My talk was about creating websites with great user experience. While “user experience” doesn’t sound sexy (many people don’t even know what it means), it’s a critical part of any website development. At its most basic level, it’s about having good organization and solid content. More specifically, I focus on three things:

1. Great content
2. Easy Navigation
3. A Little Mind Reading

What it all boils down to is asking yourself what your user’s main needs might be and going over the top to deliver on that. Whether it’s letting them embed your videos on their Facebook page, linking them to research that supports buying your product or making your navigation foolproof. The mind reading comes in when you anticipate something they haven’t even thought of yet that delivers even better customer service.

We had some great questions about the value of usability studies (I am an advocate) and about how to talk clients out of their bad navigation ideas . A good time was had by all. Hope to see you next time.

Andrea Zuegel

Mega drop-downs fly out from shortcuts sidebar

The new Yahoo! homepage sports a “favorites” bar along the left hand side. Icon/links for key areas of interest like sports, finance, facebook, eBay and a dozen or so other topics are included. Here’s the mega part: when you hover over any of the icons, a mega drop-down pops out, with a few key piece of info — stuff you’re most likely to want to see (or at least that’s what the designers are banking on). For example, a quick hover gives you the state of the Dow, Nasdaq and S&P. Place your mouse over eBay, and you’ll see the most-watched items, and a search box. Facebook gives you direct access to your login. True to its original intent, Yahoo! has once again made itself a reason to be your portal.

This is also a brilliant move for advertising, as each of the mega drop-downs has room for an ad… which of course, is targeted to the area of interest. Nice job of combining user benefits with money-making options for the site.

— Andrea Zuegel

I just finished reading the latest blog post from Wegmans Organic Farm. Courtney the intern had a fabulous trip to a local Virginia farm and had loads of great facts and pictures about their yummy produce. By the end of the post I could almost taste those tomatoes, and thankfully, she ended with a link to a recipe for tomato salad. Great next step.

Another example: a theater review article in City Newspaper gives ticket information at the close, along with a link to the theater website, so you can buy tickets.

And of course, the obvious, if you tell me about a product, also link me to where I can buy it. Cnet does an especially nice job of this even though they’re not the ones making the sale (phone example).

That said, next steps don’t always make sense. Latest example – epicurious and their new wine widget. Here’s the idea: they pair several wines with each recipe, and give you links to buy it (for shipping). Here’s where it falls down: if you’re like me, you look up a recipe the day you want to make it. By the time you order wine and it’s delivered, the meal is long gone. What would be really cool, is if they linked you to your local wine shop for the sale, instead. Nice business arrangement there, too.

My point is that no matter what message you’re trying to convey to your website visitor, you can always win points by anticipating their next move, and making it easy. It’s good usability, and good business.

So many more robust and useful iPhone applications that take advantage of the new hardware features are likely on the horizon. Which begs the inevitable question: should advertisers (or brands) start seriously paying attention to the iPhone and investing in application development? I’m sure there are plenty of people who would say “Yes. Oh, God yes!” and plenty who would say “Nope. Not for us.” Everyone’s situation will differ. What I hope to do here is offer up some solid reasoning as to why a company might pour some money into an iPhone app, and reasoning for why it might be a good idea to hold off. So here we go…

Why it might be a good idea
First off, the iPhone is becoming (if it isn’t already) one of the best platforms for mobile advertising out there. It’s capabilities are nearly unrivaled, and has the potential to serve as an outlet for customers to interact with your brand in entirely new and exciting ways. Second, if you create an application that really solves a problem or proves incredibly useful to your audience, it could be great exposure. Think of all the tech-savvy early-adopters who could fan the flames of a rock-solid app that serves a purpose and works well.

Third, it’s advertising people would pay for. Create an app people actually find appealing or useful, and it’s likely they’d be willing to pay a dollar or two for it. Take for example Kraft Foods and their iFood app. They provide users with daily recipes, a store locator feature, the ability to add a recipe’s ingredients to a shopping list, and more. And just like similar recipe apps from McCormick and Betty Crocker / General Mills, the Kraft recipes conveniently call for Kraft products. And finally, if nothing else, mobile advertising like this literally gets you into people’s pockets and purses. They take your ad with you wherever they go, and may engage with it several times a day if you do it right.

Why it might NOT be a good idea
IMO, the number one reason one might decide to not invest in producing an iPhone app is cost. I’ve never attempted it, and don’t even know many people that have, but I gather it can get pretty time-consuming, and as a result, pretty costly. Probably even more so if your plan is to incorporate many features using several different pieces of the phone. And with development cost goes testing and debugging cost. The first version of the app won’t (and shouldn’t) be the last. Even if you have a great idea for an app, one could wind up spending as much money ironing out bugs and improving upon the user experience based on customer feedback. Nothing would be worse than to spend $100,000 on an app that users find difficult to use, and that garners only negative reviews. It’s also becoming increasingly difficult to find most new apps that don’t have some kind of pre-launch buzz behind them. The iTunes store seems to be overrun with thousands of cheezy, weak, and otherwise useless apps, that will probably get in the way of people finding yours.

I’ve also heard that although the iPhone (and iPod Touch) is one of the most popular devices and the most widely used in terms of operating system data requests, the overall user base of the iPhone isn’t that hefty. Maybe 20% of the total smartphone market according to AdMob, and probably far less in terms of the overall cellphone market. One could argue that money might be better spent on a content-rich website that has a longer shelf-life, or some kind of broader campaign with an online component.

So in short, there are equally weighted reasons for and against. Success I guess comes down to identifying a real need, having a good idea behind it, and having the resources available to pull it off and maintain it. And this is all just one web guy’s take on the matter. There’s room for a whole lot more discussion here…

— Scott Wolf

Apparently, advertising talent runs in the family. David is the nephew of Rochester ad & marketing veteran Joe Nardone of Eastman Kodak.

With over 60,000 entries annually, the ADDY® Awards are the world’s largest and arguably toughest advertising competition. The ADDY® Awards represent the true spirit of creative excellence by recognizing all forms of advertising from media of all types, creative by all sizes and entrants of all levels from anywhere in the world. The American Advertising Federation, a not-for-profit industry association conducts the ADDY® Awards through its 200 member advertising clubs and 15 districts. It is the only creative awards program administered by the advertising industry for the industry.

Check out all the 2009 winners here.

So, on a personal level it’s great. But on a professional level it’s especially worth taking note. First, and most obvious, we’re talking about free content. No matter what your business, there’s some kind of credentialed content out there that adds variety and depth to your site if you can include it. For example, one of my clients, Embria Health Sciences, manufactures an immune health ingredient. They have plenty of good content on the site to explain why the product is effective, but do we believe it? A couple of months ago, they decided to embed a blog that is devoted to issues around immune health (and happens condone their product). Free product endorsement AND supporting content.

Sharing content is also a great way to increase site traffic. If a few avid readers post your content on their own sites to share with friends, you’ve now gained free doorways back to your site. And by the way, all of this linking does great things for organic search rankings.

Check out the video tour of this service on Add This site:
Add This Tour

1) Territory shmerritory – TBG is a digital agency. But here’s a partial list of other organizations that could have credibly proposed and delivered the idea: GE’s employee communication team, PR agencies, ad agencies, media agencies, a motivated summer intern. If you recognized that GE had cool things in the hopper and you could tell stories, it was your idea to pitch. Oh, and you’d have to know how to open a Wordpress account.

2) Git ‘er done – I love that they started this without knowing precisely where it might take them (according to recent coverage). If the basic premise is sound, get started and learn on the go. To paraphrase General Patton, a good plan executed now is better than the perfect plan next week. He actually said “violently executed”, but I’d leave that out of the strategy brief.

3) Don’t wait to make an impact – By blogging this way, TBG is doing the research they would have done anyway to create a larger campaign. The campaign is still coming. They’re just making the “discovery” process public, and maybe getting more ideas from readers along the way.

One criticism. Better yet, let’s call it a question: Is the blog’s impact on the reader lessened by having an outside company telling the stories? I might rather hear from proud GE employees directly. You can tell me if I’m nitpicking.

Matt Jones

What I mean is that many companies want to—and have always wanted to—reach relatively affluent young men. It’s the golden demographic. Guys with disposable income that they readily spend on beer, gadgets, and shower gel that they hope will have hordes of women chasing them down the street like something out of A Hard Day’s Night.

(Maybe that isn’t the best example. These young guys probably don’t understand the phenomenon of women chasing Ringo down the street…On second thought, do any of us understand women chasing Ringo down the street?)

And where do you find all of these guys? In front of their computers on that productivity-killing Thursday and Friday in March, watching basketball. Pretending to work.

It’s likely that as viewing continues to move from TV to every other conceivable mobile device, more and more advertising will follow. And perhaps the first two days of March Madness, where men everywhere watch games online, will eventually replace the Super Bowl as the ultimate advertising event.

“Marketing Madness” if you will.

If it does, with the personalization made possible for the Internet, a guy goofing off in Rochester will see ads for Genesee, while a guy wasting his boss’s money in Philadelphia will see them for Yuengling.

But some things never change. No doubt we’ll all still have to watch Bud Light commercials that aren’t really funny.

National Acrobats of China

My friend Rachel DeGuzman, marketing director at Nazareth College Arts Center, is using Facebook the way organizations should. She not only posts interesting and relevant information (to share with her well-cultivated friends list), she makes it actionable. So, because Rachel posted the acrobats performance it was now “in my face,” where I not only noticed it but could take the follow next steps:

1. Link to a page where I could buy tickets
2. Export the event to my calendar
3. Share the event with other friends

Rachel also kept this post interesting by adding reviews as they appeared in local media. There are plenty of additional next steps you can give your friends for your events: RSVP, share with more friends, comment/vote, etc. This is a truly interactive way to engage.

I’ve used Facebook events for both personal and professional events. The key is to post with purpose: notify your friends about the event, but make sure you give them those next steps to seal the deal.

— Andrea Zuegel