Special Thanks To The Special You

I’ve received some tweets recently about the Shorty Awards and today I’ve found out I’m on the Top 40 nominees in Gaming category.

For me, I’m happy and I would like to say thank you guys for what you’ve done to me and I’ll continue and keep fighting for you like I said I’m always here, to go through the rain, to get you the rainbow. Thanks again and I’ll blog something really special for you in the next few days. It’s a good news and a little bit of bad news. Stay tuned!

Web Designer: What I’ve Learned From Google’s Media & Entertainment Masterclass

Okay, since today I have time, I feel want to share something that’s not specifically to do with TK games, but it’s something that I’ve learned from the Google class last week. It’s really fortunate for me to be able to attend to the class on behalf of TKE, and today, I would like to share something that’s specifically taught by Shane Cassells from Google about the 10 tips to make a good website. It’s really helpful to me because the Internet has changed so we have to change the way to make a good website as well.

Okay, that’s all for showing you the goodies. Let’s start to talk about the landing page that works, and how can we make websites better? I think most web designers (including myself) we got it wrong sometimes when making a website. A good website is the website that let users do what they want to do on the site – it doesn’t have to be complicated, but fast to load and simple to browse.

#1 – Confirmation
Besides people already know your site, you need new audience. So the new audience are those people who searched or found your site from the ad. So if you use the ad to attract people to go to your site, make sure it’s right and relevant. For example, you don’t put the ad with “all items on 50% discount” text then when the users click and check your site, it’s not all items, but for some only. So make sure the message that delivered is the same.

#2 – Speed
How fast is your site has to be? The majority from the class said it has to be less than 2 seconds, and I believe that’s correct. The quicker the page to load, the more chance you can get your message delivered to the users (as some might just close the page if it takes too long to load. So it is important to keep the landing page to be fast and keep the users who are browsing it from the start until the end. If you’re a developer and would like to test how fast your site (loading time) and how to fix it, please check: developers.google.com/pagespeed/

#3 – First Impression
Make sure the site gives a good impression for users – looks good, natural, colour targeted to the audience (maybe similar colour theme as your logo), not overwhelming and of course, don’t fill it with too much information! Most importantly, make sure it all works on different browser.

#4 – Branding & Site Purpose
Although we cannot expect the users to come back to our site every time, but it’s always good to give them the impression and retention, which also means next time if they see something similar they would think “oh I’ve seen it before at that site.” Also, apart from a nice logo, make sure the whole design is related to it, so people can remember you and your brand in the future.

#5 – Design
Key content is what that matters. It’s always important to give people a chance to see what they want to do. Also, a good design is the design that gives the right message, not packed with too much information (don’t distract them) but mainly focusing on the main message. No one loves to be thrown too many things at once.

#6 – Visuals
This often happens with the site takeover, which might distract and take users away from what they’re browsing at first. Do not use stock photo, because they’re everywhere, so make sure you don’t use something that doesn’t associate to your company. Also, if your site has videos, do not auto play it, same with music – provide them buttons instead, but if you really want them to watch certain videos, you can always enlarge the message but never auto play the media.

#7 – Text
Try to use big headlines, the rest of the text can be used with bullet points (selling point). Don’t fill your page with all the text and paragraph because that would bury the message and confuse the people as well, so make it readable and obvious. Also, don’t be too robotic on the text since robots don’t read your page or buy your products.

#8 – Call-to-action
Since the world is now mobile, we need to care about the tablet users with the links on our site with easy-to-click button. I personally do not like the button idea though but we need to design the site these days based on the touch screen users as well. But what is call-to-action? It’s basically something that gives people the idea what they’re doing after the click with a little bit of explanation with what they can expect, whether it’s proceeding to the payment, or the NSFW content.

#9 – Value Proposition
A good site is the site that gives value to the users, not you. A good site is the site that benefits the users, not you. By all that means, we should always ask on behalf on the users and expect why should they stay and how long people will stay? A valuable site is the site that’s great for everyone to use, not just throwing everything to people and expect, but to let them (and tell them why they should) work with you.

#10 – Persuasion
To help people and to let them know how urgent the offer is (for example if you have the pre-order bonus on your site, it’s always good to put how many freebies left and how many people are currently checking on the offer, so the users would realize if they miss it within an hour, they would just miss it, e.g: “10 people are after this offer, only 2 left.” – A good sample site to win this category is booking.com (they did it really well). Also, make sure the page is reliable to let people to make their decision. It’s also important to have social proof, by all that means, displaying the reviews / comments from others to help others to make decisions.

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But generally, the class has taught me to take a lot of time to improve the website that works for people, not robots or ourselves, and we can’t expect just throwing things to people and have something back from them.

During the session, there’s an interesting question coming from the attendees, which is, if your page is terrible and the top management doesn’t want to change and you’re not able to change the content then how? If the site is terrible, it’s always important to get it redesigned. But if the top management doesn’t want, perhaps we can either focus on the phone number to skip the whole process (by enlarging the text for the phone number) if your company is more to travelling and selling certain products and service and the other one is try to move your social and the rest of the activities to Facebook so you can control the whole thing. And, this is what I’ve learned from the class! A big thanks to @Lead_wotawaster for sending me there.

Bad / Good Community Manager?

There’s something I would love to share about my feeling. It’s not bragging or whinning as I would love to stay honest and true with the community I’m handling. I know there’s been a lot of comments regarding Chin’s not a good community manager, he’s not passing our messages through, now see the team doesn’t even care about us in oversea and don’t even want to fix the bugs that we have purchased with the recent DLC and all that – See I did read your comments and I do care about it.

Sometimes it does make me wonder, if I’m doing my job right? The reason I blogged about this is because many people don’t seem to know what makes a community manager. A community manager is the one that eats sh*t and brings out glitters – if you’re interested with this quote, CLICK HERE. I mean there can be a bad community manager that who doesn’t give a sh*t by just giving your promises but didn’t actually pass the message between the channels and ended it up with lies. But there’s also some good ones.

I don’t think myself being a bad community manager, not the best either, but I would say I’m fair in this case. I do care about the community by giving responses (or else I wouldn’t be blogging about this). Also, I’m quite sick of saying “I’ve tried my best” every time with the news that aren’t going to please the fans. There are many levels of saying “I’ve tried my best” – am I really trying my best? Does the team who got back to me by saying “Chin, we’ve tried our best and it’s not working, sorry” really tried their best as they said? – This is one of the many issues that we don’t know and can’t even discovered.

I’m the face to this community, but I feel there’s also some lack of communication and controls (especially controls) when it comes to the management. Although there are many rejections of “No, we’re not doing it, sorry.” with lack of responsibilities and explanations, but the CM (community manager) still has to respond to the public in most sensible ways (we are 24/7 as anything could happen any time, not 9-5). I also think there’s sort of “control” level missing in between – Did the team actually pass the message? Did the top heads know about this? Why I suddenly got ignored with no reply back from the team?

I personally think the community role is playing a big part these days, but they’re at the bottom in the pyramid chart. I’d love to have another “community person” in between the marketing team, development team with the big boss (so some egos in between the pyramid can actually aware and be more careful and responsible) as I can feel those channels are so lost and some of them don’t even care and think a CM is nothing but just another dog job. The pyramid system at its worse because you don’t have rights to go straight to the upper heads and the community messages might just got buried in the middle from the person who really don’t feel want to pass the requests up. This is yet to be explored.

I need to state this because I want my community to know that I did pass through the message between the team. I’m also honest and care about this, or else there’s no point for me to blog and giving you responses. Also, there’s nothing right or wrong, it’s just something I feel and think it would be good to trigger.

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Closing Comment: I think this happens in most communities that are strictly with their pyramid chart system. This is just something I’d love to share, but this is definitely not related to @tecmokoeieurope – we’re awesome, we work as a family and we have an awesome boss who cares. Also, I love this company, I love my job and I enjoy it, the main reason is because I know what I’m doing (and I want you to know what I’m doing) and I’ve been in this community 6 years ago since @KOEIWarriors was born, and also have a deep feeling of love. In short, I just don’t want to disappoint anyone, or myself.