Next week we’ll start adding names to each resource so you can see which Synotacker is suggesting each article.

Mobile

Ideas for information architecture and CSS structure for tablet and handheld devices: WebVisions New York: Progressive Enhancement and How Sci-Fi Created Better Interfaces, Core77, 1.19.2012

Augmented Reality

QR Codes to provide quick links to online next arrival information are going up on Trimet stops: QR Codes coming to stops and station, Trimet Blog, 1.19.2012

Wearable electronics: FLORA from adafruit

Kickstarter project for scent notifications: Olly: The web connected smelly robot

Email Marketing

73% of all B2B leads are not sales-ready, but only 35% of B2B marketers have established lead nurturing campaigns.  Research has shown that lead nurturing lifts ROI by 35%. The importance of lead nurturing in the complex B2B sale, Marketing Sherpa Blog, 1.19.2012

Registration during a purchase, webinar registration and website registration pages are the most effective ways to grow your list.  Email Research: Top 3 tactics to grow your list, Marketing Sherpa Blog, 1.17.2012

Persuasion & Copywriting

Pitfalls to avoid when putting calls-to-action on webpages, from clutter to button location to overestimating the visitor’s next step: http://www.1stwebdesigner.com/design/worst-call-to-action-examples/

Why we end up writing our marketing copy like a distracted teenager and how to fix it: Understanding Plots and Subplots when Writing Salesletters, Psychotactics Blog, 1/23/2012 

How to survey your customers and learn what their true pains are.  5-step email survey process leads to 600% revenue growth, MarketingSherpa, 1/24/2012

When putting together a marketing plan, ask yourself  1) How well do you really know your target client group? d) Do you have a clear and compelling message that sets you apart from competitors? 3) Are you putting your best foot forward online? Three Questions for Marketing Plan Success, Hinge Marketing, 1.16.2012

Design

Designs that move beyond a standard box layout, mostly using WordPress (one cheats and uses Flash): 10 WordPress Designs That Surprise, Delight, and Think Outside of the “Box”, The Daily Egg, 1.20.2012

Infographics

Two more examples of trendy yet effective infographics:
http://frugaldad.com/patents/
http://www.commonrootscafe.com/2011-the-year-in-numbers.html

Search Engines

Google is starting to penalize sites with lots of ads above the fold to continue to improve visitor experience. Pages With Too Many Ads “Above the Fold” Now Penalized By Google’s “Page Layout” Algorithm, Search Engine Land, 1.19.2010

Humor, History, and Technology

At Synotac, we explored these ideas during a Lunch + Learn on January 10.

When planning for a presentation, we can easily get distracted by providing too much information, creating overly dense slides that distract from our presentation, or talking for an “impressive” amount of time.

I am working with these three core ideas to help shift my presentation style towards engaging stories that provide value for my audience:

• Take my time
• Less is more
• Be present

Take my time

Creating a good presentation takes time — both serious chunks of time to consider the presentation goals, content, and audience, but also “spaces” to let the ideas percolate and mellow.

Sometimes, there won’t be time either to really develop the presentation contents or reflect on the contents, but ideally there will be plenty of time to let the presentation evolve.

Don’t underestimate the difficulty of creating a good presentation! Ideally, use different tools (index cards, post-its, big pieces of paper) to encourage your thinking to move beyond your initial expectations and linear thinking.

Less is more

This idea can be applied to both the presentation contents as well as the visuals, typically slides, for the presentation.

We often think the longer we talk, the more value we are providing. Unfocused rambling or a fire hose of data will undercut our key points. If your presentation can be made in twenty minutes, don’t fill an hour with talking. Sometime you’ll be lucky enough to have an hour available, and this is a great time to think creatively about activities and other interactive options for the time.

Our slides also fill with unnecessary clutter and dense information, confusing your key points and also distracting the audience as they try to read the slides while listening to you.

The slides at the bottom of this post are from the Lunch + Learn — they are not meant to make sense without my presentation, but do give an idea of slides that are hopefully supporting the presentation.

Be present

This applies both to the preparation for the presentation and when giving the presentation itself. Even if you are only going to speaking to the audience without interaction, by really being engaged with your presentation, the audience will also engage.

For many of the presentations we do for web design, we get to have lots of interaction with our audience, which allows us to change gears, shift focus, and otherwise improvise once the presentation begins. This is a great opportunity to make sure we are really connecting with our audience, but only works when we are really present with our audience

Resources

• Presentation Zen: Simply Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery, Garr Reynolds, 2008.
• Garr Reynold’s website as well as his books since 2008 on presentation.
• Nancy Duarte’s website and books
• Prezi: a tool for building presentation visuals beyond slides
• Presentation examples:
  • Bobby McFerrin’s brain hack (and many other TED talks)
  •  Hidden Power of Smiling (also from TED)
  • Drive with whiteboard drawing
  • Pecha Kucha
  • Gel Conference

Synotac Lunch + Learn: Presentation Zen slides

Video

YouTube is revamping to be based around shows and channels (more like a competitor to Hulu or Netflix) to keep visitors on YouTube for longer than a few minutes: Streaming Dreams, The New Yorker, 1.16.2012

Video streaming (Ustream specifically, which we’re using for Lunch + Learns!) can promote democracy but also can identify protesters and people behind the camera (some organizations are working on technology to make the footage / faces anonymous): Visibility before all, The Economist, 1.14.2012

Email Marketing

How triggered emails can be much more effective than email newsletters because of their ability to be relevant to people’s needs:  Trigger Happy: Why emails are the magic bullets of marketing automation and shopping cart recovery, Marketing Sherpa Blog, 1.10.2012

How getting better data on your email efforts can dramatically improve their effectiveness:
Email Marketing: How a credit union selected a new database vendor and increased revenue per email 205%, Marketing Sherpa, 1.17.2012

Social Media

Excellent write-up on technical aspects of integrating social media approval and Facebook comments into a WordPress website: How To Integrate Facebook, Twitter, And Google+ in WordPress

Help keep people on your site! Want More Stickiness? Users Logging In Through Social Networks Spend 50% More Time On Site, Tech Crunch, 1.18.2012

Time management

Doing creative work with small chunks of time: The Counter-Intuitive Benefits of Small Time Blocks, 99%, January 2012

Dropbox

Have you ever emailed yourself a file so you can view it later at work or at home? Dropbox is a free tool that syncs up folders and files in multiple locations. In addition, Dropbox folders are sharable with co-workers or friends and are accessible through Dropbox’s website. This is a great collaboration tool available for Windows, Mac, Linux and Mobile.

Launchy, Quicksilver, and GNOME Do

Launchy, Quicksilver, and GNOME Do are all keystroke launchers for Windows, Mac, and Linux respectively. Launching programs, opening files, opening folders, searching the web, and accessing a calculator barely scratches the surface of what these keystroke launchers can do. After setting up the launcher, a keystroke combo can perform a huge number of tasks in a blink of an eye.

Pidgin and Adium

Keeping in touch by instant messaging with co-workers, family, and friends can occupy a lot of time. Pidgin and Adium are universal chat clients for Windows and Mac that support a wide range of chat networks. With this one application, it is possible to chat with those on Facebook, Google Chat, Twitter, MSN, Yahoo!, AIM, and more. This can be incredibly helpful (especially if you’re nearing a web design deadline) as a way to get answers quickly and keep projects moving forward.

Evernote

Evernote is a handy application for computers, tablets, phones, or the web that captures and saves pieces of the web in one location. Evernote can sync notes, videos, images, bookmarks, which can be accessed from a wide array of devices. Also, Evernote makes it easy to collaborate with others on projects and is available for Windows, Mac, Linux, and Mobile. Our staff has been able to capture interesting web design ideas around Portland and save them for future discussions using Evernote.

Let us know what you think of these tools or if you have other suggestions. As an interactive agency, we have found a selection of these tools to be very helpful in increasing team productivity.

While there are a variety of Facebook applications that accomplish this goal, RSS Grafitti is our favorite because it’s easy to configure and works with multiple accounts. Designed for Facebook Page administrators, the application actually allows you to post any RSS feed to any wall. If you’re managing multiple Facebook pages this would be particularly useful, but it’s also an easy way to automatically post your own blog content.

First, make sure you have a feed set up for your blog. We suggest you use Google Feedburner to manage your web feeds. Then, add RSS Grafitti to your personal profile and configure it for whichever Facebook page(s) you are administering. While the process takes only a few minutes and is intuitive, full instructions are available on the RSS Grafitti Wiki. The two important pieces of information are:

• The name of the feed
• The URL of the feed

After configuring the application, your blog posts will automatically be posted to your Facebook page with the blog source name, date, and RSS grafitti icon.

Understand what questions to ask before jumping on the social media bandwagon

When deciding how to use social media, first ask yourself, “Who am I trying to interact with? Are they using social networks? Would they want to hear from me?” Answering these questions will help you target your campaign and maximize activity on channels where your customers are active.

Learn about your target customer

Deciding whether to use social media is largely dependent on your target audience. How do you know which social media channels your target customers are using? Rather than guessing, try using a data driven analysis of your customers and prospects. The services FlipTop and RapLeaf allow you to get data from email lists; you can upload an email list and get information about which social media channels your customers use as well as information about their demographics.

Professional vs. personal email

When using a social intelligence platform like FlipTop or RapLeaf, be aware that your customers may have multiple email addresses. Individuals may use personal email addresses for some social accounts and professional email addresses for other accounts. Keep this in mind when drawing conclusions about your target customers’ usage of social media channels.

The “real person” behind the account

In B2B social media marketing, the person behind the account you’re engaging with may not be who you expect. For example, when it appears that you’re engaging with a business owner you may actually be engaging with an employee or a third party hired to manage social media.

For more information, check out the full slideshow:

If your request is urgent and you need immediate assistance, please call us now: 1-888-320-9255

Or, perhaps you have online resources they can access while they wait for you to contact them. For example:

Our website is full of information and resources. While you wait for us to respond to your email, feel free to …

• Explore our upcoming events
• Find inspiration on our Galleries
• Learn tips & tricks on our blog
• Read case studies

Provide additional opportunities for engagement Whenever a visitor fills out a contact form on your website, that visitor has already displayed a high level of commitment to your organization and is more likely than the average visitor to take more actions on your site. Suggest further ways for them to engage with your organization! Examples:

• Join our blog conversation on xyz
• “Like” us on Facebook
• Fill in our online survey

Curious what a contact success page could look like if you integrate these suggestions?  Here’s an example of a Contact Success page that includes pertinent follow-up information and additional calls to action :

THANK YOU FOR CONTACTING [BUSINESS NAME]

We have received your message and will respond within 48 hours.

Looking for even more information about [business industry]? Sign up for free today, and receive our eNewsletter: delivered to your inbox and featuring tips, testimonials, new developments and unique coupons for discounted services!

If your request is urgent, and you need immediate assistance, please call us now: 1-888-320-9554

“A business model describes the rationale of how an organization creates, delivers, and captures value.”

-Business Model Generation by Alexander Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur

This week’s Lunch + Learn focused on “The Business Model Canvas,” a tool for strategic management and entrepreneurial development. Billed as a tool that “allows you to describe, design, challenge, invent, and pivot your business model,” (www.businessmodelgeneration.com) the Canvas enables envisioning and re-envisioning business models.

The Business Model Canvas includes categories for all components of a business model (you fill these in with sticky notes and a sharpie):

• Key Partners
• Key Activities
• Key Resources
• Value Propositions
• Customer Relationships
• Channels
• Customer Segments
• Cost Structure
• Revenue Streams

 
By mapping your current business model – or your business idea – onto the canvas, you can identify gaps, weaknesses, and opportunities in your model. The Canvas is also helpful for strategically identifying your business model pattern (open business model, multi-sided platform, etc.). Perhaps  you realize that you’re marketing through a narrow channel base and you could expand to include web sales and partner stores; or, perhaps you realize that you could shift towards a self-service customer service model through providing web-based support services. The Business Model Canvas can be used to re-evaluate your current business model or to begin modeling a new idea.

When we experimented with the business model canvas during our weekly Lunch + Learn, we found the exercise helpful in analyzing our clients’ businesses and generating new ideas. Check out the slides from our Lunch + Learn below and let us know what you think of the business model canvas!

Here is some of the advice we give our clients when they are offering this feature on their website:

File upload limit

Larger files are going to cause more issues for you and your visitors; there’s a greater chance of the upload getting interrupted mid-way or otherwise failing, not to mention the load on the server. If you do not have an idea in mind for reasonable file sizes, set the upload limit at 20MB for starters and see what happens.

Virus prevention

Since you don’t know who uploaded the file, be safe and follow the usual advice:  run a virus scan before opening any of the files sent to you and frequently scan your computer for viruses and malware.

File extensions can be fake

While we can lock down what types of files can be uploaded, it does not actually offer protection from malicious files. Just because a file appears to end in “.doc” or “.xls” does not mean it’s safe. The extension has no bearing on what the file really is. Case in point, I often circumvent virus checkers by renaming an innocent zip file to “.jpg” when I send it somewhere so McAfee doesn’t have a hissy-fit and refuse to pass it through. And for goodness sake, *never* run one of these files. You should not be expecting executable programs.

Extreme measures (for the paranoid only)

If you are paranoid, you probably would open the file in some sandboxed computer–there are many links on the web to methods of doing it. I’d probably set up a virtual machine with the operating system and document programs on it so if that system got infected, you could blow it away easily. But the setting up of this and training is costly and time consuming. Googling for “virtual machines” would be a starting point.

When Synotac programs a file uploader, we make sure the web server is not in danger. The document won’t ever be opened on the server–it is just bits as far as the server is concerned and to the chagrin of hackers everywhere, “just bits” don’t infect anything. The safety of your own computer is dependent on the use of the good safety habits above.

We began by setting aside the particular technologies of today and thought more broadly about the possible connections and interactions. This particular exercise can be done anywhere, and is great fun. Get some post-it notes and wander around a physical space attaching notes to anything that you would like to interact with, sort of like a real world version of VH1 Pop Up video show. It can be helpful to think about what you would like to say to the thing, what you would like to know about the thing, and any two-way communication.

During our exploration activity, we came up with a variety of different kinds information and interactions:

• information about the thing (needed parts, manufacturer, origins of parts, where to purchase another, operating instructions)
• reviews and interpretations (what do you think about this piece of art?), any online community around the thing or idea (how do you use this thing? can we share?)
• whether the thing needed attention (plant needs water/light, printer needs ink, bike chain needs grease, light needs new battery/bulb)
• history of the usage of the thing (info on past text on whiteboard, past owners of the object)

Brief overview of some current augmented reality technologies

While augmented reality is here in a variety of forms, there is going to be lots of change in the technology as well as how people actually use the technology, so don’t get too attached to any particular form of technology discussed below.

The classic way to say “I am here” is with a nice graffiti tag, as humans have been doing in one form or another for millennia. Now, however, we can take this information into the digital realm, whether located on a webpage or encoded on the object.

More recently, we have been busily identifying our location through our phones. Depending on what service you are using, you can then find out about useful things nearby (food, entertainment, friends).  Location-based services are starting be a normal part of smart phone usage, with Pew Internet reporting that of the 28% of Americans are using location-based services of some kind, with directions or recommendations based on their location one of the most common actions.  Fewer folks are sharing their location (checking in) via Foursquare, Gowalla, Facebook, Twitter, and various other services, but that is also a popular extension of your physical self into the digital realm.

We are also increasingly able to use digital maps to identify where we are (or would like to be) and find out information about that physical location (This topic is worthy of a full Lunch & Learn, blog post, and more, but check out this article about a Dutch start-up and map layers and another project to identify what was there). These map layers are being constructions by individuals as a community exercise as well as a more commercial enterprise.

There are lots of tools available to provide more information about a thing that what can be written on it. We are all familiar with bar codes on the side of our cereal boxes and other products. RFID tags are appearing in library books and inserted into clothing to prevent shoplifting, as well as in our USA passports.

Near Field Communication (NFC) is a great newer technology to allow secure (hopefully) two-way communication between two devices.  This is what is underlying the Google Wallet payments excitement that has been in the news the last few weeks.

QR Codes

QR Codes came, like so many interesting tracking codes/tags/devices, from Japan. They have been around for decades, but have only taken off in popular US culture more recently. You can identify a QR code by the nice boxes in three of the four corners.

They are easy to create, and can include a fair amount of information. They are easy to duplicate and you can send them via email, webpage, and even television. Their square footprint can make them an interesting visual accent to a layout, and they can fit easier on many items than a long string of text. One service, QR Stuff will generate them for you for free, and then would like to put them on stuff to sell to you. Another, JumpScan, is all about sharing your contact information rather than creating any QR code you would like.

The simpler the QR Code visually, the less information included. These simpler codes are also less likely to get corrupted from part of the code missing.

While you can conceivably could put all sorts of interesting things in the QR code, the phone scanner applications (programs) are currently all over the place in how they interpret the code.  If you are going to encode some information today, you are  safest with either plain text or a website URL.

Challenges

For a QR code to actually be used, someone needs to be interested enough to have a device (typically their phone) that has a good enough camera to scan a code, have added a QR Code scanner program to their phone, and actually pulls out the phone to scan the code. This may get easier as more phones have image stabilizers and flashes built in, scanner programs come bundled the phone, and information of value is included in the codes. But for now, not that many people are scanning them, and they are mostly younger, male, and economically well-off.

QR codes are also in some danger of being the hot thing of fall 2011, and may look dated in the future if they are leapfrogged by another technology — so don’t get your forehead tattoo quite yet.

One possible technology is pure text scanning — if your item already has the website written on it, and someone can easily scan the website URL, why would they scan a QR code that is just going to take them to the same website?

The security concerns with QR codes are considerable. Anything could be in that code, and you can’t inspect it with your naked eye. Furthermore, most free QR code readers automatically open web urls, potentially taking a visitor to a hostile website which could do very bad things with/to their phone. Most free QR scanners do not currently appear to have any significant security protection. Our initial review of free and low cost QR code scanners/reader programs (or applications, as they like to call themselves) for iPhones and Android phones did not immediately locate any programs that were committed to security and in fact indicated that the programs themselves are requiring access to all sorts of information and functionality on your phone. If you have a scanner program that is deeply committed to privacy and security, please let us know in the comments.

Implementing QR Codes

Reasons to create them right now:

• If your customers, employees, and/or community of people interact with physical things/places, adding a QR code that takes them to additional information about those things or sending them to an online location to discuss the thing could be really helpful
• A high percentage of your people are younger, well-off men
• If you have coupons that can be redeemed online
• You’re excited to use them