Are they The Real Thing?
I read yesterday that Coke have a new revamped corporate website, a nice example of responsive design. Not your average corporate site and a major step in implementing their 2020 vision for marketing. It's a site that's much closer to being a consumer magazine title than what we might expect from a large corporate website.
Are Coke a little late?
I've mixed feelings about Coke being positioned as pioneering in modern marketing, listening to them you'd be forgiven for believing that their Content 2020 vision is somehow leading edge, world changing stuff. They are "ahead of the game" compared to some corporates on one hand, I guess, yet on the other hand, especially given their size, they're way behind the pace.
To top it off, they're…
Oxfam Ireland's new responsive design
With the dramatic increase in mobile site users all businesses are experiencing, there has been a lot of discussion of responsive design as an approach.
Responsive design gives the option to deliver a great experience for smartphone, tablet and desktop users without the need for creating a separate mobile optimised site or apps. So it can be a cost-effective solution.
If you want to learn more about the approach I recommend this primer on responsive design approach shared with me by Dan Croxen John.
Examples are often the best way to understand the potential of an approach, so in this post I focus on a single example which shows the benefits of the approach.
Oxfam Ireland responsive design example
I saw this Oxfam Ireland example mentioned in the excellent LinkedIn Web Managers Group and thought it was an interesting example of a responsive design that was worth sharing.
It was…
This is a great infographic - communicating 5 principles of B2B lead generation, it's useful for any company marketing to business buyers.
There's some good basic reminders on here, here's our favourite in Mobile (principle #5) - click to call: have a clickable phone number as well as a form. It's these simple things that make the difference.
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How considering the psychology of your audience can yield more effective creative
I recently read this interesting psychology article about a phenomenon called the 'False Consensus Effect', which is directly applicable to so many situations. In a nutshell, it is about how people believe that most other people behave similarly to themselves, and if they don't, there must be something wrong with them (we all consider ourselves rational). However, in reality it is difficult to accurately predict the behaviour of others, and if they behave differently to us, or how we imagine they will behave, it is simply because they are different (despite usually also being completely rational).
In the article above, the first study of the False Consensus Effect was a theoretical one, and the second a practical one which was…
Eight tips for promoting your content to help obtain backlinks for SEO
Even if you create outstanding, quality content, if you don’t promote it fully, it will not give you the full value you need from your investment. Regardless of how shareable content is, to get the most valuable, relevant links requires online promotion through a variety of different channels.
You may send a few tweets about your latest blog, but if no one is listening to begin with, your content assets are likely to be lost in the ether. This is content marketing without the marketing... There are a number of things you can do to promote your site content effectively and drive high quality traffic to your site; here I'll highlight eight.
Tip 1: Social media promotion
Social Media platforms are one of the most popular and effective methods for promoting your…
Consumer research shows the importance of getting mobile experiences right
The Going Mobile 2012 research by Foolproof undertaken from November 2011 to March 2012 assessed the quality of mobile user experience based on consumers' mobile behaviour and usage patterns. The research reveals some great practical insights around what consumers expect from their mobiles:
They see it as ‘big bang’ event: mobile is creating new time and space for consumers. Time that was previously unproductive or inert is now filled with mobile interaction. What are users doing with this time? What brands are they engaging with in this new, very intimate, digital space? Which tools and services create value for them...and which are just creating noise?”
Knowing the answers to these questions can be the difference between success and failure in the design of mobile services. Mobile helps today's time poor consumers to use 'dead time' easily and efficiently.
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How to increase sales by improving your product pages?
If you review the analytics for an ecommerce site using the content drill down in Google Analytics you will often see that product pages have the greatest "footfall" measured by total number of pages viewed by page type. This shows the importance of making the design, copy and calls-to-action on product pages as good as you possibly can. You can really reap the rewards of small changes across page templates for all product pages.
To give you ideas of what you can test and improve, here are my 6 recommendations on how you can improve sales by improving your product pages.
1. Split testing
Split testing, for me is a fundamental element of ecommerce, as it allows you to accurately reflect on multiple pieces of content or designs. Also, given the simplicity of some of the A/B testing tools available (especially…
Design, Content or Brand .. is one more important than the other in (re)designing your website?
Website design can be an opinionated business. These opinions are sometimes informed, sometimes not. Occasionally the opinions are not necessarily to do with the design itself, but more to do with the politics within a business.
Personally I am all for design of any nature to be stress tested by a client or the market. However, how many of us have made changes to a successful website design, just so we feel like we have been involved?.
We also need to recognise that website design is a fluid process. We are dealing with an entity that is constantly evolving. This means that when creating a new website design, the Designer has to take into consideration multiple facets; including:
is the website 'on brand' (or does it look…
Virgin media Generation IP: 2025 video gives a glimpse of the future.
One of my students recently pointed out this new simulation to me and I thought it worth sharing since it’s interesting with it’s long, 13 year, view forward. Generation IP:2025 was created by Virgin Media Business in conjunction with The Future Laboratory.
It follows a scenario of a father and daughter spending some time together. While the blurb on YouTube says “it provides an exciting glimpse into a hyper-connected Britain in just thirteen years’ time”, I’m not sure about the “exciting” part. We’re all apparently going to be very calm and stress-free, empowered by our mobiles. The gestural interface and glass-like device look cool certainly, but there’s a lack of emotion and it all seems quite dark to me as the daughter mixes family life with business.
How do you find it?…
Tips and examples for an effective Google+ content strategy
The overall aim of brands using social networking is to create engaged communities around compelling content that educates, entertains, inspires and/or angers.
The key, then, is to use content to generate interest and ultimately Likes, Retweets, +1s, comments and shares for the content that’s being published. By generating interest for specific posts, users can produce a viral effect where that interest is then multiplied as a result of others throughout someone’s social graph being exposed to and then (hopefully) interacting with that content themselves. And so the cycle continues as their social graphs become exposed to the content.
Creating impactful content on Google+
Custom Circles
One of the unique aspects of Google+ is the intuitive nature of the interface and the ability to easily filter and segment people and companies into custom Circles. By focusing in on specific Circles, users…
