6-8-5 User Interface Sketch Exercise / Click to view tweets from #nouxteam

Key Takeaway 1:
Disruptive innovation is the new marketing.

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Agency’s challenges, should they chose to accept it, are to create consumer experiences based core to their client’s brand strategy.

Marketing agency’s challenge is to disrupt industries with ideas.

For Nike, this didn’t mean pushing ads to sell shoes. It meant to create consumer services that supported the athlete.

Products support the services. Services support consumer lifestyle. The consumer lifestyle is the brand story.

Key Takeaway 2:
Art and science continue to blend for the creation of digital experiences.

From taking creative risks and leveraging new technologies to propel design forward to blending data insights and consumer psychology, art and science are intersecting in a remarkable way. Rather than relying on the old-school mentality of creative “gods” carrying a campaign, we can create strategies that intertwine creative innovations with proven tactics.

If you somehow gathered this means more effective banner ads, you’re not paying attention. Few would consider a media impression an experience.

Marketing is about experience. Marketers can build the experience with art and science.

Key Takeaway 3:
Content is integral to every consumer interaction.

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Marketing and brand strategies often focus on the company launching them. Sure they mention consumer objectives, but they primarily revolve around KPIs.

Content strategies propel tactical execution, even if only accidentally. Content is more its container. We have the opportunity to intelligently define a consistent experience through content strategy. These definitions allow us to make tactical execution decisions that will serve the true performance indicators of a marketing program.

Shauna’s SXSWi 2012 Session Notes:

Notes in links are representative of information shared. They don’t include my personal thoughts; for those–and application of the concepts shared–contact me.

Business

Why Agencies Should Act Like Tech Startups (view)

Key takeaway: Agencies should re-invent themselves without personifying others. Marketing is more than media buys and content delivery.

Marketing agencies need the agility to disrupt markets and create programs.

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If you’re interested in this topic, check out my previous posts on the new agency model:

Why is the “Next Evolution” of Agencies so Focused on Tools and Channels?

3 Habits Marketing Agencies Need to Break in Order to Grow

UI

Mind Reader: Seeing Needs Users Don’t Articulate (view)

Key takeaway: True innovation cannot come from a consumer’s existing frame of reference–but consumer’s can guide the way when the right observations are made.

Bootcamp for a UX Team of None (view)

Key takeaway: Quick concepting and outside feedback leads to effective creativity.

Ambient Location and the Future of the Interface (Keynote) (view)

Key takeaway: Digital devices are extensions of the human body. Interfaces that respect this will win.

Marketing

How Brain Science Turns Browsers into Buyers (view)

Key takeaway: 95% decision making is subconscious–and that’s trackable and accessible with the right insights. Also, test, test, test.

Tech + the Evolution of the In-Store Experience (view)

Key takeaways: Existing in-store digital interfaces are still in their infancy, but incredible technologies are becoming more popular. I’m interested to see how this space will develop in the future and create a more seamless consumer experience with out-of-store digital interfacing.

Brands: The Cost of Being Human (view)

Key takeaway: Quality engagement doesn’t scale well. Advocates are more important than ever.

Fit Together: How Fitness goes High-Tech & Social (view)

Key takeaways: Creating systems that create enough value will appeal to users and create a desire to share data.

Data

Beautiful Data? No, That Data is a Sex Machine (view)

Key takeaways: Data is beloved by it’s compliers and it’s becoming more easily consumed. There’s a need for digital strategists to bridge the gap between the data miners and its impactful marketing application.

Content Strategy

Rude Awakening: Content Strategy Is Super Hard (view)

Key takeaways: Content strategy should be collaboratively applied with complementary disciplines (user experience, user interfaces, design, development, etc).

Effective communication is the core of content strategy; documents and their evolutions are just the medium.

The Secret Lives of Links (view)

Key takeaways: People suck at using links. Link use is often a battle of user behavior and company habits.

• Deliver users to their desired objective
• Emit the right scent
• Look good, while still looking like a link
• Do what the user expects

Real-Time Newsjacking & a Cold-Blooded Tweeter (view)

Key takeaway: Viral content is quickly done by hacking pop culture. Personal opinion: This doesn’t have a ton of business value unless it’s aligned with content strategy.

Content strategy is rising because organizations all over the world have begun to realize that they desperately need it to handle their rapidly expanding online communications.

ClickZ did an interview with Neo@Ogilvy titled “Leading the Agency Evolution” focused on the use of mobile marketing and cross-channel marketing.

Like many other marketers, I love these tools (and channels) and use them constantly. There is no shortage of tools; in fact, a few more were dreamed and created over Detroit’s Startup Weekend. And of course agencies are better at using new tools–we have to be! However, agencies are capable of things greater than the tools used to execute–even when they’re flashy new tools like mobile.

I hope the next evolution of agencies isn’t short-sighted. This simply optimizes the old-school way of doing things and continues devaluing the business-focused creative work agencies are capable of producing.

To clarify my point– I’m not saying Neo@Ogilvy (the company that was interviewed) is heading in the wrong direction. In fact, they’re doing some really cool things.

Rather, I’m suggesting the article could have been positioned differently from agency to execution evolutions.

Consumers Expect More

To me, the next evolution of agencies is the opportunity to do more than move consumers around (push, pull, inbound, outbound, engage). Rather, we can connect with consumers to provide mutual value and create lifestyle engagements.

Don’t simply “evolve” to the next execution tool.

3 Habits Marketing Agencies Need to Break in Order to Grow

On ClickZ

I really like ClickZ. Actually, this post seemed inconsistent from the direction they usually head. For example:

“What’s more important in business, the idea or the execution? Well when it comes to digital marketing, if ideas are currency then execution is the Federal Reserve.” The Art and Science of Managing Digital Marketing Programs

Why not focus the next evolution on the currency of our business?

And none of the 5 Ways to Reinvent the AOR for the Digital Age focuses on tools as a method of reinvention.

Moving Foward

I believe it’s time for us to begin conversations on how we can improve the quality of agencies on a larger scale to better serve our clients.

What is your agency doing to evolve?

Offline retail planograms are completely fascinating. Before the digital environment (and their fantastic analytics) ever existed marketers have been intuitively testing and learning which layouts and organizations impact product sales. Though the applications are different, the offline environment can teach us a lot about ecommerce interface and user experience planning.

Here’s what a basic idea of what a retail planogram looks like:

In this example, clothes are arranged in 6 different ways with varying real estate given to specific products. Planograms like these are arranged to promote, cross-sell, and move specific products–and use finite spaces effectively.

Planograms do this by creating physical experiences for a consumer to navigate in-store. Online interfaces are built for multiple reasons: usability and experience being most relevant to this exploration.

Usability serves function. If a website is easier to use, the user is more likely to spend time to make a purchase.

Experience serves sentiment and feelings. If a website feels relevant and comfortable, the user is more likely to spend time to make a purchase.

Functional Layouts

In many (most?) ecommerce product layouts, products are arranged the same way with equal “real estate”.

Consider this example from Target.com:

There is a product organized for a “fun” display (not clickable for purchase), a cross-promotion sale, and then equal real estate given to each product available for purchase.

Zappos.com has a similar layout–the different is added (more overt?) customization.

It seems these websites favor usability over experience, though experience is certainly not neglected.

Forward-facing products seem to be the standard for ecommerce interface design. And this makes sense, as the user cannot physically touch, move or manipulate the environment.

This is meant for consideration, not criticism.

Target is doing some bleeding edge work with predictive analytics–not just online; check out How Target Figured Out A Teen Girl Was Pregnant Before Her Father Did and  How Companies Learn Your Secrets. (If predictive analytics freaks you out–as it does many consumers–please read Seth Godin’s recent post The illusion of privacy (and what we actually care about). If you are interested in predictive analytics, contact me as it’s something I’ve really dove in to.)

And we all know Zappos is best-in-class eCommerce.

Experiential Layouts

But, then, there are interfaces seemingly designed for much more heavily for experience, like Burberry.com.

Burberry’s website feels much more like an in-store planogram. There is mixed product view styles on nearly every page, plus the added dynamic and video content as the user navigates through the page.

Accessories page:

Products page view:

An Analytical Look at Interface Planning

Case study begins on slide 15 on How to use Google Analytics & Social Media Data to Make Marketing Decisions http://bit.ly/uEEbLN

Online it’s easy to track how an interface is navigated and what how user interface changes impact on conversion.

Determining how to prioritize and display product requires many different considerations. A few things to consider:

• What is the desired conversion? (Drive in-store sales, convert sale on the website, reinforce branding)
• Is the product display consistent with branding goals? (Lifestyle brands may prefer experiential websites while big box stores may prefer usability.)
• Is the product display easy and relevant to the target consumer? (High-end or older consumers may prefer large product views while lifestyle or younger consumers may prefer seeing products “in action”.)

Store Mapping

Not only do retail planograms move product better, they aid in optimizing the organization of products in the physical space of the store.

Sections are placed to complement each other and catch the consumer where they are most likely to convert. Consider Target: Cookware isn’t far from food. DVDs are next to TVs. Accessories are next to clothing.

Online, this is achieved through website architecture. The information architect needs to anticipate where users will expect to see something and optimize conversions through organization. But offline store layouts do not translate the same way. Users navigate online environments differently.

Why? A few theories:

1. Online caters to a singular user. Offline caters to families shopping together.
2. Online cross-selling is easier. Offline cross-selling is less overt.
3. Online environments can be customized to user behavior.

Your turn

How do you determine user interface plans?

What would you like to see differently from retail ecommerce websites?

Do you prefer retail ecommerce websites to their brick-and-mortar counterparts?

A recent article in Read Write Web revealed 87% Of Connected Consumers Prefer Websites & Mobile Sites Over Apps, which is fantastic news for digital strategists trying to manage budgets.

Opportunity to Consolidate Digital Spends

Rather than spending additional budget on applications we have the opportunity to really maximize the mobile browser experience. In fact, preference for mobile (smartphone or tablet) websites reveals the opportunity to design websites from mobile views out.

“Mobile out” means planning the mobile browser view of the website first. Creating the full browser view comes last.

Designing and budgeting mobile-out also alleviates a few other traditional budget snags and interface issues, such as:

Development, development, and more development

Designing from the mobile view out to bigger devices means considering development first. Rather than budgeting separetely for the website, the mobile browser, the application, the tablet… development can now be consolidated to one very flexible language. I recently worked on a new launch that did just that.

The website was built using HTML5 and WordPress. It’s flexibility is device agnostic –meaning budget was spared from needless spends accommodating infinite device sizes.

Over-done design

We designed the website to be viewed in the mobile browser, forcing a clean simplicity we may have otherwise not had. There’s little room for design-by-committee when real estate is constrained.

…Though I really shouldn’t use “constrained”; the smaller real estate challenges designers to think creatively to create a clean, usable interface.

Broken user experiences across platforms

One of the biggest complaints on mobile application reviews is inconsistency from the website. Users log onto apps expecting the same functionality the business website. When expectations are managed or met, an app’s review credibility can quickly suffer, rapidly deflating the return on investment.

Inconsistent user experiences can also kill credibility and trust. Check out these user experience insights from Best Buy in the email sent to subscribers. (Like what you read? Get subscribed below!)

From the above HTML5 and WordPress example: Rather than building for each device touchpoint, the digital platform we built was flexible enough to be consumed across user experience opportunities.

Poorly prioritized content

When you begin designing for mobile the simple real estate restriction forces you to prioritize what is most important to the user. Not only that, this means you have to make usability a top priority. And that’s fantastic.

It’s more important to strip out the extra details on the mobile browsing view and introduce “extras” when the user will benefit most.

Your turn

Have you built mobile-out? How was your experience?

Or have you created budgets for this type of project? What did you like or not like about the approach?

The agency model continues to demand change. Agency models based on optimizing media continue to collapse, but it seems like the typical response of marketers is to simply continue optimizing the buys. These habits are still crippling marketing agencies ability to grow. Some of habits that need to be broken:

1. Strictly Hiring by Marketing Tool
Job descriptions for new hires are still based on (channel) tool-specific strategies without hiring strategists tasked with tackling client business goals. Tools jobs are everywhere: Social Media Strategist, Pay-Per-Click Campaign Strategist, etc.

Of course we need human resources to execute and deliver on these channels. I’m arguing that by identifying strategists by their tools is a self-serving model. If you’re hiring hammers, everything looks like a nail.

Not only that, but gears are ready to be turned by the global market. Customer relationships are managed by call centers around the globe. Who’s to say the widget you’re hiring for (or turning) can’t be outsourced next?

Instead agencies can hire by business objectives. As an example, nix the “Social Media Strategist” title in favor of community development. Focusing on the business objective creates consistent consumer experiences (between social media, communications, on site touch points, etc) and allows agencies to measure results by what makes a real difference to the client.

As an additional note on this practice: Agencies hiring resources in this way aren’t setting themselves up for long-term profitability. Optimizing tools is short-sighted and leaves money on the table for both the agency and the client. (Continuously optimizing investments means less budget is inevitably required to gain the same results.) Put another way, channel hires optimize channel or tool return on investment without consideration for true growth.

Smart businesses have already begun to take note and things are already stirring:

• Average Is Over
• SETH GODIN: If You’re An Average Worker, You’re Going Straight To The Bottom 

2. Underestimating Data
Even as marketers begin to finally focus on data, technologies outpace them. “Big Data Scientists” identified within Mashable’s Career of the Future: Data Scientist are already automated by data synthesizing and predicting tools–but we’re only just catching up the the IDEA that big data is widely available and ready to “drive product and operational decisions”. Big data isn’t just driving decisions, it’s able to predict outcomes.

“Big data” allows us to understand data outside of siloed channels. Big data allows us to understand individual behaviors regardless of tools. Big data lays a foundation for actual business growth. And it’s already been automated and organized.

3. Optimizing Existing Models (Instead of Making Real Change)
Companies continue to pat each other on the back–while downsizing–and aren’t putting a clear direction forward. (Consider: Clickable’s article GM Consolidates $3B Media Spend With Carat) As a Detroiter, this kills me. If all automakers did was optimize Ford’s Model T, where would we be? Yet this is the same approach GM is taking with media buys.

There’s an opportunity to innovate and change the way humans relate to and use their transportation. In the same way Borders didn’t sell books, GM doesn’t sell cars (they sell a means of transportation and lifestyle). Refocus marketing on that relationship and how to use relevant marketing channels will logically follow.

Creative campaigns will only bring companies so far. Campaigns are fantastic ways to connect with the hearts of people. But strategists need to focus on building programs that will address business goals–before connecting with people who’ve heard variations of the same messages over and over and over.

What will win?
Building marketing agency models that focus on program development–solving business problems through individuals–will win. (Consider:  Tools Execution is Not Customer Centric: Recreate The Marketing Agency Model)

Your thoughts?

Traffic investments load the funnel.
There is a lot of focus on increasing traffic to websites when assessing online marketing tactics. This is for good reason: Without website visitors, no one is there to make a purchase or learn what your business is all about.

Website traffic tools are sold most often (likely) because it’s the easiest non-invasive marketing influencer a third-party can offer. Website traffic tools include a wide range, from offline to online: billboards to pay-per-click to social media will all grab some amount of website traffic.

Conversion investments widen the mouth.
The forgotten focus is on website conversions. Conversions include sales, downloads, contact form completions–any specific business goal on a website. Conversions are influenced by a number of on and off website considerations, some examples: qualified traffic, website design, website usability, images.

There is an extremely high amount of permutations a visitor can navigate through in order to make it to the actual conversion. This is where the analytics nerds love to play, with exciting results. (There’s a fantastic example beginning on slide 15 of Google Analytics Decision Making.)

Too many companies get lazy about making design updates or testing out interfaces. I get it–it’s not easy. Website interfaces and design require a balance of science and art. And it’s not a set-it-and-forget-it process. What you’ll learn from the results, however, are worth every investment made.

Consider the following example chart.*

There’s a reason not to be lazy about making conversion rate investments. Even if the average transaction value of each conversion was only a dollar you can still see significant impact across the board. So why are so many companies only focusing on increasing website traffic?

Website traffic is a clear necessity for business growth. Just make sure you test out ways to improve conversion rates regularly.

*Please note: Conversion rates are often low percentages on average. Even incremental changes at tenths of a percentage can make a significant difference (depending on website volume). This chart was kept simple for illustrative purposes.