Websites for Robots or Humans?

Are you building a Website or a Blog? Think what are you making it for. For a Robot or for Humans.

I know you will say, you are building it for Humans and you don't care for the Robots. But I can give you some strong reasons why you should be caring robots.

Let us take two people building website -- first a Web Analyst and second a Search Engine Optimizer.

Web Analyst picks five points:
1. Site should look attractive; people must enjoy it.
2. Page traversal needs to be easy and friendly
3. Let me put colors blue and red; blue signifying stability and red performance. We are gonna be a company which provides stable solutions with above the market performance.
4. My business model has a ad revenue part; let me put ads on the right hand side where people are likely to click. But will not keep ads from day one; instead start one by one each month after 6 months.
5. Will have to make the site search engine friendly; will define metadata.

Search Engine Optimizer picks the other five:
1. Make w3c standard, and define metadata
2. Create content with as much links as possible
3. Find as many good and similar websites as possible; let me add their link in mine and seek reciprocative favor
4. Add as many keywords as possible in the inside pages; include wrong spelling to the major keywords (let me tap those search queries with typos e.g. laon, loon, loan\ etc for loans)
5. Now let me put adds on the website; and build a good looking website over it.

Great approaches. Do you think, the second one looks so selfish? Well, let me analyze the after effects.


First Site :
Have small number of regular visitors, who are happy with the site. They admire the Website and copy the design for their own site.
Less traffic with little favor from the Search Engine crawlers. Frustration with less earnings and start adding more and more ads with no results.


Second Site :
High traffic but with unhappy visitors. They dont admire the site, but search engines keep on pushing them to this site. Visitors start liking site slowly and when they know the site traffic is huge, they will like more. And even start to write reviews of the site, may be critical!!
Optimism comes with traffic and earnings, and it gives more room for improvement by listening to feedback and market buzz.

Analysis of the Result:
First one has given too much focus on marketing, and to understand others. This can seldom help. Human Nature is not predictive, and mostly what humans like is the success. And they don't like failures however good it be.
Don't agree? Search your inner self and try to answer few questions below:
1. Why did Amitabh Bachan won the hottest Vegetarian Contest? Is he that HOT even now?
2. Why do we worship and admire Gautam Buddha? Is he not the same Siddarth who left his mum and went in search for Peace?
3. Why do you admire Japan and not Somalia? Isn't it the economic reasons behind it? Else who in the World has shown more cruelty than Japanese in World War II!! But still.

The underlying fact is do the best to sell yourself, and don't bother about if anyone like it or not. Just do it and give your best. People will like it at one point or the other, provided you are able to reach them again and again.

Re. robots, be as friendly as you can because they don't change. The thing that can change is either you or the creator of the Robot. Keep track of what the creator thinks, and can do. And change yourself in accordance to how the creater changes his robot.

After all, all we want from a website is its ability to solve our problem. Looks hardly matter. And so does our experience while visiting the site. And in this crowded world, I can hardly remember any sites, all I do is Google. So whatever I like, I will land up to a place where Google The God takes me. Isn't that true for you also?

Management Consulting May Not be the Right Answer!

Well, I was thinking to write this article for long and the day has finally come. After months of research, I could finally frame a thought.
There are many words used in the Market for almost similar concepts. Some of them I could find are:
1. Analytics Consulting
2. Management consulting
3. Strategy consulting
4. Market Research
5. Strategy Sciences
6. Business Analytics
7. Vertical Solutions Consulting
8. Predictive Sciences
9. Decision Management

Many of these terms are used in similar way at the sole discretion of the user. Anyone can use a term to put his story forward.

Here are some definitions from Wikipedia.
-- Business Analytics is a term that describes how organizations gather and interpret data in order to make better business decisions and to optimize business processes.
-- Management consulting refers to both the industry, and the practice of, helping organizations improve their performance, primarily through the thorough analysis of existing business problems and development of plans for improvement.
-- Market research is the process of systematically gathering, recording and analyzing data and information about customers, competitors and the market. Its uses include to help create a business plan, launch a new product or service, fine tune existing products and services, and expand into new markets.
-- Enterprise Decision Management, commonly abbreviated "EDM", entails all aspects of managing automated decision design and deployment that an organization uses to manage its interactions with customers, employees and suppliers.
-- Strategic management is the art and science of formulating, implementing and evaluating cross-functional decisions that will enable an organization to achieve its objectives.
-- The term business intelligence (BI) dates to 1958. It refers to technologies, applications, and practices for the collection, integration, analysis, and presentation of business information and also sometimes to the information itself.
-- Other terms are still not available on Wiki.

In a typical scenario all these concepts should be talking and helping each other, as all these concepts are slightly over-lapping in functions and fully on goal achievement. All of these work to help run business smooth and catch available opportunities that market throws.

What I find interesting is, they hardly talk. All functions independently except there are some stances of companies going beyond their boundary and asking help from others. I remember one, Mackinsey Co. has started their Data Analytics center in India which is known by the name Mackinsey Knowledge Center.

Beyond this, there are stances of Analytics Companies going forward and helping clients to form Strategy with a separate exercise called the "Strategy Sciences".

My questions are:
Is this the correct way to do? Are these concepts being used correctly by the companies?

My take is NO. Companies become over aggressive and sometimes fail. Thanks to bad strategy. The stances of fail may be --
1. Ford buying Land Rover and Jaguar.
2. Current sub-Prime Mortgage crisis in US.
3. Harley Davidson coming up with no sound bike and failing.
4. Coke's new formula, that almost killed Coke brand.

All of these failures in different ways, but inside the reasons were same. The cause being, Management Decisions taken by following by gut feel without knowing the underlying realities.
Probably all of these decisions were suggested from the Management Consultants and the consultants might have given the best possible suggestion based on the availability of information to them. Problem: Lack of information!

Behind these failures, the reasons could be:
1. Weak Sales Force
2. Lack of proper Marketing Effort
3. Poor Infrastructure to support the decision
4. Non availability of Experts
5. Improper pricing
.................. there could be many.

There is no short cut to success and companies have to understand this. If they have to grow in a proper way, vision and ideas, and the execution of those ideas is necessary. But equally is to know the basics of the company and the market of the industry it is in.
Probably a good Market Research, Analysis of operations, Good Customer Segmentation and a good Pricing Model could have saved these failures.

The customers are humans and they need to be treated in a different way. I would say in a special way. The Rational Thought sometimes fail as they don't connect to the customers. The answer is simply to have some emotional factor into it.

Once again, my favorite picture about Management Consulting, Analytics Consulting and Market Research Consulting. Lets go with it.
I recommend a Rule for less probability of failure:
1. Know your operations first (make good MIS System) and streamline the process
2. Your your strengths and weaknesses; know your past operations, current customers and their behavior (Analytics)
3. Know the Market and the Competitors; know also the choice of current customers in the market (Market Research)
4. Explore what can be done and show your gut feel (Strategy Planning and Management)
5. Go to the Market with full force (Proper Execution) -- and back to 1.

Business is after all its all about taking risk, but in place of more risk its better to take the Calculated One.

Consulting Space -- Fight is on!

Job: Consultant
Problem: Lost in the Jungle
To be done: Find a way to reach a city

There was a time when Consulting mean Management Consulting. Consultants were heavily paid individual from MC companies like Mckinsey and BCG. Companies and big Business groups often called them and asked to their suggestions.

But Consulting was not that alone. Fair Isaac has been providing Analytics based Consulting services for the last 50 years and they have helped companies grow in their own way. Analytics Consultant helped business managers to understand the existing operations, the pros and cons of the decisions made etc.

The third too existed, Market Research Consulting. This is some where between the first two. This is about knowing Market and planning ahead to catch the opportunity that Market throws. TNS and AC Nielson are the major players in this area.

All three have existed and done well. They did not compete but worked together to help companies grow. But they never talk with each other.

Let us take a case where there were three consultants, one each from the above mentioned three areas, and they are given the problem. The report would be something like this:

1. Management Consultant
It looks like there is a way forward. Every such pave leads to a road and when the road is followed, you land up in a city. Go ahead and you will reach a city.

2. Analytics Consultant
You have so far traveled some X kms. Whenever you have walked a road, you have reached a town; Whenever you have traveled a lane, it has ended in a jungle; whenever you have moved through the jungle, you have ended in a river etc. You have reached here by crossing a river and the other side of the river was having a road. You might have to get back to the other side of the river and follow the road, that may take you to the city.

3. Market Research Consultant
There are three lanes, two rivers and twenty different types of trees, and there are twenty other parties in the jungle who are going to the city. Two are following a narrow lane and rest are going from the jungle. Now you decide, what you want to do.

The Winners: Management Consultant
Reason: They were confident and strongly proposed a action.

The group decided to follow what the Management consultant said, and now they are walking down the lane ........ Today they reached a road and are thankful to the Consultant ...... reached a town and are taking the dinner ..... next morning they again started the journey but the Group finds no way to pass the town as the other side of the town is the Indian Ocean.

Next Problem: Lost in a Town
Solution: Find a New Consultant

................. and the journey goes on!!