Web Conferencing: Stealing Email's Secret Formula (part 3/3)
If you missed my previous entries on the topic, check out part 1 and part 2.
So now to review the remaining concerns that web conferencing vendors can address for successful adoption of their technology, all while taking pointers from the success of email, of course!
It’s too complicated to use.
Imagine that you’re about to start typing your first email ever, but the UI is so chock-full of buttons and options; you don’t know where to start. Totally frustrating!
I remember when I first opened my Hotmail account; I was able to figure it out without the help of a user guide or a call to technical support. Everything was clearly laid out for me so that I could do what I wanted to do: write and send an email.
The same goes for web conferencing. New users don’t really care if you can manage three sub-sessions within a meeting; they want to know how to upload a document to share with their meeting participants. You’ve got to keep it simple!
However, a web conferencing tool must be flexible and customizable to meet the needs of users at all skill levels.
Now, imagine you ONLY had the option to compose a new email, change the font face, size and color, and add a file attachment. Horrors!
The true beauty of email today is that it has fused other useful tools together. The ability to sort mail into folders, to schedule tasks and reminders, to manage contacts and appointments is very important, but we only appreciate the value of these options now that we’re familiar with the basic principles of email. If I had all those options available to me as a beginner, surely I would have either a) not used the tool to its fullest potential or b) given up and continued writing letters.
Web conferencing is still an emerging technology, even though it’s been around for just over a decade. And while it’s important to make it accessible to beginners, it’s equally as important to keep mindful of the early adopters whose needs have evolved over time.
I don’t understand how to get signed up for it / get started.
What if the only way you could get to use email is by purchasing a cumbersome server and software package, just to complain to your friends about how the latest season of Heroes is a complete departure from its origins? Not exactly practical.
By opening up (free) email through the Web, companies like Microsoft and Yahoo! made it accessible to the masses. There was no catch (other than those annoying ads); just sign up and away you go.
Web conferencing needs to be just as easy to access. It should be easy to get signed up (online) and easy to log on. Software downloads, aside from being unnecessary and annoying, tend to kill a meeting’s momentum and often stop it from starting on time.
Removing barriers to entry and enabling a seamless start-up process that doesn’t require the customer to ever have to place a call to the vendor or speak with a sales person is an important part of the formula.
I don’t think this will help me in my daily life.
Here’s the tricky part. Email is the pervasive communication tool it is today because it has very clearly defined applications in both the business world and the social world. At 10:05am I can remind Jim that I need him to check on a customer’s outstanding balance and at 10:07am I can send my world-famous devilled eggs recipe to my aunt.
To date, web conferencing has been almost exclusively a business tool, but a lot of the sharing and collaboration capabilities it offers are found in the social realm, under various media. Instead of uploading and sharing our photos in real-time with family members, we use sites like www.flickr.com. Instead of connecting to a web conference to talk over VoIP, we use products like Skype. Instead of using web conferencing as a means to review wedding plans with our relatives overseas, we use email!
The potential of web conferencing as the all-in-one social collaboration tool is there, we just need to harvest it.
And that’s it! Though, I’m sure you could come up with other parallels to draw between email and how its success could be applied to web conferencing. That’s your challenge, if you choose to accept it. I look forward to receiving your comments and opinions.
Irene Psimenatos is the Web Collaboration Product Manager at ACT (
irene.psimenatos@canada.acttel.com).