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Drupal training: so much more efficient when customized

Imagine you would attend a training on Microsoft Excel, where you would only be taught what you really need to do in your daily job. Imagine you would receive a manual, made-to-measure just for you. A manual including screenshots only of the features you use and clear explanations about those features only (and not the 101 other features you would never require).
 
How helpful would that be? Much more than all those standard training sessions, where you can only identify yourself to 20% of the shown features, wouldn’t it?

Well this is exactly what we do at Connexion Corporate Communications with the Drupal training sessions we organize for the (mostly) non-technical people that need to administer the websites we have developed for their organization:
1) We develop custom Drupal training manuals, including screenshots of the concerned Drupal websites and customized Drupal administration screens (see previous blog post)
2) We produce those custom Drupal training manuals in several languages if needed
3) We use those custom Drupal training manuals as a red line during the training sessions
4) We let exercise Drupal trainees by editing pages and content in the direct (test) environment of their new own Drupal website.

The proof is in the pudding: if you run across a Drupal trainee who has attended one of our customized training sessions, you will recognize him/her easily at the Drupal smiley on his face…
 

The Drupal integrators at Connexion systematically downsize and customize the Drupal admininistration screens to the specific needs and requirements of each administrator type.

This is before downsizing:

This is after downsizing and customizing:

Noone can deny that Drupal is a powerful and easy to use Content Management System. The ever growing number of (professionally designed) sites posted on www.drupalsites.net is the proof of the pudding. However, many users would love to find more user-friendliness in the Drupal content administration screens.
The guys at Connexion Corporate Communications (they now call themselves 'Borderless Information Designers') do not only pay attention to the usability of the front-end. Content administrators are also taken great care of.
This is why the Drupal integrators at Connexion have decided from now on to systematically downsize the Drupal admininistration screens to the specific needs and requirements of each administrator type.

The marketing assistant, for example, will probably only need to create new product information pages while his manager will be the one that posts press releases online. The selectable features on the administration screens should hence be different for each of them.

One more sample...

Without downsizing and customizing, an occasional user would need to spend some time browsing through the different menus and features before finding what he/she needs to do :

For the same user role, Connexion has downsized and customized the administration screen:

As a result, the user will find his way much faster and will do his content updating job with more efficiency and pleasure.

The conclusion is easy to draw: smaller can also mean happier. Ask the Borderless Information Designers at Connexion if you too want to discover how much smaller you need to go for and how much happier you will be!

It is funny to see how every day companies create new communication tools without even wondering if the colors they are using will affect their message. Color has a great impact on your communication, so use it wisely. Don't start of with red if you want to sell safety or yellow if nature is your game. 

 If the Connexion logo is blue, it is not just because we like the color (but it's one of the reasons). Blue sends out several messages to visitor. We like to tell everyone that we're a authority in the field of offline & online communications with a thorough technical knowledge of our offering. Blue is also a more formal color to show our relation to the BtB market. And I can go on like this...

The following link is one I always send to new people starting at the company to get to know the colors and the feelings that go with them. It also shows you which colors are complementary and which combinations are 'not done'.

http://www.mariaclaudiacortes.com/colors/Colors.html

Check it out! It might help you out next time when you need a new logo...

If you want your employees to put readable documents online, give them a proper training. Within a couple of hours, you can tell them all about using there right words, sentences, titles and images. The worst are the images used these days.

That's why I want to leave you with just a few tips to get at least that part sorted out already.

• Use graphical elements where necessary, not where possible
• Visuals are to be used as an addition to the clarity of the document, not to make it a happier and more colorful place.
• Use well-known symbols to guide your visitor through the page like a printer or mail icon. Do not invent these symbols for creative purposes or you will loose the reader.
• Watch out with nice and bright pictures and animations, they draw the reader away from what you're trying to say.
• Don't place images that have the size and location of a advertisement banner. They scare people away.
• Avoid using background images
• Don't let you visuals slow down your website
• Never place visuals in front of the text. You avoiding a quick first glance at the main part of the page, being your first paragraph.
• Select functionality over creativity. It might look nice and was fun to create for the designer, but is it function.

It's good to see that more and more condom producers are finding their way on the internet. Some months ago we had Manix with their nationwide action in France, and now LifeStyles is jumping in as well. 

the fun thing about this website is that they approach their product rather playfull, aimed at a younger audience. You can find Sex Confessions, a lady (Sarah) that gives you sex advice and even some sex positions every month (nicely put in scene by some Barbie dolls). Another fun thing is the fact that you can choose your own style and color, according to your taste...


Except from the more serious aspect like a product list, how condoms are made and how to use them, this website is really giving users a place to get to know the company and its products in a playful way. 

Be sure to pay them a visit:
http://www.lifestylescondoms.eu

http://www.mates.co.uk

Walking around at a great number of events these days has brought me tons of flyers, brochures, CDs and even some USB sticks. Three big bags full of information that never come out of the corner in my office where the bags with info from other events are already gathering dust...

Why is that? Why don't we ever read all the stuff we were obviously interested in only a couple of hours/days before?

read on and find out...

It's mainly because we don't need this information to make a decision anymore. When we come home and are really intersted in something, one of two things will happen: or the other party knows you are interested and will call you, or you are so interested you will call them or go online and look for information.

So why do companies still make this flyers? It' s because they need a reason to start talking to their contacts and what's better than a colourful flyer or brochure? So, when creating a flyer for your event, keep an eye on the following important points:

• Use a lot of flashy colors, pictures and glossy paper, it atracts attention
• Don't use too much or too difficult text
• Buzzwords are always good, even if everyone is already using them
• Hand them out to everyone without exception. Automatically they will put it in thier bag (which they never open again), but it gives you a reason to start you pitch
• One more nice thing is to put some complete nonsense on the flyer. It makes people stop and think about it, which gives you time to catch them in front of your booth. (which, in your eyes, makes them interested) 

At the end of the day you end up with a lot of contacts that now a little about you (because you didn't give them a lot) but with your contact details. This gives you the opportunity to get in contact with them after the event to give them more...

Isn't it a fun game?

  

Standing here all day at this event, talking to interested people, has made me think that there are probably hundreds of other companies in the Brussels area that might be interested in Connexion and its offering.

So don't hesitate and stop by on 29th March in Tour & Taxis Brussels for this great event. You can find us at booth E111 for some great demonstrations, a cup of coffee and a pen... (which seems to be very popular)

 You can also join a presentation of the Translation Guru Stany van Gelder who will be talking about multilingual websites and the easiest way to maintain them.

Talk to you on our booth!

Too many times I see that organisations ask themselves the question if they should adopt product or corporate branding. Without going too much into detail, I would like to give you some insight in the answer.

The future lies with those people who can find the right balance between the two. It has become more difficult in these modern times however, because the consumer has the possibility to inform himself better than ever.
    

If you ask me, e-commerce is more than just selling your product, it's about online selling of your products, but also your ideas, brand and image. The narrow opinion of an online selling tool still in the way of great online campaigns. Unlike the old media like advertising and snail mail, the online media can even be tracked better. They act in the same way hoewever. There is someone out there who is interested in your product and gets some more info by reading an add or a mailing. His view of your brand can be enhanced by this, which doesn't mean he will immediately be buying it. Search engines, emails and your website act in the same way, but sometimes even more effective...they get more rapid access to the info and can make their decision even faster.

In our view, the consumers are adopting a style of mixed mode buying, where they get their info online and offline, before hte buying process starts. A major advantage of the internet is however that it can serve the customer throughout the entire buyng cycle, where offline tools are only suited for one part of the process. An extra for you as a company is that you can follow-up these prospects close-by.

You see, it's not a question of choosing between offline or online media, it's a question of how well you mix suits you and your customers...     

Many of my business contacts mix up Machine Translation System with Translation Memory System. What does each do? Who is it meant for? What can you expect from both technologies? How are they used? We thought it was time to give those questions a clear answer…

As wikipedia puts it, "Machine Translation (MT) performs simple substitution of […] words in one natural language for words in another". It is commonly used today to give you a rough idea of the meaning of a (web) page or message published in a language you do not understand. If, in turn, you have an email message machine-translated in Chinese before sending it to your new holiday friend, this new acquaintance is likely to hate you for all those noughty words you threw at him…

Professional uses of Machine Translation for qualitative marketing communication is therefore not recommended. For those however who need to communicate into or from an unknown foreign language, following the NIST 2006 Machine Translation Evaluation list, Google is offering the best machine translation engine. Other well known commercial MT tools are Babel Fish, Systran and Worldlingo.

Since current MT systems are unable to produce output of the same quality as a human translator, the latter remains key to obtain professional results. Fortunately enough, Translations Memory Systems and Computer Assisted Translation (CAT) systems are here today to make his job faster, better, more reliable and cheaper.

Database-stored translation memories (TM’s) consist of text segments in a source language and their (validated) translations into one or more target languages. CAT tools feed TM’s and automatically retrieve existing translations to speed up the localisation process and make it more dependable. Commercial widely used TM’s and CAT tools are for exampleTrados, DéjàVu, Wordfast and SDLX.

At Connexion we have closed the gap between websites and Translation Memory Systems, by developing a platform that combines web content management and CAT tools, for perfectly and totally translated web content.