No doubt, categorizing information is a left-brained activity that should help website visitors find their way around your site. Enter the drop down menu. I’ve heard countless opponents and proponents of this method over the past 8 years, as it has gone in and out of favor with the big websites, like IBM for example (note they are using very detailed drop-downs). Even the leader of web design software and many other business-class software tools, Adobe, has them front and center. Apple, on the other hand, clearly a pioneer in UI, leaves them out entirely. In case you thought that was just a B2C convention, take a look a Oracle.
As a general principal, I think that overall simpler design = overall easier user experience. But what if you are an IBM, in terms of having a hand in many different categories and sub-categories of businesses? There is of course and advantage to showing the whole gamut in a concise and organized way.
For most businesses, even the ones emulating the big guys, something in the middle is the answer. But before you go developing 3-tiered menus like IBM keep the following in mind:
How you organize and name your products and services internally may not be how your potential customers will understand them. Take the time to look at any web analytics or research to find out the terms potential customers are actually using to find your website or the websites of businesses in your industry.
If an important term is in your dropdown menu, it’s hidden until the visitor rolls over or clicks that navigation. If it is in a sub-menu of that navigation, it is even less likely to be seen. Unless you have a really good reason for it (like you’re breadth of products and services is almost in violation of anti-trust regulations) steer clear of sub-menus in your main navigation. After all, the more choices you give a visitor, the less likely they will make the choice you want them to.
Don’t assume everyone uses websites like you do. You already have a vested interest in carefully navigating through your own webiste. Your potential customer probably doesn’t. Presumably you have competition and they have other choices. Eye-mapping studies show that the majority of visitors scan websites on arrival to find the piece of information they were looking for (you can thank Google and Yahoo). Be sure that your most critical concepts aren’t hidden in a menu or sub menu, but are instantly visible and above the fold.
Styling for Accessibility? Don’t Forget Your Printer
Accessible web design isn’t just for the visually impaired. There’s one accessibility issue that will probably affect every user at one time or another, whether they need a reciept for an online transaction, or just want to read a long document without tiring out weary eyes. If you’re styling for accessibility, you should consider creating a printable version of your content.
As usual, CSS provides the best method yet. Designers used to go to the trouble of duplicating their content in a separate, printer-friendly page, free of large images, navigational elements and light colored fonts on dark backgrounds. Not only is this tedious and difficult to maintain; it also has a negative impact on your search engine ranking.
Thankfully, with print-specific stylesheets we can do away with all the redundancy. There are several ways to feed your print styles to the browser, the simplest being to create a duplicate of your presentation stylesheet, optimize it for print, and toss it in right after your other sheets.
Of course, you’re already writing standards compliant, semantic markup, right? In that case, it’ll be easy to style away unwanted elements. Just set them to {display:none;} and your remaining content will flow into place as if they never existed.
Working with a tables site? Lingering tables-based layouts are an unfortuante reality of the web, but here’s one of the rare cases where tables can actually save you some time. Rather than listing off the id or class of every item you want to hide, you can create a declaration that hides everything contained in any table cell:
td * { display:none; }
Once you’ve hidden a parent element, everything contained in it will disappear, regardless of it’s own display setting. So, don’t hide your table cell itself (or your wrapper div, for that matter,) because you’re going to want to use another declaration to single out the cells you do want to print:
Naturally, the benefits of CSS based layouts far outweigh this small advantage, but when it isn’t feasible to take a whole site out of tables, you can still make use of print specific styling.
Just one more way the smallest bit of CSS can add functionality and accessibility to any site.
As part of my personal commitment to learn more about pioneering creative work, I make a point to attend as many cutting-edge and/or thought-provoking project exhibitions in Boston area and elsewhere as I can. Over the last month, I attended some stunningly inspiring and awesome events such as the down:2:earth conference presentation on “sustainable design” in Boston and the MOMA (museum of modern art in New York City) exhibition on “design and the elastic mind.”At these events, I was struck by the groundbreaking potential of interactive and responsive designs that closely weave digital lives with the physical world, blurring the boundaries between the two and redefining each other. In the previous decade, it seems that there was a real drive to move everything to the exciting frontiers of digital media. However, slowly with time, companies have been moving to an integrated brick and click model. Even in our pedestrian lives, there seems to be a growing interest in bringing the cyberspace into our physical world. This runs parallel to another trend where we’re building richer virtual communities where we may share more in common with those of like-mind and interests than we do with some of our offline communities merely connected by geographic proximity. The digital seems to take on more organic characteristics while the organic world is becoming enhanced and redefined by the digital media.
Some examples of fascinating trends that I observe are emerging and may transform our mundane experiences with design:
1)3D printing that has the potential to transform and collapse the manufacturing supply chain as the technology to manufacture 2D generated images into 3D objects such as furniture in a matter of minutes versus days advances. In a MOMA project, I watched a video of individuals painting in white digital globby ink furniture formations around them. This two-dimensional video that featured people interacting with their physical space to create digital forms was then used to print three-dimensional actual chairs made from resin in a 7 days. These chairs and tables had an organic, hand-drawn appearance and were created from a single brush stroke at each time. From a 2D video capture of a 3D moment, I witnessed the transformation of these two-dimensional video images into new physical three-dimensional permutations of the designers’ imagination.
2) The Emergence of Responsive Design as demonstrated, for example, by a MOMA project featuring digital organisms that respond to real world physical stimuli such as sunlight, human interaction, etc. These digital organisms display organic characteristics such as an ability to pollinate and populate a room. Represented at the MOMA exhibition were digital flowers—shadowy silhouettes of digital weeds/flowers—that may have bloomed on one wall but then through pollination and interaction with real world stimuli, these digital organic flowers populated other parts of the room.
3) Google Maps customized to the purposes defined by different organizations and companies to give a new level of statistical information and means to examine emerging trends. For example, there were demonstrations of how to find certain fast food restaurants and to search and plot for them on maps. In another example, the NYC police department used google maps to describe hotspots for crime. Individuals are also using it to share photos on their road trips with others in the blogosphere.
4) Digital interactive installations are pulling real-time data from the web to create a more instantaneous and meaningful end-user relationship with live, evolving content. At the MOMA exhibit, I saw a very creative, poetic, and fun installation piece by Jonathan Harris and Sep Kamvar entitled “I want You to Want Me” that pulled real-time data from dating sites such as photos and profile details. These information were presented as balloons representing real men and women on existing dating sites and categorized in varying age groups. When one selected a balloon to view a profile of a particular individual, one could glean the professed identity of that individual and learn more about the qualities he or she is seeking in a mate. Also, another balloon also opened up simultaneously that is a match to that first balloon based on the profile details. Each balloon represented a hope rising to the sky of the large screen, a hope in finding the ideal mate for each individual. This project essentially explored the increasing plurality, plasticity, and ambiguities of digital identity creation as the web and social media community grows.
5) Concise data visualizations that display rich and complex details that empower us to access, absorb, and interpret a tremendous quantity of information more quickly. For example, there was a MOMA project exhibited called “History Flow Maps” that was able to concisely depict the multi-tiered terrain of the collaborative content editing processes for the Wikipedia entries on chocolate and abortion. This project provided perceptive insights into this collaborative Wikipedia process through color coding of each author’s editing period in the collaborative sequence and the duration of the color line corresponded to the length of the text line they edited. The project enables one to see which topics described were more controversial through either harmonious periods of non-editing or rapid content changes.
6) Environmentally responsible and sustainable designs are becoming central to a forward-thinking company’s message and solution to address a burgeoning public demand for solutions that are socially conscious and eco-friendly. At the down:2:earth expo, Ursual Tischner, founder of a German based sustainable design consulting firm and one of the guest experts in global sustainable design concerns, presented some case studies on this trend. She discussed how firms are starting to recognize that a demonstration of their commitment to socially conscious issues and eco-design is a competitive edge against others in their industry. This commitment also helped these firms project a more progressive image to their customers. For example, according to Tischner, Timberland creates boots made of recyclable and renewable materials and manufactured through energy generated by wind and solar power. They now proudly display their environmental commitment by including a “nutritional label” in all their shoeboxes that feature a quantifiable eco-conscious “nutritional” score on their shoes. Timberland cleverly asks, “what kind of footprint will you leave?” — a play on the ecological footprint concept.
7) Increasing awareness that designers are not merely plastic surgeons and beauticians of existing content and images that should be introduced at the last rung of the creative cycle, but rather an integral part of the solution strategy and vision. Consumers of content are more influenced by design subconsciously than many have realized previously. Tischner at the down:2:earth expo also described a case study where a eco-friendly drink was made dramatically more popular with a new well designed product package that conveyed a superior, natural taste. As eco-friendly product packaging also become more attractive and well branded, these products become more appealing and are considered the preferred option beyond the merits of their primarily socially conscious value. Through the imagination of sustainable design experts like SMIT (Sustainably Minded Interactive Technology), solar cells are given an attractive face-lift and made more compelling to the end users for a variety of reasons. SMIT exhibited and prototyped GROW, a new hybrid energy delivery system designed to look like organic ivy when it’s placed over buildings to harness solar and wind energy.
Stay tuned for more musings on particulars of some of these major themes and a discussion on how they may impact your firm or organization. I will also be exploring other emerging themes in digital media in upcoming postings.
You have heard the expression about the cobbler’s kids and their shoes, well even those of us in online marketing need to step back every once in awhile and take an inventory of what new assets can be leveraged to help improve web visibility.
Recently a software vendor wanted to create a video testimonial as to how we use their tool to engage with our clients and share information. The vendor hired a small production staff come to our office and shoot the footage. A month or two later, talk of the video surfaced during an internal meeting. A quick surf over to youtube and low and behold… there it was. After making the rounds to co-workers and colleagues it got me thinking….. Here is a video that talks about our own organization that costs us nothing to produce.
Now I don’t foresee the video being the most watched video on youtube, or even casting directors to be beating down the Nowspeed office door , but the video shows our organization in a professional light and with universal search more main stream a quick search in Google for “nowspeed generate leads“ produced 2 results for the video.
The lesson to take away here is to look at any new creative, testimonials, surveys and see how they can be leveraged on the web.
I’ve seen too many websites with a stunning design and terrible code. So what does it matter if a beautiful new website is standards compliant anyway? The viewer doesn’t see the code directly. Here’s a few things to consider:
W3C valid XHTML will load faster, because the browser doesn’t have to fix errors (which most don’t do effectively or expediently)
Standards-compliant XHTML can be parsed faster by search engine spiders, and can help search visibility by decreasing extraneous and duplicate code
Valid CSS will be much more likely to be compatible across browsers, and can eliminate the need for clumsy workarounds that require more code or browser-specific style sheets and javaScript
Staying standards-compliant improves the scalability of your site, especially if you use multiple vendors to create content over time
Certainly, there are situations when it’s not possible to stay 100% compliant, and I’m not advocating that every single minute issue needs to be fixed in every circumstance, that could be a big waste of time. I’m just saying that the tools are out there, we might as well start using them: W3C Markup Validation
Sure, SEO success is goal of every great web copywriter. But in our dogged pursuit of appealing to search engines, it’s possible we may have left something by the wayside: our readers (who are also our customers, prospects and supporters). Readers don’t care how many keyword phrases appear in your 325 words of content. They simply need information and your site is the one they’ve landed on to find it.
SEO copywriting that appeals to readers and search engines alike is possible and provides the best results if you follow a few simple rules:
Readability: Clear headlines with a clean message is best, followed by text that actually supports it. Long copy blocks? Forget about them. Break that dense info into shorter paragraphs with bulleted lists and include relevant links if you can. It’s easy on the eyes and easy for readers to scan—and gives you ample opportunity for keyword placement.
Relevance: Your content needs to support your keyword for SEO. But content that’s relevant and informative will keep readers coming back to your site for more. Write for reader content first and SEO second. It’s easy to find creative ways to work those keyword phrases in. But turning readers off (and away) is a big mistake that’s difficult to correct.
Ratio: 250 words on a page is plenty of content for the average reader to digest. And, if you keep your keyword density to 6%, your SEO will be happy, too. Need more text? Consider a daughter page that links off the main page for more detail. Everyone will be happy and SEO will be right on target.
Reward: SEO success is rewarded with high search rankings. Reward your readers, too, with a worthwhile web experience that leaves a lasting impression—and ensures frequent site visits. Entertain them. Educate them. Challenge them. Support them. The riches of your reader-focused web content are sure to have many rewards.
In The Search, Federated Media author John Battelle writes that search engines have revolutionized marketing by capturing a potential buyer at the moment of their intent. A user tells the search box what she wants when she wants it. Unlike contextual advertising, where you may buy an ad on Oprah if you want to target ladies and very sensitive men of a particular demographic who may (or may not) be interested in your offer, with SEM you don’t have to guess at who is looking for your product.
With the correct approach, you can tap directly into the stream of millions of queries related to what you are offering that are being typed by qualified buyers as you read this. Capturing them at the moment of their intent at the very least requires your presence in the marketplace. If you do not have your site listed on the first three pages of google search results or a Pay Per Click ad running with a compelling offer when that user comes searching for you, someone else will get their business.
April 16, 2008 at 2:50 pm
· Filed under Web Design
One of the biggest challenges that we face as developers of B2B websites is effectively reinforcing / establishing a brand without compromising usability for visitors. Why is this such a challenge?
Click-paths are becoming less and less linear as search engines have taken on the dominant role as primary gateway to your website
Improvements in search engines have lowered visitors’ patience: They want the information they’re looking for right away
Visitors have been self-trained to ignore branding areas of pages because they typically lack usable information and interactivity
Eye-tracking studies on B2B homepages, like the one conducted by Marketing Sherpa in 2007, confirm that purely brand-focused areas are rarely looked at regardless of where they are placed on a page. Invariably, the highest-rated designs in the study were those where the subject could find the information they were looking for most quickly.
Where “stickyness” in terms of time spent on each page has been considered a positive statistic for branding in the past, the results of this study seem to indicate the opposite. A better measure is perhaps, “how quickly was a visitor able to get where I wanted them to go,” or, “did their click-path result in a telling action, like a form submission?”.
Traditional, linear methods of establishing brand identity are becoming less and less applicable on the internet as it becomes more and more user-centric. As a web designer, the best way to build your client’s brand is through exceptional usability. By understanding visitors better, you can present them with more relevant, and more compelling content. This is your single best opportunity to establish brand identity: Not in a complex flash animation header, but at each point where you’re presenting valuable information and interactivity to your visitor.
With hundreds of references existing online, marketers can easily define social media marketing and can easily find social media websites. The challenge of social media marketing comes when actually setting out to build a social media marketing plan. Truth is it doesn’t need to be a challenge. In fact, we’ve laid out how a social media marketing plan can be launched in seven simple steps…
1. Research & Listen
What is being said about your product/brand?
What is being tagged on del.icio.us and Digg?
What applicable communities and comments exist on Twitter and Flickr?
Which of your url’s are saved on del.icio.us?
Is anyone reviewing your product on YouTube?
What influential contacts exist in your space?
2. Engage & Socialize
Become active on blogs and social sites… join conversations or start conversations where none exist.
Activate influential contacts and get them talking to their network about your product/brand.
3. Launch Your Blog
Use insight gained to create content and keep future content in line with what blog and social site participants are discussing.
Create a media calendar for your own blog.
ID content owners and hold them accountable.
Implement web analytics.
4. Spread the Word
Create your own Wikipedia and Facebook business profiles.
Create communities wherever possible.
Post your own link backs on del.icio.us, Twitter, Flickr.
Share your posts with influencers and influential bloggers.
Invite influencers to comment on your posts.
Create your own content on sites like Squidoo and Hubpages.
Leverage optimal keywords and links within your descriptions.
5. Consider Viral Marketing
Conduct keyword research on top searches around “How to…”, “Top 10…”, “How do I…”.
Use the research and create something buzz worthy! For example, after seeing search volume of 40,000+ for “how to tie a tie” a video on the subject was created and launched on YouTube where it has received 760,000+ views in the past year. Think of the opportunity missed because this video didn’t carry your branding!
6. Monitor & Analyze
Subscribe to RSS feeds on all social sites and monitor when your name is mentioned.
Use web analytics to monitor referring sources and new traffic.
Track your own blog subscribers.
7. Be Active & Socialize
Continue contributing to these sites and keep giving influencers something to talk about.
At this point, the hard part actually starts. The key to your social media marketing plan is to always keep the buzz alive, to keep generating new content and to keep your audience interested. Just when you thought you had come to the last step a successful plan must include going back to step one and doing this all over again!
March 26, 2008 at 4:25 pm
· Filed under Web Analytics
There are several available tools on the market to help you find new keywords. Keyword Discovery, Wordtracker, and the Keyword Tool from AdWords will literally give you thousands of keywords with search volumes plus all kinds of other fascinating metrics.
But how can you pick the ones that are specific to YOUR business? Which ones will actually work?
There is an option in Analytics that is seldom used, but contains a wealth of information if you’re searching for new keywords that can produce measurable results. Log into Analytics and try this technique:
1. Go to Traffic Sources > Search Engines
This option contains all the search engines directing traffic to your site.
2. Click ‘Google’ (or whatever search engine you would like to analyze)
At the top, you see Show: total | paid | non-paid and the Segment: has a drop down button.
3. Select ‘non-paid’ in the Show section and ‘Keyword’ in the Segment section.
What do you see?
Yep, these are the actual queries being typed into Google that result in a conversion on your website (non-paid). Go ahead and sort it by the Goal or Visits – you can quickly evaluate exactly what keyword terms people are typing in to convert. You can get more data from looking at the weblogs too, but this is a nice workaround, especially if you don’t have access to that data.
What else?
If you sort it by Visits, you’ll quickly see what keywords are NOT appropriate for paid search campaigns. Lots of visits and no conversions can show keywords that will waste money and seeking out new negative terms to implement can easily improve the quality of conversions. Use the filters at the bottom and expand the list to 500 - there is plenty of info there to analyze, but at least it’s all relevant to YOUR site and not based on search volumes for the entire Internet!
How to find the best ones for AdWords?
Exporting this report to a spreadsheet will give you further analysis via sorting and using the formula that converts the percentage of goals to visits. *Keep in mind you can only export 500 at a time, so if you have 1000’s of keywords, you’ll need to select ‘Go to 501’ and export the second (and third-1001, fourth-1501, etc..) wave of 500 keywords.
The simple calculation is multiplying the number of visits by the percentage of goals to get the actual number of conversions for the specific keyword. Plenty of those keywords have a 100% goal conversion with one visit and one conversion. These are good, but it is better to shoot for the ones that have 5+ visits and a 20% conversion rate because they have a better chance of having the volume required by Google to gain an impression.
Little used keyword phrases that have already converted on YOUR site are about as relevant as you can get. Filtering down to specific keywords and implementing these new phrases into your paid search campaigns will greatly benefit your share of impressions, clicks, and lower your cost per conversion if done correctly. Good luck maximizing your keyword lists and getting the most conversions at the lowest cost!
