Molecular Voices » Digital Strategy

Posts from Digital Strategy

What’s next?

June 8

The Dynamic Duo of Persona and Consumer Journey

consumerjourneycollage

One of the principal strategic design tools employed by design teams today is the persona. The persona has come a long way in the past few years and is being broadly accepted by business as a critical component to defining a business strategy for new product and service innovation. The reasons for this acceptance are clear: the best personas are being created from insights developed through a balanced effort of qualitative and quantitative research. Marketing stakeholders are finding that personas, aligned with their market segmentation, really bring to life the characteristics of customers they have become very familiar with over the years, in a very real and dynamic way. In addition, the methods for socializing personas within an organization make them relevant such that they become a readily referred tool for a wide range of business planning activities.

However, the value and use of personas can increase considerably when paired with another empathic design tool…the user or consumer journey. At its highest level, a consumer journey outlines the various stages in the lifecycle of a consumer’s interaction with a brand, from initial awareness through to long-term retention. At a practical level marketers plot the potential channels through which they can acquire, convert, and retain customer’s interest in their products, services, and experiences, both analog and digital. It is becoming increasingly attractive and complex to orchestrate an overall, holistic experience of the brand that communicates in a clear, consistent, on-brand fashion. Marketers have a great number and mix of potential customer touchpoints at their disposal, beyond the direct contact with the product or service. Ancillary experiences through digital touchpoints, such as search engines, social media, digital signage, etc call for a broader understanding of the possible destinations for target markets.

Personas allow marketers to evaluate their options for interaction through the lens of key personas, representing target market segments. When personas are mapped to consumer journeys, digital marketers can be more deliberate about the communication strategies they roll out across channels. For design teams conducting customer research it is important to investigate the broader digital space that target users interact with. Are they bloggers…lurkers or leaders? Do they attend venues with digital signage? How do they use social networks? How are they influenced by others online? What web sites do they trust for actionable information? What web sites do they purchase products and services on? How do they use search engines? By investigating the answers to these questions designers can piece together insights into consumer’s current experience and how that can likely be stated as a prospective consumer journey over time and the key touchpoints that are likely to expose the consumer to a company’s product or service.

More and more digital designers are being enlisted to provide the insights and intelligence needed to strategize this open digital space. That’s good news for designers and good news for business!

posted to: Digital Marketing, Digital Strategy, Experience Design, Strategic Design | No Comments »

April 22

Google Analytics APIs Launched

by Charudatta Wad

Google announced the launch of its Google Analytics Data Export APIs (beta) today. It was anticipated for a long time. Analytics API is a Google data API (same as Google calender API). APIs currently support Java and JavaScript (details on the Google Analytics Blog).

So what does this mean to Google analytics users?

You can access Google Analytics on your desktop (using Adobe AIR or Google Desktop). Desktop reporting is one such application.
You can access specific reports on your iphone or Android powered phones. Few other cool applications can be found here.

The most important impact is that you can mash-up your data. You can marry your web analytics data with your offline data (Sales, CRM), create custom dashboards or new visualizations. Web analytics reports can be combined with data from other sources to create even more accurate predictive models and study online-offline user behaviours. You can now track your multi-channel campaigns more effectively.

Other web analytics vendors (like Omniture) already provide this functionality but Google Analytics is the first big player to do it for free (a lot of $$$ savings). Piwik (open source web analytics solution) enables you to own your analytcs data by hosting it in-house, but with these new APIs, you can save yourself the hassle of maintaining the analytics server and import the data.

posted to: Data & Analytics, Digital Strategy | No Comments »

March 4

What is the best way to host my global site(s)?

by James Douglas

This is a question I hear over and over from clients or colleagues who are tasked with managing a global web presence.

And for global site owners – choosing between hosting your global sites on a top-level domain (TLD) versus hosting it centrally on one domain utilizing a sub-directory hierarchy is a fundamental decision on the future direction of your online business. For instance, a business may need to choose between:

Option 1: ‘Molecular.co.uk’ in the United Kingdom, ‘Molecular.com.cn’ in China,

or,

Option 2: ‘Molecular.com/uk_EN/ for United Kingdom (in English)
‘Molecular.com/cn_ZH/ for China (in Chinese)

(Similarly, sub-domain options might also look like: ‘uk.Molecular.com’ for the United Kingdom or ‘china.Molecular.com’ for China).

While the answer is never entirely black and white, it’s not just a SEO decision. Instead, I would start with 4 simple considerations that we always work to identify and prioritize when building out a domain name strategy with clients:

1)    Need for Marketing-friendly URLs locally
2)    Search Engine Optimization (SEO) priorities
3)    Global Domain Name Registration efforts
4)    CMS hosting / distribution of content considerations

Conveniently, and not surprisingly, the list is prioritized in the manner in which we would recommend defining and mapping out your global TLD strategy – business needs naturally superseding internal IT team preferences. A bit more detail on each consideration:

1) Need for Marketing-friendly URLs:
First and foremost, there is a significant local ‘branding’ benefit and recognition/association of a country-specific top level domain (TLD) to establishing a locally-relevant and locally-appropriate market presence. The ability to target, publish, and market to a country-specific TLD within all marketing collateral and use it as an appropriate destination for local marketing campaigns is most ideal – and the biggest priority in deciding upon which hosting solution to choose.

2) Search Engine Optimization (SEO) priorities:
Second, from a global SEO perspective, TLDs are always preferred for full optimization opportunities for indexing within global and local-specific search engines. We define ‘indexing’ as simply the ability to have your site included within Google / Yahoo / Baidu / etc. search engines, and there are significant benefits to having your local content distributed across appropriate TLDs and hosted on globally-specific IP addresses. Centralizing content into subdirectories will limit your ability to maximize your indexed URLs and distribution of ranking opportunities for targeted SEO keyphrases across multiple ‘sites’ – particularly around product-name or brand-based targeted keyphrases.

3) Global Domain Name Registration efforts:
Third, domain name registration can be difficult for some organizations to consistently own and manage worldwide. With varying degrees of local requirements for registration and in-country business ownership validation, the challenge of a decision on a consistent domain/subdirectory strategy across all global sites can be affected by the logistical ability to own all top level domains across the world. There are some managed services that will assist companies in maintaining the appropriate registration standards worldwide, but often we find IT departments hamstrung for months attempting to clear out ‘squatters’ who might previously own a country-level TLD for a priority market.

4) CMS hosting / distribution of content considerations:
Fourth, content management system (CMS) or distributed content hosting / content delivery factors always play a key role in the decision for a domain / subdirectory strategy. Often, particularly for ‘coupled’ content delivery CMS systems or for high-security, transactional sites, the content repository needs to reside ‘close’ to where the content is being served up to users – therefore, great flexibility in full TLD and IP Address hosting cannot be fully optimized due to base global CMS publishing limitations.

Once all the above requirements are detailed out, we typically recommend the following best practice hosting solution (listed again in order of preference – and of course assuming Language HTTP Header is correctly assigned in all scenarios):

1)    Country level domain name, hosted on an In-Country IP Address: http://www.molecular.com.br/ (on Brazilian IP: 200.181.3.xxx)
2)    Country level domain name, centrally hosted: http://www.molecular.com.br/ (IP: 24.234.193.xxx)
3)    Centrally managed domain, first level subdirectory with consistent language header ID – note, some 301 permanent redirects from owned TLDs can be pointed to these subdirectories: http://www.molecular.com/br_BR/ or http://www.molecular.com/cn_ZH/

One final thought, there are long-term limitations utilizing of a locale-specific sub-domains (i.e., fr.molecular.com or br.molecular.com). Over time, since you’re not appropriately associating the preferred ISO locale / language pair consistently in this model, having a ‘be-de.molecular.com’, ‘be-nl.molecular.com’, and ‘be-fr.molecular.com’ website standard may be quite counter-intuitive and relatively confusing for users, marketers, and the entire organization.

I hope this globalization ‘quick tip’ helps to organize your internal team’s hosting discussion – please do add comments or questions if you have any unique global hosting situations that you might be dealing with on your own global site.

posted to: Content Management, Digital Strategy, Technology | 1 Comment »

February 11

The New York Times as a Service Platform

by Bryan Maleszyk

It’s no secret that the traditional media industry — newspapers, especially — has been disrupted by the rise of web-based services like craigslist. With traditional advertising placement plummeting, even tent pole journalism brands like the New York Times are struggling.

Despite this, the Times has been one of the innovation leaders in the newspaper industry over the last year. It has made its own news for its unique and informative visualizations of the Summer Olympics medal count and the Twitter chatter during the Super Bowl. More importantly, the Times’ have started providing open API access to their content such as movie reviews and — more recently — their entire news archive of nearly 3 million articles since 1981. The Gray Lady is changing from a newspaper brand into a news service platform.

This might seem counterproductive. The Times’ most valuable asset is their news, right? After all, Gatehouse Media just sued the Times for re-purposing (and linking to) their content, so why would The Gray Lady give their news away, for free?

Because its most valuable asset is not (nor has it ever been) news — it’s greatest asset is eyeballs. The more the Times allows others to take their news and mash it up with other relevant content, the more unique value it provides to its readers. And the more unique value provided, the more readers come and stay. It’s a great example of inviting interaction.

Despite the collapse of the newspaper industry, there is a still a need for quality, facts-based news in this world. One newspaper can’t possibly fill all of the media channels we consume every day, but by providing open, machine-consumable access to their content, the Times is betting that the networked world will come to its rescue. While it’s still early to tell what the return on its investment will be, the Times’ move to a platform of services is a great attempt to innovate out of a potential catastrophe.

Image by Joe Shlabotnik on Flickr

posted to: Digital Strategy, Industry Trends, Technology | No Comments »

February 3

Web Site Accessibility – 4 Steps to Avoid Getting ‘Target-ed’

by Jeffrey Easton

This is the first of three blogs on accessibility for Web site owners and designers

Last August the Web world was shocked to hear that mega-retailer Target had agreed to pay $6 million to settle a lawsuit brought by Bruce Sexton, a blind California college student who complained that the Target.com site was inaccessible to him and other blind consumers. Retail site owners lit up the blogosphere with complaints that the courts have stomped on their rights and with predictions that greedy lawyers would use this precedent to extort billions of dollars from any deep-pocket online retailer they could find. Six months later, however, the buzz had died down and the real lessons to be learned from the Target case are now clear.

Above: Target’s public relations nightmare

The real reason that Target was forced to settle for such a significant amount was not because of overzealous government bureaucrats and greedy lawyers, but because Target stubbornly refused to acknowledge that online accessibility was at all their responsibility. Instead of seeing the requested changes to their site as an opportunity to expand access to their online store, Target pushed back on what they saw as an illegal effort by the government and special interests to dictate to them how they should run their business. Target contended that the cost of the suggested changes to Target.com would be prohibitive and refused to make any of the requested accessibility changes to their site and instead spent money building a legal defense.

If you understand that ecommerce sites are the equivalent of brick and mortar stores to the 18.6 million Americans who reported having a disability that prevented them from easily getting out of their homes (http://www.census.gov/prod/2003pubs/c2kbr-17.pdf ), then you also understand where Target went wrong. The National Federation for the Blind (NFB), who joined Mr Sexton as a plaintiff, convinced the judge to declare the suit a class action, which meant that just about any disabled person in the US who could prove they had been barred access to Target.com could also become a plaintiff. The NFB and other advocacy groups began to publicize the case and the mainstream news media began to cover it. When Target realized that this was quickly spiraling into a public relations nightmare, they wisely decided to quickly settle. Considering the potential reputational damage, $6 million was a cheap way to make it all go away (for the settlement details, go to http://www.nfbtargetlawsuit.com/ ).

What can you learn from the Target settlement? How can your Web site avoid the potential monetary and reputational risks associated with an accessibility action?

Below are the four steps you should be taking now to make sure your site doesn’t get ‘Target-ed’:

1. Become aware of the laws that pertain to the accessibility of your site

The Target case hinged on the US federal ‘Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)’ law and the ‘Unruh’ California state civil rights act. The ADA is a comprehensive federal civil-rights statute protecting the rights of people with disabilities and ensuring that ‘reasonable efforts’ are made to give them access to places of ‘public accommodation’. The statute does not mention the Internet or Web sites, however, and the courts have not provided much guidance on the applicability of the ADA to online stores. For this reason, the NFB also leveraged the California ‘Unruh’ statute that states that all state citizens, regards of disability (among other categories), are “entitled to the full and equal accommodations, advantages, facilities, privileges, or services in all business establishments of every kind whatsoever”.

Take the time to get up-to-speed with the federal or state laws that may apply to your Web site. If your site is international, you may need to consider the laws of the various countries your customers reside in. Once again, the WebAIM site is a good resource for investigating accessibility laws around the world.

Important caveat: this post is not meant to be legal advice - please contact your lawyer or internal legal department for the most accurate and up-to-date information before you act on anything.

2. Educate your site’s development team and content creators on Web accessibility

Train developers and communicators on Web accessibility so they understand how to identify issues and, more importantly, how to fix them. There are many great online sources of Web accessibility training, but WebAIM (www.WebAIM.org) and the WorldWide Web Consortium’s (W3C) Web Accessibility Initiative (http://www.w3.org/WAI/) are good starting points.

You can also create a low cost accessibility lab by installing demo or freeware versions of assistive technologies, such as screen readers and screen magnifiers, on a spare PC. Engage the disabled community in your organization or city - invite representatives in to give assistive technology demonstrations to your staff or to evaluate your sites.

3. Assess your site’s accessibility

Matthew Kreeger, a partner at the law firm of Morrison Foerster and a former software designer, suggests that Web sites prepare for accessibility suits by first taking an inventory of how easy it is to navigate their site using a screen reader. “We have found that this first step helps clients determine the extent of any potential issues and puts them in a position to evaluate any programming updates or modifications” (http://www.mofo.com/news/updates/files/14568.html) .

There are also several free online accessibility assessment services that can be used to get an understanding of what issues may exist on your site. WebAIM’s WAVE assessment tool is easy to use and comprehensive. A complete list of free and commercial assessment tools is also available at the WebAIM site.

4. Create a remediation plan and measure your progress against it

The National Federation for the Blind (NFB) has been approaching major online retailers and financial services providers about the accessibility of their sites for years. In almost all cases, these businesses worked with the NFB to develop plans for improving the accessibility of their sites over time. As long as the business showed reasonable progress on their accessibility plan, the NFB, courts, and regulators were happy and enforcement actions were not pursued.

A good example of an accessibility remediation plan can be found at the US Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) site. Scroll to the bottom for the timeline - note that they have taken a multi-year phased approach, and that they are keeping track of their progress as represented by the percentage completed next to each active task. Also note that HHS is working towards compliance to Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act - this is an accessibility statute that covers government Web sites and the Web sites of any private businesses interacting with the public on behalf of the government. We will discuss Section 508 in more detail in the next accessibility blog.

Summary

According to the US Census Bureau, nearly 8 million Americans have visual or motor skill disabilities that impact their ability to use the Internet. All commercial Websites should be aware of how their site is experienced by the disabled and come up with a plan for correcting any issues. To ignore the pleas of this large and growing sector of the Internet population is to take on significant legal and reputational risk.

To avoid Target.com’s fate, Web sites should be gaining awareness of accessibility, assessing the accessibility of their pages, and creating and acting on realistic long term remediation plans.

In the next two accessibility blogs we will learn techniques for advocating and winning funding for accessibility remediation tasks, and for how to integrate accessibility remediation into a traditional Web development project.

posted to: Content Management, Digital Strategy, Experience Design, Industry Trends | No Comments »