The Slipping Point

When does a brand get old? When does a Nintendo become an Atari? When does a Toyota become an Oldsmobile?

Rolling Stone magazine was once on top of the music world. It was the authoritative source for what was cool and upcoming in the music and entertainment industries. They announced recently that they will be launching an online social network - a "MySpace for music," if you will.

My thought: Kinda late to the party, don't you think?

I wish them luck, but the problem is the world has changed. Today's youth doesn't read Rolling Stone. Most teenagers probably think of it as a "stodgy, old" magazine that their parents used to read. A vestige of a bygone era.

It's hard work to rejuvenate a brand. Just saying "this is not your father's Oldsmobile" is not good enough.

Friday fun: Pie anyone?

Craig Robinson illustrates his life to date. Using pie charts, of course.

What R U doing?

More evidence of the shrinking of content: You can now blog using text messages. It's called Twitter and it attempts to answer a simple question: What are you doing?

You can even monitor what others around the world are doing right now using Twittervision.

Self service

I remember being a kid and my Mom driving into "service stations." Our car would roll over a wire that rang a bell (ding ding!). The bell alerted a station attendant that a customer was here. The attendant would come out, walk over to the driver's window and ask "How can I help you?" While the gas flowed into the gas tank they would often check our oil or clean our windshield. This was called "full service."

Sometime in the 1980's we transitioned to stations that offered both full service pumps and self-service pumps. Now we pull in, pay at the pump, get a car wash and never need to talk to a human. (Sorry New Jersey and Oregon.)

Then the self-service concept went to banking: ATMs and debit cards, online billpay and account access. Here too, we can have a lengthy financial relationship with a company and never talk to a person.

Now the self-service, or DIY craze is everywhere. I can pay at the grocery using "Self Checkout." I can self-publish, self-insure, self-medicate, self-represent and self-help . I can navigate using GPS instead of asking for directions and order pizza online instead of calling.

The funny thing is, we don't mind doing things for ourselves that used to involve others. In some cases we prefer it. Yes, the self-checkout concept saves the retailer money. But it also saves me time waiting in a line. Yes, having someone pump my gas would be nice but not if the gas costs a lot more.

The web has accelerated this self-service trend even more. I can do research without going to the library. I can ship and track packages without going to the post office. My wife can (unfortunately) buy shoes without trying them on. More and more, customers are expecting to be able to conduct business of every kind on the Internet:

• Meet a date.
• Order flowers.
  
• Make a dinner reservation.
  
• Get directions.
  
• Pay the parking ticket.
  
• Change a phone number.
  
• File a restraining order.
  

OK, kidding. But your site does need to offer users the ability to "serve themselves" in every way possible. Can they currently pay their bill or renew a membership? Can they download brochures and applications? Or better yet, complete them online?

Make it easy for your customers to "self-serve" or they may become someone else's customers.

Not every picture tells a story

I'm sorry if you spent hundreds of dollars on that stock photo. Or hours making that image look just right. Most of the time, your users don't care.

"In the case of Web design a picture isn’t always worth those thousand words… users treat pages with superfluous images like obstacle courses: The images create barriers to content."

Eyetrack studies, in which the movement of users' eyes are tracked to see where on a page they look, show that users are great at ignoring decorative imagery. Similar studies have found that users are first drawn to headlines, article summaries, and captions. They often do not look at the images at all until the second or third visit to a page. Print magazine and newspaper readers on the other hand, check out the photos first, then get on with reading.

Online, content is still king.

RSS Explained

From CommonCraft: A clever and effective answer to the question "What is all this RSS stuff about?"

RSS in Plain English

Jalopy.com?

There's a classic marketing exercise where you are asked "if our company were a car, what kind of car would it be?" Is your company fast and exciting like a Porsche? Or conservative and safe like a Volvo? Is your company a Mercedes (luxurious and high-class) or a Mini Cooper (fun and friendly)?

There's no right or wrong answer. But it's a helpful exercise to gauge the "personality" of your company. Your corporate personality is your brand. And that personality should be reflected on your website. Not just with a logo or a tagline, but with the entire web experience.

The Porsche site should be fast and sporty. The Volvo site should stress luxury and safety. The Mercedes site should be well designed and connote quality. The Mini Cooper site should be fun.

If your website doesn't reflect the brand values and personality of your organization, it may be time for a tune-up.

Almost Famous

Being famous used to be reserved for a select few. Now with game shows, reality TV, the Web, satellite radio, etc. - it seems as if anyone can be famous.

Fame, as we once knew it, has been fractured. Split into little pieces of popularity. Sure there are still some people that transcend - those that 9 out of 10 people would know. George Bush, Michael Jordan, Oprah Winfrey, etc. But the modern era has brought us more "niche celebrities" than ever before. Within a certain world, these people are hugely popular. But outside that world, nearly unknown. Here are some examples. My guess is either you know them as being "famous" or you don't know them at all:

• Robert Scoble
• Giada De Laurentiis
• Aishwarya Rai
• Jessica Rose
  
• Sanjaya Malakar

Some say the Internet has changed Andy Warhol's famous statement to "In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people."

Web 1.0

Wow.

Discovery: The next big thing

Ten years ago few would have predicted the 800 pound gorilla that search has become. Back then, we had Hotbot and Lycos, Webcrawler and Infoseek, Yahoo and Google. None with a clear idea of how to make any money. And most websites back then didn't have (or need) a robust site-search solution. We "surfed" the Web, skimming along the surface. And we were happy.

But much has changed in ten years. Today, Google makes billions serving up ads based on search keywords. Yahoo claims to be "the world's most visited homepage." And enterprise search is now a huge trend as large organizations struggle to organize and access their vast collections of digital information.

Search is and will continue to be very important. But a new trend is also emerging: Discovery.

I think of it this way:

• Search helps you find things you are looking for
• Discovery helps you find things you are interested in, but that you didn't even know existed
  

The leader in this area is a site called StumbleUpon. It's basically an application that recommends interesting sites for you based on your interests and the votes of other, similar StumbleUpon users. Today StumbleUpon released StumbleThru, which will surface the best content on popular Websites - "the best music artists on MySpace, the best photos on Flickr, the most relevant articles on Wikipedia. It's kind of a way to discover interesting information without actually having to search for it."

Google likes this idea so much they have created a similar "recommendation engine" called Google Dice.

Sites like Digg and Reddit offer discovery through their communities. They "crowdsource" the discovery of what's new and interesting. Newsvine and NowPublic do the same for news.

As the Internet continues to grow in size, complexity and importance, the act of discovery will likely play an integral role in how we make sense of it all.

Conventional usability

There are times to be innovative, creative and clever.

Most of the time though, when it comes to usability of your site, you want to be more conventional than "inventional." You want the customer to be comfortable performing a transaction on your site. If she clicks the "submit" button, you want what she expects to happen and what will happen to be exactly the same thing. This is the essence of good usability. Be one step ahead of the customer at every turn and provide the options they need and the site behavior they expect.

Google Office

I recently wrote about OpenOffice as a free alternative to Microsoft Office. As an update, I point you to this announcement from Google that they soon will have not only free online word processing and spreadsheets (available now) but also free presentation software (coming this summer).

Similarly, Adobe announced in February that they would be releasing a free, online version of Photoshop within the next six months.

As more and more applications move from the desktop to the Internet, look for this "webtop" trend to continue.

The incredible shrinking content

First there were full concerts and recitals. Then came pop music and albums, then singles, now ringtones. First there were plays, then movies, then TV shows, now downloadable clips and vignettes. People aren't reading print newspapers as much anymore. We want our information fast. In bulleted lists. We want the soundbites and the highlights.

Despite having more of it than ever, content is shrinking in size. Wired Magazine examines the trend this month: Snack Culture. It's recommended reading.

Update: Seth's take.

Don't be a tool

I believe it was Jerry Seinfeld in one of his stand-up routines. He made the point that we are so connected today - with ubiquitous email and cell phones - that the shower is really the only place where we can't be reached.

"Yeah he's six feet away, naked and wet. We can't reach him. You're going to have to call back."

Some people feel completely tethered to their email or phone, letting the workday have no end - The "Crackberry" Phenomenon.

Some companies are having "meeting-free" days or "email-free" days in an effort to boost productivity. I'm not sure that's the answer. After all, if email and meetings aren't making you more productive, why have them? Instead, here are some tips for managing email and making sure your meetings are productive.

Henry David Thoreau wrote over 150 years ago "Men have become the tool of their tools." Email, meetings, and the telephone are your tools. You own the tools. Don't let them own you.

Broadband vs. mobile

High speed internet access, or broadband, (which 80% of American Internet users now have) has changed our opinion of the web. It has ushered in the Web 2.0 movement and an explosion of online video (Youtube, iFilm, Atom, etc) e-learning, and online gaming. It's similar to the way cable changed TV and the way satellite is trying to change radio.

Users will expect more. More audio, more video, wider resolutions, better photos, "Ajaxy" interfaces, etc.

But the mobile web movement, demands almost the exact opposite - smaller graphics, less load time, more succinct copy.

Your site needs to have a plan for both.

How Google is like the dictionary

I remember an episode of M*A*S*H from my youth in which Hawkeye Pierce (Alan Alda) is being interviewed by a war documentarian. One of the questions is "what's your favorite book?" Hawkeye, in his smart-alecky way, answered that he would choose the dictionary because "you know, it has all the other books in it."

In the same way I think if I were asked what my favorite website is, my answer would have to be what George Bush dubbed "The Google." Not for how it looks, but for what it does and what it provides me. In a fraction of a second. For free.

Now I realize there are other, arguably better search engines, and not everything is findable through Google. But our ability to find and access information - facts, statistics, opinions, images - is greater now than at any other point in history. And to me, no other site exemplifies that achievement of mankind more than Google.

With hundreds of millions of searches per day, I don't think I'm alone in this sentiment.

Does design matter?

There was a fascinating article in the Washington Post today about a social experiment: take one of the best violinists in the world and have him play out of context - in this case, as a street performer in a DC Metro stop. What would happen? Would beauty transcend? How would commuters react? And what is beauty? Is it a fact or merely an opinion? Or is it a little of each, tempered by context?

Read the article to find out the amazing results, but it made me think about websites and web design. (Hey, I'm a geek.)

Ultimately, does it matter how "pretty" your site is? Do the photos, colors, and fonts make any difference? Web designers show off their technical and artistic prowess at sites like the CSS Zen Garden and StyleGala. Meanwile "uglies" like Craigslist, Ebay and MySpace are wildly successful despite their homely appearance.

I think it's important to realize that web design is not just about the look and feel. It's about information architecture and interaction design. It's about form following function. More than anything, it's about the user experience.

Make the user experience rewarding and it won't matter that your colors clash.

Update: Read Seth's take.

Usable content

The usability of your website is not just about the forms and functionality. It can refer to your content too. Here's an example of good content that is simply not usable. Would you want to read that?

Here are some tips for better writing:

• Avoid alliteration. Always.
• Never use a long word when a diminutive one will do.
• Prepositions are not words to end sentences with.
• Parenthetical remarks (however relevant) are unnecessary.
• Proofread carefully to see if you words out.

OK, seriously. Go here to learn more about writing for the web.

Context is king

If the Internet is the "information superhighway," maybe online marketing is the collection of billboards and roadsigns along the highway that encourage you to exit.

Gas, food, and lodging are the real-life staples because of context. It's what the users want and need. Online, context is the power behind Google Adwords and other similar programs. You pay for your ad to show up only when users are searching for a keyword related to your product or service. So the ad for your brand of ice cream doesn't show up when people are searching for "cars," but it does show up when people type in "desserts."

Similarly, promotions on your site can be more effective when placed "in context." People will be more receptive to an ad if it makes sense in their current surroundings.

Hi. Welcome back.

I pulled my car into a nearby Jiffy Lube the other day. I parked and walked into the office. As I entered, the gentlemen working there greeted me with a "Mr. Evans?" Having never been there before, I was more than a little surprised. But they had typed my license plate into their system and recognized me as a previous customer at a different Jiffy Lube location. They had my car's maintenance history on the screen and were better prepared to do business with me.

The best bartenders and baristas recognize their repeat customers and have their "usuals" waiting for them before they are fully in the door.

Amazon remembers your browsing and order history and makes product recommendations based on it.

Many sites that require a login offer a "Remember Me" feature to facilitate future visits.

How does your site recognize, reward and retain your best customers?

Advertising is story time

We've all seen him. The roadside guy dressed like a chicken holding a sign announcing the opening of the new barbecue place. Or the dancing guy spinning a sign for the new wireless carrier.

They are real-life pop-up ads.

We all look at them and dismiss them. Say they don't work. A friend of mine goes so far as to claim that advertising as a whole "doesn't work" on him. But brand awareness and location awareness are worth something. Maybe you're not in the market for a new cell phone (or barbecued chicken) today. But when you are, these companies are betting that a little part of your brain will have filed the information away and you'll remember their store.

You should market your products and services the same way online. No, I'm not advocating you dress up like a chicken. But you should think "long-term." Ads are not all about click throughs. Conversion is not the "be-all end-all." Sometimes it takes multiple messages to get the point across. Dell doesn't expect you to buy a computer every time you see one of their ads. But when you're in the market for one, maybe you'll think of Dell.

Advertising is about telling a story as much as it is selling a product. The Mac vs. PC ads today are a great example. They never say "go buy a Mac" or give you a price or any call to action at all. Years ago Infiniti introduced a new car with an ad campaign that never even showed the car. Ads for investment companies seem to tell a story that if I put my money with them, I'll live to a ripe old age, be in good health, and have great looking, well-behaved grandchildren.

So figure out what story you want to tell, then get out there and dance.

Keep your friends close, but your competition closer

I had an economics professor tell me this story once. I have no idea if it's completely accurate or taken from a book, but years later I still find it interesting.

McDonald's has a pretty successful track record. Rarely do you see a McDonald's location go out of business. When McDonald's is considering opening up a new location, they spend thousands of dollars and commission a study to look at factors such as:

• How far away is the closest McDonald's?
• What's the average income of the surrounding neighborhood?
• Is it a commercial or residential area?
• How much would the real estate cost?
• How much traffic does the road get? At what times of the day?
• What speed are the cars going?

Here's what Wendy's does:

• Open franchises next to McDonald's.

If the area can support a McDonalds, in all likelihood a Wendy's will thrive there too. And now they've saved all that time and effort researching locations. Take a look around in your town and as you travel. They are often in very close proximity.

So how does this apply online? Don't turn a blind eye to your competition. Learn from their successes and failures. Subscribe to their e-newsletters or RSS feeds. Use tools like Alexa and Google News Alerts to keep track of what they are doing. But also collaborate with them when it makes sense. After all, there's probably room on your street corner for both Big Macs and Frostys.