6 Simple Steps to Improve User Experience (copy) / 6 pasos sencillos para mejorar la experiencia del usuario

6 Simple Steps to Improve User Experience / 6 pasos sencillos para mejorar la experiencia del usuario

• by Justin Zalewski 
•  2 min read 
•  original
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There’s a reason we come back to the same grocery store each week. It’s the same reason that we return to the same barber, home improvement store, or favorite restaurant. These businesses have created a positive experience, which in turn creates loyalty toward their particular brand.

Hay una razón por la que volvemos a la misma tienda de comestibles cada semana. Es la misma razón por la que volvemos a la misma belleza, tienda de mejoras para el hogar, o en el restaurante favorito. Estas empresas han creado una experiencia positiva, que a su vez crea la lealtad hacia su marca en particular.

In the retail world, brand experience and engagement are the strongest drivers of loyalty, and the digital world is no different. Design, atmosphere, speed, and problem resolution are all pillars of a great consumer experience, and these same concepts contribute to their digital experience as well (highlight to tweet).

En el mundo del retail, experiencia de marca y el compromiso son los principales impulsores de la lealtad, y el mundo digital no es diferente.Diseño, la atmósfera, la velocidad y la resolución de problemas son los pilares de una gran experiencia para el consumidor , y estos mismos conceptos contribuyen a su digitales experiencia, así (resaltar a tweet).

A great user experience on your site ensures that your visitors can find everything they’re looking for with ease and speed. It’s up to you to create a content-rich, meaningfully designed site that keeps your customers and partners engaged and returning for more.

Una gran experiencia de usuario en su sitio asegura que sus visitantes pueden encontrar todo lo que buscan con facilidad y rapidez. Todo depende de usted para crear un sitio rico en contenido, de manera significativa diseñado que mantiene a sus clientes y socios comprometidos y que vuelven por más.

There’s a lot to say about how to better UX in every aspect of an organization, but the quick tips below will help you avoid common UX mistakes on your website, and instead, create a site that’s easy to use and provides an engaging experience for the visitor.

Hay mucho que decir sobre cómo mejor UX en todos los aspectos de una organización, pero los consejos rápidos a continuación le ayudará a evitar errores UX comunes en su sitio web, y en su lugar, crear un sitio que es fácil de usar y proporciona una experiencia atractiva para el visitante.

Speed

Optimize images: Speed matters. Every fraction of a second a visitor waits for your site to load, their frustration grows—and that frustration is aimed at your brand. Images account for a significant portion of that load time. Make sure you’re not making your visitors download a gigantic image that’s only being used as a tiny thumbnail. A website set up properly on a CMS will do this automatically for you, but if that’s not the case, there are plenty of free tools available that you can use to optimize your images before adding them to the site (JPEGmini, Smush.it, etc.).

Velocidad

Optimizar imágenes:  La velocidad es importante. Cada fracción de segundo el visitante espera a su sitio para cargar, su frustración crece y que la frustración se dirige a su marca. Imágenes representan una parte significativa de que el tiempo de carga. Asegúrese de que no está haciendo sus visitantes descargar una imagen gigantesca que sólo está siendo utilizado como una pequeña miniatura. Un sitio web creado correctamente en un CMS lo hará automáticamente por usted, pero si ese no es el caso, hay un montón de herramientas gratuitas disponibles que se pueden utilizar para optimizar sus imágenes antes de añadirlos al sitio ( JPEGmini , Smush.it , etc.).

Automate speed improvements: Set up as many automated speed improvements as you can. If you use a CMS, install a plugin that will cache parts of your site so that visitors don’t need to download anything more than once. WP Super Cache or W3 Total Cache are great if you use WordPress. These plugins can also minify and compress files, making file sizes significantly smaller and allowing visitors to browse your site more quickly. Some of the more technical aspects of caching and compressing files may require a web development partner.

Automatizar mejoras en la velocidad:  Configure tantos mejoras en la velocidad automatizado como sea posible. Si utiliza un CMS, instalar un plugin que almacenar en caché partes de su sitio para que los visitantes no tienen que descargar nada más de una vez. Super GT caché o W3 Total Cacheson grandes si se utiliza WordPress. Estos complementos también pueden minify y comprimir archivos, por lo que los tamaños de archivo significativamente más pequeño y permite a los visitantes navegar por su sitio con mayor rapidez. Algunos de los aspectos más técnicos de almacenamiento en caché y compresión de archivos puede requerir un socio de desarrollo web.

Design

Avoid stock photos: Cheesy stock photography is the quickest way to turn a great site into a mediocre one. The typical user can spot a stock photo from a mile away, and it instantly devalues your website. If you’re looking for a photo to use on your “Contact Us” page, try a picture of your actual teamrather than using the same stock photo of a woman wearing a headset that every one of your competitors uses.

Diseño

Evitar fotografías de archivo:  queso stock photography es la forma más rápida de convertir un gran sitio en una mediocre. El usuario típico puede detectar una foto de archivo de una milla de distancia, y al instante devalúa su sitio web. Si usted está buscando una foto para usar en la página de "Contacto", tratar un cuadro de su equipo actual en lugar de utilizar la misma foto de stock de una mujer que llevaba un auricular que cada uno de sus competidores utiliza.

Protect your brand: So you ran an A/B test and found that the garish neon green button converts better than the on-brand accent blue used consistently throughout your site. Is a 1 percent increase in conversions really worth the damage that eyesore will do to your brand? A/B testing is great, but keep in mind that the design affects more than what people click—it affects how they think about your company.

Proteja su marca:  Así se ejecutó una prueba A / B y nos pareció que el botón verde de neón chillones convierte mejor que el azul acento en la marca utilizada consistentemente a través de su sitio. Es un aumento del 1 por ciento en las conversiones realmente vale la pena el daño que monstruosidad va a hacer para su marca? Las pruebas A / B es grande, pero hay que tener en cuenta que el diseño afecta a más de lo que la gente haga clic-que afecta a la forma en que piensan acerca de su empresa.

General

Be clear: Find a way to distill what your business does down to a clear, concise statement, and lead with that. There’s a time and place for mystery and intrigue, but the main headline of a business website is not it. Visitors shouldn’t have to read the entire site to figure out what your business does; they should be able to understand what you do within a couple seconds of landing on your homepage. A few well-written pages will be infinitely more effective than dozens of poorly-written ones.

General

Sea claro:  Encontrar una manera de destilar lo que hace su negocio a una declaración clara y concisa, y conducir con eso. Hay un tiempo y lugar para el misterio y la intriga, pero el titular principal de un sitio web de negocios no es así. Los visitantes no deberían tener que leer todo el sitio para averiguar lo que hace su negocio; que debe ser capaz de entender lo que se hace dentro de un par de segundos de aterrizar en su página de inicio. Unas páginas bien escritas serán infinitamente más eficaz que la de los mal escrito docenas.

Well-placed calls to action: Tests have shown that a call-to-action button performs best at the point in the page where the visitor also finds the information they need. Rather than plastering calls-to-action throughout the site and bombarding visitors at every turn, use a more strategic approach and place the button at the point where the visitor is prepared to make a decision.

Llamadas a la acción (Call to Action) bien colocado:  Las pruebas han demostrado que un botón de llamada a la acción se desempeña mejor en el punto de la página donde el visitante se encuentra la información que necesitan. En lugar de enlucido llamadas a la acción de todo el sitio y el bombardeo de los visitantes a cada paso, utilizar un enfoque más estratégico y colocar el botón en el punto donde se prepara al visitante para tomar una decisión.

Oftentimes, we get so caught up in ensuring that our websites appear in relevant searches that we forget how important it is to ensure that once customers and partners do arrive at our website, we are giving them the best possible experience. These tips should get you on your way.

Muchas veces, estamos tan atrapados en asegurar que nuestros sitios web aparecen en las búsquedas relevantes que nos olvidamos de lo importante que es para asegurarse de que una vez que los clientes y los socios no llegan a nuestro sitio web, les estamos dando la mejor experiencia posible. Estos consejos le permitirá estar en su camino.

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How To Crowdfund $50,000 In Your Spare Time

Referencia:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/85broads/2013/10/01/how-to-crowdfund-50000-in-your-spare-time/#3769323198e4

By Lisa Curtis

A few months ago, the idea of running a crowdfunding campaign to raise $50,000 terrified me. I had a full-time job and hadn’t told many people about my startup, Kuli Kuli. My own father still couldn’t pronounce the name of the plant that we were trying to make the next big superfood (for reference it’smoringa — MO-ring-GA).

Making me even more nervous was the fact that every high-volume crowdfunding campaign I read about seemed to have a full-time staff and a couple of celebrities behind them. Which sort of made me wonder, if they had all that, did they really need the crowdfunded capital?

So this is the article I wished I’d read six months ago. It is entirely possible to run a very successful crowdfunding campaign without being absurdly well-connected or quitting your day job. It just requires a little more planning. Here’s how we did it:

Figuring Out Your How & Why – 2 months out

About two months before you release your campaign, you need to figure out your how and why. As my good friend and crowdfunding consultant Sydney Malawer put it, “do you have a legitimate ask besides ‘we want money’?” People want to feel as though they are a part of something bigger than themselves and they want to know that their money is instrumental in accomplishing that goal.

For us, this meant that we needed to do a lot of research. The goal of Kuli Kuli’s Indiegogo campaign was to raise enough money to do our first major manufacturing run and launch our first moringa product in U.S. grocery stores. And we wanted to do all of this in a way that significantly improved the lives of the women farmers in West Africa where we source our moringa.

We depicted these goals in the graph above and wrote out an estimated budget in our campaign based on the quotes we’d received from manufacturers, insurers, lawyers, suppliers and distributors. Sound like a lot of work? That’s why you have to start early.

You should also do some research on crowdfunding. Both Kickstarter andIndiegogo have a lot of helpful tips of their website. Mike del Ponte wrote a great post on “Hacking Kickstarter”, Marked Point compiled a list of factors to consider that contribute to campaign success, and the Unreasonable Instituteput together some good learnings from their failed campaign.

As a final but important part of the preparatory phase, you need to find a videographer. Your video will make or break you. We were able to find a professional videographer who was willing to work pro-bono but you can make a compelling video yourself so long as you focus on telling a compelling story and keep it under three minutes. There are lots of good resources online to help you edit your video. A new startup called Ignite Video even has an app to help you edit videos from your phone.

Designing Your Campaign – 1 month out

Now that you have an idea of how much money you need to raise, you need to decide which platform to use. There are literally hundreds out there just waiting for the JOBS Act to pass but Kickstarter and Indiegogo are the two best options in my mind.

Kickstarter is the more trafficked of the two, but is a lot pickier about the types of projects they’ll allow (strictly creative) and its harder to make it onto their homepage since they do have more high-volume projects. In all honesty, Kickstarter rejected our campaign and I am so happy they did. We were featured on Indiegogo’s homepage for multiple days, went out in their newsletter and posted in their social media.

Once you’ve chosen your platform, you need to design the layout of your campaign. At this point, you should have storyboarded out your video and crystallized your pitch. Try explaining your value proposition to a five year old. If they get it, you’re golden. If they love it, put them in your video.

Your campaign should be image-rich, with just enough content to answer the predominate questions of “why should I care” and “what are you going to do with my money?” Most people don’t read so make sure all of this is in your video too. In general, it’s a good rule to not overestimate people’s attention spans so you’ll also want to keep your campaign short, around 30 days.

The final question you need to answer is “what are you going to give me?” Yes, technically people are donating to your campaign but it isn’t necessarily out of the goodness of their hearts. It’s a little bit of that plus a lot of “that looks awesome, I want that.” This is where your rewards come in.

You’ve got to have an appealing reward at the $25 level — this is by far the most popular pledge amount. But you should also dream big and have a multi-thousand dollar reward that offers some sort of incredible experience related to your product. We did a “weekend of health and wellness at a Napa winery” for $5,000. Full disclosure: the person who claimed it is related to me and would have donated anyway but said that she “got excited” by the winery reward and so donated more than she might have planned on.

Do NOT forget to factor shipping into the cost of your rewards. Your final price for the rewards will likely be the cost of the goods + shipping + a crowdfunding premium that includes the percent that the platform will take along with a little extra because these people aren’t just purchasing a product, they’re getting an idea off the ground. Finally, make sure that the estimated delivery date is something you can deliver on. We thought three months was enough. It generally isn’t, which is why about 70% of campaigns don’t deliver on time. You’ll probably want to give yourself six months.

Building the Movement – 2 weeks out

By this point you should have a core team of people working on this with you. Maybe its your co-founders, maybe its your mom, it doesn’t really matter so long as these people are ready to go out to their networks to make this campaign a success. Now the key is to increase that number.

We did this by creating a simple ambassador form in google (ours is here) that everyone on our team sent out to their networks two weeks before we launched. The goal is to get a lot of very excited ambassadors who are willing to go out to their networks for you. These people are signing up to get short-term spammed because your job is to send them sample social media posts and emails every week during your campaign. (You should tell them this in advance).

Organizations make even better ambassadors because they often have much bigger networks than individuals. We made a list of every organization we could think of related to moringa, nutrition, Africa or the Bay Area and we contacted them asking if they’d be willing to post about our campaign on their social media.

Lastly, you’ll want to prep the media. You should draft up a standard press release as a template but understand that personalized reporter pitches are what will actually get you covered. If you can, find a friend who works in PR and ask if he/she can download a list of reporters from a media database like Cision or Vocus. You’ll also want to spend time looking for relevant bloggers. Often a good place to start is by looking at who covered campaigns similar to yours.

Don’t expect that most reporters will respond. No one responded to our first pitch but when we followed up after our campaign had gained some momentum we landed on the front page of the SF Chronicle Business Section

Launch Day!

Your goal is to raise 25% of your funding within 24 hours which is roughly the amount that should get you featured on the homepage of Indiegogo or Kickstarter. This day is critical, so make sure that you’re prepared. And be sure to wake up early.

Two weeks ago you sent the ambassador form and your launch date to a list of friends and family (in my case about 200 people). Now you should send an “it’s here” email to everyone you have ever met or interacted with. An easy way to do this in gmail is to click on Contacts → More → Export (All Contacts, CSV). Then you can import those contacts into your preferred email service provider (we use MailChimp).

Take a deep breath and then send out an email to all of those people (in my case 2,000 people). Note that you should only do this once in a blue moon otherwise you’ll be marked as spam, kicked off your email provider and your friends/family will begin to hate you. Encourage your teammates to do this as well but don’t force it, this type of email isn’t for everyone.

After sending that email you should spend the rest of the morning reaching out directly to key influencers, posting on social media and watching as that little green bar moves towards the right. Then you should go to your day job.

That evening, you should host a launch dinner party with all of your family and friends. If you’re a bunch of 20-somethings like us, you should ask your parents or someone older to host it. Aka, someone who has friends with real money. Over the course of that evening you should show your video, give a short heartfelt speech about what this campaign means to you and then make sure that everyone in that room has access to multiple computers with your campaign on it.

That strategy helped us raise $21,000 by 9pm and got us on Indiegogo’s homepage. If you do your preparation and launch day right, the rest will follow. You should plan on sending updates to your backers and networks throughout the campaign, ideally in video format for a few of the critical moments such as when you’re halfway to your goal or 80% there.

End of Your Campaign

At the end of your campaign you should be sure to thank everyone who backed you, ideally in a video format. You should also celebrate! I’d highly suggest throwing a big party and inviting everyone who supported your campaign to attend.

Make sure to add all of the emails you’ve collected to your list and to keep everyone updated on your production timeline. If you do it right, a successful crowdfunding campaign can help launch your idea to the world and finally let you quit your day job. It did for me.

A writer, activist and traveler, Lisa Curtis’s experience ranges from working in the White House to serving as Peace Corps Volunteer in a small Nigerien village and working with women entrepreneurs in India. For more about Lisa, check out www.lisamariecurtis.com or follow her on Twitter @LisaCurtis.

GxAgro - Software Agricola

GxAgro es un software de Gestión Agrícola, se gestó hace muchos años, en el 1984.
En esa época yo estaba trabajando en la UNRC (Universidad Nacional de Río Cuarto) y tenía varias actividades principalmente trabajaba en la cátedra de Administración Rural de la Facultad de Agronomía y Veterinaria, y además colaboraba en el Laboratorio de Estadidisticas en Investigación y Desarrollo de Software. 

También tenía desarrollaba programas, de análisis económicos fuera de la Universidad en la consultora Agropecuaria "Campo y Gestión" de Bartolomé Felix Sciola y Juan Carlos Mafei.

Los principales trabajos realizados eran elaboración de Análisis económicos para la empresa agropecuaria, elaborabamos estadísticas y gráficas para el Suplemento Rural del Diario Puntal de la ciudad de Río Cuarto, y atendíamos una amplia cartera de productores y empresarios agropecuarios, a los que asistíamos para generar análisis de resultados económicos que iban más allá del Margen Bruto, se llegaba a obtener muchas comparativas y distintos ídices de rentabilidad y retorno económico.

En este contexto, uno de los clientes de la consultora, me solicitó hacer un desarrollo de software a medida para lo cual, si yo aceptaba el proyecto, compraría una PC de alrededor de 20.000 u$s, en ese tiempo, era una cifra mucho más importante que ahora.

Obviamente que acepté y así comenzó el desarrollo de la primera versión de GxAgro,para ambiente MS-DOS 3.0 y lenguaje xBase (Primero fué dBase III, y luego Clipper Summer'87). 
La primera versión en Windows, ambiente en el cual no tenía lenguaje conocido en el cual desarrollar fue realizada gracias a que yo conocia la herramienta CASE GeneXus, desde el 1992/93, en ese entonces trabajaba solo para pantallas   " verdes "  , DOS, AS/400 o a lo sumo  " ambar " , había tambien pantallas color, pero eran básicamente de Texto. Cuando en 1997, decidí hacer la primera versión para Windows, sólo pude hacerlo debido a que conocía GeneXus, de lo contrario hubiese sido imposible. Esa versión fué hecha con GeneXus 6.1 y para FoxPro for Windows, que era un lenguaje a medio camino entre DOS y Windows.. 
En el 2003, trabajamos migrando de FoxPro f/Windows a Visual FoxPro 6.0, ya un lenguaje Visual, con GeneXus 8.0, y allí ha quedado hasta HOY, 10 años después, en que de nuevo gracias a los impresionantes avances de la tecnología dominada por el mundo GeneXus, vamos a compenzar, Hoy, 14 de Febrero de 2013, el desarrollo de nuevas versiones de GxAgro para dos tremendos e igual de desafiantes ambientes:

I -  Web  que correrá probablemente con Ruby / JAVA o C#(.Net) con bases de datos, optativamente Oracle, MySQL, PostgreSQL, DB2, etc. .

II - Y para la novedosa plataforma de  Smart Devices , los Smart Phones y Tabletas, para TODOS los ambientes populares:

• Android (GalaXy Tab, GalaXy S3, ASUS Tablets, e infinidad más)
• iOS (iPad, iPhone, iPod)
• Black Berry (Smart Phones)
• Windows 8 RT - (Surface Pro) 

 Debemos ser realistas, si nuestro equipo fuese un equipo de desarrollo "tradicional" es decir que domina una plataforma/tecnología. No podríamos plantearnos una locura así, básicamente porque cada plataforma y ambiente, que es dominada por algunos lenguajes requiere, si se desea conquistar, que luego de seleccionar un lenguaje nos avocásemos a estudiar el mismo, además de estudiar la plataforma (DOS, Web, Windows, Linux, Apple, IOS, Android...) 

Nuestro equipo, no conoce ni de estos lenguajes dominantes (Ruby, Objective C, HTML5, Ruby, JavaScript, JAVA, etc.) solo conoce GeneXus, y por eso decidimos que podemos desafiar a estas grandes plataformas con sus lenguajes y tecnologías.


Referencias:
GeneXus : http://www.genexus.com
GxAgro BLOG: http://www.gxagro.blogspot.com.ar


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El Cisne Negro de Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Mis amigos.

Es un libro que me siento impulsado a recomendarles.

Leer este libro forma parte de aquellas cosas que hacen que exista "un antes y un después" en el modo de ver el mundo.

Yo no diría que es de lo mejor cambiar todo el tiempo la forma que vemos el mundo, por el contrario somos propensos a no cambiar nuestro modo de ver las cosas, a no cambiar mucho en ningún sentido. No nos gusta cambiar.

Les advierto: de alguna manera, ésta lectura cambia el modo de comprender nuestra propia existencia.

Creo que al leerlo, comprendemos que -paradójicamente- nuestro conocimiento del mundo disminuye.

Sin embargo, a mí me gusta comprender un poco más el universo, a pesar de que esto implique tirar por la borda mucho de lo que "sabía".

Tengo -según me acusa un amigo- una curiosidad infinita, y a pesar de que trato de aprender de todo, voy descubriendo cada vez, que lo que conozco es siempre más pequeño en relación al todo.

La compresión que nos regala Taleb, es única y extraordinaria.

Este conocimiento, hace que cambiemos el modo de ver las cosas, y el modo en que nos manejamos e interpretamos el mundo.

Acá les dejo una explicación del Black Swam, por el propio autor.

PD: gracias Nicolas Jodal @njodal

Google WAVE & XMPP.

by Peter Neubauer

Google Wave - concurrent document editing on steroids
Google Wave is introducing a concept where a central XML document (the Wave), reflecting the total of a conversation, is simultaneously edited by several participants (via XMPP clients) of the conversation at the same time. While the incremental changes are sent to the XMPP Google Wave server for merging into the central Wave, they are at the same time even sent to the other online clients in the Roster of the current conversation just as chat messages, creating the real-time response impression of the Google Wave experience. However, these packages do not contain simple chat but actual machine-data interpreted by special Google Wave clients in e.g. JavaScript (see the Wave Protocol).Google Wave even supports extensions to its functionality, see this blog post which means that a lot of the infrastructure can be used to e.g. support new functionality and data packets.gwaveGoogle Wave setup
Social Computing or Let the bots talk! | Jayway Team Blog - Sharing Experience

What is XMPP?

XMPP is an XML instant messaging protocol that was developed by the Jabber foundation, as a reaction to the closed protocols of ICQ, Microsoft Messenger etc etc. It is based on the concepts of

• server side contact lists (Roster in XMPP terminology)
• open XML streams between the XMPP server and any connected client once the connection is established
• every connected XMPP client gets a unique ID (e.g.
  "neubauer.peter@gmail.com/phone1/xyz") under the common XMPP "bare" ID
  (neubauer.peter@gmail.com) and is uniquely addressable by XMPP packets.
  This can be used in situations where there is no direct IP number
  available or it is changing (e.g. mobile devices), making any
  Internet-connected device addressable as a potential server, with a
  constant address over time and space - an URI.
• extensible payloads of XML packets as defined by the XMPP Specification, the most important reflecting the 3 paradigms of asynchronous communication, and supported by all major XMPP servers
  
  • broadcast ("<presence>")
  • one-to-one or one-to-many ("<message>")
  • request/response with acknowledgement ("<iq>"), similar to the HTTP protocol
  
  
• handling of status, presence of resources and routing of messages to the right receivers by the XMPP servers
• from the beginning built to scale for the Internet with distributed infrastructure, as explained in this blog post
• large existing XMPP networks to tap into (GoogleTalk, iChat,
  Facebook Connect, holding part of your existing social graph in the
  contact lists) and open XMPP servers to set up your own XMPP network
• SSL support built into the base specification, distributed
  server-to-server communication even between XMPP networks like
  GoogleTalk and iChat.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Google Chrome - Inspect Element

PopUp, Collaborative Projects

Collaborative Project (CP). (v02)

GxNiceWEB / PopUp

OBJETIVOS:

Lograr hacer mas fácil el desarrollo de una interfase amigable y agradable en los desarrollo Web, buscando, seleccionando y construyendo, si fuese necesario, un conjunto de librerías AJAX, que puedan ser usadas fácilmente con GeneXus.

Construyendo “controles” o componentes, el comienzo de un GxAJAX Framework.

· PopUp Windows.

· Menús,

· TABs, dinámicos.

· Grids, mas flexibles y de mejor aspecto.

· Forms, con mejor aspecto y dinamismo.

· Suggest, adecuado. (tipo GMail, en la selección de contactos)

Interactividad SIN Full ReLoad, para ver esto ver en BaseCamp donde tenemos alojado el presente CP