Article The Content Commitment published on October 2, 2012 Here I am going to indulge myself, and with language fit for Tarzan, Frankenstein or Tonto, get right to the bottom line about content strategy: "You, write..." Read Now About
Article How to Use Google Analytics by Christopher Butler on September 25, 2012 Have you been avoiding learning how to use Google Analytics because you assume that measurement and analysis is someone else's job? Have the words, "I'm not really a data person," or "I'm not an analyst" left your mouth recently? Well, this month, Chris Butler will share with you a simple, three-step approach to Google Analytics that has been designed to answer five specific questions you should be asking about your website... Read Now About
Article Prospect Experience Design Web 3.0? Made with Metadata. published on September 21, 2012 Metadata is useful for more than just SEO, it's also an integral part of where the web is quickly going. The Semantic Web is about linking knowledge, rather than just linking web pages, and using some simple metadata, it's fairly simple to plug into these emerging technologies... Read Now About
Article Prospect Experience Design Evolution of the Mood Board by Justin Kerr on September 21, 2012 Mood boards are a key element in the design phase of our web development process and the format for these boards has evolved over the last three years. In this post, I outline some of the key changes and the thinking behind them. Read Now About
Article Prospect Experience Design Don’t Be So Linear… Learn how to wrangle! by Christopher Butler on September 18, 2012 In Shaping Things, Bruce Sterling's manifesto for design in a post-gizmo society, the author points out that technologies "do not abolish one another in clean or comprehensive ways." If they did, the designer's job would be far easier. Instead, we must design for the spaces between the old and the new—a challenge that Sterling calls "wrangling"... Read Now About
Article Get Your Name Out There with Metadata published on August 31, 2012 Using author metadata is a simple, effective way to attribute your content on the web to yourself. The rel="author" metadata tag is easy to use, and allows Google to understand who you are when you publish, and has big implications for both your search visibility and your eventual inclusion in the Knowledge Graph... Read Now About
Article Content Strategy What Should A CMS Do? by Mark O’Brien on August 30, 2012 At Newfangled, we've been building sites exclusively on CMS platforms since 2000, so we've had an up-close view of the comings and going of the CMS market for just about as long as it's existed. In some way, content management is unrecognizable compared to what it was in 2000, in other ways, the more things change, the more they stay the same. This month, Mark O'Brien pushes to redefine CMS, from content management system to conversion management system... Read Now About
Article Prospect Experience Design The History of Web-Safe Fonts by Justin Kerr on August 6, 2012 I recently wrote an article for HOW's Interactive Design site about the history of computer-based fonts and how "web-safe" fonts, such as Arial, Verdana and Georgia are no longer the only game in town when it comes to web typography. Read the full article on HOW's site. Read Now About
Article Testing 101: The only way to scientifically improve your conversion rate published on August 2, 2012 Conversions are king. A conversion is the most valuable action a visitor of your website can do. Depending on the organization's goals, a conversion can be a variety of actions: purchasing a product/service, filling out a call-to-action form indicating they're interested in your services, signing up to be contacted regularly from your organization (blog, newsletter, special offers), completing a multi-step registration form, etc. All other metrics are secondary to the mighty conversion. You could pay an SEO firm to try to rank higher for particular keywords, sign up for a pay-per-click program, run advertisements through every marketing channel, but if your visitors are not becoming customers at a profitable conversion rate then you're just wasting your money on more browse & bounce traffic. So how do you improve conversion rate? Read Now About
Article Report: The State of Digital Marketing for Small Agencies by Christopher Butler on July 31, 2012 This month's newsletter is out today, and it's a detailed run-down of the results of our survey on the state of digital marketing for small agencies. By detailed run-down, I mean detailed: we asked 132 questions and the answers we received are all there in their full glory. I'd recommend taking a look through that information, but if you'd like a consolidated report, take a look at the document I've embedded in this post, which has a synthesis of the survey responses by topic... Read Now About
