Adventures In Digital Marketing

• The Ever-Changing Widget Landscape
  Blog post on Yahoo! Widgets Blog about the way widgets are going to be affected in the very near future with the launch of Vista, and the other widget platforms that could be affected as well.
  (tags: widgets blog yahoo widget software gadgets desktop vista osx)
• When is a corporate blogger not a corporate blogger?
  Rob Andrews posts over at Blogging4Business to comment on a couple of articles on corporate blogging doing the rounds.
  (tags: corporate blogging blog business)

Steve Rubel has a post on his site commenting on how Forrester has created a model by which it thinks it is possible to measure the impact and hence forth the ROI of blogging for a corporate entity.

The diagram on his site could prove to be very interesting, certainly when trying to sell the idea of blogs in to a client - one of the biggest problems so far has been explaining what they’ll get back from a blog if they start one.

I do think the biggest issue with clients is often that they just think they’re going to get slagged off on a blog and they’re worried about the risk involved, but this report could, I hope, start to educate and help make this task easier for us.

Quote: In Forrester’s interviews, the most frequently mentioned benefits of corporate blogging were: greater brand visibility in mainstream media on the Web, word of mouth, improved brand perception, instantaneous consumer feedback, increased sales efficiency and fewer "customer service-driven PR blowups."

I’d love to read the report, but as I always find with these things, at $379 a go, it’s a lot of cash for something that, really, we could probably find in the blogosphere itself for a lot less.

Perhaps Steve will send me a copy?

Howard

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The Register is reporting that a recent email from Lloyds TSB had a slight coder related blunder inside it’s HTML.

Hidden inside the ALT tag for one of the images on the email was the phrase "Here is another advert for something you’ve already got".

Oops!  Well, these things happen - coders often put in junk phrases when they’re building a site or email and don’t have all the copy - I know of an infamous "Now piss off" thank you message left at the end of a HTML form which was demo’d to a client! - so this isn’t that rare to be fair.

I guess the QA at the agency that made it should have been a little tighter thats all

Any comments on this Jonathan?

Howard

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There’s a PR piece on Brand Repubic today about UEFAs decision to appoint The Marketing Store as preferred merchandise supplier for the 2008 European Football Championships.

To support the physical world of merchandise, in the digital department we’re working on two web sites - a marketing and information focused microsite to provide information and case studies, and an eCommerce site where customers will be able to preview and order online the products they wish to obtain.

The eCommerce site will be tailored in look and feel for each of the event’s sponsors to provide a fully branded experience for the user which are…

quote brand republic: In November, Uefa named Castrol as the tournament’s final official sponsor. The event’s other sponsors are Carlsberg, Coca-Cola, Continental, Hyundai-Kia, JVC, MasterCard, McDonald’s and Adidas.

Howard

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Some time last year I was discussing with a couple of mates a usual favourite topic of ours - was there a dot-com style, web2.0 business we’d missed that could make us billionaires in 2 years?

OK - so we haven’t thought of one yet, but one of the things we discussed was how easy it is really to make banner ads.  not all of them, I grant, but generally, a few images, moving text, click through etc., and you’ve got a banner ad.  And, with the ad services all being online as well, so you can get your ad out there quickly, it made sense to do a banner machine website, that could product professional quality creative, but without the need for an agency.

So, this is what Pick-n-Click appears to be - but with much more, as it covers off radio, tv and a host of others.  Shame I can’t login to see how it works, as the accounts appear to be managed by a real life human being. 

Anyway - here it is - a virtual agency.  Hmmmmmmmm.

Howard

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These QR codes have been around for a while - but I’ve not yet come across any use of them that really sticks in my mind.

Over at AdverLab, they’ve linked to a handy little QR code generator, so you can have a play with it yourself.

Apparently, in japan the software to read these codes is often available on mobile phone so you can get info on the fly.  it’s also popping up on food packaging.

Here’s a few I made earlier:

if you want to get some software for your own phone, and aren’t living in japan, then the Kaywa reader is a freeware app for phones that you can download from here.

–

Howard

Just booked my tickets for The Future of Web Apps conference, here in London on 20th and 21st of February.

There is also a workshop day on the 22nd, but i’ve decided to skip that.

Last years event sold out very quickly and was very useful according to jonathan who managed to go.  Hopefully this year will be just as good.  Certainly they’ve got a great list of speakers.

If you’re going let me know and maybe we can have a chat over a coffee.

Howard

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Pete Trainor, an ex-TEQUILA\ colleague and founder of the phenomenon that is the Pete Collective, passed a link on to me today for the next generation search engine from Ask, "Ask X".

Looking pretty snazzy in the usual web2.0 style it offers pretty much the usual search engine experience from the start-  single form in middle of the page and not much else - you know.

But once inside the results it shows signs of some interesting features which make up for the fact that, as is often the case, it’s results themselves aren’t actually as good as google.

First thing to notice is that the whole site appears to be using AJAX to deliver results once the page has loaded intially - and not just results, but also search tips as well, which are automatically written into the left-hand column on  the page as you type, allowing you to filter down your search results to the exact thing you want - which is a nice feature and really helps you to nail it down to what you want.

Another nice point is the way that it allows you to save your favourite results into a "mystuff" area, which seems to work a bit like del.icio.us for search results.  This may be something that’s been in Ask for a while, but i’ve not seen it before.

There do appear to be PPC listings in the results as well, which is only to be expected, and they’re in the same place on the page as most of the other sites.

This follows on with something Pete also pointed out…

"They’re in exactly the same format as Google… same colours… same weighting… I read somewhere that all the search engines are going to start mimicking Google’s style because it’s what people are familiar with."  (crikey pete, you’re right! :P)

Which I suppose makes sense, but makes it hard to see how you would differentiate yourself from the big-G if you end up copying they’re style to a t?

It offers the other must-have search components also, Video, Images and, via the "more" tab, News, Blogs and Shopping.  Obviously Ask don’t rate blogs as being important enough to warrant being on the top-level navigation straight away!  Content for these sections is loaded in with Ajax as well, making for a very nice, smooth transition between the different areas.

Videos are provided via Blinkx and then you’re directed through to the relevant site which contains the video content.

I’ll keep playing with this for the next few days or so and see how it stands up.

For me, the AJAX is interesting, especially with the recent (2006) talks of ajax affecting banner impressions on yahoo!

Howard

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There are
different ways to measure the success of a specific design. Before we go into
what makes a successful design we have to look at how we perceive things.
According to Donald Norman, author of Emotional Design: Why We Love (or Hate) Everyday Things
there are three levels of perception:

1. Visceral (reactive): Literally the gut reaction - this is biological, hard-wired and automatic. This will, for example, perceive beauty and cause flinching.
2. Behavioural (logical): The advanced brain level, reasoning, cognition, language and expert skills.
3. Reflective (evaluation): Your self image, the part where you seem to exist. The bit that says "I didn’t mean to say it like that!" two seconds after you’ve inadvertently insulted the boss. This most closely compares to consciousness.

The first
level of consciousness at which we perceive a design is visceral. This is the
automatic reaction that we have of desire, like and dislike.

The second
level of perception behavior, is measured by utility, how effective the design
is, and would be measured by how useful the user found the design and how
productive they were using the design. This is the level of perception that most
concerns usability professionals. 

The reflective
level of perception looks at design is on a more intellectual basis. This level
of design is concerned with the higher order emotions such as status. This is
the level of perception that most concerns theoretical discussions on design.

Let’s look
at the iPhone:

First off,
I find it incredibly attractive. I want to touch it, hold it, and play with it.
It looks new. It looks unlike any phone that I have seen before, and I want
one.

In terms of
behaviour and utility, well I have to imagine here. I imagine that it will do
those things that I want to do and will do them well. Apple have so many highly
skilled interaction designers that I trust they will make the user experience a
success. The fact that it looks so good, gives me every confidence that the
user experience will also be a thing of beauty. Especially after it has gone
through some different iterations and has removed the first version glitches.

Finally,
looking at the reflective level, I see that I have already reasoned that
because it is so beautiful it must be fit for purpose. I have strong feelings
of trust and respect for the Apple image and brand name. These positive
feelings make me a warm target for any new Apple product offering. I also fit
the early adopter profile as I like to project an image that is tech savvy,
geeky and ahead of the curve in terms of tech gadget adoption.

Now analyzing
how I feel about the Apple iPhone design for all of 2 minutes shows to me just how
intertwined these levels of perception are. Each level interacts and influences
the next. It is impossible to separate out only one level of design. They must
all be considered together holistically.

So if we relate to a design on so many different levels, and if we each have our own unique appreciation of what makes a design good or bad, well then how are we to judge if a design is successful. A good design sells more would say a businessman. A good design wins awards would say the designer. A humanist might say that a good design is one that improves the lives of those who use it.

I say a good design is a work in progress, that it is never finished and never will be perfect. That the act of designing is the striving towards that essence of what the product or service should be.

Jon

What are the most popular user-centered design methods? I have 12
here but surely there are more that I am missing. Can you add to this
list:

1. Focus groups
2. User research, user requirements
3. Questionnaires & surveys
    
4. Interviews
5. Usability testing
6. Participatory design
7. Paper prototyping
8. Verify story boards with a user walkthrough
9. Expert review
10. Card Sorting
     
11. Ethnographic research eg. Observe and interview users on job
12. Monitor help desk calls
13. …

    Jonathan