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Rare Bird Blog

What is the value of design?

Friday, August 22, 2008

We often field questions and have conversations around justifying the investment in good design. Traditionally, it's been very difficult to quantify the ROI of design. In some ways, the internet is helping to change that.

We've recently had the opportunity to accurately measure the impact of design for DRG, one of our clients in the publishing industry. While re-designing their primary lead generation site, FreePatterns.com, we focused on improving the usability to help members more quickly and effectively address their individual preferences. It's important to note that the design changed dramatically, the function changed somewhat, and the content remained the same.

The results were astounding:

• Visits increased by 8%
  
• Pageviews are up by 64%
  
• Time on the site increased by 30%

[Learn more about this project]
[Visit FreePatterns.com]

Labels: analytics, design, marketing, web development

What Do Cosumers Want Online?

Wednesday, February 13, 2008

So, you think you know what your customers want? Go ahead and list the top three, I'll wait...

Got it? Great! Now check your list against this reality: Forrester Research recently conducted a survey of more than 5,000 online consumers to find out what content and functionality is most important to them. Here's what they found out:

Consumers want user ratings and reviews the most. Sixty-four percent of consumers reported wanting to see user ratings and reviews. And nearly the same amount also wanted price-focused offerings, like special offers or coupons (61%) and product or price comparison tools (59%).

Interestingly, while the majority want to have access to ratings and reviews, only a few (23%) have any intention of writing one. Not surprising, there were differences in preferences based on age groups. Generation Y (18 to 27) are more interested in being entertained and sharing content. Younger Boomers are trying to get things done. And Seniors just don't want the clutter of extra information keeping them from getting things into their cart and getting on with it.

One final, revealing item: Overwhelmingly, consumers voted for ease of use.

So now you know what they want, the question is, what are you doing about it?

[See more from Forrester's North American Technographics Customer Experience, Marketing, And Consumer Technology Online Survey]

Labels: consumers, marketing, web development

If You Read Nothing Else Today, Read This:

Monday, February 4, 2008

Seth Godin, pitchman for common sense and a marketer's marketer, wrote a post recently that should be printed, laminated, and stuck on the wall of every single person who is even contemplating sending a 'promotional' email out to a customer or prospect. Marketers everywhere should read it every day (some, probably twice a day.) They should point to it every time someone walks into their office and says, "Hey, we have an email list, right?" They should print extra copies and have them on hand for marketing meetings, sales meetings, board meetings, and water cooler gatherings.

In a word, this is the truth, as hard as it is to hear and as hard as it is to follow. Do this, and reap the rewards. Don't, and, well... The world is full of people who squandered long-term opportunities in pursuit of short-term gains.

[Read Permission Marketing from Seth Godin's blog.]

Labels: branding, email marketing, marketing, permission marketing

Target: So Many Things Right, One Big Thing Wrong

Wednesday, January 23, 2008

Disclaimer: I'm generally a fan of Target®. I appreciate the turn around they've implemented and I applaud their belief that general consumers (read: the rest of us as the unwashed masses) appreciate good design and want to own it, even if we don't want to pay an arm and a leg for it.

So it was with some alarm and a great deal of surprise when I learned that they seem to be so far out of touch with the reality of the world in which they do business. Here's the story:

They recently ran an ad that featured a young girl laying spread-eagle across a life-size representation of the notable trademark. This girl happened to be lying in a position that placed the center of the target -- the bullseye, so to speak -- directly between her akimbo legs.

A blogger named Amy Jussel from an organization called Shaping Youth took notice of the ad and sent a question to their corporate headquarters voicing her concern that this ad might be placing too much emphasis on the woman's genitals, and didn't they think this might be a little overly sexually subversive? (At this point in the story, you can choose to agree or disagree... it's their response that was truly imbecilic.)

Target responded with the following terse reply:

Good Morning Amy,

Thank you for contacting Target; unfortunately we are unable to respond to your inquiry because Target does not participate with non-traditional media outlets. This practice is in place to allow us to focus on publications that reach our core guest.

Once again thank you for your interest, and have a nice day.

"We want to focus on publications that reach our core guest"? It's the Internet, folks, which part of your core do you think isn't being reached by the Internet? I could go on, but the stupidity of this stance is hopefully obvious.

I am forced to ask, however, "So what?" So they've alienated bloggers and marginalized that part of their core that is being served by the Internet. So what? Will they be generally incensed enough to write thousands of words about how idiotic Target is? Probably. Maybe Definitely. Will these people stop shopping at Target? Maybe. Maybe not. The truth is, Target may never know the full cost of taking this position, because it may hit them in ways unforeseen by methods not contemplated.

An example? Sure... It's a known fact that the inclusion of product reviews on an e-commerce site can provide a noticeable boost to sales, especially for products receiving positive reviews. The reviews that have the most impact are not written by professional reviewers, they're written by customers. Is it possible that some of these customers, perhaps bloggers themselves, might be less likely to take the time to write a positive product review on Target's web site? Or, realizing that Target devalues their input, isn't it also possible that these same people might be more likely to only share their negative reviews? I think you can count on it.

Labels: blogging, internet, marketing, strategy, stupidity

The Inmates (and/or the Legal Department) Are Running the Asylum

Friday, January 18, 2008

File this under the same business category as "New Coke" only bigger, dumber, but (possibly) less expensive, though the true cost is to be determined. You probably didn't know, but Mattel and Hasbro have been stewing recently about a MySpace application call Scrabulous that allows members of the site to play a game that is suspiciously (ok, it's the same) like Scrabble™. Unable to stand themselves any longer, they've ordered the game squashed like a G-R-A-P-E (17 points).

Now, obviously, this game is a violation of the Scrabble™ trademark, so why shouldn't they put their collective foot down? Well, let's consider that there were over 600,000 registered users playing this little wonder. And let's consider what percentage of half a million likely rekindled some sort of fondness for a game they hadn't played in years, and maybe -- just maybe -- picked up a new physical for home. And let's consider how virulent this new online world we live in can be. What were their options? I couldn't write a better list than Matt Dickman, so I'll just repeat it here:

If I were in Mattel's marketing department here is what my train of thinking would be here:

1. Somebody please kick the legal department out of the room. Thanks, now let's continue.
2. Wow! These guys built an awesome application around our brand
3. We NEED to talk to them and buy this application ASAP
4. We NEED to hire these guys (or at least retain them) to do updates and possibly roll this out to other networks (Bebo, MySpace, etc.)
5. Seriously guys, keep those lawyers out of here! Just tell them somebody in accounting is using the wrong Pantone color in the logo again.
6. If we can't buy it, we at least need to sponsor/co-present it as *the* official Scrabble game on Facebook
7. If none of those options work we need to congratulate those guys publicly for their efforts and encourage people to join in
8. I wonder why we didn't think of this.

Matt goes on to make some recommendations about how you should be applying this lesson learned to your own situation. Read it and take heed.

Labels: legal, marketing, stupidity

Business Consulting or Web Development?

Friday, December 21, 2007

We walked out of a client meeting the other day when Michael, one of our recently-acquired programmers asked me, "So, was that fairly typical of how these meetings go?"

I ran through a mental checklist... let's see, we talked about design, site architecture, implementation strategy, marketing strategy, product delivery, logo and identity development, branding issues and concerns, product pricing, sales efforts, post-launch PR and marketing efforts, beta testing, testimonials, and a few other things.

"Yes," says I, "that's a pretty good example of how these things go." His response surprised me:

"I'm surprised at how much business consulting goes on," he said.

Which is interesting to me, primarily because it can be difficult to define what we do. Obviously, we specialize in web development and new media, but there are so many other issues involved that we're providing a high level of business consulting at every step of the way. I just never really thought about it in that light before.

Thanks, Michael!

Labels: business consulting, marketing, strategy, web development

E-Commerce, Affiliate Marketing, and Predictive Modeling

Monday, November 19, 2007

I had the good fortune of addressing a group of progressive-thinking marketers last week at a Marketing Roundtable held by Strategic Fulfillment Group. The meeting, held in the historic Stockyards of Ft. Worth, Texas, proved to be enjoyable and enlightening. Aside from my presentation about "Perfecting the Online Buying Environment", attendees heard from Ash Ishrak, Strategic Solutions Leader for IBM's West Region; Mike Gunn, president and CEO of Chicago-based Profit Rank; and Jim Tucker, president and CEO of Integrated Marketing Technology in San Francisco.

Some of the most interesting topics from the event dealt with the methods being employed by Tucker's group to provide realistic and accurate predictive modeling. Their analysis applies 138 different criteria to your database records to help you determine which segments would perform the best. The upside is that you can achieve similar results by targeting a much smaller portion of the whole. Pretty cool stuff.

We also spent some time discussing the ins and outs of strategic, triggered email events that can be used to automatically contact customers based on a variety of criteria. You're probably familiar with things like order and shipping confirmation, but this same approach can be used for a whole variety of contacts. Examples include customer service and promotional messages, and almost any kind of targeted communication based on customer order history, preferences, activities, etc. Also pretty cool.

My time was spent highlighting some of the best practices in web design, both at the product and the cart level, with a eye toward helping companies realize the best possible results from their online efforts. I'll get more into some of this later, but here's a hint of one item: too much choice can be a bad thing.

Labels: marketing, strategy

Everyone's An Expert

Friday, November 16, 2007

It seems like everyone is an expert at something. We have automobile experts, stock market experts, antique experts... we even have a client who's a sheep and goat expert. This abundance of experts in all fields butts up against a point of friction with the Internet, where information is clamoring to be free (or pretty cheap) and readily available. This leaves experts in a tough place. It's no longer enough to declare yourself an expert and expect everyone to just accept it. Instead, experts are forced to engage in a continuous effort to prove that they are, in fact, expert in a given subject.

[Read the complete article]

Labels: internet, marketing, web reviews