ISITE Insight

Does Your Web Content Measure Up?

Ryan Summers — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 18:28:49 +0000

Five Ways Google Analytics Can Help Optimize Web Content

A lot of attention is given to measuring a website’s conversions and goals. After all, these transactions are the ultimate end points of a successful visit. But what about the content that drives users to these goals? Measuring and improving the effectiveness of your website’s content is often overlooked. The good news is that Google Analytics makes it easier than ever to understand the value of your content. You just need to know where to look.

Content Strategy Gets R-E-S-P-E-C-T

Jeff Cram — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 21:55:14 +0000

Over the past year, content strategy has grown from a nice-to-have to a you’d-better-have. ISITE has some ideas for how you can get your team singing that tune.

Margot Bloomstein details how content strategy fuels other aspects of a website design project.

Design Philosophy Poster-rama

Barbara Holmes — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 17:34:07 +0000

Our design and user experience teams collaborated on a poster series for the 2009 Usability Professionals Association conference in Portland, OR. The goal? Find a way to encapsulate our company's user experience design philosophy into a series of posters that tied into the conference theme of 'bringing usability to life.'

Goodnight IE6?

Will Moore — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 23:40:59 +0000

After years of pain for developers and end users alike, is it finally time to put Internet Explorer 6 to bed?

Internet Explorer 6 (aka "IE6") is 8 years old — that's like 56 in company dog years. We're talking about an ancient web 1.0 browser here. With the release of 8.0, is it finally time to say "Goodnight IE6"?

The Web Marketer's Dilemma

ISITE Design — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 00:12:53 +0000

With better tools and more ways to connect with customers, why is running a web marketing program still so hard?

Shouldn’t running a web marketing program be a piece of cake by now? After all, the profession has matured over the past 10 years and marketing technology is abundant and cheap.

Yet by in large the marketers we talk to are overwhelmed by both the technology itself and the countless options for connecting with customers online. The barriers to entry for successful marketing have never been lower, yet the path to a successful web marketing program feels more daunting than ever.

Getting Scrappy

Jeff Cram — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 23:31:19 +0000

Web Marketing on a Shoestring - Being Scrappy with Free Tools and Techniques

I had the pleasure of moderating a MITX panel in Boston last week titled Web Marketing on a Shoestring. Essentially, we got four wicked smart marketing experts together, packed the room with even more marketers and spent 90 minutes running through low cost marketing technology.

It was fast paced, fun and full of great questions. The panel included Cappy Popp (Thought Labs), Greg Slama (One to One Interactive), Mike Volpe (Hubspot) and Dean Whitney (Garfield Group Interactive).

Hello (Accessible) World

Matthew Clarke — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 19:51:09 +0000

Matthew Clarke explores how a rich media portal developed for MIT can be more accessible for visually imparied users.

The web world we live and work in as web developers is predominantly a visual medium, yet what happens if you don’t have the benefit of sight? It’s a completely different experience, and often not a very good one given the lack of accessibility support from most web sites.

Through the process of building a rich media portal for MIT, I had the honor of getting to know a visually impaired user and gained a better understanding of how to build more accessible online experiences everyone can enjoy.

Does your CMS fit?

Jeff Cram — Fri, 08 May 2009 16:22:10 +0000

Go beyond the feature list and vendor hype. Find the right CMS for you.

Searching for the perfect web content management system can be a long and bewildering journey. One littered with hundreds of vendors, aggressive sales tactics, confusing terminology and a smorgasbord of features you may never use.

Traditional thinking in the CMS selection process includes jotting down a list of desired features, watching a generic demo and evaluating vendors based on who ‘checks the most boxes’ and gives the best end-of-quarter pricing. This process is fundamentally flawed and all too often results in poor technology selections and dismal implementations.

Who Rocks the Party?

Margot Bloomstein — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 21:59:08 +0000

ISITE Design User Experience Strategist Margot Bloomstein participated in the inaugural Content Strategy Consortium at the IA Summit 2009 in Memphis.

The group discussed the emerging discipline and how it fits into an overall web strategy, while attempting to collectively define necessary steps, key deliverables, and core competencies. Margot's presentation "Who Rocks the Party" explored how a good content strategy can support a website's approach to user-generated content.

Social Media Smackdown

Jeff Cram — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 17:18:29 +0000

How a luchador and his panther took on Twitter and the Boston interactive community.

How it all started

ISITE Design was invited to submit a video short for the popular MITX Awards in fall 2008. An enthusiastic brainstorm resulted in a fictional luchador character, El Consultador. The video would highlight his efforts to toughen up our staff and improve results through violent and unorthodox tactics.

What unfolded over the next month was an experiment in leveraging multiple digital and social media channels to create interest, intrigue, and suspense culminating in his debut by video and in person to 1,100 influential New England marketers.