Strategy Blog: Viget Labs

Stephanie Hay - Project Manager :

As somewhat related to my post about how offline experiences can influence those online, I'm going to dish a bit about customer service.  We work with clients who have products or services that potential customers (understandably) want to explore more holistically before choosing, so we may suggest their linking to/exploring the places where chatter about them might already exist -- like GetSatisfaction or Rate-it-All -- to help promote acceptance through transparency. And, on the flip side, it has the potential for companies to learn and grow based on the honest feedback being exchanged out there.

Southwest Airlines has been an early adopter of social marketing strategies, using Twitter and blogging religiously, and continues to forge itself as a rather personable airline that strives for that transparency.  I have been flying it whenever possible -- or, at least since Independence Air folded, sniff sniff -- for a great combination of low fares and friendly staffers.  Twice now I've been on flights where an employee has sung to us.  And, last night, after being diverted BACK to Baltimore having being told not to land on Cleveland's ice-covered runway (good idea), the ground staff re-fueled the plane and then hopped onboard to announce, "I hope we don't see you here again tonight. No offense." 

None taken.

Well, we didn't see Baltimore again, but we didn't see Cleveland, either.

Continue reading "Customer Service With a Smile (For Real)"

Jackson Fox - User Experience Designer :

Over the last few months, I've worked on several projects that started with good, solid user research efforts. We've sent out surveys, performed interviews, run usability tests, and worked with customer support teams. It's exciting to start a design project with good input from users, but the research we've been doing made me realize how often we have to work without the benefit of good user insights. This got me looking around at tools that companies can use to get started on gaining insight into their user's needs. I found two that looked particularly useful, and easy to use: Get Satisfaction and UserVoice.

Continue reading "Creating a Feedback Loop for Users"

Kara Davis - Project Manager :

Aside from its standard bevy of free tools and services, Google has several grants and premium services available to nonprofits:

1) Google AdWords Grants

Certain nonprofits are eligible for free pay-per-click (PPC) advertising through Google AdWords (up to $10,000/month). Organizations are able to target keywords and craft appropriate ads within Google's guidelines.

Ads are each given a cost-per-click (CPC) value of $1, so they're not going to rise to the top as often for common keywords that others may spend more money on. Once you get a grant, it's important to carefully select and monitor your keywords to make sure they will actually show up on relevant searches within your niche.

The grant amount will vary based on how much you are able to use in a given month. The monthly cap is $10,000, but because you only spend $1 if your ad is shown AND someone clicks on it, it's rare that you'll actually be able to spend the full amount in a given month. Still, you'll be able to tweak your campaigns and keywords at any time to try to maximize your grant.

• Check your eligibility - Basically, you should be a nonprofit organization that is not political, fee-based, or religious. Organizations in several countries are eligible.
• Apply for the grant

Continue reading "Google Gives Back - Services and Grants for Nonprofits"

Kevin Vigneault - Project Manager :

The heat map below is an attempt to visualize the current trend in banner advertising. It shows banner size and placement (highlighted in white) on 50 different popular sites. The brightest white areas are where banner ads were most frequently placed and the black areas are where no banner ads were displayed. The two red lines are 1,024 pixels apart to provide scale. Click here to view the heat map at full size.

 

Observations

 

• The most frequently used areas are along the top and right sides of the page.
• The most popular ad sizes are 728x90 Leaderboards and 300x250 Medium Rectangles.
• More sites place Leaderboards above the main navigation than below.
• Very few sites are placing banner ads along the left side of the page.
• The observed common placements do not match up very closely with Google's suggestions.

 

Methodology

 

At around 6:00 PM EST on 10/24/2008, I captured screenshots of the latest 50 articles posted in Digg.com’s content section, skipping any sites that did not contain banner ads and only counting each unique website once. The screenshots were then pulled into Photoshop, each as its own layer. Excluding the advertising areas, I removed all areas of the pages and filled the remaining advertising areas in solid white. Each layer was then set to ~95% transparency.

Stephanie Hay - Project Manager :

Since starting at Viget in February 2007, I've received a few requests from friends and clients who want to know what project management tools we use for tasking our teams. Also during that time frame, I've auditioned three different platforms, including Fog Creek Software's FogBugz,  Thoughtworks' Mingle, and now Unfuddle, whose features and flexibility seem most promising for our particular needs.

I should note that, before my time, we tried and abandoned XPlanner; same with Mantis.  Later, we even built our own tasking tool, Viget Labs Project Management (VLPM).  Ultimately, though, we learned that maintaining and building upon internal applications is unrealistic when paying clients have deadlines and expectations; so the search began for an external product that could support us (and, ideally, be customized as we grew and our needs changed).

Of course, each product we've tried has its pros and cons, which I describe here in my personal reviews (that's a disclaimer!).

Continue reading "Exploring Project Management Tasking Tools"