10 for 10: Looking Ahead to Next Year’s Web Design Trends

I recently did a blog that recapped the Web trends we saw in 2009 and a story in Brand Bounce eNewsletter (click here to receive Brand Bounce, at bottom of page) on what to expect in the coming year.  This blog provides further detail on those trends.

While 2010, won’t be a big departure from the trends that gained traction in ’09, we’ll see some of these trends expanded on and become much more ubiquitous on sites.  This doesn’t mean that you have to cram your sites with all of these trends.  Rather pick and choose the ones that best suit your site and your brand.  But go ahead…experiment a bit.  That’s the beauty of the Web you can introduce and refine.

Want to create memorability?  Try these ideas (click on the images to go to the website):

1. Go Big: Oversized logos and headers have replaced splash pages as a statement.  Some of these designs can, in fact, take up the entire initial screen from which site visitors scroll down.  The rationale behind this?  Studies are finding that users tend to have an initial aversion to clicking, because of too many experiences with bad navigation.  The header and scroll, gives people time to settle into your site.  Some examples:

2. Sketch it out: While drawing and illustration has been a staple of print design, it’s new – and eye catching – on the web.  Get those illustrators on your staffs to dust off their pens/pencils and apply their talents to your web pages.  Why it’s worth considering?  It adds dimension to your site, separates the pros from the amatures and catches attention.  Good examples include:

3. Break the type mold: Bold expressions using typography, like the use of slab typefaces, go hand in hand with the trend to bigger design. Designers continue to push the frontiers on font use as design on the Web.  And our browsing experience is the richer for it.  The true trend setters have abandoned their fears of usability issues and taken to exploring, twisting, and molding fonts to fit their purposes. With the correct placement, a website that utilizes typography as its main design element will be more interesting to a reader than overloading the same site with tons of photos.

Scale doesn’t only apply to type and headers.  It can be applied in terms of your overall site design as well.

4. Get down to the bare essentials and make it personal: one page layouts force you to focus on the essential elements of your story.  One pagers are great ways to introduce your organization and tell your story in other areas of the web where your audiences find you – blogs, social media pages, directories.  One pagers should be more personal – providing users with insights into who you are and what makes your organization tick.

5. Show the big picture: Like big logos and headers, a huge and stunning image does the same thing.  It will create an impression site visitors are likely to remember.  It’s a great opportunity to tell your brand story with those thousand words imbedded in the image rather than typed out on the page!

6. Be a minimalist: Think minimalism in terms of design, but it doesn’t necessarily mean you sacrifice richness.  Instead it means you get directly to the point.

Finally, capitalize on what we know works:

7. Don’t just show, let your visitor do: Interactivity keeps reaching new highs in terms of functionality and usablitity.  The days of the all-Flash, bandwidth hog websites should be disappearing.  And while these over-the-top uses of flash created kind of a mini-backlash against Flash, that should be over too.  Today’s Flash integrates itself into sites much more seamlessly.  Add to that, new tools like jQuery that can mimic a lot of the motion that Flash brings, and interactive design is primed to move to a whole new level.

8. Go Modal: Modal boxes are a great way to bring depth and dimension to your website without over-cluttering the design and muddying the visitor experience/  They can allow you to get more personal with your site visitors by giving the a deeper glimpse into your brand experience.  They’re also a great way to say hello.  Modals take pop ups to the next level – unlike their intrusive predecessors, modal boxes are better looking, operate more smoothly, and user controlled. Here’s WebGuru’s list of the 10 best modal boxes and their accompanying codes…why start from scratch, when someone’s already done it for you!

9. Repurpose the best of what’s old and make it something new: Retro design is a perennial favorite of designers.  Doing retro right takes some skill.  In the hands of a great designer, however, infusing some retro elements into your site could hit the right note for your brand.  The trick is to pay appropriate homage to the vintage art, tap into some of the playfulness inherent in retro design and avoid its sentimentality.

10.  The graphic, well organized format of the print magazine finds a new home online: In the online magazine layout, information is carefully organized on a single home page, giving the visitor an opportunity to explore as interested. The familiar layout will appeal to appeal to anyone who’s ever read a magazine or newspaper.  This isn’t about taking a print publication and putting it online, it’s taking the best of the print magazine format and migrating it to a digital environment.  Blogs, in particular, will adopt this format.  And with the growing popularity of e-readers like Amazon’s Kindle, there will be increasing opportunities to create digital formats of institutional publications like alumni and research magazines, even recruitment publications.

The Rise of DESIGN on the Web

I’ve been working on a number of different web projects lately, and like many other creative directors, have run up against the huge obstacle in creative expression on the Web…primarily the limitation of the medium to allow the full richness of expression one can achieve in print, for example.  Ironic, since most of what you see in print today was created using digital tools!

It’s fair to say that, for the most part, function has outpaced form on the Web.  Most sites, even today, are ruled by the constraints placed on them by programmers tasked with taking something graphical in nature and converting it into strings of words that approximate what the designer has imagined.  As a result, the majority of what we see on the Web has a feeling of sameness.  That said, there are glimmers of a new age of design on the Web, trends that will allow you to break your sites out of their boxes…literally.

Following is a list of the 10 hottest trends playing out in 2009, courtesy of Smashing Magazine [www.smashingmagazine.com/ The magazine compiled over 25 trends worth checking out.

1. Letterpress

One of the most unexpected trends in Web design observed over the last months was the emergence of letterpress (actually pressed letters). Probably the most important reason for this trend is the simple fact that this technique has been rarely used until now. Letterpress is used in various styles, on various websites, and for various topics; in particular, it is often used in product designs and on websites for online services.

2. Rich User Interfaces

Happily, user interfaces in modern websites and Web applications are becoming more beautiful and more usable. Over the last year, the user experience for these applications has dramatically improved, resulting in rich and responsive user interfaces that have tremendous similarities with classic desktop applications. AJAX and Flash are widely used to offer users the dynamic interaction that they have come to expect from advanced, sophisticated, professional solutions.

In particular, we’ve seen much more white space over the last year, much more padding and much more space for various design elements. We also observed that many modern user interfaces display intuitive visual clues to communicate the status of a user’s interaction with the system. For instance, upon being clicked, event buttons often change their appearance from a “normal” to a “pressed” look (as on Newspond.com and Quicksnapper.com), confirming and providing immediate feedback on the user’s interaction with the system. Aside from this, more and more services are now able to be personalized by the user: for us, it’s a clear sign that adaptive user interfaces are coming in 2009.

Both examples are evidence that designers of Web applications are paying significantly more attention to the way in which functionality is presented and are trying to improve the user experience with more interactive and responsive solutions.

3. PNG transparency

PNG transparency, although unsupported by Internet Explorer 6, seems to have gained popularity on the scene over the last year. Apparently, designers are trying to better integrate background images into the actual content and are aiming for a style that is often seen in printed media, magazines for instance. In most cases, semi-transparent backgrounds stand out in the overall background of a page and are intended to highlight an important design element, such as a headline or announcement. Sometimes PNG transparency is used for the background of modal boxes as well.

Last year, we described a variety of ways in which can get creative with transparency in Web design, and many designers seemed to experiment with these techniques in their work. Interestingly enough, transparency is often used either in the header or footer of designs, but some designs go beyond that.

4. HUGE Typography

We presented some outstanding examples of BIG typography in previous posts. In 2009, big typography remains popular. In particular, design agencies, portfolios, product websites and online services will use big typography to communicate the most important messages of their websites.

The font size of these design elements often goes beyond 36 pixels, and in many cases quite expansive typefaces are used to reach an audience. Overall, designers are paying closer attention to typographic details such as leading, line height and choice of font. The consequence: websites are more beautiful and more consistent and look solid and trustworthy.

5. Font Replacement

As designers pay more attention to typography, they also pay more attention to the fonts that are used for the copy in the body of websites. Although classics such as Helvetica, Arial, Georgia and Verdana undoubtedly dominate, we observed a slight trend towards font replacement.

What is interesting is that these fonts are often seamlessly integrated in the design of websites; they are almost never used for their own sake or simply to “upgrade” the typography of a website. Designers are trying to blend beautiful typography and arresting visual design to improve the appearance of websites and improve the user experience.

6. Modal Boxes (Lightboxes)

Modal boxes (dialog windows) are, essentially, the second generation of pop-ups. They serve as a user-friendly alternative to classic JavaScript windows and support users by focusing their attention on the most important area of the website. Modal windows are always triggered by a user action (e.g. signing up or logging in) and appear on top of the main content, like a window in a regular desktop application. Modal windows are often presented in a very subtle way: they are often semi-transparent and have a “Close” button.

7. Media Blocks

With more broadband Internet access, users can now afford to browse more than they did a couple of years ago, and designers can use this opportunity to present content in a more attractive and memorable way. Hence, it’s no wonder that many product websites use media blocks (for videos and screencasts) for this very purpose. The main advantage of such elements is that they can communicate content quickly and effectively and make it easier for users to consume information.

Users just lean back and enjoy the show; they get everything explained to them step by step, without having to click, search for descriptions or learn the navigation. The movies are usually pretty short and get directly to the point; they are mostly formal but can be entertaining, too.

But please make sure that videos are an alternative presentation of, and not the main or only, content on your website. Not every user has broadband access to the Web, not every user is willing to watch a video (e.g. because he or she may have a radio or music playing in the background), and not every user has Flash and JavaScript installed on his or her machine.

8. The Magazine Look

An interesting development in the design of blogs is the adaptation of various techniques usually found in traditional (print) media. The arrangement of posts on the page, the use of typography, illustrations and even text alignment often resemble traditional techniques from print. Grid-based designs are gaining popularity as well but are used mostly in portfolios, product pages and big blogs; they almost never appear on corporate websites or in online shops.

9. Carousels (Slideshows)

Carousels are essentially slide-show navigations. The content rotates vertically or horizontally (hence the name “carousel”). To rotate the navigation, users need to click on one of two toggle elements (usually a left/right or up/down arrow). Depending on the toggle element selected, the content is rotated in the desired direction.

Instead of clicking through various sections of the website for their favorite stories, users can quickly skim through the available stories without vertical scrolling or unnecessary mouse movements. The result: users save time, and the carousel focuses their attention sharply on the content, instead of on interacting with the browser. Such slide-show navigation is often used on entertainment websites and big blogs, but designers also make use of it in their portfolios to showcase their work in a more interactive way.

10. Introduction Blocks

The upper-left area of a website is the most important block on the page, because it grabs the most attention from visitors. Therefore, it makes perfect sense to place the most important message of the website right there and thus make sure that readers get the message as quickly as possible.

In fact, this is exactly what many designers are doing. Whether for a Web application, corporate design, online service or portfolio, designers are pushing their slogans and brief introductions to the top of the page and are using strong, vivid typography to make a good first impression. Some introductions are short, others are quite lengthy; in either case, they usually take a lot of space; the full width of the layout and between 250 and 400 pixels in height are common dimensions for these introduction blocks. Notice, though, that introduction blocks almost never appear in blogs and rarely in online shops.

For all the trends visit smashingmagazine [http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/01/14/web-design-trends-for-2009/]

What Students Are Telling You About Your Website Design

This is the second of my two-part post recounting what we learned in a recent series of online focus groups on website design and navigation.  The objective of the research was to gather input to guide development of a client’s new website.  Participants were high school students from the Midwest reacting and responding to  the client site and four carefully selected comparator websites.

We often use online focus groups to understand how and why target audiences respond to various types of communications.  Like all of our focus group work, these were designed for a specific school, but much of what we learned applies to any college website.

In the first post, What Students Really Want (click here), we laid out four factors that the focus group participants indicated were shaping their reactions when they visited a home page for the first time:

1. Design, content, color that define a strong personality
2. High-impact, descriptive photography
3. Friendly content that gets to the point fast
4. Clear navigation to find desired information easily

With regard to #4 above, careful interpretation of the user-group input identified two categories of information that prospects looked for in the initial website visit to see if they were interested enough to learn more:  Info they needed, and info they wanted.

Information that students need encompasses “Threshold Factors” that determine whether or not your institution can make it to the short list of schools that can be considered.  User group input showed that the pathways to Threshold information have to be clearly identified and easy to follow from your home page:

1. Program listings
2. Tuition and fees
3. Financial aid
4. Location

While you need to have clearly defined pathways to such information, it doesn’t necessarily mean that program listings, tuition and fees, location, and financial aid information should be at the very top of your navigational scheme.

Here’s why:  Focus group participants identified a second critical category of initial information – information they wanted to see.  These are Motivational Factors” that get prospects excited and energized enough to stay on your site and to find out more:

1. Campus setting and student life
2. Scholarships and Awards
3. Reputation
4. Brand personality and promise

Based on the user group input, shaping the user experience in a way that blends both Threshold and Motivational factors in a seamless and compelling way is the sine qua non for an elegant, effective student prospect website.

The more powerfully you communicate Motivational elements on the home page and throughout the pathways that prospects use to navigate to Threshold information – through engaging student-life images, concise brand messages, teasers about scholarship opportunities, designs that convey distinctive personality, and reputation-building proof points –  the more successful your site will be in generating inquiries and interest.

The trick is to communicate this sort of branded motivational information pervasively on your site in short, intriguing bits and pieces so that prospects are interested enough to get to the information they feel they need.  And once they arrive at Threshold information, you want that information to be absorbed within the context of your most motivational branding environment.

Information Architecture: A Little Insight Into How I Start Building

Developing a website information architecture for an institution is usually a fun, yet humbling experience. And I swear I’m not just saying the fun part just for this blog! The process is also humbling in the sense that colleges and universities are complex entities, some more so than others. Some are small, some are large, but in their own ways, all are unique, influential, and mean something to a lot of people (students, faculty, staff, alumni, donors, community members, etc.). Producing a website characteristically entails having to please many audiences, making difficult decisions, as well as reviewing and revising lots of material. Keeping the big picture in mind at all times is especially important.

When I begin the process, I make a point to start with a clear mind and a completely blank slate. I’ll go as far to say that having a cup of my favorite tea hits the spot. I don’t think about previous architectures I’ve helped make or work from any kind of template. Being able to start fresh is a wonderful feeling. This allows for a lot of freedom at the start of the process, but sooner than you might think, there does come a moment that you’ll be reminded of certain rules and/or limitations you need to abide by. Nobody wants to spend time working on something for no reason and working on something that is going in the wrong direction. An example of a limitation might be trying to get the best result with a difference between expectations. Some people have exaggerated expectations, while some have humble expectations and everything in between. Where is the happy middle ground or compromise? Another limitation is the issue of what pages/copy will be migrated over from the clients’ old site is vital to consider. And another limitation is that universities and colleges continuously seem to change and goals always seem to fluctuate and may go under considerable change as you develop the architecture. This mean you’ve got to mix and match what makes the most sense, while at all times striving to create the best possible and most relevant architecture.

But I’d quickly argue that these limitations are where creativity cultivates (say that 5 times fast). It’s not too difficult for me to remember several instances in which I was faced with having to venture away from initial plans, only to end up with a better end product. Stumbling across an alternative solution to your initial issue while all of a sudden simultaneously enhancing another area of the site? That’s a stellar feeling. Additionally, always keeping in mind basic principles and best practices is a given. Nobody likes to overlook the obvious.

To wrap this up, I’d like to revisit the beginning of the process, even before I sat down to drink my tea. Before the development stage, you obviously have to do your research, which includes a review of their current website (all factors, including navigation and brand presentation), several comparator websites, and analytics/web stats. The other part of the preparation is hearing the voices of campus stakeholders. We go through an intricate interview process with as many institution representatives as possible, everyone from the Presidents to students. This is where the nitty-gritty is learned. Little tidbits from different departments and different personalities can mean the world, both in terms of what needs to be done and inspiration for what could be done. Referring to our notes isn’t at all a trying process, it’s again… here comes that word… fun. Searching for the nuggets or website architecture-pertinent information from our conversations is personally rewarding. Without these intimate, in-person conversations, in my opinion, nothing mind-blowing would get made. Hitting on all the details you can while not compromising the overall integrity, usability, and impression of the site is clutch.

What Students Really Want

I just spent a few days reviewing and analyzing input from a series of recent online focus groups.  The focus groups were with college-bound high school students – second-year to fourth-year – who we had asked to react and respond to four carefully selected college websites.

Online focus groups are a great – low-cost – way to crawl inside the heads of your target audiences and understand how and why they respond to your most important recruitment tool – your website.  You should think about doing these on a regular basis.

The Test
We had the focus group participants visit four comparator websites (plus the client’s site) and react to a series of questions about each.  We selected four very different websites for our prospects to review:

1. One was very sophisticated, with high-concept design using graphic treatment instead of imagery, clear navigation, and an array of multimedia and the latest applications on second-level pages;
2. One was businesslike, with a traditional block layout built around a high-impact, attention-grabbing image and prominent text/image teasers guiding users along focused second-level information paths;
3. One displayed a distinctive and inviting brand personality carefully targeting the priority audience segment with inviting, colorful design and intriguing headlines, followed by an extensive list of links to all kinds of information;
4. One was visually busy, filled to brimming with images and eclectic design and typography spaces, news, spotlights, highlighted by conspicuous, inventive links for specific audience segments.

Which of these would you guess got the highest marks for interest and usability?

Winners and Losers
While each of the sites generated positive comments, two of them jumped out at prospects as far-and-away superior in interest, impact, and usability:  The second and third of the four website described above (I’ll send you the urls we tested if you email me by clicking here)!   Surprised?

The website that communicated a distinctive brand personality (#3 above) created the strongest positive impact and “buzz” with participants.  And to address the obvious objection, it even fared well with those who weren’t in the target segment and didn’t resonant with the personality!  Everyone appreciated the fact that the college conveyed pride and openness about their distinctive world view.  “You know right away what’s important to them, and what they stand for.  That’s great,” said one.

Unfortunately, that website lost its appeal just as fast due to its extensive list of poorly organized links, which required too much reading to be worth the effort!   The students didn’t bother with trying to find information; they simply gave up, and fast.

The second winner in our mini-sweepstakes was the traditionally designed workmanlike site that gained power from a single, high-quality branded image and clean navigation.  Based in large part on the impact of the great image, students said the layout projected sophistication, prestige, and elegance.  And unlike #3, this site kept visitors engaged by presenting a clear, logical information flow.  Students liked the pathways to important information in quick, intuitive steps.

The biggest loser was the sophisticated, high-concept site (#1 above).  High school students are so used to reading and interpreting imagery that the absence of it turned them off.   They immediately judged the site to be boring and unimaginative despite the attempt at a chic graphic style.  Too bad, since most participants weren’t interested enough to get to the next level, which was engaging, attractive, fun, and filled with innovative multimedia attractions.   What a waste!

The moral of our focus group study?

Four basic factors have huge impact within 20–30 seconds of a prospect opening your page on their browser:

1. Conveying your unique brand personality through design, content, color
2. Strong, branded imagery that intrigues and/or conveys emotion
3. Concise, conversational copy that gets to the point fast
4. Clear navigational paths to the information that students want most

OK, so that brings up another crucial question:  What information do prospects want most from a website?

The answer – which may surprise you – will have to wait until my next blog post…stay tuned!

Shrinking News Media and What To Do About It

Back in the eighties, I was the national science writer at Washington University in St. Louis. Ah, the glory days of PR, when there always seemed to be a ready market for news media pitches on science stories. Like shooting fish in a barrel.

Research stories have been the traditional go-to area for universities hoping to increase credibility and name recognition in the news media. Twenty years ago, print and broadcast editors – lots of them compared to today – were hungered by the scent of advancements in science, especially when you were able to inject a whiff of economic development into your pitch.

And scientific research – hard sciences and social sciences, both – remains a stalwart for university PR, but the media resources for, and the space/time allotted to, research have both waned. Fewer outlets are devoting less space to research than they used to.

What’s a PR unit to do? Plenty!

The March 09 start-up consortium website, Futurity, is a great idea and brings to mind once again the idea of creating themed microsites. This one is a consortium aimed at letting “the public learn about important breakthroughs at leading research universities as traditional news outlets continue to shrink?” The site describes itself as “an online news magazine that reports on discoveries in science, health, technology, business, society, and the arts.”

Its scope is limited, at least currently, to 35 large research institutions and while it’s a neat idea, consortium sites aren’t the real solution for most institutions. This one, for instance, is more a resource for science junkies and the few science writers left, and is not likely to garner significant public attention because it’s not the way audiences want to consume such news – in oversized big-gulps.

But here’s the important nugget: Every institution should be looking online for solutions. And there is enormous ROI to be had by developing your own research microsite.

A themed microsite can either embedded in your current institutional website, or it can stand alone as a branded URL. And don’t think the idea is limited just to science research. You can make a waves through a “community outreach” microsite, or one devoted to “the arts,” or “economic development,” or whatever brand differentiator is most important to your organization.

The key is in creating focused, interactive, multimedia content and “drawing” your audiences to that site through advertising, viral tactics, social media, and push-pull e-mails that give audiences a real reward on the microsite.

I’ve noted in previous blogs the effectiveness of Virginia Tech’s microsite “thisisthefuture.” It’s branded, it’s interactive, and it involves and engages audiences with the VT “Invent the Future” identity, all while showcasing important applied research stories from prominent faculty.

Microsites provides a host of opportunities to reach your critical audiences with the exact stories you want them to see, and moreover, to give them a lasting, high-impact brand impression. So while the media outlets for science coverage have declined, we’ve never had a greater opportunity to disseminate stories about campus research.

Analyze This

I have yet to see the results of one of the Notebook Polls so one-sided, until this poll.

The question posed last month was “Which website analytics tool does your institution use?” It seems that “Google Analytics or other free analytics” was the main response (86% of respondents).  I am assuming that most responses where focusing Google Analytics and not the “other free analytics” part of the response.

Not surprisingly, the people who took the poll did not choose any of the following options that were available as a response.

• ClickTracks, WebTrends, WebSideStory HBX Analytics, Omniture’s SiteCatalyst or other non-free analytics
• None
• Don’t know
• Don’t care

And a slim 14% mentioned they use “Urchin, AWStats or Webalizer or other analytics provided by your web hoster”.

The chart below provides the full story.

We all know that keeping track of your website stats is now key data that any marketer should keep a close eye on. While there are many tools out there to track this data, they are are similar and most do a good job. Google Analytics is, by far, the fan favorite and is a very powerful tool. It takes some training to get used to, but it is well worth it.

It is good to know that everyone who took the poll pretty much agrees with this and no one mentioned that they “don’t care” or don’t have any web analytic tools.

Some key data to watch on a regular basis

• Bounce rate: how many are leaving a certain page to view a completely different website. The lower the percentage the better.
• Average Time on Site: how long users are staying on your site. The higher the better.
• Percent New Visits: how many new visitors are viewing your site. A good number to watch when running advertising designed to point lots of new people to the website. During an advertising campaign, the higher the percentage is good a sign the advertising is working.
• Pages per View: shows how many pages a viewer is looking at. The higher the number the better. It shows your audience likes your content and wants to see more. It could also mean your content is too hard to find but is still needed by the viewers.
• Traffic sources: where viewers coming from. Again, good to watch if running something like AdWords or some internet advertising. Or to know if someone has added a link to their website.
• Pages: which pages are the most viewed. In many cases, it is the home page that is the most viewed page. This is good to know so you know what content people want the most on your website.

With many of the analytics tools you can mix and match the data to get a cross section of a certain page or a certain viewer domain or of a certain day.

Some things to keep in mind when watching the data trend.

• Quick trend shifts: If you haven’t made a change recently to your website, find out why there is a quick change in the site stats. It could mean a page has crashed or a new browser update isn’t compatible with certain site functions. A sharp positive shift  in site trends could mean certain content is needed or someone has linked to your content.
• When making changes: If you plan on making changes, make incremental changes to your website and then take a break to watch the stats. If you make a small shift in the website and notice  a positive change in the data you can continue to make more of the same type of changes. If the change creates a negative reaction, revert back to the version of the site before the change took place. If you make large multifaceted changes, you won’t know what works and what doesn’t work.
• Seasonal shifts: Keep an eye on seasonal shifts in data. As we all know certain audiences on and off campus will need certain content on a seasonal basis and if you see a seasonal trend in the data you can make seasonal changes to match the needs. For example, during football season you can make your team’s scores and game times easier to find and after graduation you can make new alumni information easier to find on your site.

While it seems many use Google Analytics to track their website usage, most have their own favorite data trends to watch. I am interested to know what data people try to keep an eye on that we haven’t mentioned above.

And give us input on how the H1N1 flu is affecting your campus in the new Notebook Poll on the right panel.

Allow Students to Tell Your Story

My colleague Ineke Caycedo and I just returned from a 2-day campus consultation for a client. We conducted a series of interviews with senior-level administrators and key communications staff to better understand the institution’s goals, current strategies, available resources (primarily related to Web), and overall vibe of the campus and community. From now until spring, we’ll be working collaboratively with the institution to develop a new website, and more importantly, helping to determine what message we’ll be sending on that website. This isn’t the easiest task given the truly unique position of this institution, but it’s an exciting one and we certainly made significant progress on that front during our visit. The sky really is the limit here.

A Free International Trip!?
As a result of our interviews, one important nugget of information we learned was that the institution has a healthy amount of ‘student-voiced’ marketing ammo that has yet to see the light of day. For example, this college offers one of the best international opportunities of any institution we’ve ever seen. During their second year of study, students are offered a free week-long trip overseas with their classmates. To no surprise, almost all students end up going. As part of the academic component (there is a large one, of course!), students are asked to write a journal documenting their experience. These entries are thoroughly looked over by faculty and the students are given feedback, but they never end up becoming public in any way.

A Huge Opportunity
Truth be told, there might not be a better way to present this unique international experience to prospective students than making these students’ journals easily accessible online! Promoting this type of content is a huge opportunity for colleges and universities. We know from our own and others’ research this is the exact type of approach prospects are looking for and resonate with.

What the Research Tells Us
We know from Edelman’s Trust Barometer that young people most trust people like themselves. This idea was further confirmed on our trip in the Web usability testing we conducted. We were straight up told by the students in several instances that they’re looking to hear from current students. It’s the best way for many of them to learn about different aspects of the college or university, as they can best relate to what they’re hearing.

The bottom line is, if you have any appropriate student-driven media (text, blogs, photos, videos, etc.) sitting around in the depths of your offices and computers, there may very well be an effective way to make that material work for you. And because the production cost is zero since the work has already been done, you’ll only have to spend time doing a little strategizing, editing, and uploading. So if you decide to do a little detective work, good luck! Here’s to hoping you are surprised with what you find.

Eye Tracking is Darn Fascinating

I recently spent some time digging deeper into the details of eye tracking, and quickly realized that I could spend most of a day reading about it. The idea/practice of recording eye movements and methodically analyzing the data to gain insight on everything from how a user views webpage content, to how people walk or drive, is tremendously interesting. Since this is a marketing blog, let’s move away from the walking and driving. My colleague Ashley Martin directed me toward an eye tracking study conducted by Oneupweb which focused on the study of social media sites Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter, and specifically around how users treated the search functions on those pages.

The point of an eye tracking study like this of course is to ultimately better understand consumer behavior. Us marketers know that’s the goal, because once we’re able to understand more of what the consumer is doing and why, then we can work to shape the behaviors we’re looking for. Eh, it sounds so evil when you put it that way but that’s how it works!

Back to the study and why I found it worthwhile. The study looked at scan paths, duration of first fixation, and length of fixation within the first thirty seconds of the search process. To start, let’s check out how a user looks at their Facebook homepage (image source: Oneupweb).

Nothing too surprising there, though I’m somewhat taken aback that there is barely a hint of green surrounding the red notification in the bottom right. I feel that when I have notifications I’m looking down there pretty quickly. Does that surprise you?

Looking at the Twitter homepage below is a little surprising to me, as I don’t feel like I view the search/trends area that strongly, but I’d never really know that for sure unless I was tested. And that’s another thing: ever since I started looking more into eye tracking, I’m paranoid when browsing websites, trying to analyze my own habits. Anyway, here’s the heat map:

Now begins the meat and potatoes of Oneupweb’s study. Looking at the gaze plot visualizations of a Facebook search result, you can see the progression of fixations the user went through. (For more information on gaze plot visualizations, click here).

The sponsored ads in the right column were viewed before users looked at the second and third results on the page. Sponsored ads truly get noticed. If you can come up with a creative and relevant Facebook ad, people are going to see it… period.

Again, you can learn more within Oneupweb’s short but sweet study on the subject. It begins to delve into a bit of areas of interest, which areas do users have a fixated gaze on for at least 1/10 of a second. Looking at the eye tracking sequence a person takes in moving from one area to the other can be extremely telling. Many times you’re likely to be surprised at the results.

In short, there’s a lot to feel good about when it comes to advertising on social networks!

Un-sites and Other Lessons from the Frontiers of Marketing

If there’s one thing that has defined marketing for almost the last 100 years and perhaps even more so today, it’s the constant drive to find new ways, new words, new mediums to spark consumers’ imaginations. For daring groundbreakers, that implies huge risks, huge failures, and huge rewards. For everyone else, it means new ideas, new inspiration, and new opportunities.

A few years ago, Advertising Age published its list of the top advertising campaigns of the century. The publication had three criteria for judging a campaign:

• If it was a watershed, discernibly changing the culture of advertising or the popular culture as a whole.
• If it itself was credited with creating a category, or if by its efforts a brand became entrenched in its category as No. 1.
• If it was simply unforgettable.

At the top of the list was Doyle Dane Bernbach’s 1959 “Think Small” Campaign for Volkswagen.

Ad Age wrote this about it:

“First of all, our thanks to Kurt Kroner, the man behind the defining example of the greatest advertising campaign of the century. He wasn’t the copywriter. That was Julian Koenig. Nor was he the art director. That was Helmut Krone. Nor was he elsewhere employed by Doyle Dane Bernbach, the agency that stormed the confining Bastille of advertising orthodoxy to ignite the “creative revolution.”

Actually, our hero wasn’t in advertising at all. Kurt Kroner was the one, among 3,389 Wolfsburg, Germany, assembly plant workers, to flag a blemished chrome strip on the glove compartment of a 1961 Volkswagen Beetle and reject the vehicle for delivery. Yes, if we are to believe Koenig’s copy, Herr Kroner gave us the famously failed and fabulously forlorn. . . “Lemon.”

God bless him, because in so doing he also gave advertising permission to surprise, to defy and to engage the consumer without bludgeoning him about the face and body. Kroner offered up a lemon with approximately the same result of Eve offering the apple. Not only did everything change, but suddenly things were a lot more interesting.”

Suddenly Things are a Lot More Interesting
In following the developing trends in marketing today, it strikes me that we’re at a moment in time, like 1959, when things are about to get a lot more interesting. And that’s exciting.

The explosion of digital mediums. The interactivity of those mediums (touch screens; voice activated commands; hands-free, full-body video control). The cross pollination of technology (using your cell phone to connect to your online presence; your TV to get additional information on material you’re watching in a broadcast…). The social networking rage. The expectation of user engagement. All of these are forming a perfect storm of possibility. Most in the marketing business are still struggling to understand how to use these mediums effectively. What I see most often are still campaigns designed from a very last-century world view – they talk at the consumer rather than with the consumer. There are a few, however, that are paving new ground, and perhaps one will become that groundbreaking campaign that will change everything. Like a great multi-stage bike racer – say Lance Armstrong – (a little plug for my favorite sporting event, the Tour de France as it is the month of July), a savvy brand manager will stay at the front of the marketing peleton (cycling term for big bunch of riders) watching carefully those marketers who break away from the pack, and jumping on the wheel of those mavericks of the race who show the most ability to help you achieve your goal. Or, better yet, know when to leap out in front yourself.

3 New Trends to Stay on Top of

1. Let Others Do the Talking About You

A new genre of websites, or rather, un-sites as blogger David Griner calls them in his blog “Web 3.0 is About Taming the Deluge of Data” are tapping into social network and Web content streams to promote their brands.

The upside: it’s fresh, updated frequently, honest, and less of a workload for you.

The downside: it’s unpredictable, uncontrollable…and honest. If you’re willing to risk the downsides, the upsides could reap rewards. How much, hard to tell yet.

Some examples of these types of sites:

• Skittles, which uses people’s references to its brand on their Twitter feeds; comments on their facebook page; and flickr and YouTube posts as the company’s website.

• The ad agency Modernista! which literally uses the Web as its website. When you type Modernista! into Google or you type in modernista.com you get a Google search page and several small red bars along the top of the page. One is the site navigation (you can drag and place it anywhere on the page you like) and the other is a notice that says the following:

“Do not be alarmed. You are viewing Modernista! through the eyes of the Web.

The menu on the left is our homepage. The blog is ours. Everything else is beyond our control.”

2. Brand Minimalism

Another type of un-site is the kind that takes the brand to where Web users hang out rather than making them come to it. For example, the agency BooneOakley’s site exists only on YouTube.

When you go to BooneOakley.com, it directs you to the company’s YouTube page where you can watch this video

The upside: it’s unexpected, invites user engagement, has a built in feedback mechanism, uses a video interface, is concise, should be simple.

The downside: it’s concise, perhaps too simple, feedback is open for all to see.

3. The Challenge

Probably nothing gets people more intrigued than if you challenge them to figure something out. In a perfect marriage of product, medium, and message, Samsung’s latest campaign for its new phones with high definition cameras is a poster child for how to do this right. The campaign, created by the Viral Factory in London, challenges viewers to figure out how the phone appears and disappears in the ad when the entire spot was shot in real time, on the camera phone, with no editing. The genius here is the chatter that it created simply by people trying to guess the trick. Samsung then came back and posted a “How we did it” piece, which had people coming back to their site/product to see the reveal.

The upside: it’s intriguing, highly engaging, it fits the medium beautifully, is a great example of something that feels self-made but was professionally crafted, promotes chatter, brings people back for more, gets multiple views as people are trying to figure out how the trick is done, and the metrics are easy to track. Not only are the views tracked by YouTube (over a million so far), but marketers were able to track how many times individual visitors viewed the piece, how long they watched it for, and whether they spent time replaying pieces of it.

The downside: hard to see a downside to this one, other that some of the random lude comments some people made. In general, I’d say this is an idea to jump on when you can.

Initial Spot

Camera Trick Revealed