digital Aim - ADVICE BLOG

Google launch PC operating system

2009-07-09T14:30:00.003Z

Is the market too crowded and dominated by Microsoft and Apple to have an operating system take on the Windows monopoly? Would you invest your life savings in this business? In marketing terms finding a unique and compelling sales proposition for any product is hard work. It is yet harder for the complexities of software selling and even more so for 'operating systems'. I suggest however, that the time is now for Google's move. Microsoft's launch of Vista has been fraught with technical and user experience difficulties, to the extent that a laptop now sold which is Windows XP backwards compatible, commands a premium over a new Vista only machine (relates to drivers bla bla). At the risk of sounding negative, (and I didn't even mention the "I'm a PC" child, failed musician and extreme sports exploitation ads) I will offer Google's own words as to how a new OS could change the way even our mothers and grandmothers feel REAL interaction with their PC:

"We wanted to share our vision now so everyone understands what we are trying to achieve:
Speed, simplicity and security are the key aspects of Google Chrome OS. We're designing the OS to be fast and lightweight, to start up and get you onto the web in a few seconds. The user interface is minimal to stay out of your way, and most of the user experience takes place on the web. And as we did for the Google Chrome browser, we are going back to the basics and completely redesigning the underlying security architecture of the OS so that users don't have to deal with viruses, malware and security updates. It should just work."

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/introducing-google-chrome-os.html

I will take heart in a future from an organisation that deals in excellence in programming over 1 famed for lawsuits, hostile takeovers and buggy launches. Google, aggregate and use my data all that you wish for your commercial purposes if this is how we are to be rewarded for our loyalty to your search engine.

Google Search Wiki threatens SEO industry

2009-06-25T13:55:00.007Z

Goggle has recently added increased 'search result personalisation' in the form of "Search Wiki" to its Engine. A registered Google Account holder can now vote up and down their search results the quality of pages. In theory of course this provides a significant threat to the traditional Search Engine Optimisation industry. Where clients now pay for efforts taken to get increased traffic through the exposure of 'higher listings' in Google, a registered user can downgrade those efforts or even delete your website from the results served to them. This mirrors advertising removal or behaviourial targetting direct online advertising models.
This raises a number of questions:

1/ Is this level of 'personalised customisation' just an initiative by Google to increase the loyalty of its current, market dominating, user base?
2/ Is it the start of a push to bring a behavioural targetting element to Google Adwords advertisers?
3/ Is this a piece of functionality aimed to increase the uptake of Google Account usage as this increases Google's ability to promote trialling of their other software?
4/ AND MOST interestingly I feel, is this a test bed of user data gathering that helps Google further eliminate Search Spam from its listings? If so, then this release of the functionality could be a forerunner to when Google incorporates this user 'voting' data alongside its measure of inbound links (PageRank) to help contribute to the algorithm's own decision making. Could Google's greatest coup be to have their Users doing manual site evaluation work on their behalf. If so, then with 85-95% market share they would truly merit Pied Piper of Hamlyn status.

I will leave readers to ponder this, as yet unknown longterm motivation. Please feel free to comment...

Recession boosts digital

2009-05-27T12:30:00.002Z

No question about it. Having been recruiting 2 posts for the last few months and been in contact with numerous web design and web development agencies over the last 6 months it is clear that this recession is growing digital again. While the run up to the recession proper had many clients stuck 'in the headlights' movement once again is shifting toward the digital player who know how to 'Do it Right'. Clients need transparency, the ability to question the technical and user experience assumptions made and have support is demonstrating the value of customer activity happening online. An agency confident in meeting these expectations and happy to be questioned on their scoping assertions has no reason not to grow in strength over the next year. Those that will suffer will be the "we've always done it this way" brigade who wait for clients to simply define there expectation levels for agency response.

Has Twitter grown up too fast?

2009-03-23T17:41:00.003Z

The Daily Mail has always had a difficult relationship with technology and the internet. It is never long before an article that describes 'evil-doers' online threatening the safety of our children surfaces with accompanied 'ban the internet' undertone. NMA recently debated the digital industry's lack of experience in understanding its responsibilities when launching mass communication media in a web 2.0 era. The discovery that prostitutes and pornographic actresses are asking fans to 'follow them on twitter' is a little shocking but hardly surprising. The debate about protecting children from possible exposure to these corners of a social interaction website is both a valid and an urgent discussion. The debate about whether Twitter's owners should have pre-empted this is also valid. However the gutter press is mentally invalid in suggesting that the digital sphere is somehow the creator of all things lucid. The internet has changed the way we live through a revolution in information access and in interest-group interaction. Just because some less attractive aspects of our society also exist online, does not give authority to legislating and controlling the distribution of online information. The internet is an eco system of data. In that eco system there will be swans as well as vultures. Consider the effect of regulating the internet in the way dictatorships now do, as sending our society backwards not to halcyon days, but to dark ages.

This site may harm your computer on every search result

2009-02-02T16:51:00.003Z

There was a bit of a mishap at the weekend with Google results.

Due to a human error Google flagged all search results with the message "This site may harm your computer"

Google labelling suspicious websites with this message is normally really helpful and can stop you accidentally visiting a site that can install malware on your computer.

There was some confusion about where the problem originated and Google have since updated their statement. The StopBadware.org site who Google work with to establish if a website poses a risk have issued a statement along with Google to clarify.

The StopBadWare site fell over under the strain of all the additional traffic from confused Google users.

Google's Statement
StopBadWare Statement

Please manage my expectations...

2009-01-20T14:02:00.012Z

Of course content and regular content refreshment remains king. However this web 2.0 aspiration is not always readily available to all corporate brands. This may be due to the nature of their brand, the level of consumer passion in the product area or a restrictive / compliant nature of marketing work such as in financial services marketing.

However there is no reason why any organisation can not be considering their customer issues and use web technology to communicate more effectively for better customer experience both on and offline. The screengrab below is, I believe an excellent example of this:

New year thoughts

2009-01-06T11:56:00.002Z

The industry has taken down their decorations and is now back in full flight. Now the hard work begins again. All clients need to be seen to be spending their budget more wisely this year. In digital marketing and web development this highlights an existing problem for a number of clients - that (dare I say it) many clients do not know what exactly they are buying. Great web experience is like a beautifully considered and crafted piece of architecture or engineering. Therefore if clients pay little attention to handling, reliability, depreciation and road grip when buying a car they are more likely to end up with a Kia Pride than one of the brilliantly sensible Turbo Diesel Golf range. Apologies to any reader who loathes petrolhead metaphors, but cars do affect all our lives in some way or another, and owners generally live with their choices a good while - both good and the bad choices. In my view 2009's economic challenges should give way to much more considered approach to how web work is bought. Most businesses now realise that web is far more than another 'marketing channel' or BTL collateral extension. Your web presence is the real front door to your business for prospective employee, customer or investor. Now is the time to get all aspects of web design, content production and online marketing RIGHT. Getting 'pretty' is no longer enough. Whether full redesign or quick win improvements to generate business or increase conversion - the time is now.

Now I'm certainly not a PC

2008-12-11T15:29:00.005Z

What a terrible piece of brand planning for Microsoft. This is in part a defensive response to Apple's advertising that highlights so of Windows and specifically Vista's weaknesses in a "I'm a PC, I'm a Mac" format. When Apple have consistently given Microsoft their best R&D innovation (right back to 1984 and the invention of the Window and commercialisation of the mouse), why does Microsoft find this David and Golliath relationship so threatening to do defensive TV advertising (even featuring Gates himself!). Get back to hostile takeovers and curing Malaria - your organisation is better suited to that than trying to look 'coolio'.

Financial Times polls users on new website in development

2008-11-11T18:06:00.002Z

A true victory for the power of quantitive user research. We would like to commend FT.com for sending their new website design to their online subscribers. Inevitably the design has already been user tested with a usability testing house, but this shows a level of confidence from FT's web marketing / IT team and a hunger to ensure that their new website hits the spot in their competition against the likes of the Economist and the BBC.co.uk. You can review their development site at:
http://www.uploadlibrary.com/ops.ft.com/Falconland/index.html

Obama raised over $110m in online donation

2008-11-10T15:36:00.002Z

Its great to the the 'leader of the free-world elect' is wise to the power of using the internet (read: web 2.0) as the critical tool in his campaign communication and subsequent fundraising. Has a Democratic candidate's campaign budget ever outstripped the Republicans, despite being perceived as the 'party of big business'. People Power indeed.
Barack's 1st move was to get Chris Hughs on board. Chris Hughs was co-founder of Facebook and was responsible for the creation of my.barackobama.com community site that was integral in the fundraising effort.

Upon election victory Obama emailed 70 million American donators with a very personal message:

“We have a lot of work to do to get our country back on track, and I’ll be in touch soon about what comes next,” Obama promised in his e-mail. 'Change has come'

If politicians can succeed in 'doing personal' on a mass scale then companies will quickly need to get to best of breed or risk 'old marketing' perceptions from an ever less attentive audience.

A deviation of subject matter

2008-11-07T15:22:00.004Z

Well this blog is not normally about politics and apologies to anyone reading this who is offended by the deviation but yesterday's events in the USA need committing to paper (kinda). The historic significance of America voting for a very different perspective in its governance goes far beyond the fact that in only 70 years since abolishing afro-american slavery, an African American has made it to the white house. I don't want to belittle the significance of this, as the west lectures the world on human rights, but I would like to make some different observations, primarily around linguistics.

The language used by the Bush administration over the last 8 years has enabled the likes of Putin, Mogawbe and Israeli spokesmen to have an English language arsenal, for the world media that makes their atrocities far harder to interrogate publicly. Here's some expressions I'm excited of seeing the back of:

-Axis of Evil
-War on terror (Obama will call it something but may move from this?)
-Coalition of the willing
-Shock and Awe (gone anyway but no forgotten)
-Freedom lovers
-Pre-emptive strike
-Extraordinary rendition flights
-Electoral "folks"
-Rising insurgents
-Terror on our doorstep
-Enemy combatants (ie non-political or criminal detainees with no right to trial)
-Hockey mums (well we can but hope)

While the economy has dominated the election, it will be interesting to see if Obama, the man with a heavier burden of expectation than anyone I have witnessed in history, will:

-Return the right to trial
-End rendition flights
-End the military support (by sending weapons as aid) to Israel
-Close Guantanamo bay (he and McCain both said they would)
-End the War on terror?
-Ever be daft enough to say "we need an energy policy that encourages consumption"

PS - Sarah Palin no sooner yesterday announced her intention to run for President in 4 years time than was caught saying "Oh, is Africa really a continent" -
I pray that America has indeed changed and that this 8 year imperial, oil price fuelled war-mongering experiment is indeed marked in the history books to never ever happen again. For now at least the USA has sent a message to the world that they were not all blind to the Machiavellian fear bull-shit politics of the Bush regime -America has a chance to properly look itself in the mirror now and not to appease terrorists, far from it but simply to regain a respectful foreign policy and a position in the world that they can be proud of. Roll on 'regime change' in January.

Obama has a 1 trillion debt to fight alongside 2 unwinable wars (what on earth did victory look like anyway? - not a neighboring allied state loosing control of Pakistan's border region) - I rarely turn to God but after the impact of the last 8 years on global state sponsored terrorism, and unashamed oil commodity market destabilizing - Obama, may God protect and be with you all the way.

To end, a Bushism that should really be his epitaph:

George W - "Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we."

Meta Descriptions

2008-10-08T12:26:00.011Z

I have been writing page titles and meta descriptions for one of my clients websites and I thought I would post some basic tips for writing optimised meta descriptions.

Many webmasters / web designers don’t give meta descriptions the attention that they deserve. We have seen many cases where meta descriptions or page titles have been ignored completely during the build of a web site.

While it is true that search engines apply only a limited level of importance to meta descriptions with regards to the ranking of a page, they are however an important way of marketing pages of your site as they are often used as your company 'snippet' descriptor within search results. Having a well written, compelling description can mean the difference between achieving just impression or gaining a click through.

Writing good meta descriptions

Here are some considerations when writing meta descriptions.

The number of characters that search engines display varies by engine. We recommend limiting descriptions to 160 characters which is the smallest character number and what Google display within search results.

Write meta descriptions to act as a summary of the individual page of your site. They should describe the page accurately and succinctly. If the page description is not accurate, the user experience is poor.

Sell your page to the searcher - use a call to action in the meta description and highlight the key points of the page, whatever the purpose of the page. If a page is promoting a product, highlight the key attributes of the product. You should include brand, model numbers and consider including prices if possible.

It is important to include the page’s target keyphrase in the description. This is not done for ranking purposes but to indicate to the searcher that the page is relevant to their search query. Keywords from the query will appear in bold within the results which can have a positive impact on the click through rate.

If you are promoting a bricks and mortar business or location, then include a phone number in the meta description. People viewing the page with a mobile device like the Apple iPhone or other mobile browser can dial your business directly from the search result. This also applies to users with Skype’s browser extension and is becoming the norm for mobile browsing.

If you have a large database driven site with thousands of product pages it is possible to create meta data dynamically changing variables in the description. I would recommend that at least 4 variables are included within the description to avoid meta descriptions appearing too similar or in the worse case spammy.

Avoid duplicate titles and descriptions across multiple pages. This will limit the ranking ability of pages and as search engine duplicate content filters are getting tougher. Anything that can be done to differentiate pages will help pages being filtered out.

Search engines only want to present searchers with the most relevant information in relation to the search query. They may scrape any relevant content, keyphrases or content surrounding keyphrases and present this as the snippet. For pages targeting many 'long tail' keyphrases the best strategy can often be to allow search engines to extract the most relevant data from the content of the page and present that to users.

Search Engine Optimisation - The Archaic way

2008-09-29T14:11:00.002Z

Today we received from our very reputable domain and web hosts, Namesco, an ACT NOW! offer:

{Last day of the offer} - "You can get your website listed and noticed with our FREE search engine submission service worth £50 with any new annual website hosting plan." Namesco Ltd customer email - 29.9.08

Why does this stuff even exist?
Well in 1997 / 1998 when around 30 search engines controlled about 80% of the total searches made by consumer and the technology that their 'spiders' or 'robots' used to gather website information was far less sophisticated than it is today, it made some (limited) sense to build software that 'pinged' search engines saying "come and look at my site'. Some of these web services even made a sales differentiator out of annoying the search engines with a daily request for them to visit your site. This served to get new sites increased brand name web exposure and therefore increased traffic due to the spread of search engines used by your customers. Now however, a great way to get exposure on Google, Yahoo and MSN (the 3 that really matter in 2008) is certainly not to tap them on the shoulder everyday.
If you would like to have a conversation about how to increase you market share through increased traffic from Google's organic search listings then give us a call. DONT take up offers like this one.

Is the time now?

2008-07-17T16:28:00.000Z

The technology sector has been guilty of starting every article with one of a variety of “The time is now” statements. Many incarnations of this statement have underpinned key changes in the evolution of the digital marketing medium.

There were, to my mind, two points in time when the captains of our industry were most active in playing town crier. The 1st was undoubtedly upon the commercial roll out of the World Wide Web in the late 90’s when messaging centred around “get online or become a business dinosaur.”

Now that broadband arguably becomes the standard 81% of all UK internet connections* (up 20% on 2005) and we enter into the next phase of the growth in the role of the internet in the lives of consumers, many clients look to take independent advice on opportunities for increasing traffic to their site and converting more of that traffic into customers and in understanding how changing media patterns should affect how they plan their marketing.

The way we consume media has already changed greatly and the modern digital marketer needs to embrace the idea that they are no longer in control of the mode of communication. Long gone are the days of revelling in the infallibility of a TV advertising slot within News at 10 or Coronation Street.

New media marketing communication as a discipline is about adaptability to change – sponsorship will increase in prevalence as the next bedroom born user generated content (UGC) phenomenon explodes to levels of popularity that we have seen from Friends Reunited, then Bebo, then Pop Bitch and Facebook.

*(BMRB Oct 06)

Safari is coming onto your radar very soon

2008-07-17T11:08:00.002Z

I'll confess to having been a long standing member of what was called the "Mac Minority". Of course I use PCs as well for client browser testing and (as an aside) my Subaru Impreza tuning software is not Mac compatible. The launch of the new 3G iphone at £100, (almost a third of the price of the original iphone) last Friday created so much demand on the O2 website that its servers fell over. The web development community has often done well to avoid adding Safari browser (now available on the PC too) to the list of browsers for testing in the web development project scoping documents. As the touch screen browser experience using the iphone's only web browser becomes more common place, the web design industry must sit up and realise the the 4% of web users on Safari (Stats from WC3) are very soon set to mushroom. If you would like to understand how mobile browsing is likely to affect you communications strategy over the next 2 years then give us a call for a chat.

Second Digital Picket Line

2008-05-14T18:50:00.002Z

The web has without doubt revolutionised the way pressure groups and political activism has mobilised. In China, where the media is still somewhat restricted, worker blogs have exposed illegal working conditions in factories producing big brand western goods. Hong Kong also had its 1st ever strike earlier this year in a climate where the most populated country in the world is having to reassess the value of labour. This could not have been done without the usage of web communication as a mobilising factor. So what next? The French (who since Monsieur Guillotine rise to stardom) have never been shy of taking to the streets in protest took to submitting a raft of blogs to the employment tribunal in protest at FNAC the music retailers redundancy proposal.
There has been a lot of discussion about whether brands should be setting up stall in the virtual world of Second Life. Well it now seems that Second Life's role has influenced the traditional bricks and mortar life of one of the technology sector's founding fathers. Last September 2000 Italian IBM employees logged on to 2nd Life from home and staged a virtual protest on IBM's 2nd Life campus. Dramatically the event resulted in the resignation of the Italian Head of IBM and the RSU Union agreed a new pay deal. We have not seen the last of this - The King is dead - Long live free internet publishing.

What does Web 2.0 really mean in the marketing brief?

2008-03-08T14:56:00.002Z

Some marketeers will be unaware of the origins of the term “Web 2.0”. Oh so briefly: When US web strategist Tim O’reilly (Oreilly Media) formed a planning group of big- brains to analyse the changes in internet usage, the output created the 1st coining of the “Web 2.0” phrase. They examined the changing face of portal strategies from 99-2001 when the large media sites Yahoo, MSN, Lycos other search engines and BBC strived to provide all things to all men online. Since then we’ve seen the rise of empowered consumers defining product choices in vast forum groups, the phenomenon of online voyeurism in blogging exponential popularity growth. Google’s Pay per Click (PPC) launch (their 1st revenue stream) combined with increasing market share of searches and the impact of this on traditional marketing media is also central to the Web 2.0 era. Oreilly media’s site has an extensive article for those interested.

No-one can criticise a client’s desire to keep up with changing ways in which people are using the internet but its worth acknowledging that successful UGC initiatives providing active interaction with a brand requires skilful planning and intuitive implementation – its anything but plug and play. I saw a client brief recently that defined Web 2.0 as being UGC and “the ability to design web pages with rounded corners” – not entirely correct.

So how do brands build a reputation for being Web 2.0 compliant?
Listen to your online customers. It sounds basic, but many clients do very little analysis on their site traffic. How do they interact with the brand? What level of passion do you customers have for your products? What are your customers doing online now? If a brand attempts to engage its audience through a UGC concept without due consideration for your audience, customers may regard the efforts as misguided and perhaps damaging to their brand perceptions.
The danger to brands negating the planning process can be seen on many websites (I’ll avoid pointing out any examples) that have a discussion forum void of any discussion.

Web 2.0 should perhaps be considered as finding gold dust through brand depth – you can’t demand it you have to earn it through searching for increased respect from your online customer base.

What does this mean for brand managers?
-Surrender some control of your brand to your customers.
- If you moderate your UGC, do so retrospectively (get out of hours cover off-shore)
- Consider asking and rewarding some loyal customers to also act as moderators in responding to negativity rather than removing it.
- Look laterally at the opportunity to invite people to UGC – If your consumer product interest levels are already high then its most likely happening already. The last 2 cars I have owned have both had full ‘nuts and bolts’ forum attention in over 3 online sources each – none of these resources were provided by either car manufacturer or by a dealer network.
Overall avoid knee-jerk reactions and take advice from customers, and people in-touch with your brand who have UGC experience then review your options.
If your online customer engagement opportunity is strong then growth of awareness can be enormous and “Web 2.0” can therefore have significant meaning to your brand.

Pay Per Click Industry in Limbo

2007-11-29T11:47:00.000Z

Nathan Levi, the Search Director of Razorfish wrote an excellent article in New Media Age on the 8th of November. I praise primarily, his honesty in acknowledging that the Paid Search / Pay Per Click / SEM industry is in limbo with the gold rush of super cheap customer acquisition costs in competitive markets now well and truly over. The question I ask is, whether the end of the honeymoon should primarily be an SEM agency headache? Well by the nature of pitching and the chest puffing process in competitive tender situation is, of course it is. However my message is directed to clients in saying that while PPC is a unique advertising media (the only media that is not paid by visibility but only charges when customers are pre-qualified by search term then by reviewing your ad) it should not be treated as the 'magic media' forever. Competition for TV eyeballs in the eighties made News at Ten and 'Corrie' the most prized TV spots. How did we achieve cut through in traditional media - through better creative standout, better marketing planning, brand building and the slickest fulfilment of customer expectations. If we apply the same rationale to PPC we should be looking at a raft of assets to maximise the budget (even if cost per clicks are increasing). Timed campaigns, landing page test, competitor tracking, supporting brand campaigns to increase generic searches and combining complimentary natural SEO strategies. When PPC is managed as a channel in its own right it still performs very well. I won't profess to know Nathan's specialism as well as he, but I will reiterate that increased focus on the customer experience rather than just "buying traffic" will increase conversions and repeat traffic to that Paid Search can remain the most cost effective paid marketing medium for the business. Who takes responsibility for the shape of the end-to-end customer journey is down to you.

E-commerce business leaves dragons short

2007-11-07T21:56:00.000Z

Far would be it be for me to criticise the wealth of talent that makes up the BBCs Dragon's Den. However, it was interesting to see the responses to 2 young contestants (for want of a better term) who wanted cash to fund an online gambling price / promotions comparison site with SMS alerts, did not curry much instant favour in the den. Their revenue model is based upon affiliate schemes from the online gaming sites. I felt they had an interesting proposition presented by 2 smart young characters who had memorised their numbers well. The dragons acknowledged that the market was growing but hugely competitive. Is that not just the reason why an "offer comparison" might work well for the 1st independent (mover advantage)? Despite those who herald the coming of dot com2, the dragons generally all said that while the two presenters were very impressive, the idea was not. Duncan Bannatye even said that online bingo could never work -despite owning bricks and mortar casinos himself. Sadly I think that if Doug Richard had still been part of the 'den', the tone of the discussion may have been different. Interestingly Theo Paphitis alone gave them the investment. My issue was that they had additional interests in a media agency and the conflict on their efforts was clear to see. However - still the most compelling TV in my house. I'd welcome the views of anyone who saw the same episode.

Death of the Page View?

2007-10-18T17:58:00.001Z

Clients Beware!
Not for the 1st time I have read that given this year's growth of mouse-over content appearing 'in-page' using Ajax programming technologies (see Wikipedia's Ajax page) , the measure of 'page views' from a log report becomes irrelevant.
These technologies when used in a customer centric usable design can significantly improve the user engagement with a website. However if you are a client that is still tusselling with the mesurement of current online user activity and what decisions should be made in response to the data, then take some advice and establish measurment criteria soon before the traffic data become obselete.
You have been warned!

P&G pushes online planning currency

2007-10-18T15:02:00.000Z

The lead story in this week's copy of New Media Age is "Online planning Currency on horizon - finally". This story relates to a press release by Jicms, the joint committee trade body tasked with responding to call from P&G, Unillever and the COI for a central independent testing panel to provide independent research data for the industry on the success and failure in consumer terms of one digital initiative over another. Jicms have announced a timetable that rolls out its proposal to the online planning industry in Summer 2008. On the face of it this seems like a good idea. Or does it?
Paul Framption, head of digital at Media Contacts says " I'm not sure that a single online (planning) currency will work. All you are doing by trying to revert to an old model is to make old-school marketers more comfortable with digital."

Is he right? Well we need to understand the role of data in our digital marketing arena. The ratings panel that is used for TV and radio viewing and listening figures was created because TV and radio don't have log report or web analytics. TV and Radio also don't have Hitwise (data centre link) or our old friend Alexa Traffic rankings to justify ongoing spend or competitor positioning to the finance director.
Planning currency and ratings panels for traditional media exist to minimise risk in marketing investment providing an alternative for the largest advertisers to their brand tracking results and their focus group outputs.
The reality on the ground, as I see it, is that the majority of old-world (ie not dot-com / e-commerce businesses) are still struggling to agree metrics for success measurement of their current digital data. Many large organisations have departments running multiple analytics tools and no-one is centrally measuring overall success at a senior level. Therefore I'm inclined to agree with Paul and I believe that before the digital industry unveils another universal data 'pet' to its menagerie, we should make sure that our current data 'pets' are all being adaquately fed and watered. What's more if Jicms panel data analysis solution is not the very 'best of breed' then it will be inevitable ignored.

BBC Panorama - kid fighting videos - Is You Tube culpable?

2007-08-03T07:29:00.000Z

Early this week the BBC showed a very worthwhile episode of Panorama. It highlighted the growing number of playground fights and bullying incidents being recorded on mobile phones by kids and posted on You Tube. Like most adult viewers I was shocked by the programme, entitled "Children's fight club". However as the programme went on, I became less alarmed by the playground brawls which, without condemning any form of violence or bullying, remain to my mind, an inevitability of boys discovering testosterone at a young age. I became more alarmed by the old media guard call for greater online censorship. Now, there is a good case for asking You Tube to remove more of this material in the public interest but there is not a strong case, which Panorama mounted, for an end to You Tube's self censorship "report this as offensive" as an inadequate tool- And at this point I bring relevance to digital communications. Are the Panorama journalists not aware of the founding tenant of the internet is totally free access to information. This is the ultimate technological end to the end of nation state's manipulation of their subjects access to information and if we really do value freedom of speech. We are not talking about Britain but about the impact that the internet has had in enabling people in China, North Korea, Zimbabwe to find out what is happening in their own countries and get together with other people to take a stand. In a world where Murdoch's empire and editorial influence continues to grow along with other media moguls, then free access to online information of all kinds, is vital to the future of the world and I'm disappointed that Panorama felt no need to point this out as a possible negative to their suggestion of responsible corporate online censorship. Any day of the week I will take the 'rough with the smooth' in place of having Ronald McDonald moderating my blog (sorry digital Aim client base that sounded a bit militant!). It is very easy to find a police chief who will say that it is You Tube / Google's responsibility to contact them every time someone posts evidence of an illegal act. Come on the BBC - you can do better than that!

Social Networking - an explosion in a vacuum

2007-07-25T12:28:00.000Z

More and more I'm reading about so called experts in business social networking. These people I tend to treat with a little caution for fear that they may have pre-existed as the eternal business networker and have simply rebranded themselves following the cataclysmic rise of the likes of Bebo and Myspace. However if we look to understand the root of the rise of youth social networks we should perhaps acknowledge that technology has only provided a vehicle for a point in time were offline communities are at their weakest. Children and parents are bombarded with horror stories of child abduction, inner city violence and our post Thatcherite materialist era has left little of the community high street, church group or Tupaware party network. It is perhaps in this vacum, that youth social networking had the chance to explode - and it is perhaps for this reason that traditional marketing departments should take heed of the new online marketing metrics that operate in this communication environment. This is an area where trust is earned through the effort of communication and where broadcast will always be shunned as irrelevant unless engagement is both highly targeted and creative. This is really only the beginning of the change that will expand over the next 10 years. We can suggest that the www is only 10 years old as a comms media, but the real changes are happening faster now as a result of 85%+ broadband access. Marketeers need to look and learn fast or suffer at the hands of newly empowered consummers.

Virginal approach to usability

2007-07-11T09:42:00.001Z

I was attempting to book a train earlier this week on Virgintrains.co.uk and I found the user journey to be, better than it was on the old Q-Jump system used on The TrainLine.com but still less that enviable. As digital consultants, we inevitable give digital marketing advice free to open doors, so I sent the list of comments to webmaster@virgintrains.co.uk.

Apologies for unsolicited mail but as a customer experience consultant I was
unable to prevent myself from noting some customer experience issues I had
on the Virgin train site recently.
Unpopulated return time minutes on page 1
Overnight train journeys offered with no warning
Next page auto selects travel the day before creating increased booking
errors
Order of journeys changes to non chronological for "later trains"
You can click on single journey train "journey details" but can not edit or
opt to go back
Purchase process
No flag to go to postcode look up and address field breaks
Only can delete and add new journeys at the end of the process - no edit
facility
+Registration process is now in the right place not at the start of the
search as was the case on the previous site version 2005.
Login
Order_login shows an update button - unclear as to what happens next.
Management of expectations will increase online booking saving the
commissions payable to the station booking offices / other train companies.
Please let me know the name of the person in charge of this area or ask then
to get in touch if they would like help in increasing site revenues and
customer loyalty to the Virgin Train brand at this, the start of a customers
brand experience before travel.
Kind regards
Scott

Rather strangely and hilariously, I have recieved this reply:

Dear Scott
I am sorry to hear of the problems encountered when using our site.
I apologise for the inconvenience caused to you. I have forwarded your request to the Virgin Customer Relations team, who will respond to you directly. Please contact Customer Relations at customer.relations@virgintrains.co.uk for future help and information.

For any urgent bookings, please feel free to call our Web Support team on 0870 010 1127 (0800 hrs - 2200 hrs) who will be happy to make any bookings for you.
If you have any further queries, please do not hesitate in contacting us.
Kind regards
Krishna

Drawing an Iceberg -Concept designer or HTML designer

2007-05-09T13:45:00.000Z

Recently I read an article in Revolution that looked at the pros and cons of specialist independent web design agency over technical web development company over an integrated communications agency. While I intend to blog about this issue in detail later, this article and some work I've done recently for 2 integrated communication agencies has highlighted a point of great industry debate: Who designs better websites - the concept designer from print / graphics / advertising / brand ID background(working with no HTML programming skill) or the technician who programmes HTML / CSS / Flash etc who lives and breathes websites? In advising on the "buildability" of a given website route to a concept designer I found myself explaining that only 40% of great web design is based on what it looks like - 60% of the iceberg is below water. Meaning, in a time of full digital marketing employment, the designer truly worth their salt is focused on intuative transitions from page to page, navigation that has a clearly communicated hierarchy across content boxes, secondary nav and the main nav. ebay, amazon and Google are not sexy designs but their brands have grown through excellence in usable, intuative technology.
I struggle to decide whether one type of designer is better than the other. Arguably the HTML designer will achieve a presentable route faster but is less likely to challenge the client's expectations of creativity. Ideally have both - make sure they work with mutual respect for each other and distribute briefs based on suitability for that client.