Real Men of Genious

Every now and then, I get a bit nostalgic. Tonight, it was because I stumbled across these videos on YouTube. I gotta admit, the NI culture (for the most part) was top notch.

Real Men of Genius - Mr. Barefo0t R&D Programmer


Real Men of Genius - Mr. Paint The Stripe to Duval Entrance

ever notice that ikea rhymes with idea?

Doing some competitive research today for a project I'm working on for JCPenney, I noticed something simple yet innovative on the Ikea site.

The problem with large feature graphic/promotional banner spaces on top level pages is always sacrificing that kind of real estate for something 'pretty' that usually contributes very little in terms of click thrus and transactions. But nobody in an organization ever wants to sacrifice a big, pretty, impressive photograph.

This Ikea feature graphic does what everything on the web should do - it takes advantage of the interactivity of the web as a medium. Furthermore, it seems that it'd be relatively simple to throw together and templatize in Flash, if the organization had the photography necessary to pull it off.

Screen captures.

Don't Blend me, Bro!

I'm going to be honest with you: I'm way behind the times on this. Today I learned about willitblend.com, a site sponsored by blender company Blendtec, that won .net magazines 10th annual “Viral Campaign of the Year” for 2007.

The site features videos of a guy in a lab coat wearing safety goggles and using the Blendtec blender to annialate random objects, from a Rubix cube to a taser.

According to "Blending Video and E-Commerce" by Bill Siwicki in June 2007, this site created a 650% increase in traffic, around 10 miillion views, and more products sales in one weekend than in the best month they'd had to date.

Not to mention, air time on The Today Show and The Tonight Show.

Gotta love good viral marketing...

so true...

Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance. - Kurt Vonnegut

snood much?

I was on the web doing some research and I stumbled upon this very entertaining blog called iminlikewithyou.com.

This made me laugh out loud.

http://blog.iminlikewithyou.com/post/28693982

phil: did i tell you the story about when i was playing a lot of snood?
setpixel: no
setpixel: do tell
phil: i was walking down the street and i saw two black women walking with a white lady, and i thought, if i had one more black lady i could free that white woman.

hardest game ever?

OK... not sure if you're into little flash games on the internet, but I've been known to enjoy one from time to time. Brant & I just got completely engulfed in this for a few minutes, and I finally had to pull myself away from it to try and get something productive accomplished.

http://www.onemorelevel.com/game/the_worlds_hardest_game

flash navigation

Late last week, I was contacted by a client and friend with whom I've been in touch with recently. We'll call him John. He was building his own site, but wanted some fancy motion effects on the navigation. See below for our correspondence.

---

On Thu, Apr 10, 2008 at 9:29 PM, John wrote:

Erin,

I am attaching two PNG graphics of our the new "structure" of our new website that I am building out right now. I need to sets of flash buttons. One, for the home page is 1024X50. If we need to make the height a little smaller, that is fine. The other pages will need a file that is 750X50. If you adjust the height on the Home page, please adjust it for the other page as well.

You will see the index page that will take you to what will be our new home page. What do you think will be the best look for the Flash buttons? I am thinking some time of metallic gray when one scrolls over the button or maybe a brush stroke of color (the paint brush we are using on the home page made me think of this).

Ultimately, we want an elegant set of buttons that fit the minimalist website we are designing. If you need us to create the buttons graphically, I can do so.

Something you can handle?

John

On Fri, Apr 11, 2008 at 10:08 AM, Erin wrote:

Dear John,

Time for some advice. Typically, navigation shouldn't be flash.

One reason is flash is 'invisible' to search engines - the words in it can't be read by the crawlers. And the words on your nav, as well as the pages to which they link, are very important.

Another reason is in Internet Explorer and some other browsers, security features make users click on Flash elements 1 time to 'activate' the interactivity before they can interact with them. On a Flash game or interactive presentation, its less awkward because there's a lot of focus and interaction on/with the piece. For navigation, it can create an awkward experience, as some users may click once and not realize that they need to click again. They may assume your site is broken. As you probably realize, users do not devote much time to figuring little things out.

You can accomplish many 'hover' effects with CSS alone, or with CSS and javascript. Both of these are preferred methods and could occur within the HTML rather than as separate files.

If you do need Flash to accomplish the effect you're looking for, you should offer a plain text version of the global navigation in the footer of the page.

We can help you build either.

Erin

lost in translation

want a good laugh? check out this article:
Lost in Translation: Awkward Signs from Around the World

white papers on the web

Right now, I'm part of a debate regarding the best way to present white papers on the web. While Jakob Nielsen & usability best practice dictate that PDFs be used only for printing, I've gotten the argument that for white papers, its different.

I contended that we should link to HTML pages, which could that offer PDFs or printer-friendly versions for those who want to print.

To clarify our purposes in this particular case:
1) We aren't trying to use this information to collect contacts.
2) We aren't trying to use this info to generate add revenue.
3) Searchability is important, as is on-screen readability & printer-friendliness.

To summarize, our motives are pure. We just want to share information in the most effective way possible.

When I hit the net to do my homework, here's the data I found about PDFs and usability:

- June 10, 2001: Avoid PDF for On-Screen Reading summary: Forcing users to browse PDF files makes usability approximately 300% worse compared to HTML pages. Only use PDF for documents that users are likely to print In those cases, following six basic guidelines will minimize usability problems.

-July 14, 2003: PDF: Unfit for Human Consumption-

summary: Users get lost inside PDF files, which are typically big, linear text blobs that are optimized for print and unpleasant to read and navigate online. PDF is good for printing, but that's it. Don't use it for online presentation.

** in article's note it confirms that 2007 data brought the same results, but there's no article.. bc he wants you to attend his usability conference in london. :)

Here's the question & answer string on LinkedIn.

Do you have any thoughts or user data on this matter?

uh oh! recession!?

our country is on its way to proving the phenomenon of the self-fulfilling prophecy: we are headed for an economic downturn.

those of us who work as marketers should probably be concerned. right? marketing's always the first thing to go.

to be honest, i'm not that concerned.

a recent publication by MarketingSherpa called "Marketing During a Downtown" made an interesting point. in a recession today, companies will shift spend from traditional tactics to online. from brand to direct marketing. from feel-good to measurable ROI.

companies will use tactics that the CFO can't argue with.

suggested strategies for keeping share of wallet from consumers and businesses during a downtown include:

• focus on existing customers, who are less expensive to convert
• reach out to customers with special savings (think personalized e-mail!)
• optimize user experience to be more persuasive
• make buying a smoother process
• develop your tactics for converting your existing leads in the pre-sales pipeline (maybe tack on a few extra touches, as sales cycles are likely to lengthen.)
• start analyzing data and begin tweaking to figure out how to get the maximum from your existing marketing activities. if you can increase conversion from 2% to 2.5%, you're making major improvements. (again, this is easiest to do in digital marketing.)

i'm thinking that unlike the .dot com bust, this recession could actually bring a bump in interactive spend from saavy businesses.

which is good.