All Entries in the "Web/Tech" Category
A Conversation With An Orchestra Website
Properdiscord.com recently posted a video entitled A conversation with an orchestra website preceded by the following description: “I was looking at orchestra websites today. They annoyed me. I started to wonder what they would say if they could talk.” True that. And the resulting video is laugh out loud hilarious. With the annual orchestra website reviews about a month away this video couldn’t appear at a better time so take a moment and watch the video… (more…)
The Love-Hate Relationship With Email Marketing
Dale Fisher posted a great little blurb about email marketing HTML at The Revolution Starts…Now? last month that reminds all of us why we love to hate email marketing. Compared to mailers, they have a number of strengths but one of email marketing’s shortcomings is how difficult it is to create a simple, HTML message that function properly in the vast array of email client delivery platforms… (more…)
If You Aren’t LinkedIn Now, You’ll Hate Yourself Later
When it started out in 2003, I have to admit that LinkedIn wasn’t very appealing. In fact, I don’t even remember when I created a profile but I do know that I never started paying attention to it until recently. Before then, LinkedIn was just another social network focusing on increasing professional connections. The interface was a bit clunky, not very intuitive, and editing tasks seemed to take much more time than they should. Fortunately, they’ve made great strides since then… (more…)
Google Handing Out Free AdWords For Nonprofits
Thanks to Dale Fisher’s new blog, The Revolution Starts…Now?; just one guy’s opinion on trying to make sense of the social media revolution at hand for pointing out a wonderful program from Google that is handing out as much as $10,000 per month in FREE AdWords advertising for qualifying nonprofits (that’s $0.23/min of sponsored link goodness). The astute readers out there have no doubt already picked up on the buzz word “qualifying” but thanks again to Dale who provides some ideal firsthand experience in how to maximize the probability of getting approved… (more…)
Yeah, You Need This: How To Evaluate Social Media
Marc (the Social Media Guy) van Bree has just about finished up a multi-part series of posts about how classical music institutions can appropriately evaluate social media efforts. For most groups, social media continues to be a tricky tool to wield and an even more difficult tool to measure. Fortunately, van Bree provides an enormously useful guide based on material from Are We There Yet? by The Communications Network. Marketing and PR professionals will need to set aside some time to digest all of the content, but you’ll be glad you made time… (more…)
How Satisfied Are You With Your Ticketing Software?
Thanks to Joe Patti over at Butts In The Seats for posting a link on 4/6/2010 to the Center for Arts Management and Technology’s Ticketing Software Satisfaction Survey report (pdf). It is filled with an enormous amount of useful data by way of a comprehensive cross-section of arts orgs and ticketing software platforms in the study. Of particular interest are the sections devoted to identifying ticketing needs… (more…)
I’m Not The Only One Paying Attention To Orchestra Websites
I was thrilled to see an article in the 3/29/2009 edition of the Chicago Sun-Times by columnist that examines the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s (CSO) new website. By and large it is a very complimentary article but one item of note is the attention focused on how important usability is to revenue performance. In the article, CSO vice president for sales and marketing, Kevin Giglinto, emphasizes that every effort was made to make the online ticket buying process as streamlined and easy as possible… (more…)
Sneezing HTML Code
It’s funny how things work out sometimes. Right now, I’m eyes deep in a major development job via the Venture Project and at the same time, the majority of my regular consulting work is also very tech oriented. I’ve spent so much time working with properties, values, and other CSS syntax goodies that html code comes out when I sneeze. But the upside side effects include a high speed knowledgebase update, the result of which has turned up some intriguing goodies… (more…)
Taking The Lead In Website Usability
Regular readers know that websites are a big topic here at Adaptistration. The annual orchestra website reviews consume several weeks of time each year and add to that the plethora of new media and web/tech related articles and it becomes clear that issues related to technology and the arts are of considerable interest. Consequently, it was gratifying to see many of the best practices espoused here validated in a recent article from Smashing Magazine that examined results from a usability review of charity websites… (more…)
Did Victor Borge Predict Voice Recognition Software?
Although it has been around for more than decade, speech recognition software has never really lived up to its hype. As someone who has dabbled with various incarnations from the major providers, each offering has been one disappointment after another. Consequently, I didn’t think much of a video review entitled Speech Recognition for Bloggers – The Ultimate Guide but I’m glad I took the time to watch, and so will you… (more…)
Damn You Alex Ross!
For years now, I’ve been enjoying the benefits of seatguru.com, which until it was picked up by TripAdvisor.com in 2007, was a fairly well kept secret. After that, the associated spike in traffic meant more travelers with inside info but for whatever reason, the handful of business colleagues I tipped off to seatguru had never heard of it before. Well, that’s all gone now since cultural uber-blogger Alex Ross posted a little something in praise of the service a few days ago at The Rest Is Noise… (more…)
The Untapped Revenue Beyond Required Registration
Since the onset of the Orchestra Website Reviews, the issue of requiring users to register in order to explore ticket information and/or make a purchase has generated a great deal of heated debate. Unfortunately, most positions boiled down to hunch rather than anything supported by quantifiable data but an article by Jared M. Spool published on 1/14/2009 titled The $300 Million Button that was originally published as part of Luke Wroblewski’s book, Web Form Design: Filling in the Blanks, provides some invaluable resource material for this issue… (more…)
Bruce Hembd wrote:
Drew McManus wrote:
Geof Applegate wrote:
Bev B. wrote:
Adaptistration is authored by orchestra consultant Drew McManus and since its launch in 2003, the blog has become standard reading for arts administrators and arts administration programs throughout the world.
