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Trends in Web Strategy – For the Marketer with NeoCloud Marketing
Agenda:
Introduction
Web Trends
#1 - The web is now the social web.
#2 - Build your site with search in mind.
#3 - Content is becoming more visual.
#4 - Design Matters.
#5 – Mobile is on the rise.
Takeaways
Introduction
“All companies have customers, lucky companies have fans, but the most fortunate companies have audiences. When you build an audience you don’t have to buy people’s attention, they give it to you.”
Jason Fried, from the book Rework
#1 - The Web is now the Social Web.
This shift is based on the fact that people want to be creators. Instagram makes everyone a photographer, YouTube makes everyone a filmmaker, Twitter makes everyone a broadcaster and Content Management Systems allow the end user to be a web editor.
“People share, read and generally engage more with any type of content when it’s surfaced through friends and people they know and trust.”
Malorie Lucich, Facebook Spokesperson
FACT:
Businesses are embracing social technologies like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn as well as internal networks, wikis and real time chat.
Consider this…
In the last year, the world’s largest enterprise software companies like Google, Microsoft, Salesforce, Adobe and Oracle have spent billions of dollars snatching up social media tools to add to their enterprise suites. Like the recent purchase of Yammer by Microsoft for $1.2 billion.
Social Technology = Productivity
A new report from McKinsey Global Institute analyzed the feedback from 4,200 companies and discovered that social technologies stand to unlock $900 billion to $1.3 trillion in value. Savings come from unexpected places with 2/3 coming from improved communications and collaboration within and across enterprises.
Marketing Tip:
The web is aligning itself more closely with how things work offline in that relevance becomes the primary factor determining if something is shared. Marketing is no longer the blasting of a one way message; the message is a two-way conversation. Engagement Marketing is here and the social web is powering it. Do not over promote or you will under engage.
#2 – Build your site with search in mind.
Search Engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo are the new yellow pages. If they cannot find you, it is highly unlikely anyone else will be able to either.
Content is King!
With Google’s recent updates (Panda and Penguin), SEO has dramatically changed. Old SEO methods allowed some to fool crawlers by using words and links effectively. New SEO strategies will put content creators on an equal footing favoring those that are producing quality content that is highly engaging.
Get Discovered Online…
There are two ways a user arrives at a piece of content. The first is to actively search for it on a search engine like Google or Bing. The second is to discover or stumble onto it via a link on another website, an email, from a friend, social media, etc. Discovery covers all the ways we find information online outside of a search engine.
The Big Guys are catching on…
According to data released in August from the University Massachusetts at Dartmouth, 28% of Fortune 500 companies (139) have public-facing corporate blogs this year. This represents a 5% point increase from 23% in 2011 and 2010, and is up 75% from 2008, when just 16% of the Fortune 500 had public-facing blogs.
SEO gets a makeover…
New SEO will need to focus on the discovery element as much as the search element. Analysts will be looking at data on how they can get more engaged users discovering their content.
Marketing Tip:
People are searching for information online. The key is being the source of the information your target audience is looking for. Your organization should have a content strategy and your website should have a blog where you can deploy your message.
#3 – Content is becoming more visual.
Thanks to sites like Pinterest, Facebook and others. The rules for presenting content online have changed. You have to produce visual content that helps you stand out.
This shift toward a more visual experience online is evidenced by Facebook’s $1 billion acquisition of photo sharing app Instagram.
More than 300 million images (charts, graphics, and illustrations) are uploaded to Facebook each day. That means roughly 12.5 million images will be added while we are sitting here today.
Consider this…
Online publisher Mashable and EyeTrackShop recently found participants in a webcam eye-tracking study spent less time looking at Facebook wall posts and advertisements and more time looking at cover photos and images in the brands timeline.
Marketing Tip:
Photographs and other graphics can no longer be an after-thought. We must start seeing ‘content moments’ everywhere. Show people doing real things. Show how your product lives in the world. Use visual content you already have to get started like images of events, screen shots of eBooks, photographs of customers using your products or service.
#4 – Design Matters.
More and more people, businesses and organizations are coming online every day. More of what we used to do offline, we now do online. Because of this shift, it is highly likely that the first impression of your brand will be in the virtual world and not the physical one.
Responsive Design
By using media queries, the user’s experience will be determined based on what browser they are using. A few years ago, developers made separate sites for each type of device however this new technology will allow you to create one site with multiple style sheets.
Faster Load Times
People are processing information at a much faster rate and your site needs to keep up. To help minimize load times, web developers are using Content Delivery Networks (CDN) to serve content (text, graphics, URLs), downloadable objects (media files, software, documents) and more to end users with high availability and high performance.
Efficiency should be one of the goals of your site’s design.
For example, web forms that require a minimum amount of information are preferable. Often name and email addresses are all you need to get a conversation started.
Top Line Navigation is preferable.
In the initial days of the consumer Internet, it was common to see webpages with menus located in just about every conceivable position between one page and the next. Today, users want the navigation menu on the top of the screen as just about every user will intuitively looked towards the top of the screen to find the navigation menus. Placing them there helps to eliminate confusion when navigating your site.
Marketing Tip:
“You never get a second chance to make a first impression”. There is a difference between being present and having a presence. Invest in the online presence of your brand.
#5 – Mobile is on the rise.
Mobile Internet usage has doubled in the last year and right now represents about 20% of all web traffic in the US.
Consider this…
Nearly half of all U.S. adults use a smartphone, according to recent findings by the Pew Internet and American Life Project. Ninety percent of those smartphone owners say they use the device to check email and surf the web. That's not counting people who use other mobile devices, such as tablets, to access the web.
We love our mobility! Smartphone users engage in many shopping activities including making purchases, sharing product photos, searching for store locations, recommending items, research and checking review listings.
1 in 3 mobile device users share their location. This is important to note if you are interested in location based marketing.
US consumers spend an average of 1 in every 10 e-Commerce dollars via a mobile device.
Marketing Tip:
With more people using their mobile devices to access information about companies, business owners need to think about how their website displays on smartphones and tablets. If content isn't easy to read and access on a smaller screen, customers might go somewhere else.
Takeaways:
The speed of innovation is mind boggling. Almost every month there is something new and exciting coming out on the web.
Companies are not empowering the right people for these jobs. To be a good social media person at a brand, you have to have a background not just in digital or marketing but also in your product or service. There are few people with that blend of experience. Pick your talent wisely. Find strategic partners.
The world is becoming more and more transparent whether companies like it or not. Get involved or get left behind.
We do not live in a vacuum, purchase decisions are complex and influenced by more noise from more sources today than ever before. You have to make traditional media and new media work together.
“Many Americans begin their purchasing experience by doing online research to compare prices, quality, and the reviews of other shoppers. Even if they end up making their purchase in a store, they start their fact-finding and decision-making on the web.”
Jim Jansen – Senior Fellow
PEW Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project
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