Take Caution When Selecting 3rd Party Tools

There are many third party tools, applications, and plugins available that will allow you to enhance your web application or improve your website usability. It is tempting to select the most popular free tool available because of the number of existing users and largely due to the fact that it’s free. However, you should take caution when selecting third party tools, particularly tools that your website or application are dependent on to function properly. The following set of criteria should be considered when selecting a third party application to integrate with your business web site or web application.

1. The Vendor

Be sure to research the vendor or person that developed the tool. Is this a well established vendor? What is their area of expertise? If the tool was created by a freelancer or single developer, learn more about their development background. This is important in determining if you are using a product created by a professional development firm or person vs. using a product created by a hobbyist. While there are some really awesome third party tools created by “hobbyist”, there’s a greater chance that the tool can/will be abandoned when the developer becomes overwhelmed with requests or loses interest in supporting the product.

2. The Pricing Model

If the tool is provided for free, determine how the vendor or developer will make money on the product. If tons of individuals are using the product, for free, how does the vendor pay for development and technical support? If there’s not a clear business model, there’s a greater chance that support of the product will be abandoned when the vendor becomes overwhelmed with requests and/or realizes that they can not earn money supporting the tool. Also, the cliche’ “you get what you pay for” applies; if no one is paying for the tool either directly or indirectly, then it’s safe to assume that the vendor is donating their “limited” time and resources.

3. The Technical Support

How does the vendor provide technical support for the tool? Is there a user guide, training video or knowledge base available? Are the technical support tools up to date? Does the vendor provide a phone number or email address for technical support issues? What is the expected response time for service tickets? These are important issues to consider because as a business, you don’t want to have a site or application dependent on a product that has no reliable technical support model in place. What happens if the product breaks? Can someone in your organization provide a solution? Or are you dependent on the vendor for technical support?  You should avoid using third party tools that have no clear technical support model in place; otherwise you will need to determine if someone else can effectively maintain the third party application if the vendor is not available.

4. The Level of Security

Before selecting a third party tool, determine what security measurements the vendor has in place to protect your company’s “environment”, in respect to your information and data? You will want to ensure that the third party tool does not display vulnerabilities that would provide hackers and malware to access your environment.

5. The Risk

Determine the business processes that would be impacted by this third party product. What business processes are impacted if the product is inoperative or unavailable? Also consider if sensitive data is impacted. You will want to access the real risk of using the tool; the higher the risk to your business, the higher the standard you will use to evaluate the vendor(s) and their product.

Kishau Rogers

Kishau Rogers is the President and Founder of Websmith Group, a web application development company. Her mission is to connect businesses with the information and technologies necessary to meet their goals EFFECTIVELY. Kishau Rogers holds a Computer Science Degree from Virginia Commonwealth University and has over sixteen years of experience, which includes web, application and database development. Kishau also speaks, blogs, and writes articles to educate organizations and entrepreneurs on resources and best practices for ensuring effective, dynamic and innovation web solutions.

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Your web project development is completed!   You are visualizing the thousands upon thousands of new customers and clients that will sign up upon realizing that your launch date has arrived.   However, you may realize quickly that marketing your new web application or website is an entirely different animal from implementing it.  If you haven’t a marketing strategy in place already, you may experience some anxiety shortly following your launch, as you listen to the crickets chirping in your area of the internet.   Hopefully, you will have allocated some of your resources (time/money) toward developing a long-term marketing plan for your project. However, here are a few ideas to generate some initial buzz and interest in your project:

Pre-Launch: Activities for Generating Buzz

If you’re approaching your implementation deadline, don’t wait until the deadline date arrives before announcing your project. You will want to generate some initial interest in your project before your launch date (but not too far in advance). As you make your announcement, you will want to focus on how your project will benefit your target audience. You need your target audience to look forward to the launch date because they’ve determined that your new project will provide some value to them. There are many methods for generating interest prior to your initial launch:

1. Social Media

Select the social media tools used most by your target audience and create a profile for your project. It’s not enough to simply create a profile; you will want to connect (friend/fan/follow/fav) with the individuals and organizations that meet your target profile. Then, use your account to provide more preliminary information about your project and to announce the launch date.

2. Press Release

It may be necessary to also submit a press release, which provides more information about your project and announces the launch date. You will want to ensure that the press release is distributed in a publication that your target audience will generally read.

3. Leverage Your Existing Mailing List

If you have an existing mailing list, you will definitely want to inform subscribers of your new project. These individuals have already expressed some interest in your organization. You may want to designate one mailing to announcing the project and ask that your subscribers ‘forward’ the message to any organizations or individuals that they feel would be interested in learning more.

4.  Coming Soon …

Create a web site with a descriptive and professional coming soon page.  The coming soon page need only be one page, but it should be professional in design; you don’t want to turn people off before you get started.  Also, the page should provide a compelling description of the final product and should be setup to collect contact information (email) from individuals that would like to be notified when the project has launched.

5. Blog About It

If you don’t already have a blog for your project, create one or identify an area on your existing blog to promote the project. You can use this as an opportunity to provide information on the progress of the project and to remind your visitors of the launch date. Also, you can use your blog to gather contact information from individuals that would like to be notified via email once your project has launched.

6. Your Email Signature

Your email signature is a great way to constantly remind your existing network of your launch date. You can designate a line in your email signature for a ‘Coming Soon’ message. You should describe the project briefly, but in enough detail that entices your contacts to click for more details.

7. Have a (Virtual) Pre-Launch Party

Identify a date and time prior to your public launch to allow a select group of visitors to login and check out the finished project in advance. You may want to provide free snacks (gifts) for individuals that attend the pre-launch party and provide their feedback. You can use this as an opportunity to gain some real world feedback; there may be issues you can address prior to the real public launch. However, you will now have identified an audience of individuals that were interested enough in your project to attend your pre-launch.

8. Local Organizations

With so much activity around the internet, it is easy to forget tried and true offline methods. Contact your local networking groups regarding opportunities to promote your project at their events or in their communications with members. Pay close attention to the characteristics of members in the organization; you will want to ensure that you’re reaching your targeted audience.

Kishau Rogers

Kishau Rogers is the President and Founder of Websmith Group, a web application development company. Her mission is to connect businesses with the information and technologies necessary to meet their goals EFFECTIVELY. Kishau Rogers holds a Computer Science Degree from Virginia Commonwealth University and has over sixteen years of experience, which includes web, application and database development. Kishau also speaks, blogs, and writes articles to educate organizations and entrepreneurs on resources and best practices for ensuring effective, dynamic and innovation web solutions.

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As more businesses employ the use of web based applications to facilitate or automate one or more business processes, it is important to develop an “online” help system for providing effective user support. “How to provide adequate user and technical support?” is often a question that is asked after an application has been developed or upon receiving complaints from users regarding inadequate support levels. As more users are able to access business applications using any web browser or mobile device, giving your users the support they need, when they need it has become critically important.

The Goal: What is an ‘effective’ online help system?

1.  Provide users with the ability to select the type of assistance they prefer

First, you want to provide users with the ability to select the type of assistance they prefer. You will find that some users prefer to read User Guides, others may prefer to watch a video and a few may desire to simply contact a technician via email or phone. Upon developing a web application, you should already know your target audience and how (in general) they prefer to interact. Keep this in mind when developing your online help systems. Many times a web application will be developed and the developer will create a help system that works best for them, not the users.  Example: have you ever needed help on using an application and realized that the only way to receive help is to post your question on a forum and wait for an answer?  Many times you’ll receive an answer from other users, not a technician. While this method will work in some cases, it does not allow you to define a process that will provide a consistent level of support, as it is entirely dependent on the expertise and activity of the community of users.

2.  Easy access to help

You want to ensure that your users can access help tools quickly from any area in the application.

3.   Your help process should not interrupt the users current state.

Have you ever used an application, realized that you needed some additional instruction on how to proceed and learned that you needed to exit your current area to receive assistance (and perhaps risk losing all of your changes and/or forcing you to restart your routine entirely).

4.   The help system should not increase the complexity of using the application

The method that you provide online assistance to your users should not require a help system of its own.

5.   Information should be presented in the tone, style and language expected by the target audience

If the target audience is generally non-technical, you want to ensure that information provided via online help systems is not laden with technical jargon or in a format unfamiliar to the users.

6.  The information provided by your online help system should be current, reviewed often and easily updated.

Provide users with the most up-to-date and relevant information.   Many of us have used help systems that would be effective if the information provided was up-to-date.  Updates to the help system should be included with the rollout of new revisions and versions.

7.  Additional levels of support should be offered.

Ensure that users are able to receive answers to their questions or resolutions to their issues.  Have you ever not found an answer to your question via an online help guide or video, but were not offered an additional method for finding that answer.  It should be standard to offer an additional level of support if, for some reason, the user was unable to obtain an answer to their question.

As nearly 70% of all internet users have either stored data online or have used a web-based software application, it is becoming critically important to ensure that your method for offering user assistance remain effective. Keep the standards listed above in mind as you begin to identify your online help system.

Kishau Rogers

Kishau Rogers is the President and Founder of Websmith Group, a web application development company. Her mission is to connect businesses with the information and technologies necessary to meet their goals EFFECTIVELY. Kishau Rogers holds a Computer Science Degree from Virginia Commonwealth University and has over sixteen years of experience, which includes web, application and database development. Kishau also speaks, blogs, and writes articles to educate organizations and entrepreneurs on resources and best practices for ensuring effective, dynamic and innovation web solutions.

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