Using social media locally - new place identification system from Yahoo is a major step

Posted by Sal on Jun 2nd, 2009 | Comments

Yahoo Placemaker finds place names in text content, and returns specific location information such as latitude, longitude, other names, political borders, size, etc.

This will be a key tool for developing place-based social media. For example, this will be used to automate a local news feed for a hotel websites and message boards.  News sources selected by management - such as the BBC, Londonist or your preferred local blogs - can be filtered through Placemaker to only show stories that are relevant to your area.

The possibilities are not limited to news either. Any content feed can be examined and filtered, so look for new location-specific services to be designed to use existing content. Also look for existing location-based services, such as review sites, to have much more content on offer.

This is a big step as thus-far, there hasn’t been a service that does this type of place identification for free on a mass scale.

How to regain your hotel guests’ trust & get better reviews

Posted by Sal on May 21st, 2009 | Comments

The UK Hotel industry has changed substantially in the past 4 years, with two significant trends:

1. The rise of user-generated content, dubbed Travel 2.0.
2. The move of investment capital towards mid-range and budget hotels

This has forced mid-range hoteliers to address the leading edge of hotel marketing for the first time.  For the last decade, the hoteliers’ struggle against intermediaries has been lead by 4- and 5-star brands.  Intermediaries have seized control of guest profile information, and in turn, the benefits of an ongoing relationship with guests.  Agents who provide platforms for user-generated content, such as Tripadvisor, have won market share. Research and development by Marriott and Ritz-Carleton has helped counteract the increased control of intermediaries.   The budget sector has benefited by applying the best practices created by these more upscale counterparts.

Investment in hotels is moving away from 5-star and 4-star properties, towards 3-star hotels which offer a greater return on capital.  Marriott’s strategy has been congruent with this, with increased investment in their mid-range Courtyard hotels.  This trend has caused a shift away from personal service, as hotels reduce staff, and a loss in immediate feedback channels for guests. Guests have felt a loss of control, as their requests go unanswered, and turn to review sites in frustration.

Travel 2.0 represents a large opportunity for hotels and guests to regain control.  Customers are relying on each other because of credibility, and hotels can present the most credible context for reviews.  Companies in other industries that have recently exposed their complaint and feedback processes have seen large increases in sales and customer loyalty, and valuable insights into their product development.  This transparency also leads to customer confidence, as it becomes clear that intermediaries are not in a position to facilitate action based on feedback.

For example, Dell has provided its customers a feedback platform. This has historically been the domain of computer review websites. In doing so, Dell has:

• Become their customers’ first destination for feedback and reviews
• Increased participation in the process (since customers know their feedback applies directly to product development, rather than industry commentary)
• Prioritised their efforts according to customer demand
• Established their own feedback platform as a leader in industry commentary
• Fostered loyalty by establishing direct relationships with many of their customers

Similar opportunities are available to hoteliers. As hotel provide these types of feedback platforms, their websites will demonstrate how the hotel reacts to feedback, building guest confidence. This strategy ultimately leads to hotel websites becoming the standard reference point for the quality of the hotel.

What’s the difference between HTML, XHTML, CSS and PHP?

Posted by Sal on May 20th, 2009 | Comments

A friend new to web design asked this question, and here’s a short(ish) answer.

HTML is a “markup” language, in that you mark up content with tags. It takes text and adds machine code around it so the browser can make it pretty.

Then XML came along, which looks like HTML in that it’s a markup language, but has nothing to do with making things look good. It’s for structuring data.

At the same time, HTML was getting really ugly because it was trying to handle making things pretty and separating text into meaningful bits like XML, so they came up with CSS. CSS is a way to describe how structred data should be displayed. So the HTML can concentrate on structure, and the CSS on prettiness. When the HTML is only structure, it can be formatted as XML compatible, so that’s XHTML.

PHP is an old-fashioned language in a way. It’s a language that actually does stuff, like 1 + 1 = 2. This is known as a procedural language. (PHP is also object-oriented but that’s getting fancy.) So PHP does the work like calculations and reading databases, and then generates the HTML to be displayed in the browser.

PHP is back end and HTML is front end.

How To Price A New Product

Posted by Sal on May 14th, 2009 | Comments

A product designer from LKIC’s Tycoon Bootcamp approached me for help determining the price for his new product, and getting it to market.

The product is a “category killer,” having no obvious competition, so he’s struggling with determining a sale price. At this stage, the price is a pivotal part of his business plan. Since his designs aren’t yet legally protected, using quantitative tests in the marketplace isn’t an option.

When setting prices without exposure to the marketplace, the best practices set out by John Hogan in his book “The Strategy and Tactics of Pricing” are the strongest approach.

Determining optimal prices is one of the most underrated and strategically important aspects of marketing. It dictates what marketing strategies and tactics are financially available, defines market segments and determines how to approach each. This requires a in-depth understanding of the users, the industry itself, the market segments and the way customers use the product.

Whether or not your product is a category killer, your customers survived without you before, so there is always an alternative. Hogan’s approach starts with this alternative and then works through the potential markets, determining the added value of your product.

It then covers strategies on managing complex pricing, value communication, and segmentation - all based around the added value of the product for each specific application. This pricing approach doesn’t leave money on the table - customers who derive more value willingly pay more. Creating campaigns is also much easier for these types of segments, because the value has been clearly defined and articulated for each market.

If you’re an entrepreneur with a new product, this method of pricing is extremely helpful throughout your business. If you’ve been using a cost-plus or directly competitive approach until now, this book will be an eye-opener.

Strategies To Avoid Catastrophic Downtime

Posted by Sal on May 11th, 2009 | Comments

Recently a friend’s entire business was offline for around 12 hours, and customers were without service for the first time since the business started, over 7 years ago. Even in this case, where the team is very talented and diligent, mistakes were made.

This is a learning opportunity for us all. The following strategies will help you make immediate improvements with the reliability of your IT infrastructure:

1. Always make the business decisions first.

If you’re finding your IT infrastructure tends to hold you back, rather than create opportunity, you’re likely making IT decisions that aren’t driven by your business strategy.

A common trap is thinking that maintaining software will be as cheap and easy as installing it. This trap sometimes disguises itself to leadership as, “That’s an IT issue - I’ll let them decide how to handle that,” or to IT as, “I can just install that quickly.”

In both cases, the IT decision doesn’t get aligned to the business strategy, and it bypasses the risk/reward process that all other business decisions go through. Not only is this needlessly dangerous, it sets your IT investments down a path that isn’t in line with your overall business.

2. Don’t host anything you don’t have to.

It may seem trivial to host your own DNS, email, web servers or another common service, but you’ll pay dearly when it’s a trivial problem that takes your service down.

As you have to maintain more software, you spread your resources thin and expose yourself to catastrophe from unpatched security flaws and version incompatibilities. When it comes to reacting in an emergency, managing all of these bits and pieces is going to exacerbate the problem, reducing your response time.

In the long run, it’s cheaper to use a company with dedicated experts, leaving your experts to focus on your core business. This applies to tech businesses too: if it’s not in your core offering, outsource it.

3. Don’t punish your users for your failures.

Degrade gracefully. Avoid unnecessary dependencies between systems.

In many cases, a single failure causes other functional systems to stop, causing more inconvenience than necessary.  If there’s a catastrophic failure in one area, plan on containing it.  Consider that minimising your users’ inconvenience may be more important than other factors (such as billing.)

For example, if you run a metered service with low marginal costs, billing or authentication failures should default to a minimal access level rather than no access at all. The loss of the unbilled revenue is likely much smaller than the loss in revenue from customer churn.

4. Communicate.

Don’t worsen your downtime by going dark on your communications as well. Have a plan to get the message out quickly and regularly. Letting your customers know ASAP helps them to minimise impact to them. Regular updates, whether you’re on track or not, help your users manage and maintains their confidence in you.

5. Monitor.

External monitoring services are so cheap, there’s no excuse not to use them. Management and customer services should be on the list for automatic notification. This frees up your techies to deal with the problem first, and the entire business can react immediately.

6. Be redundant, but not complicated.

In many cases, duplication is grossly overcomplicated and unnecessary. Redundancy needs to be simple.

Most business don’t have the time to regularly test their backup or failover infrastructure, so simplicity helps make sure it still works when you need it.  The IT world is full of horror stories of fancy RAID arrays and automated backup/restore plans gone wrong.

Consider what critical functions need redundancy, and within those, consider if reduced functionality will suffice. If so, you have a much simpler failover system to build and maintain.

As an example, consider REST with queuing. It may require some investment, but it has many additional benefits. Your services become far more scalable, more maintainable, and more flexible from a strategic point-of-view. Matt Biddulph, of Dopplr, has a great presentation on this here.

7. Be watchful AFTER a migration.

Migrations are a time when you are most exposed to human error and planning failures. Plan to have extra people watching and ready during and AFTER the migration.

Migrations tend to cause glitches that are tough to spot right away. Sometimes, caching or permissions causes serious glitches to go undetected immediately after a migration. Your tests will pass, but the problems will crop up later. So watch carefully afterwards. If you have any processes that occur on a regular interval (say monthly) then be vigilant until you’ve run through at least one complete cycle.

8. Make sure you have redundant humans.

Many small businesses are over-reliant on a single tech person. This might be a necessary risk when you’re bootstrapping, but it’s a risk that must be managed.

Don’t fool yourself into thinking you need another techy of equal skill, time or knowledge. Critical emergency functions rarely require detailed knowledge of the entire system. In many cases, a server admin just needs to know how to build a few servers and install your software. That’s enough to have a second pair of hands at the ready, just in case.

Break your emergency plans into small chunks, and document them in phases. You’ll find the most likely causes of failure are easy to document and quick for someone else to learn.

For server administration, I’ve used Green Olive Tree for years. They charge $100 per server per month, which includes pro-active 24/7 monitoring and an expert pair of hands constantly at the ready.

9. Make sure you have redundant suppliers.

Organisational failure is becoming more likely, and sometimes the signs aren’t clear.  Many businesses are stretching their people further, and that can lead to unforeseen problems if you’re a customer. ISPs may have bandwidth cut off, or reduce their tech support response times without notice. Don’t put all of your infrastructure in the hands of a single organisation.

10. Make sure you have redundant bandwidth and routing.

Monitoring and DNS failover is very cheap and practical. If you consider your absolute minimal requirements, you can usually configure a server or two (or even a shared hosting package) at a different ISP which uses a different backbone, and automatically failover from the monitoring system.

As we move more towards service-oriented marketplace, SLAs have become more than a legal and architectural consideration. The marketplace is becoming more crowded, so downtime will have a greater and greater effect on your credibility and marketability. That means the impact of potential failure scenarios is rising.

At the same time, the cost of addressing these risks is lowering. The recent advanced in technology such as cloud computing, REST, monitoring and so on, now allow you to reasonably address these scenarios.

If you take a look at your services with fresh eyes, you’ll see many new opportunities to expand quicker and avoid disasters.