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Recently I flipped open a marketing magazine and read a rather provocative ad by the Canadian advertising agency Huxley Quayle von Bismark. The ad claimed that they were embracing new technology and new thinking. That they wanted to "take people from being spectators of advertising to becoming participants." and "challenge each other daily to create the best work of their lives."
“Bravo!” I thought. Well, it was “bravo” until I went and checked out the website and blog.
Oh. My. God. I'm sure they are a great bunch of people and do excellent work, but it was another example of “site architorture.”
It started with the slightly nervy “Be patient…” notice as the 100% Flash site loaded and went quickly downward from there.
So I put aside my instinctive rant and thought, well, let’s be helpful. Let’s offer these folks some solid, constructive advice.
Let My People Scroll
The coolest thing about the Web is that it is fluid, dynamic and flexible. On any given site there will be pages with varying text. But through the magic of something called a scrollbar, we can adapt to any length of copy. But if a site is designed with a fixed height as many 100% Flash sites are, it means that when text falls below the fold, the only solutions are an annoying internal scrollbar or to chop up the text with a series of “Next” buttons. Both solutions are really unfriendly in terms of usability. To me it is a tip-off that a designer does not understand the way the Web is supposed to work, but is stuck in a controlled presentation mindset typical of print. Let people scroll to get information in a way that they are already familiar with.
Just Say No To Carpal Tunnel
You want to be engaging and move people from spectators to participants? Ensure that you keep the number of clicks that it takes to get to information to a minimum. Navigation should be intuitive. I shouldn’t have to click on a “Close panel” button to go back to a sub-menu.
No PDF Surprises
The news items opened up as PDFs, without any prior notice. If you aren’t going to allow people to read your press coverage online, please at least mention that it will be in the form of PDF downloads. And, go ahead, call me tediously pedantic but shouldn't this News section be called "Press" or "In the News"?
Consistency is a Good Thing
The blog didn’t match the look and feel of the rest of the site and started with the oldest entry first, which meant a scroll-o-rama fest to get to the current entry. (This has since been corrected.) Even within the blog there was a lack of consistency. This is how an advertising agency that claims to see "endless possibilities in this new 2.0 world" represents itself online with its About page:
It did not follow the taupe and greeny-beige colour scheme of the blog (which in turn didn’t follow the chestnut brown colour of the corporate site, but I digress). Instead, there is the big white page you see above with little information and no obvious way to get back to the previous page other than my own browser’s “Back” button. The kicker: It took me awhile, but I eventually figured out that the “About Me” (don’t they mean “About Us”?) heading links back to the main blog page. Whaaaa?
Details, People, Details
It's the little things that build professionalism, brand and trust. Oversights like the ones above and these below eat away at credibility:
- On the "About Me" page, under "Contact" it read "Website:" and then an empty space. If you are going to type in "Website:" please include the URL beside it.
- It would be great to incorporate social bookmarking tools into the main blog, in addition to the RSS subscription.
- Throughout the blog posts many links were not hyperlinks. So, a visitor is greeted with a sentence like "Follow the link below" and is unable to click through to the suggested destination.
While the blog entries themselves were quite interesting, the three-line profile on the aforementioned "About Me" page included this sketchy bit of copywriting:
Using new thinking and embracing new media technologies, we use expensive and increasingly less effective traditional media less, while building the involvement in your brand more.
I’m glad they use expensive, less effective media “less.”
Am I being too mean? Maybe, but...
Here’s the thing: If you’ve got the chutzpah to place a highly visible ad about how you’re so 2.0 blah blah blah, then you should make sure you abide by some very simple user-centric design tips, have a nice consistent look and respect your users' time/experience by including contact details, clickable links and easy bookmarking tools. Don't claim to get it when you don't.
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1. The Toad Stool blog explains his love/hate relationship with Twitter. Be sure to check out the comment from Steve Woodruff - it's worth the trip alone.
2. Is the URL dead in advertising? Cabal predicts that the Japanese trend of ads showing suggested keywords, not a URL, will be the way of the future. Over at CrackUnit.com, Iain Tate agrees noting a Brit television ad that asks people to "search for EMA online."
3. Do you complain that your site doesn’t get traffic from search engines? Then this is post form SEOmoz is a must read: Why Does Your Search Traffic Suck? The 7 Most Likely Reasons.
4. Over at the invaluable Copyblogger, Sean D'Souza tells us how a few measly words can dramatically improve our blog headline and content.
5. Doing a site re-design and want some inspiration? Take a look at wakeuplater.com’s The Evolution of Websites: How 10 Popular Websites Have (And Have Not) Changed.
6. So, you’ve got to have the stats to support your social media foray. Thankfully, Jeremiah Owyang has revealed that we can all access the technographic data from Forrester Research.
7. Speaking of Forrester, analyst Charlene Li talks about turning radicals into revolutionaries: the key to kick-starting your social strategy. Her presentation on this topic at the South by Southwest Interactive festival earlier this month was a favourite of many. Didn’t get to SXSWi? No worries, you can still listen to the audio podcast and follow the slides.
8. YouTube introduces analytics for contributors to get more information about who’s watching your videos. AdAge has the details.
9. Who knew that 80’s one-hit wonder Rick Astley would make a comeback as an Internet prank? 10 Golden Rules asks, Have you been RickRolled?
10. Geoff Livingston from The Buzz Bin continues his excellent series on Social Media’s Role within Global Businesses with Part III: Marketing Departments Become Two-Way.
While you're at it, check out:
Part I: Beyond the Echo Chamber (Social Networks Impact on Business)
Part II: The Future: Social Networks Will Fly Like a Led Zeppelin
Friday Fun:
You know you’ve always wanted a shopping cart chair. Check out 20 Eye-Catching Pieces of ‘Recycled’ Urban Furniture: Geeky and Green Adaptive Reuse Design Projects.
A certain friend with the initials k.p. will be relieved to hear about this. (And probably very happy not to have to field my "Hey, is this site down for you, or is it just me?" phone calls.)
Now there's an easy-peasy way to check.
Go to Down for everyone or just me?
1. In the spirit of the upcoming weekend comes the incredibly creative article, “The Easter Bunny Was an SEO Guru.”
2. Want a little business card inspiration? Check out Matt Cutts post The Best Business Card Ever.
3. Poor Google. The company, which sports the motto “Don’t be evil”, is starting to look a little, er, evil.
4. Starting a blog, but agonizing over that first post? Have no fear, Mack Collier has come to the rescue!
5. What’s your awareness? Take this hilarious test at GrokDotCom.
6. Ann Smarty of SEO Smarty has written a stellar article on organizing your keyword modifiers.
7. Think that search engine marketing isn’t about branding? Greg Sterling at Search Engine Land outlines why branding is coming to search in a big way.
8. A little confused by the social media lingo being thrown around these days? IgniteSocialMedia.com has put together a handy-dandy guide (Part I and Part II) to social media buzzwords. I feel cooler already! (Although the phrase “social graph” can send me into apoplectic fits!)
9. Feel like you are drowning in email? You’re not alone. With everyone trying to get to “inbox zero” status, it’s no surprise that we need tips on dealing with email overload.
10. Chad Barr has an excellent point: If you don’t have the content ready for your site, don’t launch it – it just shows just how little you think of your visitor.
Friday Fun
Thanks to the Mashup Awards I learned about this fun little Twitter-based word frequency guessing game. Predict which words people you follow will use in an update and earn points when they do!
Keith Burtis is a very talented artist who works with wood to create gorgeous one-of-a-kind pieces. Recently he met up with Dave Fleet, a social media blogger who is also a devout runner. Dave is running in the Boston Marathon and using social media as a venue to raise money for Princess Margaret Hospital Foundation in Toronto, a world-class cancer research institute.
Now, they've joined forces and Keith will be creating a beautiful ornamental piece of woodwork that will be auctioned off to the highest bidder with all of the proceeds going to cancer research. Here are the details:
The auction will begin Tuesday, March 25 at 9am.
The auction will end Thursday, March 27 at 9pm.
The winner will be notified shortly after 9pm on the 27th.
Read more about the auction and make a donation here.
1. For me, the most important read of the week was Danny Sullivan’s open letter to Google over at Search Engine Land. Find out why Google should divest itself of a conflict-of-interest scenario.
2. In the “Don’t say I didn’t give you enough time to backup your computer” department comes this warning from ReadWriteWeb: The Internet Will End in 30 Years.
3. In the same vein, sort of, is this Micropersuasion blog post from Steve Rubel. The writing is on the wall. Portability is the future. Get used to it.
4. I know from personal experience that men do not like to shop. But now, e-tailers are figuring out how to speed things up to make online shopping more appealing to men.
5. Ann Smarty at Search Engine Journal talks about how to quickly check your rankings. Save yourself a lot of time and read the article!
6. Adam Ostrow has put together a list of who’s hot and who’s not in social media.
7. Who knew Nanaimo, BC, was the “capital of Google Earth”?! I certainly didn’t. Read How Google Earth Ate Our Town.
8. At Mashable, Andy Beal covers Ten Tactics That Could Save Your Online Reputation.
9. Selling something on the Web? Stoney de Geyter has put together a simple list of musts for e-tailers in his article 11 Ways to Fill Your Shopper’s Cart.
10. Not everything Google touches turns to gold. Check out The Lost Features of Google for a reminder about some of the various apps that didn’t make the cut.
Yesterday Guy Kawasaki launched Alltop for $10,000 and already it is creating major buzz online. The site aggregates the latest stories on a wide variety of popular blogs/websites. These are divided into various categories and the feeds are updated every ten minutes or so. The "About Us" section of Alltop invites users to think of an Alltop site as a “dashboard,” “table of contents,” or even a “digital magazine rack” of the Internet.
There is a lot of pro and con commentary out there, with many saying it is just like OriginalSignal, but larger. (Read the interview with Mashable and the subsequent comments to get an inkling.) Here are a few of the sections that I'll be bookmarking:
- Want to see the hot news in SEO? Check out Alltop's SEO page (Although I would prefer to see it under the category of “Work” rather than “Geekery”, but that’s just me.)
- Here are the top Social Media sites at Alltop.
- Need some small business tips? Be sure to peruse Alltop’s Small Business links.
- Want to see The Twitterati - 60 people you must follow on Twitter? Alltop has put together a list for that too…
- If you’re like me, you need a few tips and hints to get through life and make every day a bit easier. Of course, there is an Alltop’s Lifehacks page.
My two cents?
Page titles, people, page titles!!
The browser titles for the interior categories are simply labeled “Social Media” or ”Small Business.” Thus, when I bookmark it, that’s how it is saved unless I go in and add the site name myself. (Guy, my day is busy enough – don’t make me have to do that!) To help me bookmark the various sections, and subsequently recognize the bookmark, I’d love to see the titles read “Social Media – Alltop” or “Small Business – Alltop.”
On Friday Search Engine Roundtable reported that Google has officially announced that page load time will now be part of its quality score for AdWords landing pages.
Here at A.C. Riley Communications we highly recommend that whether you are running an AdWords campaign or not, that your pages load quickly.
It just makes sense. Slow-loading pages increase abandonment rates as people don’t want to have to wait to access information.
What factors play a part in slow-loading pages?
- Too many images
- Multiple redirects
- Code bloat
- A slow server
So, test your page load times before Google does.
Pingdom: Full Page Test
If you're thinking of starting an AdWords campaign, check out our strategic partner Bloom Search Marketing.
1. On Monday SEOmoz’s Rand Fishkin shared some very, very odd search engine results indeed!
2. Taking brevity to a whole new level, Egghead Marketing invites people to Twitter a business plan in 132 characters or less. The contest ends tomorrow.
3. Is it true that Matt Cutts sees all and knows all? Read Marketing Pilgrim's Matt Cutts Predicts the Future and decide for yourself.
4. Are you ready for change? Geoff Livingston tells us to tear down the Web site, and makes a case for killing your brochureware site
5. Search Engine Roundtable gives us some details about the new benchmarking tools in Google Analytics.
6. Steve Rubel tells us that a river runs through it, reminding marketers not to get too caught up with the specific venue (Facebook, Twitter, etc.), as historically most online communities haven’t stuck.
7. Check out Barry Schwartz's post at Search Engine Land to learn more about Google's secondary search box and to see how it works.
8. On the topic of the humble sidebar, Skelliewag.org examines what works and how to get the most out of your sidebar.
9. Feeling adventurous? Try out this list of The Top 100 Alternative Search Engines of March.
10. Didn't have a chance to get to SMX West 2008? Techipedia's Tamar Weinberg does an excellent round-up of the main takeaways.
- Its. It’s. What’s the diff?
- Your mission statement contains the word “empower.”
- Sally, that gormless lump of a receptionist, writes the brochures because you think it “gives her something to do.”
- You invested in copywriting software. Seriously.
- You see nothing something wrong with “Our synergistic leading edge, end-to-end solutions leverage revolutionary advanced technologies, delivering a paradigm shift in the competitive marketplace."
- The reader needs two post-graduate degrees to understand what your company does.
- Your copy is filled with “our company”, “us” and “we” with nary a “you” to be seen.
- Slogan-schmogan! What’s so difficult?! You just fill in the blanks: Helping______ achieve_______.
- Your sales letters contain: multiple exclamation points, phrases in bold red and in all caps, a P.S. as well as a P.P.S., P.P.P.S. and one P.P.P.P.S. for good measure, because after 7000 words, you really want to save the best for last.
- What do you mean there’s a difference between features and benefits?
Before creating a website, or when you are considering a remake, consider this:
- What are your website’s desire lines?
- How can you help your site visitors get to where they really want to be?
 – Swaths of dead grass that eventually become well-trodden dirt paths made by people just like …&topic=Online Content Random Thoughts Tips Usability){kind=small}
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