Metrics: The Google/Bing Smackdown

Jeff Burkholder, Inbound Marketing Analyst

I brought attention to the story this week about Bing adding Google’s data to their index. In a nutshell, Google ran a sting operation, where they discovered that Microsoft was using a combination of Internet Explorer and the Bing search bar to catch users’ searches and clicks on Google’s site. That data would then be incorporated into Bing’s search engine results. This is neither surprising, nor really all that noteworthy. Unfortunately, Microsoft instead chose to respond to the allegations with what amounts to a petulant “Nuh-uh!” Even more regrettably, Google in turn responded with an equally schoolyard-esque, “Yuh-huh!” The two have been sniping at each other all week, on official blogs and Twitter accounts.

For Internet marketing firms such as ourselves, it should remain a topic of interest that Bing apparently can be “gamed” into adding results. It remains to be seen whether or not this would help search engine rankings.

Design: Keep Your Eye on the Ball

Astrid Salim, Creative Director

Today I shared an article with the team about the correlation between eye tracking and mouse tracking. GazeHawk’s article reveals that eye movement on a web page has a high correlation (around 84% to 88%) with mouse movement. Therefore, because of this high correlation and also the high cost of an eye-tracking experiment, it would be easier for a company to just conduct a mouse tracking test. Eye tracking may be a perfect tool to see what the most eye-catching part of your website, but mouse tracking is a better tool to measure the website visitors’ actions.

Social: Potpourri for $200

Daniel Klotz, Social Media Strategist

It was a Resource Friday mashup from me today, covering several topics:

• A service for identifying missed opportunities in local search
• Common SEO mistakes in URL structures and how to resolve them
• Advanced social plugins from Facebook for websites
• The need for social media backup services, as highlighted by Flickr’s recent accidental deletion of 4,000 photos of one of its paying users
• The poor performance of Facebook ads, and tips for making them more effective
• Minimal WordPress themes that can serve as a good foundation for custom themes
• The rise of Path as a new social network, and its relation to Facebook and Instagram

Programming: The Big Picture

Mike Newswanger, Lead Programmer

This week, I showed the group a jQuery plugin called Jcrop. With the increase in image-based applications, and the need for users of websites to be able to crop or edit their avatars, this plugin makes things like that really easy to implement.

Time marches inexorably on, and that naturally leads one to think of the most significant harbinger of the passage of time: Birthdays! We celebrated the anniversary of the birth of our numbers guy, Jeff, with chicken potpie (the Amish kind; not those silly “meat pie” things you get from the freezer section) and carrot cake, which naturally led us to talking about a very different kind of cake…

Cake: Easy as pie

Mike Newswanger, Lead Programmer

CakePHP provides a very robust MVC platform for web application development. Designed to work with PHP and one of many database engines, Cake can be deployed and executed very quickly relative to many other PHP frameworks. Cake can also be extended through many publicly available plugins, components, and helpers to make site production faster and less error-prone.

Let’s make a deal!

Jeff Burkholder, Inbound Marketing Analyst

I shared with the group information about Facebook’s new “Deal” offering for businesses. This is coupled with Facebook’s Places offering, and offers similarities to Foursquare, Gowalla, and even Groupon. Most importantly, though, any Deals that people take advantage of will automatically be posted to their feeds, so friends will also see the details of the deal. This is very intelligent on Facebook’s part, as it instantly brings a great deal (no pun intended) of visibility to the new offering.

Bigfoot(-ers)

Astrid Salim, Creative Director

An article from Six Revisions shows that website footers can be optimized to engage visitors even more. Contact forms, “about me” sections, news feeds, and social media feeds are some of the things that were not usually placed in the traditional footer, but are now added in many website footers. So be creative with the footer space when you’re building a website. Keep the size of the footers sensible though. It is best not to make your visitors feel like they are visiting another whole page when they see the footer.

Minority report

Steve Wolgemuth, Principal

Salsa now outsells ketchup in the USA, and that was a central message in my deliverable for this week’s resource Friday. I brought the team up to date on marketing to the quickly-growing and very important minority segment of USA’s population. With the minority market now 35% of the US Population and few digital agencies delivering strategies to reach these receptive people groups, YDOP needs to step up to the plate.

I provided some interesting facts from a recent presentation I attended by Jose Villa and we discussed ways that our team could bring this value to our clients, particularly for mobile marketing. In ten years 50% of our population 18 years of age and under will be minorities. This has huge ramifications, especially for our higher ed clients.

Practicing what we preach

Daniel Klotz, Social Media Strategist

When you have an announcement that people would genuinely appreciate hearing, blogger outreach can be a powerful tactic. I briefly reviewed the nuts and bolts of how we identify interested bloggers, how we reach out to them, and what we do to make it a piece of cake for them to share the announcement with their readers.

We also discussed elements of YDOP’s social media strategy, which centers on giving away a lot of good stuff, especially insight and information. Stay tuned for more announcements on that over the coming weeks.

Today’s Resource Friday gave each of the team members a chance to shine in their respective fields of expertise. Read on for more from all!

Mobile-izing app development

Mike Newswanger, Lead Programmer

AppMobi services provides an XDK to develop applications for mobile devices including Android devices, iPhone and iPad. The service is low-cost and enables the applications to be developed through JavaScript, CSS, and HTML, which is then compiled into a mobile application, which can be run on a mobile device without the need for an internet connection. The XDK provides a JavaScript library used for communicating with the device’s sensors and input methods. The application can then be tested locally on any mobile devices you choose, then it can be published and submitted to the Apple AppStore and Android Market for dispersion. This allows for quick development and deployment without the need to rewrite code for all devices you are developing for.

Making sure cream rises to the top

Steve Wolgemuth, Principal

What determines if your great idea survives and goes on to be accepted and implemented? You may have an important role to play in making it happen, and that may be more difficult if you’re not a natural salesperson (and even then, it may not be easy). This week during Resource Friday we talked about an interesting article shared with me by a friend, Marita Skacel, from True Edge Performance Solutions. One of my most important roles at YDOP is to foster a culture of innovation, and I believe that a vital skill for my team is knowing how to promote their good ideas. Great ideas are nearly always collaborative or have evolved through a process of discovery, typically from more than one person and often over time. Often, great ideas are knocked down before they are ever really understood or considered. So to help beat that tendency, we implemented a rule at YDOP that new ideas can’t be criticized or eliminated until they are praised or validated first. While this isn’t foolproof, it does protect the idea for a longer period of time, so people can give it more thought.

The great article Marita sent me (“How to Save Good Ideas – An Interview with John P. Kotter”, by Jeff Kehoe from Harvard Business Review) listed 24 typical negative reactions your great idea might receive and gives practical succinct advice on how you might best prepare for each outcome. We plan to file this and refer to it from time to time in the future.

Content: The once and future king?

Jeff Burkholder, Inbound Marketing Analyst

I shared an article I ran across on SEO. In “SEO Is Dead, and the New King Is ‘SMO’”, writer Ben Elowitz argues that the recent partnership between Facebook and Bing “marks the beginning of the end of SEO”, as people are increasingly discovering information via Facebook, rather than searching for it on Google. This led to an interesting conversation within the team about whether or not this heralded a return to websites focusing more on creating good content, rather than just stuffing webpages with keywords and SEO hacks.

Looking at web design in a new dimension

Astrid Salim, Creative Director

A boring flat web design can be transformed into a more interesting one when a touch of 3D elements are added. The 3D effect can be achieved by realistic photographs, highlight and shadow, visual illusion, and more. This effect imitates objects in real life, and therefore can make a website on a flat monitor screen stand out. Six Revisions has compiled some really nice 3D elements in websites which I shared with the team. Philipp Doms, for example, uses drop shadow behind his picture thumbnails, making it stand out. The shadows adds a layer of depth that the website would look flat otherwise. However, it is easy to get carried away with using 3D effect everywhere. 3D elements work the best when they are subtle.

Mixing up a Batch of sCRM

Daniel Klotz, Social Media Strategist

Social technologies have the power to transform your business, not just your marketing. One way we’re encouraging that continued transformation here at YDOP is by moving to a social CRM (or sCRM) system for managing our projects, staying in touch with our clients, and sharing information internally. Today marked the moment we ditched our various address books, our outmoded project management software, and our habit of cc’ing each other on every single e-mail, by implementing a social contact management system. Our tool of choice is BatchBook, and today we walked through its functionality, the way we’ll be using it at YDOP, and what it requires to stay updated and accurate. We haven’t discovered a way to bring “social” to our accounting system yet, but that’s the only part of our business processes that isn’t now deeply social.

In our ever-expanding quest to redefine exactly what “Friday” means — well, that and the fact that part of our team isn’t going to be around tomorrow — we decided to hold our Resource Friday on Thursday this week. Outside, it was raining hard enough that we saw the horses begin to pair themselves up, two by two. But inside, we munched on turkey barbecue sandwiches from Hitz’s Farm Market and talked about all things internet-related.

Motivating to continue the process

Steve Wolgemuth, Principal

When a web visitor finds your site and learns about your product or service for the first time, how can you motivate them to take the next move? How can you get more booking, more completed check-outs, more sign ups? According to Chip and Dan Heath in their fascinating book, Switch, one important technique is to show progress. We listened (via iPhone and speaker) to a case study involving rewards cards. When participants were given cards that already had two wholes punched out of their ten required beverage purchases, they were far more likely to come back for the eight more cups of coffee than if they received a card with eight, all yet un-punched. People are motivated when they feel they’ve already made progress and that they are making progress.

That’s why it is so important to have great design for check out processes, online surveys and long forms. People need to understand that they’ve already made progress and are successfully finishing a task. It may not be enough to have a status bar – you may need one that is tainted with encouragement. Users need to feel that they have made progress very early in the game, that they are making great progress, and that they can enjoy finishing. It is a powerful motivator; not to be ignored.

Google Instant and SEO

Jeff Burkholder, Inbound Marketing Analyst

I shared with the group an article I ran across on HubSpot about SEO in regards to Google’s new Instant feature. The long and short of it? Nobody really knows the full impact Google Instant is going to have on search engine optimization tactics, but there are a few notes to keep in mind.

• More important than ever is making sure your results are within the top three results on Google. People aren’t going to scroll through all the results anymore; they’re just going to look at the first page and keep refining their search until they find what they’re looking for right at the top.
• Page titles and meta descriptions are vital in capturing the user’s attention.
• Keyword research is key (heh) in not only making sure that people find you, but that the right people find you.

The article goes into even more detail on this, and we at YDOP will be looking to see how we can use this information to better serve our clients.

Rest your eyes on these better contacts (pages)

Astrid Salim, Creative Director

Today, I shared this nice compilation of creative contact forms from Web Designer Depot with the team. There are some things to consider when designing your contact form:

• Make your contact form not intimidating. Lionways is using a realistic looking postcard as its contact form. It is fun and easy to use.
• Keep your target audience in mind. If your target audience is an older demographic, make your contact form as clear as possible. For example, guiding the users on what or where to fill the info, like Electric Pulp does, is great for older audiences. Or something fun like Vince Mazza’s contact form is very appropriate for a young and hip demographic.
• Stay true to your branding. Give your contact form a personality by carrying out some element from your branding, like Il Frutteto.

And remember, it’s all about the user’s experience.

Quick hits on social media

Daniel Klotz, Social Media Strategist

LinkedIn announced a new major featured, called Signal, that is currently in limited beta testing. Signal looks similar to the Facebook news feed or Twitter search results, with the addition of simple and powerful filtering tools, so users can get to the status updates they’re looking for. By the looks of it, it won’t intrude on the current LinkedIn experience. Instead, it will be a supplemental way of viewing and navigating information shared on the site.

Lawyer Cris Hoel spoke at Podcamp Pittsburgh earlier this month on key points bloggers should keep in mind. While many were more relevant for political or news bloggers than business bloggers, I shared some points that we should keep in mind as we set up blogs for businesses and consult with them.

(How) are you being served?

Mike Newswanger, Lead Programmer

Continuing with mobile development…

Most change for development on a mobile platform has to do with design, but creating a new design template needs a way to determine whether a user is accessing the page via a mobile or full-size browser. The $_SERVER[HTTP_USER_AGENT] variable in PHP allows you to check what browser the user is using, which can then be combined with other PHP code to redirect the user to a mobile-based site.

We hit quite a broad range of topics at this week’s Resource Friday. Check it out, after the jump!

See Spot run jQuery. Compile, Spot, compile!

Mike Newswanger, Lead Programmer

jQuery is a very flexible, powerful, and well-supported JavaScript library for use in web development. While it is capable of doing many simple things with little code, it is also very extensible and can be used for very complex operations as well.

Today I began discussing jQuery and its uses by showing the basics of how it is implemented. The jQuery functions can be called by either $() or jQuery(), although the latter is preferred for plugin development since it is required if it needs to be used in “compatibility mode.” Because Prototype, DomAssistant, and many other JavaScript libraries use the $() to call the library function, most have a compatibility mode to differentiate which library should be used, allowing jQuery and Prototype to be used simultaneously as an example.

On a very basic level, jQuery can be used to select elements of a web page and perform static or dynamic functions on these elements. The elements can be selected using many selectors, which look very similar to CSS inside the jQuery call (ex. jQuery( ‘#my-div-id’ ) would select a div with id=”my-div-id”). By adding a function on the end, that function would be applied to all elements selected (ex. jQuery( ‘.hidden’).hide() would set display=”none” for all elements with class=”hidden”).

You’re gonna love it in an Instant!

Jeff Burkholder, Inbound Marketing Analyst

Just announced this week is Google’s new “Instant” search feature. As you type in a search term on Google’s homepage, it will now anticipate what you’re searching for and instantly (heh, natch) search for the anticipated term. As you type further, it refines the search to map what you’re typing. I mentioned that Google is filtering out “naughty” words and phrases so kids don’t see those things show up instantly (you can still search for these things; you just have to go through with the now-quaint notion of hinting “enter” to actually start the search).

More interesting to us as an agency, though, is the fact that in the instant results, Google still serves up AdWords related to the anticipated search terms. This leads many to believe that the number of ad impressions served is going to skyrocket, as more and more people use this tool. Additionally, it’s speculated that long-tail searching will be used even more than it already is, as people will not want to search through multiple results pages to find their result. Consequently, it will become even more vital than ever to ensure that clients’ sites appear on the first results page.

The ‘Cross’-roads of social media

Steve Wolgemuth, Principal

Besides giving a short listing of interesting things about the long book I’m reading on the long tail (hence the name of Chris Anderson’s recent work), I talked about relevant aspects of the Red Cross’ several year journey into the world of effective use of social media. The reason I loved this story, explained by Charlene Li in Open Leadership, is because it runs a parallel course to the direction and vision I’ve recently cast for YDOP. We exist because companies need help moving into digital spaces and in participating effectively in a wild new communications environment. Relevant insights are needed and special skill sets are required – but not offered by traditional agencies.

New agencies need to take their clients on the journey of the Red Cross, which started out trying to control Social Media after Hurricane Katrina spawned a lot of negative remarks about response times in aiding victims. How should the Red Cross respond in the new world where everyone has a voice? The answer was not simple, but it did follow the precise steps that we believe fit well into educational environments.

First, social media participation needs to be understood from the top-down of an organization. This is probably going to involve a risk analysis and response policy for the organization. What could happen, how bad would that be, who would discover it and how would our organization respond? It’s complicated, but it’s an important journey that most agencies don’t take with their clients. It is the first step toward empowerment, and without empowerment, a client will never participate well in social media environments.

The next step is policy development for each social media channel – and better understanding of best practices. With this in place, an organization is ready to mobilize departmental participation like the Red Cross did in the USA. Grass roots involvement is key for a large organization, but only makes sense when everyone is prepared.

And central to that preparation is strategy. And everyone I’ve asked lately has a social media strategy. The problem is, most social media strategies I’ve looked at lately are neither social or strategic, but rather a list of social media channels and plans of what to say on them – and how to measure engagement (and that’s the best ones I’m describing). It begs the question, “engaged to what end?” Or are companies just giving themselves more to do in a day responding, posting and tweeting? Perhaps I’m just spoiled by Daniel Klotz’ strategies that map purposes and processes and show measurable relational flow charts that can be measured with meaningful metrics.

But back to the Red Cross, their end result was to create relationships with a huge base of Red Cross enthusiasts that helped them partner with Target in their first successful fund-raiser, and later enabled them to raise millions in days with a mobile giving launch. How cool is that?

Quick hits on social media

Daniel Klotz, Social Media Strategist

For the new YDOP website, we opted to integrate the Disqus commenting system with our blog, so I gave a tour if its features and explained why we’re using it (and I hope you’ll use it, too–it’s super-simple). I also reviewed some of the tweaks I made to our WordPress deployment.

We spent some time today talking about the ever-expanding options (from a technical perspective) for organizations in their use of Facebook. It’s easier than ever to create a custom Facebook application, and this week Facebook expanded the functionality of their “like” buttons even further. As they phase out FBML in favor of iframes only, the possibilities will become much less limited. ComScore reported this week that in terms of total time spent on site, Facebook has surpassed the total for all Google sites, which includes Blogger, YouTube, Gmail, Picasa, and Google Maps.

Finally, the Pew Internet & American Life Project released data this week showing that 47% of American Internet users age 50-64 now participate in social networks, up from just 25% a year ago. For those age 65+, the social networking participation rate doubled from 13% last year to 26% now. Particularly interesting is this bit: “Among adults ages 65 and older, 13% log on to social networking sites on a typical day, compared with just 4% who did so in 2009.”

I still haven’t found what I’m looking for…

Astrid Salim, Creative Director

One thing that you should not forget when building your website is to create a 404 page. For those who don’t know, 404 page is a page the visitors see when a wrong URL is entered. If you don’t create a custom 404 page design, all the visitors will see is a plain text saying “404 Not Found”. Well, it’s not exactly pretty. Today I showed the team a Smashing Magazine article about a bunch of interesting 404 error pages from various websites. These websites utilize their unique, fun, and interesting 404 pages to entertain or even to reinforce their branding.

Product Planner, for example, reinforces their branding by incorporating a blackboard theme from their logo into their 404 page. Or like Heinz who uses their empty ketchup bottle. Some websites rely on some humor to make their 404 page interesting and memorable, like Frye/Wiles, Wulffmorgenthaler, NotaNiche, and more. Some websites offer a more user-friendly page by putting in important links or sitemap to help the visitors to navigate away from the 404 page. This will keep the visitors away from being confused. Always remember to provide some kind of way for visitors to navigate, whether links or search field. So don’t forget to customize your 404 page!

We’re slowly getting the band back together, as Jeff rejoined the team, fresh (or not so fresh, as the case may be) from his camping trip. This week, we really delved into the things that make us unique as individuals, and more powerful together than the mere sum of our parts.

Logo Design

Astrid Salim, Creative Director

LogoLounge.com is one of the websites out there where you can see a compilation of logo trends from year to year. In recent years, I’ve noticed more logos are going towards 3D effects and web 2.0 style. While they are appealing to the eyes, they might not be easily applicable to different media. One of the rules for creating a logo is that it should be easily used in web and print, or in full-color and one-color, and there is a good reason why it is a rule. The 2010 logo trend that I see on LogoLounge.com has been influenced a lot by colors and transparency. Then try converting these logos into one color (ie. screen printing, embroidery, logo on merchandise, etc). Most of the logos suddenly lose their identity and personality. Some people say that in this era, technology is more advanced and there is less need to make the logo one-color. While it is true that what used to be done in one-color now can be done in full-color, it is definitely going to cost the company more money.

On the other hand, we are in the process of updating the YDOP logo, and I have been working on the logo development. Our new face is coming soon, so stay tuned!

Long-Tail Blogger Outreach and Facebook Landing Tabs

Daniel Klotz, Social Media Strategist

Chris Abraham wrote an article recently for the Agencyside blog outlining his agency’s method for conducting long-tail blogger outreach. I shared with the rest of the team how we can incorporate his tactics into the blogger outreach work we already do, and how we can use our existing tools in the additional ways he suggests. I also pointed out the few tips in a new article on Facebook landing tabs that supplement the information and ideas Astrid has shared in past weeks.

Content Is King

Jeff Burkholder, Engineer/Analyst

For my Resource Friday a few weeks ago, I had talked about one of the new features of the latest build of Safari: Reader. Basically, this feature extracts the content and specifically related images from a webpage, and allows the reader to see it in a clear, uncluttered format, superimposed over the old one. This removes ads, styling, and anything else that can prevent the reader from seeing the article itself. Well, just this week, a company called Flipboard released an app for the iPad that does the same thing as Safari Reader for Twitter and Facebook. This app pulls in feeds from your accounts on those sites, as well as news, photos and information from all sorts of other sites, and puts it into a magazine-themed aggregator with an intuitive interface, but without all the different stylings and ads. I pointed out to the group that as these style-neutral aggregators become more and more commonly used, it’s going to be important to remember that the content on a website is just as key as the way it looks. Potentially, even moreso, as we move forward.

In semi-related news, I pointed out that most email programs, both online and off-, now feature snippets of the text of the email in the email list. Because of this, it’s becoming more and more important to make sure that your email starts out with something that will interest the reader, and not just “Having troubles seeing this message in your email?”

Super Mario Whiteboarding?

Mike Newswanger, Lead Programmer

In addition to its extreme gaming success, the Wii’s accessories are capable of much more than Nintendo’s limits. Brian Peek, a software developer, created a library in C# to interface with the Wiimote. This library takes advantage of the ability to pair across Bluetooth with a computer, and expands the functionality of the Wii Remote significantly. Some of the features available for polling are:

• All input press and release events (aka user presses Up on the directional pad then releases)
• 3 Axis (including positive and negative results on each) values on the accelerometer to see which way the Wiimote is moving
• IR sensor data (capable of tracking up to 4 IR points simultaneously at a resolution of 1024×768)
• Access to controller add-ons such as Nunchuck data

By having access to this, many applications can be implemented through the Wiimote. One common application is a whiteboard, which can be set up using a Wiimote and up to 4 IR emitters (typically added to markers to give a natural feel) and a projector. The Wiimote faces the projector and provides an interface to the computer–very similar to how a mouse would work) by pointing at the Smart Board. It is moderately easy to implement and provides great functionality.

Today we’re initiating a new series of posts to the YDOP blog that we’re really excited to share with you. Earlier this year, we began carving out a one-hour block once a week for what we call “Resource Friday.” We grab a couple pizzas and then sit down as a complete team to share professional development resources with each other. Here are the expectations:

• Limit per person is ten minutes (we use a countdown timer)
• Talk about discoveries you’ve made in the past week—technology developments, tools, ideas, articles, books, etc.
• Find a theme to follow over the course of at least five weeks at a time, and focus your reading and learning on that

Resource Fridays inspire and push us as a team, and hold each individual accountable for constantly learning and growing. Now we’d like to share brief recaps of the resources we share with you. We’ll be posting these each week.

Object-Oriented Programming Fundamentals

Jonathan Arndt, Programmer

Today I talked briefly about inheritance and polymorphism. These are big words, and programmers use them all the time. But they are not complicated ideas.

Inheritance is the idea that when you build an object, you can extend it. The extension will have the same attributes as the main object, unless you specify otherwise. Polymorphism is the idea that you are indeed able to specify otherwise, so that the extension will have some different behavior than the main object.

Jonathan also shared this gem from a Web page he visited while researching Perl modules for a client” “Write the documentation for a module first, before writing any code. Discuss the module with other people first, before writing any code. Plan the module first, before writing any code. It’s easy to come up with a solution to a problem. It takes planning to come up with a good solution. Remember: the documentation, not the code, defines what a module does.”

Lancaster SEO Meetup Recap

Jeff Burkholder, Analyst

I relayed some of the information presented by Dan Meyer of ProspectMX at the Lancaster SEO Group Meetup (which YDOP is proud to sponsor) earlier this week. Dan started out by looking at some of the major trends for 2010 in internet marketing:

• Your Digital Footprint/Reputation Management – Paying attention to your company’s image in all forms of media by monitoring what people are saying about you on Facebook/Twitter/message boards/blogs/etc.
• Social Media Marketing Enhanced (see below)
• Video, Video, Video – Dan sees the trend of “viral” videos as continuing and increasing
• Mobile Everything - The mobile market is the largest growing segment of internet use. Also, customers are becoming more savvy; when they’re out shopping, they can now price-check on the spot. Their savvy also extends to Internet searches: 40% of search terms in Google have never been specifically searched for before. That is, customers are getting more and more specific about what they’re precisely looking for.

Dan also noted that in the marketing world, Internet media is the only one that’s really measurable. There’s no way to tell with any amount of certainty how much business is generated by a billboard or a television advertisement, but you can tell how many times an Internet ad has been seen, clicked on, and often how many of those clicks have led directly to sales. In regards to social media marketing, Dan brought up the fact that Facebook is huge. In fact, 95% of people who participate in social media have a Facebook page, and in the past year, there’s been a 48% increase in women who have some sort of social media profile. All of this points to the fact that businesses that are afraid of using the word “social” in relation to business are increasingly going to be left behind.

Taking conversion optimization from good to great

Steve Wolgemuth, Principal

Having moved on from bludgeoning my team with lists of characteristics of a great company (Good to Great, Jim Collins), I’ve began the tedious journey of understanding how to have good to great conversion results on client websites.  I’m loving it, and loving Jeffrey and Bryan Eisenberg’s book, Call To Action, which was the source of my contribution this week. I shared how a conversion is typically made up of many steps, which can be demonstrated on a decision/navigation flowchart, but the persuasive aspects of keeping visitors motivated enough to take next steps through your flowchart is—well—complicated.  I was left with the emotion that I had in my first year of marriage, my first month of cockatiel ownership and the other weekend figuring out my Verizon bill.  It’s complicated.

But, as with spouses, exotic birds and website visitors, understanding is key. (You may notice I’ve dropped the Verizon example at this point).  What motivates them?  What are their fears/concerns? What do they value and what is their mood and mindset?  It is important to keep interest at each step through polite enticement, and careful consideration of what has motivated their last action.  As Eisenberg wisely points out, empathy is the best guide, and the reality of your website’s offering/value is solely in the mind of its users. Plan a great experience for them through every click.

Spawning worker scripts in HTML 5

David DeCarmine, Lead Programmer

With the ever-increasing demands of emerging Web apps, concurrency is becoming a hot issue. This week I brought the team through a particular development in the upcoming HTML5 standard termed Web Workers (http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-workers/current-work/). Currently a draft recommendation, Web Workers allow you to spawn background scripts that run parallel to your main page (similar to spawning threads in a desktop application).

The main uses for these workers is to be able to execute tasks without stalling the main application. An example might be to pull in and parse traffic information for an online map while the user is still navigating around it.

Worker scripts are relatively safe as they can only receive data through the postMessage() method and don’t have any access to the main application data. They are contained within their own JavaScript files and are created by instantiating a new Worker object and passing in the URI to its script.

Some examples of Web Workers can be found on the WHATWG site (http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-workers/current-work/#tutorial) and the Mozilla Developer Center also has a nice little tutorial on getting started with Web Workers (https://developer.mozilla.org/En/Using_web_workers).

Five Categories of Social Media Uses

Daniel Klotz, Social Media Strategist

I shared a dense and brilliant blog entry by Jay Baer on what would happen “if we stopped lumping everything under the term ‘social media,’ and instead focused more on the specific outcomes that socialization of business can produce.” Baer suggests five categories of social media uses:

• Social PR & Influencer Outreach
• Social Campaigns & Apps (social media marketing)
• Content Marketing & Thought Leadership
• Brand Communities
• Social CRM

As a team we discussed which categories of social media usage YDOP currently focuses on, and where we would like to build our capacity.