Giraffe Forum

The Web is radically changing how we as marketers and communicators need to do our job. We need to change our mindset from organization-centric to customer-centric.
Over the years I have had the pleasure of dealing with some really great companies. My web hosting company is Verio and I am very loyal to them. They deliver […]

Living systems get constant feedback from their external environment. To truly succeed, web teams need constant feedback from their customers.
You’re a manager in a restaurant. It’s raining. A customer walks in and almost slips on the mat in front of the door. You’re very busy at this stage, but you make a mental note: “I […]

In a complex world, innovation shifts from creating and adding to simplifying and removing.
I once had a chat with a frustrated content management salesman. He believed in simplicity but had great difficulty selling it. “Customers may need simplicity but they always end up buying complexity. If we don’t have all these extra fancy features, they […]

Today, customers expect organizations to listen, observe and respond. Don’t say you care. Show you care.
I was recently testing some website tasks with a customer. At the end of the tests I asked him if he had any observations. He said he was impressed by the way this organization was showing a real willingness to […]

Goggle has achieved its position by delivering great quality search results really quickly through a very simple interface.
I was at dinner with some friends when one of them said:
“Did you see the Google homepage today? They’ve put a background image on it!” Everyone looked on in disbelief. “Look, I’ll show you,” and he loaded […]

The organization is a tribe and the customer is a stranger. That’s why it’s so hard to be customer-centric.
Some years ago, HSBC Hong Kong had what they thought was a reasonably straightforward mortgage inquiry form. It had 17 fields requesting:
• Property information (address, price)
• Applicant information (name, occupation)
• Loan information (amount, repayment period, etc.)
They were getting 2 enquiries […]

Advertising agencies don’t get the Web because the web is the place people go to do things.
In 2004, I wrote an article advising companies to never, ever let an advertising agency near their website. Back then, ad agency websites were a total joke. If you wanted to find out the very worst way to design […]

Customers crave speed on the Web, and they reward organizations that make things fast and simple.
Why is Google successful? Because it delivers better and faster results than its competitors. Google truly understands the customer’s need for speed. “At Google, we’ve gathered hard data to reinforce our intuition that “speed matters” on the Internet,” Jake Brutlag […]

On the Web the best way to think of your customers is as intelligent strangers whose most precious resource is their time.
In Ireland, the Catholic Church is facing a crisis of trust and confidence. For much too long Irish people have placed a blind faith in the Church, as they have placed a blind faith […]

The most important thing a webpage can do is be crystal clear about exactly what you can do on that webpage.
The best word to describe people when they are on the Web is “impatient.” They are particularly impatient when they arrive at your website for the first time. They are asking themselves the essential […]