Because of this we decided to re-run the same poll we did 2 years ago, where it turned out that 1/3 of you weren’t such great planners and did your Xmas shopping at the last minute on the high street! Our latest poll is asking when you’ll do your Christmas shopping between now and December and whether you’ll do it online or on the high street. Over the years we’ve run about 20 polls, with all the results available on the site - they certainly make for interesting reading.

Other than watching the poll votes pile up, we’ve been busy as usual in the office… or at least those us left in the office have been. With holiday season in full swing the office is as usual at its quietest this month. And given the weather in London during August you couldn’t really choose a better month to get away.

Another thing that happened this month is that our training courses seem to be selling even more than usual, which is great news for us! Our search engine rankings for the courses have increased quite a lot in the past month, which is one of the reasons for this.

Our web pages always rank well in Google as there’s so much good content on the site and the pages use very efficient code. We realised however that the training pages didn’t feature the training name enough so did a bit of work increasing the keyword density (i.e. inserting the name of the course a few more times on the page) and hey-presto! For example, our social media training course has increased from 52 to 9 in the Google rankings.

Furthermore, there’s an import mature student market that needs to be considered. Are mature students more or less likely to research their options in more detail before making a decision? Either way they will need information to help them make a decision.  Choosing your education path is a pivotal moment in the your life and certainly shapes your future.

Digital marketing enables direct communication and consistent dialogue to influence people throughout their buying cycle.  Interactive online technology such as LiveChat can be used in conjunction with marketing campaigns to ensure students get the information they need when they need it.

How can higher education brands increase engagement with their customers?
We think there is a persuasion battle to be won for higher education. Students (and indeed their parents) need to be persuaded that the place they choose offers them the best solution for their unique needs. Not all students have identical demands; not all are driven purely by academic achievement, extra-curricular strength can be equally persuasive. Engagement is key and digital marketing provides multiple options for increasing communication and discussion.

Dominating search results is important
Only 8% of users go past the 3rd page of search results and 68% change the term if they don’t find what they want on the first page. It is logical, therefore, that higher education marketers need to master site optimisation and ensure that their webpages are prominent for relevant keyphrase searches. In the UK this inevitable will focus on Google given its continued market dominance, though due attention to Bing is also required.

It’s a social thing
In the words of MGMT, the youth are starting to change. Traffic from social networks to brand websites is increasing and social media is international. That’s a boon for universities and colleges with an international prospectus and a lucrative overseas market.

Surely social media gives such establishments the opportunity to connect with potential customers and influence their decision-making?

Our Webcredible article on digital marketing for higher education is coming out tomorrow so come back to read more on this. In the article we look at how higher education can embrace digital media to influence their customers and attract the right people to their courses.

Although, it’s incredibly intutuive and I loved all the features instantly it did create me one major problem. Every time someone called me I cut them off.

After spending my time calling back and reassuring my friends and family that I did in fact want to talk to them, I began to look at why. It was actually very simple.

The red decline button is on the bottom left of the screen which is where I had spent years hitting receive call on my previous mobiles.

1. It’s ubiquitous
2. All your friends, in 1 place
3. It’s so easy to start playing

Ubiquitous

Facebook is everywhere!  There’s no escape. Nearly everyone I know is on it, so nearly everyone I know can play games on it.  That is a massive market ready to be tapped.  No console game could get close to the number of Farmville players at its peak.

All your friends in 1 place

Nearly everyone likes to play games with friends.  All the way back to chess (and beyond) games have been a good way to interact with others.  Being online gives you access to millions of other players, but why play with strangers when you can play with friends?  The solution?  Friend lists.

John Vechey (Popcap co-founder) recently had some interesting thoughts about Facebook and friends lists:

I’m very pro-Facebook. I never want to make a friends list again… I hate making friends lists in games. Take League of Legends - I was playing for three weeks until I found out some of my friends had been playing!

The problems with friends lists as a concept include:

• The need to recreate the list each time (or most times)
• You need to know which of your friends to add - you sometimes need to stay in contact externally to keep track of who’s playing what
• They sometimes need a complex string of characters to be entered (an email or a series of numbers). This is less of an issue with a PC, but with consoles and their less well suited input controls this turns into a real effort

Efforts have been made to reduce the pain by using shared lists. But why bother at all?  Most people have a ready made friends list in Facebook. I’ve seen Blizzard is looking to get into Facebook - and it’s not a moment too soon! I hope other developers take note.

Research is needed to find how gamers would want Facebook/the game to behave with this information. For example would gamers want their “game” friends mixing with their “real life” friends online, or should they be separated?  How would gamers like their online gaming behaviour broadcasted, if at all?

It’s easy to play

Adding a game to Facebook is easy.  No installation, very little loading screens and no initial costs. This means there’s no real technical barrier between the developers and the potential players.

Conclusion

Facebook presents a very compelling case to developers. Large markets, easy access and strong links between people. It’s also compelling to gamers. An easy access point to games, and strong social interaction with all your friends who are also playing.

All that’s needed now are iconic Facebook games that can capture peoples imagination, spare time and wallets.  Before that can truly happen, there is much work that needs to be done looking at gaming and social interaction and the interaction between the two.

Just take a look at today’s typical student:

• most will be on online via PC and mobile applications
• most will be regularly interacting with websites, not to mention constant attachment to their social media pages

So I wasn’t really surprised that in our recent poll students would like to be able to do more of their university activities online.  Just imagine selecting your future flatmates online or knowing what modules you’re taking so you can get your parents to buy all the books before you go!  See below for results:

• Applying for student loan - 23%
• Applying for clearing places - 8%
• Applying for accommodation - 12%
• Meeting fellow students - 13%
• Choosing course units - 24%
• Applying for student bank account - 3%
• Other - 7%
• None, it should all be offline - 9%

Just think how efficient the whole system would be if students could start the process prior to the start date?  But perhaps that’s the real reason that activities remain offline.

The less easy it is to navigate the process, the less likely you are to apply and the less likely to go.  Yes, this is the perfect solution to current shortage of places… make the whole process difficult!

Photo credit: nics_events via Flickr/Creative Commons

I have put together Top 10 CSS3 commands, some of which are fairly widely known and also some that personally I find interesting (Box-sizing - Old school box model).

Please let me know what you think and also any sites that you’ve seen using CSS3 as well.

Amazon’s facts speak for themselves:

• Listed at 17th position within the 1000 most visited sites for June 2010
• Approximately 81,000,000 unique visitors per month
• Around 3,600,000,000 page visits per month.
• Market capitalization of over $50 billion

Sometimes it’s good to copy the big guys. But copying a successful design does not mean that the company’s success will be copied with it!

So, ‘If it works for Amazon, why wouldn’t it work for your site?’

Reason #1 – Amazon’s low prices offsets its imperfect user experience

Amazon definitely doesn’t have a sparkling interface design. So what is it about it that makes it so successful?

Amazon can afford to sell at cost or below cost prices, offer free delivery and still have profit! It relies on its large number of customers and its fast selling pace, which can provide cash before the payment of the goods, is due to their original supplier.

Question #1: Is this type of marketing included in your business plan?

Reason #2: Amazon’s existing customers are more important than new ones

If you’ve used Amazon before then it’s more than likely that you will easily find what you are looking for.  Firstly, because you know that in order to find the product that best suits you, you have to follow the process of:

• Searching by a product by name
• Choosing only one category of goods
• Then have the sorting and filtering options enabled

Secondly, if you’re an existing user then Amazon already knows your purchasing patterns. This boosts up your chances to experience serendipity by receiving more personalised product recommendations.

Amazon has a lot of existing customers who are used to its product search process. Thus, making major changes to it involves the risk of dissatisfying its 81m+ registered customers. But what happens if you’re a new user and there’s no purchasing patterns log for you?

You’re most likely to get odd or not useful recommendations and struggle to search efficiently for the desired product. Therefore, unless you have plenty of time, patience or luck, it’s unlikely that you’ll reach a product’s best matches to your requirements.

Question #2: Can you afford transacting only with your existing customers?

Reason #3:  Amazon is continuously testing

Have you ever noticed frequent change of features in the layout of Facebook e.g. the Newsfeed?

Of course, if you are Facebook  (the website with the most traffic for June 2010) or Amazon, then you can afford to test some new designs and features directly on your users. Besides, losing some of them may not even be noticeable!

The problem with copying Amazon is that you can’t know what’s there to stay and what’s to be removed after a while. You can’t know which features have a positive and which ones have a negative return. Copying Amazon involves a high risk of copying features which are temporarily placed on the site just for experimental purposes.

Question #3: Can your ecommerce site afford having features that are possibly not usable?

Reason #4: Amazon has good customer reviews

Sometimes, people hesitate to purchase goods through ecommerce sites because they’re unable to physically see the item they’re planning to buy. Reading reviews of recent buyers of a product can provide future buyers with a clearer idea about what to expect from the purchase. It’s hard to get people to post feedback on a product. Statistically, 1 in 3000 of buyers are likely to leave a review for an item. Considering Amazon’s traffic, this still gives it enough reviews per product.

Many people choose to buy from Amazon not necessarily because of its good prices or interface but because of the trustworthy community and the content it holds.

Question #4: Is the size of your customer community analogous to the Amazon one?

Reason #5: Amazon’s famous name is enough for making its users feel secure

Have you ever noticed that Amazon does not have an EV SSL certificate? This certificate indicates when it’s safe to transact by changing the URL initials from http to https and turning the URL address bar green.

The use of this certificate is critical for making customers feel safe and confident to purchase goods using their credit card over the Internet.  But, if you’re as popular as Amazon, then there is no trustworthiness issue.  In fact, people may not even check to see if you’re using an SSL certificate.

Question #5: Is your  company as famous as Amazon?

In summary…

If your answers aren’t ‘Yes’ for the questions #1-5, then perhaps you should rethink before copying Amazon.

To sum up, just because the system is working for Amazon, it doesn’t mean it will work as efficiently for you. Each design is created to match a certain type of business model. If the business model of Amazon doesn’t match yours, then perhaps copying the design of Amazon to your site could be a bad idea.

Individual affiliates are under pressure. Putting the economic downturn to one side, the rise of voucher sites and super-affiliates (the likes of Quidco) is putting greater pressure on web owners to invest in their websites to acquire and retain visitors. Indeed, 43% of affiliates cite voucher code websites as a direct threat to their business.

At the same time, the affiliate population is ageing slightly. The proportion of affiliates under 30 has dropped from over 30% to nearer 25%. So, affiliates are under economic and competitive pressure and at the same time they are getting older; this means they have more experience. The net result is that the affiliate market is maturing and the business model must be in-tune. For many years merchants have relied on the pull of their brand to make affiliates take the burden of effort.

However, enlightened digital marketers have embraced a new model for many years, though not all merchants have cottoned on. The new model bases affiliate marketing on strategic partnership, building direct relationships with top affiliates.

It makes sense. Behind the websites are people. These people need to make a living. They will work better with merchants who take them seriously and work in partnership for mutual benefit.

Affiliate marketing has to be a two way street if you are to optimise investment and drive sustainable growth. The more effort you put into strategic partnerships, the more effort you will get back from affiliates and this will help you drive brand exposure and traffic from your affiliate channel.

The Webcredible article on affiliate marketing takes a closer look at the value of partnership. Please take a read and share your comments.

We’ve also been super-busy liaising with existing clients about upcoming projects and winning quite a bit of new business. Much of this time has been frantically spent trying to fit our schedules in with our clients’ needs. We have a hugely complex and pernickety internal resourcing system (called the ‘Team Planner’) that precisely shows what we’re all (supposed to be) doing. Trying to fit all our work into this has been majorly challenging to say the least!

When not fiddling around with our resourcing system I’ve been working hard on bringing in new business (as I always do) and we’ve won some really interesting projects, which we’ll be kicking off shortly. Our favourite projects are always ones which combine both research and design, as it means we can create interfaces based on actual user and business requirements. Quite a few of our projects are research-only, which whilst they’re always interesting can be a little disappointing when - despite our best endeavour - our recommendations aren’t always implemented in the way we envisaged.

The company seems to have had quite a government-focus in July, with the following happening:

• We published our 4th annual council report, evaluating the top 20 Socitm council websites against 20 best practice usability guidelines. The average usability score went slightly down, which was a bit disappointing. With the massive government cuts coming the way of all the councils, they’ve got to sort their websites out if they’re to truly make some cost savings.
• We exhibited at the Building Perfect Council Websites ‘10 conference (for the first time), which was a lot of fun. We caught up with some clients and met a whole bunch of new people, many of whom seemed to enjoy our sweets!
• Our Head of UX, Pete Broadbent, hosted a roundtable discussion on usability at the conference. It was a really interesting discussion which seemed to get great feedback from those participating. Read Pete’s blog post for more on what they spoke about.

We also had our CSR day at Webcredible in July. We have at least one away day each year and this year we took part in the Community Games Project, part of Give & Gain Day. The day was all about mobilising local children in London to take part in all sorts of different sports, to show them how sport could have a positive impact in their lives. We all put on our sports shoes and ran around with the kids having lots of fun! Afterwards, in a state of exhaustion we went off to do some cocktail making and then ended up in the London Icebar.

Another new development happened in July with regards to our training courses, in that they’ve gone regional. We’re running our usability & accessibility training stream courses in Bristol, Cardiff and Birmingham later on this year (as well as London) and will likely follow this up with some more locations.

I spent a few minutes headlining the findings from our 2010 council report The Devil Is in the Detail and then opened up the discussion. The overwhelming consensus was that all council sites need to improve in some way but there are a number of challenges to overcome to achieve this:

• Getting budgets for citizen research and usability studies in a time of extreme cost cutting is going to difficult
• High reliance on third party software vendors to make changes to self service functionality needs to resolved
• Balancing internal and external stakeholder expectations needs careful management
• Large and inflexible site structures that have grown organically over the years need to be refined
• Unused and unnecessary content needs to be edited or removed

We discussed a number of approaches and techniques for getting citizens involved in the design process that won’t break the bank. Techniques I’ve used before include:

• Setting up informal usability testing sessions in a library, shopping centre or council offices
• Undertaking detailed desk-based research that combines expert website evaluation alongside detailed analyses of website statistics to build a picture of what is working and what is suboptimal
• Focus group research to gather feedback quickly with multiple demographic groups
• Small-scale usability sessions with a small number of participants to validate the desk research and flesh out the common problems and concerns
• Telephone call observation and interviews with contact centre representatives to identify the top issues that people contact the council about

As with all user-centered design it’s imperative that careful consideration is done upfront when planning the research. A coherent research plan will ensure that the component parts work together to build one picture and validate each other. The target audience needs to be agreed upfront and if recruiting for usability testing be very specific who you want to test with and recruit appropriately; there’s little value testing your self service functionality with someone who’ll never use it or has little or no interest in the tasks you give them.

Above all it’s important to remember that any citizen involvement is better that none!