Groceries and responsive design

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Last night I had one of my more memorable dreams. This is the dream:

Anyone who is familiar with Kingston will know The Bentall Centre. Well, I was there. I went up to the first floor to discover Game (the recently saved seller of video games) was closed. I asked the guy standing outside what was going on and he said, “This Game is now a grocery store”. I said “What?”. The guy said, “Yeah, we’ve had an awesome idea that we now want this Game to be a a grocery store that closes at 9am so people can get their groceries before work”. This seemed a reasonable response (it was a dream!). I then asked, “How’s it going?”. “Not that well”, he replied, “The Bentall Centre doesn’t open until 9, and we close at 9”. “Oh,” I thought, “Where are all the games then?”. “We moved then” the guy responded.

BACK TO REALITY (imagine harps playing like they do on the telly).

Now, I’m not saying what I’m going to write about now is directly related, but my mind has managed to make some parallels with a very informative session given the other day by Joe Dix and Ian James about responsive web design.

Have I lost you? No? Wow.

Game clearly thought they had a great idea with their early morning grocery store (in the dream, I hasten to add). They could have had the greatest line of fruit and veg on the planet, but they closed before the shopping centre opened, meaning customers couldn’t get there if they tried. There may have even been some very frustrated gamers waiting outside to get their hands on Game branded fruit and veg.

Forgetting the silly idea of Game selling groceries, I think the idea stands. Actually, two ideas:

  1. You could think you have an amazing idea or concept but actually, from the outside in, it is just too abstract. If you have to explain what you’re doing and why it’s relevant, it’s probably not ideal for your audience. Of course exceptions may need to be made if you’re communicating a particularly different, new or important message.
  2. If people can’t get to the content/idea/product you’ve come up with, you may as well have no content at all.

Which is where responsive design comes in. You could have the greatest content in the world, presented beautifully in one particular way, but it may be totally unusable for your audience, meaning all the effort you put into it goes to waste.

Veering slightly away from the original dream

One of the key takeouts from our sessions yesterday, was that you need to work from the ground up when producing content. Focus on your audience. What content do you need to show at a bare minimum, what would we like to show, what won’t we show – cues taken from my newly learned MoSCoW acronym.

The way we produce content has fundamentally changed as we need to think of a whole range of different uses for it, i.e. is it good for blog posts, Twitter, Facebook, desktop or mobile audiences etc. Mobile, especially, has thrown a curveball – what content do we show these users? All of it? Some of it? If we only show some of the content, what are they missing out on? Why does the hidden content need to be shown to anyone at all? It’s now less about ‘let’s just chuck this content on our website and tweet it’. It’s about understanding what we have already, what we need and then developing that content from the ground up for use on appropriate media.

Also take it as a chance to move away from doing things you always do just because ‘that’s how we’ve always done it’. Test new ideas, different layouts, different styles of content – you may find out things about your audience you’d have never known otherwise.

I’m sure this is nothing you haven’t heard before, I just like how it ties in with one of my silly dreams.

Anyone wondering where they moved the games in Game to (unlikely), I asked the guy in the dream about this too. “Oh, yeah, they moved the actual Game store down to Castle Street, where the old Korean Food shop used to be” (What Korean Food shop, I hear you ask. IDK). I toddled off to the other Game store. To my dismay, this one also sold groceries.

Twitter Brand Page Banners

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Blimey, something new on the Jalapeno blog!

It seems as though a feature of the new Twitter design has gone completely unnoticed by me! While researching the #LittleThings campaign by McDonald’s (if I’m honest, it was to see if it had gone the same way as the unfortunate McDStories hashtag from last week), I noticed that their profile had a banner running across the top promoting the campaign:

While looking great, the new feature has drawbacks. Research told me that this new feature is only available as part of ‘enhanced profiles’, which become available to brands that spend $25,000 on advertising on the social network. For big brands, this wouldn’t cause a bat of an eyelid considering promoted trends can go for around the $120,000 mark. Smaller organisations or those spending less on Twitter advertising are pretty much priced out of having this new feature.

If it’s any consolation though, I’m not entirely sold on how great this feature actually is. Banners are relatively small, un-clickable, and given the ever growing average screen size of users, offers little extra benefit than that of featuring the same content on a profile background. Also take for instance, the question of how many times people visit an actual Twitter profile. Recently, Twitter added lightbox functionality that displays a summary profile (sans pretty banner) once a Twitter handle is clicked inside a tweet, a la the following image:

Traffic through to the actual profile must be hitting an all time low (I’d love to see some stats if anyone has any!), so not having this functionality isn’t a huge loss.

What do you think? Like it? Not bothered?

Personally? It’s a nice addition, but nothing that will make a huge impact unless large amounts of traffic go through to the profile page.

Will Apple’s iCloud rain on the Google Plus parade?

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Some exciting products have been announced recently and are due for general release in the near future. In this post I’ll be looking at the impact iCloud may have on Google Plus.

iCloud

Apple introduced iCloud at this years WWDC event in San Francisco. This new service is due to supersede MobileMe, much to the relief of current MobileMe users. Replacing a MobileMe and a £60 a year subscription fee, iCloud is essentially a free syncing service that allows those with multiple iOS and Mac devices to keep all their data up to date. What’s more is you get a @me.com email address, providing a further free alternative email provider.

Google Plus

Just recently, Google unveiled their answer to a social network: Google+. It’s been in the making for some time now and could provide a much needed boost to the internet giants social offering. That’s not to say that they haven’t tried before. Need I mention Buzz, Wave, Jaiku…? No, that wouldn’t be fair.

Both iCloud and Google+ are replacing product flops and have the potential to be the metaphorical pheonix rising from very real flames. The similarity between iCloud and Google accounts is also pretty clear – both are essentially moving to an multi-platform, cloud based syncing service.

But how could iCloud effect the success of Google’s latest attempt to steal a piece of the social pie they’ve been after for so long?

Mmm Pie…

I think the answer lies in the way Google have been using accounts as a single sign in for a whole host of their services. From the same account, people can access their mail, calendar, contacts, google profile, website analytics, webmaster tools (among many other great products)as well as some services that have only have a handful of users left.

Since Google+ works off this same sign in, users with Google accounts can have Google+ functionality switched on without having to sign up for anything else.

Google has built up a sizeable number of Google accounts because they have been a natural (and rather excellent) alternative to free email. On top of this, Google has managed to capitalise on the Android smartphone market, making Google accounts necessary to purchase anything from the Android Marketplace.

Enter iCloud

While a date hasn’t been set for its release, iCloud will be launching in the very near future (probably around August/September time). The threat it poses is the potentially phenomenal take up it could have.

Why?

Its functionality is fully integrated to Mac and iOS devices. Those with Apple devices and looking for a new email account will naturally consider iCloud – especially due to the other features (such as iTunes Match) these accounts will offer. It will be especially attractive if iCloud accounts can be created from an Apple ID, something over 200 million people already have.

It’s worth remembering though that Apple have also tried to add a social aspect to their accounts. Last year Ping was introduced and sold as a hyrbid of Facebook and Twitter for music lovers, but (as far as I’m aware) never took off like it was hoped.

So, if there is such a huge take up of iCloud accounts, will this have an impact on the take up of Google accounts, and therefore Google+ profiles? Where is the limit with the number of accounts people are willing to have, and more importantly, continue to use for the foreseeable future?

What do you think? Im really interested to hear your thoughts!

Charity email marketing

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The shift from traditional fundraising methods to online has highlighted the need to whole-heartedly adopt ‘new’ ways of reaching donors. Email marketing is nothing new, (in fact, email marketing was one of my first jobs when I was 19) but its new significance in marketing strategy is starting to be felt.

In a large amount of cases, we actively seek a relationship with potential donors. We ask them for money or to buy into our mission, but more importantly, we aim to build a relationship with them. We want to make them feel special; like we know who they are and be the friend people want to talk to. This may sometimes be easier to accomplish for smaller charities with an effective communications team, but is still possible for sector giants we know and love.

This approach is a substantial contrast to the commercial sector. While organisations still strive for a relationship with their customers to drive future value, the relationship is materially beneficial. Think of the fashion websites you have signed up for in the hope to hear about the latest savings. Sales for them, bargains for us.

It is because this difference exists that those who receive them may treat charity communications differently to commercial ones. So, to help you get your email marketing off the ground, here are my tips on getting it right:

Spam no more


Image courtesy of hegarty_david
Be selective with the amount of communications you send. Just because people on your database have given you permission to contact them via email, spamming the crap out of them will water down the supposed urgency of any donation/support request. Think of it as a ‘boy who cried wolf’ situation. And more to the point, this will more likely lead to people unsubscribing on mass, meaning your future audience for emergency appeals is significantly reduced.

Use the data you have, collect the data you need

In some cases, appeals are sent out on special occasions or personalised to suit a particular proposition. If you find you do not have the data you need to tailor the broadcast as required, where appropriate to do so*, start collecting that information – ideally at point of acquisition (so this could be an extra field added to your website’s donation form or a method for subscribers to update their details when asked).

*This is important so as to comply with data protection laws.

Don’t panic about knee jerk replies from donors

Always remember that people are far quicker off the mark to complain about something than to praise it. If you’re communicating a particularly hard-hitting case for support, statistically speaking, someone is going to take offense.

Landing page

Your email campaign’s landing page is one of the biggest drivers of your campaigns average gift. On the whole, people give what they’ve been asked for. This could potentially be tailored for a particular donor around their ask base (as you might in a direct mail pack).

Make sure the landing page is engaging with clear messaging, and above all, make it as easy as possible for people to donate or complete your particular call to action. Get rid of any potential noise such as unnecessary links that may cause people to navigate away. This should have a really positive effect on your conversion rates.

Metrics

I can’t stress the importance of this point. Tracking is one of the most important aspects of any email campaign. It allows us to see how well our campaign went, and more importantly, gives us valuable insight into how we can improve our next campaign.

First, you’ll want to look at standard measurements such as open rates, click rates, bounces, unsubscribes etc. Comparing these results to historical/similar campaigns will give you an idea of the progress you’re making. If you’re split testing (e.g. subject lines, creative), these results will also show you whether the test had any affect, and if so, what test worked best.

Secondly, link these results with your site’s analytics package and work out what people are doing once they hit your site. If you have e-commerce tracking, great – your job just got a whole lot easier. If not, there are other things you can do. Set up some goal funnels to record where people are falling out of the process (let me know if you need any more information on this). You can also set up Google campaign URLs to flag traffic that came from the email in your site analytics – helpful if you are pointing to your site from various sources like Facebook or Twitter etc. This will start to give you more accurate conversion rates and ROI figures.

Mobile Optimisation


After an excellent comment from Paul Henderson on my last post, I realised this post wouldn’t be complete without a section on mobile optimisation. As Paul mentioned, there is an almost unstoppable rise in the use of mobile devices to read email (cue gratuitous graph link). Just as we’ve needed to code web pages to be compatible with IE6 (grr, what’s so difficult about updating a browser?!) to make sure we don’t alienate anyone, it seems ridiculous not to cater for mobile email browsers. SPEND THE EXTRA IN DEVELOPMENT FOR MOBILE USERS. This includes optimisation of landing pages too. See Paul’s comment and my response for more information.

Now we just need to worry about designing this pesky email and figure out what it’s going to say…

Perhaps another time ;)

If you have any questions, leave a comment below and I’ll get back to you!

Mobile Optimization. Yes, it’s important.

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I was asked yesterday what I thought of the latest set of mobile usage figures posted on Mashable.

According to the figures, ‘users spent 81 minutes per day using mobile apps, compared to 74 minutes of web surfing’. It’s worth noting at this point that the 81 minutes spent using mobile apps includes games.

I had a brief think and said ‘for the charity sector I can’t imagine it will make that much of a difference yet’.

Time for some justification.

Why this was close:


To an extent, it’s a fair evaluation. The numbers are screaming at us to provide content in the form of an app.

We just need to ask the following:

Can we add value to our existing offerings by making them available though an app rather than our website? If not, can we create value with a new idea?

If not, we face the prospect of developing a dreaded crap app (what I like to call, a ‘crApp’).

Why this was way off the mark:

What these figures do show, is a significant increase in the time people spend using mobile devices every day.

In the past few months, we’ve seen a surge of growth in the mobile device market (almost directly correlated with a decline in PC and netbook markets).

More importantly, there is a shift towards people replacing the humble PC with a mobile device. Take into consideration that Apple’s latest iOS software update will eliminate the need for an iOS device AND a computer to sync it with.

This indicates that more people will be consuming online content on a mobile device.

So at the very least, this means we need to test our websites to make sure they render properly in a mobile browser. This could a relatively small task (perhaps less so if your website is flash based). Look for the quick wins you can make with formatting and ensure that content you are producing now is mobile friendly. A step further would be to create a mobile specific theme to make our content accessible on mobile devices, but this can be more costly.

Well that’s what I reckon anyway. What’s your opinion? Have any of you noticed an increase in mobile traffic to your site in your analytics? Leave your thoughts in the comments below…

My designer QR code

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After being inspired by this Mashable article and mentioning designer QR codes at the last NFPtweetup, I thought I’d give it a go. Here’s what I came up with:


A few learnings:

  • Rounding corners makes a huge difference to its appearance, but you can’t round them too much or the code won’t work
  • It doesn’t actually take that long to do (and I’m not a designer)
  • It works better if the black part of the original QR code remains a darker colour. I didn’t find success in getting the code to snap when it was a light colour.
  • As I’ve said before, I’m not a designer, and digital image manipulation is not my strong point. However, I’ve still managed to get some branding in the code with little effort.

What do you think? How much harder have you found scanning it to a regular (boring) QR code?