Beautiful design idea of showing the progression of the event.

Beautiful header idea. Slick and attractive!

Cool!

Nice idea. Not sure about the effectiveness.

Today, Internet marketing fundamentally works on three principles -

1. PULL prospects (Targeting people with the NEED for the product)

2. Converting NEED to WANT

3. CLOSE the sale

Search engines are the best place to get the “pull prospects” that NEED the product or service you sell. The reason that they have been searching for your keyword related to your product and the reason they clicked their way to your website clearly signifies an “expression of interest”.

The major focus of all webmasters (smart ones) is on the “targeted visitors” of “qualified prospects”. Ten visitors who NEED widgets are far more valuable than 1000 visitors who might be surfing at 3 am just to kill time! It is a great innovation on part of pay-per-click (PPC) search engines that they bridge the gap between buyers and providers.

If I step into a buyer shoe, I know that if I go to a PPC engine, I will get active companies (instead of information sites), they will have well designed sites and will be responsive! Many search engines who are not PPC are including results of well established PPC engines giving a wider reach to the advertiser.

With the increasing influence of pay-per-click search engines, “targeted and qualified visitors” are becoming a commodity which a webmaster can buy off the shelf to give a head-start to his business within few minutes.

So, as the PULL process becomes a commodity, the emphasis is surely shifting towards conversion and closing.

The conversion process will primarily need a persuasive copy (styles may differ greatly) which will convert the NEED into the WANT for the product. The person who has been searching for the given product on internet has landed on your page.

Now think – 

• Does he emotionally WANT to buy the product?
• Is there enough reasons and emotions for him to commit to the product purchase? Are you giving him these reasons as a provider of the product?
• Is he convinced that the given product and the provider behind the product (you) will solve the problem at hand?
• Is he comfortable doing business with the provider?
• Does he trust you to deliver the solution?
• Is this NEED on the top of his priority list?

This is the reason, even when a person NEEDS a given product; he looks around till he WANTS to buy the same. This happens when the mental-blocks are cleared and the buyer is at peace.

So, considering the above situation, the two most important upcoming service areas will be:

1. Persuasive copy writing (conversion)

2. Improving uninterrupted closure (online + offline)

Indus Net Technologies is working tirelessly to bring up “Persuasive copy writing” service with its content development team, also branded as content2please.com. It is expected to be launched sometime in July 2007.

So keep tuned in!

While talking about design of websites, style of layout, presentation, colour theme, imageries/illustrations play vital roles as content, usability, accessibility etc. And we have always noticed a “trend” goes on in the industry and most of us follow the same, some or the other way. For example web 2.0 is in these days and we can see hundreds of sites going for that style.

Korean designers are somehow kept themselves away from this “let’s-follow-the-trend” syndrome and have created their own style. The examples of such web designs can be found at http://www.dbcut.com.

They are fresh, bright, free-flowing, rich (at the same time there are lots of eye space) and colourful. Illustrations are beautiful and informative. The interactivity of the sites are also something to watch for. People can debate about usability and user friendliness, but I think beautiful looking sites with out-of-the-box design style can win the heart of users and get sales as well. You will love to be at those sites and feel naturally interested.

Thanks a lot Korean friends, you have shown that web design can be like interactive presentation as well!

Have a look at http://www.dbcut.com.

A stakeholder is anyone who is impacted by the outcome of the project. This can be either in a positive or negative way. These are the people who have some sort of stake in the outcome of the project. It normally includes people like clients, internal sponsors, employees, management, suppliers etc.

As a small business goes on to implement CMMI, it sees clearly that customer is identified as one of stakeholder but not the only one though, there are other stakeholders in the projects as well that are equally important. It may seem that CMMI does not explicitly mentions things like “Customer Satisfaction” and “Voice of Customer” which are prevalent in other frameworks like ISO and Six Sigma. This people feel that implementing CMMI will increase overheads while not doing anything for the customer directly. For a small business, this is a dreadful scenario!

I think the whole thing is being misrepresented or misunderstood. Here is why:

Although CMMI does not tells that you should keep your customer happy, but it asks you to define the flow of activities that is used to create the service or product that you are offering to the customer.

So it may be a case that a customer value great looking design but look at the value chain - The requirements of web design must be captured by the project manager first. While capturing the requirement, the primary stakeholder for the project manager will be the designer and not the customer himself.

Another example, think about quality and timeliness of delivery.  This is something that is important to most of the customers. Now if the project lifecycle consists of analysis, design, coding, testing and delivery then the each subsequent phase relies on timeliness and quality of the deliverables of its previous phase. If one phase has poor quality or is delayed then it will affect all previous phases as well. Thus, the primary stakeholder for the analyst is the architect who will do the architecture, for the architecture it may be the developer will do the coding and for the developer it might be the tester.

Now, if the developer thinks that in order to please the customer, he should work fast and in the process he introduces several bugs. Now, if the tester also thinks the same and does not do thorough testing then customer will get a buggy delivery or otherwise, the developer will have to do a lot of rework and bug-fixing which will delay the delivery. In both scenarios, I don’t see a happy customer!

I think CMMI talks about this “value chain” which leads to customer satisfaction rather than talking about “customer satisfaction” first then not defining means to achieve it.

If this “value chain” is not defined properly then it may be possible for the organization to satisfy some customers in some situations but it will not be possible to satisfy all customers. CMMI makes sure that everyone knows how their job connects to other jobs in making the deliverables.

To conclude, CMMI does not say that customer is not important, it however talks about that chain of practices, deliverables and mutual dependencies which allow an organization to deliver customer satisfaction project after project.

There has been a lot of talk over the BIG IT talent pool in India. Every bureaucrat and market research agency in the country shows towering numbers of colleges and students that they produce.

But the burning question is - Is this talent employable?

The biggest challenge Indian IT industry faces today is the ever-growing gap between graduating engineers and employable graduates. If not checked in time, it might result in a lost opportunity for India Inc. as opportunities will not wait and move towards economies that provide more employable talent at the best ROI.

The main reasons for this gap are:

• Low motivation for top experts to take up teaching as a profession.
• Outdated syllabus, course curriculum, infrastructure, teaching methodologies and content!
• Little or no emphasis in making people “life long learners”, primarily because education is spoon fed in most institutions.
• Privilege to “best education” has been made available to selected class.
• Poor use of technology to spread education to rural areas

There is a lot to rant about the negatives, which we all do. I never liked the way education is imparted in our country and always wanted to grab the first opportunity to change the same.

I am taking a humble step towards my dream project by launching Indus Net Academy in the third week of June 2007. I have coined the slogan as “New Age Education”, which is timeless and conveys the feeling behind the project. The initial academic setup will be in a small area of 1000 sq feet, which will be extended as we mature and generate more demand.

Indus Net Academy has been housed in SDF Building, Sector V, Salt Lake, Kolkata for the following reasons:

• Close to the industry!
• Easy availability of successful professionals who might like to share their experience and knowledge.
• Ease of management, since Indus Net Technologies is also located on 4th and 5th floor of the same building.

The purpose of Indus Net Academy can be summarized as follows:

• Create employable talent
• Continued education for working professionals
• Accumulation & distribution of knowledge
• Rural education

(From now onwards the team behind Indus Net Academy is being termed as “We” instead of “I” since many key members of Indus Net Technologies thinks about the academy the same way that I do and are working tirelessly to make it a success.

Initially, Indus Net Academy will start with career oriented professionally taught courses on:- Web Design, Web Development & Internet Marketing. The course will be taught by experts who are practicing these subjects at Indus Net Technologies and serving clients from all over the world. Teaching methodology will be a mix of classroom based core concept delivery, self paced study, research and discussion on important ideas, lab sessions and practical tips from practitioners of “how things are done in real life”.

We are further backing up the courses taught in Indus Net Academy with guaranteed jobs by joining hands with companies who need the “industry-ready talent”.

Since we have in-house professional talent available in Indus Net Technologies, we chose to start with subjects related to Internet industry. As we move ahead, we expect professionals from different walks of life to be a part of this movement and make a difference - to make the “new age education” dream a reality!

Will keep you posted. Looking forward to a bright future…

Keep an eye on http://www.indusnetacademy.com/