet Explorer 9 on Windows 7

Safari’s download page in Internet Explorer 9 on Windows 7

3. How to get started

Apple do not provide any introduction to Safari for users who decide to download their product. They seem to expect users to know how to operate their newly downloaded addition to the family of programs on their PC.

There only link that vaguely resembles some kind of support with Safari (the link to “detailed information on the security content of this update”, is broken.

4. Spreading the love

There is a way for users to share the download page with their friends on Facebook and followers on Twitter. But users are expected to know where to click, in order to do it. (Hint: the icon with a title/tooltip “Share”, good luck!)

Other observations

The download page is part of apple.com, which makes it seem to be consistent with everything Apple. There are ambiguous to a common user codes and ID’s on the download page, like download ID (DL1531) and SHA1 (Windows)= f601df0106987bfffc3f22b046ba835e4f8d29c6, whatever that means.

Conclusion

My suggestion to Apple is to think twice how they want to promote downloading their product on apple.com. The best way would be including a link to a download page on the presentation page of Safari. But that would be too obvious a choice, wouldn’t it?

Last up: Opera. Don’t miss it, follow me on Twitter for updates.

Analysing thank-you-for-downloading-[browser] pages: Internet Explorer

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This post is a part of the enterprise I have set out on—an analysis of how different web browser developers use words and images after you have decided to give their product a try by downloading it.

Internet Explorer logo

Internet Explorer logo

Web browser: Internet Explorer

Version: 10

Internet Explorer is the third web browser in my thank-you-page test. The thing about Internet Explorer is that there is no thank-you page to analyse. There is, however, a get-our-latest-web-browser page from Microsoft. Let’s look at it instead.

1. What is about to happen

Microsoft do not offer any kind of an overview of what is about to happen when you click, or have clicked, on their signature flat-designed button “Get Internet Explorer 10”. The largest font-size on the page belongs to the heading “Fast and fluid for Windows 7”, which makes a point and destroys it. The word “fluid” does not necessarily have a good connotation, to my mind. In combination with “fast”, it has the “unpredictable” and “confused” ring to it.

2. What is required of user

One thing Microsoft do include, nevertheless. The users are informed that by clicking “Download now” (let me tell you, I’ve searched the page to and fro for another instance of the phrase or a thing to click, without any success), they agree to “the Internet Explorer Software license terms | Privacy statement | System requirements”. The three documents are interesting and if you haven’t read them, I encourage you to do so, if only to get acquainted with what you are getting yourself into, when you decide to get Internet Explorer 10 on your machine.

Except for a computer meeting system requirements, the users are not required to do anything. Microsoft must rely wholeheartedly on the ease of installation of their product.

Internet Explorer’s download page in Internet Explorer 9 on Windows 7

Internet Explorer’s download page in Internet Explorer 9 on Windows 7

3. How to get started

Microsoft has a page-wide introduction to Internet Explorer 10 with a hard-to-interpret heading “See what’s next for Internet Explorer”. The link “See it now” leads to Internet Explorer 10 presentation page, where you are led to understand that Microsoft’s browser and latest operating system are forever interwoven.

Back to the download page. Microsoft provide users with superb marketing shmoodle and shambalamba. The new Internet Explorer is “Fast”, “Easy”, and “Safer”. There are links to a page where you can download a different language or version of Internet Explorer 9, to a page where you can explore what’s new and exciting about Internet Explorer 9 and to a page where you can get support for… you guessed it, Internet Explorer 9.

4. Spreading the love

Microsoft provide a way for users to share the download page with their friends on Facebook and followers on Twitter. Moreover, they include the Facebook Like button for page visitors to click on, thus joining the rest of 2.5 million of planet’s inhabitants showing appreciation of the company.

Other observations

There is an option for users to choose to set Bing as a default search engine before they download the browser. This is how I interpret “I would also like Bing and MSN defaults” anyway. What an MSN default is, I have no clue.

Conclusion

My suggestion to Microsoft is to get the purpose of the page straight and get rid of all the noise and bloat. I am left confused, when I think about who the target audience is. I would be surprised if Microsoft knew the answer themselves.

Next up: Safari. Don’t miss it, follow me on Twitter for updates.