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5/1/2008

The Customer Service Excellent Standard: 5 'E's

Transformational Government has given birth to the Customer Service Excellence Standard. I first became aware of this whilst following articles and speeches from the Tower 08 event a few weeks ago. The Standard will (and should) affect all public services, their approach, their delivery and their relationship with their generous taxpaying customers, because 'the citizen [will be] always and everywhere at the heart of public service provision'.

Essentially, the government wants public services to demonstrate the following 5 'E's.

Efficient: 'Performing or functioning in the best possible manner with the least waste of time and effort; having and using requisite knowledge, skill, and industry; competent; capable. Satisfactory and economical to use. Producing an effect, as a cause.'

Effective: 'Adequate to accomplish a purpose; producing the intended or expected result. Actually in operation or in force; functioning. Producing a deep or vivid impression; striking. Prepared and available for service'.

Excellent: 'Possessing outstanding quality or superior merit; remarkably good. Archaic. extraordinary; superior.'

Equitable: 'Characterized by equity or fairness; just and right; fair; reasonable.'

Empowering: 'To invest with power, especially legal power or official authority. To equip or supply with an ability; enable.'

(Definitions are from dictionary.com).

A tall order; especially the last one in the list; the word 'enable' is particularly poignant here. The Minister for Transformational Government recently made a speech in which he conveyed his desire for public involvement. He acknowledged that 'the most successful websites are those that bring together content created by the people who use them', and that 'citizens now have the ability and the appetite to use government services and information online'.

The first of these statements is accurate in many cases, but the second is a sweeping generalisation. There are plenty of people who don't have the appetite to use government services and information online - what about them? I'm all for the 'sink or swim' approach when it comes to online personal services (photo sharing, directories etc.), but public services are a different kettle of fish. We're all paying for them, all contributing, all entitled, and yet transferring everything to an online environment is almost discriminating against those who can't, won't or shan't use computers and the internet for whatever reason.

Managing this kind of change is going to be difficult, time consuming and very expensive. When we install new software systems at organisations, there's always a period where it's necessary to run 2 systems at once. The old system is gradually phased out as the new system receives information and users become more able and confident. In our experience, this is the only way to achieve a smooth transition. Surely the government will need to approach Customer Service Excellence and the introduction of online services in this manner.

I'll be following the Customer Service Excellence initiative with our customers in mind, looking at how the standard will affect arts education services, and making recommendations on what they can do to meet the standards.

Posted at 9:50 AM by Jenny Gray | Category: Education | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

4/11/2008

Survey of Music Services Completed by 'every LA in the country'?

Today, I read an article in The Guardian that referred to last year's survey of local authority (LA) music services. I have a qualm with this article, relating to the following statement:

'Analyses of the musical habits of five to 16-year-olds recorded by every local authority in the country, conducted by academics at the University of London Institute of Education, suggest that schools should consider single-sex bands to make pupils play different instruments.'

My issue is with the assertion that the survey was completed and submitted by 'every local authority in the country'. This is simply not true. I know of several music services that did not complete the survey either because the data they hold is inadequate, or because they don't even hold the necessary data. For music services charging to directly to schools, the surveys are particularly difficult because pupil information isn't readily available and there are hoops to be jumped through in order to obtain it.

From time to time, people call me to ask about Ensemble. It is almost always the same story; a combination of the following:

Current (legacy) systems can't cope with increasing demands for complicated scheduling and charging.
Information is kept in a collection of spreadsheets and databases, resulting in constant multiple-entry and duplication of processes.
Pupil data is inconsistent, and fragmented. It needs consolidating.
Regular reporting and management information is hard to come by, because a) the person who built the current system is no longer there, b) the current system isn't up to scratch in this department, and/or c) the data isn't in a fit state to be reported on.
The Survey of LEA Music Services is a nightmare.

The final point in this list is often the most prevalent. From conversations I've had with music service managers, I know that the survey can take weeks, and even months to complete. It involves a sort of 'information amnesty' whereby music services request that peripatetic staff hand in pupil registers and forms. Each and every detail of each and every pupil then needs to be entered in to a system so that it can be formatted correctly and churned out as stipulated by the researchers.

Also, there's the issue of magic numbers; I am referring, of course, to Unique Pupil IDs. If you have these, the survey is a breeze. If you don't, its complicated...

I think I'd be right in saying that most music services don't hold Unique Pupil IDs. They're difficult to find out. It's not as easy as asking little Johnny to confirm his name and date of birth when he turns up for his violin lesson (or should this be a tuba lesson?). I've heard stories of LA pupil database administrators being less than forthcoming in handing out pupil ID numbers. I know of cases where there has been much to-ing and fro-ing of spreadsheets between music services and their associated LA pupil data teams, all for the sake of acquiring the magic numbers.

My point is that the survey is not a walk in the park for the majority of LA music services, and that management information and reporting is often high on the lists made by those looking at Ensemble. This is certainly the subject on which I am most thoroughly grilled when presenting Ensemble to interested parties: 'Ability to do Survey of LA Music Services' = brownie points, nightmare relief, saving administration time/costs, leaving office on time etc.

Do we really need a survey to discover that girls and boys opt for different instruments? This sort of statistic seems to trivialise the survey and all the hard work that goes the data collection effort that informs it. I'd prefer to read about statistics that substantiate the positive, real aspects of music education and how it helps children to communicate, work together, gain in confidence etc. If these things are happening, then does it really matter that girls are achieving these things through playing the harp and boys through playing the trombone?

Email me or leave a comment if you have thoughts on this issue. I'm interested to hear them.

Posted at 4:59 PM by Jenny Gray | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (1)

3/25/2008

New Features for Managing Groups and Membership

The first installation for Ensemble enterprise happens this week, and I've been testing new features as I prepare to train new users. Here's some of the new features I've noticed whilst going through Groups (formerly called 'Ensembles').

In Group records, the leavers are shown on a separate tab from current members. This is useful because the members tab doesn't become clogged up with those who have left.

There's a new field in the Group Membership listing in which you can enter a member's part. This is great for orchestras etc. where a pupil's instrument isn't enough information and you want to record which desk they sit on, or which part they play (i.e. 1st violin, 2nd violin).

Each group member now has a notes field against their membership so that you can attach comments and notes about the member.

Posted at 10:21 AM by Jenny Gray | Category: Paritor Software | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

3/12/2008

My Advice to an SEO Newbie

"Search Engines? No problem, I'll just Google it and I'll find all the tricks in the book. It'll take no time at all and the results will be instant. Then I'll just sit back and reap the sweet google-ranking-related rewards". If only...

I was as disillusioned as they come when I first embarked upon the SEO-focused website re-vamp process. I thought it'd be easy; that there had to be a quick fix trick, and that I'd find it if I looked hard enough. Needless to say, I was bitterly disgruntled, but also strangely fascinated by the complexity of it all. I read until I was cross-eyed, I grasped at every piece of advice I could find, I rode out the ups and downs of experimenting with my site, and I've had good results, but it isn't easy. Here's my 5 pieces of advice to an SEO newbie:

1. There are no tricks. None.

Ah the harsh reality of SEO. If you're a bit lazy, and you're are after quick fixes, you're going to be disappointed. Believe me, I can assure you that I've hunted for such tricks, and they simply don't exist. It'd be more productive to take a cheese grater to your shins than to approach SEO in this way. Optimising your site is going to require time and effort. You will need to read, read and read on the subject of SEO. Absorb as much information as you can; consume articles and media on sites like Gooruze. Ask questions. Decide what is relevant to you, decide what isn't, and put your findings into practice. (During this process, you will become familiar with around100 new acronyms).

2. Other SEOs are not being smug when they say 'there are no tricks'.

At first, it seems like there's a knowledge conspiracy, and that everyone but you has the answers. This is not the case. If there was an accurate, effective and extensively-read book called 'The Definitive Rules of SEO', blogs and articles on the subject wouldn't be as interesting, the google folks would be tearing their hair out, and SEO wouldn't be fun any more. The element of mystery is important to SEO, if we knew the Google algorithm, there'd be no point. Every couple of weeks I refer back to (and attempt to understand) the 'PageRank Explained' article at WebWorkshop.net. It's mind-boggling, but it has to be.

3. Patience is a Virtue

Again, I remind you that there's no such thing as an SEO Magic Wand, and that you mustn't expect immediate results. You could see results after a couple of months, or for a new site in a competitive market it could take years. There is no telling how long it will take, you have to keep tweaking and experimenting. Never has the phrase 'Patience is a Virtue' (Piers Plowman, 1377) been more appropriate.

4. It will never stop.

The SEO process is wide-ranging, protracted and ongoing. Above, when I said 'you have to keep tweaking and experimenting', I mean that you can never really stop doing this. How will you know what works for your site if you don't try it out? Allow time for (make time for) monitoring, fine-tuning and pursuit of fresh content.

5. Person Specification

You will be a self-motivated, results-driven individual. You will have an excellent working knowledge of the Internet and must be prepared to study search engines and their complicated algorithms as much as possible. You must posses sound analytical skills in order to suss out your competitors' strategies, and to rate your own progress. You will be keen to ask the advice of others where appropriate, and to share your own findings in turn. Attention to detail is essential (a slight tendency to obsess about detail is ideal). You will be a perfectionist, a stickler for accuracy. Above all else you will be persistent, relentless, and determined to succeed.

I'm no expert in this arena - far from it; there's so much to learn. In a field like SEO, plagued by the mystery of so many unknowns, you can't know everything, but you might as well enjoy it. Accept that it's difficult and that it's never going to stop, but (for me anyway) this is all part of the fun. To me, it's like a playing game I can never truly win because there's always more I can do.

Posted at 5:32 PM by Jenny Gray | Category: SEO | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (1)

3/5/2008

Sitemap? Go for both HTML and XML

I've held back on this post because I'm waiting for some software to be ready for release (the story of my life) so that I can offer it here as a freebie. Needless to say, I'm still waiting so I'm writing the post anyway, and will add the software at a later date.

Sitemaps then. Until project re-vamp, I've always used sitemap generator tools like the one from AuditMyPC that churn out XML files which I can quickly pop into the root of a site. It occurred to me recently that an HTML sitemap would provide some heavy internal-linkage, and could be engineered to include page titles as anchor text. I don't know how effective this would be on a site without unique page titles - which are a must for SEO. See my post on Page Title Advice for more info.

I wasn't keen to build an HTML sitemap manually, so I enlisted the help of a developer colleague (Rob), and he came up with some software called 'Rob's Awesome Indexer' (his naming, not mine). The indexer requires a local file path and a root URL, upon which it sifts through a site, indexing all of its pages with their titles. Rob's Awesome Indexer needs a local file path because it runs on a pre-published project, using the root URL to create links for the output.

The output is basically a list; there's an example at www.paritor.com/sitemap.htm. It has worked for us. I know this because I made a mistake when I first uploaded it; I put a key search term (or two) in it's <title> tag. This wreaked havoc with our google listing figures because the sitemap was up there with the content pages in search results. Even though it hadn't been online as long as some of our other pages, because of it's high internal-link-with-relevant-anchor-text content, it was a fast climber.

Once I'd altered the sitemap's <title> tag, it took about two weeks to remove itself from the top spots; I'm confessing to this mistake in hope that others won't repeat it...

I'll post again when Rob's Awesome Sitemap builder is ready for release. If you want to put your name down for it, email me.

Posted at 11:08 AM by Jenny Gray | Category: SEO | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

2/15/2008

Measuring Creativity in Schools?

The BBC have reported that the government are thinking of measuring creativity in school children, in hope of boosting 'soft skills' - the kind of skills that employers want. The article presents Creative Partnerships as an example of how creative activities in schools are promoting self-discipline and team work whilst developing communication skills and self confidence.

Read the full article here

How is creativity is going to be assessed? Exam-sitting has to be out of the question: how many of us would be able to produce our most creative work within exam conditions, knowing that our offerings would be assessed? The fact that the product has something hanging on it adds an element of risk, which is bound to stifle creativity. Investing so much of yourself in something that you know will leave you open to criticism isn't going to provide an accurate example of your best creative work.

If it were up to me, I'd do it by observation over a period of time. I'd be looking at the creative processes within a project as a whole, and not at its results. This kind of approach, though, could be time-consuming for teachers and those who mark the work.

It's a tricky one, and I'll be interested to see where it goes...

Posted at 2:49 PM by Jenny Gray | Category: Education | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

2/6/2008

Good Content Speaks Volumes

I've often seen the phrase 'content is king' kicking around on SEO websites and blogs, and I thought it was just some kind of in-speak for web design types, yet now I find I'm preaching it myself.

The bottom line is that visitors aren't going to stick around unless your content is worth looking at. It's too easy for them to make quick-click decisions to leave your site - how are you going to stop them?

It's a bit like TV, only quicker. When you're watching TV, for how long does a program have to bore you before you change the channel? I bet you give websites less time. Similarly, in magazines, how quickly do you turn the page of a boring article? Sometimes I don't even get to the content of an article - the pictures and headlines can be enough to tell me that it's not something I want to read.

This applies to websites too. Getting people to actually stop and read your content is a challenge in itself, so don't let the content be disappointing. Let's say you have the perfect navigation menus, images, titles etc. so your visitors can find what they're after, and you have their attention. They have an expectation, and they're going to be a bit miffed if your content doesn't meet that expectation.

There goes the return traffic... Are they going to come back if your content is sub-standard? Would you watch the second episode of a TV program or buy the second issue of a magazine if you'd been disappointed by the first?

Content is the final hurdle, and it can make or break a site. There are 2 reasons for this - the first, I have explained above (you don't want to disappoint your visitors), the second reason is that good, interesting, readable content is good for SEO.

An over-SEO'd site that's jam packed full of nonsensical-but-keyword-rich content is going to annoy your eight-legged friends after a while. Spiders aren't stupid. Whilst it can be a good idea to write page titles, meta tags and links with the crawlers in mind, content should most definitely be written for people. If you're doing this effectively, your keywords and phrases will crop up anyway, and therefore you're ok as far as the spiders are concerned.

I find that content is the hardest thing to get right, and it's hard to monitor. Volume of traffic alone isn't really an accurate measure of how a site is doing. To monitor content, its better to monitor the amount of time people are spending on a site, and which pages they're looking at.

Writing and maintaining content is an ongoing, constantly evolving commitment. I'll never be happy with what I've written, I'll always be tweaking it, but this is not such a bad thing, as fresh content is good for SEO. I'm learning (and reluctantly accepting) that a webmistress's work is never done...

Posted at 11:32 AM by Jenny Gray | Category: SEO | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (3)

1/30/2008

Teachers Struggling with Technology

A report in the Guardian earlier this week presented the findings of the first 'Teacher Voice Omnibus Survey' by the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER). In this survey, 80% of those interviewed said that IT in schools has made a difference to the way they teach. There's no mention of the nature of this 'difference', but let's assume it's positive.

The most interesting statistic to come out of the survey is that one third of teachers felt they lacked the necessary skills to exploit the technology available to them. It seems that lack of support, insufficient resources and poor reliability is limiting teachers, and discouraging them from integrating IT into their lessons.

Only 44% of teachers believed their school to be innovative in it's use of IT. If this question were asked of pupils, I imagine the response would be quite different.

With home broadband take-up on the increase, and the widespread availability of cheap computer hardware, it's no wonder that pupils are becoming tech savvy. I expect that the average teenager will...

use msn messenger
have a facebook/myspace/bebo profile (if not 2, or all 3 of these)
use flickr and youtube to share media online
regularly send and receive emails
visit online gaming sites

...and it's perfectly feasible for them to be doing all of these things at the same time. I recently attended a presentation by Microsoft's UK Education & Marketing Manager. One of the statistics used in this presentation was that 80% of teachers never play computer games. I wonder how many teachers participate in online gaming and use social networking sites?

It's not difficult to see why more than half of the 1,000 respondents to the Teacher Voice Omnibus Survey believe that their school's use of IT falls short of innovative. People (pupils, teachers and parents) have access to rich, multi-channeled user-environments at home, and schools and their staff have a lot to keep up with.

Posted at 12:01 PM by Jenny Gray | Category: Education | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (15)

1/15/2008

Footer Links

There are 4 things that drove me to add these to www.paritor.com...

I noticed that other sites have them
I wanted to improve the site's internal link structure
I was recommended to add them by an SEO buddy of mine
They're an opportunity for keyword cramming

So I embarked upon the most time-consuming and mind-numbingly boring part of project re-vamp... Here's how I went about it, and what I learned:

My footer links are in a table in a special div (footLinksDiv) above my footer div. I've tried to keep them small and discreet by using a smaller font-size and lighter colour than the content text. They're underlined to make it obvious that they're links. I realise that I could've enlisted a colleague to write some kind of script that randomises the links for each page and displays them automatically, but I'm a control freak, and I wanted certain links to appear on certain pages, so I did it manually. I had to go through all the pages anyway, so in the scheme of things, it wasn't too bad...

Internal Link Structure

An internal link structure is important. I want spiders/robots to crawl my pages as easily as possible, and I want my pages to be indexed quickly. The more internal links I have, the easier it will be for spiders to find their way around my site. Don't go mad with this - it's more important that users can find their way around, so the navigation system has to be tidy and friendly.

I posted an article about the importance of internal links on an online marketing community website, and I received the following comment from George Bounacos, Co-founder of Consumer Help Web.

'Spot-on advice. External links are important, but especially on heavy-content sites, a good internal linking structure says to a visitor, "Yeah, we know about that too."'

Up the use of Key Search Terms/Keywords

I like to use my key search terms as often as I can, and the footer links provided ample opportunity for this. I'm a stickler for URL titles too, see my post on URL Titles and Alt Tags.

In for a Penny, in for a Pound

I started off with only 3 footer links on each page, but half way through operation re-vamp, I decided that as I could fit 5 links at the bottom of each page, I should go for it. I went back over the 3-link pages and added more links. It now looks like the addition of Adsense means that I need to make the page content section wider, so I may need to up the footer link count too - I can't wait.

The Google Snippet: An Observation

Sometimes (and I don't have a current example of this), I've seen my footer links appearing in the google snippet for some of my pages. I check how my pages rank in the google search results every day, and I usually try to analyse how the snippet is made up. The fact that my Footer Links have appeared in the snippet demonstrates that Google is noticing them. This is good enough for me. See my article on First Impressions for more info about how to best utilise/influence the snippet.

Does it Work?

I think so. I don't know how google rates sites, and I don't know how pagerank is calculated (if I knew this, I wouldn't be blogging here), but 6 of my 8 key search terms now return my pages in the top 5 Google results, and my page rank has increased from 3 to 4 since I uploaded the new site in December. Footer Links are just one thing I've done to increase my google ranking. See my Top 10 SEO Tips for the other 9 things...

Leave a comment or email me if you want to discuss any of this.

Posted at 3:42 PM by Jenny Gray | Category: SEO | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (1)

1/9/2008

First Impressions Count: Make the most of Meta Tags

When we're searching online, what makes us choose some sites from google results over others? That little sliver of information we see in a list of results is all we have on which to make a decision. How our websites appear in google search results is important - first impressions do count. We can't control exactly how our sites will look, but we have a fighting chance by doing the following:

Focus on the meta keyword and meta description tags. Although they're not as important as page titles, I think it helps to use them consistently and effectively. They are, of course, another opportunity to pack in some key search terms.

The meta description is often used as part of the google snippet (that little bit of text that describes your site in google's search results), so it is important that it accurately describes its page. Make sure it's a proper, grammatically correct sentence that's relevant to the page it appears on. I've tried to make all of my meta tags unique. It's a long, boring process, but for the industrious and persistent, it pays off.

I found this video by Matt Cutts, head of Google's WebSpam team on 'the anatomy of a search snippet'. It explains how Google builds the snippet.

I've found that the content of snippets for pages on www.paritor.com is built from a combination of meta descriptions, page content, <H1> and <H2> tags and links. I can't seem to identify a pattern with this, and I think it might be affected by the search text.

For example, in the following google search result...

Teacher Administration Software, Private Teacher Software and ...

Paritor, Music and Teacher Administration Software. PARITOR SOFTWARE. Developers of teacher software, and music administration software for music and ...
www.paritor.com/ - 6k - Cached - Similar pages - Note this
[ More results from www.paritor.com ]

'Teacher Administration Software, Private Teacher Software and...' is the beginning of the home page title.
'Paritor, Music and Teacher Administration Software' is an <alt> tag from our logo image that appears on the home page
'PARITOR SOFTWARE' is the <H1> on the home page
'Developers of teacher software etc.' is the first line of content on the home page, in which the words 'teacher software' and 'music administration software' are links to other pages.

I've also noticed that my footer links sometimes appear in the google snippet. I've blogged about these separately.

The search that returns this result is 'music teacher software'. This snippet tells the searcher who we are, what we do, what our products are and who they're for. By making good use of page titles, meta tags, alt tags, H1s and link anchor text, I'm influencing the appearance of the google snippet for each page of a site.

I think it's worth it because first impressions are important. The snippet is all the searcher has to go on when faced with a list containing your site alongside those of your competitors; the snippet is precious.

Leave a comment or email me if you want to discuss any of this.

Posted at 5:28 PM by Jenny Gray | Category: SEO | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

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