Well, it is not the first time this question got asked, but still many people struggle with the question Should I still support IE6 !?! Every webdesigner that has ever tried to develop a cutting edge website that still works with the old Internet Explorer 6 knows: The development of IE6 compatible designs is a pain in the ass!

Facebook has its opinion about IE6...

But the times have changed! The percentage of IE6 users decreases constantly and it is just a matter of time until it will disappear. In the end the cost of IE6 compatibility might be higher than the pity of serving IE6 users a sub-optimal page.

very funny: IE6 funeral :-D

I would like to get your opinion about this! For sure you have something to say about Internet Explorer 6, since its non-conformity to web-standards made it a very “special” browser.

Please participate in this poll and share your opinion with the web product management world and invite everybody you know that works in the web business to participate!

Many thanks I will publish the results in a future post!

Thank you very much for participating! Your vote counts! If you want to make sure not to miss the results I recommend subscribing to the RSS or Email Updates! Feel free to add a comment related to IE6 compatibility.

Related posts:

1. How SEO Will Affect Your Product Planning Right From The Beginning
2. 11 Very Useful Firefox Plugins For Web Product Managers And Web Designers
3. 7 Reasons Why Good Product Managers Must Be On Twitter

Discussions and articles about user experience are usually focused on user interface design, usability etc. That is for sure very important, but the best user interface is worth nothing if your page speed performance is very poor!

Firebug Screenshot - Web users are buzy and impatient and every millisecond counts. Well, unfortunately the big search engines don´t have unlimited time to spend while crawling your page, too.

Now in 2010, everybody has fast internet connections… So why bother too much about website speed!?!

You might have heard something similar already. Although it is of course correct that the average internet connection speed has increased a lot in the last years: Fast page load speed still matters! In my opinion it is even crucial for a good user experience …and there are a bunch of reasons why fast internet connections are not an excuse not to invest in page speed improvements:

1. Multi-tasking internet users - Unfortunately you will not have 100% of the visitors bandwidth in all cases. Imagine a web-user downloading a file, listening to online radio and visiting your page in parallel. Even worse if many users share the same WLAN etc…
2. Server-side performance problems - Some page loading speed problems have nothing to do with the users internet connection! Sometimes just the hosting server is too bad or there is bad code that leads to slowly generated dynamic pages or there are too many unnecessary database hits etc… the list of possible server-side performance issues is long.
3. Emerging markets web users - If you are thinking about launching a product for the emerging markets don´t be surprised if users connection speed stats look a bit like 1998.

And why is it important for SEO?

1. The search engines love fast websites, they can crawl more information in a shorter period => They don´t need to spend that much resources in crawling fast websites.
2. Website speed is a Google Ranking Factor which makes totally sense since fast websites make users and webcrawlers happy and both is pretty much of interest for Google, too. Check the second half of this video and listen to what Matt Cutts from Google has to say about website speed:

How to check the website speed?

There are some cool free page speed testing tools available:

1. Google Page Speed - Analyzes your page loading speed and gives suggestions for improvements. Works together with Firefox Firebug and Google Webmaster Tools.
   

   Google page speed screenshot

2. Google Webmaster Tools - Check the Crawl Stats Folder in GWT frequently to get an idea about how Google experienced your website speed while crawling your site.
3. Firebug for Firefox - Just activate the “net” tab in the firebug window and enjoy the magic!
4. webpagetest.org - Cool online test tool with lots of options like different browsers, bandwidth, location etc.
5. More Load and Performance Test Tools - There are lots of them, see the nice overview of Load and Performance Test Tools by Rick Hower.

How to improve the website speed?

1. Cached Pages - If you have a problem with slowly generated dynamic pages
2. Check removing Features - There is a feature on your site that only 1% of your visitors actually use and that increases page speed by 20%? => then better remove it.
3. Optimize Images - Minimize KB, Don´t downsize pics in HTML and only use pics if absolutely necessary.

About optimizing website speed there are a lot more things that can be done, for further reading I recommend the post tips for increasing website speed.

I hope this post about page loading time improvement was helpful for you. Feel free to tell your opinion or ask a questions in the comments section below.

Related posts:

1. The 15 Worst User Experience Design Mistakes Ever
2. User Experience Design vs. Usability vs. User Interface Design
3. Broken Link Analysis With The Free Tool Xenu Link Sleuth

The end of the year is always a good time to look back and remember the most special moments of the year. One of this special moments was a strange conversation that I had with a domain registration service.

Email screenshot

Well, registering a domain is not that spectacular…  but this conversation that I had earlier this year with a domain registration service provider sales dude is just too weird!

In theory it all could have been so easy: I send an Email Here is my data - Wanna domain please and an answer alright, here you go: … …2 Emails and that´s all!

But it all had to come so different, it ended up with more than a dozen Emails and in the meantime I kinda had the feeling I had a conversation with an (defect) automated Email reply bot.

The scenario:

In this case it was all about a .pt domain and the special requirement for the .pt domain by the Portuguese registry is to have a Trademark for the domain name for my case. So I filled out the registration form at the domaining service and waited until they contacted me for the EU Trademark (not knowing that a 3 weeks Odyssey was expecting me…).

The Domain Registration Sales Force:

Hello,

Please provide a copy of your trademark that is valid in Portugal in order to proceed with the registration of your domain.

I look forward to hearing from you shortly.

Kind Regards,

So far nothing special, so I send them the trademark copy in pdf:

The Web PM:

Hi,

see attached the copy of the European trademark. Please let me know if you need additional information.

regards,

…and they send me their reply:

The Domain Registration Sales Force

Hello,

This is not valid in Portugal. You can register.com.pt with no restrictions. Please advise how you wish to proceed.

Kind Regards,

Wow, that is the first moment I got a little bit shocked. Why should a European Trademark suddenly not be sufficient? That was definitely the first time I heard such a nonsense that a European Trademark is not valid in Portugal. Anyway, I checked again all the resources if suddenly something has changed. (Like a political revolution in Portugal or a spontaneous continental drift towards USA?!) And as expected:
Portugal´s registry (dns.pt) still says at its homepage that you need an EU Trademark.
Even the Domain Registration Service´s page said that you just need an EU Trademark (Sales team doesn´t know its own website?)
Anyway, I didn´t want to explain in detail why Portugal is in Europe (geographically and politically) and therefore the European Trademark is valid and just asked for an explanation:

The curious Web PM:

Hi ,

Could you please clarify why if we have an European Trademark this is not useful in Portugal?

Thanks.

The (inventive?!?) Domain Registration Sales Force:

Hello,

Portugal requires that your trademark be specifically registered in there country.

They do not accept a general EU trademark registration.

Regards,

Alright, so Portugal needs special treatment regarding trademarks… although they do not announce that on their official webpage. I still didn´t really believe that and decided to investigate that a bit more.

The Web PM:

Thanks.

I will check it and let you know something ASAP.

The Domain Registration Sales Force:

Thank you, I look forward to hearing from you shortly.

Kind Regards,

Well, at least the Sales team responded politely all the time Anyway, after re-investigating the issue I figured out that the service dude was wrong again:

The Web PM again:

Hi

I think there is a mistake.

You can see in all following links that the European Trade mark is enough:

https://online.dns.pt/dns_2008/do?com=DS;7867331493;111;+PAGE%284000060%29+K-CAT-CODIGO%28C.125%29+RCNT%28100%29;#886

1. “Serão igualmente aceites como nomes de domínio

As marcas nominativas e os elementos nominativos de marcas mistas registadas a favor do requerente do domínio, tal como constem do respectivo título de registo nacional, comunitário ou internacional desde que, nestes últimos casos, as marcas sejam extensivas a Portugal. São ainda admitidos registos de nomes de domínio baseados em pedidos de registo de marca. No entanto, se um pedido vier a ser recusado o nome de domínio será removido nos termos da alínea d) do artigo 44º.”

2. [again the URL to domain registration service provider´s page that clearly says that a European Trademark is valid in Portugal]

Can you please let us know what is going on?

Thanks.

…days of silence…

The Web PM:

Please,

Could you please give us an answer?

We need to clarify this issue as soon as possible.

Thanks a lot!

The (somewhat inventive?!?!?!)Domain Registration Sales Force:

Hello,

In the past an EU trademark was enough to secure a .pt domain.

About a year ago they changed the requirement to having a trademark valid in Portugal.

You can register .com.pt with no restrictions.

Regards,

Ok, now my patience was already quite exhausted. What more evidence did the service provider need? How about a confirmation directly from an dns.pt official? (as if the terms of service on their page wouldn´t be enough…)
here goes the mail to the dns.pt registry:

The Web PM:

Dear Sirs,

We would like to register .pt domain and see on your website (Artigo 11º: Composição do Nome de Domínio - 2 - b.) that this requires that we hold a European trademark on that name - on the other hand we heard from an ISP where we wanted to register that domain before that a European trademark would not be sufficient…

Could you please advise us in this case? Attached I send you our European trademark registration.

With kind regards from Barcelona,

and the very quick reply of the .pt registry:

The dns.pt Official:

Dear Sirs,

We hereby inform that for the registration of domains .PT are accepted trademarks valid to Portugal, as a European trademark are valid for all countries of Europe, there for extension will be valid for Portugal.

Also inform that you should insert the domain online to be verify by the legally department.

At your service for any additional questions, we present our best regards,

Yey, of course I had to forward this…

The Web PM:

Hello,

I asked directly the FCCN - Fundação para a Computação Científica Nacional (DNS.PT) and they have replied that an European Trademark is enough for registration of .pt domains, since this trademark is valid for Portugal, too.

Also you can read this at the official terms of dns.pt https://online.dns.pt/dns_2008/do?com=DS;7867331493;111;+PAGE(4000060)+K-CAT-CODIGO(C.125)+RCNT(100);#947

and at your domain registration service providers home page [Again the link to the service providers page...]

Please, continue the registration process - the trademark copy you need is attached.
If you have any questions, please let me know.

regards,

Since after this Email I didn´t get a response any more I decided to register the domain directly at the dns.pt registry, since I figured out that they offer an English domain registration form. Only drawback was that they don´t offer a Domain Name Server, but that is not a big deal for the tech team.
So I arranged the domain directly at the dns.pt and saved that way some money btw. So far so good… but why do I suddenly get an invoice from the domain sales dude?

The Web PM:

Why did I get this invoice?

From your organization you were constantly saying that you could not register the domain. Finally we did it ourselves and now you pretend to charge us?

Please, remove the invoice order.

Thanks.

The (very politely?!) Domain Registration Sales Force:

Hello,

You have been refunded, I apologize for the mischarge on our behalf.

Kind Regards,

And yes, I got the money back …must have been my lucky day.

What I have learned from this:

1. Before considering to buy an “exotic” domain via a service provider: Check first if it is possible to register directly at the countries registry. That is usually much cheaper “Cut the middle man”, but unfortunately not with all countries TLD possible
2. Be skeptic if the ISP is saying something that is against the information that you get from the official domain registry of the country.
3. Be even more skeptic if the ISP wants to offer you another top level domain with the argument that it is easier. It might just be the better deal for him.
4. Don´t be too patient. It can be hard to convince a Sales person and that is not worth the effort

So this was the weirdest web story of 2009 for me. Please let me know if you have made similar experiences with domain registrations.

Related posts:

1. Job Opportunity: Sales Executive
2. Challenge: Product Manager Senior
3. How SEO Will Affect Your Product Planning Right From The Beginning

Advanced Google Search techniques are very useful to analyze competitors or identify sites that stole your content! Also from time to time it is a good thing to check what is going on with your website´s Google index. For the case that your website has just few pages in the index that is pretty easy: you do a site:yoursite.com query and you can see all your pages in the index and check them one-by-one.

Lots of pages in the Google index!

BUT what if your site has (approximately) hundreds of thousands or even millions of pages in the Google index?
… Well, you will need a looot of patience or even better: You will have to use advanced Google Search Techniques - and that is what this post will be about, so hang on

Alright, before rushing into the for SEO interesting Google queries, I recommend to visit the Google Operators Reference sheet to get an overview about the Google operators. Lifehacker published an interesting article about “Google Search Tricks” that helps you to understand what you can do with the Google search box beyond just writing your search terms. The cool thing is that with combining these Google operators in an intelligent way you will be able to mine interesting data for analyzing your websites and your competitors as well.

Here go my favorite advanced Google search techniques for search engine optimization, competitor analysis and QA: (replace “example.com” with your domain)

1. Find pages that copied your content, but don´t link to your page

   Unfortunately this is something you need to check from time to time, because copied content without putting a dofollow link to the original site appears quite often in the web. This can happen especially with blog posts pages. To identify these pages that don´t put a (dofollow!) link to your page  it works best to search for a unique phrase of your content that is long enough to be unique. That could be the title of your post, if it is not too mainstream or a phrase taken from your blog posts text. Important: don´t forget the ” operator for phrase match search and the - operator here!

   “my blog post title or unique phrase from the blog text content” -link:myblogpostURL.com

   ---

   

   The nice example pic seems to be on 87 other sites!

   BTW:

   If you are a photographer or a designer and you are worried if somebody stole your images there is help for you available:

   You can use the Reverse Image search engine tineye to identify sites that stole your pics!

   The only thing you have to do is to upload your pic or submit the URL of a page that has the picture integrated.

   That´s it! The reverse image search engine will do the rest.

   ---

2. Find pages that mention your site but don´t link to your homepage:

   Good to know, if you or your team wants to do some Linkbuilding. It is interesting to identify pages that mention your website, but didn´t put a (dofollow) link to your site, because maybe it just got forgotten to put the link to your site! Just write: (don´t forget the - operator before the link: here!)

   example.com -link:www.example.com

   Just a note: Google shows with the link: operator only sites that put a dofollow link to your page (yahoo shows also nofollowed ones) so you will probably get lots of results from social media sites that put a nofollow link to you like for example twitter.
   Second note: with the link: query Google looks only at the mentioned page! so if you searched for link:yourhomepage.com it will only show the links that exactly linked to yourhomepage.com - links that go to sub-directories and pages like yourhomepage.com/blogpost-1 will not appear here.

3. Analyze keyword optimization of competitors

   Or analyze your own sites keyword optimization! A good way to identify keyword optimized pages is to use the intitle: operator. You can combine it with a site: search and you will get interesting results! For the case you want to search for a longer keyword phrase, don´t forget the ” operator.

   intitle:”the keyword phrase” site:example.com

4. Check for “Evil” subdomains:

   First of all it needs to get clarified what an evil subdomain is: Well, that are just pages that are in a wrong subdomain that is not wanted. This can become an issue, if:
   (a) you do URL Rewrites and it happens a bug that generates pages in an evil subdomain
   (b) your site has a looong history and in the past there have been used different subdomains
   (c) your hosting server got cracked and a spammer tries to hide his backlink pages in an evil subdomain
   Well, (a) and (b) can only happen to you if you actually use subdomains in your website, but (c) can happen to you even if you don´t use subdomains!
   Here goes the query: You will have to write -inurl:mysubdomian.example.com with “-” operator for each of your subdomains and “www”. Well, and site:example.com without “-” to tell Google that it should only search your domain. If you get 0 results after this query then everything should be fine. Example:

   -inurl:mysubdomian1.example.com -inurl:mysubdomian2.example.com -inurl:www.example.com site:example.com

5. analyze backlink anchortext

   Which pages on your site got backlinks that had your favorite keywod phrases in the anchor text? Very intersting question because the link anchor text became one of the most important SEO factors, according to SEOmoz! Important here again: use the ” phrase match operator!

   inanchor:”your favourite keyword phrase” site:example.com

Google SERP with active SEO Quake plugin

BTW:
A cool free Firefox Plugin to check important SEO stats is SEO Quake!

This very cool Firefox plugin allows you to display important SEO info like Google Pagerank, Yahoo Linkdomain, number of pages indexed and much more right in the Google search results page!

SEO Quake can do much more cool things, but a detailed description would really go beyond the scope of this blog post

Related posts:

1. Basic User Stream Analysis With Advanced Segments In Google Analytics
2. Google Visitors Special: Interesting Queries And Answers
3. Broken Link Analysis With The Free Tool Xenu Link Sleuth

You want to upload a bunch of new features and some bug-fixes to your site? Great! You want to avoid nasty side-effects and make sure that it works the same way like it was planned before? …then you will have to do a lot of testing!

Opening new pages with old browsers like IE4 can be fun :-)

Basically this Quality Assurance Phase should take place 2 times:

One time in a test-environment before the deployment to the production server and once again after the new web is live!

To maximize the efficiencies of your testing take care not to do the following mistakes that might lead to wrong observations, unnecessary time-waste or you will end up in overlooking faults:

1. Forgetting to do a QA test in multiple browsers

   

   Firefox rocks :-)

   Sure, you don´t need to test with all browsers that exist, but you should check if your website still works ok with the most popular browsers that your visitors have used according to Google Analytics. Especially the old IE6 is well-known for design-troubles and is still quite popular. If you want to do a quick test with lots of multiple browsers check the cool free online service browsershots.org to get some quick screenshots. Fancy: they even offer screenshots for a Win2000 + Internet Explorer 4 machine (=almost 10 Years old software!!!) which is I think more for fun than really usefull, because no modern webdesign will work well in this kind of superold software!

2. Not deleting the browser cache

   Whenever you start a new test the first thing you should do is deleting the browser cache. If you do not you are in danger that you are accidentally viewing a webpage version that is still in the Cache from the last session.

3. Forgetting to update the hosts file

   For the case you have to do a test in a test environment that requires that you have a special version of a hosts file, make sure that the domain names and IP´s are updated and confirm this before the test with the development team.

4. Cookie issues

   Always check cookie-requiring functionality like logins etc. with and without activated cookies. Webdeveloper is a quite useful Firefox plugin that allows you to temporarily disable active cookies.

5. Forgetting to Test in multiple screen resolutions

   Especially floating designs are bug-prone with very small or big screen resolutions. Worth to take a look here in Google Analytics, which screen resolutions are the most common ones and make sure that at least these are looking good.

6. Not using Selenium tests

   Especially for very “click-intensive” or repeating parts of a test it is very helpful to have an automatic Selenium test. Just download the Selenium Firefox plugin and design the testscript once and hit the replay button… it is almost like cinema

7. Last not Least: Wasting time by testing stuff that tools could test for you

   

   ups that link seems to be broken...

   There are many cool free tools available that can help you a lot with QA testing. Actually some of them make it possible for you to test parts of your website that you cannot test manually. For example it is impossible to check all the thousands of links on your site manually. There are tons of Online Linkcheckers for this available, if you prefer to run a automatic linkchecker from your own machine I prefer Xenu Linkchecker or the Linkevaluator Firefox Plugin

I hope I could help to make your QA day easier with this tips! Feel free to add a comment if you want!

Related posts:

1. 11 Very Useful Firefox Plugins For Web Product Managers And Web Designers
2. Basic User Stream Analysis With Advanced Segments In Google Analytics
3. Website Speed - Crucial for User Experience & SEO

There are a lot of recommendations for product management books available in the web, but I think the most valuable pm book reviews are the ones written by product managers.

image by suchitra prints

Before you run to the library or the bookstore to buy your next book I recommend to take a look at the opinions of experienced product managers.

See below my favorite resources for product management related literature. It contains only reviews and recommendations written by very experienced product managers:

---

• “10 Books To Make You A Better Product Manager” by Cindy Alvares
• PM book reviews by Tabita Green
• “Strategic Product Manger” reviewed books
• Book reviews by “On Product Management”
• Recommended books by “Write That Down”
• Recommended reading by “Pragmatic Marketing Blog”

---

Actually, I am also thinking about publishing book reviews in the future. If you want to make sure not to miss them I recommend subscribing to this blog´s RSS Feed. You probably know even more good resources to find reviews, please feel free to add them as a comment here, if you want.

PR: wait… I: wait… L: wait… LD: wait… I: wait… wait… Rank: wait… Traffic: wait… Price: wait… C: wait…

Related posts:

1. 3 Awesome Presentations About Agile Product Management
2. Mainstream?!?! - The Top 3 Most Exceptional Product Management Blogs
3. Project Management with the opensource tool GanttProject

It is always very interesting to take a look at the keywords that your visitors used in their Google search to find your website - and not only to analyze the SEO performance of your website. Some keywords actually can tell you quite a lot about what your visitors were really looking for on your site.
I just took a look at the keywords that the visitors of webproductblog have used in their Google search in my Google Analytics account. Some of these queries catched my attention, because they were not really answered so far on my blog or just too funny. I thought “better late than never” and here go the queries and my answers

• “pop up” and user experience and annoyin

  YES! YES! YES! It is really annoying!

• “should have read” mistake

  

  Agile Project Management with Scrum by Ken Schwaber

  Lol, I don´t really know what this visitor was looking for, but I would say the book Agile Project Management with Scrum by Ken Schwaber is a “should have read” for web product managers.

  Reviews of this book you can find for example here:

  amazon.com

  goodreads.com

  digital-constructions blog

• xenu sleuth limit

  

  max. parallel threads limit

  Yes, with Xenu Link Sleuth you can set a limit for for the parallel threads.

  If you experience too many timeout errors in your Xenu report you should try it again with a slower crawling speed.

  If you want Xenu Link Sleuth to stop before it has crawled every page you can just push “R” and it will show a report for all the pages that have been crawled so far.

• can you create a report in google analyt

  

  Export report options in Google Analytics

  Sure, you can actually export a couple of different types of reports in PDF, XML, CSV, CSV for Excel and TSV. You can also let Google Analytics automatically send this reports weekly if you want (click on Email -> schedule)

• “ignoring emails is”

  …from time to time a good thing! Don´t become a slave of your inbox and enjoy your workday!

I hope you liked this post! Please let me know what you think.

Related posts:

1. Broken Link Analysis With The Free Tool Xenu Link Sleuth
2. Pageviews vs. Visits vs. Visitors
3. Basic User Stream Analysis With Advanced Segments In Google Analytics

I just can´t blog here about everything that might be of interest for Web Product Managers - Yes, I am not omniscient and only part-time blogging here Therefore here goes a list of blogs that recently catched my attention. They all write about for Web PMs relevant topics like User Experience Design, Social Media, Web Analytics, SEO, Online-Marketing and more. I thoroughly recommend to follow these blogs complementary to the product management blogs:

• louisgray.com - Silicon Valley Blog for Geeks

  Danger: Geek alert! For some reason the first thing I think after I hear the name “Louis Gray” is “Early Adopter”. If there is some cool new tool out there in the Social Media Sphere it will get reviewed by him - that is as sure as death and taxes! A good way to stay updated about brandnew trends directly from the Silicon Valley is to follow his RSS. Latest geekiness:
  Real-time Google Reader Shares to Twitter - There’s An App for That.

• avc.com - Musings of a VC in NYC

  In almost every interesting web start-up there will be the earlier or later a Venture Capitalist involved, so it is a good idea to try to understand how the VC´s think and why they do so. Cool post : Why I think RSS is alive and Well

• rotorblog.com - Spin the Web!

  A fun-to-read allround-geekiness blog. Web 2.0 news, startup reviews, topics related to social networks and online games can be found here. Cool post here: Free Web-Based Widget Tools for Website Owners

• inspiredstartup.com - Next Level Startup Blog

  Especially in Start-ups you will need to have an entrepreneurial mind-set, even if you are “just” an employee. For example you can learn here how to motivate others and yourself.

• kikolani.com - The art of blogging

  Yes, there are also geek girls and kikolani is really worth following, especially if you are interested in blogging topics and social media. Tip: A very nice weekly Top-links series with selected blog posts by topic can be found here.

• joelonsoftware.com - Joel on Software

  An experienced software developer blogging mainly about tech topics. I am especially impressed by his very cool writing style! Interesting to learn about things that you should never do from a developer´s perspective.

• findermind.com - Guide to People Search

  You are thinking about hiring someone or want to get hired? Or you just want to know which information about you is available in the web? I bet you didn´t know how many ways there are to search these information in the web: 25 Free People Search Engines to find Anyone

• 1stwebdesigner.com - Graphic and Design Blog

  How could I write a blog post about top blogs for web business people without mentioning a good webdesign blog? So here goes my favourite Lots of great tutorials and designer resources like 65 Popular And Professional Free Fonts For Creative Typography can be found here.

• seomoz.com - Search Engine Optimization

  Too stay up to date on SEO this is the blog to follow, but that you probably knew already Nice post here: 17 ways search engines judge the value of a link

• goodexperience.com - user & customer experience

  In the end the product management needs to achieve products that customers love. User experience design is a key factor for this and you should learn more about design thinking.

• analytics.blogspot.com - The official Google Blog

  Yeap! Last not least it is worth to take a look from time to time what Google shouts out to the crowd, like for example: Update Regarding AdWords Cost Data Reporting

I hope you could find some interesting new blogs here! Please do not forget to subscribe to the RSS if you found it interesting and please let me know which blogs you prefer and leave a comment.

Related posts:

1. Mainstream?!?! - The Top 3 Most Exceptional Product Management Blogs
2. 7 Reasons Why Good Product Managers Must Be On Twitter
3. 10 Blog Posts That Web Product Managers Should Read!

Effective Web Product Management needs to be agile! That can actually be quite hard in practice, but don´t worry the following three presentations will be a useful resource for agile product development teams:

1. Agile2009 Product Manager - Product Owner Dilemma

   

   The Art of Product Management

   The excellent presentation of Rich Mironov - the author of the interesting Product Management Book The Art of Product Management: Lessons from a Silicon Valley Innovator* - brings light into the Product Manager´s Dilemma.

   The Slides have many illustrations that help to understand the complex responsibilities of the PM in the company´s organization.

   Just click below in the image to play the presentation or use the arrow buttons to move back/forward.

   Enjoy!

   Agile2009 Product Manager - Product Owner Dilemma

   View more presentations from Enthiosys Inc..

   The Agenda of: Agile2009 Product Manager - Product Owner Dilemma

   ---

   1. Context, scope, terminology
      - Development-only or inbound/outbound cross-functional?
      - Product strategy vs. vision vs. backlog
      - “business value” vs. quarterly revenue goal
   2. Why talk about product managers and product owners?
   3. What does a product manager do?
      - Or.. what do I mean when I say “product manager”?
   4. How does this map to product owners?
   5. Recommendations

2. Early Stage Web Product Management by Dan Olsen

   Dan Olsen highlights Web Product Management from a Start-up´s perspective. Especially I liked his points about Optimisation with Web Metrics:

   Early Stage Web Product Management by Dan Olsen

   View more documents from Dan Olsen.

   The Agenda of: Early Stage Web Product Management by Dan Olsen

   ---

   1. Understanding customer needs
   2. Prioritizing, scoping and maximizing ROI on engineering resources
      
   3. UI design
   4. Usability testing
   5. Using metrics for optimization
      

3. Strategic Role - Product Management

   Steve Johnson from the Pragmatic Marketing Blog explains the strategic part of Product Management and clarifies common misconceptions about Marketing, PR and Product Management:

   Strategic Role - Product Management

   View more documents from Afzal Khan.

   The Agenda of: Strategic Role - Product Management

   ---

   1. Who Needs Product Management?
   2. What is Marketing Anyway?
   3. Where Does Product Management Belong in the Organization?
   4. The Product Management Triad
   5. Roles and Titles
   6. Product Management in an Agile World
   7. Final Thoughts…
   8. Learn More About the Strategic Role of Product Management
      

   I hope these slides are that helpful for you, like they have been for me! Please let me know about your opinion and leave a comment.

Related posts:

1. 5 Online Crash Courses For New Web Product Managers
2. Challenge: Product Manager Senior
3. How SEO Will Affect Your Product Planning Right From The Beginning

It is just strange that there are still so many pages with horrible webdesign online. Well, at least it inspired me to publish a list of my “favourite” (or better said: “most annoying”) user experience nightmares. Please also check the references to other webdesign-experienced bloggers that have a similar point of view:

1. Bad contrast of text and background

   

   good contrast - bad contrast

   Unsolicited eyesight tests will not really amuse the users! Especially pay attention with text on backgrounds with image! If the image has to many different colours you will have to either soften the contrast of the background or use fonts with frame.

   BTW: Black text on white background is still up to date, if you want to be on the safe side - more at thomsonchemmanoor.com

2. Frames

   Framesets are just a funny thing to do…  - but an absolutely nightmare for Usability and SEO. Learn more at Sameer Chavan’s blog

3. Heavy video intros

   That is exactly what web users are looking for… slowly loading fancy intro videos, especially if there is no skip button… - Web users are always in a hurry and unexpected video-surprises might lead to loose the visitor. see more at chaosscenario.com

4. Hidden Sign in

   Your users need to sign in to perform actions in my site? If they really want to sign in they do not mind searching the sign in link… - Users will very likely not like to search for this buttons | see more about mistakes related to registration process at uie.com

5. Tiny clickable areas

   Don´t save space at the wrong place! - more at smashingmagazine.com

6. PDF for Online reading

   PDFs are great! Why should I only use them for downloads, if I can replace major content parts with it? - Please only use it for content that is supposed to be downloaded or printed by the user, because PDF breaks the flow of the web users. See the older study at useit.com that still is relevant.

7. Pop-ups for content

   Why load a new page or use AJAX, if I can just use a Pop-up? - Pop-ups are just annoying and most browsers anyway just block pop-ups by default…

8. Unstructured, unscannable texts

   Why use bullet points, bold text etc. to structure your text, if you can just put big fat and boring text blocks? - If users can´t scan your website quickly they won´t read it.

9. Over-loaded pages

   More is always better, so the more stuff I can put on a website the better it is… - Your website usability will suffer if your site contains lots of useless features and contents that distract the users.

10. Horizontal scroll bar

    Why should I care about width if I can have a horizontal scroll bar? - It is just unconfortable to scroll horizontal and makes it very hard to read your content. Usability fail!

11. Blinking text

    It is very important, so it has to blink! - Blinking text gets very quickly on user´s nerves, doesn´t it? (Sorry for the blinking text, that was just for demo purpose)

12. Forcing users to switch their browser

    I don´t want to take care about all Browsers and i why not use superfancy special tags that only my favorite browser understands? - Imagine a street with a sign “only cars by BMW allowed”.

13. Too many and too big pictures used

    I just love pics! - But too many pics reduce the speed of the site and can distract the users.

14. Unnecessary use of animated gifs, flash or Java Applets

    Yep, I know how to do and implement this in websites, so why not show it as much as i can? - Please only add this if there is no other way to do it, don´t add unnecessary komplexity to your site.

15. “Mysterious” link texts

    People like surprises… - Users should have an idea where the link goes and search engines take a look at the keywords used in the anchor text.

Please let me know what your most annoying usability mistakes are and leave a comment.

Related posts:

1. User Experience Design vs. Usability vs. User Interface Design
2. Website Speed - Crucial for User Experience & SEO
3. Basic User Stream Analysis With Advanced Segments In Google Analytics

There are some very important interferences of SEO (search engine optimization) with the web product management that you need to know before developing your new product. No matter if you think about hiring (external) SEO consultants once the website is online, there are some aspects of SEO that you will have to keep in mind right from the start of creating an online product strategy.

“But I am the Product Manager! Why should I think about that now? The SEO guys will take care of this once it goes to development…”

If you thought something similar to this after reading the headline, I recommend the entertaining blog post Building SEO into the Development Process by SEOmoz and see why good SEO involves almost everybody in your company.

You can really save a lot of time and improve the performance of your website by doing this right from the start. Or do you prefer to get a SEO analysis with dozens of required technical changes, just because you thought it is ok to start thinking about SEO “after the launch”? I guess not, so this is why here you will get a summary of the most important SEO issues that will affect your product strategy. If you are new to search engine optimization there are a lot of good SEO blogs in the web. For getting a basic overview I recommend the original Google Guides: the Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide (download PDF Version) and the Google Webmaster Guidelines.

See below SEO Factors with high impact on product planning:

1. Landing page

   Most search engine traffic will land at sub-pages of your website and only a few users on your homepage. This means every page of your website might be the first page new visitors see, which you need to know while working on a design concept for your website. Get rid of the idea that most new users see first the homepage! Every page that is not easy to scan for the users and hard to understand on the first view is almost useless. Search engines might send lots of traffic to them, but after taking a look in your web analytics you might see very high bounce rates… Goodbye Conversion Rate!

2. URL structure

   Keywords in the URL matter for search engines, so you should give your subfolders and subdomains optimized names. Especially avoid duplicate content (the same content with different URLs) to get indexed by Google. This can actually relatively easy happen with dynamically generated pages.
   All URL related specs needs to be well-planned in the early stages of development, because the URLs have a high technical importance and URL-Rewrites might become tricky to implement. Changing them later might imply high extra resources to get the URLs in the right shape for SEO. Moreover a change to a new URL structure will need 301 Redirects, which need to get tested deeply, because screwed up redirects or masses of duplicate content are really bad for SEO.

3. SEO friendly web design

   This mostly means for the webdesigners to produce HTML code according to the Google Webmaster Guidelines. But SEO-friendly coding implies some design constraints you should be aware of. Especially the use of plain text for headlines etc. means that some fancy looking solutions might become impossible or at least harder to do. Another story:  Flash sites. Flash is cool for animations and other multimedia content, but problematic for SEO. Avoid building full-flash pages and better use flash only for the parts of your site that cannot be done without it. In any case avoid putting lots of text content in flash files.

4. Text content rich pages

   Text content matters! the more text content you have on your pages, the more interesting they are for search engines. The PM Challenge here is to think about where and how to implement interesting text contents to your page without distracting from the primary calls to action of your pages. Better think about this early while doing a design concept and try to achieve easy extendable wedesign solutions.

5. Internal link structure

   Search engines crawl your site by following the links on it. Well, that is obvious, but why can this affect your product concept so much? Because Google also looks at how many links point to a specific site, how prominently they are placed in the page, what importance (PageRank) has Google assigned to the linking page etc. Your challenge here is to achieve a for the users useful website + an intelegent internal linking that emphasizes your “best” webpages from SEO point of view by linking them more often. A pretty common feature that is nice for SEO and users are “related links”. That way you can get display your favourite pages links related to the link pages content.

6. Anchor text optimization

   You still insist on having fancy images for your links? Well, at least make sure that for your internal links also always exist alternative text links with good anchor text. Avoid Anchor texts like “here“, “click this” etc. or are you optimizing for the keyword “here”?

7. Schedule SEO tests

   

   xenu

   Very important! Deep SEO tests can become time consuming, because many things like bad redirects etc. are not that simple to test and can get easily overseen. Btw., for a quick and easy broken links check I recommend: Xenu Broken Link Checker

8. Fast website

   Very likely you were already thinking about this since users love fast pages like the search engines do. Whenever you add features, keep the speed performance in mind and think about caching dynamical generated pages if possible. A good way to track your server speed is via Google Webmaster Tools. For a quick check in a browser I recommend the network check function of the Firebug Firefox plugin.

Last not least after all this SEO input: Do not forget that there are users out there that might want to use your website! So please do not “over-optimize” your website for SEO and always keep an eye on user feedback and your Google Analytics to see how users accept your page. Please let me know what experiences you have made with SEO and Product Management and leave a comment!

Related posts:

1. 11 Very Useful Firefox Plugins For Web Product Managers And Web Designers
2. Challenge: Product Manager Senior
3. Broken Link Analysis With The Free Tool Xenu Link Sleuth

Some days ago I posted an interesting job. Currently there is also the following Product Management Position in our team available. If you are interested, please send your CV to jobs@migoa.com.

Product Manager Senior

nuroa is looking for a talented senior product manager to coordinate the conceptual and technical development of new product initiatives specifically in the area of search. This position is full time and based in our main offices in Barcelona, Spain.

Responsibilities

• Write specifications, prioritize Search-related features, build consensus and coordinate product schedules within a team of world-class engineers
• Facilitate communication throughout the development process between a variety of internal teams
• Integrate usability studies, research, market analysis and SEO studies into product requirements to ensure that products satisfies business and customer needs
• Understand nuroa’s strategic and competitive position, and work to define and deliver the best products that maintain, shape, and improve that Position
• Develop the product roadmap with new, justifiable ideas to enhance existing functionality or introduce new features
• Maximize efficiency in execution to product milestones in a constantly changing and growing environment where the process is fluid and creative and unique solutions are desired

Requirements

• Minimum 3-5 years of internet industry experience in similar roles: managing a product between business needs an technical resources
• Degree in Computer Science or related technical field a plus
• Experience developing or studying Search-related Internet products and/or technologies is strongly desired
• Exceptional written and oral communication skills
• Exceptional organizational and analytical skills
• Exceptional technical abilities and/or ability to work with engineers
• Statistics background or strong skills in data analysis
• SEO knowledge, especially related to dynamic websites
• Demonstrated skills in gathering requirements, organizing resources and risk management
• Understanding of property search engines a substantial plus

nuroa is currently active in 7 countries:
Spain | Mexico | Chile | Germany | United Kingdom | Italy | Brazil

Related posts:

1. How SEO Will Affect Your Product Planning Right From The Beginning
2. Job Opportunity: Sales Executive
3. 10 Blog Posts That Web Product Managers Should Read!

My current employer nuroa is looking for an experienced sales manager and I thought you might be interested. See below the job profile! You are the right one for this job? Then do not hesitate and send us your CV to: jobs@migoa.com

Sales executive

nuroa is seeking an Account Executive to work with European clients. Ideal
candidates will have extensive experience in selling cross-network online
marketing solutions through customer prospecting and building strong
relationships. We are seeking experienced media sales professionals that are
able to generate revenues from companies and advertising agencies. This is a
contract position based in Barcelona.

Responsibilities

• Prospect and penetrate large organizations to obtain branded advertising and sales of “featured listings”
• Create persuasive sales presentations using market trends, case studies, etc.
• Analyze campaign performance statistics and recommend optimized media solutions
• Exceed sales, pricing and yield goals
• Provide best practices to your peers
• Ensure that our clients receive the highest level of sales and operational customer service
• Execute and deliver high quality answers to all RFPs
• Prioritize and deliver timely work
• Provide scalable solutions for advertisers
• Serve as industry expert in online marketing

Requirements

• Minimum 3-5 years of Media Sales
• Excellent communication in Spanish and English (knowledge of other languages a plus)
• Excellent communication and presentation skills
• Experience in & knowledge of classifieds media are preferred
• Relationships with top marketing decision makers at traditional classified companies, banks and agencies
• Proven track record of success driving revenue through the development of long-term strategic relationships
• Demonstrated track record of structuring and managing complex negotiations to successful closure and delivery
• Understand user behavior and how technology works and the ability to explain each in ordinary terms

nuroa is currently active in 7 countries:
Spain | Mexico | Chile | Germany | United Kingdom | Italy | Brazil

Related posts:

1. Challenge: Product Manager Senior
2. A Weird Story About Exotic Countries Domain Registration…
3. 7 Reasons Why Good Product Managers Must Be On Twitter

Yes, the PM workdays can be hard sometimes: Somehow the Product Manager is involved in everything and the danger to become more a “Firefighter” than a Product Manager is high! (And in the work contract it says “Product Manager” not “Firefighter“, doesn´t it?) Anyway, whenever you have the feeling that the release cycles get shorter and shorter while the to-do-list gets longer and longer, you should try the following:

1. Take a nap!

   One of the coolest things I learnt in Spain is to take a daily nap in the lunch break! It definitely helps a lot to relax. 30 minutes are enough! It is even scientifically documented that a “Siesta” is healthy!

2. Go jogging in the morning

   …or in the evening if you are not so much into getting up early. My Favourite: Jump into the sea during the run for the ultimate recreation effect!

3. Switch off instant messenger and Email notifications from time to time

   Yes, I am serious! Nobody expects from you that you are always available and they understand that you have to focus on other tasks from time to time. If a task needs your full concentration, better switch the instant messenger off and you will be more productive!

4. Say “No” the right way

   PMs that always say “Yes” will sooner or later get into trouble, so saying “No” the right way becomes an essential skill for Product Managers. A good way to say “No” that almost always works is to refer to tasks with higher priority that need to get done for this release cycle. You can find more useful tips how to say “No” in Carl Knibbs post.

5. Work outside the office

   Try to organize your tasks in that way that you can work one or two days outside from the office. This should help to stay focussed and produce quality work. See here also Tabita Greens post about Product Focus.

I hope I could help to make your day more relaxed and productive! What are your favourite ways to fight the stress?

Related posts:

1. Project Management with the opensource tool GanttProject
2. 3 Awesome Presentations About Agile Product Management
3. Challenge: Product Manager Senior

Twitter is a really powerful tool to get in touch with other internet people. In the last time I was looking for web analytics experts in Twitter and found an excellent resource at the Blog of Rich Page. Even more interesting people I found while doing searches in Twitter and Google. Please let me know If I missed somebody in this list and tweet me. I want to keep this list up to date and I will update it from time to time.

Web Analytics Experts in Twitter:

1. Rich Page | richpage
2. Orli Yakuel | orli
3. Mark D’Onofrio | donmarkweb
4. Sandra Keyes | sandrakeyes76
5. wickedkeemo | wickedkeemo
6. Gemma Torrent | gemmatorrent
7. Jan Altmeyer | Haito
8. Jo Orange | jo9ty
9. Vinesh chauhan | VineshC
10. Anil Batra | anilbatra
11. Tim Leighton-Boyce | timlb
12. Marshall Sponder | webmetricsguru
13. ravi pathak | ravipathak
14. Siegert Dierickx | siegertd
15. Dennis R. Mortensen | dennismortensen
16. June Dershewitz | jdersh
17. Chris Grant | cgrantski
18. Hurol Inan | hurol_inan
19. Chana Hercenberg | webanalytic
20. Bobby Hewitt | Bobbyhewitt
21. digitalalex | digitalalex
22. Eric Peterson | erictpeterson
23. Ton Wesseling | tonwesseling
24. Adam Ware | wheresitworking
25. Doug McSorley | dougmcsorley
26. Bente Lønnquist | bentehl
27. Vincent Granville | analyticbridge
28. Jim Sterne | jimsterne
29. dwpshields | dwpshields
30. Bryan Eisenberg | TheGrok
31. Web Analytics World | waworld
32. bamccall | bamccall
33. danpereira | danpereira
34. Moritz Habermann | moritzhabermann
35. Eduard Blacquière | EdWords
36. Raquel Hirsch | raquelhirsch
37. Gerben Bouwhuis | gerben
38. Sherri Gesin | sherri_g
39. Agustín Vazquez-Levi | oggy
40. Julien Coquet | JulienCoquet
41. Paul Cook | tagmanceo
42. Allison Hartsoe | A8llison
43. scott | swcalise
44. Jennifer Day | jdaysy
45. Christopher Millward | chrismillward
46. André Scholten | andrescholten
47. Johan Winje | kampenrampen
48. Romuald Deloumeaux | Seopob
49. Paul Smith | pgsmith2000
50. Eric Gerhardt | ericgerhardt
51. Jeff Noethen | eljefe29
52. Steve Kim | kimsteve
53. robbinsteif | robbinsteif
54. shikhvarger | shikhvarger
55. jenkinsa | jenkinsa
56. Matthew Bragg | MatthewBragg
57. Nicolas Malo | nicolasmalo


add me to this list!

58. Marko Hurst | markohurst
59. Becky Snyder | beckysnyder
60. Patrick Ludolph | Neunzehn72
61. Bansi Patel | bansi
62. widgetgirl | widgetgirl
63. Gemma Muñoz | sorprendida
64. Shelby Thayer | shelbythayer
65. Kevin Hillstrom | minethatdata
66. David Wang | blogjunkie
67. Nancy Duley | nduley
68. Jonny Thompson | jonnytee
69. ankit nagarsheth | ankitnagarsheth
70. Bror S. Skardhamar | skardhamar
71. ejenniferlynn | ejenniferlynn
72. deanshaw | deanshaw
73. Dennis James | analyticsdennis
74. Markus Walter | MarkusWalter
75. Kenny Grant | allbombs
76. Rommil Santiago | rommil
77. Stephane Hamel | immeria
78. Iain Murphy | analyticsguru
79. Michael Notté | michaelnotte
80. Matthew Niederberger | matthew_nl
81. Fred Horrocks | FredHorrocks
82. Rick Venema | Rick80
83. Shaun Lowry | WebForensics
84. Christos kyliakoudis | kyliakoudis
85. Daniel Piche | dhpiche
86. wa.emvbusiness | wa_emvbusiness
87. Tatvic Webanalytics | tatvic
88. Brian Au | the9variables
89. victorstossel | victorstossel
90. Stu Bowker | gravy834
91. Roy McClean | roymcclean
92. Alessio Semoli | alessiosemoli
93. Juan Esteves | EmailJuan
94. Peter Pletsch | peterpletsch
95. David Herbert | onlineanalytics
96. dmickey kellogg | dmickey
97. Mark Coleman | arkley68
98. Robb Collins | robby_disco
99. grumpygrandma | grumpygrandma
100. Ed VanderBush | edvanderbush
101. ytomizawa | ytomizawa
102. Mangold Sengers | analyticsbeta
103. Kenneth Eriksen | keneri73
104. WebShare | webshare
105. Brian Dolecki | dolecki
106. James O’Malley | jamesomalley
107. Mark Hanson | kramh18
108. Andreas Phillipsen | andphil
109. shanmuganandhg | shanmuganandhg
110. Dan Croxen John | ApldWebAnalytix
111. Louis Soran | LouSoran

I hope you could make some interesting new contacts! BTW: you can also follow me on Twitter if you want, let´s stay in touch!

Update:

1. Rosa Rueda | rosarueda
2. Melissa Morsi | OmnitureMelissa
3. Massimo Paolini | massimopaolini
4. Michael Valiant | MichaelValiant
5. Web Analytics India | WAIBlog
6. Avinash Kaushik | avinashkaushik

2nd. Update:

1. Larry Freed | LarryFreed
2. Kevin Ertell | KevinErtell
3. Rick Blythe | rickblythe

add me to this list!

Related posts:

1. 50 Product Managers In Twitter That Are Worth A Follow
2. Basic User Stream Analysis With Advanced Segments In Google Analytics
3. Pageviews vs. Visits vs. Visitors

In my opinion it happens too often that these important web analytics terms get mixed up or misunderstood. Sometimes even people that work in the internet industry seem to get confused. Whenever you have doubts if your conversation partner understood these terms right, you should better explain these differences again! See below the official definitions, where i have marked the parts with [!] that are in my experience most often misunderstood.

The official definitions according to Google:

• Pageviews:

  A pageview is defined as a view of a page on your site that is being tracked by the Analytics tracking code. If a visitor hits reload after reaching the page, this will be counted as an additional pageview [!].
  If a user navigates to a different page and then returns to the original page, a second pageview will be recorded as well.

• Visits:

  Visits represent the number of individual sessions initiated by all the visitors to your site. If a user is inactive on your site for 30 minutes or more, any future activity will be attributed to a new session. [!] Users that leave your site and return within 30 minutes will be counted as part of the original session.

• Visitors:

  The initial session by a user during any given date range is considered to be an additional visit and an additional visitor. Any future sessions from the same user during the selected time period are counted as additional visits, [!] but not as additional visitors.

These definitions are taken from the Google Analytics help page.

Related posts:

1. Google Visitors Special: Interesting Queries And Answers
2. Basic User Stream Analysis With Advanced Segments In Google Analytics
3. 111+ Web Analytics Tweeter You Must Follow

The New York Product Management Association is hosting this interesting barcamp-style event. For more information check out the ProductCamp NYC presentation video and view the official ProductCamp NYC webpage.
The Twitter people are already tweeting about it at #pcampnyc!

PM barcamp in NYC

Good reasons to go there:

• it is not an event with strict agenda, it is a cool barcamp!
• You will meet a lot of other interesting product managers there!
• it is free of charge!
• Last not least: Food is also included

Where? When?

• St. Johns University - 101 Murray Street, New York, NY
• Saturday, July 18, 2009 from 8:00 am to 5:00 pm

If you are interested in more Product Management Events, check out the PM Event list by Stewart Rogers

Related posts:

1. Google Visitors Special: Interesting Queries And Answers
2. 7 Reasons Why Good Product Managers Must Be On Twitter
3. 111+ Web Analytics Tweeter You Must Follow

Gantt charts are a good way to visualize project plans. To prepare Gantt charts in a quick and easy way you will need the help of specialized tools. (please do not even think about using Powerpoint or Excel for bigger Gantt charts ) My favourite tool for smaller and mid-size project plans is the free software GanttProject:

the gantt charts will look like this in GanttProject

My favourite features:

• you can easily manage dependencies between tasks.
• the appearance of the chart can be adjusted in many ways and you can decide which information should appear in the visualized project plan and which not.
• there is a separate resources view and you can easily assign the resources to the task.
• adjusting the timings of the whole project tasks is very simple - change one tasks time-frame and all depending tasks get adjusted automatically.
• export functions to PDF, CSV, HTML, PNG images and last not least: MS Project format!

What I suggest to improve:

• the export to PNG should allow to select the parts I want to have displayed. Sometimes I just do not need the whole plan and go back to do classic screenshots instead.
• would be cool: alerts if I do adjustments that are against the previously set earliest and latest starting dates for tasks.

All-in-All a cool and useful project management tool that is easy to use! Which project management tools do you use?

Related posts:

1. Broken Link Analysis With The Free Tool Xenu Link Sleuth
2. How SEO Will Affect Your Product Planning Right From The Beginning
3. 5 Tips For A More Relaxed (And More Productive!) PM Workday

Icon by Mysitemyway

For some reason people from all over the world are using Twitter like crazy at the moment. Well, actually it is not really surprising, because you can do a lot of cool things with it.  In this post I list and explain my reasons why I use Twitter and why I think every good Product Manager should do so as well:

1. Connect with other PMs

   In a previous post I have published a List of Product Managers in Twitter, which is a good starting point to get in touch with Product Managers. The best thing in the Twitter network is: It is a worldwide trend, no matter how good you are networked in your local or national networks, in Twitter you will find interesting people from all over the world!

2. Get in touch with (potential) clients

   Think about what your target group could be thinking (and tweeting) and use search.twitter.com to find these tweets. Answering Questions can be an effective way to interact with (potential) clients!

3. Listen to customer feedback

   “What should I tweet?” is a very common question for Tweeters. The question “What should I listen to in Twitter” is not so common, but here is in my opinion the biggest potential for PMs. People in Twitter love to talk about their experiences with products of all kind. So even if your product has nothing to do with the internet at all, it is very likely that somebody already tweeted something about it. Discovering these tweets is relatively easy with search.twitter.com and you can alternatively use other tools, if you want (see for example this mashable post about alternative Twitter search tools)

4. Locate the experts

   There are a couple of famous people active on Twitter and if you like their tweets you should not hesitate to follow them. Tip: Maybe one of them is live-tweeting from an interesting conference that you cannot attend.

5. Share good and relevant articles

   For sure you are reading good articles about product management from time to time. Sharing them via Twitter will help you to get new targeted followers

6. Grow your online-reputation

   If you regularly tweet about specific topics and interact with other users, you can slowly grow your reputation about a specific topic or your product in the Twitter-sphere. For sure this will not happen over night - Social Media is a marathon, not a sprint!

7. Let people know about your product

   Last not least: Promote your products from time to time! But do not do the mistake and ONLY talk about your stuff. Success in Social Communities can in the long term only be achieved with real interaction with other people!

I hope I could convince you to use Twitter and to follow me What are your reasons to be on Twitter?

Related posts:

1. 50 Product Managers In Twitter That Are Worth A Follow
2. 11 Very Useful Firefox Plugins For Web Product Managers And Web Designers
3. Interesting Event: ProductCamp NYC

There are many blogs about product management. Most of them are quite “mainstream“. But some of them have a exceptional style to blog about product management topics and they are all both: useful and fun to read

Here go my personal favourites of these “different” product management blogs:

• christophercummings.com

  

  Cool Product Management Blog by Christopher Cummings

  “Product Management Meets Pop Culture” - these title might make you already think: “Erm… What?” The cool thing is that here you get very useful information presented in a cool way. Simply learn and have fun at the same time! So don´t be surprised and see how  Hulk is giving you advice how to say “No” to customers and you will figure out why Warrior Princess Xena is the best Product Manager ever

• crankypm.com

  Discover the “ugly side of software product management” with the Cranky Product Manager! Figure out why The Cranky Product Manager bitchslaps the Cranky Marketer! Don´t miss to read the comments, this is the right blog if you are looking for some nice discussions about product management

• productmanagementzen.com

  “Finding balance by doing more with less” is a quite unusual message for a product weblog. Even buzy product managers should do a day trip from time to time! Last not least this blog confirms my theory (yey!) that ignoring Emails is a cool thing to do from time to time

I hope you will enjoy these blogs like I do! Definitely a “must-have” in your RSS-feed reader!

Related posts:

1. 11 Top Blogs To Stay Up-To-Date In The Web-Business
2. Project Management with the opensource tool GanttProject
3. 3 Awesome Presentations About Agile Product Management