This post was written by Marianne Amoss, Fastspot’s content strategist and resident writer.

What is the next generation of admissions marketing? And how can we integrate Web marketing and print marketing? These are questions that plague universities and colleges across the country, as they struggle with the cost and manpower required to keep materials updated and accurate—and see classes of increasingly Web-savvy students coming through their doors. When Tufts University considered these questions, they naturally turned to Neustadt Creative Marketing, which had worked with the school on undergraduate admissions for the schools of arts and sciences and engineering and on a university-wide brand strategy.

Tufts is a highly selective private university in the suburbs of Boston. NCM, a seasoned expert in providing marketing services to educational institutions, knew that Tufts would be ripe for a smart, creative approach. They launched an extensive, five-month-long market research project among prospective students and their parents to start to answer that question. Out of that research, NCM defined a series of marketing goals that altered the messaging strategy that Tufts was using, says Mark Neustadt, principal of NCM. What did they settle on? A relatively unconventional plan, says Neustadt: an “integrated program that abandoned the traditional package of print materials entirely and replaced it with a three-times-a-year magazine which coordinated with an admissions ‘microsite.’”

Once Tufts adopted the report’s recommendations, NCM brought Fastspot in on the project; the two companies collaborate frequently under the name Door No. 2. Together, the two teams worked together to design and develop the magazine, concept the stories, write the first issue, develop the Web design, architect the Website, build it, load in the content, and finally launch the joint project on 11/11/11. Fastspot also created a new virtual campus tour for Tufts, which launched at the same time.

The magazine, named Jumbo after the school mascot, is now published online and in print three times a year and mailed to students in the admissions funnel. The site and magazine are run on Fastspot’s BigTree CMS, a user-friendly content management system that allows the Tufts admissions staff to easily update admissions information and keep up with trends without assistance from their internal IT team. “Viewbooks can take over a year to develop and are very costly and difficult to update,” Neustadt says. “A three-times-a-year magazine is relatively economical to update and can be much more responsive to changes going on in admissions.”

It’s important to note that this program does not completely do away with print—or migrate everything to the Web, Neustadt says. “A lot of people think that’s what this is all about. This is not about eliminating print. But what is has done, which is incredibly exciting, is create a print program that is consistent with the pace and the energy of the Web.” Tufts now has an admissions microsite that is essentially separate from the main site; Door No. 2, which loads in the content for each issue of Jumbo (with minimal tech support), serves as “managing editor,” helping ensure that the content is consistent, professional, and on-strategy.

Since launch, the site has been enormously successful. Analytics show that the site is getting lots of traffic; the dean of admissions, Lee Coffin, often gets several dozen comments on his blog posts. “One of the successes of the design has been the integration of social media and the content,” says Neustadt. And Tufts has gotten students involved, creating a student group whose charge it is to create new content; you can see student-generated photos and content throughout the site. “Tufts has a superbly run admissions operation, and they are at a point in their evolution as an office where their staff feels energized and capable to take this on.”

There are lots of moving parts, and they all mesh together, seemingly effortlessly, from the print magazine to the Web to the social media. As Neustadt puts it, “It’s a smart approach to print.”

Tweet This

Today I was reading a post by Ryan on 37signals’ blog Signal vs. Noise called The Documentation Dilemma. Ryan proposes that the act of documentation and creation of project artifacts is a symptom of a bottleneck in the value chain. He implies the documentation process can slow down the creative process to the point where you either:

1. Produce design ideas at the pace of development or

2. Freeze ideas in the form of documents, diagrams and requirements until they are ready to go later on in the process.

I think this is an oversimplification of documentation, and when, where and why it’s important to a project. I live in the land of client services, where every project involves a new set of stakeholders, participants, audience types and overall business objectives. Ryan’s team is developing one set of products, used the same way by every customer. There is little customization or need for bureaucratic buy-in as they are their own client, and the strategy may already exist and be a given. However, I see 37signals’ thoughts and propositions on workflow often espoused by design agencies and firms working with client services, and unfortunately I don’t think they overlap well. While we can all appreciate an expedited process and it’s the very reason why we hold the annual X-Day at Fastspot, it is not a system that can support long-term complex client projects.

This tendency towards assuming documentation is a waste of time or as Ryan puts it, “I used to think design teams made so many diagrams and documents because… well, they like that sort of thing.” greatly devalues the importance of clarifying important issues and goals in writing. It is immature to say that some people just like that sort of thing, when in reality, unless you an extremely detail oriented control freak who is trained or gifted as a writer, you probably dread the notion of having to create detailed and important documentation when you’d rather be coding or designing. No, documentation is not something people just do because they like to do it, it is actually important. However, documents and their usefulness should always be held up to scrutiny and improvements should be made whenever possible. Just as the design process should seek to create something perfect and useful for the client, so should the documentation. Documentation can be the first set of deliverables within an agency process to become outdated, stale, or redundant – mainly because they are dismissed as unimportant or left to a lackluster team to plod through begrudgingly. This doesn’t need to be the case if we throw out what we think documentation means and seek to find more meaningful ways to integrate the process of documentation.

I find myself interviewing designers and developers these days and spending as much time looking at their writing skills as I do their technical and design skills. I place a tremendous amount of value on someone’s appreciation for and ability to conduct strategic thinking. We live in an age where a knee jerk reaction is to “just do it”, or find the “app for that” problem. However, you can’t replace good old fashioned brain storming, and the results of that kind of thinking must be successfully documented. Documents can be exciting, inspiring and creative forms of expression. Documents can be “living” data, intended to be evolving road maps which can empower a client team long after the vendor has left and the project deliverables have been handed over. Documents are often the foundations that survive the longest and inform the next iteration of the thinking. They are building blocks that should inform the future, not create problems or bottlenecks for the present.

Some of the most important documentation we create for clients is where we restate recommendations or strategic goals. While one may argue that this is a rehashing of a productive group conversation, what many who are not as familiar with management roles may forget is that important people who have some say in the progression of the project may not have been part of these group collaborative conversations. Often, teams must move strategic goals and recommendations up the pipeline for approval, sign-off, and budget allocations. These stakeholders often don’t have time to sit through the nitty gritty of the conversions and brain storming exercises, but they do need to see the final documentation. This paper trail will also serve as reminders to new members of the team who come on board mid-project and need to catch up. It’s a reality that teams will shift and the last thing you want to have to do is backtrack because a new VP of communications is hired. Documentation, when done successfully, can keep forward momentum in place and keep the team focused.

Additionally, documentation creates trust. We’ve all sat through great meetings only to see good ideas forgotten, see tasks fall to the wayside, and get stuck in those frustrating loops of “well…we talked about this, so I assumed it was going to happen.” Documentation sets expectations, provides clarity, and creates safety nets. It prevents outliers from coming in and playing “dumb” and derailing a project. It prevents clients from bullying vendors with the old “we talked about this” game. It prevents vendors from talking a great game but playing “dumb” when it comes to the deliverables. It provides a sense of accountability, and it gives teams something to cross check against.

One of our documents is the Creative Brief. One part of this document is a list of keywords describing the tone and style of the design. This document is formed after meetings and is based on collaborative discussions and fact finding sessions and research. The list of keywords is short and to the point. However, this list is often referenced during the course of the project by the designers, the developers and the client. If one of the keywords is “friendly”, we have documentation (approved and signed off on by the client) which empowers us to make certain decisions and have them backed up. It prevents an outlier from coming in mid-project and saying “this should be more slick looking”, or “why are all these colorful icons included?” The documentation sets things in stone. It reminds, reinforces, clarifies and limits the scope of the project. Without documentation, we often find ourselves in never-ending circles. Even the mere act of writing something down gives it more legitimacy.

We know that writing is a helpful tool for memory, we have learned that lists help keep us organized, we have even seen studies that suggest the act of writing something down ensures it has a higher likelihood of succeeding. Many of us were told by parents to write down our pros and cons lists before making big decisions. We often can’t see something clearly until it is clearly written out before us. Perhaps the problem with documentation is the tendency towards wasted words and ineffective thinking? I suspect the issue is not with documentation, but with the types of documents being created for the purposes set in place. I also just have to say I find it ironic that someone at 37signals is talking about documentation being a waste of time when their most popular product, Basecamp (which we use and very much like), is essentially an application for better organizing and sharing documentation.

Ryan from 37signals ends his post stating,”Documentation may be necessary when your throughput is low, and that’s an opportunity to see documents not as charming deliverables but as warning signs of a deeper problem in your process.” I would argue that a lack of documentation which is focused on strategic thinking and establishing foundations should be a warning sign of a deeper problem in your process. At Fastspot our “throughput” is anything but low, and our productivity is accomplished with a small team who pride themselves on efficiency. Yet no one here would argue on the pointlessness of our documentation. Sure, documentation might have gotten a bad rap from all the poorly conceived ones that exist in the world, but that doesn’t mean the process of documentation is faulty. When documentation is a recording of a strategic and creative process focused on clearly outlining issues, goals, recommendations and guidelines, and created in a way that empowers collaboration and revisions in the future, it is one of the most important phases of any project.

What do you think? Have you seen documentation derail productivity or the creative process? Do you have a unique process for generating useful documentation? How do you keep clients with bad habits from forcing you to spend time on worthless documentation and instead generate productive documentation? We’d love to hear from you.

Tweet This

Re-posting this article due to lots of discussion lately – let us know what you think!

Before clients see BigTree CMS, Fastspot’s proprietary content management system, they often ask us why we built our own when there are so many out there that we could have simply used. When they ask me, I usually picture this. I have seen these CMS offerings, and frankly, they are horrible. How could I ever expect my clients to wade through instruction manuals numbering in the thousands of pages when they should be focused on content? What is the point of purchasing a CMS if you need to hire several programmers or experts to run it? Why would I actually expect my clients to willingly log into a system that is unusable, unfriendly and doomed to frustrate and confuse as they try to update a page or change a video clip?

Clearly, there are different “types” of content management systems and there are blogs and companies that do nothing but rate them, review them, provide training for them, etc.. It is an industry of its own, and with little oversight or benchmarks being applied, it is confusing to determine what makes a good CMS. Here are the things that make a good CMS; they are built into BigTree CMS and enjoyed by our clients:

1. Easy to use. Let’s face it. Most of the time, you want someone who knows words and pictures doing the editing and updating on copy and imagery, not a computer scientist. I don’t know about you, but I only know a few very special people who can claim to be a programmer, a designer and a copywriter. If my goal is to be thinking about words and tone and audience, don’t make me worry about code.

2. Intelligent. If I need a piece of content to be placed in multiple places in the Website, it would be nice if the CMS could handle that for me. The benefit of a customized solution is that the development team can tweak the CMS to anticipate your needs and be ready to deliver when you need it to.

3. Helpful. When I need help, I want to get to it quickly and easily. Tool tips, easy-to-locate help sections, videos on how to do a certain process, FAQs—these are all extremely helpful. I like for this kind of information to be built into the system I am using so I don’t have to leave my CMS to find the information on a Website or, even worse, in a 1,000 page written manual.

4. Flexible. If I am going into my CMS to update a bullet point, I don’t want to have to jump through 30 hoops to get it done. Likewise, if I am adding an entire new section to the site—setting up new templates, adding links to the navigation, inputting SEO-relevant content, and setting up modules—then I expect some complexity, along with some checks and balances along the way.

5. Powerful. If I want something to be done, it should be possible. This is one of the reasons we developed our own CMS:  So we could do the things we wanted to be done within the system. It’s also why we developed it on open-source platforms. That way, our clients aren’t beholden to us if they want to build upon the system.

6. Intuitive. If I want to move a navigation item higher on the list of drop down items, wouldn’t it be nice to simply drag and drop it in the list? If I need to upload an image to use in a template or inline, wouldn’t it be nice if the system automatically knew the size and ratio and let me crop the image accordingly during the upload process? Oh, how we dreamt of sleep-filled nights without the worry of broken links or content that wasn’t being indexed by Google. Well, we answered our own dreams with BigTree—and any good CMS out there should be doing the same.

7. Stable. Don’t you love when you hit one button and it seems the whole internet goes down? Or, at the very least, it seems you may have fried some sort of major thing with servers and possibly satellites and you swear you smell smoke? A good CMS should keep you out of harm’s way. You shouldn’t be able to do massively bad things without being loudly prompted (several times) by your CMS:

“Are you sure you want to delete that page?”
“Are you sure you want to erase a week’s worth of work?”
“Are you sure you want to take down the whole site just because you want that animated gif in the copy?”

Additionally, if you do make a mistake and cause a problem, it should be a recoverable problem. Hitting one button somewhere should never take down your whole site. Ever.

8. Secure. You want the people who need to know, knowing. And those who only need to know a little, well, they should be in the ‘know a little’ room. A good CMS should allow for security and user account settings to be configured in such a way as to protect your sensitive information on the back end of your site, as well as on the front end. The system should only show users what they have been authorized to see. No more. That way, your disgruntled intern can’t mosey on over to the professional bios section and add a line about Mr. Smith’s prized Chia Pet collection…or something like that. You get the idea.

9. Pleasant. If you want your team to do something, willingly, proactively even, that something better be pleasant to engage with. Have you ever had your team say “no thanks” when you’ve invited them down for a pizza/brainstorming session? You make the brainstorm process more pleasurable by including the pizza. A little pleasure goes a long way, which is why we think a CMS’s administrative area should be as nice looking as the front-facing Website, if not nicer. It should be organized, friendly, use real world language—not things like “vars” or “default”—that make sense only to programmers. It should help you if you make a mistake, allow you to play without fear of crashing, and inspire you to log in and keep creating great content! A CMS is essentially tools for the creative process, same thing as Photoshop to designers, or paint and brushes to a painter. Who wants to create something in a sterile, threatening and confusing environment?

10. Simple. This is the most important element for a good CMS. Simple does not mean weak or limited. Simplicity is difficult to achieve and requires great effort and restraint to get it right. Sure, we could probably add modules to BigTree that would allow our clients to do some crazy stuff, but they don’t really need it. And, if they do, it’s one client out of a million. In that case, we do something custom just for them. Keeping the CMS simple allows you to build a solid foundation first. Then you have time in real world scenarios to determine if you really need it to reposition that satellite or not.

What do you think? Share your thoughts on what makes a good CMS, and don’t forget to tell us who you are. Perspective is everything!

Tweet This

I’m writing this post because I run into so many businesses and organizations who feel they were “burned” by a past Web vendor. They have negative feelings about the experience and often have been left with the impression that “the wool was pulled over their eyes.” I can relate to the frustration. In a technical field like Web development (which is growing increasingly more complex every year), how do you know if the groups who are after your business are legit? In the era of the Internet, it’s easy to pose as something you are not, so here are some tips to hopefully help the non-techy crowd, or simply the groups who feel inexperienced in choosing an agency. When you are oftentimes talking about a six-figure budget, you want to be sure you aren’t left holding the bag. These tips range from the obvious (but often forgotten) to the simple and easy-to-spot. I’m sure there are more, and I encourage any of you reading this post to tell me how you’ve found ways to spot the stinkers and find the flowers.

1. The browser title for their website’s landing page says “Name of Company – Homepage.” Nothing screams fraud to me more than a company selling interactive services that seems to have no clue how important the words placed in this spot in a browser are to search engines, indexing spiders, and people making bookmarks and saving or sharing links. Bad, bad, bad. They might as well leave a credit on the bottom of their site saying, “Website by AAA Website Co.”

2. There is nowhere to read bios about the team or find out about the company’s physical locations. This often is a telltale sign that you’re dealing with a one-man or one-woman shop where you pay them to consult and then they outsource the “design and coding” to freelancers or contract work. This is not an agency. The power of an agency is that the people are working as a team. You are getting good results because you have signed on with a group of people who know how to work well with each other and deliver for the client.

3. The portfolio examples are too few or feel weak, and the rest of the portfolio is propped up with print or other traditional design work. Here’s the truth of the matter: Most firms recognize that they are leaving money on the table if they don’t go after interactive work, even if they are not qualified to do it. Most clients who have come to them for print work or identity work or even PR or consulting work will inevitably ask about interactive work at some point in the relationship, and some businesses can’t resist saying they can do the work and then trying to figure out how to do it once the client is on the hook. So let the portfolio speak for itself. If you don’t see lots of great work, then they probably aren’t a valid (or good) interactive agency.

4. The portfolio is full of “banners,” “micro-sites,” or “games,” and you can’t see any full-fledged websites. The red flag here is that they are saying they can do full websites, but in actuality all they’ve done up to this point have been smaller projects with much less demanding requirements. Unless you want to try to get a bargain because you know you are the guinea pig, beware of being the first big project.

5. The agency’s website sucks. I know this seems obvious, but amazingly, people are forgiving of this sin. We’ve all heard the old, “We’ve been so busy doing work for our clients that we haven’t had time to think about our own interactive presence.” Hogwash. Any agency worth its weight knows how critical these first impressions are, and keeping the agency alive and thriving means bringing in good clients and profitable projects. A poorly conceived and crafted website is not working toward this goal. Therefore, you can conclude that the agency is understaffed, incapable, too new, or just not good.

6. You are met with resistance when asking for references. And take note, you should be getting references for Directors of Marketing or VP of Communications, not Web developers or lower-level people who may simply be friends with the group that’s after your business. At the very least, you should be given contact info for a reference that made the hiring decision on a project similar in scope or budget to yours.

7. Technology is leading the conversation. Beware of this, as it may be the sign of a bunch of highly competent programmers but not the best group to make strategic marketing decisions for your organization. Technology should be part of the solution, after you’ve identified the problems and chosen your path. If a group comes out of the gate pushing tech, you can probably assume you won’t be getting much creative guidance or leadership.

8. The mobile and tablet versions of the agency’s site aren’t taken into consideration. Consider this the “canary in the coal mine.” If an interactive agency isn’t paying close attention to the mobile and tablet user experiences, then they are living in the past and will fall behind the ever-advancing curve of what is considered contemporary in this industry. We are seeing a growing number of users accessing Internet content via their smart phones or tablets, and this number will only go up as devices become more affordable, more powerful, and more convenient for the user. These devices must be part of your strategy and approach, and if they aren’t being positioned as important aspects to consider by your interactive agency, then you might want to consider looking elsewhere. There is no easier way for an agency to show how they would address the mobile and tablet experience than with their own website, so pull up their URLs on your iPhone, Android, or iPad—and see what you get.

There are many more ways to spot red flags when considering an agency—these are just the ones that I look for. What tells you that you might be getting the bait and switch? Do share!

Tweet This

Your website’s main navigation, the primary navigation presented to users who first arrive on your website, should do several things, and do them well.

The main nav should be simple. The language, the organization, the placement, the size of the font—everything—should be simple. This is the most useful element of your site, and much like a doorknob or the power switch on an object, it should not be overly complex.

The main nav should tell a story. If you are a college or university, you don’t want to start your nav with “Giving.” You need to tell your story first. Many schools show just how desperate they are by making “Admissions” or “Apply Now” the first link in their main nav. This is bad. Just like a first date, you want to convey confidence and let your user get to know you before you move in for the big smooch.

The main nav should be mature. Nothing screams institutional conflict more than a main nav that is all over the place. A classic example is a nav that is one part general, one part categorical, and one part specific. Main navigation should be consistent in how it groups information; this is to aide users who are learning to use the system as they begin to navigate the site. Placing inappropriate links into your main nav is a quick way to lose user trust and degrade the user experience.

The main nav should start with the largest parts of the funnel. For example, you don’t want your main nav to be all about the specifics. Users will naturally click into sections as they seek more specific information. If they are looking for filet, they will click into the meat tab. If they are seeking lettuce, they will look under vegetables. Give them time and space to find what they are seeking in the natural order of the information.

Your main nav should be short. If you give users too many options, they will have option overload. A main nav that has more than 7 tabs or links is bordering on too big and should set off alarm bells about the overall hierarchy of the information. Remember, your main nav needs to tell a story—so if you overload your visitors with specifics right off the bat, you aren’t letting them read the big picture story.

Your main nav should be useful. It is easy to assume that all things important must go into the main nav. This is a knee-jerk reaction born out of misguided thinking by uneducated information architects or nervous clients. This is simply not the case. The main nav should be the foundation, and it should not have to change down the road. You should not have constantly changing content in your main navigation. There should be other, more visually impactful areas for including these somewhat temporary initiatives within the overall page or site design.

While we may come to think of the main nav as the thing that users see first, this is not true. Users see the features and other more brightly and boldly presented content first. They only move to the main nav when they have shifted from a browsing to a searching mode. The features and other more visual callouts you design for your users are for them to explore and interact with; they let users know what you are saying is important, what is hot, new, happening. They are your breaking news, your highlights, your top stories, your VIPs, your special differentiators. Your main navigation is a set of tools in a toolbox that you want your visitor to understand implicitly and feel confident using to effectively drill down to the specific data they are seeking.

Let’s break down the main navigation in a few sites to explore these positions in more depth.

Example: MailChimp

MailChimp.com Homepage

If you look at MailChimp’s home page and pay attention to where your eye goes, you can see that the most important messages being conveyed are not the main nav, but rather that you can sign up for free, that you can manage email and newsletters easily, and that there are some cool new things happening. Only after scanning these elements do you seek out the main nav, and now your mindset has changed. You are no longer scanning to get a sense of what MailChimp is; you are now going to follow a logical set of pathways to seek out information that is of more specific interest to you. That may be pricing, features, or places to learn more about the community, such as the blog or the support section. But these main nav items are not trying to sell you on the best parts of MailChimp—that is the main page’s job, and the brand, and the marketing messages, and everything else. No, the nav is there to get you where you want to go, now that you know MailChimp is something that interests you.

Example: Southwest Airlines

Southwest Airlines Homepage

In the case of Southwest, there are a ton of things going on, yet the main nav is quite simple—Air, Hotel, Car, Vacations. To the sides, sitting back sightly, we have Special Offers, Travel Guide, and Rapid Rewards. A nifty drop-down menu gives you immediate drill-down options to skip an unnecessary page reload and to quickly let you see what information and functionality resides within each section. Yet, similar to MailChimp, the main nav is doing its thing, and the rest of the site is presenting the hierarchy, directing your attention, making sure you see the special deals and have quick access to certain portals, etc. They don’t try to do it all in the main nav. With such a complex set of user experiences, they have actually presented you with a myriad of navigational “types”—which allow you to “learn” the way to best use Southwest’s site and not be left at the mercy of internal groups playing a turf war over the website’s nav.

Example: Mint

Mint's Homepage

Surely you’ve heard of Mint.com for managing your finances, right? No? Oh—well, if you check out their site you’ll see they suspect you might be a newbie as well, and they will help you get a quick glimpse of what they are about before offering up a helpful main nav geared toward a pleasant introduction process. Here’s what happens when you land on mint.com: You see right away that Mint is the best free way to manage your money, you can get started for free, it’s safe and secure, has bill reminders, gets lots of good press, and works on various devices. Great, you’re in! Now you head to the main nav to learn more. They opt for a two-option main nav: What is Mint? and How it Works. Pretty simple. Of course there are all sorts of other navigational options sprinkled in that you start to see if you haven’t already found what you are looking for, and typically these supplemental navigational elements cater to specific user groups—in Mint’s case, Canadian users, people seeking information about the company, or existing users who want to log in. Most importantly, they assume you don’t know them yet, and they present their offerings in ways that make sense and have a sense of pacing.

Example: Lego

Lego's Homepage

Lego has a fantastic landing page—it invites you right into its online game experience “Lego Universe” while also promoting other featured aspects of the Lego brand, like the Lego Club, My Lego Network, Featured Products, and quick links to highlighted product lines like the Star Wars line, the “Games” line, and the MBA series of toys. Once you are past the initial experience, you are ready to dive into the specifics—and here you have the main nav stepping up and ready to play its role. You have Products, Games, Create & Share, and Shop. Four links. Simple. And a story is being told; you understand that Lego is a brand that is about playing, creating, and sharing as much as it is about selling you small interconnecting plastic blocks. They don’t put LEGO Universe into the main nav, even though one could argue that it seems this is a big push for the company right now. Rather, they feature it in appropriate places. This is also a critical act of restraint because in one or two years, the LEGO Universe may not be the main feature, and it would be wasteful to need to redo the main nav every time a point of emphasis needed to change for an organization.

We try to impart these lessons to our clients at the beginning of every engagement, because much like a house, if the foundation of your main nav is not strong, you risk putting your entire site’s structure and integrity in a compromising position that may need to be readdressed in the near future. And when all else fails, remember that you can rely on your analytics data to truly tell you if your website visitors are going where you want them to go and finding what they want to find. That’s the beauty of the Web—we have data to base our decisions on! Now, this doesn’t mean that the entire process of how we expect to use websites won’t be shifting in the near future, as main navigation gets replaced with interactive elements that involve finger swipes more than the click of a mouse. But visual design, composition, and the inherent ways a person’s eye moves and the way the brain processes information is and has been pretty much the same for the past few thousand years, so don’t mess with evolution and human nature unless you have a pretty convincing argument to do so.

Now go forth and navigate!

Tweet This

Seriously, have you seen Pizza Hut’s site lately? Or their apps? They make ordering a pizza about as easy as sitting down on the couch. They make it so easy you’d be crazy not to order a pizza from them, or get distracted halfway through and never complete your order, or decide it’s a pain and go to another pizza maker’s site. Take a clue from Pizza Hut. Make giving online donations to your school, organization, or cause as easy as possible. Make it so easy they can’t say no. And if they even think about saying no, use peer pressure to push them back into the “yes” column. Easier said than done, you say? I agree; being easy is hard work. It goes against what most of us are taught growing up. I’m going to give you a crash course, right here, right now. Then it’s up to you to put on your “easy” outfit and do your thing. And don’t say I never gave you anything useful!

1. Don’t be vague about what you are asking for. Be clear. But be realistic. Sure, you want everyone to give $1,000, but it’s easier to give $10. So take the easy route—ask for $10. Cheap isn’t bad. If you get more givers, you can still come out ahead. It’s worked for Walmart (the easy of retail); it’s worked for Zappos (the easy of shoe buying); it’s worked for Southwest (the easy of flying); and it can work for you, too. So be clear, and be realistic, and don’t be afraid to be cheap.

2. Don’t make the cheapskates feel bad. If you want $10, ask for $10. Don’t give people a range from $10 to $25 to $100 to $500, because then those that would have been happy to give $10 now feel like cheap bastards as they see all the other options on your list. If you must, leave a “set your own number” area, but just stick with a nice low easy range, and don’t make the lowest givers feel the worst. Make them feel like the winners!

3. Peer pressure works, and people love to brag about good deeds. Let your donors shout to the world that they have “GIVEN!” to the cause! Don’t make them work at it. Build into your online donation process an automatic part that prompts them to share their good deed on Facebook and Twitter, and don’t make it easy to opt out of this part (but don’t do it until after they’ve given the cash). Pre-populate the prompt with something like, “I just helped ensure another kid like me gets a great education at X University by making a donation. Have you?” People are wallflowers; they don’t like to brag if it takes too much effort, so make the message easy and to the point, so all they have to do is hit “allow” or “share” or “post.”

4. Don’t over-complicate things. Use PayPal. Use ChipIn. Use Google Donate (some of these are just for non-profits, but you can find plenty of good options). Spend your time and energy on making the “user experience” as easy and simple as possible. If you are collecting donations in “the real world,” use Square—just make it EASY! Ever wonder why Amazon introduced “One Click” to make it faster and easier for people to buy things? Of course you didn’t wonder! Why wouldn’t they make buying things on their site easier?

I’m a huge fan of the Savannah College of Art and Design, but when I see this online donation form my eyes start to bleed and I feel the urge to run. I gotta REALLY be in the mood to donate to put up with this. Seriously, shouldn’t “I,” as your potential donor, be given the nicest user experience? Instead I feel like I’m in some backroom storage area with cobwebs and an old PC terminal from 1996. After a quick scan, I can see that I’m not even CLOSE to handing over my credit card info once I do finally make it through this form. Yikes.

And Yale—I get that you want lots of information about my gift and me, but seriously, I’m BUSY! If I’m a Yale grad I’m probably super busy doing many important things, so just let me give some money already—leave all this “stuff” for later!

Hey, Greenpeace: OK,way to go on keeping it simple, but you could use a little work in the “nice looking” arena. However, as one of the longest standing do-gooder orgs out there that I can remember who’s been asking for money, you get it more right than others with your simple and to-the-point donation page. And THANK YOU for letting me just jump in through PayPal and hand over my $10! Win.

And Save the Children, I commend you for helping many needy kids, but seriously, lower your donation amounts. If I want to give you $10,000, I’ll probably come drop off a check in person, or have my personal assistant call you, or have my other personal assistant write the amount into the box you leave empty for us poor broke do-gooder wannabes to have to type in $20 and feel like cheap bastards. You’re on the right path, but you could do a bit more to make this situation better.

Testimonial Interlude: I’m a sucker for animals, and I LOVE dogs. I’ve started following a few pitbull rescue orgs on Facebook, and oftentimes a dog rescuer has a situation where they have a dog that needs medical help, and they don’t have the money. These people have started creating Facebook pages to plead their cases and have made great use of ChipIn to allow fast and easy online donations. I have given more money to help out dogs in last year than I EVER have to any other organization or cause (in number of times I’ve opted to help, not in total dollars donated—YET), and this is because they’ve made it so easy! My one complaint: ChipIn is a Flash widget, and therefore it doesn’t work on my iPhone, where I spend lots of time browsing Facebook.

Since I’m on the animal thread: Humane Society of America, I LOVE your site and what you do for animals—but let me please donate through PayPal. I am currently sitting on my wallet, which means I’d have to roll my ass to one side to pull it out, and I’m too busy writing this blog post. But I have a PayPal account (probably like many people do), and there is money in that account, and it’s tied to a credit card, so I can just hit a button, log in, and give you money. Or rather, I could have, if you’d let me. And I would have as I researched for this blog post. Maybe next time, but please don’t call me. Nice site, though.

5. Being easy doesn’t mean being outdated. Be Progressive. Realize that many of your new potential donors aren’t on your Website; they are on Facebook or Twitter—and not on their computers, but on their smartphones or their tablets. Make sure your online donation process takes advantage of these social media spaces and tools. Integrate everything so it’s all happening in one place. Optimize your giving process for these mobile environments or miss out on cash—your choice. This isn’t a small deal; it’s a big deal, and it’s going to be a HUGE deal next year—mark my words. The world is moving toward mobile, not away from it.

Want to see some more great examples of HORRIBLE donation forms? Here you go!

Got some good examples of orgs or schools asking for (and probably getting) donations? Share a link. Like this post? Share it with your network. Disagree? Let me hear about it.

Tweet This

The other day, as I was sitting in a presentation where major project findings were being shared, the subject of Website visitors came up. One of the members of the client side team stated that it would be almost impossible to implement the findings and recommendations into anything cohesive, because that would mean setting a preference for one type of Website visitor over another. He continued by stating that a Website must try to be all things to all people … because so many different people use their site (this is a higher-ed site serving students, faculty, researchers, staff, media, community, etc.). Therefore, our mission was impossible. Of course, we disagreed. As unfair as it might seem, you must prioritize your audience and cater to those priorities, or you are setting yourself up for big problems. Often, these are the very problems we are called in to correct.

As I watched his face contort as our response was gently doled out, and as he was identified as the perpetrator of exactly the thing that creates runaway, out of control, sprawling messes of Websites, I did what I often do: I tried to think of a metaphor to assist in the visualization of the situation.

Let’s say you are having a party. You are expecting a variety of guests and some family members. Each segment of your guest list will prompt you to do things you wouldn’t typically do to prepare. For example, you know Aunt Debbie only likes Grey Goose, so you make sure you pick some up for her. (Or you clear the cabinets, depending on Aunt Debbie.) You also pull out that hideous ceramic bulldog statuette your mother-in-law gave you for Christmas last year because you have a bulldog and so now that’s all she gets for you, and you place it on the coffee table so she doesn’t know it lives in the basement in a box. Now, you don’t line these things up by the front door and shout, “Look, Aunt Debbie, I got you booze!” or “Look, Mother-in-Law, I love that hideous statuette so much I keep it here by the front door all the time!” But you do place those things where you know Aunt Deb and your mom-in-law will be sure to spot them. You get the point.

You also spend a fair amount of time worrying yourself over areas of your house you normally never pay attention to, especially the entryways and areas in the house everyone is most likely to congregate. While you no longer pay attention to your foyer, you do realize your guests will, and you want it to look nice. While your pride and joy is the game room you’ve built yourself in the basement, you recognize that most people will be taking in your whole house, as they move through it – so you can’t rely on some deep dark hidden cool thing to provide the positive experience you are looking to give off. Plus, you have to recognize your game room will only appeal to some, and if these “some” aren’t the majority of your guest list, don’t count on it doing all your work for you.

Continuing with this metaphor: You make some assumptions. Let’s say this is a neighborhood party, where your guests will vary in age, and you also have some friends and co-workers stopping by. You make sure the X-Box is ready to go for your pals because, let’s face it, you’ll be stuck being the hostess and chatting up your neighbors.

As you can see, it’s actually ALL about the audience, and you can’t treat them all the same. Your friends don’t expect you to spend the whole party talking to them, because they realize it’s a neighborhood party and you have obligations to play hostess to your neighbors. It’s almost unnatural for us to treat all people with equal importance in the real world, and yet in the world of Websites, it’s a common infraction.

In fact, it would seem rather kooky and even rude if you seemed indifferent to your guests’ preferences and just put out what you liked to drink and eat. A party of Amstel Lights and cheese sticks might float my boat, but come on. I don’t think my guests would stick around, let alone come to my next party.

By catering your information architecture and your content to your expected guests’ interests, you show that you are a gracious hostess who is going out of her way to make a positive experience. I might even go so far as to say that if you DON’T go out of your way, you may come across as snobby, self-absorbed, and rude. You have to realize who your target audiences are and prioritize them. Otherwise, you are doomed to failure. So don’t take it personally, people. Just realize your Website is a party. Now go throw a good one!

Got some good party-throwing tips? How do you find ways to deal with the variety of audience types and set priorities? Do you think it is important?

Tweet This

I was going to write a post about the recent campaign Stamats created for Drake University, but most relevant points have already been made in the media. It’s an interesting discussion with no clear cut lines, and it brings up the question of how in touch we are with our teenage target audiences? Stamats makes the case that this demographic “gets” the sarcasm in this campaign, whereas the adult public’s reaction is based on an inability to see it as anything other than degrading (no pun intended).

What do you think? Can a D+ campaign be seen as anything other than crappy grades, thus causing brand damage? Or does the campaign present an edgy and “with-it” perspective that will get appropriate attention and consideration from the target audience (prospective college students)?

If you want to do more reading, Mark Neustadt recently posted to his blog about the campaign, and he includes links to other relevant press coverage, as well as Stamat’s defense of the campaign.

Oh and my take? I guess I’m too old, I can’t get past seeing D+ as derogatory, but I’m willing to be proven wrong.

Tweet This

I am going to make a simple recommendation which I suspect will have a radically positive transformation on any higher ed’s Facebook fan page that is Admissions-oriented. If your Facebook page is specifically for Admissions—SAY SO!

To really set the mood, ask a few friends or students to post some questions, typical “prospective student” questions. After all, no one likes to go first. Then, make sure you specifically indicate in any places where you refer to the Facebook page that it is the “ADMISSIONS” Facebook page.

Want to see an example of a school that is doing things right? Take a look at Savannah College of Art and Design’s SCAD Connect Page (http://scad.edu/connect/), notice the “Connect With Us” tabs and links at the bottom of that page—and how the Admission Facebook link is number one. They then provide links to all their other Facebook presences, but it’s clear if you click on the Admission link, you are going to get the Admissions-oriented Facebook page.

The final proof that this is working well for them? Check out all the prospective students asking questions about applying to or attending SCAD on their Facebook page. And equally as important, check out how responsive the SCAD team is in answering their questions.

To me, this is an obvious and simple clarification that can have a big impact on how your institution leverages social media in achieving its admissions goals.

Tweet This

In this post I am questioning the rationale behind online marketing or communications initiatives being directed or controlled by technology oriented guidelines.

Face it, today technology can do whatever we want or need it to do. And one of it’s primary roles is to act as a facilitator for a message. So why would we first worry about the “how we want to say something” before we think about the “what we want to say”?

Typically technology and marketing departments are separate entities, with the tech people focused on internal software, security, protocols, databases, all very technical stuff. Then you have the marketing folks worried about the message of the institution, the look and feel of the new brochure, the copywriting and tone in the radio spot, all very non-technical stuff.

And then the issue of the Website comes up (or talk of a microsite, or an email campaign, or an employee portal area) – and suddenly – both groups must work together, because these things involve technology. This is where the first mistake is made. A company’s interactive marketing has very little to do with the internal technology or protocols. Sure, there will be some areas that “cross over”, where security or the transferring of sensitive data should be monitored, where databases will need to be able to speak the same language, or technical nuances will require some sort of expert IT guidance to move forward. However, if the initiative is oriented towards “marketing”, then it should live in the hands of the marketing folks. Yet I can’t recount how many times I have found a marketing team struggling with an overly complicated content management system (CMS), or worse, a marketing team dependent on a few skilled coders over on the IT side, who are the gatekeepers of the marketing projects.

Lets face it, when someone encounters your interactive marketing initiative, be it a Website, a HTML email, a microsite, perhaps even an iPhone app – the last thing they will be thinking about is the technology… unless of course, it doesn’t work well. I am not simply talking about something being “broken”, I am talking about overall “usability”, the ease with which an interested viewer can access the content they seek while experiencing the brand of the company. This is one of the most important experiences your audience will have with your brand, and if technology has lead the way, chances are, usability has been delegated to what “works” with the technology – not the other way around. This shift in importance is a critical mistake, and will leave your viewers feeling they experienced something that was more about tech than communicating with them.

So, before you start shopping for software, adding firewalls and overhauling your servers, stop and ask yourself, “Is this an IT project or a marketing project?”

Just because things live on “servers” vs. on paper, doesn’t mean they necessarily need to be controlled by IT folks. After all, these days your marketing team probably does much of it’s work online in places like Twitter, the company blog, Facebook, press release sites like Pitch Engine, etc. Why would the Website be any different?

One common cause for the confusion is due to the “types” of information being shared or distributed through the Website. I often see people confuse Websites with “Intranets”, and this is something that is very important to differentiate. How do you find the answer? It’s all about the audience! If your Website is primarily geared towards outside audiences, who don’t have a need for or interest in your internal stuff, then don’t build in an Intranet. If the site is to market to your internal audiences, like a company wide bulletin board, an area to log in and review tax information or payroll, etc., then focus on security – and don’t build a public facing Website!

Bottom line – give your audiences what they are looking for, and empower the people who need to constantly craft those messages and content the tools they need to manage it themselves. Empower your teams with tools that work for their needs, and be very clear about the goals, audiences, and most importantly, who needs to be able to take the wheel and work with the tools you give them.

Tweet This