If you want to succeed as a Business Development officer or Project Manager or as a Programmer, you cannot escape communicating with the client. It is that point where you will understand the requirement or you will handle all User Acceptance Tests related questions. How fine your coding might be, how immaculate your process, or how efficiently you can handle things; all these will just go in vain if the buyer is not happy with you. And you and you only responsible for transferring the right message to the client and in the right way.

In the beginning I would like to discuss at what points the communication becomes the only way of survival, for you as well as for the product you build.

• In the beginning of the project when client helps you to understand the system he wants.
• When the project is going through rough phase like employee resignation, internal disturbance.
• When the client is demanding something which might be difficult to implement or is next to impossible.
• When you know the requirement is easy to accomplish but might cross the budget involved.
• When a deadline is about to miss and you are no way responsible for this or have no control over it.
• And in the end, when client is understanding the system for acceptance.

In all these situations, if you cannot put the right message in the right way, you would always be in trouble. But what are the obstacles to frame the right question or right answers. Lets discuss.

• The receiving end if is not attentive and only wants to send his message across without paying heed to the other communicator.
• The lack of language skill to put the fact in the right way.
• Country, race and religion barrier.
• When the relationship is already at stake or some mis-communications already happened.

Before we discuss what would be the way out in each of the situation written above, let me tell you what are the golden rules for proper communication.

1. Be informative: It is useless to communicate when you are not all knowledgeable. If the client is saying something wrong, you need to intervene at the right time with the proper solution. A communication cannot build with the person who does not know anything about the system.
2. Be an active listener: If you are not attentive to what the client is saying, you cannot analyze. You must be an attentive listener.
3. Be a clarifier: Do not move to the next point, unless you are very sure of the last point. You must raise all your doubts, all questions, possibilities which come to your mind.
4. Be a verifier: If there is any example or instance, verify that before you move to next point of communication. Like if the client gives any reference, check if it really exists and if exists if it is exactly the same as the client is saying.
5. Be analyzer: Like a chess player, you must consider the implications of each and every references the client moots. You should then tell implicitly all the possibilities and their impacts.
6. Be aggressive: Do not be submissive like ‘Yes Sir’ or ‘OK Sir’ and try to rule the conversation. At the same time aggression does not implies haughtiness. So you shall be polite enough to moot all your points.
7. Be considerate: Do not tell blatantly that I won’t do it or It is not possible. Rather put it in different way like ‘as my knowledge and understandings, this cannot be done in the budget. However, allow me to study further before I confirm my claim’.
8. Don’t be an accuser: Do not accuse the client. No body like to share the blame. You can however say that ‘Whatever you said is correct, however, in our situation following that might lead to some difficulties’. So, you please say, if following your statement was viable or not.
9. Do not use absolute terms: Absolute terms are like ‘Always’, ‘Never’, ‘Impossible’ etc. Instead use ’sometimes or generally’, ’seldom’, ‘difficult or somehow not feasible’ etc.
10. Don’t be defensive nor attacking: Do not take blame nor accuse. Like ‘I am not accusing you but you know….’ or ‘I knew the fact, but I alone was not blamable. You know there were …’

Now, in the beginning of the article, I gave some examples of various situations. Lets discuss some of the possible stands you might consider for each of the cases.

• When the project starts, you role is to understand the requirements. Before that begins you must do your homework. Gain some knowledge on the business domain, existing solutions. Here, you also take client’s country and religion into consideration. At this juncture, you are going to build a relationship and a trust which will will help you to sail through the project. Don’t make any comments which could hurt the client. Don’t attack anyone’s sentiments. You must be suggestive but not critic. Try to gather as much information from client as you can and analyze the whole conversation. Once done, frame all your questions, possibilities, implications and suggestions.
• Be honest and place the right reason responsible the rough phase. At the same time, let the client know the solutions you thought of and possible date when everything will be resolved.
• Politely state what could be implications if you implement what the client is saying. Try to highlight the financial loses he might incur.
• You must be straight enough to say that the budget might cross and at the same time, present him the reasons for that. Like employee hours involvements, purchases involved etc.
• Again, before you communicate that, you must come out with an alternate deadline. Present him the reasons and the next deadline. If he gets frustrated, ask him what could be his step if he were in the same situation like you.
• This is once again a critical step. Here you must convince the client for each and every fault he points. If it is a bug or mistake just admit and give him a date for the rectification. If he is at fault, help him to understand the situation and jointly get out of the situation.

Once you have the mastery over the art, you will feel a confidence to handle every situation in the right manner. And to do that, you need to admit and understand that, for every problem communication is the only solution.

The web development has changed a lot over the past few years and has been changing. After the dot com boom, came a period which we may term it as E-Commerce age. Lots of sites focusing on selling products appeared in cyber world. Social networking can be termed as the current trend. But in this entire period one thing was definitely overlooked, which is user experience.

As written in wikipedia

User experience, often abbreviated UX, is a term used to describe the overall experience and satisfaction a user has when using a product or system. It most commonly refers to a combination of software and business topics, such as selling over the web, but it applies to any result of interaction design. Voice User Interface (VUI) systems, for instance, are a frequently mentioned design that can lead to a poor user experience.

What is user experience? Well, to put it in straight way, it is nothing but a feeling which you experience when you visit a website. A website may be rich in content, high in graphics and great in terms of service, but if your experience is not so good there, you might feel a little shaky before revisiting it. User experience is not purely the user friendliness of the site, nor it is the GUI, but simply it is a combination of overall effect which gives you a comfortable feeling while surfing the website. As an example, the popularity of word press blog is not only for the reason that, it is a great blog software or it can have a pretty cool design, but I would say, it is for how it works. The ease of admin panel, clear understanding of everything without reading a single book on wordpress, makes it not only convenient to use, but imparts a good feeling too.

If you are an active follower of web trends, then you’ve definitely observed, that the use of flash and Ajax in web application have rapidly increased in recent months. Why so? Flash and Ajax both have the capabilities to present you dynamic data while keeping you in the same page. I think you now understand that how much you detest nagging page refreshing in the early years of internet. We didn’t realize its importance until we got the experience. If creating a business idea is a key to success, I believe inventing a new user experience is the road to success.

In the beginning, I pointed out that user friendliness is not always user experience. User friendliness often refers how less confusing and unambiguous is the usage of the web site. Think of a website which is very complicated in following it. But if you get clear instructions in every page, then how good you feel? Similarly good design not always means great colors, graphics; the font and position of graphics also count. In my opinion, below given are some of the factors which govern user experience.

• Font ( I prioritize it most )
• Color ( White font on black background may look great but not a good user experience)
• Easy navigation
• Clear help instruction in every page
• Display of proper error message in a language understandable to user
• Good GUI
• Keeping out unnecessary things out of main focus area
• Keeping out advertisement from main focus area
• Minimal use of form refresh
• Minimal use of form validation
• Keeping validated data in a form in case of errors, so that the user need not to type it again
• Using color to point out error while feeling up a form.
• And finally to avoid downtime for your website

In his website Peter Morville rightly pointed out what basically is user experience. In his dictionary; Useful, Usable, Desirable, Findable, Accessible, Credible, Valuable are the terms one can associate with user experience. Whatever the thing is, it ultimately matters if you feel good or bad after experiencing a website. If you feel good, then the website has done a great job and if you feel bad, then its not up to the mark.

I personally feel in the coming years more stress will be given on user experience than on  design and anything else. As a cyber world subscriber I can only hope for the best and can look forward to a great surfing.

When you decided to have a blog and or you already started one, the time is now to promote it. Though I am very new to blogging, yet I got some handful of information to share with you and trying for myself. First of all, what you need to decide if you are at all interested in promoting it. If your blog only caters to a certain number or type of people then you shall not devour effort to promote it. Promoting not always means spreading your blog name and content wide across so that it reaches every nook and corner. Promoting can be specific target oriented or general. If your target audience is a group of people like if you have a blog on news for your local area, the way you will promote it should be altogether different.

A few ways to promote your blog.

• If your blog is audience oriented or meant for local news, events etc you can try these methods. I am not sure how effective these are but definitely the ideas are unique and make sense.
  • Aaron Brazell in one of his posts stated how effective is his Guerrilla Marketing Techniques. Guerrilla Marketing is promoting your blog in some unique, powerful and aggressive way. Like Darren Rowse in one of his articles gave an example of such marketing.
    

    I met a blogger recently who had a blog with a very local focus. His Guerrilla Marketing Tactic was to do a deal with three internet cafes in his area to make his blog the home page on all of the computers. In return for this he gave them some free advertising on his blog. The same blogger made a similar deal with the local library who also made his blog the home page of their public internet computers. This worked particularly well for him as his blog was on his local area

  • You can use local newspaper to promote your blog. I am doubtful if it will succeed, but there’s noting to lose in trying.
  • Distributing leaflet, wallpapers or encouraging local shop owners to display your blog poster can add traffic to your blog. Because some people just out of curiosity will definitely check your blog atleast for once. And if they like it, they will be committed readers.
• If your audience is global or general then your promotion should be online and offline promotion will not be a big success. Here are some golden rules.
  1. Content is king. So you must first concentrate on your blog content. If content is not good then you can draw visitors to your blog but cannot retain it. They will come and will leave and will think twice before re-visiting.
  2. Use a good blog software. There are certain features which a blog must have. Auto pinging, trackback URL, good WYSIWYG editor, should include in the blog features list. In my opinion wordpress, typepad are very good software which you can use.
  3. Search engine friendly url: Your URL at any point of time shall not look like domainname.com?blogtitle=xxxx, instead it should be like domainname.com/xxxx.html or domainname.com/year/month/date/xxxx.
  4. Submitting your website to various search engines will be your next step to index it properly. There are free tools in the market which you can use.
  5. Pinging various blog. If you are using any popular blog software, then these software automatically pings your RSS/Atom to various blog listing websites. If not then you can try Ping-o-Matic.
  6. Joining any blog community or creating one is very useful. Because in this community you will get readers who are really interested in reading blogs and all of them are regular bloggers. You can read this article for further insight.
  7. Promoting in myspace, xanga, orkut can add some traffic to your website but it cannot be very high, I bet.
  8. Putting your website address in your email signature is a good idea as this will keep promoting your website to the section of people with whom you communicate on regular basis.

Once you have completed promoting, the next thing you should think upon is how you should earn money(obviously if you are a professional blogger or looking forward to a blogging career). I will come up with another article on this topic.

The benediction of science and technology are so many to describe. But the invention and application of internet services deserve special mention. Internet services are being randomly used throughout world. Right from shopping to fixing a business deal, everything is being done with the click of a mouse. People have become computer savvy. Their lives have been shaped by various electronic gadgets. With their dependency of electronic gadgets, terms like e-book, e-cards, e-commerce etc. have evolved.

The term ‘e-commerce’ is now a very well-known word. The word ‘e-commerce’ itself signifies ‘e-commerce through electronic medium’. It can also be described as the selling and buying of goods and services on the internet. A new term e-business has also evolved to mean the same thing. We can say it is commerce conducted electronically or simply interpret as an online business. It includes customer service functions, sales, marketing, advertising and many more. It also conducts exchange of goods, information, products or services via electronic medium.

Through this medium a buyer can make his purchase just with a click of a mouse, sitting at home but the seller had to crack hard nuts. So conducting e-commerce is not that easy as the word sounds. To start an online business a big and proper planning is the first thing. There should be an adequate source of production. Proper funding also plays a crucial part in any kind of business to keep it going. But that’s not all. To create markets for the products and to collect customers for selling those products are also vital points to remember. To taste the pinnacle of success, a strong customer service should be there.

E-commerce is also advantageous to other traditional businesses in many respects. If an e-commerce site is implemented well, the cost of transaction is quite lower than others. Moreover an online shop never closes. They always remain open and this provides the customers the opportunity to shop anytime of the hour. With the advent of e-commerce, the concept of shopping from home has emerged. Information about any article is available on the net. Customers can search and gather knowledge according to their needs. Before making any kind of purchase, the customers could widen their frontiers of knowledge so that they did not repent later. Geographic limitations are no more a hindrance in commerce. E-commerce makes the products and the services easily available to the customers without any geographical hurdles. Through this type of commerce the sellers of the goods and services are reaching easily to a wide range of customers, both inland and abroad. The buying process in this type of commerce is also advantageous. It provides the customers with a platform to search product information through global markets with a wider range of choice. They can tally the prices also to buy the cheap but the exclusive article. Delivery time and costs are saved when such purchases are made like e-books, audio clips, software games etc. Distance education is delivered via internet. Global reach of internet able different organizations to send messages worldwide, exploring new markets that traditional markets have difficulties accessing.

But there are also various disadvantages in this kind of commerce for both the buyers as well as the sellers. Expenses of getting popular server for the organization are very high. It is difficult enough to get people know about the product of the company and to made them visit the site. The demerits involved from the buyer’s angles are mainly the touch and feel factor. You cannot smell the product, nor can you take its warmth. You are only guided by feature list and the visual impression. Above all to get all these, rather to enjoy the beauty of the product you have to count days for its arrival. If the shipping is lengthy, certainly it will take the test of your patience. And when you come to realize what you purchased is not what you were looking for or the quality is not at par, there is no easy way to get it exchanged or return it to the seller.

With all these merits and limitations, E-commerce is here to stay. Because it is powered by the most precious thing in modern world, yes, it is time. In future it may change its color, can shift or penetrate into a different media, but the purpose will never be eradicated. In this fast paced world, people want to buy time so that they can invest it in earning money and E-commerce targets that. So, you know who will win.

In modern era, web presence is what everybody looks for. It’s the quickest way to get oneself acquainted with. For businesses, web presence gives a perfect insight to the intended visitors about the range of products they are selling; leave aside the sales they generated online. When you have already made your footsteps in the World Wide Web or are preparing for it, why not you try one perfect way of making money online. Yes, it is the affiliate program. It’s beneficial for who are owning the service as well as who subscribes.

In single sentence, Affiliate Program is a kind of web promotion in which the publisher (subscriber) gets rewarded by the owner for every visitor, enquiry or sales generated from it.

An affiliate program works in this manner. An owner decides to run an affiliate business. The intention is solely guided by marketing strategy. To explain it better, lets take a brief look at the real world, outside of virtual domain. In real world, one promotes business through advertising, mainly electronic ads, print ads, hoarding, banner. Now, think of a case. You own a shop and the business puts a hoarding inside your shop. The condition is that, if any customer of yours, enquires of the hoarding and goes to buy the product with your reference, you will get a percentage of profit or a commission from it. This is the exact idea of affiliate program. You publish the program owners’ advertisement in your website and if any visitors of yours, clicks on that banner or text ad, get redirected to the owner’s website, you are the gainer in terms of money. Isn’t it very interesting?

Let me move into finer details and some technicalities, pros and cons of this unique way of money production.

In brief an affiliate program can be subdivided into two classes. viz Cost per sale and cost per action; where cost per sale is predominant. Pay per click is in the other side, rightly dominated by search engines. In cost per sale, you only get benefited if the visitor actually buys anything in the owner website while in cost per action you get benefited for every action of visitors who redirected to the affiliate program owner.

Almost all search engines now run an affiliate program where one pays the search engine for top listing. The search engine then displays the result based on the search context in a separate space of the search result. The idea is, if you want to place your advertisement in the pay zone, then you need to deposit a sum of money with the search engine. Now when, the query runner clicks on the advertisement, an amount gets deducted from your account. Other than the search engine, one can publish the result in her website too. In that case the advertisement will appear as per the website context and the publisher will earn money per click. This is the main idea behind pay per click program.

A caveat is that the authenticity, security and unwanted use or restriction of the program depends a lot on the ability of the software. But more or less before release, this aspect is scrutinized most. I must say, since its inception in 1996 claimed to be by Amazon, affiliate program has grown up as a mature utility which is bliss for the business as well as for the publisher.

Happy Affiliating