What role does your Chief Digital Officer have?

At the beginning of this 2012 I pulled together a post on the emerging role of the Chief Digital Officer (CDO).

Over the last few months I've been considering this role more and now think that this is a job that will become more commonplace in the future. And it would seem that I'm not alone in thinking this, with executive recruitment company Russell Reynolds now stating that

The spike in demand for Chief Digital Officers has been felt globally. In Europe, the number of search requests for this role has risen by almost a third in the last 24 months

So what should the Chief Digital Officer should be responsible for in a major organisation?

Here's my suggestions:

• Having a seat on the board that champions the implementation / growth / adoption of digital technologies & practices, whilst contributing to the overall business strategy
• Online best-practice guidance and mentoring for all executive level staff
• Owning the company's digital strategy (including the digital roadmap of future features and functionality)
• Managing the implementation and management of online services (where there's no dedicated business owner)
• Ensuring the Digital Strategy aligns with overall IT, operational and product / commercial roadmaps
• Overseeing the overall digital user experience (e.g. every online touch point)

The Chief Digital Officer should also have the following experience:

- Experience of working within a blue chip organisation on a global scale (e.g. FMCG, Manufacturing, Online, Retail, etc.)

- Knowledge of Digital Marketing (from search engine marketing through to complex attribution)
- eCommerce best practice (conversion optimisation, merchandising, pricing and fulfillment) 

- A sound grounding in technical architectural and operational standards
- A history of large project / programme delivery

The problem with collecting data

Data gets collected all over the place these days:

• Customer feedback questionnaires regularly request and assess views and opinions
• Website analytics capture everything from machine preferences through to individual clicks on each page
• Audience research shows the number of adverts watched in a single evening and the retention of those products the following day.
• In-store ethnographic research identifies trends in purchasing behaviour and the effects of pricing, product selection, promotion and placement.

But businesses and their agencies need to move away from the habit of just retaining data from single channels (e.g. website analytics. TV viewing figures, etc.) and transcend the basic online only attribution models that are currently out there.

They now need to understand the entire user journey that leads not just to a transaction, but to a longer-term relationship. Only then can business truly understand the influence that different devices, channels, proportional activity and other factors (such as peer recommendations) have on purchasing and subsequent behaviour.

But who is linking these sources and others together? Who is trying to pull together the collective understanding from each of the different communication and commercial channels?

Windows 8 isn't the expected hit

For the last week or so I've been considering a new PC and the installation of Windows 8 upon it. I'm sure I'm not the only one who's thought about it and I know at least one friend who has dabbled, installing it as an upgrade on his current home PC ... I've seen his cursing on Facebook as a result.

However, so far I've yet to take the plunge myself, perhaps put off by the ragings of my friend, but also because... well, I just don't need to really. You see, I've kind of got used to my Windows 7 operating system, which was hastily upgraded as soon as it came out, following the disaster that was Windows Vista.

So now I have had a stable and working PC for the last few year, allowing me to get on with the more productive things in life, like actually using it for work.

Am I put off by having to learn yet another user interface? Yes

Can I be bothered to install it on my current machine and risk its stability, productivity and compatibility? No
(In other words, I'm not too sure I can run all the software I have installed on my current box and I'm in no mood to find out by a process of trial and error)

Apparently even Microsoft are admitting that sales of their new version are "disappointing" and to make matters worse... even the story explaining this lack of sales in The Register has scored even more points for Google:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/11/19/retailers_report_slow_win8_sales

I can't help but feel that Microsoft may not be winning this one...

Have yourself a very merry tablet Xmas

As sales of tablets continue to grow and the market fragments into numerous smaller ones that cater to different user needs (media player, e-reader, games machine, laptop replacement, etc)... The end users and the device makers both seem to be the beneficiaries. Worldwide sales are now predicted to climb to over an estimated 100 million units in 2012 (a 98 percent increase from 2011 sales of 60 million units according to Gartner, Inc.)

Also if you run a website, you will probably have seem the jump in tablet usage from your website analytics over the Chirstmas periods of the last two years. So therefore, it is highly likely that there will be another jump in tablet users this holiday period (I'll also try and use the phrase 'Holiday Period' more often, rather than just Christmas and New Year, as this trend is a global one... with users who celebrate Thanksgiving and Hanukkah also driving sales in the winter months).

So with over 60% of tablet owners planning to research and then purchase holiday gifts, decor and food items this Winter, it is highly likely that you will see yet another jump in tablet usage.  This means that if you have not already considered the compatibility of your website on such a device, you are already behind the curve. To make matters worse, the types of device you now need to build and test for have grown significantly in the last year.

It looks like site owners and online retailers have yet more headaches on the run-up to their busiest period.

Google - just how much is adverts?

In yesterday's post I put up a screen grab of a Google results page for the term 'car insurance'.

Looking back at this image again, I was struck by just how much of the screen is actually covered by adverts. Or to put it another way... what happens if we take the same screen and remove the pay-per-click adverts and link to Google's sponsored promotion for its own car insurance aggregation product.

Quite telling isn't it?

Google is back with car insurance

Has anyone else recently done a search for car insurance?

Well,if you has done this about a month ago you'd have seen the screen shown in my recent posting.

However, I checked Google only recently (e.g. a couple of days ago) and the sponsored link to 'Compare Car Insurance - with Google" has disappeared between the organic and the PPC links.

Well, I checked Google again tonight and low-and-behold, the sponsored link is back.

But with one slight amendment.... where previously the search engine boasted quotes from 120+ providers, the language in the advert has subtly changed to 'Compare up to 110 Insurance Providers'.

Has Google possibly got issues with the number of insurance providers on its panel?

Ecommerce sites please prep for Christmas

I have a magical and imaginary crystal ball, so if you run a retail eCommerce site in the Western world ..... let me tell you what I see in your short term future....

....An increase in visitor traffic over the next 6 weeks, culminating in a peak around Christmas time.

So now I've told you what's going to happen, what are you going to do about it? Well, if you're like so many other sites I see, you'll do bugger all about it. Then, should your site start to go slow (or even stop) in the run up to your busiest online trading period ever, you'll remember this blog post. And by then, there will be almost nothing you can do about it.

But right now, with 6 weeks to go, there is still time (just) to do something about it. How much actually depends on a number of factors, including how stable and scalable your eCommerce platform and code actually are. Another will depend upon the flexibility you have with your hosting company. Other factors are much harder to describe without going into a lot of scenarios and assumptions, but suffice to say there's always something you can do to improve the performance of a site, given enough lead time and the right expertise.
Note: If you don't know who who to contact, please drop me a line

In short, dear website owner or manger, please make sure you're ready for what is expected to be the largest eCommerce Christmas ever.

Digital jobs for Scotland

15,000 digital jobs for Scotland. That's how many jobs The Scottish government is predicting will be created as part of its investment in the country's broadband infrastructure over the next few years.
(See this article form the BBC about it: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-19874173)

But hold on one minute, lets not put our faith in fast Internet connectivity to stimulate jobs here in Scotland. Lets take a moment to remember that broadband Internet might not be the employment panacea the government is predicting,

Sure, in many ways the Internet has been an engine of growth and created many new companies and roles. In fact it has created whole new industries and economies.

But it is also responsible for disrupting entire markets. For example, it has brought the newspaper and wider publishing industry to its knees. It's changed lead generation across numerous industries such as travel, effectively pushing a lot of agents into harder and more niche roles. And lets not even mention the decimation of the local consumer electronics, books or music store....

Sure, there are plenty of successful examples of new and old economy companies making a success of online... And I'm personally hoping that this significant increase in bandwidth both opens up more remote communities as well as providing a greater customer base for Scottish ecommerce...

But lets just hold on and wait for the economic benefits of fast broadband before promising them.

Big Data and The Republican Loss

This is more of a question than an observation, which is why I've posted it on a Sunday (I'm not expecting an answer and I'm assuming most professional users are out or not reading blogs & Twitter ).

I've been reading a fair bit this weekend about Orca, Mitt Romney's voter assessment software, built by an anonymous supplier on a Microsoft platform.

According to various articles, Orca suffered stability and accuracy issues in the run-up to the election last week. Something many people are now claiming cost The Republicans the Presidency of The USA.

Orca was apparently built pretty hastily 7 months ago to rival the effect of a similar piece of kit used successful by The Democrats in 2008 and wheeled-out and improved upon again this year. Both systems apparently crunch 'big data' to identify likely voters and contributors for their respective parties. Only Orca didn't deliver.... It apparently crashed, locked out users and couldn't handle the data entry required of it.

So my question is simply this... If Mitt Romney is from such a prestigious financial management background (Bain), where spreadsheets have been the backbone of accurate decision making for over a decade ... then how come it was this crucial element that was so weak in The Republican campaign?

Are we about to have a battle of the tablets?

One in four US adults now owns a tablet computer, and two-thirds of those who own a tablet purchased them in the last year. These figures, despite being quite recent, don;t take into consideration the recent launches of the iPad Mini as well as the new Kindle devices (which now makes my slightly older Kindle look very out of date) and other Android devices...... let alone this month's Microsoft Surface launch
This means that the ubiquitous iPad does now have some serious competition in the tablet market and therefore this leads to an overall increase in tablet ownership.

The above diagram, provide by The Economist & Pew Research shows just how much the market has changed in one year.
http://www.economistgroup.com/leanback/lean-back-reading/pew-tablets-users/

In my opinion there's a battle coming. One that will be fought in full view of all of us (and most will get caught in the crossfire). The war over mobile commerce.... which is set to explode over the next few years.

Don't believe me?
Well Business Insider do, as they have predicted several mobile commerce trends over the next few years.

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/bii-report-why-mobile-commerce-is-set-to-explode-2012-11 

Their predictions pretty-much reflect a lot of my own thoughts:

1. Mobile commerce is getting bigger and bigger
2. Mobile payments will fuel this growth
3. Tablet growth will drive up this usage even further
4. The SoMoLo 'holy trinity' of Social Mobile & Local will be attractive to marketers (although specifically how they will take advantage of this, I'm not sure yet)

Therefore those companies who manage to take as much of the tablet now, will be in a position to commercially make the most from it in the next few years.

How much value is your website data giving you?

I'm on a mission to make sure companies get more value from the online data they collect. Why?
Well most companies now know that they can plug analytics into their website, ranging from the free (but still incredibly useful) Google Analytics, to paid for products such as: Coremetrics, Adobe [yes, we do still call it Omniture] and WebTrends.

For me the diagram below highlights the increasing value of website analytics and their importance to the business.

Reading the diagram from the bottom up, you firstly move on from a position of no data (or badly collected data) by setting up correct data capture processes. This can be anything as simple as collecting log files from your web server of visitor traffic. However by taking the next step (e.g. implementing website analytics) an organisation makes the move to having information it can use, now typically presented in the form of tables, diagrams, etc.

But, that is typically where most companies stop. However there's an additional layer above that, delivered by carrying out data analysis on the available information and creating valuable online insight.

No you are not an expert!

It seems like every is a bloody expert these days. From self-styled Digital Marketing gurus through to Social Media ninjas (please, enough with the fantasy role playing... you should have got that out of your system playing Dungeons and Dragons in your youth), it feels like everyone wants to be known as an expert in their field.

It's actually not that hard to look like an expert these day. Just like nobody knows if you're a dog on the Internet.... it is relatively easy to create the pretense of a fair amount of knowledge, so that anyone quickly looking at your online activity will think your an expert.

Don't believe me? Take a look at a range of colleagues and ex-colleagues on Linkedin. Check out how many are now using the new 'skills' functionality to label their expertise. Now look at how many are over-stating what they are capable of and therefore how little they are getting their fantasies validated by their peers.

So next time someone says they are an expert in a specific subject, just look at how many people have confirmed this in their Linkedin profile.

Note:
So far, in my Linkedin profile I have given myself the following skills, which have yet to be validated by any of my contacts: Online User Experience, Internet Strategy, Project Management, ecommerce seo, Technology, Programme Delivery, Web Analytics, Web Content Management, Online Marketing, SEO, Web Solutions, E-commerce Solutions, Multi-Channel Commerce, Digital Communication, Conversion Optimization, Web Strategy.
Does anyone fancy confirming these for me please? :-)

Content Marketing Optimisation - presentation

To try and explain both the alignment of the typical website delivery process (engage, specify, design, develop, test & launch) with the approach needed to deliver website content, I put the presentation below together.

Both processes need to closely align, but then once content it delivered it needs to be updated in a cyclical process. This content marketing optimisation approach need to factor in not just the brand (e.g. values, voice, etc.) but also other considerations such as the relevant SEO terms to target.

As always, the presentation is a 'straw man' and I'd value any feedback anyone has on this.

Learnings from migrating the Ideal Interface domain

Last week I migrated the Ideal Interface website across to the sub-domain http://blog.idealinterface.co.uk and mentioned at the end of this blog post how I was concerned that it may affect our SEO rankings. 

Well a quick check on Google has show that we have still retained the top spot for a search on "Ideal Interface". However we have lost our site links, the series of lesser links under the main listing that link off to other pages on this site.

It is also strange to notice that Google still gives our old site (http://www.idealinterface.co.uk) a third place listing, behind an Australian User Experience consultancy.

Hopefully, when our old site completely disappears from Google's listings we might get back our site links back in time. Until then, I think it is safe to say our listing has been affected by our domain migration.

Content Marketing Optimisation

Content Marketing needs a lot of thought and effort to do it correctly, so it is definitely not something you should rush into. You first need a content marketing strategy, and then you need the right team & appropriate inputs to be able to create the content. But creating content across your owned marketing channels (website, social media sites, etc. ) is not the end of things… content needs continual review & refinement to improve its effectiveness as an in-bound marketing (and conversion improving)channel.  But, just updating content to make it more timely and relevant for the sake of it is a thankless and unnecessary task.

To truly optimise your content marketing over time, you not only need to back in the results of your efforts (visits, bounce rates, pages viewed per visit, conversions & other goals)  but you really need to take this information and use it to create further content or amend your existing content.

You web analytics package should help give you the information you need to produce various insights into what your content is doing for you. In fact, Google’s new A/B testing tool (which I have decided not to use as it currently looks a fairly immature product) is now called ‘Google Analytics ContentExperiments’, now indicating the search giant’s emphasis of the benefits of content optimisation as a means of gaining decent website traffic.

However, let me just state that I believe content marketing is not (as a lot of other people have stated) just about SEO. Search Engine Optimisation is just one of the tools in the content marketer’s toolbox and should therefore be considered along with everything else.

In other words, you need to consider content marketing optimisation as business as usual, in just the same way as (hopefully) your online PR, eCommerce merchandising and other staff currently consider search engine optimisation.

Does Scotland have a digital skills issue?

I see a huge digital/eCommerce/online opportunity available to Scotland. There's people doing great things here and I'm impressed with a lot of what I see.

But Scotland can only truly take advantage of the new digital economy if:

1. There is a decent supply of brains
Academia has its part to play here, by educating and training the best to not only gain qualifications. but to be employable. However the digital industry also has another part to play here, rather than just rely on the cream of the crop from the top universities…..by recognising where it can cross-train slightly more experienced people from alternative disciplines. I did this in the late 1990’s when all the online start-ups had exhausted the supply of programmers, digital project managers, etc. It worked then, it can work now.

2. There are roles available
A actually think that entrepreneurs are doing a lot in Scotland to move things forward and from what I’ve seen so far they are given a fair amount encouragement and resources. But they can only generate a certain amount of new roles. IMHO more traditional businesses must also step up to the plate and realise that the world is moving fast, very fast…… and that older models of working, selling and distribution are not necessarily the ways of the future.
The figure I quoted in an earlier blog posting from the Scottish Enterprise report into eCommerce showed how little IT jobs contained the word ‘eCommerce’ in them.
Surely this isn’t the fault of the labour supply, who (with the right education, exposure and training) can be highly useful digital resources?….. To me is shows a lack of general demand for digital roles up here.

Which if it is true, is more worrying!

rebuilding the new Ideal Interface website

The old Ideal Interface company website had been up for about 3 years and was looking  a little dated. Not only was it out of date from a content perspective (as well as having our old London address & details, it contained references to an association with a parent company that has now folded) . On top of this, the CMS we had used required upgrading and given that the site was only a small, I thought a blogging platform was more suitable. Oh.... it also wasn't mobile compatible, which I see as a must in the current online world.

I therefore made the decision last week to redevelop the site, but this time using the Wordpress blogging platform.... The site's main purpose is to house a small amount of content based around our central proposition of eCommerce and Digital Marketing consulting, so I thought a blog was the ideal vehicle going forward. But here was the challenge I set myself...... get it done for no charge (except my time).

The first issue I had was exporting the content from our current content management system (Drupal) to our new one. Despite looking at several ways to do this automatically, I eventually settled for a 'copy and paste' approach. This actually turned out to be quite time efficient, given that Wordpress accepted most of the formatting from the old CMS.

The second one was migrating the domain across. You see the forwarding of our company email addresses is managed via one domain name provider, but migrating the DNS across meant losing this forwarding (which was not available in Wordpress as far as I could see).
Note: I only found out about the lack of forwarding by stopping the company email addresses for a period of a few hours. Luckily these were saved by our DNS ISP and eventually came through. Ooops!
The remedy to this issue was to give the website a subdomain and eventually I settled on http://blog.idealinterface.co.uk
However, Wordpress did charge me for the mapping of this subdomain, at a cost of about £9.

So now, we have a new site. One that has the same content, is updated using the Wordpress app on my iPhone and works incredibly well on mobile devices. I'm not 100% sure I like the template used on the PC version and I need to include the logo in there ASAP. But for just a very small outlay I can upgrade this template to a premium one or get one developed that I like.

Let's see how it fares.... especially as the domain has now changed and this may affect our SEO rankings.

Scotland's new eCommerce focus

Intro: This post is the second in my series on the future of Scottish eCommerce, with the previous post here

Scottish Enterprise has recently pledged on its website:

"to increase focus on the e-commerce opportunity for Scotland and in particular, to focus on international e-commerce awareness, advice and support."

To support this focus and the Scottish Government's commitment to Scotland's Digital Future, it is now running a new programme to raise awareness of the eCommerce opportunities for Scottish companies and to help businesses north of the border to capitalise on digital commerce processes and technologies.

One parts of this programme was event run today labelled 'Effective e-Commerce: Reaching new markets online' and held in The Sheraton Hotel in Edinburgh. I went along to listen, to meet potential prospects, see the types of people attending and listen to the range of presenters giving their insight. The attendees seemed to range from one-man operations who have yet to properly venture into online sales, through to large companies who wanted to understand 'what happens next'... and everyone else in between.

What was clear from today's event was the obvious determination of many of the participants to make the most of the emerging eCommerce opportunities in Scotland. Yes, there was a lot of jargon and TLA's (three letter acronyms) being used at various points, but there was also a lot of useful advice given out, especially in the breakout session I attended in the afternoon.

On the downside though, I'm not convinced that these sorts of mixed-bag events are all that is required to move Scotland into a leading online retail region. What is also needed is other business support such as: eCommerce mentoring, a better skilled workforce and the ability for company eCommerce people to share and learn from each other in a positive environment.

Additional note:
I forgot to mention in this post that all attendees were given a copy of 'E-commerce Get It Right!'
http://www.amazon.co.uk/E-commerce-Get-Right-Strategies-Simplified/dp/0956526209
This has now been added to the company 'library' for future reference.

eCommerce in Scotland

As friends and readers of this blog will know, I've now relocated my business and family to Scotland. I've therefore taken an obvious interest in the online retail scene north of the border.

The UK is now a world leader in the field of eCommerce and over the last few years has seen double-digit growth (despite the worst recession in living memory). Furthermore recent figures from the Boston Consulting Group have predicted that the UK’s Internet economy will continue to expand at around 11% per year for the next four year. This means it should reach £221bn by 2016, or a whopping 12.4% of the UK's GDP!

However it is clear that (except for a few notable exceptions) that Scotland does not have an eCommerce economy to fully match that of other parts of the UK. In fact, in a recent report by Scottish Enterprise it said that Scotland had the lowest proportion of any nation or region in terms of advertised IT jobs mentioning eCommerce..... just 2% compared to 11% in London and 10% in the East Midlands.

But ecommerce is a huge part of business today and is a growing industry within the Scottish economy in 2012.  It also contributes an estimated 200,000 jobs, worth £31 billion in sales (of which about £8 billion was actual sales using websites, compared to other online transactions such as direct B2B connections).

Clearly there is a lot of ground to make up. Or put another way, there's a huge eCommerce opportunity in Scotland for those companies who want to move into this market.

Going back to Google Analytics

There comes a time in your life-long learning where you decide not to keep up with certain subjects.

The latest HTML / CSS code, the specific configuration of some lesser-used Content Management System functions and whatever is number one in the pop charts.... Are all items of information I no longer learn or retain in my brain.

And to be honest this is the same for the finer and more recent workings of Google's free website analytics package. As I've used a number of web analytics packages over the last few years, my reliance on Google Analytics has reduced and I've now realised that, along with the product updating, my understanding of the entire suite of tools within Google Analytics is not up to scratch.

I'm therefore putting my nose back into the latest version (3rd edition) of the GA bible, Advanced Web Metrics by Brian Clifton.

I think the current aim will be to wade through this book again (I used to have a version of it a couple of years back, but gave it to someone) and possibly sit the Google Analytics IQ qualification tests...... depending on how much time I actually get.

Why has your SEO stopped working?

Have you started noticing that a lot of your efforts to push your site up the search engine results pages (SERPs) are now not having as much of an effect as they used to?

If so, then there is a good chance that your website has been penalised by Google’s algorithm updates.

Google's Panda and Penguin updates over the last 9 months have heavily targeted content and link spam.
Therefore these "less than white hat" tactics which used to work in the past (e.g. content farming, link networks, etc.) aren’t so effective anymore and in fact are much riskier now. This effect on your site could well be because Google has significantly changed it's ranking algorithm to penalise websites that breach their best practice guidelines. In fact, Google is known for making around 300 changes a year to this algorithm, which has over 200 factors (or 'signals') that affect it.

The Panda updates were meant to affect sites that depended on poor or duplicate content. It therefore hit sites that pulled or 'scraped' content from others.The Penguin updates that came a little later then affected sites that purchased links from other sites, rather than building them up correctly over time.

Now, the very work that has previously made your website rank well, may be having the opposite effect.

Note: I've been told by a few people recently things such as "we like your blog, but sometimes it gets too technical. Can't you write something a little less complex?". This posting is in response to that feedback and therefore I'd appreciate any further comments about its content.

Does big data mean big problems?

The subject of Big Data is currently reaching the level of hype previously reserved for Social Media, Web2.0 and the dotcom boom & bust before it. Just like these previous concepts... big data is large enough, complex enough and technical enough to bewilder a lot of 'normal' people. And like its predecessors, it is sufficiently hard enough to describe... however I like the explanation:

"Big Data is anything that doesn't fit into an Excel spread sheet"

However it is obvious that some companies are making progress with big data... whilst others, especially the consultancies, are keen to make out they have been involved with big data since before it was big news.

Of interest to me was this video posting by McKinsey, which explains how to deliver big data and the necessary analytics tools into the hands of  managers who need it.
http://www.mckinsey.com/features/advanced_analytics

However I think the challenge with all of this talk about big data is not only of defining it , but also getting started in the subject. You can talk about big data all you like, but how do you actually start making progress with analysing it and when does it actually become database administration (which has been dealing with gigabytes of data since before the dotcom bubble).

The Service Orientated Architect

With the innovation of service orientated architecture last decade (a set of principles and frameworks for designing and developing software around the re-use of back-end web services) complex web properties  became easier to develop and maintain. Key functionality was separated out and structured along business-focused processes, then integrated back together when required.

But do you ever get the feeling when working with digital technology (and therefore the technologists that wield the magical power to understand and work with it) that your business needs and issues are a mere distraction from their principle aims?

Yup, you're not alone.

It's not uncommon for a lot of Information Technology people, regardless of their level, to consider "the business" as an annoyance or actually having requirements counter to their technological aims.

Perhaps IT people need to be more service-orientated too? Structured and aligned to wheat the business needs, then integrated with their customers.

The overuse of the word strategy

The other day I was asked what online jargon ticks me off (to give it a polite title).

My first thought immediately went to the complete overuse of the word 'strategy' amongst a lot of people in the online industry. Here's my reasons why I think the word has become so popular:

1. Agencies and online consultants can charge more if they use the word strategy
(yup, for some reason, using the word automatically means you understand it and how to apply it to a client's business)

2. It has become incorrectly interchangeable with the word 'plan'.
(All too often I hear things like "we need an implementation strategy" when what is really meant it "we need a plan to put this website live correctly")

3. Clients feel reassured by the use of 'strategy' to define their aims.
(Admit it, no client wants to label their approach as anything but strategic. It would be counter to a lot of anyone's ambitions to say something like "here's a presentation of our content marketing tactics")

4. There are too many digital strategies
Yup, that's right.... The equation to calculate the number of digital strategies within any organisation is:
(Number of people who think they 'get' the Internet + 1).

Perhaps we need a strategy for digital strategies?

Where have all the website analysts gone?

All to often I speak with clients who have great websites and have therefore implemented analytics, such as those by Google, Webtrends, Omniture / Adobe, etc. However a lot of them also admit that they are not getting as much from these analytics packages as they should be.

They often claim that they either don't have the skills in-house or an aligned digital agency who can give them timely and relevant insight. This is a real shame, as these organisations usually understand that their business could be that much better if they could just gain better explanation of what their customers are doing (or not doing).

To back this up, a recent posting from eConsultancy highlighted an important and worrying trend..... website analysts are disappearing.

If you look at the graph above, you will see that in the recent survey, for a question asking "How many dedicated employees does your organisation have doing analysis of web data?" the number of organisations with zero staff responsible for web analytics has actually increased.

Increased? Surely it doesn't make sense that, in an increasingly digitally-savvy business environment, companies are downsizing their online analytics capability? It would seem so, and this is further backed up by the other data in this survey.... that clearly shows that most companies (i.e. those with up to 3 people responsible for online insight) have been reducing their focus on this important function in the last year. Perhaps unsurprisingly, only those large companies with five of more dedicated website analysts have increased their numbers.

It seems that the either role of website analyst is disappearing, or the smart staff required to fill these roles just aren't around any more. Where have all these people gone?

Above the fold?

"Out of sight out of mind"

It's a pretty blunt saying, but for me it kinda sums up my thoughts about the 'fold'....that part of any web page that you have to scroll below to read stuff.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Above_the_fold

And although we now have a generation of smartphone users who are accustomed to scrolling with their thumbs, I still believe users on PC's and tablets are less likely to scroll to content below the fold as it means they have to carry out another action.

Jakob Nielson also agrees with me:

Web users spend 80% of their time looking at information above the page fold. Although users do scroll, they allocate only 20% of their attention below the fold.

Obviously this topic is entirely subjective and a lot has to do with the user experience and design of the page. Plus there are now a LOT of different screen resolutions out there, meaning that content pushed entirely off of one screen could well be sat in the middle of someone else's. On top of this, a lot of people think that fold issues are a myth.....

But a recent Google update may make more of a difference to those interested in the benefit of the fold, especially those with more advertising at the top of the page. Now Google have updated their Page Layout algorithm, which is designed to reward sites with content, rather than ads, above the fold.
http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2216227/Google-Updates-Above-the-Fold-Page-Layout-Algorithm

7 steps for creating a content marketing strategy

In my previous post, I mentioned that content marketing is easy. Well here's my thoughts on how to create and run a successful content marketing strategy:

1. Have a strategy

Yes, I know this I'd obvious. But if you set-off without knowing what you're doing, you stand a chance of going nowhere quickly (See my posts on agile digital strategy for my approach on doing this)

2. Have a strategy that can be measured

Yes... I've purposely made this a separate point and I think you need to be clear exactly what your KPI's are and what success looks like. These figures should also be stated within your business justification (e.g. for further resource to assist you or to explain why additional effort must be put in).

3. Create an editorial calender

Your content plan should not be a hand-to-mouth process of a weekly meeting to just plan the next few days of content production. Products are seasonal, demand is seasonal, budgets are seasonal and therefore content needs to be seasonal... or at least adapt to the changes needed over time.

4. Build an editorial team

Ok, not every organisation can have a full-time team of one, two or more people doing their content marketing. However this doesn't mean you don;t need to have the input of (offline) Marketing, Comms/PR, Product/Proposition and your own digital marketers (and/or agencies).

5. Don't just create content, share content!

It's simple enough to forget, but you're not just encouraging visitors to enter and read your content, you're hoping they share it via more traditional (email) as well as social channels. Therefore do what you can to encourage this via the use of social sharing functionality (usually via the typical array of social buttons) on your site.

6. Make it usable and beautiful

Ok, maybe not beautiful, but at least consider that your content isn't just for the search engines..... it has to be read by a human too!

You however notice that I've really not focused on Search Engine Optimisation in a post about content marketing. "Surely that was a slip?" you're thinking "SEO is key here, why not cover it?".... Well to tell you the absolute truth, we all should know that content marketing IS about SEO anyway and a lot of the points mentioned above should consider this all the time. I'm also keen not to promote a specific formula for search engine spamming within a content strategy.... or maybe I'm saving that for a later post?

Content Marketing is easy!

Or that's what those who don't understand the subject say anyhow.

However the recent wholesale adoption of the use of the term seems to imply that nobody was doing content marketing beforehand.... when in fact content has been at the heart of marketing for decades (if you don't believe me, just remember that the terms 'advertorial' and 'soap opera' were created by marketers to explain certain types of content created to promote their wares).

Having done, run and eventually made a success of content marketing, I can safely say it can be a complex beast. Not only because it involves different skills (not just copy writing), but also because in large organisations it typically involves several people or even departments. It is also an ever-changing discipline, that now has far more technical considerations than it used to.

In a recent eConsultancy survey,

90% of respondents felt that content marketing would become more important in the next 12 months and 93% said their companies either had a defined strategy in place or were planning on having one within the next year.

I therefore assume that if you're reading this you're planning on creating or improving your content plans into 2013. I therefore guess that for you content marketing is easy.... if it wasn't for the content and the marketing bits :-)

Agile digital strategy - an overview

Over two years back I created a set of slides about how digital strategy should be agile and not like the industrial age of strategic planning (e.g. not responsive to changes, etc.)

Well, I recently had to point people to this information, only to find out I'd not actually uploaded the entire presentation. So rather than have to sort through all the slides individually, here's the whole thing uploaded to Slideshare:

Agile Digital Strategy from Hayden Sutherland

BTW: The individual posts, along with an explanation of each slide are still available here: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5 & Part 6

A surplus of creative feedback

Just ask anyone in the media, marketing or promotional industries and they will tell you how difficult it can be to get sign-off of anything creative.

From clients that "just want a few extra changes" through to the wholesale madness that is "I don't like it, do it again".... Everyone has an opinion on creative work, everyone.

But just like every waiter in LA being an out-of-work actor and every taxi driver in London having a cure for immigration or Chelsea's failures in European Championships... Everyone seems to think they know how what good design looks like, even if they're not even asked.

You never get this in other industries (usually). Architects don't get treated like second-rate draftsmen, car mechanics are taken at face value on the quality of their work and I've never heard a hairdresser told "oh just do something and I'll tell you if I like it when it's done".

But give a client a single website design at breakfast and you'll have 10 different pieces of feedback by elevensies, plus a few more contradictory ones by lunchtime.

Has Google Plus lost the game?

In a recent piece of research, I was not surprised to see Facebook and Twitter taking up the lion's share of attention.

Using their online research tool, HighBeam (www.highbeam.com) looked into the total media attention received from the eight major social media tools / platforms in September 2012.

Although Twitter dominated with 55.84 percent of the media attention and Facebook had 40.30 percent, Google Plus received less than 1 percent of media attention. In fact it only had a meagre 0.08%, although they are keen to mention that their "Google+" search had to be performed as “Google Plus” (so results may not have contained all mentions).

However, this is yet another indication that the Google Social Network is really not getting the attention (and therefore the eyeballs) it needs, if is to compete with the big boys.

Are UK Financial Services cracking Social Media?

To a large extent the Financial Services market in the UK is still finding its feet with Social Media. This is strange, considering they have typically been at the cutting edge of digital adoption. Sure, most companies in this sector have raced to use Twitter and Facebook, but in my opinion a lot (and especially the bigger players) are still at the early stages of the Social Media Maturity Matrix.


However the  comparison sites are proving to be better at engaging customers with this channel than high street banks. Compare The Market’s position at the top of Stickyeye's recent Online Consumer Finance
Intelligence Report for social media reflects the online and offline branded campaign to “Compare the Meerkat”. The report gives the aggregator one of the highest engagement scores, despite claiming:

"Among the retail banks, social media remains a relatively under developed channel, with many operators not integrating their main site with key social media assets such as Facebook and Twitter.."

The UK however should look to the USA, where some FS companies have really found their way in this space:. For example American Express has been at the forefront of Social Media since launching its first online community in 2006 and then launching OPEN Forum a year later (a community project which focuses on small business owners).

Is your site ready for an ecommerce Xmas?

Yes, I know it's still 81 days until Christmas, but if you run an online store you're probably already preparing yourself for the busiest online sales period ever.

Or more to the point..... If you have not already prepared your website for the expected peak in Internet retailing in 2 and a half months, then you're leaving it very late to do anything about it!

Why?

1. Because as people feel the nights drawing in, they start to consider their Christmas presents for others. This means they're already browsing your site and some are carrying out early purchases to flatten out their seasonal spending.

2. Because properly assessing how to test your site for peak visitors and transactions takes time. From my experience: analysing, setting up tests and preparing for any volume & performance tests typically takes anything from 2 weeks upwards to do correctly.
Note: this can take far longer if you only have one environment (e.g. Live) to test against.

3. Because you don't just run one test during the middle of the day. You really should arrange a few tests over a longer period to get an average (Especially if you have any shared infrastructure).

4. Because there will always be something that needs to be fixed after you have tested your site. It may pass the expected volume tests, but if your developers or operational IT staff are watching carefully.... They will always find something to improve (meaning you should test again just to make sure).

A broken Mercedes website speaks volumes

Would you buy a new car from a website that didn't work?

How about one that, no matter what browser you used, still wouldn't let you view and configure a vehicle online?

No, me neither!

But in my search for a new car tonight (and on the recommendation of a friend) I tried mercedes.co.uk to check-out the latest range. And lo and behold, it didn't work. It literally gave me a grey screen and no content, no matter how often I tried.

Needless to say, I'm no longer in the mood for Stuttgart's finest. A shame really.....

IRIS : Internet retailing in store

Congratulations to Internet Retailing Magazine and Expo for their introduction of the term IRIS which is short for Internet Retailing in-Store.
Not only is it a great term that is easy to remember, but the eye-based connotation is also clever and relevant.
http://www.internetretailingexpo.com/

These days the use of mobile devices to shop online has grown to become a major revenue channel for all but the most resistant of retailers. But as more and more people shop with their smartphone in stores, and use other connected devices when they are there, then the in-store Internet retailing experience is going to become of increasing importance.
Note: connected commerce happens anywhere you can get data, not just at home on the sofa via a fast broadband connection (as I'm sure a lot if ecommerce traders still believe).

The Government's High Street Review revealed that retail spending has fallen by 42% in town centres and is forecast to fall further to 40% by 2014. So one could therefore argue that the more recent developments in online retailing such as click & collect now need to connect the digital experience with the physical one. Not just to increase the revenue for online traders, but as a potential way of boosting the stores income too.

Insurance data - is Google the answer?

I've been told I'm blogging a little too much about insurance aggregation. But the main question I still have is "where will a customer's driving data be stored, so that they can have ubiquitous and instant access to it (and preferably at almost zero cost)?"

Yes, the answer most likely is..... Google 

They are probably the only company set up to store this amount of data and make it available online at an almost free cost.

Also, if they now own a price comparison site as well, they may be able to crack the complexity of  mapping of user driving data back to the policies of the relevant insurers(and displaying it in a coherent manner).

BTW: If you think motor insurance is a 'big data headache' - wait until you get into Smart Metering for utilities.

Getting email personalisation wrong

This morning I received an email from the popular discount / voucher service Vouchercloud.

Now I'm sure I would have noticed calling myself 'Louise' when signing up for this service. But a quick check shows that all previous emails they have sent me are addressed to 'Hayden'.

Phew..... For a minute there I got confused. I therefore wonder if anyone else got the same issue.

Perhaps a simple slip, but poor personalisation can't help deliverability or click-through rates.

Who do you trust with your Big Data?

OK, I admit it..... I think Big Data is pretty sexy (But then I find anything remotely sexy if I don't fully understand it and want to. Its why I married a woman far more intelligent than me!). And if you're also a regular reader of this blog, you'll have noticed that I've recently been going on about the use of data in the motor insurer and aggregator market.

For me, the challenge with collecting vast amounts of data on each individual person's activity, such as driving speed and their late night policy breaking trip to the nearest supermarket, isn't about how an insurance company is going to calculate exactly how much extra to charge you for running out after midnight for those cigarettes, nappies, etc. but how you are going to get hold of that data when you decide to change suppliers. Because surely if you find it difficulty to move your own data away from one company who stores your data, they have an advantage over you?

So surely the answer is to not put your data with any one specific insurance company, as they could well have the advantage mentioned above. But to put your data in the hands of an intermediary service.

But again, you have the issue of who you trust to hold this data on your behalf. Perhaps a company with the infrastructure to easily hold your data securely, who can have access to a complex search service to be able to find trends in big data and who understands the online insurance aggregation market?

Which company could provide such a service? I must Google it......

Big data and telematics insurance challenge

In my research on the development of the telematics and the insurance industry  I have realised that my slide and previous post on the maturity of the aggregators needs to change. This is caused by the addition of data..... Big data!

As premiums get more specific to the individual driving behaviour and more data is collected on each policy holder, there are questions that I've got:

1. If I want to have access to all the data about my driving behaviour, can I?
2. How much data is this and how do I get it & store it?
3. How do I provide this data to another potential insurer to be able to compare their premium?
4. How would I then provide it to several insurers at the same time as part of an aggregate service and are they able to produce comparable policies?

So far there doesn't seem to be any easy way of taking one set of telematics driving data and moving it across to another company. Surely this will become of more and more concern to drivers and also to the people that set legal policy & regulations? So if the Data Commissioner's office and even the financial service regulation bodies are not taking an obvious interest, you can be pretty sure they will do soon.

In the end, telematics does not become an issue about creating a comparable policy from insurer to insurer, it is about the bigger issue of how user data is collected, where and who stores it, who has access to it (with and without the insurers permission) and what eventual use this is put to.

Will telematics save us from aggregators?

If you read my earlier postings on telematics (otherwise known as 'black box' or GPS car insurance) and the recent post on the new insurance aggregation service provided by Google, you may have combined these two things. You may have then, like me, asked how motor insurance comparison will work for those who opt for a little electronic box in the boot of their car.

In theory, telematics should give more personalised insurance premiums, as more data is collected and more relevant policies are created for each driver. The technology is used already in Brazil, South Africa and now also Australia, which have all apparently seen reductions in road deaths as a consequence.

UK insurers are starting to get more interested in telematics and so is Go Compare, one of the UK's leading aggregators. Go Compare initially approached telematics provider Wunelli to work on a 'black box comparison site' to understand more about telematics products. This led to Wunelli spending six months developing Compare the Box's price and product comparison facility.
http://www.comparethebox.com/

So far each insurer is compared using a number of a number of factors, including the location of the car and time driven (some charge extra for late night driving), but also other more detailed information such as acceleration, braking & cornering.

Back in April 2012, Compare the Box was the only telematics insurance aggregation website. But if the history of the web has told us anything, it is that when something unique and successful is developed..... a number of other similar services rush into this space very quickly.

The era of tCommerce

It seems that for the last decade, every successive year was going to be "the year of the mobile"....  up until last year, when it actually was! However, if you asked someone 10 years ago when the "year of the tablet" was going to be, they would probably have shrugged their shoulders or maybe muttered something about having "seen some devices back in the 90's that never really took off", etc.

But the tablet has arrived and now is a major platform for the consumption of online content (although perhaps not for the production of content).

This is exemplified by the recent statistics from the BBC, that showed how Olympic viewing on connected devices peaked in the evenings, when the tablet became the most popular device as people settled down either just with one or together with their TV (in the so-called 'second screen experience').

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/bbcinternet/2012/08/digital_olympics_reach_stream_stats.html

Furthermore.... if you'd suggested to anyone sane, even 3 or so years ago, that ecommerce transactions on a tablet would be a major revenue stream for a lot of businesses, they probably wouldn't have believed you, me included. But as we all know now the tablet, mainly in the form of Apple's iPad device, now makes up a significant proportion of our modern device usage with  a great deal of this activity naturally  online. And online activity for a lot of people means shopping (especially if you're my wife!).

So has the era of tCommerce or tablet commerce arrived?

In my opinion..... most definitely.

Telematics : the future of car insurance?

Telematics in its most general sense is the combination of technology and moving vehicles. However this is most generally used when referring to the tracking of motors via GPS technology and therefore it's application in vehicle insurance.

There are several ways this technology can be used and insurance companies are still looking at different ways to best offer a product to the motor market. Some providers offering a ‘pay-as-you-drive’ model similar to the way you get ‘pay-as-you-go’ tariffs for mobile phones. But others can set up restrictions for drivers, with time and geography both being possible means of restricting customers.

This in theory means they can keep premiums low by agreeing with customers that they will avoid high risk / cost activity (e.g. Away from accident black spots) or only do a specific amount of annual mileage.
Taking this only a tiny step further, this therefore can be a system for rewarding the insured for positive driving.

That little box of electronics in the boot will know everywhere you go, the speed you do it and the time you got there... then it will always report this activity back. Making it a cross between the black box flight recorder, your little brother and a trucker's tachograph.

The impact of Google aggregating insurance

I thought I'd follow up my earlier post, where I mentioned how the entrance of Google into the online UK insurance space was more of an issue for the aggregators than the individual insurers or brokers.
Note: those brands you think are insuring your car are actually fairly likely to be brokers, trying to earn a profit by selling you insurance from a smaller set of insurers.

In 2010 over 50% of all private car insurance was purchased with the use of the Internet, so it is only sensible to assume that has only increased over the last 18 months. It's therefore surprising that many insurance brands in the UK have made the decision not to have a large online marketing presence and take advantage of this traffic and growth. Sure, some companies are targeting organic or paid search online, but the major search terms are now pretty much dominated by the primary aggregators (MoneySupermarket, GoCompare, Compare The Market & Confused)*.

Either through a conscious decision, a lack of securing funds or some other factor, many insurance companies now accept the dominant role of the aggregators and pay them handsomely. In fact some even accept that up to 80% (or possibly more) of their business comes from the big players.

This current situation may not be permanent, but climbing above the big aggregation and comparison sites in either SEO or PPC is something that would take a lot of time, effort, skill and therefore money.

And this is why aggregators have more to lose now than the companies they provide customers to. They have more at stake when the biggest search engine places its own sponsored box just beneath the top two PPC adverts on a search results page. In effect giving itself a free third place listing and thus siting this service above the organic results.

For any other company this third place Pay-per-click position and top SEO place would cost a fortune to establish and maintain. Save nothing of the improved experience of a comparison service being built into the search journey.

*Sure some are spending significantly on TV (e.g. Direct Line, which is trying all it can to build brand loyalty in the run up to its proposed extraction from the now mainly Government-owned RBS group), but these cases are the exception.

Google enters UK insurance comparison market

The big news in the UK motor insurance market over the last few days has to be the entrance of a new comparison site. Usually this wouldn't be big thing, as there are a number of established players already fighting over each other to grab the remaining market share from the insurance companies they supply with leads.
However in case you're not aware, this isn't just another small startup hoping to grab a small but growing piece of the action. This is one of the biggest Internet companies out there..... Google.

Now, when searching for things such as "cheap car insurance", in addition to a couple of pay-per-click adverts appearing about the search results.... you now also get a box sponsored by Google above the search results that then takes you into a price comparison engine process that compares prices from over 120 insurance companies and brokers.

So whilst this means that insurance companies now have a new and significant entrant into the market that has a considerable influence over the search market (to say the least), I can't help but think that this move by Google is a more significant one for the aggregators.

The church of Apple

I don't know if it is just me, but has anyone else noticed the similarity between the modern Apple stores and churches?

This occurred to me when I was in my local Apple store only last week and then I started to see just how similar the technical Mecca is to a church.

Here's some things I found similar:

• Wooden bench seats arranged like pews in two parallel lines down the middle of the store
• Bright product posters / adverts lit from behind and high up on walls looking like the modern equivalent of stained glass windows
• A guru bar at altar height, with a smiling person stood behind it with the Apple logo around their neck
• A six pointed emblem (the 'Genius bar' logo) looking incredibly like the Star of David

Perhaps this goes some way to explaining the religious-like following that Apple has built up in recent years.

However if you want to full ecclesiastical experience, you should try visiting the London Covent Street branch.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/owen-b/4918511046/

 

Note: Image used is copyright to Kitty Hill

http://www.theage.com.au/technology/technology-news/apple-genius-at-making-customers-feel-good-20120831-254uc.html  

Predicting the digital future

The eCommerce and online marketing industry is one of constant change and if you don't like that.... too bad! Tools, practices & technology are permanently evolving in the online world so much it can feel like you're walking just to stand still.

So to be of any lengthy use in this industry you do need the acceptance of change, coupled with the acceptance that you can not know everything there is or what will be.

Consequently, when asked to pull together a strategy for a client that looks at the longer term digital vision, it can often be hard to come up with anything too specific without drifting off into SciFi territory.

So when asked to predict the future, you end up stating the obvious trends such as:
- Internet (especially data) usage will continue to grow
- mobile use will increase further as smartphones continue to become more prevalent
- device manufacturers will release further versions of their equipment to try and identify (& profit from) different consumer segments

Perhaps predicting the future isn't what it used to be.

Retention optimization

Building an ecommerce site is just the beginning of a long optimization process. It doesn't matter how much thought and effort you put into the initial planning of the user experience & design.....You then have the task of tuning your site to get the most out of it.

All this work is typically focused around the transaction path (also known as the 'booking funnel'). Visitors journeys are scrutinised and optimised in an effort to squeeze the most revenue out of each individual visit.

However, building a site that just takes the money (and let the customer run off) is an incredibly short-term approach to ecommerce that gives no consideration to the longer term customer lifetime value.

So ask yourself:

How are you calculating lifetime customer value?

Where's your email communication plan beyond the latest transaction?

Where's your overall customer segmentation and customer journey planning?

In essence, isn't it time you looked at the ways to retain your customers, rather than just trying to get new ones?

--
Hayden Sutherland
www.idealinterface.co.uk
Digital Strategy - Website Delivery - Online Marketing
+44 (0)780 1341955

Quality Score & on-page optimisation

Recently I've been a bit of a Quality Score fanatic, trying to get it as high as possible in my Google based PPC campaigns.

Although this has been a quest to find out the best way of optimising marketing budgets, it's also been a method for understanding just what does and doesn't affect on-page Quality Score.

As you probably know, Quality Score is calculated by Google via a mysterious combination of the advert, keywords used and the page you're directing users to. The more relevant Google thinks these are to each other, the better your QS. The best is 10 and the worst is 1. 

A quick point, if you want to find out your Quality Score, you can by looking at the 'keywords' tab in the 'campaigns' tab in your PPC account. Clicking on the white speech bubble  next to any keyword's status will reveal this calculated figure.

So what on-page attributes makes a difference? Well officially the three important factors affecting landing quality score are: relevant & original content, transparency and navigability (although page speed has been mentioned in several blogs, I'm uncertain about its actual influence in this metric).

Helpfully Google publishes its own advice on how you can optimise your site to make your Adwords efforts more cost effective:

http://support.google.com/adwords/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=2404197&from=46675&rd=1

Still treading lightly with Social Media?

Social Media is everywhere now and is almost become a laughable topic (if you follow the exploits of fake PR person @perfect_siobhan from the tv show TwentyTwelve, then it really is).

To me it seems that nearly everyone in all parts of the business is now talking about "social media", "engagement" and other similar buzzword. It's like they have just learnt how to play Social Media Bullshit Bingo.

It is now part of various job descriptions across organisations and, for a lot of middle managers, if you don't mention it at a job review or interview, then you kind of feel left back in the 20th Century.
Also (finally), pressure is now coming from the top of the corporate tree to "do something social" or (if they are a touch enlightened) to "create a social media strategy".

But hang on. We've had the issue of 'Return on Investment' to deal with for several years now. And in my words from a while back... If you can't justify moving up the levels of the Social Media Maturity Matrix, then don't!

So before you tread heavily with Social, tread lightly but quickly.

Is the concept of a page now defunct ?

The page is a metaphor that has existed since the web began. It's a simple device that allows users to navigate around the Internet easily and provides a unique location for each individual piece of content & functionality. Big sites have a lot of pages and even bigger sites have loads, that was the way of the web.

However, there are several current trends that could see the end of the page paradigm as we know it:

1. Parametised search

Have you ever gone to a major ecommerce site (e.g. www.johnlewis.com) and started to browse their catalogue of products? If so, then you may have noticed that the multi-select options, typically shown down the side, allow you to repeatedly filter your choices. In a lot of cases this doesn't refresh the page, but just redisplays the available products in the main viewing area. 

2. Browser address bar prominence

As browsers such as Internet Explorer and Firefox have developed over the years, the actual address bar showing the URL has become less prominent. So much so that for a lot of users, this once obvious feature is now relegated to a small letterbox more useful as a way of seeing if a site is secure (using https and sometimes turning green to depict an extra level of security). Conspiracy theorists may say this is a ploy by the browser makers of reducing our dependency on URLs as a way of navigating the world wide web, however I think it's just a natural move to provide more screen real estate and a sign of how the address bar has become less used (perhaps as we now follow more links from Social sourced?).

3. Constant scrolling 

If you use sites like Twitter and LinkedIn you will notice that you no longer have to click 'next page' or anything similar when you get to the bottom of the page you are on. Instead the next set of tweets, timelines, results, etc. automatically appear. This use of clever results that display more when you need them may seem useful, but what if every site did it? Would you ever need more than one page of results? 

And more to the point.... What if Google and other search engines now did this? 

(For one thing, it would certainly make the client demand of "get me on the first page of Google" far easier to achieve)

What it means to be Head of Digital

I've had senior online roles for way over a decade now and have met some of the best people in the UK digital industry along the way. This also includes individuals who have been given or earned the title of Head of Digital (as well as having done the role myself).

I therefore thought I would explain what I think the Head of Digital's role encompasses and perhaps give some food for thought on the subject:
Note: it should go without saying that this also refers to a significant extent to other similar titles such as head of online, vp of ecommerce or director of digital and multi-channel.

1. Leadership
First and foremost, any Digital head must possess leadership. Just because online is a relatively new route up the corporate ladder, it doesn't mean we have to ignore one of the key characteristics needed. I will also go as far as saying that they also need to have two specific leadership qualities:
a) To lead change wherever and whenever they can
b) To provide thought leadership (and not just by repeating and re-processing the ideas of others, I mean by having new and original ideas that are innovative and still add business value - and you though this stuff was easy?)

2. Strategic vision
Clarity of what online success looks like and how to get there is key. You don't necessary need an MBA from one of the top business schools, but you need to have the ability to understand where digital is going within your market and what the latest trends are. Also being able to communicate this vision is also really important (as there's no point having a vision if you don't share it).

3. User Experience insight
Its imperative to have an understanding of the key ways to optimise the online customer journey. From minimising bounce rates on the homepage, through to sharpening up the conversion processes across your site. Note: I'm not saying you need to be a leading information architect (and very few Head of Digital people I have met have actually come directly from this route), but an appreciation of the main concepts and having an understanding of when to focus on this is essential.

4. Advanced Digital Marketing skills
Yes, an understanding of the main digital marketing channels is vitally important for this role. However more and more I'm seeing the combination of data and marketing to optimise the customer contact opportunity (and therefore the revenue).

5. A passion for numbers
Sure, there's all the great innovative stuff to look at, but the data you can now pull from your web analytics and associated packages is immense, not including the challenge that comes from 'big data'. If you're a Head of Digital and you're not prepared to stick your nose into a cross-tabulated spreadsheet now and then.... you're probably in the wrong job.

6. Technical expertise
How to split your readership in one easy way..... by insisting that the most senior digitally-orientated person in an organisation has to have some technical nous. But its true!
Note: I'm not stating that the VP of Internet needs to have the same level of technical competence as your Development Manager, but I'm definitely suggesting they should at least be able to confer on a lot of technical issues.

Have I missed anything?

Getting ecommerce product images right

We should all know "The 4 P's of Marketing" by now, of: product, placement, price and promotion. However for selling online there's a 5th... Photo

If a picture is supposed to 'paint a thousands words', then a product image on your ecommerce site speaks volumes to your potential buyers (did I mix my metaphors there?).

There are a number of factors to consider with images, including their: size, quality, background, etc. Each can help to contribute to a sale and several of them can further help a customer make the important decision whether to buy or not.

Obviously the most important thing is to show the right image for the actual product, unlike this photo on Amazon I found..... Supposedly for a gas barbecue, but actually showing a white striped polo shirt.


Ooops!

Everything online is crap - fix it!

I'm going to approach things in a slightly new way from now on and the title of this post might just give it away.

If you make the assumption that every single website that is out there in some way needs fixing, then in my opinion you are on the right track.

I've previously stated my friend Tristan's thought that "if your ecommerce site isn't broken, you're not looking hard enough" and my approach is really a development of that.

Every website in some way needs help.

Here's what i mean by that comment. It is either:

1. Not fully compatible with all browsers
(a moving feast of web standards and evolving interpretations by the different browser makers - with Microsoft being the primary but not exclusive culprit over the years)

2. Not optimised for the user
(Even the most applauded websites have some barriers to their target users being able to complete all their tasks with the minimum of barriers. From eCommerce sites that sacrifice the smoothness of the user journey by trying to place more buying options in front of the potential purchaser, through to content sites like newspapers that interrupt the reader flow to insert advertising)
Note: and before you comment.... Yes, I know there's a commercial driver to both of these examples, where the site owner seeks to maximise the revenue from either sales or advertising, but this balance between revenue and user experience needs constant review to keep it in check.

3. Not optimised for speed and scale.
(It's actually pretty amazing, given only a few years ago we had to wait ages for a single image to come down the digital pipe via a chirping modem, that we now have such bloated websites that nobody has taken time to optimise the code, images and other assets. I've often criticised the flabby weights of major brand home pages and this is only the tip of the iceberg.
Only a decade ago I had to make sure my online production team got the most out of every kilobyte downloaded, now pages of over a megabyte are not uncommon. Have we not learnt anything from those days from around a decade ago? Apparently not!)
Note: And these site owners wonder why their beautiful, newly-built and interactive platform goes down as soon as more than a few visitors come and take a look....

4. A bunch of other reasons I've previously gone into.
(From bad error messaging through to sites that decide to just break for no apparent reason..... the world wide web is awash with mediocrity that the people commissioning, building and testing them should be ashamed of).

But that's enough ranting. Just accepting it is all crap is not the answer. "Be the change you want to see" said Ghandi (allegedly) and this is what we must all do online.

If you manage a site and it is crap, fix it! If you use a site and it doesn't do what you expect, complain. If you try to buy stuff online and the site does everything it can to make it difficult to transact, don't buy anything (but do feel free to give feedback on why you didn't).

We owe it to others and ourselves to improve the online user experience wherever and whenever possible. We need to fix things and fix them fast!