I hear it said at least several times a week. I see it posted on Twitter pretty frequently. It’s the simple statement that’s become cool to utter: PowerPoint Sucks. And often in the same breath I hear people extol the wonders of Keynote or Prezi.
I’ll be the first person to admit that I have seen countless horrible PowerPoint presentations. I probably see at least one PowerPoint presentation per day that is a crime against humanity. I’ve seen more poorly laid out slides, absurd overuse of ridiculous transitions and animations, badly-utilized effects, slides with so much text that Tolstoy would complain, more bullets than Rambo can fire off in full-length movie, and more light-colored fonts on yellow backgrounds than should be legal.
But this is not the point. It’s a poor craftsman that blames his tools. Just because you produce your presentation on a MacBook Pro (and I’m typing this post on one right now) with Keynote it does not somehow imbue you with some sudden, instantaneous and deity-like powers to produce an amazing presentation. And using Prezi mostly just increases the likelihood of inducing motion sickness and nausea in your audience while reducing the reusability of your content and failing to add anything meaningful to your corporate knowledge base.
Here’s a news flash: a good presentation requires having a good story to tell and a good story teller. Period. The tools you might use are irrelevant, but if you do choose to use tools to add to your story you need to have a clue of how to use them and then use them in a manner that supports the telling of a great story. That’s it. A great story teller with a great story to tell doesn’t even need a series of slides popping up behind them. Great visuals, content and media that reinforce key messages and enhance the story can be tremendously helpful and effective when used properly. But they are still not the primary and most important element in a successful presentation that connects with the audience. You are.
Prezi and Keynote do not grant you mystical and magical powers. They do not make you smarter and better looking. They are not powered by Skynet and constructed on top of a positronic copy of the brains of Steve Jobs, Bill Buxton, Martin Luther King, and Zig Ziglar. They do not think for you. They do not know who your audience is, they do not know the purpose of your presentation, they do not know the message you are trying to convey, they do not know the desired outcome, they do not know how to connect with the people in the room. Neither does PowerPoint for that matter.
There are absolutely some minute feature details that can be argued about the different tools. I’ve used them all. Though if you actually take the time to learn them you find that for the most part each has their shortcomings and things they can’t do well, and each has capabilities the other doesn’t. But it still all comes back to you. Saying “PowerPoint Sucks” is quite simply a short-cut to thinking. It doesn’t suck. You do. Instead try focusing on coming up with a good story and learning how to tell it well.
And just to illustrate my point, here's this entire blog post re-done very poorly as a hack-job Prezi. It's a horrible presentation. Just makes you want to cry. Enjoy. http://prezi.com/4_muqjahha-g/powerpoint-doesnt-suck-you-do/
(Image Credit: Niall Kennedy)
I admit. I’m riding shotgun on the World Cup bandwagon. And after several hours in a crowded sports bar here in Atlanta, it is clear I’m not the only one. I was welcomed into a community of individuals who actively sought information about the team, the sport, the players, even the South African culture. We shared stories, we spilled beer on our jerseys… and we Facebooked each other so we could meet up for the next weekend’s games. I’ve officially expanded into new social network.
What is it about sports that make “social networking” so natural, so effortless? More importantly, what can brands in other industries learn from sports as they spend marketing dollars to acquire digital fans? A recent attempt by Syncapse to estimate the value of a fan on Facebook has resulted in an average worth of $138 per fan. The study further states that:
- On average, fans spend an additional $71.84 on products for which they are fans compared to those who are not fans
- Fans are 28% more likely than non-fans to continue using the brand
- Fans are 41% more likely than non-fans to recommend a fanned product to their friends
SUM just launched the new MLSnet.com, which has been years in the making. Obviously, they are not ahead of the technology curve, but as Casey describes, perhaps it is because they have never needed to be.
Soccer fans are extremely loyal and craved a centralized location to read about the sport. They flocked to the new website where they can read about international matches, local MLS games, and their favorite players from all over the world.
“We needed to take control of the space. A fan would have to go to so many different leagues, teams, and national sport sites to access information about soccer,” said Casey. SUM then supported their investment by hiring some of the biggest soccer journalists, affectionately called “soccer heads,” to tell the sport’s stories. Genius.
By building one platform for all of soccer and capitalizing on its protagonists, its epic battles, and its gossip, SUM has pulled together a social network so powerful that other brands invest marketing dollars to gain access to the soccer fans that SUM has unified. When a multi-million dollar business model also includes a way to monetize your marketing and PR tactics, it’s clear your fans are worth more than $138 each.
The key takeaway: Soccer, and the rest of the sports industry, is in the business of telling stories. Strong, passionate, exciting, tales of victory, tragedy, and legends in the making. Shakespeare only wishes he had it this easy.
And by comparison, fan pages on Facebook are flat. Most connections are superficial—purely discount driven, and without true loyalty. Where are the stories? The passion? Brands forget that they are selling more than products, and they lose depth in the relationships when they set the expectation that being a fan means getting a price reduction. I’m not arguing that this method isn’t a great way to build numbers, but I am arguing that it is a fragile way to build loyalty.
In my opinion, here are a few brands that have succeeded:
- Starbucks: Starbucks offers promotions, but more importantly, the page also connects to those fans that are socially and environmentally aware— a strong attribute of Facebook users within that 18-24 demographic segment. Maybe this is why a Syncapse report revealed that Starbucks fans are likely to spend $238.22, more than triple the $71.84 average. In addition, their photo albums tell vivid, engaging stories about the company, the products, and the leadership (Check out Howard Schultz’ trip to Rwanda).
- Southwest Airlines: As over-the-top as the flight attendants can be, it is refreshing to witness personality in the airline industry. The persona is also displayed full force on the Southwest Airlines Facebook page, and fans eat this up (a relatively safe assumption given the number of times fans ask, “How do I work for Southwest?”). Another thing I like about the page is how they speak to checked bags like they are passengers, personifying a service they offer. I value my personal belongings on a trip, and everything on this page reminds me that Southwest Airlines does also.
- Nike Football (Soccer): Admittedly chosen due to its soccer content, this site still exemplifies the art of storytelling. The videos instigate a real emotional connection, and the calls to action are extremely powerful. The Nike Red campaign is building the same momentum as the LiveStrong campaign did $47 million dollars ago. This page screams “Join the team, unite as a fan of the sport, rally behind the cause, and be loyal to the Nike brand.”
What do you want? Those of you that are CMOs, Brand Managers, VPs of Advertising or Marketing, what do you really want? Whenever and wherever this question is asked, the answer is always the same: Results! You want results and you want them now (it’s the same thing you wanted yesterday, and the same thing you’ll want tomorrow).
If you are in the agency business, you should never lose sight of this basic marketing need. If you are in-house and spend your money on advertising and marketing, I hope this helps you think about how to find people who can improve those results faster.
This topic has been on my mind since I got together with a group of marketing professionals earlier this month. We started off talking about how to produce ROI reports for their CFOs and finance counter parts. Ultimately, what everyone really wants to see is results.
How you define results and what value they deliver for your business may vary, but here are some sample measurements based on our discussion:
• Brand health metrics
• Units Sold
• Leads Generated
• Awareness and Recall levels
• ROAS
• E-mail marketing conversion
• Increased Foot Traffic
How can agencies produce results more consistently when results are so varied by each client? Here are six suggestions for ways I think agencies can be prepared to provide a variety of results for a variety of clients and also for the same customer who has evolving needs over a long period of time.
1. Understand your client's business. If you are not as much a management consultant as an ad person, then I think you will fail in the future. Today's marketing and advertising challenges, impact customer service, public relations, product develop & procurement as well as IT, finance and channel relations. Now, they always have, but now that the world is digitized and visibility is possible; the demand to work on more than just demand is higher.
2. Understand customer behavior. One of the things I think Agency can do better than most client-side marketers is getting to know the end customer and the customers along the way. We can and should provide outsider insight into the purchase drivers that lead consumers or businesses to buy from clients. By being involved in the insight business, we can help our customers produce the results they need.
3. Be more social. So much has been said about this over the last 18 months, so I'll share why I think agencies need to become more social. We are in the business of communications and in connecting companies and customers. The landscape has evolved where the cost of distributing messages is virtually zero and the demand for connection is 100%. When demand is this high and the cost is so low, there is an unlimited amount of success you can have for you and your customers if you tap into this skill set.
4. Learn math and how to analyze data. I became a Speech Communications major because it had no math requirement. I bet a lot of people who are in our field did the same thing, I know it. Math has never been a problem for me, I just didn't care to do any more formulas or equations. Then I got into advertising, and as I did Nielsen store data, GRPs, category management, research, coupon redemption and media plans, it became clear that math was going to be a big part of my life. When I started our Integrated Interactive Agency in the 90s it become clear that math, engineering and analysis would be at the center of much of what we would do to help clients. A strong analytics capability and good math people, programmers, engineers and analysts are essential if you are serious about producing results and proving those results.
5. Learn how to produce. Content, code, sounds, event. From branding to social, to broadcast to micro-cast. From visual to technical, and in-home to the 6th screen. A good partner doesn't outsource the doing to sub-contractors, it is no longer acceptable to do the boards, the concept, the design, the plan and then hand it off. In these days and times, buyers expect ongoing interactions and learned messaging overtime. The mediums must be an integrated seamless experience or you will lose sales and revenue for your clients. That is not the result they want.
6. Ask your clients what they need to thrive. So I end with this, what do you need to thrive in your current marketing and advertising role? We are listening……….
If you are not familiar, LBS are the latest craze in the ever growing social media marketing landscape. The general principle is that an end user uses their smart phone and its GPS abilities to ‘check in’ to their current location.
Like its social media older cousins Facebook and Twitter, there are many out there that think this is just a passing phenomena - a game if you will. Like Facebook and its now 400 million plus users, and Twitter and it’s large following I believe in the LBS strategy. Out of the pack has emerged two ‘major’ players in the field, FourSquare and Gowalla. Google, Facebook, Yahoo! and even Apple are also looking at entering the playing field but I believe they will have to make an acquisition to truly play.
Along with the hype of these types of services there is also a lot of criticism. Since I am a ‘fan’ and a user I might be a bit jaded but I think I can at least address the critics; here are the gripes I have heard, some legit, some just silly:
1. If you tell everyone where you are then you are leaving your house open to be robbed. I originally thought that this was a ‘non-issue’ I have to admit but after a conversation with people smarter than I over drinks I have amended my opinion. This is one that you DO have to pay attention to. Use common sense, if you are ‘checking in’ on vacation, turn off the setting that posts to Facebook and Twitter, so ONLY your friends on that LBS Tool of your choice get it. Second, and this goes whether you use and LBS or not, CHECK YOUR PRIVACY SETTINGS IN FACEBOOK! Facebook has gone through a number of changes and many people have forgotten to go into their settings and make sure they have the level of privacy that they want. For me, I only want FRIENDS seeing information; others may have different standards and that’s cool, just make sure you are comfortable with yours. As for Twitter, you can ‘protect your tweets’ as well so only your followers can see them.
2. You can get stalked by a crazy ex and have to deal with all that. True, but is that really a concern? If it was, you wouldn’t be on FB, Twitter or LinkedIn. Can it be a problem? Sure. However, you don’t have to tell EVERYONE where you are. Your standard LBS lets you self select who the information goes to. Side note – crazy ex probably knows all your haunts and when you like to be there anyway…
3. Why would you want to be doing free marketing/advertising for a place or a brand? Are we seriously talking about this one in 2010? Look down at your feet people (go ahead, I’ll wait) --- is that a ‘swoosh’? Did NIKE pay you to wear their shoes or did you drop $100+? How about that laptop I carry around? You know the really sleek, chrome looking thing with the fruit in the middle very well lit? Let’s face it people, WE have become walking billboards! Take the silly Ed Hardy T-shirts (yes, I am just over 40 and don’t get it). You have people clamoring to be seen in an Ed Hardy, and what is besides some crazy print with the biggest part of it being his SIGNATURE!!! I’ll talk more about personal brands in another blog.So there are some of the negatives, which may be legitimate, but aren’t exactly deal breakers.
What are the positives you might ask?
1. It’s fun and it’s social. One of my favorite shows as a kid was CHEERS, the bar where everyone knows your name. Basically, with a tool like FourSquare you can become your own walking CHEERS. Check in at a friendly place and the bartender says, “Welcome, how about a beer Mr. Peterson”, OR how about you get to a place that is running an amazing special, you could take the time and call or your friends, or break your fingers and text them OR check in with an LBS, type in a comment, it automatically gets to everyone through whatever social tools you are using and who knows what can happen when everyone shows up. Simply put, in its most elemental form, it’s a way to extend the party.
2. As I have heard from Social Media Guru, Gary Vaynerchuck, “why would someone check in at a bar?” Give’em a free beer and watch them check in all day! What a cool way to earn stuff and allow a small business truly establish a win-win customer loyalty program. At one of the Whole Foods in Austin, TX you get a very valuable coupon on your 5th visit. What does this do? It drives loyalty, rewards it, makes it fun and even mysterious…what will I get on my 10th check in, etc…Not enough small businesses are using these tools to see a huge uptick here but I believe by this time next year it will be off the charts.
3. That last part of #2 is part of the biggest positive from a business application and it’s the direct corollary to the third criticism. I’m not sure when MARKETING became a four letter word but when it comes to LBS that is seems to be the #1 complaint and it goes something like this, “that stuff is just one big marketing ploy to get you to go somewhere or buy something”. My response is somewhere along the famous Socrates reply of “duh!” Isn’t that the whole reason for newspapers, magazines, TV shows, etc…sure they have their entertainment and news value BUT no one is shocked to know that advertisers are paying to place their content in front of your eyeballs to get you to buy stuff! Not sure why the uproar when it comes to LBS, it seems to me like a natural fit.
4. Last but not least and this is by far where I see the big win for LBS and that is creating partnerships to pull off some really cool stuff. I was discussing the value of FourSquare with an Executive at one of the major record labels. She is responsible for new acts and we were discussing the value of LBS for her and she said; give me one way it works in my world. So I said, do you have an all girl band you want to promote? The answer was yes. How about an in store ‘tour’ across America teamed with an outlet like Express? You have all the traditional ways to support it but now add an LBS layer for very little cost. It is also a completed integrated approach across all the social media tools; from Facebook, to Twitter, blogs, Flickr and a full activation using LBS. Her eyes lit up and she said, write it up and let’s take a look at it. That’s just the tip of the iceberg.So, mock it if you want. Five years ago you never thought you’d be on Facebook.
If you can remember back to 1991, if someone asked if you wanted to be accessible 24/7 via the phone, some new thing called email and a feature called text that in our old lexicon meant a book at school you would have said, “no freaking way”…and how many of you don’t have a cell phone today?
Traditional advertising has becoming increasingly inefficient, so how do you effectively reach your customers today without breaking the bank?
The Big Idea: Own Your Edge!
Case Studies in Music & Publishing
Forrester Research shows music industry sales have dropped 50% in the last decade, from 14.6B in 1999 to 6.3B in 2009. The Publishers Bureau reports that for the first quarter of this year, magazine ad pages fell 9.4% to 34,800 pages compared to the same quarter last year.
Clearly both industries are in a state of flux. These stats are stunning, but they pose a great up side for new technology, social media and digital marketing. So what will these two industries look like in five years and what can they learn from each other? Will publishers charge for on-line versions of their magazines? What can the music business do to stem the tide when their sales continue to decline?
Both industries have to contend with a world where people are more and more consuming on-line content for free. The iPad alone won't save magazines, but it's a start. There is no doubt that publishers need to harness the power of this new device immediately.
This is where publishing can learn a thing or two from the music business. The iPod and iTunes saved an industry on life-support. Apple clearly helped change the paradigm. Ever since Napster came into the lexicon the industry was slow to embrace it but Apple made it easier to buy music than to steal it, and that should help do the same for magazines.
Direct sale of content has always been the easiest way to determine the success or failure of any business, but now there's more!
Now is the time to foster B2B strategic relationships and grow your brand community if you want your business to really survive.
"Own your Edge" everywhere you can. Having the best product in the store isn't enough, you have to have the best communities online. Twitter, Foursquare and Facebook... everywhere!
Now, promotion and marketing is as monetizable as the product being marketed, and new technology and social media are the tools to success going forward.
Last week The Financial Times announced it is using Foursquare to target a new younger consumer, and the Warner Music Group has started-up an in-house social media team.
So it's clear some music and publishing businesses are going in the right direction, that is significant, and an understanding of what they are trying to do is sure to open up the door to the companies that have been reluctant to try something new.
Even if entrants into a space aren't paid subscribers, get subscribers wherever you can. Extend the brand, generate awareness through reach and frequency across all platforms, and the money will follow. Plus these new subscribers will be your best brand evangelists.
But everyone wants an immediate ROI and these tactics alone won't provide that.
The secret sauce then is to add a layer of strategic partnering to the mix. Create strategic B2B relationships and enhance the bottom line at the same time you are creating a base of engagement in the social sphere while better utilizing the new technologies.
It's all about creative thinking in the digital space. The Mantra should be "Think Better!"
And that's why flux in the marketplace is a good thing for digital marketers.
If you use the new tools effectively, create strategic partnerships while creating a loyal brand community, you will "Own your Edge."
Having to experience life without the sense of sight reminds me of how many customers ask for help in the building of a new website or some other piece of creative, without wanting to take the time to share anything about who their target audience is, their industry, their competitive landscape, or their vision for the future. Execution on creative for marketing campaigns without the input required to understand how to support and target the message is like drawing pictures in the dark. You have no sense of direction to guide you in the creation of the most attractive and appealing designs.
Here are several points to consider when guiding someone on a journey in an area they are unfamiliar with using their other four senses. Remember these steps are intended to build trust, confidence, and stimulate use of other senses beyond sight.
“Hearing” the Voice of your Customers
Listening to the Voice of Your Customers can at times sound like an old wives tales to many who choose to shoot first and then aim in their approach to designing great creative. The process of capturing a customer's requirements to produces a detailed set of wants and needs, and then prioritized in terms of relative importance can consist of both qualitative and quantitative research steps. It usually starts with a series of forensic questions that yields measurable results focused on awareness, credibility, loyalty, accuracy. This input is valuable in the creative process because it provides the designer with a framework for developing the creative to appeal to the most important needs of an end user.
“Smelling” the environmental ques around you
A designer can learn tremendous insight from your competitors and other industry and non-industry related sites that are generally appealing to your target audience. Most consumers look at search results and make three to six second decisions based upon how copy and the initial creative “smells”- that is the first impression of trust and care that one senses when seeing a new site. People know what authenticity really smells like.
“Touching ” your clients with the right message
We have all seen how a cute picture drawn by a small child can touch our hearts and pull us to act in a certain way. Planning is an essential key to an effective website that will earn the trust and loyalty of a dedicated customer base. If you were to walk around a well built house with your eyes closed you could use your sense of touch to know that a solid architecture was used in the construction of the home. A quality user experience has to be the centerpiece of any online strategy.
Share the “Taste” of the success of great design
Whether you are enjoying a meal at a hole in the wall beach shanty or white tablecloth restaurant, you know when you have experienced a meal well served with lots of different flavors that truly satisfies you. When you are following a process to developing quality user focused creative for a marketing campaign, you will want to experience the comfort of a site map that meets your target audience(s) prioritized information needs. You will likely have a taste for various design comps and want to add a few savory changes before the recipe is finally to your taste.
To steer clear of beauty pageants that want you to show your pretty pictures and to avoid having to draw pictures in the dark, look for every opportunity to show your prospects and clients how to use their other senses in developing great creative.
The front runner in this new social planning category is Plancast, with their tagline "You've got plans. Spread the word." Early adopters and Twitterati flocked to Plancast during SXSW Interactive (SXSWi) last month, sharing the minute details of every session and party they planned to attend. HotPotato, a similar social event sharing service also got tossed around at SXSWi, promoted through the mobile Foursquare app at the festival.
Unlike traditional calendar sharing, services like Plancast and HotPotato enable you to create and share an event with your social media friends, which at first glance seems like a brilliant way to get all your friends to rally around an event.The big question here is how much sharing is too much? If you use Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare and a service like Plancast, you're providing an incredible amount of personal data to all kinds of people you don't know all too well.
It's easy to get caught up in the excitement of all these new social services, and none of us want to be left behind on the next big thing in social media. I'd just urge you to consider what you share across these social channels until you have a firm understanding of your privacy risks (or at least your privacy settings).
I use all these services, and I tend to be a bit of an over-sharer when it comes to the details of my personal and professional lives (they're one and the same to me). If anybody wanted to use my information for ill-will, I'm sure they could. The Please Rob Me service that popped up recently is a good signal for the potential risks here. While the service has since been deactivated, it was effective at rasing awareness around the social media privacy issue (which was also a central theme at SXSWi).
I think the benefits of these social tools far outweigh the potential privacy risks - but that might not be the case for all of you. Before you start sharing details about that month-long trip you plan on taking this summer, you might want to think twice about who is following your feed.
For now, if you plan to attend a big event, or you'd like to rally support for an event you're close to, consider using a platform like Plancast or HotPotato to get the word out.
I recently had the opportunity to attend MIX 2010, Microsoft's annual conference for web designers and developers focused on building great user experiences, in Las Vegas, along with Definition 6's two interactive Creative Directors from Atlanta and New York.
MIX 2010 is highly unlike most other Microsoft conferences where the topics frequently focus on .NET, Exchange, Office, and Windows. Instead it's chock full of design and UX goodness - a geeky love fest for all the cool tech that goes into creating great web, mobile, desktop, kiosk, and other assorted technically enabled experiences using the Microsoft platform.
It's hard to argue that this isn't an arena in which Microsoft is still playing a lot of catch-up. Adobe Creative Suite and Flash/Flex are still easily the staple of most creative and design departments. And many people definitely hug their MacBooks and frantically wave their iPhones about when asked to provide examples of great user interface design. But if there was one thing abundantly clear at MIX 2010 it is that Microsoft has no plans to cede the battle on these fronts, they are rapidly catching up in many areas, and even appear to be leading the way in a few. Seriously.
Microsoft is a marathon runner, not a sprinter. And as Steve Ballmer said at Microsoft's Worldwide Partner Conference last year regarding questions as to why Microsoft doesn't cede such battles as Search and Advertising and retreat back home to their core Windows, Office, or SQL Server business lines, "We. Don't. Go. Home." Anyone who doesn't believe him should have been at MIX. And do you really have to look further than an example like the Xbox?
Probably the hottest subject of discussion and presentations was Windows Phone 7 Series. I am, admittedly, an avid iPhone user who stood in line the first week they came out. I happily ditched my old Windows Mobile device and it's BlackBerry predecessors back then to live in Apple's world and I've never been seriously tempted to use something else until I saw WP7.
I really believe WP7 is a game changer for Microsoft and the mobile industry. Sure, it has some shortcomings. I don't know how they could decide to not include copy-and-paste as a feature in the first release. And like iPhone, they also do not have application multi-tasking and they appear to have similarly stringent plans regarding their app store.
But the interface is fantastic, I love the "hub" metaphors, streaming video and even Xbox Live over the phone looked amazing. Not sure exactly how badly those things will kill battery life, but they sure looked impressive. For heavy Outlook users, the Outlook mobile experience on WP7 may alone be enough to get you to switch. Just awesome. And there's a chance it could finally be the breakthrough that Zune has been looking for.
Silverlight 4 is definitely another big step in the right direction. They continue to slowly chip away at adoption and now claim that it's at 60% market penetration, probably mostly attributable to the Olympics and adoption and rollouts of Windows 7.
Tools like Expression Blend keep getting better, and Sketchflow may even be better than the competition, it is simply cool. IE9 beta demos also got big buzz. It appears they have surpassed Firefox on overall performance, are coming close to Chrome in many aspects, and for certain functions like handling of video and HTML5 they could end up being even faster and better (when running on a Windows platform of course) by taking better advantage of your computer's processor and using a form of background hardware-based acceleration. The head-to-head examples showing some really slick use of animation and video in HTML5 were really amazing.
The one thing that Microsoft has which no one else can offer (not Google, not Adobe, not Apple, not anyone) is an end-to-end story on tools and capabilities in this arena. The depth and breadth of their tools and services is truly staggering when you put it all together. And I'm not just talking about the typical story of Windows + Visual Studio + .NET + SQL Server. On top of that throw in Expression Studio with SketchFlow + Project "Dallas" + Azure + Silverlight + Surface + Windows Phone 7 + OpenData + IE9 + Bing Search and Maps and on and on. Sure you can poke certain holes in individual pieces versus their competitors. But the cohesive power of all that together makes for a truly impressive lineup.
There definitely were a few other good tidbits at MIX. Announcements around Orchard, freely available tools for WP7 development, great live streaming of Channel9 straight from the event, strengthening support for JQuery, and a surprising number of atypical logos on screens being talked about as friends (e.g. Wordpress, Drupal, PHP, etc.).
And the keynotes included fantastic sessions by Scott Guthrie (@scottgu), VP of Microsoft's Developer Division, and great demonstrations by consummate tech presenter Scott Hanselman (@shanselman). But for me, the highlight of MIX was the opportunity to see Bill Buxton, Principal Researcher Microsoft Research, speak live. He is simply brilliant and one of the most passionate people alive when it comes to interface design and technology.
If you've never seen him speak it is worth your time to google (or bing) for videos of his speeches and spend an entire day just watching them. As the conference organizer, Microsoft's Thomas Lewis (@TommyLee), put it in a tweet during Bill Buxton's keynote: "OMFG! Buxton's brutality has destroyed Vegas! Only zombies, mushrooms & lavender frogs have survived! DESIGN IS GOD!". I couldn't have put it better myself. Buxton's speeches are often too filled with memorable lines to count, though my favorite at MIX included "The most important thing in the system is the wetware... the human being" during a segment where he described the importance of taking into account
all the users different prior experiences within the specific environmental contexts of where, when and how they will use a system that you are designing.
Side note: I still don't understand how such an amazing guy who lives and breathes design and is considered the Father of Multi-Touch can have such a horrible personal web site, but I can only assume it's a "cobbler's children" thing.
And last but not least, the overall crowd and dynamic of the attendees at MIX was fantastic if not a bit quirky. It was a great group of highly intelligent people that are all passionate about great design and truly unafraid to ask the hard questions of Microsoft and dole out praise as well as tough love in person in the sessions and in torrents over Twitter. Unlike typical creative and design conferences it's definitely rooted in a true developer core (e.g. more guys still talking about compilers as opposed to a more mixed-gender crowd talking about heuristics and having used many tools like these for years), but unlike normal 
Microsoft conferences it's a large group of people who love great creative design and have been dying for Microsoft to bring these kinds of things to the table.
This conference in Vegas was more WXSW for geeks than it was the concurrently running SXSW, but Twitter and Foursquare definitely reigned supreme there as well as the tools that joined everyone together digitally during the sessions, into the evening, around the bars, and throughout the event. Sunday evening even kicked off the conference with a massive tweetup at the MIX Lounge at THEhotel at Mandalay Bay. There is a real embrace of Twitter showing through by Microsoft that is really uncanny with regard to how they normally react to any tech service that they don't build and own.
At Definition 6, we do use a lot of tools and services across platforms including a very significant amount of work in the Microsoft platform. And we do use tools and design for platforms that are competitive to many of those that were showcased at MIX 2010. But there is no doubt that what we saw there has given us a lot to think about, some great ideas, and a few new weapons to put in our arsenal. We look forward to using many of these to create great solutions for our customers and to seeing them continue to evolve and improve.
I just returned from SXSW Interactive (SXSWi) and was blown away by the scale of the festival. There were more than 15,000 people in attendance, looking to expand their knowledge around the Web, social and mobile (for the most part).It would be impossible for me to summarize the entire festival for you, so here's the "what was trending" version with what you might have missed in the stream:
#1 Location-Based Services Stole the Show
For the first time in many months, something made more noise than Twitter among the Web crowd, namely Foursquare and Gowalla. While there are a bunch of location-based services (LBS) out there, SXSW Interactive was a showdown between Foursquare and Gowalla.
SXSWi was the perfect venue for LBS to take off, due to its geographic focus, large number of events and high concentration of early-adopters. I saw more people checking in on Foursquare than tweeting. Foursquare hit a new usage record at the show, with more than 347,000 check-ins in a day.Every inch of Austin was checked-in to on one or both of these services during SXSWi, with attendees trying to take over mayorships on any piece of fictional real estate they could find. There's still some question over business models and monetization, but with usage levels like this, there remains a lot of potential.
Gowalla (a similar service) made a fair impact at the festival, but was overshadowed a bit by Foursquare's daily four square games, custom SXSWi badges, heaps of swag, and its star-studded party with the likes of Ashton Kutcher.
While there was a lot of buzz for Foursquare, you really need massive user adoption to make this stuff work. At a show with 15,000+ people, you're bound to have a friend nearby. To really make LBS stick, locations will have to start offering up incentives to people who check in (the most logical extension to all this stuff).
To quote Gary Vaynerchuk's keynote (see #3): "Why the heck would I check in somewhere? If someone gives you a f**king beer for checking in, you're going to check in."
It's true, once businesses start rewarding customers for their check-ins, services like Foursquare are going to explode in popularity (which is what happended when Twitter followers started to get hookups). I wouldn't be surprised to see Foursquare owned by somebody else by the time SXSW rolls around next year.
#2 Private PartsThe more people share online - such as where they're having lunch or who they're hanging out with at SXSWi - the more privacy becomes an issue.
Danah Boyd, Social Media Researcher at Microsoft Research New England, delivered the opening remarks at SXSWi, quickly launching into a mild attack on Google Buzz and Facebook for their recent, well-reported missteps regarding privacy. "Just because something is publicly accessible, it doesn't mean people want it publicized," said Boyd.
As more and more people take to lifestreaming, there's mounting concerns over the sharing of sensitive information. Boyd says she's never met anyone that really knew what their privacy settings were on any social site they use.
While on one hand brands want to open up the lines of communication with customers, they also need to consider any potential privacy implications.
There's a great write-up on Danah's keynote on Techcrunch here.
#3 Gary Vaynerchuk's Keynote
There had to be more than 1,000 people there to hear Gary Vaynerchuk have a conversation with the crowd. Gary is all about connecting with people on a personal level. He stood at the door and personally thanked everyone for attending the keynote (did I mention there were about 1,000 people in there?).
Gary has a no-BS approach to his presentations that reallly make you just want to watch him again. Bottom line? Most companies don't care and consumers know it. When companies even show they care a little, they get rewarded (Zappos is a perfect example).
For a great summary of the keynote, check out Andrew Mager's post on ZDNet. And in case you're wondering, he's got a mean four square serve too.
For a more coloful view into the keynote, you can watch it here. The quality's a bit shaky, but you can still get the content. Keep in mind, Gary's a brilliant speaker, but he does have a potty mouth (in case you get offended by profanity).
#4 Twitter Launches @anywhere While Foursquare and Gowalla drove the buzz, Twitter still managed to get its share of the lime light. Unfortunately, a good part of the chatter revolved around how boring the keynote was, causing about half the room to leave before it was over.
Dissappointing keynote asside, the launch of @anywhere was significant. @anywhere is a new framework that enables developers to integrate the Twitter experience into their sites. Early @Anywhere partners include eBay, Amazon, Salesforce.com, Bing, Yahoo! and MSNBC.
For the full scoop on @anywhere, check out the official Twitter blog.
#5 Can You Digg It?
Almost launched in the midst of SXSWi was the announcement that Digg is getting a major overhaul. Digg CEO Jay Adelson made the announcement at the "Bigg Digg Shindigg" (love the name). The overhaul will include personalized feeds and the return of the Digg leaderboard. You can learn more about the new version (and sign up for the beta) at http://new.digg.com.
#6 QR Codes
There were QR codes (Quick Response code technology) on everything at SXSWi, from everyone's name badges to the fleet of Chevys on display. QR codes, a special type of bar code, are becoming more prevalent in advertising and product packaging. They provide an added way for consumers to interact with content, typically through a mobile device.
For example, if you used one of the QR readers (like I-Nigma for the iPhone) to scan an attendees badge at SXSWi, you were able to save the person's information. It was a cool way to exchange information, despite the experience being a bit slow. Look for QR codes to show up more and more (more on the SXSWi QR stuff here).
Checking Out
In conclusion, when all the hype dies down, everyone will remember this year's SXSWi as the kickoff of LBS for the masses. If last year was the year of "What are you doing?", this year will certainly be the year of the "Check-in".
Were you there? What was your favorite part of SXSWi? Let us know.
(Image Credits: Danah Boyd Art by amanichannel)
I recently read that the White House has chosen an Open Source CMS (Content Management System) to develop their government Web site. This announcement caught my attention for several reasons--not only are many agencies moving their clients to open source and praising it's virtues, I also started using Drupal this past year and found it remarkably fast and easy to setup and maintain my own Web sites with quality results. Despite some criticism of open source over the years--more and more commercial (and government) developers are choosing it.
It's hard to argue against the benefits of free software, especially when results show that the software does what we expect, often exceeds expectations, and provides more opportunities for expansion than many proprietary products. While relative newcomers Drupal and Wordpress lead the pack for CMS offerings, open source mainstays such as Linux and Perl have been around for many years--not only surviving, but thriving over time. In a study by Amit Deshpande and Dirk Riehle of SAP Labs, LLC, Total Growth of Open Source results have shown that "the total amount of source code and the total number of projects double about every 14 months." Open source enables freedom for both users and developers to move & change quickly when needed, as well as providing more flexibility with software decisions such as to upgrade or not to upgrade. It's really no surprise that businesses and individuals are moving to open source at exponential rates.
Of course, Open Source has always been very much associated with Free, although there are other solid reasons to choose it beyond its cost. The pool of development resources is not limited to a specific company or provider, but instead is seemingly unlimited. As a specific open source project becomes popular, more and more developers start contributing, growing and adding to the code. Not only do they enhance the software to make it better for everyone, but they also create markets for their own support services. The better the code is--more people will use it-- and the more support is needed. Large developer communities have evolved around each software project, contributing to its growth, and administering its support. These open source communities are continually coming up with new innovations, powerful add-ons, extensions, and effective tools.
With so many open source choices available, even the ubiquitous LAMP stack (Linux, Apache, MySQL, and Perl) has come to be accepted as generic term for any completely open source application stack--substituting interchangeable parts from other sources that include "PostgreSQL, SQLLite, Apache Derby," as well as "PHP, Python, Ruby, Groovy and JavaScript." Even behemoth Microsoft has entered the game with their own Open Source CMS Platform.
Additionally, interactive ad agencies are able to offer their managed computer services at lower rates when developers take advantage of Open Source technologies. This enables clients to do more within their budgets. Every size company can now take advantage of Website integration, online advertising, and interactive media development due to the emergence of open source and accumulation of knowledge brought to us by the developer community. Businesses across industries are now embracing these technologies, taking advantage of interactive media, and using a more integrated approach to marketing with the vast number of new tools that are now available from these creative, innovative communities of developers.
Let's take this summary of the 21st Century Corporation from Business Week in August, 28, 2000*, over 9 years ago:
1. Everything gets cheaper faster. The Internet commoditizes every new service or product idea so rapidly by providing the ability to not just compare one or two sources, but 100 or 1,000 sources, that price reduction has accelerated almost out of control.
2. Cutting costs is the answer. With significant downward pressure of margins it is imperative to reduce expenses to maintain profitability.
3. Innovation builds profits. Since you cannot raise prices, and must consistently reduce prices, innovation is required accompanied with rapid expertise development and ingenuity. This advantage is temporary, so innovation must be constant, reflexive and accelerate (rather than coast forward) to address #1 above.
Adaptability
That article was almost a decade ago, and is still relevant, if not even more significant now than it was then. It was published prior to the dot com crash. Unlike 100 years ago as the Industrial Revolution and the Carnegie's, Rockefellers' and Fords' were taking assembly line production to it's maximum potential, we clearly know it's weaknesses and limitations. One of the most significant limitations is adaptability. Workers specialize so much on their individual task that they cannot readily adapt to other tasks or provide generalization or see the whole picture.
The transition from the assembly line mentality of large deparments and silo style development is a slow one. Integrating departments and collaborating by increasing communication between sales, project managers, creative development, application development, product managers, production and delivery is not as simple as it may sound. Your value chain may involve a very large set of people and keep communication clear requires expertise and training.
New Models for Development
In application software development and internet software development, the models over the last 20 years have evolved considerably. Agile methodologies are gaining traction as a way to create adaptable solutions and modular approaches. This keeps the customer focus as well as the requirements together, and allows flexibility with solution delivery as the landscape changes. Social Media strategy is a fabulous example of this, requirements change so quickly that modular frameworks are developed so that new quick features can be added onto the framework rapidly to meet social change and social needs and Facebook is a fantastic example of this type of structure and development.
Clearly, to stay on top and to consistently provide value, you must value education exponentially, foster creative thinking, be vigilant with the technological landscape, and be able to generate ideas and critical thinking. In Interactive Media Agencies such as Definition6, we constantly strive towards an integrative approach, with all skillsets and all mindsets sharing information and cross-pollinating ideas. We dedicate ourselves to innovation through cross-department research and landscape analysis. Our Innovation Team is specifically dedicated to meeting the demands of the 21st Century business.
* "Twenty-First Century Corporation," Business Week, August 28, 2000, p. 278.
Both companies created a "U.S. Spanish" website. Their target was U.S. Spanish speaking consumers. What they discovered was that they were getting a lot of non-U.S. Spanish speaking visitors to their websites. These visitors wanted to buy online just like U.S. consumers. In many cases, the non-U.S. consumers were either visiting relatives or friends in the U.S. or were Mexicans crossing the border to shop. The prices in the U.S. were cheaper than in their country and so they wanted to get their items in the U.S. and then bring them back home. So what is the problem with that?
For Home Depot, the problem is that they did not take the foreign credit cards on the U.S. Spanish site. Best Buy on the other hand embraced the additional and unexpected consumers and did allow the foreign credit cards. Best Buy is finding that, even though they don't ship overseas, people will order online and ship to friends or family where they will pick up the items later. They also have found that U.S. Hispanics are using the website to print out information before they go to the stores to purchase the items. In many cases it is easier for them to understand the information in Spanish.
One of the more interesting sides to this story is that The Home Depot has stores in Mexico, they have a Mexican website (in Spanish, of course), they have an English Canadian website and they have a French Canadian website. So they are marketing to everone across North America except the the growing number of Spanish speaking Hispanics in the U.S. and those Spanish speaking visitors who wish to purchase in the U.S.
Not knowing the full details of the costs involved, it would be interesting to see the cost for Home Depot to maintain the U.S. Spanish site and the revenue the site could bring in (if they allowed foreign credit cards) and the revenue brought in by those in the U.S. who used the site to gain more information about products they wanted. It seems to me that 4 months of running the U.S. Spanish site is not enough time to determine its impact and that if Best Buy can make it work for them, The Home Depot should be able to make it work, too. Besides, if a French Canadian site can work for Canada, why can't a Spanish U.S. site work here? I wonder if Home Depot is looking for a way to recreate the U.S. Spanish site in a way that will embrace those consumers that liked having the site available.
Are you looking to build a website to market your products or services to the fast growing U.S. Hispanic community? Definition 6 is an Atlanta interactive marketing agency that can help you. Besides doing website development and web application development, we can manage your Search Engine Optimization, your Search Engine Marketing and your email marketing campaigns while providing web analytics that ties everything together. As we gather more and more valuable information about your consumers, we can tweak all methods of marketing to maximize your dollars. Contact us and let's get a plan in place for you.
Here's a recent article written by JT Smith on Website Magazine. (Choosing An Open Source Web Content Management System) He successfully details the differences between closed and open source systems (without bashing the Big Guys). Ultimately, every company has their own decision to make, their own contstraints, processes and budget concerns. A WCMS solution has to adhere to these points, so open source may not be for everyone. But it's certainly worth taking a look at some of JT's points:
As your business grows, your needs will change. The open source model provides a mechanism for adapting to that change without relying on proprietary software to catch up to evolving trends and new technologies.
Budget...Budget. If budget is a concern, and likely it is these days, open source makes sense. Period. Save the budget for your other interactive marketing strategies.
Fully supported. Lack of support used to be a pitfall of open source solutions. That has changed. You'll find that well established, reputable solutions offer not only support, but also a vast community of developers and end users.
Somewhere in between. Open source CMS does not necesitate custom application development. Nor does it necesitate costly professional services contracts. It really falls in the middle. The benefit of open source becomes the ability to lean in either direction.
I love JT's quote: "Using closed source CMS can be likened to buying a new car with the hood welded shut, the wheels permanently attached, and your only maintenance option is a visit to the dealership."
Give open source a look. At Definition 6, we utilize one of the "good ones", Umbraco. We've been through several (> 20), successful implementations for a variety of clients. Including websites in the travel, telecommunications and online retail industries. I'm proud to say that we're also the first certified solutions developer in North America.
As social media channels become more and more powerful they also seem to become more and more varied, it feels like every day we learn about a new cool tool, as an interactive marketer, it can be challenging to figure out which one is the best fit for which marketing strategy. I read an article in Marketing Sherpa on how to use social media in a more effective way. The article gives specific examples from IBM on how they have combined social media strategy with traditional tactics for application development, event promotion and demand generation. I have highlighted here one of them, where social media was used to promote SOA’s events and tools.
Social Media Marketing for Event Promotion and Lead Generation
IBM wanted to bring together the SOA community and generate leads for its SOA tools and solutions. So the Marketing team organized a road show that included 100 cities. To complement the traditional marketing methods of promotion for the event which included direct mail and one-to-one invitations, IBM used an animated 3D person on the SOA website, a Twitter campaign, blogs and a widget.
- 3D Animated Character
The animated 3D character was added to the SOA website, it walked with an invitation in its’ hand, when users clicked on the character or on the invitation they were taken to a registration page. Visits to the registration page increased by 600%.
Messages were sent on Twitter with a promo code, users that signed up with that promo code were allowed to talk directly with one of IBM’s CTO for 30minutes. Within 3 days, over 40 people registered in Amsterdam alone.
- Blogs
The marketing team blogged about the conference on multiple development oriented blogs. The buzz created around the event caused many developers to mention the conference in their own blogs, feeds, profiles… Customers even created Facebook and LinkedIn groups supporting the event. The buzz caused by the social media ‘add-ons’ increased their event registration by 10% at no cost to the company.
- Online Community
For connecting customers after the event the team used a third-party company to build an online community website called SOAsocial. They let the third-party host the community as the goal was to make it less company/IBM focused and let it grow on its own.
- Consumer generated content
They encouraged customers to take pictures at the events and post them on Flickr afterwards. This not only increased engagement through user-generated content, but it also helped the company save thousands of dollars on hiring a photographer.
- Widget
Since the attendees of the events were potential customers for the SOA tools. The marketing team built a widget that supplied the events’ presentations. The widget could be added to a blog, website or downloaded to a computer. The widget was driven by RSS feeds, so the company could push news and products demos to potential and existing customers. 67% of the conferences’ attendees downloaded the widget.
One of the “key lesson learned” for Interactive Ad Agencies is that social media is a channel and not a strategy in itself, it is most effective when used to complement other marketing initiatives, including offline and traditional marketing.
In recent years it seems as if E-Mail marketing has fallen by the wayside in light of emerging technologies and trends. Time and time again statistics have supported the profitability and legitimacy of E-Mail marketing, so it’s important to take a step back and see how E-Mail marketing is or more importantly isn’t, affecting your company.
Here are three questions to ask yourself or your marketing team in order to answer the bottom line; do we need to invest or reinvest in E-Mail marketing?
1) Have you forgotten about the basics?
In this new Web 2.0 world marketers are constantly scrambling to keep up with the latest trends, throwing money at anything deemed “cool,” “trendy,” or “popular.” At first glance new social outlets and advertising mediums may seem appealing, but sites such as YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and Myspace have short track records in terms of performance and viewership capabilities. These mediums aren’t poor investments by any means, but more often than not companies are blinded by the popularity of new social sites and forget about the basics of interactive marketing; E-Mail marketing.
In one Forrester survey E-Mail more than 80% of businesses surveys achieved a significant return on investment - double that of most other marketing initiatives. I highly doubt any current social media site can boast 80% ROI satisfaction for use of their advertising and marketing platforms.
There’s a reason social media and Web 2.0 technology is called the “frontier” of internet exploration; IT’S UNKNOWN TERRITORY. If you’re hoping to catch the wave early and become one of the first settlers on the new frontier, be prepared to sacrifice quite a bit of blood, sweat, and treasure. A word of warning though for those looking to brave these mysterious, ever-changing virtual landscapes; by the time you and other businesses jump on the bandwagon, the consumer has most likely started getting off to ride the new model bandwagon – the one that has three axels instead of two.
BOTTOM LINE: Like my great grand pappy use to say, sometimes the best things in life are the simplest things; E-Mail marketing may not be as flashy as a MySpace page, but 9/10 it will dole out a much larger reward upon investment.
2) Are you putting your data to good use?
For those already utilizing E-Mail marketing it’s important to take a step back and review your E-Mail marketing process. Do you simply click “send” every two weeks to blast your newsletter or promotion? One of the foremost reasons E-Mail campaigns fail or plateau revolve around the marketers lack of interaction, understanding, diligence, or experience analyzing and applying the data generated by their E-Mail campaign. E-Mail is light years ahead of almost every other advertising medium in terms of accountability and tracking, the question is whether you’re leveraging this unique capability or not. With the ability to instantly review the results of your efforts, it’s important to analyze the outcome through multiple lenses rather than just a couple such as “E-Mails opened,” “conversions,” or “bounced rates.”
As a rule of thumb every time you receive the results of an E-Mail blast you should be changing at least ONE aspect of your next E-Mail strategy or design. It’s entirely possible to deploy E-Mail blasts without acknowledging the data and still receive a good response and return. As a marketer you need to apply the data you receive in order to run a GREAT campaign. Just because you’re running a “good” campaign with minimal effort doesn’t change the fact that in reality you’re really running a poor to mediocre campaign.
The most effective E-Mail marketing is an evolutionary process consisting of hours, and hours, and hours (and hours) of data compilation, review, and reform. If you or your marketing team takes performs no action other than clicking “send,” odds are you’re missing out on the true strength of E-Mail marketing; quick, intuitive, statistically supported campaign adaptation.
BOTTOM LINE: We don’t live in a static world; neither should your E-Mail marketing.
3) Are you maximizing your dollar during the recession?
Marketing departments across the world have been laying off employees in droves. Even higher level management today is looking for any way possible to show their superiors that they add value to the company. What would your superiors say if they saw you could not only boost revenue but cut costs at the same time?
Marketing budgets have shrank, but thankfully E-Mail marketing prices have stayed relatively the same – cost efficient. Of all the advertising mediums both virtual and physical, E-Mail marketing is among the most cost effective with the privilege of being able to boast one of the highest ROI’s. A single print ad can cost thousands upon thousands after the cost of graphic design and ad-space. Instead of paying $10,000-$25,000+ for one month of magazine advertising, you can run a four month e-mail campaign which normally entails better audiences, conversion rates, and accountability. If you find the costs of traditional advertising to be exorbitant, it may be time to dust off the E-Mail marketing proposal and take another look.
BOTTOM LINE: As the great Benjamin Franklin once said, “A penny saved is a penny earned.”
So ask yourself:
1) Would it be beneficial to scale back on costly new-age technology investments in order to temporarily invest in more dependable marketing initiatives?
2) Would it be beneficial to engage in an E-Mail marketing discovery phase to see if you’ve truly been interacting with your campaigns and applying the data you find?
3) Would it be beneficial to divert your limited budget to more cost effective (and often times profitable) marketing venture such as E-Marketing?
I have seen several articles recently about how Dell made $3 million using Twitter (How Dell Generated $3 million in Sales Using Twitter, Social Media ROI: Dell's $3m on Twitter and Four Better Examples). Interestingly enough, the articles stress that having the $3 million in sales is not the most important thing that Dell is doing, but rather a good result to a much bigger strategy. The important thing Dell is doing is customer communications. They are actually listening to their customers. They listen for their complaints and listen for their ideas and then they interact with their customers by replying to them. Customers love it when a company responds to them. By building a constantly growing base of customers, Dell is earning more respect. So it is no wonder that when they started posting promotions on Twitter they generated a lot of sales.
It is important to note that even though Dell was able measure a hard ROI of sales that came directly from Twitter, there is a more difficult measure called "soft" ROI that no doubt led to the hard ROI. The soft ROI is measured in things like fewer support personel required to take phone calls, the value of an online community that openly discusses a company's products or services, and the value of forums where people can search for answers rather than waiting on hold for a customer rep on the phone. I think if you can build the soft ROI's, then the hard ROI's will be easy to create.
Definition 6 is an interactive marketing agency that can help companies start with the basics to build up a strong and powerful customer base using social media and then help to start generating hard ROI's. We can help you with your long term strategy rather than just focusing on getting a company Twitter account up and running. Just having the account is not going to help you generate revenue or customer loyalty. It is how you use that account that will accomplish those.
According to recent studies and surveys over 50% of all smartphone traffic in the U.S. now comes from iPhones (AdMob Mobile Metrics, March 2009). And it’s growing. Other platforms are starting to catch on, but Apple truly succeeded in building and proliferating a means for people to have a vastly improved mobile web experience. Add to that a rabid user-base and the result is that iPhone’s Safari browser now starts showing up more and more on the overall analytics reports when companies review what browsers are accessing their sites. As an avid iPhone user myself since the first version I’ve been amazed at how I could navigate sites on this platform despite site designs that still required extensive zooming in and out and scrolling back and forth. I was so enamored that Apple designed UI mechanisms to help accommodate sites not designed for mobile that for a while I was simply excited to be able to use them at all. But slowly some sites began creating better mobile versions to make navigation even easier on the iPhone and other browsers. Now I grow greatly annoyed when I try to access a web site from my phone and find myself staring at a microscopic version of the homepage which makes it difficult to even find the buried link that says “Contact Us” just so I can find their address or phone number to get directions and a map while I’m out and about. Or even worse, the site is built in Flash with no HTML version and for whatever divine reason Apple has still not decided to support Flash on the iPhone. So the site is essentially useless on my phone and in some cases looks uglier than a Nip/Tuck season finale. I found it funny when I tried looking at the web sites of some of our competitors, some large digital agencies, and found they had sites built in Flash which are rendered useless on my device.
Numerous solutions exist for creating mobile presentation layers for even the most complex and transactional web sites to handle every different mobile device under the sun. We’ve helped many of our customers do exactly that. But there wasn’t a simple, fast and inexpensive way for a large majority of companies who just have a typical web site with typical CMS needs managed by a small number of people to easily publish and manage simple mobile site versions. With all this in mind, Definition 6 worked to build some simple scripts, toolsets and templates that integrate directly into a Content Management System enabling re-purposing of content by a non-technical marketing manager to easily deploy a site that looks great in an iPhone Safari browser. It leverages iPhone navigation mechanisms, and helps you to offer mobile users with the experience they desire and the information they likely need while mobile which is often quite different than what they want when they are sitting in front of a laptop or desktop computer. We’ve also packaged it all up in a simple series of offerings to make this an easy decision for our current and future customers so they can cost effectively begin to meet the needs of a growing market. If you don’t have an iPhone you can test to see what your site looks like using an iPhone simulator which we have posted at http://www.definition6.com/our-services/mobile.aspx and if you do have an iPhone just visit www.definition6.com now on your device to see an example.
In the coming weeks and months we’ll also be releasing the same kind of CMS plug-ins and templates for other mobile browsers as add-ons to these tools. But we thought we’d start with the one that represented the most traffic. For a quick and simple way to manage mobile sites in a CMS we think this new toolset makes great sense for a large number of businesses.
The promise of a new web project or marketing initiative leaves stakeholders dreaming of online success, higher conversion rates, higher traffic volumes and positive bottom line results. Quite often, the strategy for measuring success gets lost in the shuffle.
Some of you reading this might be thinking, "Why waste the time? Higher conversion equals success." In some cases you may be right on track with that thought, but most of you probably know it's more than that. Success can be measured in many ways, I'll get into that in second. But understand that it's worth a deeper dive into the metrics that are important to you, your company or your industry, before you start on a new initiative. Ask yourself what data you'll be reviewing a week after a website launch to determine if you're on your way towards a positive ROI. It might be PPC reporting, website analytics, email marketing, CRM comparison or another set of metrics that is specific to your industry. I've seen it before, 2 months after redesign and stakeholders are trying to figure out what to measure. By that point, you're probably not going to have the baseline data needed to show a comparison. Solution? Benchmark. And do it early. The strategy and planning phase of any project is the perfect time to start thinking about it.
So what metrics should you benchmark? There is no perfect answer. Sally, who manages an online retail business will have different success factors than Frank, the owner of a property management services company. Sally cares about online sales and revenue generation, but Frank wants to see an increase in online lead generation. It can be a daunting task, so here are a few good places to start:
- Website analytics - If your initiative includes the enhancement or redesign of a website, start the project with an examination of your existing analytics data. If you don't have any, stop reading this and go get it. Figure out what will be important to you later. It may be as simple as traffic volume, visit duration, cost per ad spend or conversion rates. But you may find a need to collect custom data as well. Almost every analytics package out there has that capability.
- External data - In this context, external data is performance data obtained through your CRM package or 3rd party sources. Call center volumes or in-store data would fall into this category. You need an adequate way to access it and you need historical references.
- Email marketing - If your initiative includes modifications to email marketing programs, make sure your provider is collecting meaningful data on open and click-through rates. And make sure you'll have access to historical data to create a trending analysis.
There are various reasons this important form of communication get overlooked, but why are they important in the first place:
Branding - Any email generated from your domain represents your brand. Guess what, users aren't always left with an impression of your brand based on their website visit, they're often left with a confirmation, newsletter or subscription email based on their website activities. Why let that confirmation email negatively impact how you're perceived? It's just as important as that promotion email you're gearing up to send them next week.
Call-to-action - Auto-generated emails are often utilized to seek verification or ask users to continue the process started at the website.
Communication - If a user feels strongly enough about your website or your company in general, they're going to seek more information and allow you to keep in touch with them through automated emails. Keep them enganged and thinking about your products or services.
So where do most companies fall short? The biggest thing that we see is that auto-generated emails simply are not given much thought during the website enhancement or build process. As an afterthought, it will never be an adequate means of communication or engagment with your customers. Spend some time with the design. You spent time reviewing comps and making adjustments for various ESP's for standard email marketing initiatives, do the same for your auto-generated emails. ExactTarget provides a great reference for do's and don'ts conerning email marketing. Spend some time and follow as many best practices as possible. Make your calls-to-action precise and easy to comprehend (even 2 months later). Represent your brand, make sure your emails maintain company branding standards.
People tend to hold onto emails. Why not? Storage capacity is longer an issue at most ESP or client programs. If they're going to hold onto something that represents your business, make it worthwhile for them when they open it again 2 months later. It is still a representation or your company and they can still act on something you wanted them to previously. Don't be afraid to give auto-generated emails some love.
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