From a designer’s point of view, a perfect world would be a world where every decision he or she makes regarding a layout would be set in stone. No room for debate. No room for other peoples’ opinions. This is the way we’re trained in school. You design something once and it’s finished. Your classmates and professor critique it, but you almost never go back and “fix it” to conform to other people’s opinions.

In the real world, however, designers need to be prepared for multiple rounds of changes. The ability to design while anticipating other peoples’ input is in large part what separates a new designer from a veteran.

There is a way to structure your files so that they’re extremely flexible. It’s like leaving a trail of breadcrumbs for yourself so you can go back to where you came from. The technique is called non-destructive editing. One of the tools I use most often for non-destructive editing is called “Smart Objects.”

I use Smart Objects for three purposes:

1) Bringing vector graphics into my PSD (Vector Smart Objects)

You can bring your vector art into Photoshop while maintaining its edibility. There are two ways to do this; you can either copy it from Illustrator and paste it as a Smart Object into your psd (my preferred method), or you can use the menu option, File>Open As Smart Object. If you use the second method, just make sure you select “Photoshop PDF” from the format menu.

Once you have your vector art in your psd as a Smart Object, you can transform it, apply filters to it, apply layer styles to it… basically treat it almost as a normal Photoshop layer… but the key difference is that if the client says something like, “Oh, we have a new logo we’d like in this layout,” all you have to do is double click on the layer icon for the Smart Object and the Smart Object opens right in Illustrator. Then you just paste the new logo into the Smart Object, save and voila! Your layout is automatically updated. Any filters, layer styles or masks you applied to the Smart Object are preserved.

2) Flattening layers into a single Smart Object (non-destructive flattening)

Who hasn’t had a psd that has way too many layers? You end up either flattening your file to the point where any change to the layout forces you to redo everything, or you end up spending half of your time scrolling the layers palette finding the layer you want. Next time, instead of flattening, just shift-select the layers you want to flatten or group, right click on them and select, “Convert to Smart Object.” This groups all of the selected layers into a single Smart Object. You get the benefits of flattening with 1 major advantage – if you ever want to manipulate parts of the Smart Object, just double click on the layer icon again and the Smart Object will open in a new Photoshop window. make your desired changes, save the Smart Object and your layout is automatically updated.

3) Placing large raster images into my document while retaining the original resolution (non-destructive scaling)

If I have a hi-res photo that I want to bring into my psd, but I’m not sure how big I want it to be yet, I’ll open it as a Smart Object. When you place Smart Objects into your psd, you can scale them down without losing the original pixel data. In other words, if you shrink an image and later on decide you don’t want it that small, you can safely enlarge it without losing quality. The original pixel data is still there.

Incorporating these three techniques into your workflow will save you and your client a lot of time and frustration. For more non-destructive editing techniques, click here.

I’m reading Made to Stick by Chip Heath & Dan Heath, and the key qualities they discuss are deceptively easy considering how hard it is to get people to change their minds or even their behavior. In reading the book and working through the exercises, these start to make a lot of sense.

Here are the 6 characteristics of ideas that stick:

1. Simplicity – The key here is to strip an idea to its core, without dumbing it down or turning it into a meaningless sound byte.
2. Unexpectedness – The idea has to be interesting enough to capture people’s attention without appearing too gimmicky.
3. Concreteness – Avoid abstractness when defining your idea.
4. Credibility – Your audience needs to believe in your idea before they will consider it.
5. Emotional – People need to care about your idea before they will act on it.
6. Stories – Stories can be used to teach your audience how to act and give them the motivation to act.

After reading this book, I tried to take these characteristics step-by-step and work them into my everyday communications. Ironically, simplicity has been the hardest one for me to master. I did take to heart the example of the journalist’s lead (the first sentence in a story). Leads are written with the most important information first, then information is present in decreasing order of importance. This helps ensure that readers will always get the point of the story, even if they don’t read the entire article. Applying this theory to emails has really been an eye opener for me and has caused me to think about communication differently.

I didn’t go too in-depth into these theories, because I highly recommend picking up a copy of this book and diving into the details for yourself. How have you used these concepts to communicate your ideas?

1. ADHERE TO THE CAN-SPAM ACT

While your company may use another company to send emails, your company is ultimately responsible if they’re not following the rules:

• Don’t use false or misleading header information.
• Don’t use deceptive subject lines.
• Identify the message as an ad.
• Tell recipients where you’re located.
• Tell recipients how to opt out of receiving future emails.
• Honor opt-out requests promptly.

2. GET PERMISSION AND KEEP IT

While it may be tempting to buy a targeted list of email addresses and blast out a marketing message, that is a recipe for a spam-flagging disaster. Instead you want to have an organically grown opt-in list that asks and confirms permission to send messages. You want to build a list of people who will not mark your messages as spam in their inbox, and will even go as far to whitelist your “from” address and mark your messages as “not spam” if mistakenly delivered to their spam folders.

3. SCRUB BOUNCE-BACKS & INACTIVE USERS

If the email address you sent a message to is no longer valid, immediately remove the email address from your list. If you don’t, you run the risk of their ISPs taking notice and spam-flagging all of your future messages to their users. Try to engage inactive users with a win-back campaign, but don’t be afraid to say goodbye.

4. MAKE IT EASY TO UNSUBSCRIBE

Consider putting your unsubscribe link right at the top of the email. This tip may sound counter-intuitive, but as we learned in tip #2, we’re trying to build a coalition of the willing, not people who can’t figure out how to unsubscribe and start flagging your messages as spam.

5. SEGMENT YOUR TRANSACTIONAL AND MARKETING LISTS

Segmenting your list is not just for sending targeting messages. By setting up separate IP addresses and “from” email addresses for your transactional and marketing lists, you ensure that your transactional emails get delivered because the marketing emails are more likely to be flagged as spam.

Does anyone have any other tips to share?

Most times, the “creative” and “development” areas are on opposite sides of the company, physically, so it is best to set up a system of best practices so [you] the designer or [you] the developer don’t have to waste valuable time walking across the company just to find out a simple solution.

These are my recommendations:

Set up a system.

Let your developer know ahead of time how you work. This should be illustrated at the beginning of your relationship. Do you work in Fireworks? Photoshop? Pagemaker? This information will help the D&D in their decision process per project or during the entire collaboration. This also helps establish collaboration techniques and points out any possible errors that could arise further down the pike.

Up the ante.

Use vector images when possible. This helps when rescaling the files. Most of the time, the client doesn’t know what resolution they want. This information is deferred to the D&D. Even though a designer sets in designing at a 1080 pixel size, that doesn’t account for all developing pixel elements. Soooo, use vector! This will help with rescaling the image sizes without the compression issues. If you need a raster image, then buy, or take a higher resolution image to fill the spot.

Know your game.

I’m not asking you to know everything developers and designers do, but know what browsers have to offer. Too often do I see a designer over-design for web.  They paint this amazing picture that reaches beyond what a browser can parse.

Not to fall prey to this cliché, but designers are creative and create! Never bound by web limitations! “It is magic, and does not need taming!”

But, in all seriousness, know what techniques browsers can implement. No matter how much HTML, CSS and jQuery, the landing page’s parrot can’t fly off screen aGnd around the room.

Message with your mouth.

The greatest/hardest part of being in a group is accessibility. It’s a luxury when the D&D work in the same office space. They can keep close, build a relationship… an understanding. It is important to build and establish this understanding. The two of you are going to work together, so communication is vital! If you don’t have the ability “in house” to build this communication, then do so by going to lunch as a “D&D team” often. Also use Instant Messaging and the Phone [I know, the phone!] as much as possible. It will take a little bit to build the team mentality, but it must be done!

Another one?

Stylesheets and mockups. What and wha?!? This really helps when the developer is off-site, but it also helps if the developer is on site… so it helps, all-around. I know in step one, we discuss what layout programs the designer works in, so this should already be established!

It helps tremendously to have a stylesheet. Giving all available font families, colors and other noted CSS elements saves the developer valuable communication time.

Mockups are great too. Granted a “Dev Head” knows what program you are using [a la “Photoshop”] and can read pixel depths via that program. They still have to take time and read them. A mock-up can illustrate the exact pixel depth needed. Enjoy the time saved.

The Conclusion!

There are a lot of approaches to take in becoming a tight D&D team. Here are some basic ones that I’ve found that help the process along. There is no “I” in team, but there is an “M” and a “E”; still! As a D&D’r you must think as a D&D’r and that is thinking tight! Move as a team. Become one as a team. What I’m trying to say is when one does the “robot” dance the other must “pop and lock.” Seriously.

So I did what any resourceful internet-age efficiency whore would do: I made my own.

First, I got all my contacts in one place. Lifehacker did a piece on consolidating your contacts, which is really good, but they use Gmail to house all of their contacts in one place. I personally don’t really like Gmail’s contact system, so I’m using Plaxo, synced with Address Book on my Mac. This also syncs with my iPhone, so I have a complete and updated address book on my laptop, my iPhone and on the internet at Plaxo.com in case my phone dies and I don’t have my laptop with me. This system works really well and I’ve never been without my contacts’ info when I needed it. Check out Lifehacker’s post for all the info on how to export all your addresses and get everything synced.

Ok, now on to the categorizing. Plaxo, Address Book on a Mac, Gmail, and pretty much any other address program you decide to use has a way to categorize your contacts. If you have a way to add a category, a group, or a new field in whatever address book you’re using, it’ll work. I went through every contact (and I have almost 400) and categorized them into the following groups:

N- I never really feel the need to speak with this person, but I want to save their contact info anyway, or I see this person daily (at work, for example) and don’t need to have a Keep In Touch plan for him/her.
1y- I will get in touch with this person at least once a year.
6m- I will get in touch with this person at least once every 6 months.
1m- I will get in touch with this person at least once a month.
2w- I will get in touch with this person at least once every 2 weeks.

Most of my contacts ended up in N. I know a lot of people that I either don’t need to stay in touch with, don’t want to stay in touch with, or don’t really know that well.

Once I had everyone categorized, I took all the categories except N and began putting them in my task list. I use RememberTheMilk, but you can use whatever task management program you like, as long as you can set it to repeat tasks at specified intervals. I put everyone on my list. If I knew their birthday, I went ahead and used that as the starting point, since I’m obviously not going to get in touch with everyone, like, this week. For the people whose birthdays I didn’t know, I staggered them throughout the year. For each one, I set up a repeating task based on how often I’d like to contact that person.

Et voila!

Honestly, it took a really long time to do all that, but I’m so glad I put in in place. Maintaining it has been a comparitive piece of cake, and the biggest benefit is that I have a system in place to keep in touch with everyone I need to keep in touch with, and I won’t forget, and I won’t be sending notes saying stuff like, “Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry I haven’t spoken to you in THREE YEARS! Can we still be friends?” And that’s worth a lot.

A correspondent had just returned from a long tour in China and he was steadily re-acclimating to his life in the states. On a recent trip to the supermarket with his family he was struck by the vastness of the aisles, the bounty of groceries and the 37 varieties of ranch dressing that the mega-store offered.

He thought, “37 varieties?! How can someone choose?”

The decision was paralyzing.

Decision paralysis is an all-too-common barrier to entry that we combat every day at BBI.  Clients often feel the need to communicate ALL of their benefits to their users. It’s understandable. They believe that a campaign with 10 offerings will outperform a campaign with one.  So often they will ask us, “Be sure to mention this,” or, “Can we add that?”And, “I just found out we are offering this other thing – can we squeeze it all in?”

Well, we can.

But we shouldn’t.

While it’s a very normal desire to offer everything you’ve got – it’s also a very normal response to shy away from such large offerings. The opportunity to do anything and everything can often lead to doing nothing.  Think: The Graduate. Dustin Hoffman can do anything in the world, but spends his post-graduation days lying by the pool, sleeping in the sun, unable to act – until Mrs. Robinson gives him a clear unilateral course of action.

Shopping is another great example.

I am reminded about my first trip to a Super Target, where the largess of the space and the variety of items for sale proved too great. After piling my cart high, I realized that not one of my items for purchase were actually on my shopping list.  In the end the choice was overpowering –  I abandoned the cart and walked out the door.

That’s the danger with offering too much online. If given too many options, users abandon the cart.

So what do you do instead?

Have a plan. Have priorities. Roll out your messages slowly and steadily. This also lends itself brilliantly to testing (which I look forward to talking about in future blog posts).  It may be simple, but ask yourself if the additional messaging affects the success of how this campaign will be measured.

Let’s say you are a Fruit of the Month Club, sending out an email to get more subscribers. How will the effectiveness of the campaign be measured? Probably by the number of users who subscribe as a results of the email.  Great. So let’s design a program that promotes subscription, with a compelling offer, driving directly to the subscription page.  The moment  you decide to convey other information (like bonus prizes, sends-to-a-friends, rules, provisos, limited time offers, call-center phone numbers, additional ways to sign up, a ‘Tell us your favorite fruit’ submission game…) you dilute your original message, and give the users too many choices.

And in the end, they abandon the cart.

Too many choices can be overwhelming– paralyzing, in fact. You must resist the temptation to be all things to all of your clients. The more you are able to specify your message and deliver it concisely, without distraction, the more conversions you are going to see.

Anyway, the point is, going viral is often a thing for marketers to aim for. However, a recent event suggests that there is a line with going viral that should not be crossed.

On Tuesday, August 17, 2010, a little application called Twifficiency rocked the Twitter world. The phrase “my Twifficiency score” topped the day’s trending topics and feeds everywhere were full of tweets that resembled this:

By now we know that the application owed its extreme viral power to a small programming error — which caused it to automatically tweet from the account of each user that allowed access. As a result, all of our friends were inadvertently tweeting about their scores, and many of us, including myself, couldn’t help but click it too.

Imagine this happening with your (or your client’s) product. Sounds great, right? Who doesn’t want to be a trending topic on Twitter? Unfortunately, this didn’t impress users of the application. Speculation started to spread that the application was really just a huge scam by some evil hacker. Anger and finger-pointing ensued. What had this application really meant to do?, people wondered.

Luckily for all of us, it turns out it wasn’t a scam. But does that make any of us feel better? What if it had been a scam?

While his endeavor was hardly a marketing one, the developer of Twifficiency has, all the same, reminded us of a sobering fact. As the Internet gets older, we as users seem to be more easily spooked than ever. This means that marketers need to continue taking this into consideration while planning their campaigns — especially when they are primarily online.

A good viral campaign can engage its viewers and get them to share without making them feel like they’re being metaphorically Rickrolled.™ What can one do to make their next online campaign go the way of the Old Spice Guy, and not that of Twifficiency?

1. Create content that meets the expectations of your users. Be it humor, narrative, or innovation, today’s consumer needs a reason to pay attention to your message.

2. Make sure the user immediately sees value in sharing the content you have to offer. If you do this, you have already earned a measurable amount of the user’s trust.

3. Reward your consumers with more. When Old Spice Guy became a success, the advertisers didn’t stop there. They knew consumers would be looking for more, like downloads, custom voicemail recordings, and even swag.

I believe that viral campaigns will continue to gain speed as Internet advertising becomes more and more sophisticated. We as marketers just need to remember that our users will become more sophisticated and savvy as well.

In short, marketers like me are gaining the ability to decide whether or not you’d be a good customer before you tell them a single thing about yourself.  Different visitors hitting the same website can have vastly different experiences based on split second analysis being done as that user enters the site – one fifth of a second to be exact.  Freaked out yet?

credit: WSJ.com

The latest WSJ installment focuses on [x+1], the leading technology offering in this space. [x+1] and companies like it aggregate terabytes of Internet user behavior data and cross-reference it with records of home ownership, income, marital status, etc (note names and what the industry calls “personally identifiable data points” are missing from this list).  Combining this anonymous data with cookie-based online browsing records and retail purchases, they use statistical analysis to create behavioral data banks with cute names like “White Picket Fences.”

Capital One is currently using [x+1]’s technology to determine which of its many credit card offerings to serve up to a user.  It goes something like this:

1. A visitor lands on Capital One‘s credit-card page.
2. [x+1] instantly scans thousands of lines of code on the visitor’s computer containing details on their browsing behavior.
3. [x+1] then uses Digital Envoy to determine the ZIP code where that computer is physically located.
4. Armed with this data, [x+1] taps into Nielsen to assign the visitor to one of 66 demographic groups.
5. [x+1] scans for similar types of Capital One customers to make an educated guess about which credit cards to show the visitor.

The Journal did some experimentation and determined that not every data point within every category their guinea pigs were placed in was always 100% correct.  But the ones that were correct were certainly enough to make an educated assumption about shopping proclivities.  Someone in the previously mentioned “White Picket Fences” category would be categorized as:

• living in a small city
• having a median household income of $53,901
• being between the ages of 25 and 44 years old
• having kids
• working in a white-collar or service job
• owning their own home
• having some college education

So my question is, with all that data, just how big of a leap is it to knowing that Mrs. “White Picket Fences” is Sheila Smith, for example?  According to privacy-advocacy groups, not a very big leap at all.  When you really start to dig into the specifics, the mathematics of personally identifying an individual from anonymous data points is a little scary.  According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, using the above “White Picket Fences” data in conjunction with Digital Envoy’s zip code data, you can narrow Mrs. Anonymous down to just 1 of 64 people worldwide.  Starting to feel a little less anonymous in here right?

The marketer in me thinks this is the pinnacle of targeting.  The ultimate in using what we know to influence creative, offer and conversion rate.  But, I must admit, the consumer in me who logs 60+ hours on the web a week is a wee-bit freaked out.  Representatives from [x+1] acknowledge that de-anonymization would be possible with the data they have but that it just isn’t worth the effort.  My question is, what happens if someone buys [x+1] who thinks it IS worth the effort.  Like (Dr. Evil pause)… Google?

Where you aware this level of tracking was happening?  Does it bother you as a consumer?  Does it bother you as a marketer?

There are certainly a lot of case studies that show having a strong call-to-action (CTA) above “The Fold” is a key component to higher conversion rates.  BBI has many.

I learned this in MBA.  If you’re not 100% sure, the correct answer is always – “It depends.”  I really believe that the effectiveness of the CTA above the fold depends on the test you are running.

Here are the things to consider and I’ll walk through an example:

1)      What is your overall goal (metric) for the email/landing page?

2)      How did the users get to the landing page?

We just finished running a test for a newsletter.  The end goal was to drive traffic from the email to either a landing page or a log-in page for users to log-in to their accounts.  The overall goal was to drive more click-throughs and get users to log-in to their account.

The diagram below shows overall flow of the test cells A & B.

Half the user group got Email A and the other got B.  Email A users could, from the email, go to Landing Page A to read more about the feature article, or go directly to the Log-in page.  The same applied to Email B group.  Once on the landing page, there is a CTA to go to the Log-in page.

The diagram below shows a skeletal view of the emails.

As you can see, Email A’s CTA above the fold is the “Log-in” button, compared to Email B’s CTA which is “Read More.”

Want to take a guess as to which email got more “clicks” for the “Log-in?”

You guessed right… hopefully.  Email A in terms of clicks on the “Log-in” button beat Email B by 21%.  Overall, the number of clicks for the “Log-in” button accounted for less than 5% of total clicks.  In terms of the other metric of overall click-throughs, Email B crushed Email A by over 50%!

So Email A wins “Log-ins” and Email B wins the overall click-throughs right?  Not so fast.  Remember, the goal for Log-ins is overall and not necessarily just from the email.  So what happened once users clicked on the “Read More” and got to the landing page?

Let’s take a look.  This is where it gets interesting.  Below is the diagram for the landing pages.

Remember my point #2?  How did the users get to the landing page?  The users that came to this landing page are users that clicked on the “Read More” button so we can assume they are interested in reading the article.

Note the fold line.  Landing Page A’s CTA for “Log-in” is above the fold compared to Landing Page B.  So if we’re going with the theory of above the fold, Landing Page A will drive more clicks on the “Log-in” button.

Guess what?  The conversion rate for users coming to the landing and clicking on the “Log-in” button was 50% higher for Landing Page B.

Step back and think about it.  The CTA placement on Landing Page B goes against the above the fold best practice… but it also makes sense to put the button at the bottom because these users are interested in reading the article.  If they read a majority of it, there is no CTA for Landing Page A.

Take-away: above the fold is not always the right call. It depends! Sometimes it is better to sweep the leg.  Know why your users are on your landing page and test from there!

If you want another example of tracking and testing buttons, my personal online marketing analytics blog site has got one.

You may be thinking, “What can a dog teach me about online consumers? Doesn’t she chase her tail, bark at herself in mirrors, and sniff butts?” The answer to those questions would be yes; however, she has much more to offer. First off, look at that widdle face! But seriously, take a seat; you’re about to learn something from my dog, Reese.

She is playful – Online consumers love to play/interact. This is becoming more important because overall web knowledge is increasing.  You don’t necessarily need to slap a game onto your site, but try and make the mundane tasks more engaging. Try presenting your customers with personalized services, encouraging interaction with other users, or creating interactive widgets. Interactive elements are a way to create a positive customer experience.

She responds to treats – Who wouldn’t drool over a Milkbone? Reese may prefer treats of a different sort, but the fact still remains: Everyone likes treats! Offering an incentive is a wonderful tactic that online consumers react to. By offering an incentive you can increase traffic, collect data, strengthen customer relationships, build hype about a new launch, and much more.

She is lazy – Would we work if we could lounge around on a couch all day? Probably not, so why not make your process quick and easy to complete by focusing on usability, speed and order/payment processes. It seems like a “duh” statement, but finding, ordering, and paying for products and services on the web should be fast and easy. Start tracking where people are dropping off and then optimize those areas of your registration path. The easier your path the more conversions you’ll get.

She is loyal – If a dog can be man’s best friend, then how do you make a consumer your best friend? Three things you need to focus on are: transparency, trust, and enjoyment. Consumers will respect a company that is transparent, eager to help, and honest. And what does respect become? Trust. Consumers want to know that a company will take care of them; high quality customer service and products establish trust. Lastly, customers should get a sense of enjoyment out of interactions with your company. Always be pleasant, be efficient, and listen to what they have to say.

She is easily distracted – We are less likely to chase a squirrel up a tree but flashing banners produce a similar reaction. Your customer is calmly reading your article then BLAM, a dancing Obama ad pops up and your customer runs off. Talk about frustrating. Because we have no control over ads or consumers, the best way to prevent distraction is to optimize your programs to be quick and painless. Once you optimize your path, try to make it enjoyable. If the customer is doing something they enjoy, they are less likely to get distracted.

She will surprise you – “You ate the whole wheel of cheese? Heck, I’m not even mad; that’s amazing.” Like Ron Burgundy discovered about his dog, Baxter, no matter how much we think we know about consumers, they always find a way to surprise us.  This is why testing is so critical. Consumer trends can change in an instant, and you want to be on the cutting edge when they do. Testing and optimizing strategies are great ways to keep up with your consumers.

Hopefully, this comical, yet strikingly accurate comparison will inspire you to think about the needs and wants of your online consumers. Consumer satisfaction is an integral piece for increasing your bottom line, marketing, design, usability and functionality to name a few. So, go out there and listen, understand, and build your marketing plans around your consumers. And while you’re at it, throw them a bone once in a while.