AgencyCritique

Google Reader in Plain English

2008-08-27T14:52:29Z

Lee Lefever creates these wonderful videos that take what can be complicated tools and concepts, turning them into easy to understand primers. His first (or least first massively popular) video was RSS in Plain English. So this video on Google Reader is a great companion.

I recommend Google Reader to my clients as the best and easiest way to begin engaging in an “outward facing” web strategy. Google Reader is an effective tool to manage the first step, listening to others. It’s ability to easily extend this effort by sharing with others is another key benefit. The next step is to begin participating by commenting on some of the posts you read. I’ve started using Google Reader’s tag folders to sort my feeds into a few groups. My first group includes those bloggers I find most compelling and that I intend to read more thoroughly and potentially comment on more frequently. I can then scan the rest of my feeds a bit more quickly, sifting for a few nuggets here and there.

This video is an excellent overview of Google Reader. Chris Butler also wrote a great Web Smart newsletter on RSS and Google Reader with valuable tips. Take a look, and if you aren’t using RSS go ahead and grab a free account and get started. (I also embedded the original RSS video below.)

Agency Website Gaffes: 2. The Splash Page

2008-08-25T17:21:02Z

It’s 2008 and sadly I still need to write about splash pages–an unfortunate stronghold of advertising agency websites. The use of the “splash page” has a long history (long in Internet years anyway). Back in 1999 I wrote an article for Web Techniques about the appropriate and inappropriate uses of website splash pages. Today that article is moot. There are no appropriate uses for a splash page.

A splash page uses a website’s home page to make a visual impact rather than provide basic information and navigation. Splash pages are usually animated sequences that precede the actual site home page. Sometimes the splash page will transition into the homepage (sometimes seen in Flash based sites) but others require a click through to the home page after the sequence completes. Most splash pages (at least those with a modicum of courtesy) will provide a “skip intro” link so you can abandon the animation and go straight to the actual site.

Splash Page Abandonment
There are some significant misunderstanding of web strategy that cause agencies to utilize splash pages. But before I address those misunderstandings let me share some factual data that I hope is enough to dissuade you from this practice. My analysis of website traffic reports over the years has consistently shown that at least 25% of all site visitors abandon a website at the splash page. At Newfangled we used to have a splash page our site. In fact we spent months building it. But once I saw the abandonment numbers, I dumped it.

Impact–the wrong place at the wrong time.
Agencies are prone to the use of the splash pages because they feel that they make a strong visual impact–and they do. Splash pages, as creative expressions, can be very cool. Unfortunately, when it comes to web strategy, this impact just gets in the way.

Because agencies spend most of their time helping their clients compete for attention in a crowded marketplace, they must exert significant creative power to capture attention before they can get a message across. But when it comes to the web, attention can be assumed. People don’t navigate to a website by accident. Websites aren’t pushed in front of them; they go to them on purpose. They find them in search results, or type in a URL, or click on a link on another site. Attention is gained before they get there. How the site looks, or how impressive an animation is, has absolutely nothing to do with a decision to visit a site.

Agency Sites are B2B, Not Entertainment
When a prospective client goes to an agency website, they want information–quickly and easily. They certainly don’t want to sit through an animation before they can start looking. An agency website is a business to business marketing tool. It’s about information–not entertainment. So splash pages just get in the way and annoy.

Creative agencies sometimes feel like a splash page, or flashy website, is a demonstration of their creativity. And I suppose it is. But creative firms have plenty of creative work in their portfolio section to demonstrate this. It’s a mistake is to think of the site as another opportunity to be creative, rather than a means of showing your creative work.

Are You Being Strategic?
Let’s think about this impulse some more. In fact, let’s hold it up to the claims most creative agencies make for themselves. Every agency claims not just creativity, but creativity as a mean to an end–the client’s marketing goal. They say they’re experts in helping clients use the right tool for the right job. They guide clients strategically. They would never, for example, produce a creative television commercial for every assignment because television makes the biggest impact. That would be stupid. Instead they devise campaigns that work for best in each particular case.

Is a splash page the right tool for the maximum effectiveness of a business to business website? Is turning 25% of visitors away necessary? Is significantly hindering search engine optimization a smart use of the web? Certainly not. What the agency says by the use of a splash page is that they are willing to ignore the best practices of at least one medium (the web) for an opportunity to demonstrate creativity.

Let’s be honest
We’re creatively wired. We love what we do. And who doesn’t have a million stories of clients that picked the worst logo, or the safest (not best) ad, or watered down the concept of a brilliant campaign? It’s frustrating when our creativity gets down-shifted in the real world of clients and corporate politics. But nobody can tell us what to do on our own website, right? Finally, an opportunity to go all out, to give full reign to our creative powers! We’ll get that Communications Arts profile or One Show award for sure!

But at what cost? We may tell ourselves that we’re being strategic about our creative splash page, that we’re making an impact or demonstrating our creativity. But really we’re making a strategic mistake–improperly employing a medium and using creativity in the wrong place. Not a good start for when we want to then persuade a client how smart we are, how expert we are at employing the right marketing tools in the right way for the right goals.

This is the creativity barrier in action. We forget we don’t need to employ creativity to get the click. We just need to fulfill the visitor’s expectation for information. And we want an opportunity for unfettered creative play on our own sites so much that we’re willing to ignore best practice.

All things considered a splash page is a seriously bad idea. I can’t think of any upsides and there are serious downsides. The numbers don’t lie, and our true motives betray us. If you haven’t already, it’s time to dump the splash page.

Advising Agencies That Get Positioning

2008-08-22T19:41:17Z

This week I consulted on web strategy with Forma Design in Raleigh. We worked through all of the concepts that ultimately lead to the conclusion that an effective web strategy depends on a robust content strategy. Most agencies, when they get to this point, begin to feel the weight of regularly creating compelling content for their website. Where will they possibly find the time to do that?

That’s why agency positioning is so crucially important. The only why to consume and create compelling content regularly is have a clear focus. Without focus sustaining a content strategy is indeed impossible. An advertising agency’s content strategy must flow from focused positioning or else blog posts and articles will devolve into commonplace topics that get harder and harder to produce, and less compelling along the way.

Unfortunately, most agencies embrace positioning about a much as a trip to the dentist–sans pain killer. They fear boredom, or the potential loss of opportunities. Fortunately, this is not the case with Forma. They’ve adopted a position as experts in Life Science Marketing. Their work, their experience, their client base, (and soon their content strategy) all back this up.

While digesting all that goes into web strategy, the technology, the concepts, the tools, and the time, it is easy for an agency to feel overwhelmed, and even lose heart. But positioning is a great encourager. It makes web strategy–while certainly hard–definitely possible.

The Crit: Bear Brook Design

2008-08-14T21:40:48Z

Overall
Score:

3.88

Positioning 5

Content 3.5

Platform 4

Design 3

scale: 1…5

Thanks @itafroma (That’s Mark Trapp for you non-twitter folks) for tagging the Bear Brook site in del.icio.us with my accrit tag.

Positioning: Bear Brook Design’s positioning, clearly declared on the home page, is “experts in entertainment and media marketing.” This expertise is demonstrated front and center with a rotating series of entertainment-oriented work samples. The portfolio further proves their expertise with clients consisting of radio, television, media and arts organizations. Their range of services is refreshingly kept to four: Branding, Environment, Print, and Web/Interactive. True, these categories do cover a lot of ground. But at least they don’t go out of their way to list every possible area of service as though they were afraid to leave any opportunity uncovered.

One of the real strength of Bear Brooks positioning is under utilized. They have an entirely separate website that describes their unique “Brandopoly” solution. This looks like a highly refined offering. It certainly differentiates them and demonstrates expertise. I would make more of this on the website. They do link to it off the homepage, and it is listed under “Services,” but such a powerful tool should have more of a site wide presence, perhaps even it’s own navigation tab.

Content: The site’s content is good, but could be pushed further. I’m happy to see some commentary on all the portfolio detail pages, and the news section is updated regularly. They also have a resources section with a handful of thoughtful articles. I would add article dates, in order to establish an expectation for update frequency. With such a focused position though, establishing a more robust content strategy, perhaps integrating a blog, should be quite attainable.

Platform: Bear Brook is running Drupal as a CMS so I’m sure they’ll have no problems making site updates. The page coding is clean and should give search engines no trouble. The URL structure gets a little long (too many slashes) as you dig down into the content (ex. http://bearbrook.com/about/news/2008/bear-brook-brands-bethel-woods). Since the most robust content pages end up with the longest URL they’ll take a small hit in search results. This is minor issue but could be improved (Note: whenever changing URL structures remember to use 301 redirects for the current page URLs). I love it that they use unique title tags for each page! But they could be more strategic in the choice of phrases.

Design: The visual design is very clean, intuitive and easy to use. It’s sign of web maturity when a design agency shows restraint on the overall visual design in order to promote the work, the thinking and the content. While the website won’t show up in Communication Arts Interactive annual (and I don’t think agency sites should be aiming for this) it is a refreshingly clean site, with an attractive design and no significant interface problems.

The Crit: Anonymous Associates

2008-08-08T01:13:09Z

Overall
Score:

0.25

Positioning 0

Content 0

Platform 0

Design 1

scale: 1…5

When I review an agency site for “The Crit” I look for examples that perform well on at least one or two of the four criteria I consider most important for a successful agency website: positioning, content, platform, and design.

I’m making an exception for this post. This agency website fails on all counts. My intention is not to poke fun at this agency. In fact, I’ve gone to great lengths to obscure their identity. I’m also not linking to the site, instead I’ve recorded a screencast and blurred out all identifying information. I’d also appreciate that if anyone happens to recognize this site, please do not name the agency in the comments. Instead just ask yourself if any of these failures can be found in your own agency’s site, and if so, fix them.

One thing that cannot be seen in the screencast is the irritating (and all too common) practice among agency sites of automatically maximizing or resizing my browser window. A previous blog post was a rant against this practice so I won’t need to express my irritation again. But adding insult to injury this site not only maximizes my browser window, but it begins a 2.7MB Flash file download. Perhaps with the ubiquity of broadband these days this practice is not as presumptuous as it used to be. But I happen to know that this site has been online in its present form for some time–well before a 2.7MB was considered lightweight. Still, it’s bad form.

The site gets a third strike even before we get passed the intro. It begins playing a music automatically. There is a small sound toggle button, but we’re treated to an earful before we can locate the off button. I’ve shortened the music in the embedded screencast’s, so you won’t have to listen for long.

The site ironically provides a “Skip intro” link, but it does not show up in the animated sequence until well after the download finishes, after the music starts playing, and the intro animation is halfway finished.

If it wasn’t my job to help agencies with web strategy I would have bailed on this site before the preloader ever finished. But since it is my job, I stuck it out and analyzed the rest of the site. Let’s examine it from The Crit’s four criteria.

Positioning. Quite simply there is none. They define themselves as a “marketing and communications” firm with services that run the gamut. Even the “About Us” section offers no distinctives. Instead they begin asking about “Your Customers,” “Your Clients,” and “Your Audience.” This might be appropriate text for a process page, but I’d like to know a bit more about what makes Anonymous Associates the right fit for my business, what makes then different? The only thing they say about themselves is that they “ask questions” and “think.” This fails the “I would hope so” positioning test. If after hearing a positioning statement you could respond “I would hope so!,” it fails. Who wouldn’t ask questions and think. This is hardly a differentiating position.

Sometimes an agency’s client list is more revealing about the firms actual positioning than the agency is willing to state outright. Anonymous Associates lists many clients in Real Estate. They also list clients under Service and Financial, and Corporate and Manufacturing. Based on the list I think with a little work and a bit of boldness they could define a more strategic positioning. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that they claim and demonstrate expertise in real estate marketing when they pitch new real estate clients. But the site takes no advantage of this expertise.

Content. Aside from one press release (from February of 2007) in the “All The News” section of the site (which is the only news in this section) the entire site contains just over five hundred words. Most of these words are found on the directions page. You’ve already read more words in this blog post. Their portfolio contains nice images of their work but the descriptions of the work consist of one sentence each, all they all follow the same formula “When the [client name] wanted to [stated goal], ANONYMOUS AGENCY DID IT.”

Platform. Since the site’s platform is entirely Flash based, which usually ensures a failing grade, there’s not a lot else to say here. Except for one curious detail I’m suspicious about. I can’t be sure, but it looks like the text in the Flash movie has a bit of a jpeg halo around the letters. Meaning the words are not text in Flash, but rather embedded graphics of text in Flash. If this is the case Google’s recent announcement that it will begin indexing Flash movies will not benefit this site at all, since the “text” is still in graphic form, thus invisible to search.

Design. I’ll go easy on the design. I’m not a fan of the visual design, its definitely very old. It also typifies the agency inclination to use impact visuals rather sharing expert ideas–a common symptom of the “creativity barrier.” The information design fails. The browser resize, forced download, and music on start would be enough to fail the site. But they also add animated transitions to every section, an annoying practice that wastes the visitor’s time. They have not, however, committed the mistake of creatively labeling the main navigation bar titles. They’ve kept to normal and obvious labels: About Us, Our Work, Our Clients, etc. So I guess it doesn’t fail on all counts, it fails on all counts minus one.

I don’t like being an unduly critical critic. But because so many agency sites make mistakes like those pointed out in this review, I thought this post would make a good mirror to hold up in evaluating agency sites. Your agency site might not be as old looking, and maybe you have better taste in music, but the impulses, failures, and framework for this kind of agency site are sadly typical. And this needs to change.

Web Smart: Search Engine Marketing

2008-08-01T16:32:40Z

Last May I addressed the topic of search engine marketing at the Highland Capital Partners Internet Marketing Summit. The May 2008 Web Smart newsletter “Search Engine Marketing: At the Corner of Context and Intent,” provides the substance of my talk. I highlighted three main principles for evaluating any online advertising opportunity; context, recommendation and intent.

I recently tagged an article on the Social Times called “How Long Can “Ad Supported” Last?” Nick O’Neill echoed my main point when he wrote, “Search is still the only thing that can measure intention [italics mine] and nobody has figured out a better way to reach people.” There is a lot of excitement about social media, and the explosion of web based applications, media, and services. Most all of these sites are advertising driven, yet the effectiveness of the ads in such contexts is not as great as advertisers would like.

It’s incredibly important for advertisers to be learning about and participating in the social media movement. But not so much to figure out where to best place their ads. Rather they need to be in tune with how it’s changing the nature of marketing and advertising all together–the effects of which we are just now beginning to feel. But this is not a post on social media’s impact on advertising, it’s a reference to my search engine marketing session and newsletter.

While search engine marketing (both optimization and advertising) is not the newest most exciting subject, it is still by far the most effective avenue for driving traffic. That’s because it meets us at the corner of context and intent. It’s in the act of searching, using various iterations of search phrases, that a search engine delivers it’s results. And it’s when we are searching as part of a purchasing process, contextual ads have their greatest effect. They not only reach us with the right message, but more importantly, at the right time.

So while social media is very important to brands and marketers, search is still the bread and butter of active, traffic-driving Internet advertising. Check out the newsletter to read more.

Classic Agency Website Gaffes: 1. The Browser Re-Size

2008-07-28T20:11:49Z

As an agency consultant I spend a good deal of time visiting agency websites. I haven’t counted precisely, but a large percentage of the agency sites I visit attempt to take over my browser. These sites either launch a new window, or maximize my browser to fill the screen. Before I calmly explain why this is a very bad idea and a poor web strategy I must vent some rage… PLEASE STOP! STOP STOP STOP. YOU ARE NOT INVITED TO REARRANGE MY DESKTOP!

Ok, that felt good. The impulse to control the browser window is common among advertising agencies. It stems from the art director’s historic ability to precisely control every aspect of page layout, typography and design. I remember in the old days prepping a Dexter Shoe ad layout for Hal Curtis (a creative director whom I greatly admire). It involved sending out for a photoset type galley, scanning the text, enlarging it on the Cannon copier (not the Minolta) and finally reducing it back down to size with the stat camera to achieve a subtle worn, slightly grainy feel. Hal Curtis is a true craftsmen, and this full spread ad was an award winning thing of beauty.

Agency art directors are used to this level of control over layout, so the idea that they need to design for a format that has no fixed width or height is sometimes just too much to endure. When they ask if there is any way to control the browser’s size (thus ensure their carefully crafted web page layout’s integrity) and hear that yes it’s possible but… what ever follows the “but” goes in one ear and out the other. If there is a way to control the browser that’s what they want (and they usually get their way).

But this is a mistake. First of all it’s just plain rude. I have my desktop situated very carefully. I’ve set my browser’s location, in relationship to my Instant Messenger, my Rhapsody player, and other windows as well my browsers width to maximize my productivity. If you maximize my browser window you screw all that up. It’s so inconsiderate and arrogant to think that I would of course want to maximize my browser to see your wonderful web design in all its full-screen glory.

Now some agencies just pop up a smaller window rather than maximize the entire browser. This is less obtrusive and not as infuriating as maximizing my browser. But it seriously hurts the effectiveness of the agency’s site. For one thing, it pretty much closes the door on search engine indexing. When Google or any other search engine sees a link embedded in javascript (which is what you need to use to pop a window and control its size) they ignore the link. That’s because this technique can be used to maliciously redirect link from one page to an entirely unrelated (spam) page. So if you feel so strongly about preserving your layout that you’re willing to dismiss all search engine traffic, you may have a clean layout, but you’ve proven that you can care less about maximizing web strategy. Not a good idea in this day and age when the advertising agency’s influence is slowly eroding due to its weakness in digital media and web strategy.

One other reason browser size should be left alone has to do with the content of the website. Effective websites are content rich.Website’s that have gone through the trouble of controlling browser size usually also want to control copy length. They want to preserve the layout and not mess it up with lots of paragraphs (Oh, the horror!). So browser control leads to copy control, which tends to make sites static and shallow.

Crit: Marblehead

2008-07-24T15:57:06Z

Overall
Score:

3.5

Positioning 3

Content 4

Platform 3

Design 4

scale: 1…5

The Marblehead agency site is an interesting case. The main website is typical of most agency sites, perhaps even a minimalist example. But their blog is excellent. Jeremiah Owyang often boldly asserts that the “corporate website” is irrelevant. I don’t agree but here’s a case where the agency’s blog is far more robust and sophisticated than the main site. And I think it serves them well.

Let’s start with their positioning. The home page identifies their positioning as “a marketing and design firm that can help you improve the value of your customer relationships.” That’s an intriguing positioning statement. It has potential. But I need to know a bit more about how and for whom for it to be persuasive. Their main navigation labels are a bit vague “identify, innovate, inspire, improve.” But the identify page talks about data management and business analytics. This starts to answer a bit of the “how” question for me. It starts to differentiate them. Although most agencies say they evaluate the effectiveness of their campaigns, this page seems to indicate that Marblehead goes deeper in this regard. The “improve” section give a bit more detail about how they use analytics, dashboards, and customer scorecards but they don’t provide details or examples. The main site leaves me a bit unclear on how their focus on data and measurement relates to improving the value of customer relationships.

The positioning breaks down a little when I view the services (inspire) page, where the horizontal positioning broadens out to include all the stuff every firm offers (print, web, identity, logo, design). Ironically, if you dig down deep enough you’ll find that under the “about us” tab there is another list for services that is much more compelling. It lists Data Warehousing, Data Integration, Data Management, Customer Relationship Management, Campaign Management, Relationship Marketing, and Marketing Segmentation among their services. These particulars make them different from many other design and marketing firms. It’s odd that the main “inspire” page lists generic services when they offer such fine-tuned, differentiating services. Why bury these under the about us page? Another positioning weakness is reflected in their client list which doesn’t indicate any vertical industry focus.

The content of the main site is weak. But the blog is much more robust. It’s odd to me that an agency that has devoted so much attention and effort on their blog would leave their main site so sparse. I really like their blog. They’ve designed an advanced layout and feature set, but more importantly they have a clear content strategy and it serves to bolster their main positioning statement.

The platform for their main site leaves much to be desired, but their blog platform is excellent. They use WordPress for the blog and it’s fairly well optimized for SEO. The URL structure could be improved by changing the permalink setting. The default date setting adds too many slashes in the URLs. I also think more thought could be put into their browser titles. But all things considered it’s an excellent blog. The main site though is less ideal. The transition effect they achieve is nice, but in my opinion it’s not worth obfuscating the content behind indistinguishable URLs and a single generic browser title. At least the sites not built entirely in Flash.

The visual design of the site, especially the blog is excellent. I’m less impressed with the main site though. It’s unnecessary to make the navigation less intuitive simply for the sake of assonance. Let the navigation serve to navigate by being clear and intuitive. When you find yourself redefining your labels on rollover or on click (ex. the inspire label is further described as “creative services upon clicking) stop and just use the clearer label “creative services.” Let your services be creative, not your navigation labels.

Crit: Erickson Barnett

2008-07-24T14:45:20Z

Overall
Score:

4

Positioning 4

Content 4

Platform 4

Design 4

scale: 1…5

In my opinion, Erickson Barnett sets the bar for advertising agency websites. While there is still room for growth the site does very well on all four of the most important factors for agency web strategy. I really like their positioning. Not because it’s the tightest, boldest positioning I’ve ever seen, but because it’s so genuine. Let’s face it, B2B technology marketing is the bread and butter of most mid-sized advertising agencies. Yet agencies would rather highlight one or two consumer brands than feature their more substantive work done for B2B clients. Erickson Barnett embraces this focus and leverages it on their site. B2B technology prospects will be drawn right into this site.

The content of the site is excellent. They have a “thoughts” section containing white paper like topics, as well as a frequently updated blog. The content orbits their positioning with refreshing consistency. They’ve also integrated video commentary from clients and staff. I would like to see a bit more content integrated into their portfolio section.

And as far as platform goes, the portfolio is the only part of the site I’d reconsider. There is so much potential for an agency’s portfolio section (especially for lead generating SEO). Settling for a slide show presentation leaves a lot of value on the table. Simply giving each sample a unique URL with thoughtful strategic copy can significantly increase performance.

I give the design high marks. The site is navigable, clean, easy to read and visually compelling. None of the design features get in the way of the content, yet every part seems considered, balanced and executed with skill. Erickson Barnett demonstrates that they understand web strategy both with how they’ve built their own site, and with its content. And this proves they can put the web to work for their clients. Nice job!

Resources: Win Without Pitching

2008-07-14T18:33:40Z

Blair Enns is upending the new business process for creative service firms all over the world. And he’s doing it from his remote mountain location in the village of Kaslo, British Columbia, Canada. Blair is a frequent speaker and author who advises his clients that the pitch process is no way for creative services to pursue new business. His radical ideas effectively point out the flaws and fallacies of spec creative and the competitive account review process. Most importantly his point of view helps us realize that to the degree clients have a surplus of available alternatives, we’ll never maintain a valuable, sought after service. In other words, tight positioning is critical for agencies to eliminate the surplus of options. His emphasis leads us to refine our offerings and develop expertise that cannot be readily reproduced.

You can find out more about Blair’s valuable services and publications on his site Win Without Pitching.