Integrated online marketing
A technological innovation brought to you by Microsoft that you can’t wait to get! Hard to believe - but true!We thought it was so cool, we had to share it (complements of Ted Talks)…
And then there’s this demo of what your Wii Remote can do for you (complements of Johnny Chung Lee). Enjoy!
With Google’s recent statement they were going to give increased importance to the loading times of a website’s home page (and penalise accordingly slow loading sites), could we be seeing the return of the Splash Page?
Here’s a favourite Splash Page of mine - Ginko Gardens
Much like hard copy brochure covers, splash pages typically contain very little content. Instead what you find is Flash animation, a striking image, a fancy tag line or a brief intro spiel advertising what the site is about. Throw in a logo, a keyword optimised footer and you’re done!
From a user’s perspective, splash pages are just one more click to make to get to the content they’re after. So they’re a big waste of time.
For website designers and online marketers, splash pages aren’t necessarily all bad news. For one thing, they can load pretty quickly (which given Google’s recent pronouncements is good news) and they usually offer a low exit rate.
Assuming few users leave the splash page and pursue their journey further into a website, that could have some SEO benefit. Search engines are known to value positively websites with low exit rates on their top web pages…
So could Google’s latest pronouncement in favour of fast load times further encourage the use of splash pages? And doesn’t that run counter to usability best practice?
Imagine the web populated by useless splash pages. They would no longer contain Flash (as Flash increases load times), but they would be extremely content light to upload fast and would likely require users to click on to get to the content they’re after.
With savvy web marketers around… That scenario is not so hard to imagine.
Your thoughts?
A client recently approached us with the plan to render most of their website in AJAX (otherwise known as Asynchronous JavaScript and XML), a web development technique used in online forms and other interactive web apps.
AJAX is designed to make web pages more responsive - it allows for a page to be ’seamlessly’ refreshed with new data without requiring a reload and effecting the look and speed of the interaction. It’s fantastic in application forms where instant feedback or additional details may be required.
But AJAX should be used with care. It can have a negative impact on a site’s search engine optimisation (SEO) and can prove problematic for disabled users. So here’s a quick breakdown of what AJAX is good at and what it’s not so good at…
To see an example of AJAX functionality, play around with the flight booking engine on Bezurk.com
Google Australia just released its ‘Australian Year-End Zeitgeist Highlights Hot Searches in 2007‘ (try saying that quickly 3 times); a summary of what Australians searched online in the past year.
No surprise, social networking sites make a up a large part of Google’s fastest rising search queries in 07, most notably: Facebook, YouTube, MySpace and Bebo. And if Aussies weren’t chatting with friends, looking at videos or sharing their lives through pokes and ranking their ‘top friends’, they were trying to escape – dreaming of owning an iPhone, jetting off on a cheap Tiger Air flight to Asia, trying to catch up on the Rugby World Cup, or getting the latest update on their favourite fantasy show like Heroes or the ABC’s brilliant Summer Heights High (Yes! That made the list too!)
If Google searches are anything to go on, then you would have to conclude Channel Seven is tops while Nine is all but irrelevant! Out of the top ten searched shows on Google, Seven had 6, including: Heroes, Today Tonight, Home and Away, Prison Break, Lost and Grey’s Anatomy. Channel Ten followed with its two hot media properties, Big Brother and the ever-popular Australian Idol, while the ABC’s Summer Heights High and SBS’ Top Gear rounded out the top ten. Where did it all go wrong Eddie?
As you’d expect, Paris Hilton and Britney Spears were top of mind in celebrity searches for 2007 – the Internet’s equivalent of the 18 car pile up (you can’t help but look, but you should really just move on!) Rihanna and Justin brought sexy back, John Howard didn’t, Steve Irwin will be fondly missed and Anna Nicole Smith closed out her 15 minutes on a sad note. What a year it’s been!
For more insights on what Australians searched in 2007, check out the rest of Google Australia’s Search Highlights for 2007 right here.
American Express Australia (Amex) recently refreshed its website. For your reading pleasure we review it so you can learn a few do’s and don’ts from a major brand’s efforts to improve its online experience.
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* Where 1 is Poor and 10 is Fantastic
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As with any top brand in the financial services sector, you’d expect American Express Australia’s website to ooze credibility, substance and style - to look every bit the fortune 500 company it is. After all, if you’re going to entrust your money to a credit card issuer, you’ll want to be sure you’re dealing with a secure, professional organisation.
The good news - Amex’s new site delivers ‘credibility’ in spades. It’s slick, it’s flash (it really is Flash… of the Macromedia kind), it boasts a clear semantic layout, and it’s straight to the point. The good Amex people want you to sign up to their latest credit card offering and they want to make sure you do by placing an offer front and centre on the home page. Mission accomplished - if you’re looking for a new credit card (or charge card), American Express’ website will deliver.
Cardmembers returning to the site to check up on their card balance will note the account login is now easier to find as it now sits prominently in the left hand column and in the upper right hand corner. (The account login was likely hiding under the ‘already registered?’ link inn the website’s previous version.) It’s a small change, but it should help American Express drive more users online and relieve some of the pressure from its much taxed call centres.
Look & Feel Rating (out of 10): 7.5
True to form Amex Australia’s website follows global style guidelines found on its other sites in the US and the UK - which means the font size is extremely small. Vision impaired users and those with less than perfect eyesight will struggle with the microscopic text in the cramped left hand column. This flaw might be forgivable if the pixel size was not fixed across the whole site - preventing users with larger browser font settings from re-adjusting the page to their specifications. Clearly we’re dealing with a fixation on pixel perfection to the detriment of usability.
So what if I wanted to get a Platinum Credit Card or a prestigious Platinum Charge Card or a Small Business Card? How easy is it to find the right card?
It’s relatively simple. Using a Flash presentation, Amex successfully showcases its card offerings and leads prospects to the appropriate card by highlighting each product’s most important benefits.
Where the process bogs down is on the main card page (for example on the Platinum Charge Card’s page) where contrast issues make reading difficult and where additional clicks need to be made to truly understand the card’s value. It takes a few clicks to read up on each benefit and the back and forth journey between product benefits gets tiresome.
Listing a series of attractive benefits in bullet form right then and there would likely produce a better, faster experience and lead to more sales. Unfortunately that’s not happening at present - but it can be fixed.
Usability Rating (out of 10): 5
In Australia, Google is the 800-hundred pound gorilla of search engine advertising. By its own estimates, Google accounts for 85-87% of searches online in Oz. In Australia, if you’re not Google’s front page… you’re not going to be found. Period.
Will Amex be a player? Will it show up naturally on Google through good search engine optimisation (SEO) or will it simply rely on paid advertising (SEM or Search Engine Marketing) to show up on Google’s front page?
With a site grounded in Flash and JavaScript and not featuring the keyword credit card even once on its home page in a manner that’s readable for search engines, it’s a safe bet the marketers at Amex or the agency acting on their behalf have decided to buy their way onto Google’s front page via paid advertising.
It’s not the end of the world. Amex will still be visible in paid searches - but it will cost them and they’ll be sacrificing all organic traffic (approximately 40-60% of clicks on search engines) and relying solely on SEM to deliver sales.
Used in moderation, JavaScript and Flash do not hinder SEO. However, when they replace all meaningful content a search engine could latch onto to learn what the site is about - as is the case with American Express Australia’s site - you end up with a site with very little content/meaning attached to it.
And if a search engine cannot decipher what your site is about via content, it won’t list your site. In that sense, American Express’ site is all but invisible to search engines in its present form.
What’s worse, the site is not based in Australia. http://www.americanexpress.com.au/ redirects you to the Australian section of Amex’s US server: http://www.americanexpress.com/australia/. And when the user is not registered or logged in (and that would usually be the case), he/she is redirected once again to an intermediate page, http://www.americanexpress.com/australia/homepage/personal_notreg.shtml., which ultimately redirects you to the homepage, https://home.americanexpress.com/home/au/home_p.shtml, also located in the US.
Confused? We are. Why so many redirects? No idea. Why a secure https homepage? No clue! A secure homepage is not needed as no one has logged into a secure area yet. Go figure…
From an SEO perspective, redirecting traffic outside of Australia sends a clear message to the search engines, namely: ‘this is a US based site… Not an Australian one!’ It’s one more nail in the coffin in what is essentially a non-optimised site.
SEO Rating (out of 10): 0.5
So… does American Express Australia’s’ site do the job of selling credit cards? It’s straight forward and professional looking. It takes you to its product simply and quickly, but it’s somewhat slow at laying out product benefits and taking you to the sale - and there’s no offer to sign up or any meaningful call to action.
With regards to driving traffic to the site via search engines like Google, American Express Australia will need to rely heavily on Search Engine Marketing. In its present form the site will likely remain invisible for important keywords like ‘credit card’, although its powerful brand name, significant SEM spend and other marketing efforts will still bring in sales.
Overall Rating (out of 10): 5
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