Spider Chart, Spider Chart,
Visualizes whatever a spider can
Spins a chart, any size,
Catches insights just like flies
Look Out!
Here comes the Spider Chart
A spider chart plots the values of each category along a separate axis that starts in the center of the chart and ends on the outer ring. These charts are great ways of visualizing the strengths and weaknesses of your current or future state website user experience. At Bluetext we have a deep focus on the science of user experience. After all, when you design and build sites for Fortune 500 companies, every fraction of a percent counts.
Bluetext likes to help visualize the various states of our analysis in spider graphs.
Competitive Analysis Visualization Through Spider Graphs
In today’s fast moving digital marketing world it’s critical to be a watchful eye for our clients to ensure they have a competitive advantage. A real time pulse and visualization of where they fall in the competitive marketplace can be very valuable. The below sample spidergraph can show a marketing leader where they stack in many categories. They can review these sequentially chronologically to see how they are progressing and ensure they have the best opportunity to capture and convert users across their desired journeys to achieve the key performance indicators the site is measured against.
SEO and Landing Page Optimization Visualization Through Spider Graphs
If you really want to impress during a presentation, this is the chart for you. It allows you to display multivariate data easily while also impressing with the visual appeal of its radar shape. Check out the chart above which shows SEO traffic by landing page. This Spider Chart stylishly displays SEO traffic for each series of pages in a specific time frame. This kind chart allows you to easily see real SEO traffic rather than just keyword ranking reports like those from Google Analytics. At the end of the day, the quality and amount of traffic matters more than just keyword ranking. translations The Spider Chart can be used to hold the attention of your audience as you explain the insights you’ve discovered in a way which won’t scare them off.
These charts are just the tip of the data visualization iceberg. Talk to us at Bluetext about your story, brand, or data visualization needs.
Brand Strategy. Brand Presentation. Brand Delivery. Bluetext.
If anyone is looking for a strong example of the impact of website personalization, they don’t need to look any further than this year’s redesign of ESPN.com. ESPN’s move shouldn’t come as a surprise—after all, most enterprises redesign their websites every 18-to-24 months. But the reason that ESPN received so much attention is that it made one very significant strategic shift—its new website adapts to the person who is viewing it.
Some of the techniques that were built into the site allow it to reflect the location, preferences, interests and the device of each of its visitors. For example, it can predict (within reason-more on that later) your favorite team based on its best guess on your location. Once preferences are determined, it can prioritize relevant content every time you return to the site. That means the dynamic delivery of relevant content, a tailor-made river of information that is constantly updated.
ESPN certainly isn’t a pioneer in website personalization—after all, Amazon has been delivering that type of individualized content for years. But ESPN has figured out what every enterprise company needs to learn: Website visitors across all industries and sectors now expect at least some level of a customized experience. In fact, according to one recent survey, three-quarters of online consumers get frustrated when websites offer content that has nothing to do with their interests.
In other words, enterprise organizations that don’t start offering a more personalized experience will soon see their target audience abandoning their websites—resulting in lost opportunities for conversion, and, ultimately, lost revenues.
Here are four tips to help get you on your way to a better customized experience for your visitors:
Go Mobile First. This means installing technology that identifies the various devices that visitors use to view your content. First and foremost, Google rewards mobile-friendly sites in its page ranking, and is beginning to penalize those that aren’t. Viewers using their mobile devices need to be easily able to access content on those devices, and that requires a far different design than for a desktop or laptop.
Recognize the Buyer’s Journey. A first time visitor is going to need different types of content than someone who has already visited the site on several occasions. That means more general explanatory content for first-time visitors, with content moving towards specific questions and specifications as they move through the journey and towards a purchasing decision.
Use the Best Tools for Persona-based Content. Cookie technology is a necessity to understand and track where returning visitors have been on the site, what types of information they have sought, and what they might need next. Anticipating their needs and interests will result in a significant increase in conversion, and a decrease in frustration.
Allow Visitors to Contribute Their Own Personalization Settings. In the case of ESPN, it might seem obvious to assume that a visitor from Washington, D.C., was a Washington Nationals fan. translate But they could just as easily be a Baltimore Orioles lover. Checking in with that visitor directly will deliver better engagement, and better results.
Ok all you Thornton Mellon fanatics, the stats are in and the truth must be told. Some interesting data points I hope you all reflect on as you gear up for going back to school.
DATA POINT NUMBER ONE – DEDICATED TO OUR FAVORITE TEACHER SAM KINISON
The mobile revolution is complete. Smartphones account for more than half of searches in 10 countries—including the U.S. and Japan—according to Google, which didn’t release exact percentages or a full list of countries.
Why this is important?
Is every aspect of your digital infrastructure optimized for mobile?
You shouldn’t just stack your desktop elements. You should think through the human factors of mobile design and what your users truly want in the palm of their hand on first visit. Mobile first should be in the DNA of your marketing organization.
DATA POINT NUMBER TWO: THE TRIPLE LINDY OF DATA POINTS
60% of B2B marketers use web traffic to measure success instead of using sales lead quality or social media sharing.
Why this is important?
Success comes down to the key performance indicator and the analytics that you can generate. It’s much easier to track performance and measure return on investment with reliable website traffic data. Great data gives you a clear picture of an online campaign’s viability, but traffic isn’t your only solution. This stat also shows the immaturity of marketing measurement in the majority of organizations and the need for more in-depth data and analysis. If you can ramp up your content marketing analytics in 2015, you’ll be leaps ahead of your competitors.
DATA POINT NUMBER THREE: EMAIL GETS NO RESPECT
63% of consumers prefer to be contacted by email
A new study by Adobe claims that marketers are failing to engage ‘email addicts.’
While 63% say they prefer to be contacted by email, only 20% favor direct mail, 6% social media, 5% the brand’s mobile app, 4% text message and 2% phone.
Why this is important?
Surprisingly, this shows that email campaigns are favored way above even the second most-preferred form of contact from brands, suggesting that email marketing should still be high on every digital marketer’s agenda.
Last week some very interesting data came out of Parse.ly, an analytics firm which collects data for 400 digital publishers including Conde Nast, Reuters, Mashable, and The Atlantic. The headline is that, as of June 2015, Facebook is driving more traffic to websites than Google’s sites including google.com and Google News.
HUH you ask? How is that possible? Google is the king of referral traffic, right? It is all about search engine optimization.
Not so fast. The data points to some recent shifts in how Facebook focuses on driving content to its site, and validates the fact that this is not some random stat that will course correct. The trend line has actually been going this way since 2012.
So as a marketer, what are you to do? Well, don’t ring the alarm bells too quickly. Search engine optimization is still critical for success and needs to be a big part of your marketing mix. But don’t ignore Facebook and write it off as a nice place for consumers to share pictures with friends. That is an uneducated and naïve viewpoint and one that is clearly not valid based on these numbers.
I think it is safe to say that Facebook is just getting started, and optimizing your content to play off the Facebook algorithms, as much as that is possible, is a very smart approach. Some of the concepts that we continuously share with clients include:
- Make your Content snackable and consumable
- Encourage social sharing
- Create conversation and dialogue
- Be unique, relevant, or different, but never be boring
How is your organization optimizing social content? Are you seeing an uptick in conversations due to your efforts or are you just scratching the surface?
Bluetext was one of the first agencies to sound the alarm for mobile-optimized websites after Google tweaked its search algorithm in late April. Dubbed “MobileGeddon” by SEO experts, Google announced that it would now reward mobile-friendly sites in search results that were coming from mobile devices. The only question in the minds of search marketers was how much of an impact this would have, or whether it was more of a bluff.
The results are in, and this was no bluff! According to a survey by Moovweb, having a mobile-friendly site is absolutely essential in the SEO competition for search result rankings. Moovweb tracked more than 1000 important keywords across a range of industries over a six-week period to see if Google was serious. Here is a snapshot of the results:
• 83 percent of the key words returned a mobile-friendly website as the top result.
• In 81 percent of the cases, the top three rankings went to mobile-friendly sites.
• When looking at all 10 of the search results that make up the first page of a Google search, 77 percent were mobile-friendly.
In other words, if you aren’t mobile-optimized, the odds of landing towards the top of a search, or even at the bottom of the first page, are very low. And for any company that relies on search to drive leads, conversions or outright sales, that can be very costly. According to recent report on CNN Money, the fall from the top can be precipitous:
• The top spot on a search result receives 20-to-30 percent of the page’s clicks;
• Spots number two and three produce five-to-10 percent of the page’s clicks;
• Any results below the fold attract less than one percent of the clicks;
• If you’re on the second page or lower, your clicks from search will be negligible.
The survey results can be interpreted as the glass being half full and as the glass being half empty. It’s impressive that such a high percentage of results returned mobile-friendly sites, demonstrating that companies with a lot at stake were able to quickly meet the Google requirements. That might be partly explained by Google’s early warning to the market that it was making this change—a heads up that Google has rarely given previously when it comes to search algorithm revisions.
On the other hand, who are the companies that show up in the 17 percent of the top results where sites are not mobile-friendly? The survey doesn’t say, but those brands may not be there for long. As the impact of the algorithm changes continues to be felt, those numbers will all climb towards 100 percent.
What’s interesting about the results when broken down by industry is that some sectors are more advanced than others, at least based on this survey. For example, retail has the highest percentage of mobile-friendly sites ranked in the number one spot for the keywords that Moovweb reviewed. That makes sense, as retailers have been early adapters in the mobile commerce world where the competitive stakes are so high. Close behind are healthcare, insurance and travel and hospitality.
Lagging far behind are the education and transportation verticals. These markets may simply not be as competitive in terms of SEO and are behind on the “mobile maturity” curve. Yet, as the use of mobile devices increases and search engine results become more important and more competitive in these lagging markets, organizations without a mobile-optimized platform will be left behind.
Here’s the bottom line: MobileGeddon is real, and the effects are being seen as well as felt. Even small changes to Google’s search engine algorithm can have a huge impact on a brand. The CNN Money report cites one company that had to lay off 10 percent of its work force because of its slide down the search result pages. Mobile matters, and that will only become more apparent over time.
We have leapfrogged almost overnight from a digital first to mobile first multi-screen world.
Brands – no matter their size – can no longer afford to ignore the mobile market. Users aren’t just browsing on mobile devices – they are now finding content, sharing it socially and completing purchases at a rate that is increasingly on par with their older desktop siblings – and this is now having significant implications on website design.
Where responsive design was the new frontier not more than 18 months ago – most progressive digital studios have adopted a mobile first design mentality. Instead of designing websites for desktop users and degrading the experience and functionality for mobile – they are now starting with the mobile screen as their primary palette and adding layers to ‘dilute’ the experience for desktop and larger screens.
Putting mobile at the front of the website design process leads to sites that are simpler, faster, more usable and – most importantly – more accessible to your customers. Here are the five primary keys to a smart, mobile first design strategy.
Speed
With users – and Google – demanding sub-one-second page loads – speed is a critical component of mobile first design methodology. As a result, you will be seeing a lot more sites going to a flat, 2D design with single blocks of color and streamlined images.
Navigation
Navigation is a major consideration for mobile website design, so we’ll be seeing more brands using fixed menu bars and infinite scrolls for continuous access and loading of content…and of course the ‘hamburger’ menu with three horizontal lines is now almost ubiquitous.
Typography
Since the days of newspapers – type has always been a good way to show the visual hierarchy of page elements. But in a mobile first world, readability is critical, so many brands are using a wider range of larger fonts that better render text as easily visible on smaller screens.
Layout
A desire to cater to mobile users has led to a variety of new layout trends, including tile or grid-based layouts where the content shifts to accommodate different dimensions, displaying single or multiple tiles depending on the screen size. Parallax scrolling to make page elements shift or disappear is also seen as a cool and sophisticated trend in mobile design.
Usability
The last – but far from least – consideration is usability, which brings everything together to optimize how much content can actually be consumed on a smaller screen through gestures, taps, swipes and clicks to get to more content faster. This is huge push for the Google search engine algorithm, so companies whose audiences are coming in via their mobile devices need to understand how important mobile usability has become.
Don’t let your content get left behind in a cloud of mobile dust – or worse yet – your brand annihilated by ‘Mobilegeddon’…don’t be last to mobile first.
The Challenge:
A leading scientific association came to Bluetext with a unique challenge. The association’s goal was to drive higher click-through-rates (CTRs) for its core web properties without altering the front-end design of each site before 2016. Built on a custom, legacy CMS, these sites featured an aged look and were not built responsively. The Bluetext team knew immediately that there was one way to boost traffic to these properties in an effective, long-term fashion that would simultaneously increase conversion rates to purchase, and grow overall engagement with the association’s premium content. Bluetext mapped out a highly-detailed Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Strategy for each of these properties and executed it methodically through the first half of 2015.
Tactics
Our team ran a series of detailed reports on these web properties’ performance in search, analyzing every factor that could possibly be weighing the site down. When assessing SEO rankings, it is key to remember that a website’s “domain authority” is impacted by two main audiences: the search bots crawling the website, and the people searching it and reviewing its content.
Bluetext crafted a multi-phase plan that aimed to improve perceptions of the web properties among both audiences, making sure that any changes made to appeal to crawler bots also suited the needs and expectations of live searchers. Bluetext made recommendations for highly-relevant short and long-tail keywords to include in meta data and content across the site. We then pointed out specific pages on the site that housed meta data (titles, descriptions, URLs) that was too short or too long- and harmed the sites’ search “scores” by breaking structural rules. Bluetext collaborated with the association to rewrite meta data so that it fit Google and Bing’s structural guidelines, and also incorporated keywords that would draw the right searchers to relevant pages, thus boosting overall search authority.
Our next step was to assess website speed and load, and to point out specific tactics to improve these metrics and optimize the user experience. In comparing these web properties to competitors, we found specific referring domains that the client could form relationships with to gain backlinks and grow trustworthiness. Our team explored the client’s social media activity in-depth on platforms that could be used to strengthen relationships with their target audience. We sat with the association’s marketing team and pointed out opportunities to broaden awareness of events and useful materials, and to stimulate engagement among members with posts that ask questions or offer a short piece of valuable information. And since we are a digital design agency and we couldn’t quite help ourselves, we offered design insight on how to effectively rearrange the homepage to improve CTRs to interior pages and display timely, relevant content without drastically changing the current design.
Execution
After receiving a green light from the association to make the recommended changes to their web properties, we got straight to work. Using Google Analytics and Webmaster Tools to identify pages that served as the top 75 “entry points” to the organization’s largest domain, we recreated meta titles and descriptions for these pages so that they fit structural guidelines and utilized keywords that are heavily searched on a monthly basis.
To grow breadth and depth of keyword usage on the sites, our team filled in “Alt Tag” descriptions for images. We looked back at periods where web traffic sharply declined or increased, pinpointing dates when the search algorithm changed and caused these fluctuations. Since the overall quality of a business or association’s Wikipedia profile plays a strong role in search rankings, we combed through the client’s Wikipedia properties and elegantly filled them with high-volume, specific keywords. To draw a closer relationship between the pages across a large site, we created a highly-detailed internal linking strategy that mapped many high-volume keywords on interior pages to particularly relevant interior pages in other areas of the site.
We extended our recommendations to the client’s properties in other countries, identifying ebbs and flows in traffic to these other sites and noting vital changes that should be made to site structures. We also compiled a set of recommendations for the client to manipulate the current mobile design without making major changes so that mobile and tablet users could have a more pleasant user experience.
The Outcome
The time and effort spent by Bluetext to optimize search for this association’s web properties made a drastic impact. Total traffic to the largest site in early June was 13X larger than original average traffic to the site. This same domain saw 12X the number of users visiting the site by early June, alongside a 500% growth in the number of users visiting the property on mobile and tablet devices since project inception. User engagement with website content also increased through project conclusion, with users visiting each page for 20 seconds longer than before. This association is now getting the website CTRs that it deserves with a design that remains almost entirely untouched.
When it comes to where a brand should spend its video ad dollars, YouTube has long been the go-to destination. With more than 3 billion video views per day, content producers direct the majority of its efforts here – and unsurprisingly the advertiser budgets have followed.
But this presumption is being seriously tested by a video traffic explosion – chronicled in great detail by Fortune magazine writer Erin Griffith – underway at Facebook. Facebook users are watching 4 billion video streams a day, which is a 4x jump from just twelve months ago. Granted, Facebook counts a “view” as any video that plays for three seconds, which means that users scrolling down their feed and allowing a video to briefly auto play before moving on inflates the view total. Nonetheless, 4 billion is 4 billion.
Fortune’s Griffith goes into some of the reasons behind social network’s video success – which unsurprisingly includes efforts by engineers to adjust algorithms that make it not only easier to watch videos, but also to share them. While Griffith’s focus is on how all of this impacts advertisers and where they spend their money, Facebook’s rapidly growing impact with video presents a conundrum for B2B and B2G brands and the public relations/marketing firms that represent them.
In evaluating the major social networks and where to focus resources, investment and, most importantly, content, Facebook typically comes up last for firms seeking to influencer decision makers across government and businesses. Sure, everyone is on Facebook, so it goes, but the working assumption is that the largest social network is where you go to view new pics of the grandkids or post updates from the beach – not to consume B2B/B2G focused content.
Griffith’s article supports as much when it comes to videos, with the author pointing out that, “…Facebook’s biggest advantage over YouTube and other video providers may be boredom.” Griffith suggests someone lands on a YouTube video either because they are searching directly for it or a related topic, or a video being shared is ultimately sourced on that site. With Facebook, most of the time we are watching videos because we are killing time on the site and it is just another thing to do.
Because Bluetext works with so many B2G and B2B firms, social media strategy comes up quite a bit. Often, recommendations lean towards LinkedIn, Twitter and YouTube depending on the ultimate goal and category of decision makers the client is trying to reach. Even with B2B and B2G clients for whom we are not supporting social media, Facebook is usually trailing the pack in their social efforts.
But the fact is that Facebook drives one-quarter of all web traffic, and its video traffic explosion demands B2B and B2G firms reevaluate how best to use the site with video content. Is it ideal for placing corporate marketing, event or deeply technical product and service videos? No, absolutely not. But are there times when Facebook, rather than YouTube, should be ground zero for launching a more consumable brand humor video or engaging content that can be easily viewed – and shared – across Facebook and then on to other destinations? 4 billion video streams a day say yes, and going forward B2B and B2G brands may be saying yes as well.
While it might seem like a bad movie plot, websites that aren’t friendly to mobile devices are about to be in for a rude awakening. In late February, one of Google’s top webmasters announced in a blog post that the dominant search engine was about to make a significant change to the way it ranks search results. Beginning on April 21st, its search algorithm would increase the weight it gives when returning search results to what it called “mobile friendliness.” Not only does that mean that mobile-friendly websites would enjoy better results, it also means that sites that don’t meet those standards will face the consequences. Some have already dubbed it “Mobilegeddon.”
The stampede from desktops to the wide variety of shapes and sizes now available as tablets, cell phones and even wearables—think Apple Watch—that has taken place over the past several years is only getting larger. A recent survey by ComScore Networks—a firm that analyzes internet traffic and trends—found that in the final three months of last year, desktop searches in the U.S. decreased, while the searches with smartphones jumped 17 percent. The volume of tablet searches increased 28 percent.
And while many of our clients have made this shift to mobile friendly, they are in the minority. A survey by Didit.com took a look the sites of the largest companies to see if they have adopted a mobile-friendly approach. Didit looked at the home pages of publicly-traded companies on the Standard & Poor’s top 100 list by checking them against Google’s “mobile-friendly test page.” The result—some 25 percent of those home pages failed the test, including the Walt Disney Company, a brand that is typically at the forefront when it comes to leveraging technology for visitors to its theme parks.
The Disney home page looks great on a desktop. But as the screen size gets smaller on table and mobile devices, the Google tool found that the text was too small, the links overlapped each other and the content was often wider than the mobile screen.
We’ve been working with our clients for the past four years to make the move to responsive designs that automatically resize their user interface depending on the size of the display screen. A responsive site takes a standard website and instructs the mobile device on how to display it properly. Responsive websites can handle any resolution with changes in CSS files, which affect how the elements on Web pages are presented. Computers, laptops, smartphones, and tablets will all display the website in the best way possible.
One of the reasons responsive design is so important is the “fat finger” problem—as menus shrink, it becomes nearly impossible to engage the functionality since our fingers are too big. Responsive designs shift the menus from ones that are driven by discreet buttons to larger options that are easier to see and easier to select. Without this type of design, visitors will be frustrated and leave the site in search of one that is user friendly.
This approach insures that the website appropriately presents itself on every size display, from the smallest to the largest. Another approach is to have a separate mobile website. Yet, since new devices in different sizes seem to hit the stores about every 10 minutes, this could be a large problem for websites, and certainly would not be cost-effective.
To put this in perspective, while this is a significant move by Google, it doesn’t mean you have to panic. Some of us have been advising our clients for several years that more and more users are accessing their websites via tablet and mobile devices. Google is simply responding to the shifting trends of how consumers are accessing the web. It will not unduly penalize a website that doesn’t immediately meet its requirements like it did in previous search changes—you can still make the move to a mobile-friendly site and see your rankings adjust accordingly. And if you haven’t been paying attention to the marketplace and to the shifting needs of your audiences, you may have a bigger problem than Mobilegeddon.
Working at a Washington DC digital agency that works with brands spanning the largest, most cautious Fortune 500 companies to the most speedy of start-ups disrupting every corner of Earth, we need to back up our creative and marketing recommendations with stats. Here are some that stats could arm you in your next planning phase, ranging from user experience design to marketing promotion and branding.
WHO ARE YOU BROWSING FOR?
The latest stats are in from the US Government on Browser and device usage. Plan your next website user experience design based on these stats as well as the stats from your analytic application.
WHAT DID THAT ICON SAY?
According to ScienceDaily’s recent study, Icons need to tell something very clearly or face horrible usability issues with your user experience.
The recent report asked users to look at an icon and try to avoid thinking of both the word of that image, as well as how many letters that word had (for example, a subject is told to look at a iPhone and not think “iPhone” or think “6,” the number of letters in the word). Nearly 80% of people could not stop themselves from “sub-speaking” the word in their head and only 50% could stop themselves from saying the number of letters in the word. Stopping the brain from making associations in the subconscious is nearly impossible, which makes it extremely important to ensure that visual icons and representations are completely recognizable and aren’t easily confused by the user to have another meaning.
Placement of icons should not just be for visual effect. It can actually aid your user without making them think at all. It’s important that you choose the right icons as well, because you don’t want to trigger an automatic association from your user about something unrelated to the purpose of the icon.
DO YOU PERSUADE WITH VIDEO?
A recent User Experience Dynamic study by SearchEngineWatch shows that 73% of people will convert to the sites desired action when they enhance their user experience design with video.
HAVE YOU JOURNEYED BELOW THE FOLD?
Countless recent studies are showing that almost every user (yup over 99%!) these days are scrolling below the fold. Be adventurous and think of the user experience taking place on a tall dynamic canvas.
GOT SHARES?
Facebook continues to be the most widely used social channel for sharing. It gained 8.2% share and made up 81% of all shares in Q4. Sharing activity by email also increased, but it still only represents about 1% of total share volume. Looking at the channel distribution of sharing on mobile, Facebook edges out the competition even further. Facebook activity jumped 51% from last year and now represents 85% of mobile sharing activity. Pinterest and Twitter have also gained traction on mobile.