In a recent Sales Caffeine email newsletter from Jeffrey Gitomer, there is an article by Michelle Joyce on Making Transactions Memorable.  She had a pleasant experience at the McDonald’s drive thru in Huntersville, North Carolina, and summarized what made the transaction memorable.
 
These three simple steps can be considered website redesign tips to improve user experience at your eCommerce websites and in all your interactive marketing efforts.

1.  Start with a smile and engage your prospect in a friendly manner.  Would you do business with someone you didn’t like?  Well, neither would your prospect.  This guy made me like him – immediately.  When he made that connection, the transaction became enjoyable and personal.  It was all about me, not just my order. 

2.  Offer alternative solutions.  People want choices.   Don't assume that your customer is aware of them.  Uncover their needs and help them make a choice.  McDonald's already mastered the upsell technique with their famous line, “Do you want fries with that?”  What kind of additional features and services can you upsell?  What kind of additional revenue are you leaving on the table at every sale?

3.  End the transaction with something memorable.  When is the last time that a fast food worker told you to “drive safely”?  Usually, it is the perfunctory "thank you” and “have a nice day”; but this guy made me feel like he was genuinely concerned about my personal safety.  What are you saying to your customers that make them remember you personally?

Michelle ends by saying:  The reality is that people are still buying products and services in this economy.  The only question is "Will they buy them from you?"

Definition 6 is an interactive marketing agency that can help you make a connection to your users, whether customers or prospective ones.  We are experts in website development and custom application development.  Even though we are an Atlanta Ad Agency, we have clients across the US that we help differentiate themselves from their competition.

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.

I just got a call from a strategic business partner, and as an Interactive Advertising Agency we stay up to speed on most things in the marketplace, and he was calling me from a break at a conference for his company.  As he said hello, I congratulated him on their company raising another round of VC dollars.  He said "Wow, how did you know that?!"  I told him simple; Twitter!  I was a follower of his company's partner account and at the same time they told the company they tweeted about it.  Interactive communications is so fast, that in less than 5 minutes the word was out!  Now this is a great story because they are an eMail marketing partner of ours, he is a long time friend and the news was good.  We talked about what the investment meant to his company and our partnership, we discussed how online ad agency business was continuing to see good growth this year and that 2010 was going to be a great year, and hung up smiling.

Now what if the news had been bad?  What if they had a meeting that was altering the relationship with partners and it was negative?  And someone had tweeted about it? I suspect our call wouldn't have been the same. 

Let's talk about your online interactive marketing and message management.  Do you have a twitter monitoring policy?  Do you have an account?  Do you follow your partners, customers, employees, competitors?  I do, you should too. Website Development is a very small part of being digital, search engine optimization is only a part as is eMail or even PPC. The big parts are listening, monitoring, and watching the ecosystem and being informed as quickly as possible to make decisions as rapidly as possible.  So next time you are with your Interactive Ad Agency, ask them what they know and when they learned it.  You will be amazed at how fast Digital has become.

Lately I've been reading articles related to the Hispanic consumers.  I think most of us have read or heard about how the Hispanic population is growing so much in the U.S.  It seems to me companies that have products or services to sell should be paying more attention to this and shifting some (or a lot) of their marketing efforts toward the Hispanic consumer.

In an article on MediaPost by Jose Villa (http://www.mediapost.com/publications/index.cfm?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=98883#comments), he talks about a very good reason to shift some focus to the Hispanic community.  Put plainly, they may be in better shape after the recession than any other ethnic sector.  In his article, he points out that unlike the previous recession, most consumers will not be able to go back to their old spending habits because they won't be able to get the same credit that they received before.  And we all know how our society loved to spend money on credit.  In the article, this is referred to as the "deleveraged consumer".  The Hispanic community, on the other hand, typically stayed away from spending on credit.  So when the economy recovers, they'll be more likely to continue their same spending habits they had before the recession while others will have to learn to cut back on their excessive spending.  Their lack of debt means that "the Hispanic market represents a beacon of opportunity as a truly deleveraged consumer" according to Jose.

I really like the idea of spending some marketing focus on the Hispanic community because I think there are a lot of potential buyers in that group that are untapped.  The three top ideas I can think of would be:

1. update your websites to offer a spanish version.  Although many of today's Hispanics that are online speak both English and Spanish, it is a welcoming gesture to let them choose their language of choice.  But don't forget to update imagery and styles of the Spanish website and not just the text (Jose has another article that addresses that: http://www.mediapost.com/publications/index.cfm?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=103345)

2. allow your users to decide which language to receive their emails in.  You'll want to be sure you have proper tracking tools in place so that you can see how well your Spanish emails work and compare that to your English emails.

3. advertise in places where Hispanics spend more of their time.  In a previous blog post I discuss what some of those websites are.

Definition 6 is an interactive marketing agency that can help you analyze and plan a course of action to market to this untapped group.  As an application development company and online marketing company we can also implement your web applications and email marketing campaigns as well as provide analytics of both.  So take advantage now and don't leave out this important ethnic group.

I am quoted in the book The Truth about Email Marketing in the chapter entitled Getting the ball rolling with your email marketing partner.

"As a client, be prepared to share information about how email addresses are captured, what is stored on each customer or prospect, metrics on all your email campaigns, as well as, offline marketing efforts.  The email strategy vendor may suggest a new look and feel, new language, or more ways to target users.  Continue to test recommended changes in order to optimize email campaigns.

It can be difficult to convince senior management that the email marketing strategy should be given as much thought as the marketing strategy.  There should be dedicated resources, and the strategy needs to continue to evolve.”

Definition 6 sends out almost 300 million emails a year on behalf of clients.  We know how difficult it can be to get started and to improve email campaigns.

We can help you develop an email marketing strategy, segment and target users, design templates, craft language, build HTML templates that content can be dropped into, deploy the emails, and measure the effectiveness.

Email marketing continues to be a cost efficient way to reach customers and build productive relationships.  It is easily measurable.  That's a combination you can't beat.

Definition 6 Client Manager, Andy McCann, on how twitter is replacing search...

Tapping into interesting news and seeing what people (you care about)have to say is one aspect of Twitter but its also becoming more and more of a relevant tool for search.  It's strengths are in local search, news feeds and product and company news.  There is a great article on Media Post that you should take the time to read.  Here are a few key points that I took away from it:

• Twitter reaches a community that is multiple times larger than your contact list in your phone
• Twitter search is real time in reverse chronological order
• Product and company reviews are also a snap to find and address what is happening today, not last month or last year

Director of Software Development, Graham Street on the popularity of website integration with content management tools.

I've been noticing in recent months that the development projects crossing my desk for estimation have more and more in common. It's CMS, CMS and more CMS (Content Management Systems.)  Everyone feels entitled to have administrable content on their corporate website. CMS solutions have been around since the good old days of dial-up BBS systems. They've been steadily improving every day, from complicated systems that allow you to jump through 10 hoops to edit a sentence, to 1 hoop to edit a whole page. But this incremental improvement in CMS technology doesn't explain the spike of interest that I am speaking of.   

My father even asked me about a CMS topic on a recent trip home. This is the same Dad who showed me Lotus 1-2-3 on my first Compaq 286 in 1984. I still receive all tabular correspondence from him as a 1-2-3 attachment. So for him to be asking about easy self administration of web content for a non-profit, I was a little perplexed.. Excited and definitely proud, but also perplexed.

It's like activism for free speech at the corporate level. Only the cause for oppression is the "old system" that either allows very limited content administration, or perhaps offers too much flexibility with no boundaries, requiring that "editors" learn a syntactically obscure markup language specific to their respective system.  

As an employee of an online agency, with experience in website development and website integration, I hear things like "I want to update every page on my site, and I want to be able to do it just like I do here on my MySpace." It seems these users have learned how easy it "should be" to author some content and publish it to a web-page. I'm quite sure we can thank MySpace, FaceBook and Gmail for much of this. They've set a precedent for what is literally "even your parent could use it" usability standards.       

This new user group is a diverse group of people from all walks of life, from all generations,  who are ready to add content to their respective  enterprise's website. And where CMS systems do not already exist to support that in those organizations,  they're ready to spearhead an initiative to get it implemented,  because they know it can be done at a competitive cost,  almost as easily as creating a new my space page.

Whether you are launching your first email marketing campaign or seeking ways to improve an existing campaign, we understand that you have a need to drive commerce and nurture leads while at the same time reducing spending.

What We Deliver:
• Account set up and configuration, including a branded dashboard, landing pages for unsubscribe and profile management
• List management and upload
• Initial template setup

Estimated timeframe for delivery is 1-2 weeks.  Contact us today for more information.

As companies cut back on IT spending, and potentially personnel who may have been responsible for making site updates, they need to find ways to make the site more self-service so that it can be managed by marketing and other non-technical personnel.

What We Deliver:
• An Umbraco based Web CMS site with up to 5 templates, leveraging your existing branding, content and look and feel migrated to the new platform
• 4 hours of Umbraco CMS training

Estimated timeframe for delivery is 4-5 weeks.  Contact us today for more information.

by Arondale Withers

Brief History of Personal Computing
The first breakthrough in personal computing was the invention of the computer mouse by Engelbart in 1964. The first computer to be marketed with a mouse was the Xerox 8010 Star Information System in 1981. The Apple Lisa is one of the first known computers to have used a mouse, but at $9995 US in 1983 ($21,482 in 2008 dollars), it can hardly be called a “personal” computer. Altair, IBM, Apple, Commadore (Amiga) and other IBM Clones all made advances in personal computing in the 80s and early 90s that brought computers to the masses, standard with mouse controllers. In 1985, Amiga was the first personal computer to ship their computers with a two-button mouse as standard.

A lot has changed in the world of personal computing. Today computer scientists are making some existing technologies more accessible in the market place and are changing the way in which we interact with computers. Gestures are quickly becoming the preferred and most logical method of quickly and efficiently navigating new interfaces and accomplishing tasks that are accomplished by mouse clicks today it’s a natural step toward Fitts Law.

A New Era of Multi-touch Gestures
Many companies have been working on multi-touch interfacing since the early 80s. In January 2005, Apple Computers applied for a patent titled Gestures for touch sensitive input devices (pictured right). In it you will see the pinching gestures used to zoom an object in and out. In that same year, Apple released a PowerBook with a trackpad that would accept a limited number of multi-touch gestures. One example is using two fingers being dragged vertically to scroll thru content. Another circular gesture with two fingers would page up/down content.

Multi-touch in the Marketplace
Over the past few years there have been many advances to bring multi-touch products to the marketplace. Most notably, the Apple iPhone and iPod Touch. Featuring single and multi-touch gestures, users can quickly and easily navigate thru songs, playlists, contacts, resize images, magnify text, access special menus and more.

Jeff Han of Perspective Pixel has one of the most advanced customizable multi-touch solutions to date. His solutions are currently reserved for private government applications and Fortune 500 corporations. Han’s 3x8 foot interactive wall starts around $300,000 with the ability for his 10-man team to customize the solution to your exact needs thru custom development and configuration.

Bill Baxton, one of the pioneers of multi-touch technology, is now working for Microsoft to further develop the Microsoft Surface tabletop computer. With Surface, you can put a wifi or blue tooth-enabled camera on the table top and its sensors will recognize the camera, extract the pictures from the camera and display them creatively on the screen to toss, resize, and more.  Its sensors are so advanced it can recognize a number of objects. If you set a glass on the MS Surface, it will animate creative imagery from the placed object. Set two phones on the MS Surface and you can trade contacts between phones... all wirelessly. Today’s applications include trade shows, car show rooms, luxury hotels, and homes. Pricing is between $5000-$10,000 US. As pricing falls, you will soon see an increase of these interactive coffee tables in homes and offices.

Replacing the Mouse
Replacing the mouse and changing the behavior in which we interact with computer interfaces may happen sooner than you think. Note: it took 20 years from the time the mouse was introduced by Engelbart in 1964 until the time the two-button mouse became standard in personal computing in 1985 with the Amiga 1000. It has been approximately 26 years since the conception of multi-touch technology. The transition of from mouse controllers to multi-touch interfaces has already begun and is becoming more affordable every year. Not only are we starting to see touch displays on the shelves of computer stores, but we are also see multi-touch interfaces in the audio production industry.

Mark my Words
In the next several years you will see an exponential growth in multi-touch technology. It will trickle down from government and corporate usage to many types of home applications; from personal computing to your microwave.

Multi-touch technology is changing the way we use computers and interact with devices. In 2007 the iPhone was introduced, selling millions of phones. The very next year A/V installers began offering iPhone solutions to their high-end clients to control their blinds, lights, HVAC systems, home theater and more with their phone. It is only the beginning. Soon, personal computing will be using multi-touch as the standard method of operation. Companies like N-trig, Jazzmutant, Perspective Pixel, Apple and Microsoft are working hard to be the first to change our digital lifestyle with products available at affordable prices.

Mouse be gone!

According to the Mobile Marketing Association, 89% of companies use text and multimedia messaging to reach their audiences.  Nearly one third of those companies plan to spend more than 10% percent of their marketing budgets on advertising in the text SMS marketing medium.

Short Message Service (SMS) is a low cost way to reach a large number of your customers through a device that they are sure to always have with them.  You can reach your customers during those key times when they are out holiday shopping to promote special deals and offers – or you can insert coupon codes directly into your message so that your customers can redeem them in-store.

So how does Definition 6 help customers implement SMS as a low-cost solution to direct marketing?  We offer 1-way and 2-way SMS text message campaigns, leveraging your existing web applications using SMS as a front-end.  In just a brief 2-3 week engagement, we can deliver a landing page with an opt-in and sign up form, an interface to be used to send out SMS messages to registered users and all the necessary underlying infrastructure and services as part of a SaaS model.  For more information and to talk to someone on our Business Development team for pricing, please visit the Definition 6 Contact Us page.

Simple E-Mail Segmentation

Jeremy Bromwell and Cecilia Barella, Definition 6 Account Coordinators, recently spoke on articles they read on ClickZ...

List segmentation is often perceived as difficult or expensive; however, if you are not currently segmenting your list there are some very simple tactics you can use to better target content and improve performance of your direct email marketing efforts.

Jeremy and Cecilia explained segmenting your list based on metrics and developing 5 groups:

There are different strategies and tactics utilized to tailor your messaging for each of the above groups.  Our email marketing services can not only help you segment you subscriber list, but also develop comprehensive strategies ranging from trigger-based transactional emails, quarterly schedules, to templates that view and convert well across multiple platforms and browsers.

The full article can be viewed at: http://www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3629708