Here, for my feed and email subscribers who are not following me on Twitter, is a linkbaitalicious list of the most useful digital marketing tools that I have learnt about from other Twitter users and re-tweeted over the last couple of months.

• Compilation of measurement tools to help with your SEO, Web Analytics, Usability, AdSense, Competitive Intelligence
• 10 Twitter Tools to help you work smarter
• Free tools and checklist to conducting An SEO Audit To Troubleshoot Problems & Tune-Up Performance
• 25 Infographics for web designers and marketers - ideal to brighten-up your office/cubicle or classroom:  http://cli.gs/3A2j0d
• Web Design Industry Jargon - Glossary and Resources
• Email creative examples (mainly US)
• Email/web creative examples (mainly UK)
• Digital Dave’s Marketing Q&A

and finally if you have time for a lighter moment…

• Digital marketing lightbulb jokes

So, I was pleased to receive a review copy of the Twitter book by @timoreilly who is best known for first defining the Web 2.0 concept and has over 600,000 followers (not bad for a business bod) and @SarahM who is a Twitter specialist who describes herself in her bio as  the 21st user of Twitter.

This post gives a brief review of the book and highlights, what for me, were the 10 most  useful practical tips for companies developing their Twitter business strategy. Since I like to be useful, I’ll also summarise some of the tools I found useful in the book which I wasn’t aware of.

10 Twitter business strategy tips

In Chapter 6, 25 business tips for Twitter are explained by the author. Here are the top 10 which resonated with me and my take on them.

1.  Listen first. Don’t jump straight in without a strategy - understand conversations in your marketplace about your brand, competing brands and customer concerns. If there aren’t conversations may be a Facebook strategy or blogging strategy may be more appropriate.

2. Integrate with other channels. For service resolve issues promptly via Email or phone. For sales offer coupons to redeem in-store if relevant.

3. Figure out who does the twittering. Don’t outsource this to a PR company - keep it genuine.

4. Reveal the person behind the company. Be human - give a face to the brand. Or faces… tips are given on managing multiple staff Twitterers.

5. Be conversational.  Make your Tweets two-way - ask questions, reply to others through @messages.

6. RT Your customers.

7. Post mostly NOT about your company. The best and probably most tricky advice.

8. Link creatively to your sites.  i.e. link in a lively way.

9. Report problems…and resolutions. Makes sense.

10. Offer solid customer support. There are some great examples of responsive support @comcastcares in the US and @carphonewarehouse in the UK.

My Twitter style 140 character book review

Accessible Twitter-style, one-per-page guidelines with screengrab examples to help develop both personal and business strategies.

Tools to support business use of Twitter

There are many compilations of these, but these mostly reputation management tools from the book were new for me, so checked them out and this is what I found:

• Tweetbeep - Like Google Alerts for Twitter - alerts you with email digest when your brands are mentioned. Good idea, but looks like it might have infrastructure problems to me.
• Backtweets - again great in theory - give it your plain URL and it finds all backlinks to it regardless of URL shortener. Doesn’t work 100% for me.
• Microplaza - Nice summary of top Tweets with potentially useful feature to filter by your interests - unfortunately gave me a 500 Internal Error for that option
• TwitterSheep - Enter your twitter username to see a tag cloud from the ‘bios’ of your twitter followers. FWIW Here’s mine.

I was reminded of this when browsing the June issue of the excellent Search Marketing Standard (everyone serious about SEO should be a subscriber). In an article Link by Link: Reconstructing the Past 15 Years, link-building specialist Eric Ward reviewed some of his learnings from the last 15 years and I thought it would be useful to pass on a summary of his key learnings and recommendations - they’re relevant to everyone:  site owners, marketers, PRs and of course SEOs.

These are the 3 paras I think are most relevant to succesful link building:

“1. Link-building is nearly indistinguishable from public relations”

Eric explains: “If you regard links solely as an SEO function, link-building initiatives may end up creating an unnatural inbound link profile. Fix this by working toward more cooperation between the public relations, marketing, sales and SEO teams”.

In other words, successful link-building isn’t limited to work by an SEO specialist adding links to directories, or adding anchor text to press releases. It requires the garnering of links to be a structured marketing activity built into all PR and marketing campaigns. I see many great campaigns which don’t harness their link-building potential.

“2. Be honest when a client has a site with no true distinguishing content to their 20 competitors”

You can see from this guideline that the article is written for SEOs and he is describing a common situation faced by SEOs. I, and many other SEOs have found this “some clients are perfectly willing to do what they need to do to stand out, whether that means adding content, resources, tools, or even refocusing on a narrow vertical approach. Others are not”.

So, if you’re serious about SEO and link-building, then creating new content and tools to add value to visitors is essential and you will have to think laterally across the whole team about the types of  content that will attract links. It will need resource and a separate project to develop this. Product pages and press releases alone will not work! Creation of compelling content and resources doesn’t happen by accident!

“3. It’s not the link-builder that get’s the links. It’s your client’s content that must earn the links”

To reinforce the point, Eric says that ”the easier it is to get the link, the less value that link is likely to have as an algorithmic sign of trust”. He’s saying that the benefit of great linkbait content is that it will tend to attract better quality and more natural links.

So, how seriously do you take link-building in your company? Is it a structured, managed process integrated into all campaigns or is it an afterthought or doesn’t it happen at all? It’s all too common that there isn’t a structured, proactive approach and without this, your link-building and SEO will fail.

If you would like to work through a strategy to link-building I’d love to help through my guide SEO Best Practice Guide for Econsultancy or an introduction or advanced SEO training course.

Finally to help you review your approach, here is a summary of some of the issues we discuss to achieve a planned approach to E-PR (this updated chart was originally presented in a presentation for AdTech 2006).

Which approaches have worked best for you?

If you’re not familiar with the book, I have also included this figure which provides a framework for managing resources needed for sell-side E-commerce in a large organisation. It gives an idea of most the ebusiness management issues that I tackle in the book.

OK, so on to the changes. The chapter structure of previous editions has been retained, but many other changes have been incorporated based on lecturer and student feedback.

There are two main new features. First, new case studies in boxes “Real-world E-business experiences - The E-consultancy interview” are introduced at the start of most chapters. These are interviews with E-commerce managers at a range of UK, European and US-based organizations concerning the strategies they have adopted and their approaches to strategy implementation. Second there are numbered boxes which explore a concept in more detail or give an example of a principle discussed in the text. There are also 3 major new case studies to enable learning from brands that will be well-known personally to students in different countries: Dell, Facebook and Google. To help accommodate these less reference is given to the running “B2C and B2B Company” case.

The main updates for the fourth edition on a chapter by chapter basis are:

• Chapter 1 starts with a look at the amazing innovation in business model that the web has facilitated. The introduction to different E-commerce concepts now covers different Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 concepts in more detail including a new case study on the Facebook business model.
• Chapter 2 is structured around a new approach to online marketplace analysis for e-business which can be used by students working on case studies or practitioners in business is described with new diagrams and links to information sources. Coverage of evaluation of business and revenue models has been extended with a spreadsheet activity on web ad revenue model.
• Chapter 3. The simple introduction removed with more detailed coverage on the advantages and disadvantages of the Software as a Service (SaaS) model. The tools section has been updated to include concept of Web 2.0 and atomization / widgets. Coverage on Mobile commerce and IPTV extended (these are also covered throughout the book). Chapter 3 includes a new case study on Google technology and innovation.
• Chapter 4. Increased focus on the adoption of different web services and social media rather than Internet adoption. Legal implications for E-commerce in different countries and regions updated. Section on green and environmental issues added.
• Chapter 5. Incorporates the strategy models and latest research completed by Dave Chaffey for Econsultancy on managing digital channels.
• Chapter 6. Incorporates new research on SCM from PMP Research. New content on the challenges of managing supply chains and the Information Supply Chain concept.
• Chapter 7. Update to content on adoption of B2B marketplaces.
• Chapter 8. Management of customer acquisition, conversion and retention incorporated into strategy process. Marketing mix section updated to include new content on customer insight, long tail, tipping point and digital product options. New case study on how Dell varies its marketing mix.
• Chapter 9. Increased depth on search engine marketing, Email marketing and social media.
• Chapter 10. Scrum and agile methodologies introduced. Use of Web 2.0 for knowledge management through a case study on Janssen Cilag.
• Chapter 11. Section on user-centred design extended with additional commentary and mini-case studies. New section on common security threats and solutions for the e-business.
• Chapter 12. Removed basic introduction to HTML and scripting languages as recommended by reviewers. Introduced section on Application Frameworks and servers  added. Updated section on web analytics with new example of online retailer benchmarking.

We have to start with popularity - how many will use the new search engine. Microsoft has been somewhat successful in retaining market share in the US primarily through it’s cashback affiliate scheme and the launch is likely to increase this. It has an 8% share of searches. In the UK Live Search had a lower share of around 1% according to Hitwise

Source: Comscore

Implications of Bing for marketers

1. Start out by checking out your brand searches: See Amazon example.

There is potential for more brand leakage through Related Searches which show competitors. For the searcher is the main difference from Google at the search results page level.

2. How is your brand described?

The snippets are from meta descriptions, but watch for the Expanded snippets on the Right when you rollover your mouse to the right of the SERPs listing - do those describe your brand accurately?

Sitelink listings under the site are harder to come by

3. For retailers, Shopping is more closely integrated through a Google “Universal Search” type approach as the example above show.  In the UK, shopping gives a link to www.ciao.co.uk so we can expect this will increase in popularity.

4. Image and video search is more tightly integrated.

Bing launched without Help to learn about new features (still used old Live Search Help #Fail).

To find out more you can use the preview site: http://www.discoverbing.com/

I’ve written this guide since I now find when training, that the majority of the marketers on the courses have Google Analytics installed on their websites.

But oftentimes, although Google Analytics is installed, it hasn’t been configured to help marketers track and review their campaign or site effectiveness.In fact, when I take attendees through the configuration options, it seems very often little or no configuration has been done in their organisations!

So, I have written this guide as a checklist for non web-analytics specialists. It is a top-level guide, but I have provided links through to detailed descriptions on more specialist sites on the technical approaches needed to configure.

This  guide steps through all  main configuration concepts and issues to consider for using Google Analytics to improve your results from online marketing. I haven’t seen any other lists that cover everything in a single list from a marketers point of view, probably because it’s too much for a single-post!

If you are personally involved with configuration,  or want to know how to use some of the reports to improve results, I also recommend you buy Brian Clifton's book on Google Analytics since this has more detail and examples than the Google Help files on Google Analytics configuration.

Justifying use of Google Analytics to colleagues

A barrier I encounter which stops some marketers using Google Analytics is that there may be questions from colleagues as to whether Google Analytics is suitable for medium  or larger businesses or whether it could reduce page load times, particularly if it is used alongside tracking tags for other web analytics system.

To help with justifying use of Google Analytics, I recommend taking a look at what competitors or large companies are using with Eric Petersen’s Vendor Discovery tool which will show you which competitors or larger companies are using Google Analytics. Many are, often in parallel with other tagging systems.

Installing the Google Analytics tracking code

As the starting point for the checklist, I’m assuming you have already installed the Google Analytics tracking tags. This is straightforward in most content management systems which enable you to paste the Javascript code into a page template across the site.

If you haven’t installed the tracking tags for a new installation, hold fire since some of the later configuration advice require these tracking tags to be amended.

The recommended placement location is towards the end of the page before the </body> HTML tag, but note that some of the configuration techniques below require a different location.

To give you an idea of the extent of the Google tracking code, for my site it is:

<script type="text/javascript">
var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www.");
document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E"));
</script>
<script type="text/javascript">
try {
var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-UNIIQUE-ID-FOR-YOUR-SITE");
pageTracker._trackPageview();
} catch(err) {}</script>

Checklist - configuring Google Analtyics for Marketing Improvement

Step 1. Review your approach to collecting data from different sites and services.

The granularity with which you collect and report data should be consistent with the way the organisation is structured since different people in the organisation will likely NOT want to review the results for the entire site, but instead you will want to separate out data for part of the company or a particular product, service or audience they are responsible for. Common options which you should consider to report separately on include:

• Distinct domains - Many larger companies will use different domains for different services or audiences, for example using a different Country code top-level domain (ccTLD) such as .nl or .de as well as .com or .co.uk.
• Sub-domains - For example, you may have a blog on a subdomain, for example fashion retailer ASOS has http://blog.asos.com.
• Sub-folders - Alternately you may want to report separately on content in a subfolder, for example if your blog is configured this way, http://www.domain.com/blog.

To report separately on domains, sub-domains or sub-folders you need to apply the concepts of profiles and filters within Google Analytics. You may even want to have different accounts with different unique tracking codes for different countries, particularly if they operate as separate entities and you want to apply different currency and time zones to the report. Each account will use a different unique tracking code, but you will need to remember to include an aggregrate tracking code to report all the sites together.

A Google Analytics profile will typically be used to produce reports for different sites , subdomains or subfolders. Google Analytics Help on Profiles.

So, on my site I have a master profile that is unmodified for the entire site other than a filter for excluding my IP address together with other profiles for particular types of content such as blog content or visitor segments such as returning visitors. You should specify your default page for the profile, e.g. index.html.

Google Analytics Profile

A Google Analytics filter is applied to modify data from a particular profile so that it shows a subset of data within the profile. A filter will often be used to show visitor interactions with product information stored in a sub-domain or subfolder. Google Analytics Help on Filters.

In this example I have a filter which is applied to my Right Touching blog which only includes visitors who go to that sub-folder.

Google Analytics Filter

For example, a filter could restrict results to first time time visitors or returning visitors. With the Advanced Segmentation feature in Google Analytics you are effectively provided with several default filters, such as all visitors from

So you can see this is complex! You need to get this right from the outset of collecting data since profiles and filters cannot be applied retrospectively, applying filters incorrectly will introduece errors and introducing new profiles will lead to employee confusion.

• Google Help on Domains and Sub-domains
• Google help on tracking across/links between separate domains

Step 2. Exclude employees from report.

This configuration is relatively simple! You don’t want visitors from a company skewing the results, so these should be excluded unless you want to artificially boost your visitor numbers and have difficultly understanding visitor behaviour.

A filter should be created to exclude a range of IP addresses for company employees and contractors working in different offices.

• Google Analytics Help - Excluding internal traffic / Employees

Step 3. Define conversion goals.

Visitors to a site do not have equal value to a company, they engage to different degrees suggested by the types of pages they visit. A visitor who has visited a product page, registered for an e-newsletter, bought a product or visited the contact page is clearly more engaged - in web analytics we call these “value events”.

Within Google Analytics these value events are known as “conversion goals” and they can be setup for an individual page such as the thank you page for an enquiry form or for a folder such as product pages or downloads. Only 4 goals are available, which is a limitation if you have many lead types or want to track individual PDFs. You can apply Ecommerce tracking to non-e-commerce sites to monitor additional value events through tagging individual pages with a call to the Javascript function getOrderID().

You should set a nominal value on each value event, so you can compare how different pages and referrers influence contributing to conversion goals.

Avinash Kaushik has a great post on the rationale and examples of conversion goals.

Step 4. Setup conversion funnels (optional).

Funnels representing the different steps in a checkout process are an essential piece of configuration for retailers. After these have been setup up you can then visualise the drop-off or attrition at each stage.

They can also be setup for sites showing how many people engage with different parts of the site which then contribute to a lead.

• Google Analytics Help on Goals and Funnels
• Justin Cutroni has a series of posts on configuring E-commerce tracking.

Step 5. Standard digital campaign tracking codes.

Defining a standard set of online marketing source codes is essential to determining the value of different referral sources such as ad campaigns or email campaigns.

Many companies will track AdWords because of it’s automated integration enabled from Google AdWords, but they may not track other codes or have a standard notation which needs to be defined and then added to all links involving media placements.

Google Analytics uses 5 standard dimensions for a campaign which need to be incorporated into the query string of the URL for each ad placement as this example shows:

http://www.domain.com/landing_page.php?utm_campaign=spring-sale&utm_medium=banner&utm_source=handbag.com

The campaigns report in Google Analytics will then enable you to compare media.

The table explains each of these 5 dimensions which refers to this example:

The Google URL builder can help with creating these links.

Note that in the major Fall 2008 upgrade to Google Analytics, Advanced segmentation provides some standard source codes for campaign types such as paid search.

• Google Analytics Help on Campaign Tracking

Step 5. Tracking internal links on-site promotions.

Although standard Google Analytics reports enable you to view paths through a site, it doesn’t enable you to see clicks from individual links which is useful for optimizing sites by evaluating the impact of different calls-to-action and promotion containers such as links and buttons which lead to the same page. The Google documentation mainly refers tagging external links as campaigns.

You might think that the campaign tracking dimensions above would enable you to do this, but this approach is undesirable since the original referral information will be lost when a link coded in this way is clicked.

However, you can and should use this approach if you make extensive use of PDF collateral with links back to the main site.

It can also lead to indexing of different versions of the pages within Google which may have SEO implications (best to have links pointing to a single page).

There are alternative methods of achieving this, but a common method is to add an onclick event to a link which creates an additional PageView recording the link using the _trackPageview JavaScript function. This will inflate page views within Google Analytics, so these should be removed with a filter.

See this post for one implementation suggestion: http://www.viget.com/engage/how-to-track-internal-links-in-google-analytics. An example of the code which will group all internal links together in a folder ‘internal-link’ in Top Content is:

<a href=”http://www.domain.com/destination-page/” onClick=”javascript: pageTracker._trackPageview(’/internal-links/green-button-A’)

Since this is a Javascript function it won’t be followed by search robots when crawling the site.

Finally for one other type of internal link, Google Analytics introduced support for tracking of Flash events in 2008.

Step 6. Tracking offline campaigns

Many companies will reference promotional URLs or so-called vanity URLs (we hate that term) in offline Print ad, Direct Mail and TV campaigns to make it easy for the customers to fulfil the offer.

Of course, they also want to track the effectiveness of different promotions.

Best practice in such offline or multichannel tracking has been explained well by Avinash in his post: Multichannel Analytics: Tracking Online Impact Of Offline Campaigns.

The core technique is to use a 301 redirect which appends a campaign code. He gives the example of http://www.dell.com/tv which redirects and appends a (non Google Analytics) tracking code referencing TV:

http://www.dell.com/content/topics/segtopic.aspx/tv?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs&keycode=6Vc94&DGVCode=TV&dgc=TV&cid=11510&lid=985367

As with digital campaign tracking, offline campaign tracking should use standard codes for medium, source and campaign name.

Step 7. Tracking outbound or external links and downloads.

Unlike other web analytics tools and notably Index Tools (now Yahoo! Web Analytics) which has done this for 5 plus years, Google Analytics doesn’t record external links and downloads without additional configuration! This is a pretty serious limitation for publishers and B2B lead generation sites which need to measure document downloads.

Help is at hand, since both external links and downloads can be recorded using a similar approach which uses a script developed by Brian Clifton. This uses a similar approach to that described previously for measuring internal links based on a virtual pageview, but it doesn’t require individual links to be hand-coded, it is done automatically.

External links are recorded in content as a folder /ext/ and downloads in a folder /downloads/ and it should be remembered that these are recorded as duplicate page views unless filtered.

However, it does require that the data collection script is moved to before the <head> part of the page template, it references an additional Javascript .js file and the body tag calls a script <body onLoad=”addLinkerEvents()”>

Details on setup are explained by Brian Clifton in this post on tracking external links and document downloads.

Step 8. On-site search

Analysing the volume and types of searches completed by site visitors can pay dividends to find the type of content visitors are looking for and whether they can actually find it or leave the site frustrated!

These types of insights are available:

Google Analytics Search

If you are using a Google appliance for search or Google custom search for providing on-site search configuration is straightforward. But other search engines can be integrated through specifying the query string parameters to Google Analytics.

• Google Analytics Help on-site search setup.

Step 9. E-commerce tracking (optional).

E-retailers will need to enable E-commerce tracking for their Profiles since this isn’t enabled by default. Ticking the tick-box will be straightforward.

The reports summarising E-commerce transactions and revenue within require inclusion of additional tracking code on the checkout completion page specifying order and product information.

Including the transaction information about the order and product(s) will be less straightforward, but many popular E-commerce systems will support this.

If you are coding this or inserting manually (e.g. for event tracking), in addition to the standard tracking code, the _addTrans() and _addItem() Javascript functions need to be included as in this example from Google:

<script type="text/javascript">
  var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-XXXXX-1");
   pageTracker._trackPageview();

  pageTracker._addTrans(
    "1234",                                     // Order ID
    "Mountain   View",                          // Affiliation
    "11.99",                                    // Total
    "1.29",                                     // Tax
    "5",                                        // Shipping
    "San   Jose",                               // City
    "California",                               // State
    "USA"                                       // Country);

   pageTracker._addItem(
    "1234",                                     // Order ID
    "DD44",                                     // SKU
    "T-Shirt",                                  // Product Name
    "Green Medium",                  // Category
    "11.99",                                    // Price
    "1"                                         // Quantity  );
 pageTracker._trackTrans();
</script>

• Google Analytics E-commerce Help Documentation

10. Tracking and grouping visits from social media

I have added this step prompted by the excellent Econsultancy post by Ran Nir of Conversion Counts on 2 easy ways to track social networks in Google Analytics . I personally find it easier to use option 2 using Google’s Advanced Segmentation, which will also give historic data (Option 1 is to setup  a filter). The steps Ran recommends are:

1. Head to ‘Advanced Segments’ in your main Google Analytics profile

2. Create a new segment and drag the ’source’ box which under ‘Traffic sources’ to ‘dimension or metric’ window

3. Open the ‘Condition’ drop down, select “Matches regular experession” and  paste the following sources:

digg|aim|friendfeed|econsultancy|blinklist|fark|furl|misterwongs|wikipedia|
stumbleupon|netvibes|bloglines|linkedin|facebook|del\.icio\.us|urner|
twitter|technorati|faves\.com|newsgator|PRweb|msplinks|myspace|bit\.ly|

I preferred to call my segment “social media” and also note the 256 character limit and you have to go through to remove spaces.

The graphic below shows the results when I apply this segment to my “All traffic sources report in Google Analytics” - you can see that Twitter is most important for me (although this doesn’t include visits via Twitter monitoring  tools like Tweetdeck) and that Facebook is also significant - my tweets are syndicated to Facebook as status updates and friends then clickthrough when interested.

Step 11. Configuring users, dashboards and emailing reports

Basic configuration of standard reports is possible through adding any report to to a dashboard through a button at the top of any  report.  Custom reporting is also available.

Emails can also be scheduled to send thse reports for different types of users.

Footnote

Well, that post took a while, but it seems that so many site owners and marketers have this issue, so I thought it would be worth giving a checklist to work to with links to more detail information.There’s a lot more I could write about using Google Analytics for improving the results from search engine marketing and landing page optimization, but that will be another post.

Please let me know anything you feel is missing or inaccurate since I intend to keep this checklist updated as Google Analytics introduces new features.

Since I wrote this post and perhaps inspired by it, Future Now Inc have posted an excellent assortment of different blog posts and videos on configuring Google Analytics - essential reading.

• Complete site optimisation survey

Through completing the survey myself, I’m sure that doing the survey and reading the summary report will change the way you approach marketing improvements to your site.

This research is by Conversion rate optimisation expert Craig Sullivan who has extensive experience of conversion optimisation through positions at a range of transactional e-commerce sites including John Lewis, Ocado, Lovefilm and most recently Belron. 

As a thank you, Craig will share insights with everyone who helps or participates - You’ll also be entered into a prize draw for an iPod Touch 16Gb or a £200 donation to your favourite charity.

Craig is also developing a “Holistic Site Health Check” which I have been reviewing and I’m looking forward to sharing that with you shortly.

Readers of this post may also be interested in my compilation of site conversion rates (transactional ecommerce).

Thanks Dave

Whether a site design is effective naturally depends on the ability of the designers at a web design agency to select a modern design style with  interactive design elements.

That’s why all marketers need to keep in touch with rationale behind the latest design styles and why I was keen to talk to a Twitter contact, Jim Callender of Callender Creates, a web design agency whose client portfolio showcases current design styles well.

As a freelancer, Jim has worked on many high profile site such as the Times Online redesign, eBay, Royal Mail, Travelbag, Expedia, Halifax and Audi. Awarded ‘Digital Freelancer of the Year (Digital/Media)’ 2006.

Getting the balance right

Q1. For me, an effective design is naturally user-centred, but must balance striking visuals that support the brand against usability, accessibility and delivering the right marketing messages to gain a response. So that’s quite a challenge…

How does your design process seek to get this balance right? Can you give us some examples of client sites which illustrate this?

[Answer: Jim Callender, Callender Creates ]

Good question. This is something that is continuously evolving as the web gets older, with new technologies being added to the web designers toolbox. We can also learn directly by observing how users understand and interact with the web sites and online applications they use. A good question to ask users is why they come back to their favourite sites on a daily basis? What features are those sites offering their users?

One factor that has not changed since the early days of the web, is that web sites have to be credible, and to create a sense of trust that will encourage the user to learn more about what information site is offering. This will always be the case, if the message is wrong or doesn’t ‘feel’ right in the users mind the user will click back to the Google results.

This emotional response cannot be measured accurately on the web, emotional responses to colours, font-size and page layouts. For example, on a corporate site of a multinational company how would you feel seeing a design that uses comic sans font and a black background?

To support your online brand and business we now have to measure and adapt to what is happening on and around our brands. Businesses that are not evaulating their web analytics/traffic and monitoring their ‘brand buzz’ online are not going to go the distance compared to businesses that are this proactive and having direct discussions with customers.

Think a static marketing message, like a billboard advert, compared to say how Virgin are using Twitter to have a direct dialogue with users that mention ‘virgin’ on the social network. Businesses that ask web design companies just for brochureware sites are missing the point with what the potential or reaching an international audience on the web. It’s our job as web professionals to point out and build into a web design project the opportunities to develop their online brand and reputation as well as creating a clearer company message online.

Finally, over the last year, we have seen a steady rise in copywriters who are proving to be a valuable addition to any professional web team. Advising on the best use of keywords and call to action in site headings. Making a web site interface easy to scan, and understand the different areas of a homepage for example.

Examples (of good effective design process - * not client sites)

Blogger.com * - Clearly signposted task driven actions on the homepage - ‘create blog in 3 easy steps’ - users will know exactly what to do from these instructions, they are also reassured further by the friendly images on the site, and doesn’t need to explain any of the technical details. Therefore, accessible for users to understand, and results in most users getting what they came to the site to do, creating a blog for free!

YesInsurance * - This site uses straight-forward headings, it’s obvious they have thought about the correct wording for the title for each module of the homepage. Using copywriting to ‘call out’ to the user, it makes the site easily and quickly understood. It also creates a ‘mental model’ of what the user expects to see when they click on a heading through to the subsequent page. ie: van insurance. If you don’t meet the users expectations with a simple process like this, it can lead to feelings of confusion and negative feelings in the users mind.

East Hampshire District Council - Working closely with East Hampshire District Council we created initial wireframes which we tested on users to find out how intuitive the design was and also whether they could understand the different parts of the site. By meeting our users needs and requirements from this early stage, we were able to tailor an experience that is information focused, in a fun, clear and visually appealing experience.

Client design concerns

Q2. What are common client concerns right now when you’re pitching? I’m sure aligning the site with business goals and brand remains crucial, but what other features are they asking for beyond accessibility, usability and SEO-friendlyness?

[Answer: Jim Callender, Callender Creates ]

A number of interesting trends that perhaps sum up the current financial climate.

Establishing a long-lasting relationship with a web design company, like Callender Creates, on a number of levels; as a consultant, designer and programmer.

Being able to demonstrate to your clients that the work you have completed with other clients are of good quality, delivered on-time and you can continue to advise on implementing their web applications with up to date web technologies that are not going to disappear overnight.

Requests from clients wanting to reduce the costs of future site updates, and bring this in-house with a content management system (CMS) package.

This may lead to why a number of recent clients have particularly asked for Open Source software. These products compared to licenced closed source alternatives, are built on strong communities of developers and programmers who can all contribute to creating a more stable and robust software alternative. This type of software are usually free, and just costs time to configure the platform for our clients.

Two types of popular software we use are Wordpress a blog and publishing platform, andMagento ecommerce software.

Reducing costs of future updates, and future proofing software ticks the boxes for managers and developers alike. Offering our clients this commercial open source business model yields a web based product that is superior for a fraction of the cost.

Blending video and Flash into designs

Q3. With the popularity of YouTube video online, I’m seeing more sites embed video into the site to enhance the experience and increase conversion. Of course Flash has been used for similar reasons for a long time, although it seems to me as if accessibility arguments have limited it’s use in the UK.

What do you think are the success factors for integrating video and Flash elements into a site? Who does this well in different sectors?

[Answer: Jim Callender, Callender Creates ]

The success of this rich media format (video/flash) depends on what context you use the format in. They have been excellent on gadget sites where a movie can showcase a tour of the new features on a camera for example. However, if a flash movie is just for decoration, users can be quickly turned off and think ‘whats the point?’ - much the same with flash introductions.

Including an alternative or skip link to these formats is often forgotten. Say if the video does not load correctly, or the user does not have the flash plugin installed. We are seeing video and podcast blogs that now have transcripts where there is a text version of the presentation. Which is excellent for demonstrating consideration for your users. Without your users in mind there maybe no one to enjoy your work after all.

Most video channels that have gained popularity over the last 12 months are the ones where you can customise your own theme and embed this into your own web page. Much like the myspace generation have been doing for a while with widgets on their profile pages.

• Vimeo allows full customisation or the video player, and also offers High Definition (HD) embedding formats on its network for the premium level subscription.
• Seesmic was the first service that allowed users to leave video comments on blogs, such as Techcrunch.com. A trend on blogs and social networking sites that should only increase as users gain confidence in creating their own content on the web.

Using web analytics to support redesigns

Q. It used to be the case that review of web analytics wasn’t part of the web design process at many agencies, although this is slowly changing. How do you think it can help? What do your designers look for?

[Answer: Jim Callender, Callender Creates ]

By understanding your visitors behaviour on a site from analytics and direct feedback you can further add to the success of the site in an agile manner from real data rather than your own opinion.

These facts are ammunition in backing up reasons for going in a certain direction with a user interface design for example, and work very well within large organisations. Real user data over personal opinion everytime.

Unfortunately, user experience success metrics cannot be fully analysed like ROI with PPC campaigns, so it is sometimes difficult to sell user experience to managers. However, once positive feedback comes in from an addition you recommended then they will be open to more and more suggestions based on your justified recommendations.

Essential pitch questions

Q. Finally, Jim, please tell us 3 questions that marketers should ask designers when they’re pitching which really help distinguish an agency that is going to deliver great results.

[Answer: Jim Callender, Callender Creates ]

So, what can you do to convince a client that you are right for the job? I have found that most clients don’t want a sales pitch, they want reassurance. They want to know if you can be trusted to help them solve their problem.

1/ Will you be there for the long-term?

Designing a web site is all very well, however clients want a certain level of trust from you so they know if any alterations are required on the site, you can do them. Also clients just want a second opinion on how things work on the web, by you being available you guarantee your position as an expert on web design and interaction, as well as being someone who will be referred by your clients to other companies and suppliers.

You may also be asked about your resilience plan if you are knocked over by a bus. Have your answers to these questions planned well before you are asked, that way you can demonstrate that you have the correct processes in place.

2/ What is your design process?

Clients will want to know how you go about creating a site that will match their business plans and also make their customers want to keep coming back to the site.

It’s not just about SEO and PPC - after all, sending traffic to your site is no good if uers dont click on the ‘buy now’ link for example, or cannot understand how to navigate using your flash menu.

3/ Can you provide sites that demonstrate good design and user experience?

Recent clients have realised their money has to work harder to get the desired result for their company web site redesign for example. Some budget holders aren’t technical, it is our job as web professionals to walk them through examples of site that do things well, and sometimes site that are terrible just to demonstrate usability issues.

Be smart in 2009

To the designers and developers, the employees and the freelancers, your challenge is to do your best to get work done in a speedy way that does not sacrifice quality. Time really is money, be smart about your efforts and spend it wisely. Don’t leave anything to chance or undone in a way that will cause further stress and anxiety for your employer as they are likely already significant pressure to keep the work coming through the door. Be proactive and anticipate problems that may arise, this way the client will have their full trust in you, even if you do make mistakes, own up and laugh about them which can trivialise them looking back.

Working smarter will not only make business more successful, but ensure that clients are impressed, thankful, and very willing to recommend your business to everyone they know. If you follow these steps then nothing should ever get in your way to being very successful.

Recommended link - “Five things all clients want to know

Over the past few years of running email marketing training courses I have reviewed hundreds of enewsletter templates and often see the same basic errors. Individually they often aren’t important, but if several good practice features are missed, they can definitely adversely affect the experience or response rates.

For other examples to inspire, you may want to download my recent Email Marketing Masterclass presentation.

Two Three best practice enewsletter template examples

Good practice will naturally vary according to sector. The two main enewsletter styles are B2C retail-style for transactional sites featuring products and information-led for business-to-business, relationship development and publishing. We will look at and example from each.

1 B2C transactional newsletter example

2 B2B informational newsletter example

3 Professional services/membership enewsletter

Added this since I wrote the article - includes many of the recommendations here. Have to disclose I gave some informal feedback into the layout for this for this design via my work as a consultant for the cScape customer engagement unit, so very proud of this design, although it’s mostly down to the design team and client reviews.

• View enewsletter example in browser

My enewsletter best practice recommendations

These best practice tips, many of which are illustrated by the Tesco.com example, are generally presented from top to bottom of the creative. But we start with the most important practical issue which although obvious seems to be forgotten by many print designers working on big brand accounts.

1. Ensure enewsletter version effective in image-blocked version. Many subscribers will initially view your enewsletter with images blocked which is the default in Outlook and most webmail readers

You should design and test that your template, creative and messaging is effective for this situation

Many of these other recommendations flow from this such as the prompt to view in browser.

2. Use a clear, consistent brand ident. Reassure your readers you are a trusted sender. If your branding isn’t clear your enewsletter will be deleted or ignored.

Use familiar typography, background tints and logos based on brand guidelines. Is the enewsletter “on-brand” even if all references to the brand are removed?

The from address is also important…

3. Use an identifiable from address. The physical email address (here Online@mailing.tesco.com) and the display address (Tesco.com) should reference the brand rather than an email service provider.

4. Devise an engaging subject line. Usual subject line guidelines apply:

• Shorter tends to be better
• First three words most important as readers scan their inbox
• Make relevant through targeting
• Highlight value
• Add branding if relevant

In this example, the subject line is “James Bond Quantum of Solace only 7.00 GBP* from Tesco Entertainment” generally works well.

This is a specific offer, featured in the introductory copy. More generic subject lines may also tease the subscriber to read more. For example, Tesco also use: “Check out This Week’s Great New Releases at Tesco Entertainment“.

5. Include a prompt to view in browser or mobile version. Make this meaningful. Most enewsletters now do this, although relatively few recipients will select this option. Keep this short and sweet.

In 2009, HP prompted with this non-geeky way:

6. Include a whitelisting prompt. Again not many recipients will act on this, except perhaps for their most personally trusted brands, so better to encourage during initial subscription confirmation emails.

7. Use an effective banner width. The banner width will often be used by the designer to control how the creative is displayed. If the banner width is set too wide, this may require the reader to scroll right - an unsatisfying experience which may truncate some of your headlines and offers. l advise a maximum width of 500 pixels although 550 to 600 are commonplace.

Specify the height and width in pixles of banners and other key images since these will
be used to control layout when images aren’t downloaded.

8. Use an effective banner-depth. It’s difficult to get this balance right. You will certainly see email designs where an image banner is too broad and it pushes the content below the fold.

9. Integrate navigation bar with website.  Linking to different product categories is a common approach in retail enewsletters. It could be used more widely in non-transactional enewsletters to link to different website sections.

10. Use a distinct text headline. Since the image banner will often be blocked, a large font headline is a must-have for highlighting the lead feature or main offer of the newsletter.

11. Include a table of contents. Particularly important for informational enewsletters, this can reduce the problem of subscribers not scrolling down to later features. Usually positioned in the top left or right, it is generally best implemented as a jump to a named anchor rather than a link to the website:

Link HTML:

<a href="#feature 1">First feature</a>

Label for anchor:

<a name="feature1">Feature name</a>

The link syntax to a named anchor:

12. Encourage the viral affect. A simple forward to a friend / forward prompt to a colleague will encourage some subscribers to forward.

13. Include a subscribe option. This may seem redundant, but if an enewsletter is forwarded, an easy subscribe option needs to be present, likewise for browsers of archived enewsletters.

14. Include personal subscription preferences. These can be incorporated into top-menu bar or as in this case, from the HP.com newsletter, a menu bar below the main content.

15. Consider a personalised editorial. This helps make your enewsletter more personal and can stress the main offers or features with a text link through to the website which will often generate a high proportion of clickthroughs.

16. Incorporate your main brand value messages. Emphasise your customer value proposition, for first-time customers. This is an example from online office supply retailer Euroffice (www.euroffice.co.uk).

17. Group related features into common sections. You can highlight the different parts of your proposition through using section headers, each of which can contain several features. This works particularly well for informational enewsletters.

18. Make feature headers or product offers readily clickable. Rather than using a tiny “read more” link under the snippet about the feature, make it easy to read more as shown by this imediaconnection enewsletter which has nice large point size feature headlines which are underlined for a mouse rollover.

19. Use quality images. The double digit open rates achieved by many enewsletters show that images are often downloaded and quality images appeal, so use larger high-resolution product shots.

20. Make it social. Newsletters that include comments or testimonials from your customers are more engaging. Social options include.

For transactional emails:

• Customer reviews
• Customer ratings
• Most popular products

For informational emails:

• Surveys and polls that can be rolled forward to the next edition
• Top blog postings or discussion forum topics
• Featured customer stories or case studies

21. Use a multi-column design (with care). Using a multi-column format can help fit more content above the fold and make the design more visually appealing. It is essential for retail enewsletters.

22. Use 4-6 panels or areas of visual emphasis. Help the user to scan by limiting the number of areas with visual prominence to a maximum. I recommend “Focus on Five” as a mnemonic.

Tinted background-colours can help add visual emphasis

23. Include an unsubscribe option which links to a communications preferences centre. Of course offering unsubscribe is required by the privacy laws in many countries. But don’t make it too easy to unsubscribe. Offer options to change or limit the types of features / offer or frequency.

24. De-emphasise the T&Cs. The terms, conditions and privacy conditions are essential and should be reasonably easy to read, but through use of a lighter colour grey smaller font they can be setup so they don’t detract too much from the visual design.

Please let me know other factors you think are important via the comments.

If you’re an email marketer, here are some other enewsletter guidelines you may find useful:

• My pre-send Email marketing copywriting checklist
• Exec summary of Jakob Nielsen’s Enewsletter Usability report
• Dotmailer 2009 Retail Email newsletter benchmarking report

The Facebook pages page doesn’t really give any good company examples - just the NYT, so in a Tweet I asked “Do you know good examples of Facebook company pages please?”

These are the responses I wanted to share with others - more welcomed in comments! Not looking at Facebook Applications here.

1 STA Travel Facebook page - c 24,000 fans

Thanks to @chriseden who says “I like STA Travel’s. Some good features and very human voice. They’re quite active in responding too”.

Notice how they incentivise recruitment of fans and participation through a prize draw if you become a fan and take a picture.

2 Social media for small business - Powered by Dell - 33,000 fans

Thanks to David Hughes of NonLine Marketing for this - a useful resource showing sponsorship options for Pages.

3 Marmite - 230,000 fans

Thanks @guy1067  and  David Hughes. Yes, Marmite is my mate too.

4 Howies Facebook page  - c 1,000 fans Howies are a clothing retailer. 

Thanks to @marksnichoson for this one. Mark recommends this because Howies enagage with their audience on facebook. I like the question “What would you want howies to do for you?” which attracted over 60 responses.

5 The National Trust - uses a Facebook Group - 1,200 members

Thanks to @DJBenLogan who says  ”Hey Dave - The National Trust seem to update their Facebook group frequently with video content etc“.

This is an example of a Facebook Group rather than a page. For me, Facebook seems to have not developed the Group functionality as much as other areas, so I think the Facebook pages are now the best way to go. 

6 Wiggly Wigglers - organic gardening (group with 1,400 members)

Thanks to @einbusiness_JG

7 Another small company advocate is Claire @preseliventure who says: “we use FB extensively for managing r’ships, it works brilliantly, generates enquiries, and drives traffic to our website “

Other Facebook pages and corporate social media examples 

Here are some others via Peter Kim’s recent and impressive List of Social media examples  which also has some examples of Facebook fan pages and Facebook apps. Thx to @peterjabraham for the tip.

- 8 http://www.facebook.com/applestudents > 1 million fans

- 9 http://www.facebook.com/pages/innocent-drinks/7211436203 - 13,000 fans

- 10 http://www.facebook.com/pages/Kodak/20385151754 - >3K fans and good use of visuals.