Marketing

Getting Web site development right

August 30, 2007 by Susan Getgood

Two of the most popular search terms for this blog are "b2b website" and "corporate websites suck." The second due to a 2005 post called Why Corporate Websites Suck and some ideas for fixing them.

But, as I was writing a memo about site development for a client, I realized that I haven’t written about Web development here in quite some time. Since people seem to be coming here for just that sort of information, seems like I should rectify that 🙂

So here’s a step by step outline that covers the most important part of the process: defining the requirements and navigation for the site. I strongly believe that you must have a clear picture of the path(s) you want your visitors to take through your site, to get to the desired result, before you commit one line of code or design a single page.

These are the steps I follow. Every time. New site or redesign.

1. Assemble a team that represents the key stakeholders in the site. You do not need every individual, but you do want to be sure that the representatives are truly cross-functional. In some cases, you will want someone from the actual business area. In others, it may be more effective to have members of your team interview the relevant people. Some of the functions that should be included are sales, marketing, business development, communications and customer service.

I do not recommend having the Web designers or developers too involved in this stage. You want to keep the discussion at a business level until you have a solid idea of what is needed across the company. Developers often get too wrapped up in how to do something rather than what is necessary, which should be the focus early in the process. Involving developers too early also can steer the discussion toward what the developers can do easily rather than what the company really wants. Later, when you get to the development stage, you may make concessions due to cost or complexity but it is too limiting and undermines creativity to start this way.

2. Once the team is assembled, the first order of priority is to identify the objectives for the Web site. These objectives should be closely aligned with your overall business goals. Some of the questions to ask:
a. Who are you trying to reach?
b. Why?
c. What do you want to tell them?
d. What do you want them to do once they are at the site?
e. What are the priorities of the business now and for the next three years?

It is helpful to pull the web stats from the existing site to better understand what your site visitors are doing. What areas get the most traffic? What are people coming to your site to see and do? It’s okay to let the team refer to areas on the current site that they feel need to be kept or improved, but don’t let them get bogged down in what they don’t like or think does not work. The point of this work is to develop a specification for the new site; rehashing previous decisions, good or bad, is not useful and slows down the process.

You are going to have multiple audiences and multiple objectives – everything from sales to customer service to media outreach to things very specific to your business plan. This is exactly what you want at this stage.

3. Next, you determine priorities. Of all the objectives identified in the previous stage, three, maybe four, will be critical to your overall business objectives. These are the priorities and the elements that should get attention on the highly valued “real estate” of your home page. For the most part, everything else can go on inside pages. Typically, the core priorities fall into these buckets:
* Identify product set and market segments so visitors know they are in the right place;
* Communicate key company news/events/messages to constituents;
* Purchase;
* Customer service.

4. The team should then discuss content. Starting with the existing content. What stays/goes? What should be improved? What new sections do we need? What data do we need to capture from our visitors? How will we let people search our site? Keep the team focused on the desired result, not the technology that might be used to get there. And don’t worry about writing the content yet; that comes later.

5. One or two team members should be deputized at this stage to develop a straw man home page, home page navigation and inside navigation. Their job is to synthesize all the discussions into a cohesive navigation. You still should not be thinking about design or functionality. Keep thinking content. The key questions:
a. What action do we want or expect to visitor to take?
b. How can we drive the visitor through our site to accomplish our priority business and site objectives?

As mentioned above, you need to stay focused on the visitor. How does she use the site? What did she come for? Every click should move the visitor forward to accomplish her objective. The goal as we develop navigation is to ensure that she is never more than one click away from the next thing she wants.

This is just about the most important part of the process: Making sure you have defined a clear path through your site for your users so they get what they came for.

Never assume that the visitor will figure it out. If you want him to do something, make that the attractive option. If he wants to buy something, make sure he can do it easily and quickly.

So, if we sold apples, our home page would make it clear we sold apples, and perhaps the range of varieties. Within one click, the visitor could get more information on the specific varieties (product page). One more click gets him to the order page, or perhaps the dealer search page if we don’t sell direct.

We can offer more information about our apples, but we have to make the desired path crystal clear. Otherwise our visitors get lost.

Typically, the home page has its own navigation, and the inside pages have two levels of navigation: a top line navigation which contains all the items that are common throughout the site, and not that different from the home page navigation, and a side navigation, which contains all the navigation items for the specific section of the site.

6. Once you have your straw man, the team reviews it and the straw man is adjusted accordingly based on feedback. Continue the review and revise process until you have a defined home page and navigation that meets the approval of your key team. This should all still be in outline and very rough graphic form “FPO.”

Now it is time to involve the Web developers and designers.Whether you are putting the project out to bid or using an inside development team, I always recommend that the marketing team and key stakeholders get a clear picture of what they really want from the Web site before involving the techs.

I also stay away from delivering a “spec” to the Web team in the first pass. I find it more useful to present what the site needs to achieve from a business and customer perspective to see how the vendor(s) respond. You may discover that some of the things that you’d like to have require more funds than you have budgeted. This is where the priorities developed earlier come in so handy. The budget needs to deliver the priorities first, and the “nice to haves” come after.

The goal is to develop a scope of work that delivers as much of your core needs as can be accomplished, along with a plan to incorporate any additional elements as time and budget permit.

7. You then move into the development stage of your site which typically will have three main areas: Design, Development and Editorial. Your Web developer will probably offer both Design and Development (functionality, coding) services. Editorial, ie writing the site, is best project managed by someone in-house using a combination of internal and external resources. If you spend the time upfront as I’ve outlined, the actual development project will be far simpler and smoother than you perhaps have experienced in the past.

Tags: b2b website, b2c website, website, web development, web design, marketing

Blurring the lines — just what is advertising on a blog?

August 12, 2007 by Susan Getgood

Most online advertising is easy to spot. Skyscrapers or banners with blinking lights and flash animations. Text ads with the clear tag "XYZ Ad Network" or Google Adsense.

But what about blogs that are sponsored by a company. For example, Scratchings and Sniffings, a pet blog sponsored by Purina.

Or Pay Per Post? Or blogging networks like Parent Bloggers Network in which companies pay a consulting fee for review coordination and the bloggers keep the products?

Or blogger relations — where companies reach out directly to bloggers with products and exclusive stories and other blog-worthy material?.

Are the posts that result from these efforts advertising or editorial? It has to be one thing or another, right? After all, in the" good old days," it was black or white. It was advertising or it was editorial and never the twain shall meet. Right?

I mean, we’ve never had evaluation labs that did paid reviews of products and applied a seal of approval. Oh wait a minute. Yes we did.

Magazines and newspapers never sold editorial-like space for advertisers to write their own stories. Oh wait a minute. Yes we did. And do.

And it wasn’t really a problem. It just was.

And is. Readers have always been, and still are, able to apply their own judgment to the material they read, no matter how stupid advertisers seem to think we are. The Web is no different.

And all these approaches have their place in our informational ecosystem. So, let’s put a little definition around the issue.

What is advertising, what qualifies as "advertorial," and when can we expect that a blog, podcast or Web site is serving up "pure" editorial content?

Advertising. The advertiser has complete control over the ad content and landing pages. Paid or pro bono, using rate cards not that different from the old magazine CPM. Examples: site advertising, Google AdSense, BlogHer ad network, Blogads.

Advertorial. This is where I put things like Pay Per Post and blog networks like Parent Bloggers Network. In the print world, of course, the advertiser has complete content control and the magazine simply dictates a common format. Online, it is a bit different, but the end result isn’t. Online, the advertiser has control over the initial factors — what is to be reviewed or written about and who will be writing. But, after that, the blogger is more or less free to write what he pleases.

That said, we can certainly expect a certain cognitive dissonance effect; paid reviewers will be more likely to be positive about a product, regardless of their opinion, or lack thereof, before starting the review. While they aren’t being paid to voice a view contrary to their own opinons, as were the subjects in Leon Festinger’s original research in the 50s, the mere fact that they are being paid by an entity with a vested interest is bound to shape the review.

But so what. Readers can make up their own minds. And will. However, full disclosure of relationships is absolutely essential. If the service or network does not require full disclosure, I strongly advise both advertising companies and bloggers to stay away.

Sponsored blogs fit in the advertorial category. Even if the writer is totally independent, a certain sensibility is bound to affect the blog. The sponsor may not say "don’t trash me" but the writer isn’t going to. Unless there is such an egregious situation that the blogger wants to divorce the sponsor. Likewise, I consider review networks like Parent Bloggers to be advertorial because even though the writer is free to write whatever she wishes about the product or services, there is a prior agreement that there will be a post.

Caveat: Do not confuse pay-per-post type writing with freelance writing. Paid posts on a personal blog reflect the personal opinion and style of the blogger — some are short and breezy, some funny, some deep and introspective. The clients are not paying for the in-depth research, impartiality and writing skills that we might see on a sponsored blog or from a professional freelance writer.

This does not mean that bloggers cannot be freelance writers. They can. It just means that we need to understand that there is a real difference between pay-per-post writing and freelance writing, and the fees each type of writing should command.

Independent editorial. The blogger may take advertising, but the expectation is that the blog contents are 100% owned by the blogger, in all senses of the word. The blogger may be receptive to pitches from blogger relations, marketing and PR firms, but there is no quid pro quo. The company making the pitch had better tell a compelling, relevant story that offers something of value to the blogger. Or risk being ignored, or worse, ridiculed.

Companies that get this right can have long, mutually beneficial relationships with bloggers. Get it wrong? Just ask Wal*Mart.

Pay Per Post and other paid blogging services can supplement blogger relations, but in my opinion, do not replace it.

They can however coexist. Just as advertising, editorial and advertorial have been working together to tell us the story for years.

Tags: blogger relations, advertorial, pay per post, parent bloggers network, advertising

Big Pharma goes Viral..and it’s not too painful

July 16, 2007 by Susan Getgood

Bayer has just launched a viral marketing campaign for its Aleve pain reliever. From the NY Times, July 12:

"By visiting a Web site, www.aleviator.com, Internet users will be able to follow a fictional storyline that leads them through a series of clues, taking them in and out of social networking sites, wikis and blogs.

For each person who clicks through to the end of the game, which takes at least a minute, Bayer will make a donation of $5 to $10 to the Conservation Fund, an environmental nonprofit group. The campaign will last a month.

The gimmick is intended to get people in the 25-to-49 age group to notice Aleve, a pain medicine that was introduced 13 years ago and is used mostly by people over 50 to relieve symptoms typically associated with aging, like arthritis and back pain."

So, given that I am both a marketer very interested in these sorts of campaigns and an Internet user in the target age range, I thought I’d check it out.

Prediction: the campaign will spread and people will click through to the end because Internet users will be motivated by the charity donation. Even though Bayer doesn’t advertise the donation upfront on the aleviator site, let’s face it, everyone who spreads the word will be prefacing it with the information. And knowing that outcome is going to be what keeps people looking for the links to move forward.

At least that was what kept me moving forward. The story itself was kinda hokey; it was trying so hard to be hip and funny, and ended up not so much of either. While it clearly wanted more engagement that I was willing to give it, it didn’t give me a good reason to bother reading or viewing more material. I just looked around for the obvious next link in the chain and clicked.

It wasn’t that it was bad. It just wasn’t that interesting. For me, the payoff is the donation. As it will be for many.

That said, I wouldn’t call this a failure. It will be interesting to see the sales results for Aleve in the target population after the campaign. Even if people (like me) click through as fast as they can, it doesn’t mean they won’t think more positively about Aleve and perhaps consider purchasing it.

Because that is the measure of success. Not how many people view the campaign. Not how much is donated to the charity, although it is an excellent by-product. How many people actually buy the product.

A lesson learned the hard way by many. Like Miller last spring, whose beer cannon campaign was a viral success and a sales flop. As reported in CNN Money:

MISS] No accounting for taste. In the midst of today’s viral-marketing epidemic, it’s worth noting that funny videos don’t always circle back around to the bottom line. That’s a lesson Miller Brewing learned the hard way with the "beer cannon" campaign it produced for its Milwaukee’s Best brand. Though the videos–featuring cans turned into projectiles and blowing away unmanly items like stacked teacups and ceramic kitty cats–have been viewed more than 4 million times on YouTube, they haven’t had much impact at retail. In fact, despite the direct hit with its target audience, Milwaukee’s Best sales fell 11 percent from the previous year.

Let’s hope Aleve can avoid that headache….

Disclosure: I already occasionally use Aleve when I have a particularly nasty headache.

Tags: Aleve, pharma, Bayer, viral marketing, word-of-mouth

Into the Dragon’s Den and some Summer Reading

July 3, 2007 by Susan Getgood

1998 … my year as Director of Corporate Communications at The Learning Company. Twas an interesting time, bookmarked by the acquisition by TLC of its chief competitor Broderbund in the early part of the year and the acquisition of TLC by Mattel at the end of the year. In early 1999, I returned to Cyber Patrol as VP/General Manager and proceeded to spend the next year or so helping sell the unit, at a hefty profit I might add.

TLC was an interesting place. And no one was more interesting than company president Kevin O’Leary, who will probably go down in software industry history for his comparison of software to cat food.

Tip of the hat to former TLC colleagues Karen and Kathy for pointing out Kevin’s most recent incarnation as the Canadian Donald Trump on The Dragon’s Den, albeit with no, versus bad, hair.

Gotta say, if your livelihood doesn’t depend on him, he is a funny bastard. Enjoy!

******

Geoff Livingston over at The Buzz Bin posted a query to a bunch of us PR/Marketing types on Facebook over the weekend: What’s On Your Social Media Reading List? The usual suspects made the list — Cluetrain, Naked Conversations, Debbie Weil’s Business Blogging book, Hobson & Holtz’s new podcasting book, and so on. But there were also some interesting, and new, suggestions, and I urge you to check out the list for yourselves.

My contribution? I believe that one of the biggest hurdles to understanding social media, and how to work in this new world, is learning how to think differently. Not just out of the box. Get rid of the box. Think about things in a whole new way. I suggested people should read The Long Tail by Chris Anderson, Gonzo Marketing by Chris Locke and Freakonomics by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner.

What am I reading now? Beyond Buzz by Lois Kelly, with The New Rules of Marketing & PR by David Meerman Scott and Everything Is Miscellaneous by David Weinberger on deck.