Google just announced their Knowledge Graph. Not really a surprise since it seems like they were headed that way for a while now. Basically the idea is that they will organize data so that you can explore that topic not only through links but through content on the search page itself. The data will be pulled from “public sources such as Freebase, Wikipedia and the CIA World Factbook” as well as Google’s massive user history. So what does this mean?

1. Google is using third party content without paying for it

2. Google is selling ads around that content

3. The content creators will get less traffic and therefore less revenue

So from my quick review it appears that Google’s Knowledge Graph is a good thing…for Google and probably their users but not for content creators and their websites- what Google calls “public” could mean any website that isn’t password protected. Content creators gave away some milk and now Google’s coming for the cow.

I think a lot of kids growing up in the 90s were inspired by videogames. They evolved in front of our eyes at a tremendous pace. It left me wondering if one day I would be able to get paid to make something so fun and exciting.

The picture below represents how quick things were evolving when I was young. One of my favorite games for the Super Nintendo, Final Fantasy 6 was released May 11, 1995 in the US. Only two years later on September 7, 1997, Final Fantasy 7 debuted on the playstation and completely blew me and all of my friends away. Just look at the difference in terms of graphics alone. It was amazing to leap from 2D into 3D at such a quick pace and get totally immersed in those worlds. I think I had my mouth open for the first 4 hours of Final Fantasy 7 when I got it for my birthday. It was a surreal experience to say the least.

Final Fantasy 6 on the left and Final Fantasy 7 on the right

I investigated going into videogames as a career in high school but through that research I was scared away from the community. There were countless stories of underpaid and overworked programmers and designers, small independent companies getting bought and sold to bigger companies who stifled the videogame creators by restricting creativity and freedom in order to maintain high profit margins. Simply put, videogames weren’t fun anymore for me and I decided to follow a different path.

Fast forward to Factory Week, SmallBox created a videogame as a side project. I participated in the project and it was a really fun to collaborate with my co-workers in a totally different way than I am typically used to. I also had the realization that I was getting paid to create something that I always wanted to create, a videogame.

During SXSW, I mentioned I saw a really cool documentary called Indie Game: The Movie – it’s coming to Indianapolis soon and you totally should go if you have any sort of interest in videogames. It’s being brought in by Indy Film Fest (our marketing strategist Sara serves on the board) and the Indianapolis Museum of Art. Horrible Night, the videogame website I participate in, which is also run by our own Justin Lacey, is helping promote the event too. It’s cool to see the side projects and passions of several SmallBoxers combining for this one event. You can get tickets here.

With all that inspiration behind me, I have taken it upon myself to create a videogame with my girlfriend at home when I am not working at SmallBox. It’s been a wonderful experience and has been really fun working on and brainstorming ideas I have been kicking around since I was 11. Making a game is no walk in the park and I have been brushing up on my programming/design skills in a focused attempt to make something worthwhile.

Jessica

SmallBox developer Jordan is also working on his own game on the side and I had a little preview and was really impressed and humbled about how amazing his work is compared to mine. Seeing it only makes me work harder to make my game as good as it can be.

I think this side project has been improving my work here at SmallBox as well. The process of creating a videogame is very similar to that of a website. It has to be planned, written, designed, programmed, tested and then launched. I find challenges like this outside of work is what leads to a better workday in general. I learn new things I can apply to my daily work. My 11 year old self would be so proud.

SEO is a dirty word. At least, it is when it’s misused and misconstrued, becoming synonymous with trickery, tom-foolery and back-alley antics.

But SEO isn’t a dirty word. It’s search engine optimization. Not search engine tricks, or search engine gaming, or search engine magic.

And here at SmallBox, that’s the way we see it. SEO for us is clean-cut, straight forward and above-board. In fact, we wanted to make sure that everyone can understand our train of thought when it comes to SEO, so we sat down during Factory Week in January to create our own SEO Code of Ethics.

In this list of standards, we stressed that we always adhere to Webmaster guidelines. We never use tricks, our work is transparent, and we always strive to create content that our clients (and ourselves!) can be proud of.

We want you to understand our core principles and best practices, and help give you peace of mind knowing that when we say “SEO”, it’s most definitely not a dirty word.

Read our complete Code of Ethics.

I recently presented on Factory Week for the Reachmore presenters series that my biz coach CJ McClanahan runs. It’s basically a how-to guide for those looking to run their own Factory Week.

SmallBox will be holding our next Factory Week the last week of June. If you are interested in having your team hold its own Factory Week please contact us so we can talk! We have seen Factory Week change our company in so many positive ways and I would love to get a movement going here. If you think you can’t afford to take a week off then I would challenge you to think about all the efficiences and innovations you are currently missing that a week off could deliver for your company. Factory Week works, try it!

This post is part of a series of posts on simple UX techniques you can use in the ongoing quest toward website betterment.

This installment focuses on eliciting user feedback, and since this is quick and dirty style, we’ll talk about a tool we use when time and resources are limited.

Wait, I should talk to users?
First, why do you want user feedback? In the simplest of explanations, users are the ones using your site, so why wouldn’t you want to hear from them? You can make all kinds of assumptions about how someone might find something on your site, or what they might see first, or how they might perceive that button or call to action. But until you ask your users, it’s a lot of speculation and guessing.

Hearing from your users can be a pretty insightful exercise because it can shine a light on the disparity between what you think users do and what they actually do. It can also identify places where users get frustrated or confused. Reducing frustration and making it easy for users to achieve their goals on your site can improve brand perception and keep them coming back to you, all of which is good for business.

But what should I ask?
Good question. The answer to this question depends on what we want to know. Sometimes we want to know how users are using a specific part of a website to find out how we can improve that part. Other times, we want to know if they respond better to one option over another (also called A/B testing). And even other times, we want to see how they might use something that has yet to be implemented (aka testing a prototype). We can ask users many different types of questions and employ a number of methods to ask them (surveys, in-person user testing, remote user testing, contextual inquiry, and so on). The list is extensive.

For us, many times our questions are straightforward and we want to get answers fairly quickly without using a lot of resources. In that case, we use one of the many usability tools out there, Usabilla. Usabilla lets us ask a variety of questions and get helpful data by which we can then make more informed design decisions. (And, as a great supplement to this post, they have a great blog post on 5 Things You Can Test in Under 5 Minutes.)

How it Works
To be clear, Usabilla is a paid service (with a pretty affordable basic plan — and a 30-day free trial) and they haven’t paid us to write this. I just like using it enough to include it in this series. Usabilla allows you to create a brief visual survey for your site that you can then send to your users (through email, social channels, or right on your site — they provide a handy script for that) and get feedback.

For example, we wanted to improve the shopping experience for a client’s website, Floors to Your Home, so first we started by asking users what jumped out at them the most:

And this is what they told us (the results show up as a handy heat map to reveal areas of concentration):

From this data we learned that users are drawn to the logo, the red bar below the main navigation, price, product photo and the free shipping graphic there in the middle. This was helpful information for us know when deciding how to prioritize making changes to this page.

For this same client, we also used this test to ask users what are the most important elements they consider when purchasing flooring:

These results confirmed our hunch that most of their users consider price to be the most important element. We also discovered that users like the room view and knowing there’s free shipping. Again, this was helpful information to start with when we went to rework the page.

These tests were really easy to create and required very few resources to execute, which is a huge benefit. Usabilla also has helpful analytics that can be used to track time spent on a question, as well as notes that users make when answering the survey (not shown here). Keep in mind that this kind of testing still resides in the quick and dirty sphere: it’s great to use as a jumping off point to make high-level decisions and decide on a direction, but it’s not a replacement for rich user testing evaluations and research.

Let us know if you give Usabilla a try and how it works for you!

As promised, we have another round of notes from SXSW, this time from creative director Leigh and client success manager Justin Shimp!

Getting Connected
To echo everyone’s sentiments, my biggest takeaways from our time at SXSW were the deepening connection I felt within our team. It seemed we all grew a bit closer to one another in some way or another… from shared adversity (being locked out for hours in the pouring rain), shared experiences (playing individual and group rounds of “Where’s Jeb?”), shared meals (a team palaver over fine food & wine in an actual vault), and more. The point is, I think we all got to know each other better.

In terms of the event itself, my stand-out moments included Baratunde Thurston‘s talk about the important role humor (specifically satire) is playing in cutting through biased media and political propaganda messaging — not only in the physical realm, but digital as well. It appears that comedy may be the last “trust-worthy” voice of society (provided you have sense of humor enough to read between the lines.)  You can read more about his speech here.

I also enjoyed Jennifer Pahlka’s keynote about her “Code for America” project. Insightful in regards to the challenges facing our local government, services that cannot benefit from the efficiency and cost-savings that advanced technology has been providing the commercial world for years, because of the lack of interest in developing solutions for government entities. Her group spent a year working on simple and effective solutions for three US cities, concepting, designing and building 21 different web-based apps and/or services to solve specific issues facing their respected cities. An amazing concept that seems to really have struck the right note with other SXSW attendees. I hope you’ll read more about it, and maybe even join some of us SmallBoxers who have already signed up for the “Code for America” brigade.

- Leigh Marino

A Trip of Firsts
First off this was a trip of many firsts for me. It was my first plane ride ever and my first SXSW! First off, the plane ride was amazing. I got to meet the pilot and they gave me little pilot wings for my first time ever. It sounds dorky, but it was totally cool.

SXSW started out cold and rainy but it didn’t deter my spirits and quest for knowledge! I met many interesting people and saw some amazing lectures. One of my first takeaways I had was concerning my use of free open wi-fi networks. A couple lectures were based on this topic at SXSW and it was interesting the ways they were able to access many people’s phones and computers just because of the convenience of an easy wi-fi set up. Made me second guess my own security and was very eye opening indeed!

Secondly, I got to meet some really cool astronomers and social media experts from NASA. Their Twitter presence is amazing! There are astronauts in space right now live tweeting! I got a official NASA sticker which is now proudly displayed on my computer.

My third surprise was a couple movies I got to see with another SmallBoxer, Sara. We saw “Indie Game,” which was based on some recent independent game successes of very small teams of one or two developers. Especially after our Factory Week project where we built a video game in one week.

Then we saw an amazing little gem called “Grandma Lo-Fi” about a 70 year old woman from Iceland who takes up recording and composing her own songs. It might not have had a lot to do with web development but it had a strong impact on my desire to create and put my own personal work out there more and share it with my friends.

Overall, I was really happy with the experience and cannot wait to come back next year. Austin is a wonderful city with great locals and places to visit.

- Justin Shimp

The general consensus? We all want to go back next year! See you there?

We’re finally recovering from our trek to Austin for SXSW Interactive. We filled our brains, met some awesome people and shared a few shoe-fives along the way. Our team chimed in with some take-aways from our week in Texas.

SmallBox HQ at SXSW! We rented a house in Austin's SoCo neighborhood.

Teambuilding, Austin-Style
SXSW was a whirlwind of fun and learning, but the biggest takeaway for me was how it evolved and strengthened our team. The structure of our schedules during SXSW allowed space and time for us to hang out and relax with each other. I think in those relaxed states, against the backdrop of Austin and the vibe of SXSW, we were able to “talk shop” without really feeling the pressure of day-to-day project schedules. So we were able to take our conversations to a different level, make connections, and reach conclusions we hadn’t yet made. What I felt during SXSW was a strengthened appreciation for each other with a lot of great ideas thrown into the mix, and I think we brought that back to the rest of our teammates who weren’t able to make the trip.

-Lydia Whitehead

Less Tweeting, More Face Time
I don’t mean Apple’s version of Face Time either. As a SXSW rookie, I half-expected I’d tweet my way through the experience. The combination of less than stellar wi-fi and the sea of incredibly fascinating people made for very little social posting of any kind. I very happily gave up that face-in-phone time to meet some new people from all around the world. I can tweet any time, but when else will there be such a great convergence of tech geeks?

-Sara McGuyer

Big Ideas, Big Inspiration
I was a little frightened that SXSWi would be a huge hobnob around new apps and technology that had huge party budgets (kind of like what SXSW Music has become): WRONG! Well, sure there is some of that, but the core of my experience was a deep inspiration that came from big idea presentations. I tried to do my homework and find the most thought provoking presentations and panels that were not exactly focused on marketing, but rather ideas and technology that change the way we approach business AND life. The epitome of this was a keynote centered on a civic hacking program called Code for America that puts creating beaurocratic efficiencies in the hands of the people. i.e. we create new software for the BMV, the line moves faster.

-Dan Fahrner

Yo! We made it!!! Yesterday, several SmallBoxers made the trek down to Austin, TX for SXSW for a week of technology-focused seminars, speakers, and assorted events. The trip down was a blast—Justin even earned his wings since it was his first time EVER on a plane!) We’ve rented a house down in SoCo and spent the evening getting acclimated to the city. Had a great dinner at The Iron Cactus last night and this morning we’re making a “family” breakfast before heading into town to pick up our badges. I’m sure we’ll have lots more to report as the week progresses — so check back soon!

Once upon a time, in the not too distant past, tricks ruled web marketing. People would buy keyword rich urls (i.e. IndianapolisDoctors.com), throw up some junk content, install Google AdSense or a similar ad system, maybe sell placement (often at a premium) to local companies who badly wanted to win that search, create some links on equally junky websites, win their keyword and watch the leads/revenue come in. I have been pitched some variation of this idea many times. A few years ago it felt a little like a gold rush with everyone wanting in. Hey, it worked! Does it still work? Somewhat, but it’s clearly fading.

Web marketing trickery is mostly based on exploiting inefficiencies. This often includes Google’s algorithm. Finding holes to create an advantage. Some would argue an unfair advantage. These exploitations often result in having an inferior brand win over the superior one that didn’t use that same exploit. This can leave the user feeling cheated, losing trust. Google doesn’t want to lose your trust. These inefficiencies have also rewarded aggressive, new brands and punished some older, rigid brands. Not an altogether bad thing, It’s a hard call to pick winners- global, national, local and categorical winners- but it’s also the core business of search engines.

But the window of opportunity is closing. Search updates like Google’s Panda, enabled by increased computing power, as well as socially connected (and, frankly, no longer naive) users has made these kinds of tricks harder and harder to pull off. But some business owners are still looking for their digital silver bullet. They still hold out hope that some “guru” can pull some magic internet levers and…voila! Money would flow like water. Sorry, but it ain’t gonna happen.

Where does this leave us? For better or worse, it means doing it right, no more tricks. Ok, what’s that? It means building and maintaining your company’s brand ecosystem. This ecosystem usually has your website as the hub with social, email, mobile, search and yes, traditional media surrounding it. Also, it means interesting content and meaningful conversations across all platforms. Don’t forget continual measurement and refinement. Like taking care of your body- you are never done. Doing it right still requires, and rewards, hustle.

This new reality is forcing another change, a cultural one. The time when companies can hide behind an artificial brand is passing. Social Media is pulling back the curtain and exposing the fakes. The erosion of brand control is a scary thing when it comes to marketing. The fact that a company’s brand is based on its culture is just beginning to sink in. This realization will change the way companies are run, much the way it has changed the way countries are run- see the Arab Spring. Companies that embrace this new reality will thrive. Companies that deny it will decline and die. So…

Don’t base your marketing strategy on exploiting inefficiencies. It won’t work in the long run. Computers will only get more intelligent which means fewer holes. Modern marketing starts in HR, put your focus on your team and go from there. Let them tell your story. Good stories are platform agnostic.

Have you noticed any strange web advertising activity lately? Perhaps web ads for sites you recently visited lurking around the furthest depths of your corner of the web… In alleyways, payphone booths, peaking over newspapers looking extra suspicious? This is no coincidence… you’re being retargeted.

The concept of retargeting may not be news to our marketing friends, but with the debate over online privacy and Google’s new “we’re literally going to track everything you do on the web” privacy policy hitting the mainstream, the retargeting web advertising strategy will surely follow suit… and quick.

Retargeting begins when a website places a “cookie” in your browser upon visiting their website. This allows the advertiser to use relevant image and text ads that follow your browsing patterns all over the web and entice you to revisit the site. Many advertisers use discounting sales tactics such as “save an additional 15% off” and even include the exact product you’ve been researching within the ad. Here’s a visual example courtesy of Search Engine Journal:

The goal is to increase the ad campaign conversion rate and it sure-as-heck works. A few recent web browsing studies claim that shoppers visit an average of 5 ecommerce stores while researching their purchase before they pull the trigger. Retargeting is changing the game so that each store is able to stay top of mind with relevant ads throughout the entire process.

We’ve seen results with several SmallBox clients who have experienced an average conversion rate increase of roughly 100% when using retargeting. Oftentimes these conversions also cost 100-150% less than a first time visit. I was pretty impressed by these stats!

How does this relate to email marketing? Think about it: the cookies these websites are collecting are conversion points themselves, much like securing an email address. As retargeting technology grows, the goals of web marketing will shift. It will merely take a visit to your website (or key page) for a user to enter your sales funnel, your company won’t even need their email address.

We’re potentially looking at a gold rush where companies will begin collecting retargeting cookies before they even plan their campaigns. Sooner than later regulations will need to be put in place that operate much like the federal do-not-call list to allow consumers to opt out of website tracking. These regulations are already being discussed by federal agencies.

The takeaway? Inbound marketing is getting evermore sophisticated. The retargeting process itself can grow to include multiple steps, messages and conversion points for each lead or sale. This is certainly good for businesses and advertisers and, if done well, good for consumers as it will allow for even more competitive pricing and pairing of services.

Ready to jump into pay per click marketing? The time is definitely now: the industry won’t be waiting around checking its watch while there are leads and sales to be had.