This is steve linden's blog. Welcome!

Effective client/customer communication can be a daunting task. As the world gets ever more complicated, knowing how and when to communicate with a client to move business forward is essential to success. I recently gave a talk about customer service and was surprised to see the amount of people who paid no real attention to this important detail. It seemed to me that they normally would do what was best for them and not for the client.

With that in mind, I shared with them some of the things I do whenever I communicate with a client:

Pay attention to time: Can you discern a pattern to what time they usually call or email you? Many people carve out blocks of time during their day to make calls and answer emails. And when you become aware of these times, you can email or call a client in that time frame and usually get a quicker response.

What’s the medium? Is your client always emailing you and you end up calling him or her back in response to the email? Perhaps you client prefers emails. As I said before, many people do what’s easier for them, but not necessarily ideal for a client. I have a one who only deals with text messages and gets quite annoyed with anything else but. It drives me crazy because I am a phone person, but I have learned to work within her preferences. On the other hand I have another client who only likes phone calls at 3:00am (he is in Europe so it’s 8:00 over there).

Keep it short. Or Long.: Is your client the pithy type? Or are they the detail type? Some clients want you to be short and to the point, while others want lots of details and personal business thrown in. Learn these traits and respond appropriately.

When all else fails, ask.: There’s no harm in asking a client how and when they are available and what their preferences are. At times, I have even sent a questionnaire to my clients asking them about their communication preferences.

If you follow these guidelines and pay attention I think you’ll find that your client not only respects you because you’ve taken the time to truly understand them, but I think you’ll find yourself closing business a lot faster.

Recently a client asked me about developing a mobile site. He wanted to handle it all himself and we would supply advice. guidance and copy/content. He asked me if I have some basic tips I could share with him before his team got started on the project. Here's what I told him:

Know your audience: This is the most important aspect to any mobile site—or website for that matter. If you don’t know your audience, you will not be able to properly plan and execute a site that will generate results. Does your audience visit for information? Entertainment? To make a purchase? Take some time to understand your customers or clients before putting any ideas on paper or writing one lick of code.

Keep it simple: Ideally a one column layout is easier to navigate and more user friendly than a multi-column layout. Keep scrolling to one direction, preferably up and down, as this is the most common form of scrolling. Also try to keep graphics and photos to a minimum. Everything takes time to load, and squeezing a lot of info over a 3G network can be time consuming. That doesn’t mean it has to be boring. Make it elegant, clean and functional.

A finger isn’t a mouse: Many handsets have touch screens. Rather than being navigated by buttons and cursor, the phone is operated by touch or tapping and movements of the fingers and thumb called gestures. Touch interaction requires careful thought. Remember you are designing a physical interface to be explored by human hands, not a mouse. Also remember people may only be using one hand.

Make the site mobile specific: Don’t just reconfigure your site for a mobile device, design it specifically for mobile users. Gain a strong understanding of different mobile devices, their limitations and advantages and design to get the most out of these products.

Make sure to include a browser sniffer on your website: A browser sniffer is basically a script that will detect what type of device is being used. If it finds a mobile device, it will send the mobile optimized pages or site.

Include a link to the real site: Give the option to go to the regular, non-mobile site.

Thorough testing is the key to success. Try to test the site with real customers if possible, and get their feedback. Test in all types of situations on all types of devices, not just emulators. Nothing beats real-world testing as opposed to simulated testing through an emulator.