Manhattan Marketing Maven

Are Websites Obsolete?

If information and engagement are business goals, websites, the ultimate icons of the Internet age, are quickly becoming obsolete. Consumers now engage and interact with mobile apps, social networks, text messages, email and dynamically loaded loyalty cards much more than they do brand websites. 

In fact, for the vast majority of brands, consumers visit the site once; get the information they want, opt-in and never return. That’s why savvy marketers are looking carefully and skeptically at added investments in complex websites. Many are de-emphasizing the role of a website in a brand’s digital ecosystem preferring instead to use more agile and cheaper channels to maintain on-going relationships and generate sales. 

The rapid adoption of mobile and social media has changed the marketing calculus about the content and the role of branded websites. Once the cornerstone of a brand’s online identity, today the function of a website is just a small part of an overall brand experience. 

In the beginning there were web pages, a way for brands to stake a claim on the newly invented World Wide Web. Consumers expected every brand to have an 800 number and a web page.

Next site builders embraced interactive technologies to engage customers. Flash, video, SFX, bells and whistles and keeping up with the Joneses was the norm.  Having a cool website and getting on a Top 10 list mattered.

After a technology shakeout, websites were focused achieving business results. ROI was king, or at least talked about as if it were king. Encyclopedic websites were built. Governance was split between marketing and IT. Brands consolidated assets. Metrics trumped show biz.

After a period of corporate consolidation, individual brands felt oppressed broke out by creating mini-sites and syndicating to drive traffic and attract broader audiences. Video, photo carousels, animation and games were ubiquitous. Social sharing was introduced. And brands began to orchestrate messaging, traffic and content between brand sites and Facebook and place branded content on allied sites or in places frequented by most likely prospects or customers. (This is now called native advertising.) But many marketers never gave customers reasons to return to the site after the first visit or registration.

Websites now are accessed primarily using smartphones and tablets. Websites compete with and/or compliment native apps for content and tools to spawn repeat customer engagement. Some sites are also interconnected with branded social network assets. Some are not.

But websites are no longer a sole or even principle destination. Rather they are an element in an evolving brand ecosystem structured to engage customers over time and achieve measurable business goals. Marketers have to discern what customers want and how they want it and then decide what kind of experience they want to offer. The design and array of digital assets requires an understanding of customer needs and a data-driven customer engagement strategy.

The current thinking is that a branded site should drive consumers to take a specific desired action(s). Design and content should be organized strictly to achieve that objective.

Upgrading or building a website today can’t be done in a vacuum. It has to be part of a customer engagement plan that anticipates customer needs for information, validation, incentives and/or repeat purchases over time. Creating a website today requires a relationship context that integrates the attitudes and likely day-to-day behaviors of your brand’s best customers.

No Patience for the WSJ Pay Wall

Generally I have little patience for pay walls. In the case of the Wall Street Journal, I’m an aggrieved subscriber so this will be a rant. 

I wanted to read and print a story online. I logged in and engaged with a Live Chat operator named “Jefferson” who was polite but robotic. Immediately upon clicking the chat button I was accosted by an extensive form and a warning that the queue was 4 minutes long. 

This disembowels live chat as an instant engagement or gratification tool. If you have to wait four minutes and endure an interrogation just to get access, your customers begin their interaction by being annoyed and angry. 

Then Jefferson tells me hold on while he verifies my entry. So much for the prime marketing directive -- lavish love on your paying customers. When he returns having verified me, he asks for my user name; as if I haven’t already forked over enough information that he should have known from my log-in. 

Since I don’t remember it, he tells me. But I still can’t read or print the story so it was an exercise in frustration. Then Jefferson runs out of gas. He can’t explain why I can’t get what I paid for and he’s pretty much done with me. I walk away doubly pissed; I’ve been dissed and disowned by a publication I read everyday and a website that could care less. 

Now maybe Rupert Murdock doesn’t care about his customers. But in an age of dying newspapers you might think that the brain trust running the Journal would pay more attention to the impact of their technology investment rather than employ tools and people who only serve to alienate their customer base.

6 Web 5.0 Imperatives

In the beginning there were web pages. Brands staked their claims on the newly invented World Wide Web. Web 1.0 met consumer expectations that every brand would have an 800 number and a web page as points of contact.

Web 2.0 was about finding, developing and embracing interactive technologies to engage customers, prospects and other constituencies. It was about Flash, bells and whistles and keeping up with the Joneses. Having a cool website mattered.

Web 3.0 was about business results. It was a phase of encyclopedic websites. Governance was split between marketing and IT. The Holy Grail was a fully realized multi-dimensional interactive relationship between a brand and its customer base nurtured by using the latest and greatest tools to achieve predictable business results. Metrics, rather than showbiz, began to be important.

In the Web 4.0 era, brands broke out of the corporate mold and sidestepped corporate rules to create countless mini-sites. Experimenting with one-off efforts to slip away from IT and corporate design and functionality restrictions, it was a re-run of 2.0 with more internal conflict and a much broader experimentation with designs, content and functionality. Video, photo carousels, animation and games were deployed. Social sharing was introduced. Brands began to orchestrate messaging, traffic and content between branded sites and Facebook.

Today’s Web 5.0 is about the surgical use of sites to achieve specific marketing objectives in an era of near total mobility. Sites are no longer all things to all consumers. They are built to specifically and immediately achieve discrete business goals. They assume that context and mobility married to established best design, SEO and functionality practices will achieve results effectively and efficiently.

And while everyone thinks they know how to create a 5.0 website, it is hardly the case. That’s why Gabe Shaoolian, founder of Blue Fountain Media is emerging as a Web 5.0 guru based on the sheer volume of sites he’s built and his UX-driven insights. 

Here are his six Web 5.0 imperatives.

Start at the End. Determine what you want to the site to do. Then use user experience design techniques to direct visitors to make the desired action. Be rigorous. Eliminate anything that will distract or impede users. Put the most important stuff up front. Avoid too much scrolling. Pre-plan the page pathways. Then map them to business objectives.

Use Responsive Design. The Internet has gone mobile. Build sites that automatically stretch to fit the screens they’re viewed on. Given the high rate of smartphone turnover and tablet adoption, responsive design is much easier and efficient than creating separate versions for each operating system and its variants. It will take a bit longer and cost a bit more. But the payoff, in terms of user experience and SEO, will be well worth it.

Write for Scanners. Strive for clear concise messaging. Forget about intro pages. Anticipate FAQs. Proactively answer them. Avoid dense copy blocks and use lots of white space. Viewers, especially mobile users, scan. They don’t read. Design headlines and subheads to call out key messages. Use bullets and numbered lists to highlight content. And place big colored buttons to focus attention on your call to action.

Forget Flash. The days of dazzle are over. Use video, animation and gaming techniques to engage visitors and sustain attention and page views. Don’t use music. Be careful when using copyrighted images, video, music or memes. Be wary of image carousels because rarely does a single viewer see all the images.

Accelerate Sharing. Put social media buttons and sharing tools across the site. Create content with search and sharing in mind. Make it as easy as possible for visitors to help you earn added impressions. This is especially important for images, videos and games, which lend themselves to sharing.

Make Navigation Simple. Put navigation across the top of the sight so users have a clear line of sight. Left navigation bars, especially on interior or sub pages are distracting and give visitors too many choices. Give users navigational control by using forward and backward breadcrumbs or numbers. The goal is to offer clear sign posts and reduce any friction or confusion.

Web 5.0 promises to be the most productive era so far. Implementing these ideas will yield a site that improves your chances for customer engagement, commerce and loyalty.

 

 

 

3 UX Imperatives from David Bouley

David Bouley is arguably one of the greatest American chefs. He is also a god when it comes to designing a user experience. Dining at his eponymous restaurant in the Tribeca neighborhood of Manhattan is not only a sensation for the pallet, it’s a lesson in consciously designing an experience to surprise and delight customers. 

Here’s what I learned: 

Target the Takeaway. Everything begins with what you want the customer to see, feel and take away. You can’t get where you’re going unless you have a very clear picture of where you want to end up. In Bouley’s case, he wants you to walk away feeling amazing. He will fill your mouth with tastes and sensations you haven’t had before. He’ll surround you with warmth, comfort and a sense of understated luxury that leaves you with the feeling that you are welcomed and belong in his restaurant. He’ll focus on you and your guests by providing a platform to share and converse. And he’ll send you into the night happy, satisfied and with provisions for breakfast. Bouley has built a loyal customer base by starting with the business objective in mind. 

Focus on Senses and Cadences. Most experiences have a beginning, a middle and an end. By carefully studying these, Bouley guides what you see, hear, smell, feel and taste. Nothing is left to chance. The entry way smells of warm apples. The room is warm and lit sensuously with a roaring winter fire. The chairs are extremely comfortable and the linens are crisp but not overly starched. The menu reflects seasonal tastes and locally available fresh seasonal ingredients. The people who greet you are formal but friendly. Every element is orchestrated to give you a feeling of belonging and to heighten your enjoyment in the moment. 

You are taken on a very subtle guided tour that engages your ability to process multiple inputs simultaneously. The food comes out at a pace that feels natural. You never wait too little or too long for any course. The staff watches closely to see when you pause, when you’re done and when you need more water, bread or wine.

He leverages and improvises on consumer expectations. You expect a waiter; you get a team of them. You expect bread; you get a bread cart and a doting baker. You expect a drink, an appetizer, an entree and a dessert; you get that plus an array of unexpected tastes and mini-courses and conversation and explanations from the maître d’. 

God is in the Details.  Consumers are influenced by initial impressions, comfortable design and intuitive navigation. The only way to deliver these experiences is to develop a laser-like focus on the details. Bouley thinks about ambient light, the feel of the napkins, the weight of the fish forks, the shape of the water and wine glasses and the mother-of-pearl box that the bill is presented in. The staff mentions some of these things and asks occasionally about them.  

You need to focus on where people look, what they expect to do and how we’ve trained them to scroll, to click or to download. Where you place the CTAs, how big they are, the color, the labels all make a disproportionate difference in perception and response.  You need to get feedback as you design experiences; some from pixel tracking or metrics software, other from talking to your customers and testing your work with eye-tracking and guided task testing.  

7 Baby Steps to Bridge the Mobility Gap

Smartphone adoption and use are growing with hockey stick proportions. The adoption rates are predicted to grow from a base of 162 million in 2008 by 35 percent year over year through 2013. Smartphone penetration, according to The Nielsen Company, is expected to overtake feature phone penetration by the end of 2011 when they predict half of all wireless devices will be smartphones; not that much of a stretch when you realize that twenty-one percent of wireless subscribers were using smartphones in Q4 2009, double the rate in Q4 2008. 

Unfortunately the user experience lags behind expectations. With each new phone and each new app, users expect smooth sailing when reading e-mail, accessing the web or conducting eCommerce. The reality is that often they are frustrated because content and functionality haven’t kept pace. We have a mobility-marketing gap. 

Everyone has had the experience of reading an e-mail on a smart phone where the frames and images appear in silhouette or are broken. Many of us are frustrated not only by the time it takes to access the Web but also by the half-rendered image at the other end. And increasingly just when we are ready to buy something on the go, the site isn’t ready, willing or able to accept our information or process the order. 

Litmus, an e-mail delivery service, reports that people are more likely to spend time reading e-mails on a mobile device than on a desktop. They understand that mobile devices serve as default boredom killers. People waiting, in-transit and hanging out are more apt to read e-mail to fill the time.  Even so, among the 124 million e-mails they studied, over 50 percent delete e-mails within 2 seconds of opening. A lot of those are  messages not optimized for the platform. 

Azuki Systems found that 52 percent of mobile users access the Web from their phones and 25% access video. Eighty percent say they wish it was easier to access the Internet from their phones. The leading barriers and frustrations are long download times and hard-to use navigation. Two-thirds would share content from their mobile devices if it were easier. 

A survey of 2255 adults by YouGov Pic found that e-mail use from smart phones ranges from 14% to 40%, depending on age and that 35 percent plan to read e-mails on mobile phones in the future. Forrester’s North American Technographics Benchmark Survey found that mobile e-mail users are more professionally oriented with incomes 14 percent higher than the national average. They are more likely to be employed fulltime, are interested in owning the top brands, are less price sensitive and less hostile to advertising delivered by phone. 

My friend and former colleague, Graeme Hutton, conducted a smartphone survey that yielded 1800 respondents for Universal McCann, that documented the growing use and importance of the mobile web for consumers. 

The most compelling findings are … 

• 95% use mobile media to fill downtime
• 53% of smartphone users click on ads
• 54% said their mobile use increased by more than 25 percent over two years
• 35% are requesting more information or downloading coupons
• 24% are making purchases using their phones
• 82% use their phones at work
• 81% use them when out shopping
• 80% use smartphones at home
• 65% use them while commuting
• 73% search for maps or directions
• 55% use social networks via smartphones
• 50% looked for restaurant and movie locations or reviews
• 44% accessed national news or sports information
• Almost 1 of every 7 minutes of media consumption is done by phone
• 6 in 10 expect the range of mobile Internet services to expand by 2012
• 56% said they were driven to mobile from other media
• 42% said they were driven by mobile to other media
• 38% took action based on mobile ads
• 30% shared information on the basis of mobile ads
• 22% said mobile ads influenced a purchase decision 

According to the Acuity Group, it’s not much better for dedicated e-tailers. Only 12% of the Internet Retailer 500 have sites optimized for mobile phones and only 7 percent have downloadable apps.  As you might imagine the Amazon, Best Buy, eBay, 1-800 Flowers, Barnes & Noble, QVC, Sears and Target are among the industry leaders. 

If adoption and innovation are driving mobile use and expectations anxiety about direction and cost are the factors holding back added mobile development of content and functionality. Consumers are finding more new uses everyday so marketers aren’t sure what will last and what will flame out. Similarly uncertainty about 3G capabilities coupled with the slow introduction and roll-out of 4G technology and the imitations of wireless networks (think AT&T and iPhones) make it difficult to determine where and when to double down on technology investments. 

So in the short run, consider these simple baby steps to better align your communications with an increasingly smartphone-enabled customer base. 

1. Create and use a .mobi level domain for e-mail campaigns and promotions.
2. Create and use a .mobi landing page for campaigns
3. Use either mobile detection devices in creating assets or explicitly use directions e.g. “If you are viewing this on your phone” in your messaging
4. Build in WAP optimization into your digital assets
5. User test digital content and assets in mobile-friendly formats
6. Learn about micro-browsers Like IE Mobile and opera
7. Watch or ask your customers about smartphone use and preferences

Google's Sidewiki : A Revolution Worthy of Chairman Mao

On the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China, Google has unleashed a revolution wrapped in a velvet glove that could upend all social media competitors and radically change the game in Google's favor. 

Google Sidewiki is a persistent social media space adjacent to every web site. Embedded in the Google Toolbar it pops us with each site you visit. So far its compatible with IE and Firefox. Chrome access is exected soon.

Assessing the new offering Josh Bernoff in his Groundswell blog called it "a land grab." But this is way too mild a caution. Sidewiki is as ingenious  as it is insidious. It's as if the masses in Mountain View set out to launch a revolutionary disruptor that would roll up the best aspects of their competitors' functionality into a tool that not only would grow virally but would force site owners to further connect and kow-tow to Google. It's a not-so-naked play for social media and maybe even Web domination. 

How and why can they do it? As Chairman Mao said, "Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun."

Allow me to illuminate the plan as I understand it.

I. SideWiki splits the browser screen and sets up a running commentary field on the left side of your screen. That's right, the primary side you look to for navigation and the key junction in the "F" scanning pattern we all use when viewing Web sites. They set up shop on your most desirable real estate.

II. It's embedded in the Google Toolbar which makes it easy to download and gives Google a launch pad by using their installed base of users. Think of them as a network in waiting of "fellow travelers" ready to embrace and advocate the revolution.

The pitch is not only benign but helpful. "What if everyone, from a local expert to a renowned doctor had an easy way of sharing their insights with you about any page on the web? What if you could add your own insights for others who are passing through, " write VP Product Management Sundar Pichai and Engineering Lead Michal Cierniak on the Google Blog. Couched in social media-friendly language, its something consumers are doing and expect. It feels like the natural evolution of things; the onward march of civilization gently goosed by Google.

But consider the implications. 

III. Google sets up shop next to your web site with the intention of participating in the content and conversation. You don't get a vote.  In fact, they probably already have more viewers and advocates than you'll ever have. Your new partner offers your visitors the opportunity to post comments on a wall-like device (Facebook) or instantly and viscerally react (Twitter) and these comments or reactions are broadcast in real time to other sites featuring similar or relevant content (RSS). The comments could include additions, amplifications and corrections (Wikipedia), rankings or ratings (Zagat, Judy's List), references or bookmarks (Digg, StumbleUpon) or denunciations, attacks and the ever popular "you suck" messages.

Ideally this a free gift without purchase which benefits you greatly. Its an all-in-one social media tool that vaults you from worst to first in the social media competition because in one swoop it can be a listening device, a customer service tool, and customer relationship management tool, a community or a common and searchable storage tool for your content and related content. The built-in inference is --- Google gives you their best stuff for free to help your business.

Not only will Google give you these goodies, it will use "an algorithm that promotes the most useful, high quality entries" to insure relevance and viewer interest. They are applying a variation on the page rank algorithm to the comments on or about your site. So now you are being ranked by your participating customers and prospects and by Google. 

You have to do macro and micro SEO to manage or impact the conversation about you on your site. Google has inserted itself strongly and seamlessly into your business overnight. God help you if you are deemed a "capitalist roader" or an "unrepentant bourgeoisie."

IV. But put away that paranoia. You can claim back your own Sidewiki space, if you validate your site ownership using Google's Webmaster Tools, download the Google Toolbar and then publish the first listing to address your site visitors on their new turf. It sounds benign. As if Sundar and Michal are saying, "No biggie. All you have to do is get our stuff and you can play with us too." 

But the deeper you go into Google's technology, the greater the chance you can influence or blunt the impact of their technology on your site and your business. You're in their clutches whether you've opted in or not. In this spiraling scenario, either you're red or dead.

The next step in a year or two, I predict, will be be sell you space, rankings and the option to intervene in the content of the Sidewiki accompanying your site. As Lenin wrote, "ultimately we'll sell the capitalists the rope that we'll hang them with." So the circle will be complete. Google will rule.

As a plan for social media revolution and domination it is technically inspired, competitively targeted, ultimately scary that requires immediate attention.