strategy
Digital Engagement in the Public Sector
Sep 8th
Overview
Author: Tom Raggett
Pages: 30
Features: In-depth examination of how UK Government Departments are engaging digitally with their stakeholders and wider public.
About this Guide
This report examines the current use of digital channels within the public sector, with recommendations about organisational policy and structure, how to deal with new communications channels and ways of working more effectively.
The research, based on a series of interviews with the Directors of Communications of 20 major Government Departments, examines how the Government could be using new technology and channels to provide better services while also making costs saving by embedding digital in civil service culture.
The report, written by independent Government adviser Tom Raggett, covers four main areas:
- What does digital engagement mean to Government?
- How [is the Government] structured to deliver?
- What next for digital engagement?
- Digital engagement in practice
Contents
The following areas are covered within this guide:
- Broadcast communication is marketing
- Policy making is most like crowdsourcing
- Digital must not be a distancing mechanism
- Digital is: Providing services
- Digital is: Cost reduction
- Important to consider the digitally unengaged
- Departmental leadership defines digital engagement
- Is “success the lack of failure”?
- Departments which understand their stakeholders best are most advanced in digital engagement
- Departments may not need a separate digital engagement strategy
- Leadership can let go a little
- Communications department profile
- eCommunications teams still bear an imprint of their history
- Training and skills
- Active listening
- Measurement
- New metrics
- Integration
- Infrastructure
- Enhance access to new digital channels
- Consultation and policy development
- Correspondence
You can download the free sample to see the full list of contents.
Who is this guide for?
This is a must-read for anyone working within a Governmental body, department or organisation. Client-side companies, agencies and consultants operating in this sector will also find relevance in this report.
Related resources
Econsultancy covers a wide range of similar operational topics that offer practical advice, such as our Managing Digital Channels Guide and Child Protection Guide. Up-to-date information about the digital landscape can also be found in our Internet Statistics Compendium.
To go exclusive or not: dealing with the dilemma
Aug 20th
Advantages
The security. In many but not all cases, exclusive agreements can provide a level of security that is hard to find in non-exclusive agreements. For instance, an exclusive advertising agreement may provide for a guaranteed amount of revenue over a several year period.
The premiums. Oftentimes, exclusive agreements can be quite lucrative. After all, if you’re giving up the ability to deal with others in a particular area of your business or market, you are probably being paid a premium for that.
You get to build deeper relationships. Managing relationships is one of the most time-consuming tasks business owners and executives engage in. Forging relationships that are exclusive often reduces the number of relationships you need to manage, allowing you to build a stronger bond.
Disadvantages
There’s an opportunity cost. An exclusive agreement might look good on paper right now, but locking yourself into one always comes at a cost. After all, a better deal that you can’t avail yourself of might come along next week, next month or next year, and you won’t be able to take advantage of it.
It’s like a marriage. An exclusive agreement is a lot like a marriage. Marriage can be a wonderful thing, but it can also be painful when something goes sour. The other party could, for instance, fail to perform their obligations, leaving you high, dry and in panic mode as you scramble to find a new party to fill their shoes.
Losing touch is easy. Dealing with a wide range of parties enables companies to stay in touch with what’s going on in the market. When locked into an exclusive arrangement, it’s arguably easier to lose touch with the latest developments and trends, especially if the other party isn’t at the leading edge of them.
In short, an exclusive relationship is often a tough proposition to accept, and an equally tough proposition to reject. Making the right decision requires that you weigh not the advantages and disadvantages, both in the short-term and the long-term.
Will snazzy web fonts soon be a reality?
Aug 19th
Because the number of fantastic fonts in existence far exceeds the number of fonts that are web safe, web designers are forced to settle for web safe fonts, use graphic text instead of HTML text, or implement JavaScript-based solutions like cufón or the Google Font API.
But thanks to the Web Open Font Format (WOFF) technology that is being worked on by the W3C, font angst may one day be a thing of the past.
WOFF relies on a CSS element, @font-face, which directs a web browser to a location at which the font specified by a designer can be downloaded. WOFF also incorporates compression technology to speed download time of fonts.
As noted by News.com’s Stephen Shankland, technology isn’t WOFF’s biggest stumbling block; business interests are. On the browser front, Microsoft, Mozilla, Google and Apple are all looking at including WOFF in future versions of the browsers they distribute.
Even more important is the support WOFF is receiving from major font foundries, including Adobe, ITC Fonts, and Linotype. While font foundries have good reason to be concerned about piracy, WOFF, if it flies, also provides them with a significant opportunity, as web designers and publishers would constitute a large new market of potential licensees.
Obviously, despite the gains WOFF is making on the technical and business fronts, we won’t see snazzier web fonts overnight. There’s still a lot of work to do, and until WOFF is supported by browsers with majority market share, it’s unlikely that designers will flock to use it.
But nonetheless, WOFF looks to be the best hope that the web might one day be a bit more diverse than Arial and Times New Roman.
The BBC crashes the HTML5 party
Aug 17th
In a blog post on Friday, Huggers explained why the BBC is sticking with Flash for the time being, unlike many companies and organizations which are already making and planning HTML5 transitions. In his post, he made a statement that is sure to give pause to those who think HTML5 is destined to be the best thing since sliced bread: “HTML5 is starting to sail off-course.” While noting that the BBC is “committed to the aims of HTML5“, he expressed some honest worries:
The fact is that there’s still a lot of work to be done on HTML5 before we can integrate it fully into our products. As things stand I have concerns about HTML5′s ability to deliver on the vision of a single open browser standard which goes beyond the whole debate around video playback.
One of Huggers’ primary concerns is that various parties working on the HTML5 spec are increasingly putting their own interests before the goal of “bringing HTML5 to a ratified state.” As Huggers notes, this isn’t anything new, and in the past, proprietary implementations of technologies have frequently won out over the standards they were supposed to be based on.
It’s far too early to tell if key HTML5 stakeholders, such as browser vendors, will eventually opt to forget that HTML5 is supposed to be a ‘standard‘, as they have done with other standards in the past, but Huggers clearly hints at the possibility. As NewTeeVee notes, Huggers may have been referring to the fact that Apple has been showing off HTML5 functionality that is only supported by Apple’s Safari browser when he wrote of “browser vendors…showcasing proprietary HTML5 implementations.“
In my opinion, it is going to be difficult for HTML5 to overcome the challenges previous web standards have faced in the past. The reason: the process of developing standards, especially those with goals as lofty as HTML5, is something that inevitably takes more time than the market is often willing to wait. Vendors, knowing this, have an incentive to move faster, even if it basically defeats the development of true standards.
From this perspective, developers and companies might be wise to heed Huggers’ justification for the BBC’s continued use of Flash: “it currently happens to be the most efficient way to deliver a high quality experience to the broadest possible audience.” While Flash certainly doesn’t and won’t offer the best experience for every website or application, Huggers highlights an important point. At the end of the day, developers and companies care a lot more about technologies (and standards) than consumers do. Consumers, on the other hand, care almost exclusively about experience. Until HTML5 can guarantee the best experience possible, at least some of the HTML5 optimism out there would seem premature.
Ten dangerous ideas for startup entrepreneurs
Aug 17th
Raising money from VCs is crucial to success. While having a flush bank
account can give a startup entrepreneur the opportunity to execute on a
vision, money alone doesn’t guarantee success — the majority of
companies that receive VC funding still fail, just like all businesses.
Bootstrapping is wonderful. Some believe that startups should raise as
much money as they can, but there’s another camp that advocates for
bootstrapping. Unfortunately, extreme bootstrapping is problematic
because not having enough money is just as detrimental as having too
much of it. In fact, undercapitalization is one of the leading causes
of new venture failure.
We can figure the business model out later. While there are more than a few high-profile examples of successful entrepreneurs that didn’t know how their startups were going to make money, the reality is that launching a new company without a business model (or some thoughts about business model) is, in most cases, more likely to produce failure than success.
There’s no competition. Even though focusing too much on the competition can be a distraction, entrepreneurs who believe that there is no competition are almost always completely out of touch with reality, and that’s a far worse thing.
The competition sucks. Many entrepreneurs who recognize that they have competition believe that the competition is so inferior as to be of marginal importance to their new business. In some instances, this might be the case, but most of the time, this type of denial can be harmful.
Experience is overrated. Just because a number of high-profile startups have been founded by entrepreneurs with little to no experience doesn’t mean that experience doesn’t matter. Experience is far more likely to provide for key industry insights that will boost the chances of success, and in some relationship-driven industries, having a track record is a prerequisite for getting deals done.
We don’t need a business plan. While a 40-page business plan might be an unnecessary formality, not planning is planning to fail, so it’s always good for entrepreneurs to put into writing a ‘business plan’ for personal use.
That’s going to happen — it’s in our business plan. Business plans, including those with financial projections, can be valuable planning tools, but far too often entrepreneurs conflate plans and projections with reality. They come to believe that certain things are real because it’s in the business plan. Business plans and projections should be thought of as a guidebook, not a map.
Somebody will want to buy us. A big exit is something many entrepreneurs dream about, but it’s not something they should count on. Unfortunately, when you’re building for an acquisition, chances are you’re not building for self-sustainability.
Failure is not an option. Negativity isn’t a desirable trait for an entrepreneur, but overconfidence isn’t one either. Opportunity cost is the greatest cost entrepreneurs pay and therefore, getting tied up pursuing a business that isn’t going anywhere can be very expensive. That’s why entrepreneurs should be prepared to recognize when a business has reasonably failed and be ready to move on, even if they’re going to fight as hard as they can for success.
Photo credit: chego101 via Flickr.
The keys to finding a good contract web developer
Aug 16th
Before Engagement
He or she:
Is responsive. I’ve seen it time and time again: clients who hire a developer that is less-than-responsive during the courtship process, only to find out that when the project begins, he or she is even less responsive. It’s not surprising: if someone is less-than-responsive when they’re trying to win your business, why would they be more responsive after you’ve given it to them?
Has references. Unless you’re specifically looking for someone who is new to the business (for whatever reason), a good developer will be ready and willing to provide solid references to you.
Has a portfolio/CV. While it seems like a no-brainer that a developer should have a portfolio or CV, you’d be surprised at how many clients I’ve encountered who have hired a developer based on a few simple words easily muttered: “sure I can do that.”
Gets down to business. Serious developers will ask you to sign an agreement (if you don’t present one yourself) and bring up payment terms as soon as your discussions get serious. Sometimes individuals who haven’t been in the client role before will be scared by this, but it’s actually a sign of a professional.
After Engagement
He or she:
Treats you like a customer, not an annoyance. Anyone who you’re going to be paying should treat you with respect. After all, you’re paying their rent. If your new developer starts acting entitled and like he or she is doing you a favor, watch out.
Isn’t interested in nickel and diming you, but lets you know when you go out of scope. As a developer, there’s a fine line between being unreasonably stingy (and unhelpful) and permitting a client to go too far. Look for a developer who doesn’t have a habit of saying point blank “that can’t be done” (few things can’t be done), but who also isn’t afraid to tell you when something is out of the agreed-upon scope.
Keeps you up to date. You should not have to chase down your developer to get a status report. Obviously, you probably don’t need a status report every other hour (you don’t want to be a legitimate pest) but a good developer will be proactive in letting you know where things are at, especially when milestones are approaching.
Delivers, and on time. Needless to say, a good developers will deliver what you asked for within the agreed upon timeframes. This said, I’ve met more than a few people who continue to work with developers that don’t always deliver an on-spec product or on time.
At the end of the day, finding a good developer requires that you have certain expectations. Obviously, expectations will vary depending on your needs, and your budget. But if your expectations aren’t met, your search should continue. Don’t settle for mediocrity.
Managing Digital Teams
Aug 12th
In this second decade of ecommerce, with digital revenues vital to businesses, there is a need to fully integrate digital activity in the business while, at the same time, meet the growing call to make digital teams fully accountable for performance.
Digital professionals are aware of the demands to increase team performance by undertaking additional responsibilities and contributing broadly to organisational development. This course builds upon established management good practice to look at the distinctive needs of online and ecommerce teams: how to build them, understanding the competencies, communication in the team and across the businesses, building effectiveness, leadership and transformation.
Freelancers: five ways to maintain your sanity
Aug 9th
Boost your rates
While there’s always a limit to how much you can realistically charge your clients, there’s a good chance you’re charging less than it. Increasing your rates (within reason) is often a good way to make your life simpler. For one, it may actually help boost your perceived value, especially if you’re undercharging. It also often weeds out ‘bad’ clients, helps minimize the risk you will take a loss on a project if Murphy’s Law hits and perhaps most importantly, can also enable you to do more for fewer clients.
Set boundaries
Want to be a successful, and sane, freelancer? Be prepared to learn how to say ‘no‘. You may have the most wonderful clients in the world, but clients are clients, and a good number of them, if given the opportunity, will try to get their way even if means you lose out. The key is learning how to say ‘no‘ at the appropriate time and in the appropriate manner. Obviously, a freelancer who always says ‘no‘ is likely to get a reputation for having a bad attitude. You don’t want that. But ‘no‘, when used as a tool for setting boundaries, is a must.
A tip: when a client asks for something that isn’t in-scope and would materially impact either cost or schedule, make it clear that the request cannot be accommodated within the existing budget and schedule, but also make it clear that you’re willing to work with the client to make sure he or she gets what she’s wants if the client is able to accommodate the appropriate changes to the engagement. Sometimes they will, and you make more money, and sometimes they’ll come to their senses and stick with what they wanted in the first place.
Stop nightmare clients before they strike
If you have been working with clients for any length of time, you probably spot the nightmare clients before they’re your clients. You know all the signs — early miscommunications, no specs, etc. — but even so, you still might take them on. If your sanity is important to you, it’s worth recognizing that some prospective clients are best left as ‘prospective‘ clients. In other words, turning away the wrong business and walking away is an option. Incidentally, avoiding nightmare clients is not only one of the best ways to maintain your sanity, it’s one of the best ways to maintain your profitability too.
Focus on building up the right client list
One of the most difficult parts of being a hired gun is drumming up new business. This is particularly true for freelancers who are relatively new to the game, but is often the case for seasoned veterans who have high client turnover. High client turnover is a sign that you’ve built up the wrong client list.
Instead of thinking all paying clients are created equal, think long-term and focus on acquiring clients that you have the potential to develop ‘committed‘ relationships with. Achieving the ultimate goal of not having to do business development again may or may not be possible, but by considering the long-term potential of each new client relationship, you have a better shot at minimizing the day to day hustle that is so distracting and sanity-killing.
Take a vacation
Vacation? If you’re a busy freelancer, the word may be foreign to you. After all, when you have a menagerie of clients to manage, finding the time to venture off to a deserted island is pretty tough to do. But it’s important that you make some time, at least once a year. If you have the right clients, they’ll understand, and when you come back, you’ll notice that you actually perform better.
Photo credit: Edge of Sanity via Flickr.
Creating value in an age of addiction
Jul 28th
In a blog post, Graham writes:
The world is more addictive than it was 40 years ago. And unless the forms of
technological progress that produced these things are subject to different laws
than technological progress in general, the world will get more addictive in the
next 40 years than it did in the last 40.
It’s an intriguing thought, but Graham’s conclusion is even more interesting to me:
But if I’m right about the acceleration of addictiveness, then this kind of
lonely squirming to avoid it will increasingly be the fate of anyone who wants
to get things done. We’ll increasingly be defined by what we say no to.
Despite all the distractions that most of us grapple with on a daily basis, most of us strive to ‘get things done.‘ Whether you run a business, develop website, are a marketer, etc., results rarely produce themselves. And increasingly, the technologies we rely on to produce results can be the same technologies that hamper our ability to produce them.
From this perspective, Graham’s post provides some particularly useful hidden insight no matter what you do, or which industry you work in. Far too often, we focus on the things “we like too much.” How can I expand the scope of my products and services? How can I build a ‘stickier‘ website? How can I create more ‘innovative‘ marketing campaigns? We’re addicted to more, faster, thinking that both of those things combined equals ‘better‘. But they usually don’t. Unfortunately, as Graham notes, the “accelerating rate at which technological progress throws off new addictions” is something we probably won’t be able to fight.
But this is good news in my opinion. Why? This will provide significant opportunities for businesses and individuals who recognize the simple fact that in our fast-paced world of clutter and distractions, those who have simple solutions will be able to create more value for customers, and extract more revenue from them.
If you run a business, focus less on developing cool new products and services; remember that your customers probably come to you looking for a simple, cost-effective solution to a problem. If you build websites, don’t worry so much about how ‘sticky‘ they are; utility may not always be sexy but it matters more than ever. If you develop marketing campaigns, remember that your story — the message — is what compels consumers; all the cool mediums you have at your disposal can’t create such a message for you. And so on and so forth.
In short, in a world where the number of things we like too much is growing at such a rapid pace, the businesses and individuals who can give their customers a breather and help them ‘get things done‘ will be worth their weight in gold.
Five ways your staff can improve your multichannel marketing
Jul 16th
1. Don’t isolate your teams.
Generally speaking, the core purpose of online marketing is to drive traffic to your website.
Certainly sales teams may focus more heavily on conversions, while your design team works out how to maximise the customer experience, but ultimately you all need to pull together to make this as holistic an experience as possible.
One of the major stumbling blocks in marketing is the increasing specialisation of the teams that facilitate this. Instead consider how and where you can cross-purpose teams in order to achieve a more integrated workflow.
Concentrate on improving internal communication and information sharing. Your technical teams should ultimately have as deep an understanding of your customer profile as your marketers.
By promoting collaboration, you’ll be more likely to spot gaps in your strategy, and will improve your entire web presence.
2. Check your hiring policy
One of the biggest challenges when organising a site is deciding how to group products or services.
Different customers will obviously have widely differing habits and preferences, so you need to organise your site based on a composite picture.
While it’s fine to organise products according to traditional factors like ‘Brand’, you may also need to consider more esoteric classifications. Think carefully about who uses the product and why.
A good way to initiate this is to introduce seasonal promotions. If you’re a retailer for example, then putting together ‘summer holiday’ packages makes sense, but think about your target demographic. Are they likely to be found caravanning in the Cotswolds or larging it in Ibiza?
Think about your staff again. Why did they join your organisation? Why did they want to work for you? All these questions are common enough on HR forms but are rarely fed back into the workplace. If you have a team that joined you because of your reputation for bleeding edge tech then it’s a fair bet that they represent a large section of your target market.
Likewise you should organise your site monitoring around these factors.
Consistently map customer behaviour and actively consult profiles when considering new sales initiatives. Track single, repeat and multi-site visitors and consider how you can bundle products to appeal to these customers.
Ultimately, the understanding needs to exist that customers exist in a variety of different group sizes, from ‘individual’ to ‘all’. Your site should be flexible enough and your report data detailed enough to cater to either, so make sure you utilise metrics like conversation in order to maximise groupings.
3. Get input from all levels.
Analysing the entire customer journey both on and offline has never been more important, so it’s paramount that you receive feedback at every step.
Keep an eye on search terms, conversion and departure points to clearly identify any problems with your site.
Is your checkout procedure too complex? Do you have too many distractions on a given page? By focusing on these key areas you can hone your copy to dominate search, and refine upsale features on site.
Overall, you want to make your sales process as quick, painless and intuitive as possible. By taking input from staff at all levels you’ll gain a wider understanding of possible bottlenecks and be able to change accordingly.
4.Share your data.
By allowing multi-purpose teams to analyse data, you’ll notice gaps in your marketing you may not otherwise spot.Sales teams will be able to clearly identify which marketing initiatives are working most effectively.
Despite the various goal conversion setups that analytics services provide, there’s still a definite tendency to focus on a single KPI. Stop and look at your analytics and think through what each measurement means.
Monitoring actual sales is obvious, but examined in isolation this will leave you in the dark when it comes to possible future problems. A decrease in sales may initially point you in the direction of price, rather than, for example, traffic quality and relevance.
Make sure you’re getting the best out of your analytics by finding comparative goals for each metric.
Put together a framework of major KPI’s, set goals for each and have different departments review these regularly.
5: Continuous improvement from within.
Regularly review everything. Ask staff to actively suggest and report areas where they or their friends are dissatisfied.
Make suitable comparison benchmarks. Check out your competitors and look for holes in their strategy as well as your own.
Instigate a policy of constant improvement, if possible incentivise staff suggestions that lead to improvements. Don’t automatically assume that you know better than them.
Make as much effort as possible to get different teams talking, organise social events and online initiatives, get rid of the competitive sales element and instigate company performance based bonus schemes.
In other words: Listen.
By applying the opinions and diversity of your staff to your selling process you’ll be able to gain a deeper understanding of your customer and will have access to an otherwise underused ideas pool. Combine this diversity with solid metrics and you’ll have a continually adaptive and improving strategy that anticipates and harnesses trends and creates an intuitive full service experience for your customers.