Pivot + Levy

Viral Video: How a simple craftsman captivated the entire globe.

info.nospam@nospam.pivotandlevy.com (davidr) — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 14:13:00 -0600

It was a tiny shop, in a small village far from the tourist trade and raucous boulevards of the city. Passed down from father to son more times than anyone in the family could recall, the family trade had always put food on the table, clothes on the children, and created a day of leisure each Sunday. However, the comfort of this moderate prosperity was slipping away, and there appeared little that could be done.

Despair or hopelessness was not of the family’s way, when days passed without an order or a visit that brought the bell above the door to life. Yet there was a day, a day much different from the others, when the bell did ring celebrating the return of Aamir the son who has been lost to the shameless desires of the city and beyond. Recognizing the dire mood of the shop, Aamir said, “Papa, I know you have not so isolated yourself to be unaware of the Internet?”

“Yes, but why speak of it now?” It has little to do with the life your family leads, and I can open that door and within a few steps greet everyone I know. Why do I need this Internet you speak of?”

Pleading with Papa to understand the nature of the Internet and viral marketing, he realized it had to be framed in the familiar. “Papa, what happens when a customer leaves this shop, joyous with the good work you have provided them?”

“Our commitment to good work creates talk among friends and acquaintances. Our good work has its own voice and is passed from friend to friend.”

“Papa, in my world, we call that viral marketing. Yes, it is a fancy term, but as you and others have learned, the age-old practice of conversation is perhaps the best way to find success within your community.

“Upon my return I find the family happy, yet I sense times could be better. What if I were to apply a new approach to the age-old practice of conversation to ring that bell a few more times each day?”

Skeptical, Papa replied, “My son, this is to be your business one day, so perhaps this is the proper time, as times have changed and you are the best to know what this means. So, what is it that we should do?”

“I will ask that you do very little, but I will promise that the vitality that we once enjoyed will return, bringing you more prosperity than you could imagine. There is just one thing I will ask of the family. There will be temporary sacrifice, but the reward will be worth the price. Please ask my brother Muntadhar if he can join us, as he will be instrumental in this plan.”

“You mean your brother the writer?”

“Yes Papa. What I will ask my brother will only take a moment of his time. Papa choose the best of what you make with his own hands. Have Muntadhar wear them proudly, and when the time is right toss them at the President of the United States.”

“But how will this help us?”

“Trust me, your bell will ring, and customers from near and far will turn to the most famous cobbler in the land.”

Today your agency should be talking business rules & application development.

info.nospam@nospam.pivotandlevy.com (davidr) — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 11:18:00 -0600

We live in an application-driven world. Contact with one another, contact as a customer; or contact with a potential business partner will be facilitated by an online application. The best of these encounters are invisible; the worst shatter the experience where the results can be catastrophic and costly. Any application, no matter what the intended functionality requires a clear and concise set of business rules to delivery the right experience, to the right user at the right time.

Beyond the fringe of core services provided by traditional agencies, application development is often pushed to the tactical realm long after a strategic plan is in place. This afterthought approach in fact defines the customer relationship experience as an afterthought and as such, in today’s connected universe, you’ll hear about it.

In the world of IT, application providers build applications; some include assessment of current business practices where translation to a technical solution is required, often without regard to the brand or the customer experience. Others choose to offer up boxed solutions, where one size never fits all. Again promoting compromise of the customer experience.
Forrester Research makes a great case for strategic process to address the classification of users and the subsequent rules to ensure an appropriate and successful online brand experience: POST, an acronym, that sets up the assessment process: 1) People, 2) objectives, 3) strategies, and 4) technologies. It is not at all unusual to see companies seek out technologies, and then fit the customer to the system. This never works, and dilutes the value of the customer relationship. It continues to surprise us that the customer is the last to be considered at a time when a customer’s voice can so easily be heard – and shared.

Defining business rules can be straightforward, and resolving the structural definition of a sales organization is imperative as the first step in building any application intended to serve a distributed sales organization, a specific group, as well as a single individual. We have found that companies are secure in their belief that their channel organization is well defined by criteria such as geography, product, and a channel management hierarchy. However, these criteria can be ambiguous and usually require moderate restructuring to articulate an absolute picture of the organization, its partners, and customers. Once in place, the foundation is set for the development, distribution and targeting of applications to serve the sales organization, channel partners, and most importantly the customer.

If an agency is not speaking in these terms, and targeting is limited to a demographic discussion, focus groups and test markets, it must be 1990.

The Last Mile: A Better Experience Makes All The Difference

info.nospam@nospam.pivotandlevy.com (mattt) — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 11:50:00 -0600

At Pivot + Levy we focus on the last mile—the final points of contact between your brand and your customers. There are multiple facets to the last mile that encompass consumer facing web sites and the experience at the point of sale. But one issue that overarches everything when it comes to influencing how people actually behave is the user experience—or how well things work.

A simple example from my personal life illustrates this point. About a year ago I was called for jury duty. Rather than pay the ridiculous parking rates in downtown Seattle, I decided to use mass transit for the first time. One of the things that kept me in my car for so long was, frankly, my intimidation about learning to use the Metro system. Metro’s web site does offer a trip planner but I found it clunky, difficult to use and not that helpful in making my route visual to me.

And then I found Google Transit.

The Google Transit system uses the exact same data as the King Country Metro trip planner, but the interface is so much more elegant, easier to manipulate, and, critically, blends Metro data with Google’s excellent maps. As a result of using this tool, I overcame my reluctance to use Metro and have become a committed user of mass transit (and this was long before gas nudged near $5 a gallon).

The key idea here is that it wasn’t data that changed my behavior, it was a superior interface. It was a better user experience that got me on the bus. In this example, Metro failed in the last mile (no pun intended) because, despite the massive investment in resources and advertising to increase bus users, they failed to convert me due to my online experience with their brand. Fortunately for them, Google came to their rescue.

The issue of usability is at the core of what makes a truly effective business extranet or consumer web site. Often it’s not the capabilities of the software that define whether a solution will be a success, but how quickly it is embraced by users. Well thought out and implemented user interface and user experience design are key to driving user adoption. Tremendous efficiencies can be gained by automation. Communication can be made much more timely. Prospects can be responded to more quickly and at lower cost. But only if the system is actually used by the people it’s intended to benefit.

Failing in the "Last Mile"

info.nospam@nospam.pivotandlevy.com (mattk) — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 16:21:00 -0600

We at Pivot + Levy have been talking a lot about the "Last Mile" lately. This is the final point of contact between thinking about buying and actually purchasing - the consumer facing website and the retailer. If your final customer is excited about a big purchase, but can't explore the product online, or knows more about the product than the salesperson they interact with at the retail level, your brand has failed them.

Recently, I have experienced this. I am in the market for a new pair of glasses, something I haven't purchased since 2003. Because of their great customer service, I headed back to Seattle Eyewear where I shopped before. After trying on what seemed like 100's of frames, I stumbled across a pair of KLIIK frames from Denmark that I really liked. They only had a couple frames in a couple colors that worked for me, but the brand seemed very intriguing.

So I headed to the KLIIK website. At the homepage, you are asked to select between a Flash or HTML site. No matter which one you select, a popup opens, and this now serves as the website. That is, however, until you select the catalog. This selection opens a new window in the original browser. Talk about bad UX.... To top it off, you can only view 4 of the hundreds of frames they offer unless you have a login and password.

I do not understand the thinking behind this. The entire collection does exist on the website, so no added production work is needed to let the customer browse your entire collection. And, this is not the type of purchase normally made online, so sharing this information would not alienate the dealer. Customers will still need to head to a dealer to try the glasses on, have measurements made, and to place the order.

Consider the money KLIIK spent on the Flash intro on their website - the models, the photo shoot, and the music. Why not spend a little more time thinking about the "Last Mile", and how your customers will want to interact with your product?

Google Indexing Flash... kind of

info.nospam@nospam.pivotandlevy.com (seanm) — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 17:06:00 -0600

So the big news in the Flash development world is Google's latest announcement that they have improved their indexing of Adobe Flash files. But what exactly does this mean to developers?

Google has been indexing Flash since 2004

Well, the news isn't exactly as groundbreaking as some first thought. For starters, Google has already been indexing flash files since 2004. Google's spiders have been able to view any static text information since shortly after Macromedia released their Flash Search Engine SDK. The difference with this latest update is that Google's mystical little crawlers can now access dynamic text as well as recognize URLs in that text.

Because it deals with their algorithms, Google is very close mouthed about the specifics of this change. But of the three technical limitations they (Ron Adler, Janis Stipins, and Maile Ohye) cite, two of them stand out conspicuously.

1. Googlebot does not execute some types of JavaScript. So if your web page loads a Flash file via JavaScript, Google may not be aware of that Flash file, in which case it will not be indexed.
2. We currently do not attach content from external resources that are loaded by your Flash files. If your Flash file loads an HTML file, an XML file, another SWF file, etc., Google will separately index that resource, but it will not yet be considered to be part of the content in your Flash file.

No JavaScript?

The first isn't too bad at first blush, but it raises quite a few questions. Best practices for embedding Flash has involved the use of JavaScript for years now. Most developers use scripts like SWFObject to do the dirty work and take care of IE's old problem with Eolas and the ActiveX warning. So does using this method cancel out Google's new ability? Or would a simple noscript tag be good enough for their bots? And what about libraries like SWFAddress? Which would you choose between, having Flash indexed in this new way, or deep linking, bookmarking, and analytical functionality?

Dynamic without being flexible

The second caveat is much bigger and makes the new indexing possibly pointless, some would say worse than pointless. What is the point of dynamic text if you can't load dynamic data? And does "external sources" cover Json and other text files? How about Remote Objects? Google simply doesn't tell us enough.

What's more, as some of the anti-Flash crowd (I'm looking at you Reddit) have pointed out, is that this might encourage old, bad habits. If keeping your data separate from your presentation loses out to SEO, than the myth that Flash pieces aren't maintainable starts to become true.

And then there's this point:

At present, we are only discovering and indexing textual content in Flash files. If your Flash files only include images, we will not recognize or index any text that may appear in those images. Similarly, we do not generate any anchor text for Flash buttons which target some URL, but which have no associated text.

So does this mean that URLs appearing within the Flash are only indexable if they are spelled out explicitly, or that they need to be labelled? Once again, we simply don't have enough information.

A step towards a more open Flash player

But for me, whether this proves to be a boon or a bust, the big news isn't Google's update, but the change at Adobe that instigated it. In yet another step that may eventually lead down the garden path of an open source Flash player, Adobe opened up the player up to Google and Yahoo in order to facilitate this change.

Adobe has provided Flash Player technology to Google and Yahoo! that allows their search spiders to navigate through a live SWF application as if they were virtual users. The Flash Player technology, optimized for search spiders, runs a SWF file similarly to how the file would run in Adobe Flash Player in the browser, yet it returns all of the text and links that occur at any state of the application back to the search spider, which then appears in search results to the end user.

More to come

And here's the kicker. This is just the start:

We are initially working with Google and Yahoo! to significantly improve search of this rich content on the web, and we intend to broaden the availability of this capability to benefit all content publishers, developers, and end users.

I'm not sure how far behind the curtain Adobe will eventually let us look, but they're not through just yet. Until they do, we're very much in the dark regarding the specifics of Flash's new searchability. If I can find the time, I intend on doing a little experimenting to try and fill in some of the blanks that Google left out. I'll post my results if I do.

But what does this mean for marketers

The jury is still out on exactly how this affects web strategy. There's simply not enough information available to make a judgement call. In the meantime, Flash implementations that were a bad idea yesterday because of SEO, should still be treated like a bad idea today.

Web 2.0 for the masses

info.nospam@nospam.pivotandlevy.com (kevinb) — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 17:34:00 -0600

Generally the public and those in the media outside of the advertising and marketing world latch onto snippets of what we do every day and think they "get it" because they know a bit of the terminology. In the 80s and 90s it was "desktop publishing" - why should I hire a real design firm when I can get PageMaker and do desktop publishing myself? In the early days of the web, it was about "hits" - how many hits a website received raised it above its peers.

The concept of Web 2.0 is soon, if not already, going to be at that same place. The mainstream media has heard the term but generally doesn't get that it's more than just big shiny buttons and simple social networks.

How refreshing, then, to see an entry today from BusinessWeek of the 10 Commandments of Web Design that pretty much gets it right. Their Biblical hyperbole not withstanding, it's a good list that will introduce to a wider audience the sentiments and approaches we've been preaching for years.

The wisdom (and weakness) of crowds

info.nospam@nospam.pivotandlevy.com (mattt) — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 14:46:00 -0600

Had lunch with a good friend I hadn’t seen in a while and we spent a lot time talking about the Pokémon trading card game. I don’t know a thing about Pokémon, but what “Joe” told me about how the game works posed some interesting questions about the concept of the “wisdom of crowds”.
Joe has been mad for card trading games for years. And while Pokémon is aimed at kids, he’s a serious player and competes in the “senior” category. According to Joe, game play is pretty simple—a player assembles a “deck” and competes in a sort of rock, scissors, paper way. Each year, Pokémon issues a new series of cards and there’s a season ending in an international tournament every year.

Players from all over the world share ideas about strategies and figure out what combinations of cards are the most effective. In other words, they create a global “evolutionary” environment where many, many players are constantly making tweaks and figuring out winning combinations. The result is an unbeatable “super deck” that, if played well, virtually guarantees a winning result.

Joe told me he’s been expecting to meet an individual player who’s better at assembling a deck than he is, and he’s not found one yet. But he can’t beat the super decks. He’s a very smart guy with a strategic mind, but as he said, “I’m not smarter than the internet.”

I asked him, “But where’s the fun, just in the winning? If everybody’s playing the proven performer, where’s the suspense, the fun, of competing?” But he told me there’s a catch. Typically, most of the players that make it to the finals are playing the super deck, but that is often not who wins. Even though “the internet” has created the super deck, it’s often the individual who’s come up with the combination that beats that deck that takes home the trophy.

I think this example has interesting implications for the nature of social networks. There’s no question that a large number of people contributing to finding a solution to a problem can often lead to a really smart solution, a solution that’s “smarter” than you are as an individual.

But we shouldn’t forget that there is still that potential out there for a scary smart individual to beat the crowd, and do it consistently. To rely only on the wisdom of crowds would be a mistake—whether in investing, research, politics, etc. Potentially, relying on the crowd misses the opportunity for a contrarian or an original thinker to produce a world-beating idea.

Now that social networking technologies are linking more and more “crowds” together, do we risk becoming lazy about challenging assumptions and looking for the best solution? When is it appropriate to challenge the wisdom of a crowd? Is it more efficient to go with the almost best solution to a problem, even if it means sacrificing the very best idea? When should we kick over the conventional wisdom, even when it’s proven to be effective?

Dynamic Charting: One Click Intelligence for Real Time Decision Making

info.nospam@nospam.pivotandlevy.com (davidr) — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 09:13:00 -0600

As companies gather more and more information on the customers and prospects, analyzing this data has become tedious, time consuming and expensive. In many cases conclusions come too late and applying learning based upon analytics is no longer of value.

Pivot+Levy has developed a reporting approach that provides dynamic and graphical analysis of any demographic or psyographic inputs from online forms. These may include information or subscription requests, or summary data from ecommerce transactions.

A client comments: "What once took weeks and a dedicated staff resouce, has been entirely automated. Critical prospect and product preference data is now available to key decision makers in real time." – JoAnne Foist, Fleetwood Homes.

Purchase Timeframe/Lead Counts & Age Data (Chart is dynamic, and reflects data collected from consumer form submissions).

Most leads plan to purchase within one year. 7-12 months is the purchase horizon most often stated, followed by 4-6 months, and 0-3 months

Sailing for Leukemia: Epilogue

info.nospam@nospam.pivotandlevy.com (davidr) — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 08:24:00 -0600

Saturday, June 7th. No wind, fifty plus boats drifting towards the starting line. The action may not have been on the water, but was found in the spirit of contribution leading up to the regatta and through to the end of the evening fundraising event. Overall, $180,000 was raised. Those sailing aboard Zöe, plus family and friends ashore, raised $7,625 as "Team Eagle Spirt" in honor of John Crane who is currently undergoing treatment for Luekemia.

Thanks to all who contributed, volunteered and participated in the 2008 Leukemia Cup Regatta.

In today's Seattle PI, June 11, 2008, Mary Swift writes.

The demise of the Jeep brand?

info.nospam@nospam.pivotandlevy.com (mattk) — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 16:58:00 -0600

"It's a Jeep thing. You wouldn't understand". You have seen it before, most likely on a beat up old Jeep's windshield behind you at a stop sign. Jeep owners, with CJ's and Wranglers in particular, are a family of sorts. They wave or nod to each other in the streets, signaling a mutual sign of appreciation for each other. This extreme brand loyalty is unique to Jeep among modern car manufacturers.

With such a strong brand following, each new Jeep that is introduced to market faces heavy scrutiny by current Jeep owners. Over the years, Jeep owners slowly accepted the steady modernization of their beloved CJ into the YJ and then the TJ Wranglers. New model introductions, like the Grand Cherokee and Commander, were still true to the Jeep brand promise of being "Trail Ready" and accepted into the Jeep family as cousins.

Then came the new Jeep lineup, and the introduction of the first 4-door Wrangler. It is obviously designed to complete against the FJ Cruiser and Hummer's H3, but has Jeep has gone too far? Does this new Jeep stray too far from the Jeep brand with it's 4 doors and power windows? Or will it’s familiar removable top, slatted grill, and true trail readiness be enough to grant it entrance into the Jeep family?

Only time will tell if this new arrival will be brought into the fold, but the real brand killers come in the form of the Jeep Compass and Jeep Patriot. Both are not built to leave the road and this goes against everything the Jeep brand stands for. Although in the short run these two new models may help Jeep sell a few more vehicles, the potential damage to their brand in a crowded space like the auto industry is not a risk that I would take.

"Live" living on borrowed time?

info.nospam@nospam.pivotandlevy.com (mattt) — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 13:46:00 -0600

Yesterday, Kevin Johnson, president of Microsoft’s platforms and services division announced that the “Live” brand—Microsoft’s flavor of search and online services—could be replaced. Given the many millions that have been invested by Microsoft, as well as the numerous iterations of “me to” services that have been added to their online offerings over the years, this is a pretty stunning admission. The failure of Live to really catch on and represent a credible threat to Google’s dominance has been cast as a branding problem, but I think there’s a real user experience issue that lives just below the surface. I also believe that without addressing this, any rebranding effort is unlikely to make a real difference.

Consider the development arc of Google as a brand. From the very beginning, that empty field centered on a nearly blank page made it crystal clear what Google was about—search. The fact that Google, as a word, has become synonymous with search in the public’s mind goes to show just how successful they have been. I think that you can attribute quite a lot of the brand’s success to the truly simple and intuitive user experience Google delivers.

Microsoft’s latest gambit to essentially bribe people to use Live search just underscores how much they have to catch up. And I think a part of the problem is the way Microsoft always seems to want more from the user if they want to play with the toys.

Visit windowslive.com, and one thing is clear immediately, you’re going to have to give up a bunch of personal information and allow Microsoft to install a whole bunch of stuff on your computer. Pretty strong contrast with the elegant simplicity and immediate gratification of the Google search field.

I’m confident that Microsoft will develop a successful strategy, which is a good thing. Google needs a credible competitor to keep it sharp, and we all benefit when really smart people compete to come up with innovative new services and products. When they get it right, you’ll know because they won’t have to be paying people to play.

Kerning matters-a brief rant

info.nospam@nospam.pivotandlevy.com (mattt) — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 12:03:00 -0600

Pity the poor brand manager--they have to keep track of a million tiny details all the time. But there are times when it pays to sweat the small stuff--one of them being when your brand mark is literally carved in stone. Here in Seattle, the Wells Fargo head office is in a nice skyscraper downtown on 3rd Ave. And if you're at street level, and you happen to be just a touch obsessive-compulsive, you'll notice how the Wells Fargo logotype carved into the stone plaza in front of the building has TERRIBLE kerning. Maybe only one person in a thousand notices, but once you do, it starts to annoy, kind of like getting the Macarena stuck in your head. I'm guessing Wells Fargo has a few bucks invested in their corporate image, so it strikes me a bit surprising they'd let this go in such a permanent setting.

Another example--a local cruise company who has a reputation for going the extra mile when it comes to the details has unbelievably bad kerning for some of its ship names. You may ask, "so what?” but when the name is rendered in four foot high letters that you can see from half a mile away, badly executed kerning really shows. Does this impact their business? Probably not. But when you consider that their reputation is based on delivering a luxury experience, the very name of the ship is sending a subtle message that maybe the cruise isn't quite going to be everything that was promised.

Sailing for Leukemia

info.nospam@nospam.pivotandlevy.com (davidr) — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 16:02:00 -0600

A warm and windy day can always be a excuse for an afternoon of sailing. Better than an excuse, a good cause only comes along once in a while. On June 7, 2008 , the Leukemia Foundation will be sponsoring their annual benefit regatta on Elliott Bay. Two boats from Pivot+Levy will be participating: Barb and Terry Stosser aboard Trofast, their Nauticat 36, and David and Barbara Rogers aboard Zöe, our Fantasi 44. For Zöe and John's family who will be aboard, this will be special opportunity to honor a close friend, father and husband who is currently battling Leukemia. Racing under the banner of John’s Eagle Spirit, it is our hope to bring awareness and support to John, John’s family and others impacted by this disease.

The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society is the world’s largest voluntary health organization dedicated to funding blood cancer research and providing education and patient services.

How to create an army of brand loyalists

info.nospam@nospam.pivotandlevy.com (mattk) — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 10:57:00 -0600

Weber Grills has an army of loyal outdoor chefs that are still cooking on their old charcoal kettles and wouldn't think of buying another brand when it comes time for a new grill. While this may seem like a situation any company would be happy to be in, brands with a diehard user base like Weber are constantly challenged to innovate while not diluting their brand with their existing customer base.

To create brand loyalty you must first and foremost build a product that lives up to expectations.

Weber has been building grills from day one that not only cook well, but are designed to last. You won't see too many functioning 10+ year old CharBroil grills out there, but there are plenty of 20+ year old Weber kettle grills with owners proudly grilling away on them. Weber decided to mobilize their user base and take an indirect crack at their competition when they introduced the Campaign to Promote Grill Decency. As a campaign member, you are delivered informative pamphlets, stickers, and other campaign materials designed to make sure "friends don't let friends buy crappy grills". Members register how many crappy grills they have been able to get converted into Weber’s online, and a worldwide competition is born. Marketing genius!

To sustain brand loyalty you must communicate with your customers and continue to deliver value.

When I registered my three Weber grills with the company I was enrolled as a member of Weber Nation for free. As a member, I am emailed a new recipe each week. The recipes were originally delivered in HTML email format with basic photos. Weber now includes videos of their recipes being prepared by Real Grilling's Jamie Purviance in the emails. A complete, searchable archive of the recipes lives on the Weber Nation website and can be downloaded as podcasts or vodcasts. Now, I am not sure how many pit bosses would be caught getting recipes off an iPod, but that is industry leading innovation!

The Flash Commandments

info.nospam@nospam.pivotandlevy.com (seanm) — Fri, 30 May 2008 12:08:00 -0600

Some recent discussions have gotten me thinking about what is and isn't a good use of Flash. I thought I might illustrate what isn't a good use of Flash, as it's a bit easier to nail down. Mind you, some of these "rules" aren't specific to Flash. Some of them are just basic usability and UI. Without further ado, I give you the Flash Commandments:

Thou Shalt Not Get Between The User and Content

Yeah, you with the splash page - I'm looking at you. If you're trying to decide whether to give the user the option to skip anything on your site, you probably need to rethink whether to even have that element at all (Actually, this day and age you should be rethinking your career while your at it). It's obviously not necessary; otherwise why give the user the option to pass by it. Users come to a site to buy products, gather information, and enjoy content. Don't stand in their way. Don't waste their time. That one extra click you put in front of them could be the one that broke the camel's back and sent them back to the search page to look for a site that will give them what they want in a more straight forward way.

Google is Thy Search Engine, Thou Shalt Not Have Navigation Without Keeping It In Mind

Google might know and record the sordid details of your browsing history, but it can't read the contents of your swf. Flash navigation is usually a bad idea. If for some reason you find a good excuse for Flash navigation be smart about it. You can write your navigation as a bulleted list in standard html for instance, just like Google's mysterious algorithms supposedly like it. Then you can parse the navigation data and send it to Flash via JavaScript, using a tehnique similiar to Mike Davidson's sIFR. This way the user gets the rich Flash experience and Google's spiders get exactly what they're looking for. You'll still want to make sure it degrades gracefully in case the user doesn't have Flash or JavaScript. You'll also want to offer the user the right-click functionality there are used to via Flash's context menu.

Thou Shalt Not Embarass The User

No one wants to unexpectedly announce what page they're looking at to the entire office or library. Don't surprise the user with blasts of sound. Allow the user to choose to hear your content, either with a volume control set automatically to mute, or by requiring them to actively choose to play your content. Exceptions can of course be made, especially in cases like children's sites, but always weigh the consequences. You can never know what type of sound output the user has. "Welcoming" users with loud, blaring noise will see your bounce rate skyrocket.

Honor Thy Father and Mother

This one is a general rule of thumb for all UI, but since Flash developers seem to be more guilty than most about breaking it, I've included it here. Designing a creative and fresh user interface is great, but before you start congratulating yourself for thinking so far outside the box, ask ol' Mom and Dad to give it a spin. Any user interface you design will always be intuitive to you - it better be, you made it. But even if you haven't personally designed it, as someone who lives and breathes the web you're full of thousands of UI assumptions that the average and not-so-average user simply won't see. That's why it's a good idea to sit down with the people that will actually be using your application. Sure, it might be frustrating. But it's even more frustrating to be made to feel dumb and useless by some designer or developer's poorly thought out UI. If the user can't figure out your UI, it's never their fault. It's yours. You're the one that wants them to use your application, after all.

Thou Shalt Take Advantage of Thy Medium

This is the sin of which the now infamous Dilbert.com is most glaringly guilty. For those who don't know, Dilbert raised the ire of the geek-o-sphere when they "updated" their simple and usable UI to a Flash-based kludge. In their example, what reason was there for using Flash that could not have been better filled by other technologies? The developer did not even taken advantage of the most basic of Flash benefits, the stateful nature of the framework. The entire page is reloaded when the user requests the next or previous strip. What's more, the strip is loaded twice each time. First a static .gif is loaded, then the container swf, which then requests the image again. Judging by the load time, the image doesn't appear to cache. So not only is there no benefit gained from choosing Flash, it's actually to the detriment of the experience. The only "advantage" of using Flash that I can see is some over-the-top rollover animations, that I personally find more distracting than engaging. The moral of the story is, use the right tool for the right job. Don't use Flash unless there's a reason to use Flash.

Thou Shalt Separate Thy Content From Thy Presentation

While this rule is obvious to other types of developers, I've met far too many Flash "developers" that don't understand this basic concept. The all too popular notion that Flash pieces are hard to maintain has nothing to do with Flash's capabilities, and everything to do with individual developer and designers' implementations. Arguably, Flash content can be the most dynamic content on the web. Flash can take a great variety of data and asset formats and display them in endless ways. The only limits are the imagination and the laziness of the person building the application. Yet, Flash's reputation as an unmaintainable platform persists thanks largely to designers masquerading as developers. If you're going to call yourself a developer, start acting like one. Keep your data elsewhere, be it images, text, path names, whatever. Over the long run, the major cost of applications isn't in their initial development, but in their maintenance. If you do your job right, you shouldn't ever have to open your authoring files after the project has been delivered.