You won't be able to design a great site without a good understanding of information architecture
The way in which a website is structured is a hugely important factor in determining how people find, understand and engage with content. In the absence of a sound structure, problems related to usability, content management and multiple re-designs can cause problems for both users and webmasters alike.
The process of planning and defining a website’s structure is known as information architecture (or IA for short) and it’s a practice that’s most often associated with user experience. However, an understanding of website structure and how different content elements relate to one another means that IA impacts digital marketing at a wider level and is therefore something many of us can use when strategising and planning.
Defining information architecture
The Information Architecture Institute offers the following definition:
“Information architecture is about helping people…
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April 29, 2016
Attention is a currency. We spend it. We earn it. And, sometimes we waste it.
Experience is something special. It’s all the rage at the moment, yet, we often talk about it as is if it’s a thing. But, as we know, deep down, the best things in life aren’t things, they’re experiences. One of things that makes it so hard to make experience a strategic and actionable part of our work is that the word “experience” means so many things to so many different people across so many aspects of the organization.
We continue to think operationally, which prevents us from feeling empathetically, which stops us from acting experientially.
To CMOs or brand managers, experience may be something creative, whether it’s a campaign, a viral video, an online journey, an event, a physical escapade, fantastic packaging,…
The anatomy of a successful website in 2016 and beyond
Digital marketing is such a fluid industry that many changes have taken place this past year alone.
Consider:
The Mobilegeddon threatened lots of website owners, only for it to produce less dramatic ramifications to most sites, at the very least.
The latest Google search engine guidelines emphasized high-quality standards for Your Life or Your Page (YLYP) and placed more value on Expertise/Authoritativeness/Trustworthiness (E-A-T), among other changes.
The emergence of personalized content such as Facebook’s Instant Articles, Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)
There are probably more changes that went under the radar and developments that are about to take place soon in this field. This goes to show that digital marketing is an ever-evolving industry that requires marketers to stay abreast with the latest news to keep themselves informed about its best practices.
Throughout the years, there are digital marketing practices…
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March 16, 2016
7 success factors for managing charity websites
Balancing the interests of diverse audiences of a charity site is a real challenge, magnified by the diverse communications needs of different teams within a charity. Given these diverse needs, it's no surprise that many charity websites struggle to communicate effectively and encourage interaction with different audiences. I have seen some truly compelling charity websites which we feature in the new Smart Insights guide to website best practice for Not-for-Profits and charities, but there are many more that don't, some with lack of focus shown by a confusing carousel or slider on the home page.
In this post, I take a look at some of the common challenges that charities need to recognise before embarking on redesigns to improve effectiveness.
Management barriers for effective charity websites
Some of the key barriers to success that I have seen when working in NfP organisations are:
1. Lack of clear aims. Gaining a…
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March 14, 2016
Non-profits need to use big data and mobile to present clear messages in 2016
2015 has seen charities gaining increased confidence to streamline, simplify and even surprise. With increasing demands from an ever increasingly digital savvy audience, standing still has not been an option.
The larger charities are capitalising on ever more sophisticated opportunities gained from insights and improved team working and systems. The best of the medium to small size charity websites are finding cost-effective ways to improve experience such as featuring user-generated content.
There are a host of encouraging trends in the sector, but these ones stand out to me due to their take up across the sector and positive impact are:
1. Clarity of message
It would seem that many charities have pared down their offering on key pages to focus on core content and calls to action.…
It's best to test these 4 design elements before using them across your site
It’s real easy to jump on the band wagon and employ design and usability elements that everyone else is using. But have you done your research to see if those elements could be detrimental to your conversions?
Before you leap, here are a few elements that should be considered before implementing them.
1. Rotating Picture Sliders
Slids or carousels, often used on a home page can make a dull site feel more flashy and active. And they make the most of a websites limited space above the fold by displaying several messages.
Perfect. Right?
Well, not exactly.
A study by usability expert, Jakob Nielsen , revealed that participants found it extremely difficult to answer even the simplest of questions when it came to the marketing messages in rotating picture sliders or carousels.
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Participants simply couldn’t grasp each message when…
Your menus may be letting you down. Here's how to perfect them
When businesses are looking to understand why their websites aren’t performing effectively or reviewing options to convert more visitors as part of a CRO programme, they should take a hard look at the different types of navigation they are providing.
If some visitors can’t find their way around a website, or more importantly find what they are looking for, then a pretty website is useless to them.
The primary and secondary navigation menus are the key to getting visitors effectively around a website. Without an effective navigation menu in place, businesses risk confusing and frustrating their visitors. More importantly, they risk losing conversions and sales.
So how do businesses keep that from happening?
This article will go into detail on how to create an optimal navigation menu that effectively helps visitors find their way around.
Choosing Buttons
To start, businesses must choose buttons that will be…
Why the marketing hare beats the tortoise
Traditional marketing has been turned on its head by increasingly disruptive technology and the connected customer. It’s not enough to plan campaigns and follow best practices anymore; as a marketer you have to be agile.
Why is that? Because the connected customer, your customer, people just like you, is ‘always on’. You don’t have a small window in their day to try to reach them anymore, as they’re switching from screen to screen, device to device, which such limited spans for attention, you have to be able to keep up.
To be a customer centric business today means that you as a marketer need to be able to think, and act, in real-time.
As a result, marketing professionals are faced with a new age of engagement - an age in which a series of targeted short-term promotions or messages are beginning to outperform more traditional long-term “integrated campaigns”.…
Over half of businesses don't have any defined responsibility for multichannel customer experience
In our recent research, in collaboration with eCommerce Expo, on Managing Online Customer Experiences, one of the main challenges we wanted to investigate, is who is responsible for managing experiences - both online and across multiple channels.
Given that we are reaching and interacting with consumers across a multitude of touchpoints, all businesses are looking for the best ways to influence and engage with our consumers, to 'maximise conversion from lead to sale and customer loyalty'. But who is responsible for this?
Over 52.6% of respondents had no defined responsibility for managing for managing the Customer Experience
Well we think this is shocking, but understandable? What are the implications? Well, they're the same with any lack of management and likely include:
No / poor KPIs for evaluating Customer Experience
No / poor process for reviewing and improving…
An interview with Nick Dutch, Head of Digital at Domino's Pizza UK
Nick Dutch is Head of Digital at Domino's Pizza Group Limited in the UK and ROI. In this interview he shares the approach used to help manage customer experiences for Domino's. He will explain their approach in more detail at the Smart Insights Digital Marketing conference.
Q. Please outline your role and how your team is structured?
My role combines all aspects of the online customer experience from media to conversion, both on the desktop site and in mobile. So, I’m responsible for all online marketing activity that drives people to the site and in determining the customer journey whether on our desktop site, mobile sites and apps or our communities on social media sites which are also part of how the Domino’s brand is presented in the digital space.
From a strategic point-of-view, I’m responsible…
