WebDriven recently completed a web redesign for the Pharmaceutical Care Management Association (PCMA). The Pharmaceutical Care Management Association (PCMA) is the national association representing America’s pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) PBMs administer prescription drug plans for more than 210 million Americans with health coverage provided through Fortune 500 employers, health insurance plans, labor unions, and Medicare Part D.

The project began with a full-day onsite consulting session conducting interviews and facilitating meetings with PCMA management and staff.  The requirements gathering phase concluded with a presentation of findings and recommendations.  Once these recommendations were reviewed and accepted, WebDriven worked with PCMA to develop an overall project plan.

Features of the new site include:

New web design with managed slideshow
The WebDriven design team created an entirely new modern design layout including a homepage slideshow which staff can easily manage and update. There is also a smaller version of the slideshow on the interior pages of the new PCMA website.
  

Members Document Management Application
PCMA has an extensive library of PDF and Word documents for PCMA members. For this private area of the site WebDriven developed a file management system that allows the different stakeholders to upload & categorize each file and make them available on a password-protected web site. Additionally WebDriven implemented a system which helps ensure links passed to other people are not accessible unless you are logged into the PCMA Members Only site.
 
Event Management & Agenda Builder Application
WebDriven also created an event management module to allow for easy creation and updating of PCMA events. The Agenda Builder module allows for easy creation of the individual agendas for each event. Session title, speakers, descriptions, time slots and colorizing are all part of this tool that was developed specifically for PCMA and their needs.

Visit PCMA Website Now  »

WebDriven has worked closely with Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF) over the last four years to upgrade and expand the web presence for the Government Relations (GR) group.

At the heart of GR's management of engaged advocates is Convio, a leading non-profit donor management & CRM application.  Convio serves as their primary database to manage the data of the many thousands of individuals who support the advocacy initiatives of JDRF. Through regular email communications, calls to action and custom web & social media applications JDRF maintains contact and engages its audience.

WebDriven has been able to integrate the Convio data with six different applications in order to facilitate information flow and to maintain a primary “master” database. And all the applications utilize core Convio services in the background.

Here are three ways custom Convio integration has helped boost JDRF's advocate recruitment:

1) Registration can be extended to all web properties in a modular fashion.

A primary interface between the Government Relations applications and Convio is the basic registration module which each application uses for gathering and processing new advocate information. One of the primary reasons for contests and sharing stories through applications like Spread the Word is to a) generate interest in JDRF and b) ultimately, to encourage more people to become advocates.

Now, registration is a widget which can be extended to any web property or application.

2) Create a service for your advocates while keeping users on your site.

Once an advocate completes their registration, WebDriven passes the registration information to Convio and then provides a customizable thank you message to the user, all without the user leaving the GR site.

While passing the information we also use the Convio API to check for the email at Convio to avoid creating a duplicate and we check to make sure all required information has been provided.  And perhaps as important for the advocate, we can also prefill a form if they are returning but neglected to complete the information from an earlier time -- or -- automatically log them into web applications that they have opted into.

 3) Create 'easy' buttons for common Convio functions without requiring users to login to Convio.

One application actually simplifies the top five functions for a group of 150 leaders in order for them to search their groups, send emails and update advocate information. We call these the “easy buttons” after the Staples marketing effort. The goal was to follow the 80/20 rule and make it easy for them to do the most common tasks with just a few clicks.

The application has met rave reviews and utilization is up considerably.

Summary

Tight integration with a donor management or CRM application -- like Convio -- may not be possible in every situation. Whenever possible, though, steps should be taken to minimize user experience (UX) disruption caused by a) frequent linking in to and out of these applications, b) little or no central login capabillity for registration, among others.

Organizations of all sizes increasingly rely on Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applications for core functions like customer or donor management, business intelligence (BI) and eCommerce just to name a few.

While many providers are building robust options for integration, many still offer few options without costly programming through their professional services arm.  Regardless of the available options, every organization should have a focused approach to balancing SaaS features with usability to help create more of a win-win situation for everyone.

WebDriven Work:

Check out Spread the Word
Check out Tell Your Story

Google's Caffeine seems an apt name for its' new search index technology. Processing several hundreds of thousands of pages in parallel every second would give most anyone the jitters.

With the exponential growth of social media (e.g., blogs, tweets, etc.) and range of content added almost constantly (think video) to pages, content creators want their information visible in search in a more timely fashion. 

Caffeine aims to cut the lag time by the constant parallel indexing of information - 50% fresher than their previous index Google claims.  All while expanding the reach of content they add -- in both volume and variety.

Here's an excerpt from Google's official blog:

With Caffeine, we analyze the web in small portions and update our search index on a continuous basis, globally. As we find new pages, or new information on existing pages, we can add these straight to the index. That means you can find fresher information than ever before—no matter when or where it was published.

Caffeine lets us index web pages on an enormous scale. In fact, every second Caffeine processes hundreds of thousands of pages in parallel. If this were a pile of paper it would grow three miles taller every second. Caffeine takes up nearly 100 million gigabytes of storage in one database and adds new information at a rate of hundreds of thousands of gigabytes per day. You would need 625,000 of the largest iPods to store that much information; if these were stacked end-to-end they would go for more than 40 miles.

Realizing the goal of near-realtime search will be a moving target as the volume and variety of content grows over time.  Along with the its potential for utility, this desire for speed will likely create new challenges for content producers (such as recalling certain content, etc) and search engines alike.

Google has entered the online storage space by opening up Docs (http://docs.google.com) as a place to upload and store your files. 

No longer do you need to convert native formats to Google Docs format, you can simply upload the file and store them.  Rumor has it that Google may ulitimately provide some click-to-publish options to social media outlets, blogs, etc. but it isn't clear if or when that functionallity might become available.

Google Docs users can purchase additional storage for 25 cents per gigabyte/year.

At this time of year, clients routinely ask us to review their web sites and provide recommendations on how to improve the user experience and increase traffic. For a relatively small investment, the WebDriven team will perform a comprehensive audit that includes looking at your site traffic, social media opportunities and design elements. Once the audit is completed, WebDriven will provide a report outlining specific tasks for improving the site.

Step One: Kickoff

The Site Audit will begin with some basic questions about your organization and the role of the site in reaching key audiences and contributing to communications, marketing, outreach and sales goals. 

Step Two: Review of site traffic, audience and goals

WebDriven will review responses to our questionnaire and review recent site analytics, audience and goals.

Step Three: Review of current web site

WebDriven will review your current web site for usability, performance, adherence to stated goals and other key factors. 

Step Four: Review of social media presence

We will take a look at your brand/message presence on top social media networks. 

Step Five: Findings & Recommendations

Following our review, the WebDriven team will provide you with a summary of our findings from the audit and provide several key recommendations we believe will help improve your site's overall contribution to stated goals.  An optional budget can be provided if desired.

Why a Site Audit?

Glad you asked.  There are a number of important benefits of the site audit to consider including:

• Better management of web project dollars - Before investing significant resources in a redesign of your site (or a new site from scratch), our Site Audit gives you deeper insight into how to best use project dollars to maximize impact.
   
• Annual check-up - Let's face it, the web is an organic place and it's hard to keep up with emerging trends.  An annual Site Audit helps you identify opportunities for improvement and can be scheduled to sync with your budgeting process. 
   

Drop us a line today to take advantage of this offer
 

Silicon Alley Insider's Dan Frommer makes a good point in a recent article that Microsoft should be working on iPhone apps as a hedge bet if nothing else to a) have a more substantial brand presence on fastest growing mobile software platform and b) grow its mobile ad platform...not to mention the fact that they still rule the Office space and mini apps would support the millions who use them.

Frommer outlines possible Microsoft iPhone apps which include:

* Office micro apps, so the millions of people who still read and create Word, Excel, and PowerPoint docs can do this from their iPhone. This should sync to Microsoft's new online Office. (And what about the Apple tablet? Won't that need Word, too?)
    * Zune music subscription player.
    * Bing. Why not? Google has a search app.
    * Games, like an iPhone version of Halo and throwback favorites like Minesweeper and SkiFree.

I for one would love to see a Bing, Halo or mini Word iPhone app.

Tell us which ones you'd like to see in comments.

According to a Google blog post last week, the company will soon enable public search access to 'public' Google Docs.   Good idea, right?

Presumably if users mark documents as public, one would guess this move would be a welcome one.  There is a snag though as C|Net's Zoë Slocum points out:

While it may well be obvious to most users how publicly available their Google documents are--and many of those published documents may well be intended to be as publicly available as possible--this seems to be another area where Google needs to find the right balance between transparency and data accessibility.

It seems like it would be a better move for Google to provide some clear, straightforward manner of determining whether documents have/will be indexed, or are indexable.

A service aimed at transparency and comprehensive access is only of benefit to your community if everyone clearly understands the ground rules.

Back in 2003, email communications took up about 50% of the time users spent online each month. Content consumption is now moving close to that 50% mark as email slides downward.

Monthly content consumption has increased on average from 3.75 hours to 7 -- according to a six-year analysis of the Internet Activity Index (IAI) conducted by the Online Publishers Association.  While some categories like search increased signficantly, its share of overall time was only a two percent increase.

The OPA press release explains:

IAI’s share of time helps to provide further context. For example, Content consumption, as a share of online time, surpasses Communications as the leading way online audiences spend their time. Furthermore, although time spent with Search doubled, its share of time is very small and has only increased by two percentage points. Monthly time spent with Communications decreased by less than half an hour, but declined by 41 percent as a share of a consumer’s online time.

The OPA's study also confirms what many observers have asserted already -- that community sites like LinkedIn, Facebook and others have displaced email and IM as the primary means of online communication.

There was an interesting piece in Tech Crunch earlier this month on how charities can leverage Twitter to raise awareness and money. Twestival which raised $250k for charity:water was featured as was Blame Drew's Cancer and others.
 
The bigger question is how non-profit organizations -- many of whom struggle to maintain a website and/or a blog -- best integrate Twitter and tools like it. 

Here are three basic questions to consider:
 
1) Where is my audience today?
 
Are your core audiences using Twitter? Which social networks do they use? The reality is that even if your audiences are not currently on Twitter, launching a well-designed campaign on social networks including Twitter can help you identify new groups of supporters.

Turning tweets into advocates and donors can be tricky though so thought has to be given to how you a) convert folks coming in via social media and b) creating opportunities for folks who may not "join" but are still interested in helping you.
 
2) What level of resources and effort are required to maintain our social media presence, including Twitter?
 
We get this question a lot. Be careful not to underestimate the amount of time and effort it takes to maintain a meaningful social media presence. Also it will be important to find a style and updating schedule that fits your organizational rhythm.
 
3) What do I need to get started?
 
Develop an action plan which defines:
 
a) goals of your social media presence (be specific),
b) time per day/week invested in maintaining your presence
c) team members responsible for presence
d) process for approving content
e) metrics for evaluating effort
 
Then test-run your action plan for 1-2 weeks and evaluate. It will probably need some tweaking.
 
Conclusion
 
When it comes to social media, walk before you run. It can be tempting to leap at every new and hot social media network but simply having a presence is not in itself good strategy. Know what you want to accomplish so that you can measure value to the organization for the effort you invest.

TechCrunch article:
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/07/05/tweetraising-the-potential-for-charities-on-twitter/

So, which platform is the most popular for sharing content?  We gave you a bit of a head start with our title but here's another tip -- it's not email.

According to AddtoAny, which makes a popular "Share This" widget, Facebook takes the cake with nearly a quarter of all content sharing (24%) with Yahoo-dom coming in second with 14% (includes Yahoo, delicious, Yahoo Bookmarks, Yahoo Buzz, Yahoo Messenger).

Other mentionables include: Twitter's third place finish with a little under 11% (10.8% to be precise).  MySpace's plummet continues; they accounted for only 5% of sharing traffic. Email hangs in there though squeaking past Twitter at 11.1%.

What do these numbers mean?  While relative rankings among various platforms may be somewhat fluid, the larger trend of social media supplanting email as the primary means of sharing content seems to be firmly in place. It also confirms that link sharing platforms such as digg and delicious don't quite have the potency they once had in the social media world. 

It's been a good week for Facebook; they just announced they are serving 1 billion video views a month which while not matching YouTube (they serve more than that each *day*), it's still speaks to the growth of their platform for sharing and consuming content.

Clients regularly ask us for help in creating a social media approach. "Twitter. Facebook. Blogs." "Where do I start?"  We get that. And if we're honest, we have to admit that navigating the various social networks and trying to stay current can be a bit overwhelming.

Not to mention figuring out how to assess and measure the business value of your efforts while at the same time setting boundaries on time dedicating to tweeting, blogging and Facebook updates.

Too often we've seen a social media plan become little more than an inventory of required social media presence “points” detached from careful consideration of time or opportunity costs and candid assessment of the value to the organization.

Here are four keys to developing a manageable social media plan:

1. Assess what you hope to achieve and how you'll measure progress

• Goals
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