Matrix Group International

Month: September 2011

  • Another Killer iPad Use: Storing My User Manuals

    Another Killer iPad Use: Storing My User Manuals

    I have a giant stack of user manuals in my house. Manuals for the stove, the microwave, the gas fireplace, the digital camera, the DVR, the game consoles, yada, yada. Yes, I’m the type of person who actually reads user manuals so I can use my devices better and do my own troubleshooting when there’s a problem. When I don’t have a user manual for a device, I look for it online and bookmark or download the PDF.

    Well, I’m going paperless with my user manuals because they’re all going into my iPad.

    Just imagine this: all (or most) of my manuals in one portable device, searchable, and including a dictionary and ability to write notes. Here’s how to do it:

    • Download the PDF to the computer that you use to synch and back up your iPad.
    • Drag the PDF to your Books collection in iTunes
    • The next time you synch your iPad, voila!, the user manual is now on your iPad

    This means I can get rid of the ugly stacks in my house and I never have to worry that a manufacturer will remove a user manual for an aging device.  Want to learn more? This article from MakeUseOf shows you how to paginate, bookmark and annotate in iBooks. Love it!

  • Firefox Web Developer Toolbar

    Firefox Web Developer Toolbar

    If you’re a web developer or a web manager, you NEED this Firefox add-on. You can troubleshoot code, add grid-lines, modify text and styles in temp mode, and more. It’s free and fabulous!

  • Why Your Organization Needs a Mobile Strategy

    Why Your Organization Needs a Mobile Strategy

    Woman on a mobile phoneDuring a meeting with other CEOs last month, I noticed that nobody pulled out their laptops; instead, every person with a device was using an iPad. At least two of my clients have said they’ve turned in their laptops in favor of tablets. And a mom friend says she manages her entire household with her blackberry.

    In case you hadn’t noticed, the world is going mobile. Check out these amazing statistics:

    Which is why I think every organization needs a mobile strategy. Here are my top recommendations for getting started:

    Include Mobile in All Of Your Marketing and IT Activities

    Over a dozen years ago, I urged clients to be the person in the room who always said, “what about the Web?” Today, appoint yourself as the person who says, “what about mobile?” Know what tools you have available in your mobile toolbox, including mobile stylesheets, mobile sites, text messaging, and apps. Talk to your customers and ask them if, how and when they access your website and e-mails on a mobile device.

    Budget for Mobile Initiatives

    I believe mobile needs its own line item in your budget or it needs to added to your marketing and IT activities. For example, do you have the hardware you need to view your website on an iPad, Android phone, iPhone, iPad or Android tablet? Be sure to ask your Web partner (like Matrix Group!) to help you budget for mobile, whether it’s developing an app for your convention, designing a mobile version of your website, or using text messages to generate traffic at your exhibit hall.

    Planning a Website Redesign? Plan for a Responsive Design!

    Here at Matrix Group, we’re really excited about building websites that look and behave differently depending on the size, platform and orientation of the device, including widescreen monitors, standard size monitors, tablets and smartphones. Responsive Web design uses a mix of flexible grids and layouts, images and javascript to customize the experience for the device. For example, if I’m looking at a website on a smartphone, the large branding area could disappear and the horizontal navigation might turn into vertical text navigation. If your organization is thinking of redesigning your website, please consider a responsive design. You will spend more time and money on wireframes and design, but the results will be worth it. Just imagine: less pinching and squinting for smartphone users and lots of gestures and swipes on tablets.

    Pay Attention To Your Mobile Stats

    As always, pay attention to your usage reports. Google Analytics has a whole, new set of reports that tell you what your mobile users are doing and what devices they are on. I’m using our usage reports to figure out what functions to include in a new mobile version of our MatrixMaxx software since we don’t believe mobile users want to use ALL database function.

    How about you? What’s your organization’s mobile strategy? How are you getting started? What kind of results are you seeing?

  • Videolicious

    Videolicious

    Videolicious is an iPhone app that creates a finished video, edited and layered together like a professional video editor—automatically!

  • Does Your Organization Have a Social Sharing Strategy?

    According to a study by ShareThis, the social sharing widget that you see on many websites, Facebook accounts for 38% of sharing traffic on the web. And that’s just the percent of people who click through. If you add links shared but not clicked, the number goes up to a whopping 56%. Which means that if we (the collective “we” since there are over 700 million of us now on Facebook) want to share a link with the world, we do it through Facebook.

    This totally makes sense to me. When I find something new, cool, interesting, amazing or whatever, I immediately post it to Facebook and Twitter (increasingly, Google + as well, but more on that in a future blog post).  And I rely on my network of friends, co-workers, clients and business colleagues to find out about other new, cool, interesting and amazing things.

    So I got to thinking. If social sharing is an important means by which we (again, the collective “we”) learn about new sites, we can’t and shouldn’t leave this sharing to chance. Sure, most websites now have a ShareThis widget, but is this enough? I say no. I think every organization needs a social sharing strategy that includes the following:

    • What you want people to share. Do you want visitors to share your home page? Individual articles? Donation pages?
    • How you want people to share. Do you want visitors to send an e-mail, post to their social networks, save to their social bookmarking pages, all of the above?
    • Regular review of analytics to find out what and how people are sharing links on your site. Be sure to review your usage reports, ShareThis account and other reports to find out what’s popular, how people are sharing, and learn why certaini articles or posts generate activity.
    • Design and CSS guidelines that make your site shareable. For example, if you share a link on Facebook, Facebook automatically indexes the images and allows you to cycle through the images and select one to include with the link. If your organization logo is set up as a background image in your CSS or the logo is not whole, your logo can’t be included in the link.
    • Calls to action to encourage sharing. While many of us will share our favorite links on our own, other won’t unless prompted, so I think it’s important to have calls to action to encourage sharing. It’s also a good idea to test calls to action on a regular basis to find out which calls to action work best.

    The design and front-end team at Matrix Group has developed a set of guidelines for setting up web pages so that titles are complete and the proper images are included in links. Be sure to test the shareability of your site on a regular basis and address issues with your web design or maintenance team.

    How about you?  What’s your platform of choice for sharing links?