In a meeting this morning, someone shared a phrase his father used to tell him: "Give a lazy person a hard job and they will figure out an easy way to get it done. "It's a great, and incredibly true, statement. We have to admit we're all a bit lazy - or impatient or demanding or whatever term you prefer. However, our "laziness" has allowed for great leaps and bounds in new innovations and processes that enhance efficiency and productivity, making our lives easier - which is what we all really want. I know "lazy" may have its negative connotations, but in the web environment it is usually the smart way to go. Feeding into this "laziness" is part of a good web strategy - organizing website content so that users can get the information they need without having to think and businesses are able to run at maximum efficiency. Simple is good. Often hard to achieve, but good nonetheless. As a web strategist, I for one, have found a career amidst this "laziness" - finding ways to make lives and job easier. I love finding resources (online and off) that make my life more efficient. So, below are a few efficiencies that have allowed me to embrace my laziness, and I would love to hear about the tools you use as well. E-newsletters and RSS Feeds - A great way to get automatic reminders of bills, low bank statements, coupons, sales, concerts, breaking news, the stock market or anything else you may want to be reminded that you care about. Metro Transit GoTo Card - No more scrambling to find exact change for the bus or waiting in line for a ticket while watching the train go by. Just swipe and go with the prepaid card. Meebo.com - Consolidates all your instant messaging accounts in one place. Kayak.com - Gathers flight information from all the major carriers and travel search engines. It also provides trends in flight costs and other great tools. Web Bookmarks - In one click of a button I have access to all the website I visit on a regular basis. No need to type in the URL every time. Auto-bill pay and online banking - I haven't had one late payment and receive my statement notices online, reducing the amount mail to sift through and overall paper waste.

As I stopped to get my morning coffee, the woman behind the counter was going on about this newsletter she receives about her daughter's preschool and how hard it was to decipher. She still wasn't sure if her daughter actually had preschool that day or not. Her frustration was obvious, and reminded me of the ever-present challenge of usability in our lives. Nobody likes having a toaster you can't figure out, roadsigns that are hard to understand or websites that are impossible to navigate. Product developers have an important task on their hands: to ensure consumers find the product useful. We consider ourselves product developers as well because websites can be more than brochure-ware; they are e-commerce engines, communications tools, educational resources and more. On the web, usability is a make or break element. If users can't understand how to use a website or can't find what they're looking for, they'll be gone - probably forever. It is an avoidable obstacle, however, if given some thoughtful planning and consideration. There are numerous schools of thought out there on usability best practices, but a good place to start is to evaluate the current state of your site from a general usability perspective. Conducting a quick heuristics evaluation can shed a lot of light on glaring problems and obstacles. Below are seven questions to ask about your website in the context of your market, goals and target audience, based on heuristics standards set by Jakob Nielsen, 1. Does the website inform users about what's going on during their engagement and give feedback in a timely and appropriate manner?, 2. Does the website use language and terminology that the user is familiar with and follow real-world logic and convention?, 3. Does the website provide adequate exit options, allowing users to correct mistakes and providing clear error messages?, 4. Does the website use consistent language, navigation and action standards across the entire site?, 5. Is the website structured to prevent or check for user error with tools like confirmation steps, etc?, 6. Does the website provide clear direction about where the user is in a process or in the site, eliminating the need for the user to have to remember where they came from or how they got there?, 7. Is the website content relevant to the section and the audience?

The marketplace is swarming with new technologies and products that promise to make our frantic lives easier and more efficient so we can get more done in less time with less effort. Work less and get more. Talk less and say more. You get the picture. We've always got too much to do and too little time. So it's only natural that we're drawn to technology that makes our to-do list a little less daunting and life a bit more enjoyable. And let me just say, thank goodness for these products. I mean, let's be honest, few of us could survive without our cell phone or voice-command GPS or self-cleaning razor or remote control blinds or robotic vacuum, etc., etc., etc. These modern conveniences have made our lives more efficient to the point where we can hardly remember how we survived without them. For better or worse, they have completely revolutionized the way we live. But they might not always work out as planned. I wanted a PDA for so long. I thought it would be such a great gadget to keep my life calendar in order. I expected that by syncing up all my information I would be able to keep track of my commitments with less time and clutter. Surprisingly, it didn't quite work out that way. It turns out writing things down on a paper calendar with a regular pen works way better for me. And my fancy PDA with all its features sits, unused, on a shelf in my closet. With a constant stream of new ideas and technologies being shoved down our throats, how can we judge what is the best solution for us before we make an investment that may turn out to be nothing but a closet accessory? In this information overload, technology-driven era, how can we separate the revolutionary from the useless? One would think that we, working in a digital company, would be the ones preaching new solutions and always pushing the latest, greatest technology. The truth is that is not how we work. It wouldn't be smart. Don't get me wrong, we love innovation and new technologies and ideas, and in some cases that might be exactly what a client needs. But we make sure to ask for our clients, as we do for ourselves: what do you really need, and is the benefit worth the cost? Will it help reach your company's goals? What hardware or software or hosting package or content management solution will make your jobs easier and the company better? In this ever-changing landscape, it is imperative that we sit down side by side with our clients and ask questions and more questions until we come to a mutual understanding of the issues to address and the goals moving forward. Until we've done this, we could never help our clients sift through the mess, confusion, and promises of the available software, platforms, services, and mash-ups available out there to find the right fit for their goals. For example, you can now buy golf binoculars that tell you the exact distance of a golf course hole, but if you can't swing a club, it's a wasted investment - just like our client could license a very robust, and very expensive, content management system with all the bells and whistles. But when it comes down to it, if the site only needs basic content changes, it's probably a wasted investment. Why buy a $100 electric martini shaker when five flicks of the wrist does the same thing? The client may not really need all the fancy features, but does need the site to work for their specific needs and for their target audience. The options are endless, but pockets aren't bottomless, so we create strategies that ensure we're building products that will revolutionize the way our clients' work. We work to squeeze value out of our clients' budgets by providing the right solution. We will help make their jobs (and lives) less frantic and more effective as well as help to increase visibility or generate leads or establish a brand presence or provide an internal content approval process or whatever their objectives may be. With all the questions and options and objectives and necessities aside, what it really comes down to is the fact that we want to make sure our clients' investments don't end up on the shelf next my PDA.