10/15/2004 11:35 AM

Essentials for A Successful Web Site

Albert WongProduct and Technology, JobStreet

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Content

� Successful website businesses� Essentials

a. Does a useful job

b. Ease of use

c. Trust – Security, Site Credibility and Brand

d. Scalable and Operational Efficient - Technology

SEO and SEM – Online Marketing

� People - Web Development Jobs Stats

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What are qualities of successful Website Businesses?

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US Websites with High Traffic (ComScore)

47,048Apple Inc.12

47,632New York Times Digital11

52,661Time Warner - Excluding AOL

10

54,120Ask Network9

55,172Amazon Sites8

55,906Wikipedia Sites7

77,864eBay6

83,638Fox Interactive Media (MySpace)

5

108,911AOL LLC4

118,355Microsoft Sites3

135,970Google Sites2

136,767Yahoo! Sites1

185,017Total Internet : Total Audience

(000)

Unique Visitors WebsiteRank

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Other Successful Websites

� CareerBuilder.com� Salesforce.com (CRM Company)� Local Country Sites

a. Sanook.com in Thailand

b. JobStreet.com

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Mission Statements

� Google - To organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.

� Yahoo! - To connect people to their passions, communities, and the world’s knowledge.

� Amazon – To build a place where people can come to find and discover anything they might want to buy online

� Ebay - To provide a global trading platform where practically anyone can trade practically anything

� JobStreet – To improve lives through better careers

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Why are they successful?

� Does a important job better or cannot be done before� Repeated transactions � Low cost - cost effective and scalable fulfillment� Larger base of users who wants to do job – mass market – long tail

Implications� Specialized database/IP – The top ones dominates� User participation - generated content – self service� Automated Personalization � Process - Perpetual Beta – Continuously changing - improving

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The Value For Users

� Why would a sufficient number of people want to use the website and pay for it or at least don’t mind ads?

a. Useful - Its does the job they want to do well – Solves a major pain

b. Convenience – easy to access and use -Usability

c. More cost effective

d. Better than alternatives (Up to a point –satisfaction versus importance)

� Switching cost is generally less online so differentiation have to be a lot better or cost a lot lower to compete well

High Importance Low Satisfaction

Low ImportanceLow Satisfaction

High ImportanceHigh Satisfaction

Low ImportanceHigh Satisfaction

Finding Opportunity

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Revenue Models

� Advertising

a. Direct Advertising

b. Third party advertisement

� Transaction or subscription fees

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Long Tail

The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Sellin g Less of More

The power of the internet as a low cost search/acce ss for massesand inventory/distribution medium

Selling of small numbers of personalized or niche p roducts is now viable

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Ensure Great User Experience

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Usability - Why Should You Care?

� Have you ever…

a. Gotten lost in a Web site? Not sure what’s next step?

b. Left a site without finding the information you wanted?

c. Waited too long for a page to download?

d. Gone to a site you can’t view or read?

e. Visited a site with outdated information?

� Do you want people to visit and return to your site?

“Studies of user behavior on the Web find a low tolerance for difficult designs or slow sites. People don't want to wait. And they don't want to learn how to use a home page. There's no such thing as a training class or a manual for a Web site. People have to be able to grasp the functioning of the site immediately after scanning the home page —for a few seconds at most." - Jakob Nielson

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User Experience

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User Experience

� "User experience" encompasses all aspects of the end-user's interaction with the company, its services, and its products. The first requirement for an exemplary user experience is to meet the exact needs of the customer, without fuss or bother. Next comes simplicity and elegancethat produce products that are a joy to own, a joy to use . True user experience goes far beyond giving customers what they say they want, or providing checklist features. In order to achieve high-quality user experience in a company's offerings there must be a seamless merging of the services of multiple disciplines , including engineering, marketing, graphical and industrial design, and interface design.

� http://www.nngroup.com/

� Don’t forget other touch points besides from the website – e.g., emails, telephone

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Components of Usability

� Learnabilitya. How easy is it to accomplish basic tasks on the first encounter of an

interface?

� Efficiencya. Once users are familiar with the interface, how quickly can they perform

tasks?

� Memorabilitya. When users return after a period of not using the interface, how easily can

they reestablish proficiency?

� Errorsa. How many errors do users make, how severe are the errors, and how easily

can they recover?

� Satisfactiona. How pleasant is it to use the interface?

http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20030825.html

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Qualities of Great Web-based Software

� Conforms to the way users interact with the web but focuses on the activity

� Have only those features that are absolutely necessary for users to complete the activity in the application is meant to support

� Supports user’s mental model of what it does � Helps users get started quickly so they can become intermediate users

as soon as possible� It makes it easy to recover from mistakes and difficult to make them in

the first place� It has uniformly designed interface elements but leverages irregularity to

create meaning and importance� It reduces clutter to a minimum

Book: Designing the obvious – Robert Hoekman

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Understanding Users

� Understand Users – How they use the web in generala. We don’t read pages, we scan them

i. We are usually in a hurry

ii. We don’t need to read everything, we just want to get what we want

b. We don’t make optimal choices, we sacrifice

i. We click on the first thing that make sense

ii. There’s not much penalty for guessing wrong

c. We don’t figure out how things work

i. Few people will read instructions

ii. We tend to employ the “trial & error” method

iii. If we found something that works, we tend to stick with it

� Design for the job’s activity and outcomea. Use case and refining it

b. Simple prototype testing

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Capturing Users Inputs

� Ask the right questions - outcome� “If I’d asked my customers what they wanted, they’d say a faster horse.”

– Henry Ford� Watch what they do

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Build scalable and cost effective technology forefficient operations

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Technology and Operational Scalability

� Architecturea. In box performance – how efficient in using server resources

i. Caching – off load static content, in memory caching

ii. Design database for usage pattern if needed

b. Scaling out

i. Multiple servers (replicated or partitioned)

c. Distribution – Regional yet local

� Efficient backend operations – e.g., Backup/Recovery, monitoring (e.g., nagios) , content management system, CRM,..

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JobStreet Recruitment Exchange

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Scaling

� Scaling Up In a Box – There is a limita. 1 box, 2 boxes, Databases becomes a bottle neck

� Scaling Outa. Hardware getting cheaper

b. Architecture has to support it

c. Database will usually become the bottle neck

� Master - Slave Replicationa. Create/Update/Del on Master

b. Read on slaves. Load balance over multiple slaves

� Partition of Data/Processing� Combination

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Build Trust and Ensure Security

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Privacy & Security Highlights

Privacy and Trust� Address Privacy Concerns – (Truste)� There is willingness to share (Web 2.0) but people want control� WWW – Wild Wild West – Putting some Self Managing law and order in

placea. Reputation System/User Feedback

b. Charging

System Security� Be paranoid - DO NOT TRUST ANY DATA THAT IS PASSED I N FROM

BROWSER CLIENTS – cookies, input fields, hidden fiel ds, header, etc. � Ensure that all input are checked, e.g., meta chars - SQL injection and

cross site scripting� STORE important ids that are same across a session in server side session

variables to prevent manipulation by client side (l ogin id, access info)� Firewall - Ports and services closed unless need to be open

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Cost Effective Marketing –Search Engine Marketing

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Online Marketing - SEO

� SEO – Desired keywords in:a. Page Titles

b. URLs Name and parameters (url rewrite)

c. Inbound Links Quantity and Quality

d. Text for links

e. Alt Images

f. Relevant content (text)

g. Meta Description and Keywords

h. Sitemap.xml

i. Freshness

� Do not overdo� Keyword popularity tools – Search in Google.

http://www.wordtracker.com/

http://www.tele-pro.co.uk/scripts/google/popularity.asp

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Online Marketing – SEM – Paid inclusions

� Simple to set up and do market research a. Per click model and conversion tracking

� Google AdWords� Choose appropriate title and ad text� Select targeted keywords� Try it out and iterate� http://www.google.com.my/ads/

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People –Web Development Related Jobs

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Percent of Web Relate Job vs. IT Jobs

Total Web Related

Job Ads in 2007

7,600

Total IT industry

Job Ads in 2007

23,100

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Web development Jobs broken down by Level

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Salary Range

Management Staff Level

High 10,000 5,800

Mean 7,000 4,300

Low 4,500 2,200

Low, Avg, High are based on 25th, 50th and 75th per centile data

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People

You need a good team to build a successful website

� Passion for web technology and domain area

� Keeps on learning/continuously improve� Not happy with average or status quo

� Agile and creative

We are always open to good people. Become a JS MAN.Email albert@jobstreet.com

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JobStreet.com

Building Asia’s Talent Bank

Improving Lives Through Better Careers

Q&A, Feedback