Go Go Mama Go » Site Development

Tips for Dealing with Elance Arbitration

Christine — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 05:00:33 +0000

If you’ve been following Go Go Mama Go for a while, you’ll know that I originally intended to build a site that allowed consumers to search and compare strollers as well as provide editorial neutral articles on strollers. I went through eLance, which I have found to be great for sourcing VAs, writers and people to cut product images. But I also used them for my main development company.

The experience started out great. The logo and interface designs were lovely. I was more than ecstatic when I got my first deliverables. But as time wore on, I realized that the vision for my site would be significantly impacted because this developer did not understand the vision itself and was creating functionality that would hinder – not help – the site.

After months of frustration, including some weeks of radio silence, I decided to escalate to Elance. The first step in dispute resolution is that they will try to get the parties to come up with a solution via private message board. In this case, the provider refused to budge. The second step was for Elance to bring the parties together via conference call. Unfortunately, the provider sent the project manager, not anyone who was capable of negotiating anything, so there was no resolution. The final step is to go to formal arbitration. The result of arbitration is binding and final. In my case, because the amount I’m requesting is over $1,000, Elance recommended going with a panel. The fee for arbitration is split three ways between the provider, elance and me.

I’ll let you know how I faired, as well fill you in a bit more with the process of arbitration, but here are some tips to consider to help you either avoid arbitration or help you should you find yourself in arbitration:

1. Keep a log.

Log everything. Even if it’s just a note. Just log activities and deliverables in point form. Note your thoughts, as well as significant things that may have been said. You might be able to search in private message board or emails later, but it’s a bit of a pain. Keeping a log keeps things clear.

2. Always stick to private message board.

This is what Elance recommends. There are transcripts of conversations between the provider and me in Skype but they have not even been submitted. Never send email directly. Take advantage of the log that the private message board keeps. If you can’t say it on the private message board, then it shouldn’t be said.

During one part of the project, I was logging bugs in the provider’s bug tracking software. When things weren’t going well, I started forwarding the emails generated by the system directly to the private message board so that they would be logged.

3. Speak up early.

If you are not happy with your provider, tell them early. Be very clear. If you are using a provider from another country, mind the power distance, which basically means that you might need to be more forceful than you usual to make a point. Speak up often so that they understand that things aren’t going as you’d like.

4. Write requirements.

As someone who has been in the biz for years, I couldn’t believe that I made the rookie mistake of not providing documentation. I assumed that a mid-tiered web shop in India would understand concepts like “tag” or “compare functionality” or “advanced search”. Or that I wouldn’t need to explain that search results could look the exact same whether they were from a simple search or an advanced search.

But this was not true and I found myself having to correct issues because I assumed that the provider would be more savvy.

5. Do not give up your leverage.

In North America, especially with those you have a business relationship with, you can go on “good faith”. You can say things like, “I’ll release this payment if you deliver on these terms in a certain time frame” and expect that first the provider will endeavour to meet your needs or that you’ll get some kind of compensation or refund if they don’t just to make you a happy customer.

I know – I can see your face cringing as you read that last paragraph, knowing without me having to tell you, that I made that mistake with my India provider. I gave up my leverage, releasing it in good faith and expecting that the provider would not just provide lip service when agreeing to the terms. I was wrong.

So I’m in the final bouts of arbitration. I don’t want to reveal too much before everything has been decided but I will definitely let you know the result.

Sourcing and Managing Affordable Web Builders

Christine — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 04:00:11 +0000

In a two-part guest post, a family of eco-preneurs share tips from the trenches on how they built two membership sites for a fraction of what they would have cost otherwise by tapping non-standard resources. This week, Nancy Rielle and Leigh Copin, cousins and co-founders of VerveCards.com, a quality ecard site, discuss their experience using a proprietary web builder. Next week, cousin and sister-in-law Suzanne Rielle will highlight ways she effectively managed her offshore web development team to build Loobalee.com, a resale site for designer kids’ clothing.

Looking back on our 18-month journey from the Eureka Moment (it shouldn’t be this hard to find a decent ecard), to launching VerveCards.com, home of “wry and snappy – never sappy” ecards for savvy senders, the web building muses were definitely with us. Of course there were curve balls, but they were of the non-catastrophic, lesson-learning variety. (You know – what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger!) Here’s the quick and dirty version of what we discovered along the way:

Dashed, but Not Defeated

Because VerveCards.com is a membership site with auto-renew annual billing, our first stop was MemberGate.com. As a web design firm that specializes in information-based membership sites, they have it down to a well priced science. They came highly recommended by a fantastic career changers’ website ChangingCourse.com, which is where we learned of our business model in the first place.

However, moments out of the starting gate we learned that our virtual product was not an information product, and the ecard-sending functionality that we needed was a deal breaker. Dang! (Good Move #1 – Starting with a niche web builder. They can offer substantial savings by not having to reinvent the wheel — IF you fit into their niche. Unfortunately, we didn’t, but it was worth a shot.)

Dodged That Bullet

On to winging it without benefit of a trusted recommendation! Googling “web designers” led us to a high-ranking company with very attractive pricing. (Must mean they have great search engine optimization capabilities if they ranked so high, right?) We’ll call them No-goodnik Web Design (not their real name).

The long and short of it – they wooed us, we fell for it, but … suddenly they were pushing a little too hard … enticing us with if-you-sign-right-now-we’ll-slash-the-price bonbons that smelled a little fishy. Danger Will Robinson! Literally moments before signing on the dotted line we hit Pause to do some due diligence — better late than never! We Googled the company name, and a tsunami of hard core customer complaints came up — Yikes!

How could this be? Until closing in for the kill, they’d been so helpful and forthcoming. (In fact, with minor tweaks, their very detailed quote served as our Request for Services for subsequent bids. Our lengthy Q&A calls even taught us the lingo, which ultimately served us quite well.) And what about that impressive “Inc. 500” banner plastered on their Home page? (Turns out, all that means is that they grew really fast – “how” doesn’t factor into the equation!)

Through the Google hits, we located the sites of real live people who had used them — and heard their horror stories when we called. The upshot — signing on with No-goodnik would have wiped us out and stalled our project indefinitely. (Good Move #2 – Being our own Columbo. Testimonials on a site, or references provided by a vendor, are always going to be positive. Dig deeper to find customers on your own, and call them.)

The Goldilocks Phenomenon

Leigh Copin of VerveCards.com

Next we zig zagged through myriad proposals from domestic web builders that ran the gamut of wildly out of our price range to roughly three times our budget. Then we explored a firm in India that came highly recommended – closer, but still way beyond our means.

Finally we stumbled upon the Goldilocks trifecta, and everything fell into place. One web builder was too small (couldn’t handle our ecard sending functionality and the Flash slideshow on our Home page); his buddy’s firm was too big (had an outsized minimum budget requirement); but his pal’s firm was just right! (Of course, this time we did our due diligence tout de suite!) (Good Move #3 – Just keep asking “Do you know anybody else who could help us?” until you hit pay dirt!)

SiteStrux.com to the Rescue

Nancy Rielle of VerveCards.com

Kismet kicks in at zero hour – if something’s meant to be! Had we not discovered SiteStrux in this serendipitous fashion, we would not have been able to build our site – period! They work with a proprietary modular system that really keeps site building costs down. When needed, they build custom functionality from scratch, but first they customize their existing modules wherever possible.

As far as we know, there’s nothing else like them out there. They built us a well designed, custom looking/functioning site for 2/3 less than our next highest bidder, the firm from India! We’re very grateful to the scrupulously honest and diligent fellows from SiteStrux, Brandon Griggs and Eric Katherman!

VerveCards.com includes E-commerce, Shopping Cart, Catalogue, and Membership modules from the proprietary Content Management System (CMS). The rest of our site is custom built. The CMS modules are customizable to a point, but options are more limited. The system can be updated by the owner without learning html code. This is perfect for us, as we’re constantly loading new ecards and updating our Home page, as well as other areas of the site.

How to Optimize Your Site Building Experience Using a Proprietary System

1. Prepare an Airtight Home Page Mock-up and Request for Services. Take nothing for granted when hashing out your final pricing and contract, or it could come back to haunt you. Make sure all functionality shown on your mock Home page is described in your written RFS, and everything noted in your RFS appears on your mock Home page. Clarify any discrepancies up front, and specifically ask your web builder if anything looks awry from their point of view.

2. BYOGD — Bring in Your Own Graphic Designer. It defies the laws of nature to expect that someone tech savvy enough to devise their own system will also be an ace designer. And a graphic designer who has no preconceived notions about what can or can’t be done technically will likely come up with a much more creative site design. Take the best of both worlds, and marry them – let the graphic designer come up with the look, and let the web builder make it functional.

3. Create a Consistency Guide for Commonly Used Terms and Spelling, So Everything’s Uniform Throughout the Site. Those same laws of nature extend to tech savviness and spelling/grammar. More often than not, these strengths are mutually exclusive! Before you create your custom pages, comb through the Core pages to determine standard word usage and spelling. With your Consistency Guide as a reference, make sure they carry over to the custom pages.

4. Get Clear on Which Site Pages Will Be Core and Which Will Be Custom, and Make Sure This Is Stated in Your Contract. Before you begin, ask to see mock-ups of all Core pages and a list of any design limitations. Build these pages first, then add your custom pages, so they’re consistent.

5. Use Shared Googledocs With Your Web Building Team. These freebies are life savers! Assign tasks to be done, then colorize them when complete. Everyone can see the project status, and the document lives on as a record of the project from start to finish.

VerveCards.com was founded by mompreneur and graphic designer, Leigh Copin, and her cousin and co-founder, Nancy Rielle, a copywriter, marketing consultant, and former fine artist/painter. When an ill-fated search for a decent ecard uncovered slim pickings, they created “wry and snappy – never sappy” ecards for savvy senders like themselves to fill the void. With their vibrant designs and ingenious wit, paper-free VerveCards provide an eco-friendly, time-saving and cost-effective solution to sending quality online greetings with style! VerveCards.com is wholly owned and operated by VerveCards, LLC, a Florida company based in West Palm Beach, FL with an office in Brooklyn, NY. For more information, please visit VerveCards.com or Twitter.com/VerveCards.

Cultural Divide

Christine — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 04:00:32 +0000

So, the stroller site is not progressing as happily as I would like it to. I’ve been stalled because my project manager in India has been sick. I’ve also been hamstrung by the fact that I did not provide them with a spec as I assumed that they would speak up if they were missing anything. Note to self: never assume – especially when dealing with a remote team that speaks English as a second language and who lives in another country with major cultural differences.

A friend of mine named Chris has worked quite extensively with outsourced offshore teams. He told me this hilarious story describing the differences between working with a team from India and another from Bulgaria. When you get status from a team from India, they typically will tell you that everything is going great, but when you press them, their response will be that the project is going to be about three months late. When you work with a team from Bulgaria, it’s the exact opposite: they will tell you that the project is an irreparable disaster and will be late. But when you dig a bit deeper to find out how late, they’ll tell you that their plan is tracking one hour behind.

I wonder if this has anything to do with the power distance index (PDI), something first introduced to me when I read Malcolm Gladwell’s latest book Outliers: The Story of Success – one of my all time favourite books and one I recommend to anyone and everyone.

Conceived in the 1960s and 70s by psychologist Geert Hofstede, the PDI ranks countries according to how much its culture values or does not value hierarchical relationships and respects authority. A low PDI score, like Canada’s 30, means that the society leans towards egalitarianism, blame is shared between superiors and subordinates, and managers socialize with their employees. On the other hand, a high PDI score, like India’s 77, means that there is generally more class division, subordinates expect clear guidance from above and are expected to take blame when things go wrong.

Incidentally, the PDI isn’t limited to countries. As far as I can tell, it also applies to corporate culture. In my last company, I saw two VPs at the helm. The first VP was friendly and entrpreneurial. I had known him for 8 years and felt very comfortable with being extremely informal with him. I wanted to be very approachable to my staff and generally had an open door policy where people could consult me on basically anything and everything that was on their mind. My staff regularly shared information with my own boss and I never felt threatened by them doing so. We definitely modeled a low PDI.

When the new VP and his regime joined the company, everything seemed to change. Speaking up was viewed as “self-entitlement”. All communications were to be crafted and deliberate. What a difference.

My troubles with getting my stroller site launched is largely due to these cultural differences. For example, I did not provide the India team with a spec document because I expected the company to speak up if they needed something. Wrong – it wasn’t until the very end that I determined that they did not understand my requirements and could not efficiently function without me providing much more guidance. Also, although I felt completely in the right, I did expect them to put up much more of a fight when I challenged them on some of the items they were considering to be out of scope. Instead, they immediately conceded and said that they did not want to debate every single point and that their goal was to make me a happy customer.

Here is world map of Hofstede’s Power Distance Index.

Here are some tips when dealing with a country with a higher PDI than yours:

Ensure that your directions are clear and direct. Emphasize deadlines.
Don’t expect your outsourced company to take initiative and identify when things are not progressing.
Employ a much more direct and authoritative management style. I sometimes feel downright bossy, but that’s my own cultural sensibility kicking in. It’s what’s required to overcome the distance in the power relationship.
Expect more bureaucracy. My outsourced team is much more about protocol and procedures than I am accustomed to.

Cross your fingers that the site will be much more closer to launch worthy this week!

Lessons Learned from Working with India

Christine — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 04:00:46 +0000

Resistance posted to Flickr by Elishams

I should always listen to myself.

When embarking on my stroller site, I thought I’d approach the project differently. In my day job (if I had a day job right now), I would be overseeing a team of project managers, coaching them in the ins and outs of deploying huge applications for major web sites. Or helping them run a project for adding a vertical to a site or creating a shopping tool. No matter where I’ve worked, the process for deploying sites looks generally like this:

1. Identify there is a project and get permission to start.

2. Define the business, technical, creative, strategic requirements. This usually requires activities like stakeholder interviews and spreadsheets that are dubbed “matrices” just to make them sound a bit more fancy.

3. Design the solution using wireframes, mock ups, use cases. Once functional requirements are written, the tech team will define the architecture.

4. Develop the site.

5. QA the site.

6. Deploy and monitor the site.

There are versions on this – ones where you take a more iterative or agile approach. But no matter what you do, it’s all basically the same.

So even after 13 years of experience of delivering interactive projects big and small, I listened to someone else who was really smart, but in retrospect now realize that he knew nothing about delivery.

Now I’m nearing the end of our first push to go-live and this is what I already knew but obviously needed to be reminded of:

1. Working with a remote team who speak English as a second language means that communication channels are not ideal. Communication needs to be crisp and expectations set and managed.

2. Write a spec! Unless you are doing something TOTALLY on the cheap and do not care about the end product too much (I ask you, though, why bother), then some kind of documentation that explains the layout of the interfaces (aka “wireframes”) and the user flow (aka “use cases) is tantamount. Even a basic one. Trust me. It would be saving me hours and hours of back and forth right now, as well as a ton of frustration.

3. Hold a meeting with the designer and developer to review the spec and answer questions. Ensure that they understand the goal of the site, as well as specification itself. Items that would be easy to understand among locals can be surprisingly excrutiatingly painful across continents. I can’t tell you how much back and forth there has been on the difference between “reviews” (i.e. editorial reviews) and “reader comments”.

4. Ask for a timeline and insist on weekly meetings and status reports to track progress. I did not do that and didn’t realize that there was next to no progress on the site for the first three weeks of a four week project.

5. If you are lucky enough to have a project manager, do not trust that he or she is on top of everything. Make sure that action items, decisions and critical discussion are properly logged in issue logs. Follow up. I cannot tell you how many times I thought that something was agreed to, and weeks later when I’d reference it, my project manager would seem to have no recollection of the interaction.

6. Understand cultural differences. My friend Chris described his experience working with India and Bulgaria like this: “Working with India, they will tell you everything is fine and completely on track, but when you press them, you find out they will be 6 months late. Working with Bulgaria, they will tell you that the sky is falling and the site will be delivering late, but when you press them further, you find out that the schedule is only about 2 hours behind.” Don’t I know it.

7. When progress is floundering, push hard. I finally set a very aggressive timeline to get the project done after it was behind by 2 weeks. In the end, my stroller site will deliver one month late – all of which I could have avoided if I just followed my instincts and experience.

My Favorite SEO Blogs

Christine — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 04:00:03 +0000

As you know, I’ve been doing a lot of research about the best way to optimize a web site, and I’ve written about the SEO, what it is and why it matters. I thought it would be useful to compile a list of significant SEO blogs. I’ve also taken some quick snippets from the About pages to give you a sense of what their blogs are about. Here’s the Quicklist:

My Favorite SEO Blogs:

Blue Hat SEO
Bruce Clay
DaveN
Graywolf’s SEO
Jim Boykin
Link Building Blog
Marketing Pilgrim
Matt Cutts
Online Marketing Blog
Pronet Advertising
Search Engine Guide
Search Engine Journal
Search Engine Land
Search Engine Roundtable
Search Engine Watch
SEO Blackhat
SEO by the SEA
SEO Chat
SEO Moz
SEO Refugee
SEOBook
SEOpedia
Small Business SEM
Stuntdubl
Tropical SEO

Now the details….

Blue Hat SEO
URL: http://bluehatseo.com

Blue Hat SEO is essentially the study of advanced Internet marketing and search engine optimization techniques. Blue Hat SEO covers the advanced knowledge of both Black Hat and White Hat SEO.

Bruce Clay
URL: http://www.bruceclay.com/blog/

The site offers step-by-step methodologies including free interactive tools on a broad range of Internet Marketing topics, and ranks near the top of all web sites visited. Services include tool subscriptions, training classes, site assessments, consulting services, and full-service projects.

DaveN
URL: http://www.davidnaylor.co.uk/

David Naylor (DaveN) has been an industry leader in Search Engine Optimization and Search Marketing for 12 years, leading large online marketing campaigns for many companies with excellent and sustained results.

Graywolf’s SEO
URL: http://www.wolf-howl.com/

Graywolf’s SEO is an seo blog which provides information about search engine marketing, searching issues and the search engine industry, tips on blogging, to marketing your blog.

Jim Boykin
URL: http://www.jimboykin.com/

Jimboykin.com Hat Blog offers articles on Link Building Campaigns and Search Engine Marketing Tools.

Link Building Blog
URL: http://linkbuilding.tblog.com/

Dreamsubmitting’s Blog on Link Building and Resources

Marketing Pilgrim
URL: http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/

MarketingPilgrim.com was launched by internet marketing expert Andy Beal in September 2005. As a follow-up to Beal’s award-winning search marketing blog, Marketing Pilgrim expands its coverage to bring the latest news, rumors and reviews of all things related to internet marketing and online advertising. The site is constantly rated a top 10 media and marketing blog by Advertising Age. top 10 media and marketing blog by Advertising Age. (http://adage.com/power150/)

Matt Cutts
URL: http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/

Handle questions about webmasters or SEO. The author of this blog Matt Cutts joined Google as a software engineer in January 2000. He is currently the head of Google’s Webspam team.

Online Marketing Blog
URL: http://www.toprankblog.com/

“Since December 2003, TopRank’s Online Marketing Blog has provided insights, resources and commentary on a range of digital marketing and public relations topics including: Search engine marketing and optimization, Social media marketing, Business blogging and marketing Online public relations”

Pronet Advertising
URL: http://www.pronetadvertising.com/

Pronet advertising provides tips and information about advertising, affiliate marketing, link building analysis of the search engine industry.

Search Engine Guide
URL: http://www.searchengineguide.com/

Jennifer Laycock is the Editor of Search Engine Guide, an educational web site aimed at translating the search marketing world into something that small business owners can understand. Jennifer specializes in common sense search engine marketing, viral marketing and customer outreach via social media and blogs.

Search Engine Journal
URL: http://www.searchenginejournal.com/

Search Engine Journal is a 5 year old publication of Search Engine Journal Publishing Group, specializing in search engine news. Loren Baker, Editor in Chief: Mr. Baker has been involved in the search engine marketing field since 1998 with a background in paid search and search engine optimization. In 2002, he began collecting his research and thoughts on the SEM industry, which blossomed into the current Search Engine Journal publication.

Search Engine Land
URL: http://www.searchengineland.com

Search Engine Land is a news and information site covering search engine marketing, searching issues and the search engine industry. The site is led by journalist Danny Sullivan, who has been covering search for the past 11 years.

Search Engine Roundtable
URL: http://www.seroundtable.com

The purpose behind the Search Engine Roundtable is to report on the most interesting threads taking place at the SEM (Search Engine Marketing) forums. By enlisting some of the most recognized names at those forums, the Roundtable is able to not only report on these outstanding threads but also provide a synopsis that provides greater detail into those threads.

Search Engine Watch
URL: http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/

Search Engine Watch provides tips and information about searching the web, analysis of the search engine industry and help to site owners trying to improve their ability to be found in search engines.

SEO Blackhat
URL: http://www.seoblackhat.com/

SEO Black Hat Blog offers articles on Blackhat SEO, Linkbait & Link Spamming. And if you need to escape White Hat SEO Whiners, check out The Private Black Hat Search Engine Optimization Forum.

SEO by the SEA
URL: http://www.seobythesea.com/

SEO by the Sea, Inc. uses professional, ethical, and proactive approaches to help web sites and their intended audiences find each other. The SEO by the Sea blog was originally started in 2005 to inform people about a grass roots gathering of people interested in internet marketing and search engines in Havre de Grace, Maryland.

SEO Book
URL: http://www.seobook.com/

Offers marketing tips, search analysis, online business tips, and general commentary on the evolution of the web. Launched in 2003, we have one of the oldest standing SEO sites that is still regularly updated. The site originally was designed as a blog that offered DIY SEO tips and helped sell the leading SEO ebook, which had sold well over $1,000,000 in volume.

SEO Chat
URL: http://www.seochat.com/

Seo Chats gives the useful information about Google Optimization,SEO Tools, Link Trading, website Submission, Yahoo Optimization, Keyword Optimizer

SEO Moz
URL: http://www.seomoz.org

SEOmoz provides companies around the world with consulting, Internet marketing and search engine optimization services. The goal of SEOmoz is to provide a high level of service and education to businesses, individuals, non-profits and government organizations so they can best leverage the unique reach of the Internet to increase visibility and achieve success.

SEO Refugee
URL: http://www.seorefugee.com/

Dedicated entirely to search engine optimization. As well as forums, there is a weblog and periodic SEO cartoons by James Cook, the site owner.

SEOpedia
URL: http://www.seopedia.org/

A blog about Internet marketing, advertising and industry trends, written by Cristian Mezei

Small Business SEM
URL: http://www.smallbusinesssem.com/

SEO and web marketing tips and conversation for the small business owner and webmaster.

Stuntdubl
URL: http://www.stuntdubl.com/

This site is my attempt at documenting some of what goes on in the wonderful world of internet business and

Tropical SEO
URL: http://tropicalseo.com

Tropical SEO blog gives information about SEO, Competitive Webmastering, affiliate marketing etc.

Communicating Effectively With Off-Shore Service Providers

Christine — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 04:00:43 +0000

RMZ Millenia Business Park, Chennai – India’s Largest LEED Gold rated Green Building, originally uploaded by g_gauri.

Yesterday, I talked about what you can expect from dealing with an off-shore provider. Today, I’ll focus on communicating effectively with off-shore providers. Here are some tips to keep in mind:

Remember the Language Gap

This is obvious. While many people in India can speak English, for most, it’s a second language. Things will get lost in translation. In his book, the 4-hour Work Week, Tim Ferris recommends that you write your correspondence as if you are communicating with a person in the second grade. While that does seem a bit demeaning, there is a lot of truth to it. Forget fancy words that wouldn’t come up in the normal course of developing web sites (obviously, talking about technical terms is universal). Use simple, straight-forward words to ensure that your message gets across.

Be Direct and to the Point

Forget flowery language. Being precise and direct is the best message. Resist the urge to use unnecessary adjectives and adverbs. Re-examine your emails and ask yourself if the message is clear enough. Keep your emails short and your sentences as minimal as possible.

Spell It Out

I hired a company to research on strollers and deliver the data in a spreadsheet. Initially, I left the information ambiguous. Beside some basic data (i.e. stroller name, brand, etc), I left it up to the company to decide what criteria should be included in the spreadsheet. My rationale was that most parents researching strollers go into the endeavor cold and have a steep learning curve before getting the lay-of-the-land on strollers. Surely this team in India could do the same and be able to recommend which brands should be featured, which models were the most popular, etc.

Likely my assumption was true, but it would have taken way too long and I would have not gotten the results I was hoping for.

After the first delivery of the spreadsheet, I needed to add a worksheet that specified what data I was looking for. I also had to include detailed instructions on how to enter the information to ensure consistency and quality in the delivery of the information. It saved me from having to spend hours of editing the information at a later date.

Ensure that you have deadlines specified and clearly dictate your expectations. You might need to go further than you would for a locale resource; you will need to assess whether that effort is worth using a remote team. For me, the cost savings was so great that it most certainly was.

Overcome the Challenge of Working With a Remote Team

Have you ever found yourself working from home one day when all of a sudden, a major issue at work crops up? If so, you’ll know that you are hamstrung by what and how people communicate with you. It’s tough to deal with the situation because you can’t assess the situation first-hand and are at the whim of second hand communication.

Working with any team remotely – particularly one 10 hours ahead – can be extremely challenging. Ensure that your communications are clear and tight or you’ll lose time when the recipients of the info wade through ambiguity.

You can also see the time change as an opportunity. Since you’re not working the same hours, you won’t lose a day while you review deliverables. Respond quickly to emails and package reviews and you’ll be working your project cycling across a 24-hour time-zone.

Request Frequent Updates

Don’t let your remote provider get too far without checking-in. It’s best to have something as early as possible – preferably within 24 hours. This way, you’ll ensure that they are on-track and not waste time working on something that does not meet your expectations. The research firm I hired communicated with me on a daily basis. I saw at least three iterations of the spreadsheet within 5 days.

Employ Various Tools of Communication

In addition to email, you will also use IM and Skype. eLance has a meeting room in their Workroom; however, I have not used it yet to comment on its effectiveness. You may also need to communicate in real-time during the hours that their workday overlaps with your awake time. For me, that’s at 7 am, a few hours before my web development team is ending their day and still has time to incorporate changes.

Remain Respectful and Remember That They Are Capable

Admittedly, working with a remote vendor can be pretty frustrating at times. Just last week, I received work that was far below expectations – images named incorrectly, missing information. These were items that could have and should have been caught before sending to me. The point of above is to say that problems arise because of communication. Check yourself before you fire a flaming arrow. Remember that you are dealing with people – and if you’ve done your research right, people who are highly capable.

Sometimes You Won’t Overcome the Communication Gap

Some jobs are best left to person whose native language is English. For example, I’ve awarded the article writing for my stroller site to a freelance writer in Seattle. I just wasn’t confident that a person who spoke English as a second language would understand the humour and nuances. Also, if you think your project will require a high-degree of collaboration, like two or more major parts of your team being split in different locations, you may want to examine how the work is divided. In those cases, it’s often best to cherry-pick work that can be easily farmed out to a remote team, and keep the collaborative stuff local (or at least in one location).

Using remote resources can be extremely useful in building your business. You’ll just need to alter your communication to ensure that you maximize the benefits of dealing with off-shore service providers.

What To Expect From an Off-shore Service Provider

Christine — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 04:00:49 +0000

I’ve been dealing a lot with India these past few months. In my day job, I’ve hired a team of Indian resources from a major consulting company to build a significant application for us. To build my first online product, I’m using Mind Genies in Noida, India, to build my stroller site for me.

I found them through eLance. What sold me was their design talent. I figured that it would be difficult to evaluate a service provider based upon their coding talents. So I decided to pay a bit of a premium (we’re only talking a few hundred more) to buy design talent. If you look at their portfolio, it’s pretty impressive – especially compared to the other vendors that were bidding on my work.

Thankfully, they didn’t show me their main site. However, I do get a lot of enjoyment knowing that I’ve hired “eMagicians” who upon landing on their home page greet me with “Welcome to our e-Magical World!”

If you haven’t dealt with an Indian provider, here’s what you can expect:

Costs Are Ridiculously Affordable

Compared to North American costs, Indian resources are incredibly affordable – perfect for me who is starting out and doesn’t have a lot of capital for launch. I am not exaggerating when I say that I’m paying less than 3% what I would pay some of the companies that I’ve worked for in the past who do similar things. When I show people the mock ups, they are blown away at the level of design and functionality I’m getting for the fraction of the price.

Talent Is Out There

As I’ve said above, I looked at coding to be a bit of a commodity in the marketplace – compared to design talent. Before I offend my web developer friends, I’ll say that this first build of my site has some room to be messy and inelegant. For the purpose of launch, I’m willing to scrimp on the beauty of the technical architecture to get higher end design skills. Only one of the providers that bid on my project came close to their design work. And I have a feeling that this little firm is likely to be talented on the coding side of things as well.

When You Are Sleeping, They Are Awake

Although this really sucks if your project follows an agile methodology or if you need to operate in a collaborative environment, the time zone difference can benefit you in that you don’t lose a day in reviewing and providing feedback on their work. For me, it means that I can review the work after I tuck the tots in bed and provide comments before the start of their work day. I typically get another package drop by 10:00 am the next day. I’ll do a brief check during my lunch hour, digest my thoughts and then hammer something out that evening. And the cycle goes on.

There’s Still Some Overlap

Noida is nine and a half hours ahead, which means that 7:00am EST is their 4:30pm. Early on, when Mind Genies was compiling their quote, I got on MSN messenger with them to work out some of the details before heading to the office. I figure this little bit of overlap will come in handy if ever communications are stalled in email.

You’ll Need to Employ Non-Traditional Ways To Share and Communicate

“Non-traditional” is all relative these days. We use email for 99.9% of our communications, and I have only needed real-time communication once in the four weeks I’ve been dealing with them. If you don’t have Skype or instant messenger set up yet, you’ll definitely need to do that if you want to use an Indian company. I’ll be moving into development shortly, so these tools may become more required. I’ve also had another provider use YouSendIt to share large files.

You’ll need to Adapt To the Language Differences

I’ll be talking specifically about communicating with an Indian vendor in a future post, but suffice it to say that things get lost in translation. It might just be typical for all vendors (I know it happens even dealing with North American companies), but I’m finding that work will be completed half-done. I’ll indicate whole sections of copy should be copied and pasted into mock ups. However, when they get returned, the implementation won’t meet expectations. Thankfully, Mind Genies always has quickly addressed the fixes.

This experience may not be limited to Indian providers – they might be the same for off shore providers from Russia and China, etc. I wouldn’t know since I’ve only dealt with off-shore resources from India.

Overall, it’s been awesome using off shore resources. It works very well with my working schedule, and I’m getting some great work for the fraction of the price.

So I’ll ask you: Have you had the opportunity to deal with Indian resources? What has your experience been?

Link Building: Essential For SEO

Christine — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 04:00:46 +0000

Links to the Past, originally uploaded by bengalsfan1973.

A few days ago, in my post Why Google Matters, I talked about the basic importance of Google and why you need it for the success of your site. Well, duh, you’re thinking. I know. I know. It’s pretty simple, but we need to start at the beginning for those of you who may not be aware of these details.

Search Engine Optimization (or SEO) refers to the process of enriching and optimizing your site so that it grows in popularity and rank in search engine results pages. Living somewhere between the marketers and the developers, SEO is considered to be a bit of a “black art” – meaning even if you follow all the rules and suggestions to the comma and quotation mark, there is still no guarantee that you’ll improve your PageRank. In addition, if you abuse the rules, you might even get blacklisted from our friends at Google who don’t take too kindly when publishers try to beat the system.

It’s possible for your site to become popular organically. You could just continue to write great content and hope that it gets picked up in Google and is blessed with a high position – but that’s just like waiting for success to happen to you. Personally, I’m too impatient for that.

Remember that the search engines are always looking for websites that contain relevant content, but it’s possible to help them along (that’s what the “submit url” link is there for!). If you want to improve your site’s rank in engines like Google, Yahoo! and MSN, it’s important that you employ classic SEO tactics – like link building.

Link Building: The Basic Concept

“Link building” refers to the number of hyperlinks that point to your website from various sources.

Basically, the more sites that link to you, the better. It tells the search engine that your site is important, and depending on the nature of the links themselves, it raises the relevance and aboutness factor of the content – subsequently improving a search engine like Google’s opinion of your content for those particular search terms.

Take this example:

You create a site about strollers. You have a review of the Maclaren Quest, as well as lots of relevant pictures and user comments on your site about that particular stroller. A search engine crawling your site thinks, “Ah ha! This site is not only about strollers, but it’s about a particular kind of stroller – the Maclaren Quest.”

Sally the Stroller Shopper just bought that stroller and posts your review on her public Facebook page to show her mother in Seattle what kind of stroller little Katie will be rolling around town in. She uses the phrase “I’m not the only one that loves my new Maclaren Quest stroller!” as the caption.

When the search engine scans through Sally’s Facebook page, it thinks “Oh, here is the term Maclaren Quest.” And unless there is a no-follow link (we’ll get to that another day), the search engine will follow to the next site and think “Ah ha! Here’s that site again! This content must really be about the Maclaren Quest – and it must be important and relevant since people are linking to it.”

And so on. And so on. And so on.

But how can I increase the number of links pointing to my site?

You can do that a couple of ways. You can pay for an SEO service to execute a link-building campaign for you. Or you can build the links somewhat naturally.

Since I’ve never paid a service, I’ll talk more about the natural link-building.

Building Links Naturally (At Least Semi-Naturally) – A Few Pointers

First and foremost, write compelling content that people WANT to link to. Guru blogger Yaro Starak talks in depth about pillar content. It’s vital. If you have crap content, then no one will link to you.

Good content also requires people to read and have the facility to link back to your site. So make friends online –blogging about a person or site, or linking to their site means that they might scratch your back in return.

Add your link to every possible public profiling and social media thing out there. Just the other day, I read this great post in Daily Blog Tips that suggested that you should update your Google Profile and grab the easy backlink.

Make sure you ping blog search engines like Technorati.

One classic way to build links is to put your link everywhere through blog commenting and participating in online discussion forums.

Be sure to submit your site to all relevant directories. There are both free and paid ones available, depending on your budget.

Make sharing easy. Post Digg, del.icio.us, etc links on your site.

Good luck!

Why Google Matters

Christine — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 04:00:36 +0000

Google celebrates 40 years of The Very Hungry Caterpillar

So let’s talk about Google. According to its site, “Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”

In 2000, I was on guest on the tech segment of TalkTV. Three guests were invited to talk about new sites and gadgets that emerged earlier in the year. I remember quite clearly that hands-down, everyone was the most excited about Google. Back then, information portals like WebMonkey, Yahoo, MSN dominated the search box, but users also had to endure a mess of other information that crowded the page.

Then along came Google.

The big portals were trying to employ usability standards, but Google blew them out of the water. Users of Google were treated to an interface where the mission was clear: enter some words in the search bar and click Search. Yeah, there was the standard now iconic company logo (charming in that it always changed with the seasons and holidays (see logo above)), but also very limited text links – maybe five on the page. The simplicity of the interface meant that it quickly and infectiously became the number one search engine and one of the top ranking sites on the Internet.

And well, the rest is history.

And well, so what?

Basically, this means that if you’re a person who is trying to make money online, it’s extremely important for you to rank as high as possible on Google. Google runs on a unique combination of advanced hardware and software. According to Google, its speed is due in part to the efficiency of its search algorithm and in part to the thousands of low cost PC’s they’ve networked together to create a high-performance, extra fast search engine.

The heart of its software is called PageRank, a system for ranking web pages. PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page’s value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves “important” weigh more heavily and help to make other pages “important.”

In other words, important, high-quality sites appear higher on search results pages (i.e. it has a higher PageRank). Google remembers a site’s ranking each time it conducts a search. But because high-ranking pages also have to be relevant to the person who’s entered the page, Google also combines PageRank with sophisticated techniques in matching text to identify pages that are both important and relevant to your search. Google goes far beyond the number of times a term appears on a page and examines all aspects of the page’s content (and the content of the pages linking to it) to determine if it’s a good match for your query. The full picture of the content is often referred to as its “aboutness”.

Yeah, but SO WHAT?

While Google has not revealed the details of their searching algorithm (after all, it’s their secret sauce), there is an entire industry and army of people who are trying to play by Google’s rules by legally stuffing their sites with as many search engine friendly terms as possible. So for a site publisher who is trying to make money online, one of the basic things he or she should do is try to ensure that the site has as high as a page rank as possible. In a few upcoming posts, I will be writing about a site’s link structure and the importance it plays in your PageRank. Some of the topics will include:

Directory submission
Internal Linking
The importance of anchor links
Title attributes in links
“No Follow” links
General suggestions for link building

Don’t worry. For newbies, these terms might be pretty foreign, but they’ll get you started on your quest to get your sites popping up higher in Google, as well as prime you in your search engine optimization knowledge (often plainly referred to as “SEO”). For more information, check out my other articles on SEO or simply go to Google itself and type in “SEO” in the Google search bar.

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Received My First Mock Ups!

Christine — Wed, 27 May 2009 04:00:17 +0000

I know I haven’t mentioned anything about what my first site is yet, but I need to tell you that I received my mock ups and I’m so excited!! It’s so cool to finally be able to see my ideas start to take a shape. What’s more is that the business idea is feeling tangible and real.

I’m particularly happy with the design. I received a lot of bids through eLance and finally went with MindGenies not because they were the cheapest, but because their interface designs were vastly superior to those submitted by the competing bids. I was a bit annoyed that they seemed to low-ball me with a “placeholder bid” (something eLance buyers should be careful of). Now seeing their mock ups, I’m so glad that I went with them.

I showed the mocks to a co-worker today and she nearly fell over. I could tell that she was as impressed as I was. We have both been in the business for a long time and both of us know how much quality design and dynamic web site development costs. We talked about how the nature of our work was changing.

Anyway, so thrilled. It’s really starting to feel like a business around here.

Hopefully the rest of the project goes smoothly. I’m set to release my beta in early July. Cross your fingers!