TreeWorks Blog

I found out from Iulian Comanescu that the newspaper Romania Libera relaunched their site.

A few small remarks plus, in my opinion, a very important one.

The small ones:

1. Some RSS would have been extremely useful. Think Web 2.0!

2. Why does the general belief that the “Advertising” section must have a place in the menu still exist? I mean, how many times does it happen for a big corporation or advertising agency to pop up and say “I saw on your webpage that you also sell advertising space. We would have never guessed that.”

3. What is the use of a clock in the header of the page? To show exactly the time the computer also shows? At least if it would have shown the time of Bucharest for the ones abroad, for instance.

Besides these remarks, everything is ok. Except my big dissatisfaction.

This site is a very clear example how to not use the AJAX for the sake of AJAX. If you look at the URLs you will see they don’t change at all. Index.php remains like that all the time. Which is extremely bad for the search engines which will see exactly one page. Apparently, until now, 15-20 percents of the visitors came from the search engines. From now on only the ones looking for “Romania Libera” will find a link to the page.

More, it is a completely not usable thing, affecting all users. What should I do if I want to save some articles to read later? How do I save the URLs? Of course, there might be some appended parameters when sending the articles by email, but this facility was not working at the time I checked it. So it was impossible for me to figure it out.

And what do I do if I want to link an article from RL to another site, for instance?

I think they did it to avoid certain websites that merge content, but I think it was a completely counter-productive choice. To try to turn into a totally isolated island in this fluid online world proves a profound misundersanding of the way value and web content are created and propagated.

PS. And since it is all about faulty misunderstandings of the way things on the Internet work, here’s a very cool post written by Vladimir about a workshop at Biz Days. Completely hilarious, you almost wonder if that workshop does not deserve all the money in times when Hollywood does not produce good comedies anymore.

The T-shirts that carry a message say something about the persons wearing them. Quotations, funny ideas or ironical phrases (I see dumb people / I smile because I have no idea what’s going on / Your lips keep moving and all I hear is Blah Blah Blah). This can label a person as being either ironic, funny, the fan of a band, with a fantastic imagination or not, but, above all, they can label him/her a person who wants to stand apart.

How should the text on a t-shirt look, in order to be read? Short, concise and big. Because the street is a dynamic place. People move, run, are in a hurry. The texts should adapt the environment.

The online is similar to this to a certain amount. Scanning, rapidity and concision. If we analyze a concrete example, we will notice why not only the design and the usability count, but also what and how you write online.

Above we have a compact block of text. Maybe I’m just being subjective, but the design of the first text is not similar to this one:

How are they different? Lists, bullet points, one idea per paragraph, white spaces, clear structure, URLs. Just a few elements that convince the user to read the webpage or to return on it. Because he liked it and it was not difficult to get the information he needed.

But how do you write something for the online? You put yourself in the user’s position, you choose the key words (that will be underlined, made URLs etc.), you try to structure text so that it appears airy and not just a block of text. Think if some of the information can be better explained with the use of a photo, a graphic or a table. Do not insert a big quantity of information on one page. Instead, insert a URL to a downloadable file or to another webpage for the users that are really interested on the subject. More about writing online you can find here.

When I buy a mobile phone I expect it to be able to ring, to save my messages and not to run off of battery in a day; because that’s why they call it “mobile”. The same, when I am searching something on the web or when I enter a page, I’d rather not install all kind of plug-ins just to see the page. I expect to see all the characters. I’d rather the ads don’t turn the navigation process into a winding maze.

The questions is: In what amount does your product respond to the users’ needs? Satisfying the need of simplicity and organization is not just the cherry on top, which you may offer as a favor. It is the dought itself.

About the usability of websites and web based applications. In other words, about making the searching / navigation process easier for the user. So that he comes to feel the things are working on their own and he does not have to stress in order to find the home link or the word he initially searched on Google. Because, unconsciously, we all have certain representations about a menu, about the place of the Shopping Cart or the link of the foreign language version. We are familiarized with Arial and Times NR and not with Haettenschweiler or Kartika.

Do not try to re-invente the wheel. Improve it. Because our expectations are based on what we already know. And when it comes to usability: the simplier, the easier. And more visited.

This percent was our output at Internetics. We have signed in a piece of work (protv.ro) and we got two awards (Webspace - Media Portal and Platinum Icon Best Practices for Webspace). I remember a story in the Munchausen Baron in which two deer (or boars) were shut through their ears with the use of just one bullet.

We did not know there was also a big award for the entire webspace category, so that turned out to be a cool surprise. Especially that our strategy was not to sign in with works for online presence because we are trying to differentiate as specialists in the content organisation (programming and also design), and not as a web agency.

In other words, our competences are towards content-delivery and not image-delivery.

We believe there are others better than us at this (advertising agencies and branging companies). We know how to apply identities in the internet, we do not want to create them from zero. So we are trying to be closer to the industrial design than to the artistic design - we structure information in a clever way, so that people consume it right.

But to return to the purpose of this post: we wanted to show we are good web-developers (web-developers meaning subject’s strategic planning + super-skills in programming + design focused on usability). We also took the Best Practices Award - which would be the equivalent of the agency of the year for the webspace zone.

We are not interested in awards, although they are a good opportunity for celebrating.

Next year we want to win at least an award with a cool concept we are working on at this moment. I will give you a hint - especially for those who are familiar with the SF: Diamond Age

Or, whatever, those 15 minutes of fame could as well last for a few days .

1. So, Wednesday evening, PROTV uploads on their website the material filmed by their cameraman in the Himalayas, showing the Chinese Army assassinating Tibetans.

2. On Saturday I take a glance on the website and I see that protv.ro doesn’t do too well in traffic. Robi (the coordinator of the online division of Mediafax’s televisions) tells me that this happens because that film is linked on onet.pl - the biggest Polish portal - and that creates a super-spike in traffic.

3. The guys from PRO’s IT team move fast and add capacity/servers. So do the site’s editors who add in a few hours an English version of the materials (here and here).

4. The website’s traffic goes way up (at a moment I saw that it had the biggest number of visitors in the last 24 hours, after Softpedia). And notice that most of the visitors came for the movie, so it was a big band consumption.

5. Today I see in GoogleNews a huge cluster (over 100 articles) about the cameraman who filmed the Tibetans’ executions. With apparitions in digg.com, boingboing.net, International Herald Tribune, News Corp, Guardian, CBS News etc.

And now my remarks:

1. Onet.pl is listed in Warsaw’s stock. With a capital of 1.2 billion zlotys and sells of 85 million zlotys in 2005. This means $400 millions and $29 millions. Onet.pl send in an interval smaller than 24 hours, yesterday, over 79 thousands units. With an article that appeared in one category of the news portal. The normal question is this: what traffic do they have?

I feel that it is at least 15-20 times over the one of Romanian portals, otherwise it is not explainable how they sent so many visitors.

2. Here’s an example of Press 2.0. I mean the way they link to blogs and other external sources.

3. It is important to have the hardware resources to deal with this kind of spike in traffic.

4. I am curious if CNN will cover the news. And the Western authorities. At the time being, they kind of need China’s vote regarding the North Korea and my feeling is they would not want to alienate the Chinese with this story. But to remain optimistic.

5. Compare the coverage in the traditional media with the one from digg.com. Which manages to generate a big quantity of comments and reactions.

6. I wonder how much this piece of news will go up. I mean, a few days have passed since an outside big channel covered it (Onet.pl) and after that a few hours until the international English publications/channels took it.

Later update (October 16): Mihai from PROTV offers here technical details. 2100 Gigabytes in 10 hours is something!

Why does not vocal recognition exist? I mean vocal to text conversion. One that works good, also. I think a stuff like this would completely change working and communication interfaces.

Phone communication would orientate more towards data - because the necessary band width is smaller. Automated support would be available - and not those telephonic command rows: press X and Y. The productivity of the online communication could grow. Including the blogs. Very efficient search interfaces would be available.

I say that the next big thing is vocal synthesis and recognition.

And then comes the online-offline joining. Populating real world objects with information that is now available only on the net. I’ve already written about this here. BTW, have you noticed that the first step towards the direction I was talking about was made by wireless sharing form Zune?

And after that Artificial Intelligence.

And then we will consult with AI regarding where to head to.

Last week I have ordered books for at least the tenth time in a year. I prefer polirom.ro. And librariilehumanitas.ro, but not that often. I cannot stand dol.ro, after some experiences. I will not analyze amazon.com, although I have ordered on their site too this year.

Let’s take them one at a time:

1. polirom.ro

- Best value proposition: 30% discount (I prefer buying 6 books instead of 4, especially since I am a power-buyer).

- Ugly, not user-friendly site. Without too many facilities.

- Big variety: all their books.

- I do not like that it takes 10 days for an order to arrive at me.

- Free delivering starting from 50 lei, I think.

2. librariilehumanitas.ro

- Value proposition quite ok: I see now that they offer 10% discount; they used to have 20% (already 10% is not a sufficient incentive for the medium buyer - 50/150 lei).

- Clean website. Clear. Although the search does not always work (it has some small usability problems).

- Great variety: I have even found books that appeared out of stock at Polirom.

- Medium mail delivery period: around 5 days.

- Free transport.

3. dol.ro

I do not know much retail, but I think that Diverta cannot compete with a serious book store chain on the depth side (for example Carturesti or Noi). They just do not have enough books on the shelves. Because in the otherwise generous space they have to stick other things too. An exception I think it’s the bookstore form Vital Mall. But, for instance, the one form Diverta is pathetic.

Whatever, you might think they will improve their virtual part. But it’s not like this. Try searching, for instance, “Borges” on the three websites and see what you get on dol.ro. It is phenomenal how many books on their site can be out of stock. Especially when the advantage in e-commerce is the long-tail and the 24/24 availableness.

- Until this summer it was weird that they did not offer discounts. Now they give a 20% - that’s good. It is already a sure value point.

- The delivering problem (at least when I ordered). Because I work two steps away from Unirea, I chose to take my order directly from the store. When I got there I had to wait a lot. Plus the price would have been 3 lei higher had I bought from the exact same store. So where is the advantage? (Now I think the discount solves this problem.) Had I chosen mail or special delivery I would have had to pay the transportation, no matter the value of the order.

What we can see:

1. Finally, the big offline players (publishing houses, distribution firms or retailers) have more chances to impose themselves. And that is due to the brand and the power of acquisition.

2. Neither Polirom, nor Humanitas promote their site how they should do it. And thank God, there would be ways! For instance, on the bookmark from Polirom it says “The Cultural Supplement” and “Liternet.ro”, but it does not say something like “order from polirom.ro and you have a 30% discount”.

3. Nobody knows how to make the delivering in the same day - I have never got a message in the same day saying that the books I have ordered have been sent (it takes minimum 48-72 hours).

4. There are no incentives for community generated content - see, for instance, threadless.com. If they would offer a little discount or some points for the reviews, I think they would generate some content that could increase the value of their business.

5. There are no intelligent recommendation ways, other than the previous orders. This is the key for orientation in these domains: collaborative filter, clustering etc.

And Romtelecom was king. And if you still remember, we used to connect to the internet around a few minutes to 11pm in order to make the night day. The internet was fascinating those days. It was a nocturnal occupation. In fact, the subscription options suggested the same thing: business (during the day) and personal (during the night).

Anyway, that was not what I wanted to talk about. I wanted it to sound this way: “Back then when the mobile phone looked like a brick, the new Romtelecom site might have had an excuse, now it does NOT have one!”

In this type of situation you simply cannot understand the nature of this change: why change something good with something bad? Why change a labored layout and just throw something else instead. And more content for less content?

The old site has been created by Greenpixel (chapeau bas for the professionalism). The new one is made by Romtelecom (that’s what it says in Metatags at author).

The questions is this: Does it make sense to create in-house? Especially since you are not known as being the pole of creativity in Romania. (I mean, Apple Inc. could take a risk and make all sort of in-house things - although I think they are too smart to abandon the focus - but can the same thing be made by Romtelecom or other companies of the same sort?)

The answer is, of course, no. Because a good web-development company understands how things work. While a communications’ corporation understands other things, but not those related to web-development.

Is in-house creation cheaper? Absolutely! Yes, it is cheaper if you design your desk furniture or call a friend who has Canon Ixus to make your print photos.

Later update: “May we hear for the best” slogan does not really work when you want to make it clear you are selling data, hosting, tripleplay and other related stuff.

The niche market is the next destination for the mass-consumption industries. Targeted, orientated productions, created for certain consumers.

But mass production frustrates the consumers because it shadows their personality. Personalized I pods, selected news sections in your newsletter, book collections in libraries, customized clothes, more and more niche targeted publications and productions. I cannot tell if the majority will end up having just a slight connection / maintenance support while being, at a deeper level, composed by numerous minorities. But I can observe that the need to be remarked is a powerful one.

In college I was part of a team that had to create a website. I was familiar with the need to create products that were orientated to a small number of potential consumers, but they matched their standards and expectations. My website was targeted on a neighborhood from Bucharest and its inhabitants. It contained dates regarding schools, drug stores, shops from the neighborhood and a lot of pictures.

What I did not know at that time was this: in order to exist for a subject you have to appear in the first two pages of a search engine. For this you need to set the main key words and the general key words. The title and the descriptions the search engine lists must be interesting enough for the potential viewers. Otherwise, they are likely to not even open the site.

The website planning brainstorming process can start with the rule of the 5 W, suitable to any communication situation. Who tells what to whom, when and where?
Whom are you writing to? Answer this and you will also know your competition, you will be able to identify the main domain for your keywords, the ways to lure your viewers and all the other things that follow in the post-planning phase. Already having the two first coordinates: whom and where (on the internet, of course), you must not forget that a webpage that takes a lot of time to load will lose viewers. As Catalin was also saying, everybody wants everything as fast as possible. For the producers, “To be on the wire is life. The rest is waiting.”, as in All That Jazz.

What are the fonts you should use, how many images you should load, what is the best resolution, browsers checking, an user-friendly menu and what makes a menu user-friendly? Details in Website Planning - From Conception to Launching.

That is why I think Google bought YouTube. Nowadays people don’t consume philosophical systems like the Kantian Criticisms, because they switched on essays’ collections. They don’t buy tones of sophisticated food in order to prepare some tasty delectable dish, but they buy pizza and microwave it. And when we get to a restaurant we want a really quick serving. Because we also have other things to do.

Right-on-time delivery of every pleasure and every need. We hear more and more often “Today I’ve seen the X season” of some comedy show.

Because:
1. the actual public can no longer wait a couple of minutes for something to happen. They want the continuously flowing jokes and they get this easier from the 20 (or 45) minutes per episode series than from the 2-3 hours long artistic movie.

2. because the public doesn’t really want to experiment, they want to consume something they know they would like.

3. because the actual public wants to consume at his own pace – on DVD or computer, and not in front of the TV set – at the hour someone has decided the public from that specific target is likely to be in front of the TV screen.
The novel populated with non-substitutable characters is dying. Almost no one wants to feel the disintegration. But they do want sharable stuff. Long live WOW. And chick-lit novels.

Therefore, the new small-multi-energy nutrients-pill-concentrated-in-a-small-space-format will win. BTW, have you seen that commercial at some detergent which is now 30% more concentrated, so the 3 kilos packet becomes a 2 kilos one, washes the same and costs, of course, the same as the old 3 kilos packets?

I am looking forward to the artistic aspects of the new format: visual 30 seconds long haiku. Right-on-Time Satori onYouTube.

Leaving poetry behind, I say that “Google Tubes & Tunes” will be an important distribution channel for some tough guy from Hollywood, TV or music industry for maximum two years. Remains to see how they will solve the intellectual property problems.
PS. Romanian Television, are you on? Gag of the day with Iri, Moni, Jiji, Adi, Tetelu and the rest of the illustrious are pure gold. (Actually PROTV and, in a smaller amount, Realitatea and Antena3 have already started doing this. I would say that the Flash-based video executions are much more indicated than the mpd, avi, mov ones.) Especially since the viral effect already exists – we all get them on email from the enthusiastic ones, they can be found on torente or on other sharing forms.