Fuzzy Content

Using Stamats’ proprietary TeensTALK® (Trends, Attitudes, Lifestyles, and Knowledge) nationwide study, we’re able to segment, analyze, and interpret the data to help you understand what’s important to teenagers at specific decision points in their college selection process. Is there a difference between a teen’s attitudes about college when he or she is 15 as opposed to 18? At what point do a teen’s college choices start to solidify? At what point are you too late to be added to the teen’s top choices?

What’s unique about our study is that TeensTALK® reviews teens’ perceptions and preferences not just as a single snapshot, but at several points along their decision-making timeline, starting in spring of their sophomore year, continuing in spring of their junior year, and in both fall and spring of their senior year. This presentation will provide you with a bedrock understanding of how teen perceptions and preferences affect the national landscape, the big-picture issues, and, most importantly, the context for understanding the continually evolving preferences of your prospective students—from start to finish of their college selection process lifecycle.

Yes! You really did it this time! This one’s it, baby! The phantasmagorical vision of your sleep-deprived brain. The striking photos and cross-fading galleries with hand-kerned text in professional typefaces, smothered in Flash and gradients, with one blatant intention to make the clicker-by go “Wooooo-wee!”. Ok, I get it. You want to make a splash. Perhaps screenshot the sucker and save it for yo ‘folio. Or maybe something less gratifying, like hoping to impress a maniacally micromanaging VP or some steering committee, where “steering” is likelier to refer to raisng of oxen than any form of actual guidance.

Well, good for you, my mouse-wielding warrior. But have you factored in the “third impression”? No, not the 80’s Australian band. Third impression is how the site visitors view the site after they’ve used it for a while. In other words, it’s not the first glance, and even not the second — it’s the perception established through a good bit of everyday use of the site.

How does your site look through the prism of third impression? First, take away all decoration. Then peel off the content that doesn’t change. Finally, prune navigation that’s rarely used. When you’re done, you might be staring at a mostly a blank page. Yup. This third impression thing sure is going to be a pain in the butt. Hang casual bookmarking on the other end of the scales, which diminishes the need for navigation, and you’ve got yourself a certifiable “mission impossible” — effective communication with a chock-full of blank pages.

Can it really be that bad? Umm.. Yeah, if your site is just colorful pictures and pretty text. But look at CNN’s site. Check out how heavily stories favor decoration and well, everything else. Not the prettiest site, no. But its definitely not blank on third impression. Hey, did I just tell you to design ugly sites with lots of catchy, newsy stuff on them?

This is where the wisdom of balance rides in on a white horse and saves the day. If you only design for third impression, you come up with stuff that’s appalling to look at. If you only design for first, it’s a great-big bang and then downhill from there. So, you have to balance the two, naturally opposing forces. Not the first time, eh?

Not surprisingly, third impression is kind of hard to establish when your site is still being architected. It’s even harder to convey to the stakeholders. It’s near-impossible to explain to the client who wants a shiny new toy. But if you care about success of the site (which you may not, and woe to you my friend, if that’s the case), you’ve gotta fight for it.

So, what matters for third impression?

• Always on, always ready, lightning-fast. Aside from the usual suspects — server performance and reliability, all those graphics and extra requests to fetch them, generated by the browser, are going to try your user’s patience, and create perception of slow and sloppy dinosaur. And unless you’re into Barney, nobody likes dinosaurs.
• Well-prioritized content. Yes, I heard you are committed to excellence, but do you have to yell it at me every time I come to your home page?
• Space has purpose. Use negative space to aid in readability of content, period, and not to impress your Dada buddies.
• Consistent, intuitive labeling and navigation, kept to a minimum. Users are humans (most of us, anyway), and as such, they learn new things everyday. Please, don’t add discovering new navigation scheme or deciphering your intentions to their list of chores.

What should you remember when designing for third impression?

• Balance the needs. Depending on how much you expect the visitor to come back and use a page, emphasize design for third impression accordingly. Hint: you want people to come back to your home page.
• Pictures have little value unless they tell a relevant, time-sensitive story. No, happy faces of beautiful people don’t make your page more useful.
• Don’t sweat the pixels. I swear, I am going to start a Pixel-Pushers Anonymous Society. Think about it like this: in a year, you won’t remember (and won’t be able to tell) if it’s 9 pixels or 10 pixels. You won’t care whether it’s Verdana or Abadi MT. But the user will still suffer from you being a snob and choosing to make text a graphic. Don’t be a snob. I am begging you.
• Cut or prioritize way down everything that slows the frequent user down.

Was this helpful? Did I sing to the choir? Did I change your mind, even if a little bit? Are you offended, because you’re on one of those steering committees? Tell me. Better yet, post a URL to your home page, and I’ll run you a simple third impression analysis.

We had some down time and some issues over the last few days, I also received a message that our comment were down but it is all sorted out now.

This is call for discussion:

• Is there a hierarchy for web people at your school?
• Can people move up?

This is something I have been discussing with various colleagues at my university. Unlike IT which has System Analyst 1, 2, 3 and so forth. Or Computer Specialist 1,2,3… There are no steps to take for web people. At my school there is Web Designer, Web Site Administrator and I happen to be officially titled a Communications Specialist. This is the same title as the writer in my department. Go figure. What I want to know is do you face similar situations at your school? Do you have any way to move up? I think it is time that all schools recognize that the web is here to stay and not just a fad. I know DUH. But at a lot of schools web is the thing that gets overlooked and under funded.

Let me know your thoughts.

-Matt Herzberger 

Disclaimer: If the account below were real, it would undoubtedly be so over-dramatized by yours truly that no specific factual details could be gleaned from it. In other words, the story told is not what actually happened, but a made-for-TV version of it.

So, it goes like this: a university goes on a bleeding edge, hosts unmoderated, full-open blogs for a handful of their students, feeding straight to the university home page. The blogs become instant success and by far the most popular part of the site.

Second year into the adventure, one of the bloggers starts pushing the envelope with edgier content. Her blog gets noticed, even linked from a major sports network site. Posts are sharp, fun, and closely personal. Popularity is rising.

The blogger keeps inching to the edge, eventually going over (can I call this a “rageboy syndrome”?): a person in Admissions office turns on their computer in the morning and reads in horror a fun-filled, but wildly inapropriate (not for a university official site, that is) story, featured prominently on the front of the university’s online face. Orders are yelled, buttons are pushed, post rolled back, everybody’s pissed. Ouch.

Sounds familiar? No? Let’s pretend it is a fictional tale of caution. But what should we be cautioned of? That we shouldn’t let bad girls blog? That people only want read really edgy stuff? That blogs are bad? That young people are not fit to shape the brand of the university?

The reason why I ask these questions is because I don’t have ready answers. Or maybe I do, but I don’t know if they are the right ones. Talk to me.

OK…maybe that’s a little harsh, but in many cases, it’s true. As I look across the great educational Web landscape, so many home pages are way too assuming. Assuming you, as a reader, will read everything on that page word for word. Assuming you, as a reader, care more about events on campus than finding information. Assuming you, as a reader, will be able to navigate through the institutional speak.

Some simple steps to improve your homepage:

• Let the rest of your site build your homepage. So many projects I have been a part of lean heavily on what the homepage will look like in the beginning. Consider that 90% of your visitor sessions are under 30 seconds…now tell me how much of that time your site visitors are spending on the homepage. Let site structure and Top 10 pages (from your logs) determine what visitors see at first entry.
• Restructure the real estate for what’s important. You only have so many pixels vertically before parts of the page need to be scrolled to (we call this “above the fold”). And everyone is fighting for a place on the homepage. Use the area above the fold to answer readers’ first questions: 1) Who are you? 2) Do you have …? If they cared about the latest news release, they would scroll. Get to the point, because your homepage should be the most scannable.
• Understand the focus of your page. I know, I know. Home is supposed to be all things to all people. But this is your five seconds to tell your story. If the structure of the site is most important, make global navigation your focus. If personality is, move stories and photos front and center. If your name is the most important, that logo better be big. Pick your focus for the page. By the way, this isn’t true for just the homepage…every page should have focus.
• Rely on interior pages to tell your story. Be brief on the homepage. If you are having news and events, make them headlines only. The interior pages have all the information they want. If you have global navigation, write good labels so you don’t need to explain each link. Get to the point.
• Understand how your visitors use your site. Seems like a no brainer, right? People look for links, click on them, and find the information they want. Remember that about half of every visitor to your site is looking for one thing - the search box. Use labels that they use in navigation, use pictures and color contrast to separate sections. And most importantly, grab 10 people a month and watch them use your homepage.

[Eric, give me some examples.] You got it. Try these on for size:

• Seattle University. This one I’ve been a fan of for a long time. Global navigation is the focus, giving you two steps in from home. They also show personality very well with the rotating main graphic and the student stories…all this above the fold. And if you want to scroll to more, that’s where you’ll find news and events, along with audience navigation.
• Duke University. If you are a searcher, you will love this site. The search box is the primary option, with global navigation the next step. Also, good use of images to tell secondary stories.
• Boston University. This page is the essence of Web convention. They have their search box in the upper right corner with resource links. Then the focus of the page are their distinguishing points (forward thinking with the use of video), then global navigation with (instead of rollovers) sectional navigation below. This may be my favorite.
• Cornell University. Much like Seattle University, but they use the main image to promote a seasonal concept.
• Northern Illinois University. The big distinguishing point between NIU and other Web sites is how much real estate they dedicate to action. The main image drives to a particular action. Which, let’s be honest, is the main reason people visit your Web site…to do something.

Didn’t see your site on the list? Send it to me (or leave a comment), and I would be happy to tell you what I think.

Gender optimization may be the next big craze. We’ve been ignoring it for quite awhile.

I think Peter Morville, Chirstina Wodtke, Jeffrey Veen, and others started talking about men as hunters and women as gatherers back in the mid to late ’90’s. But Web sites have mostly ignored these gender traits.

SEO and SEM have been proven to be effective. How effective could gender optimization be? A couple recent articles got me to thinking about this again: one on Jewelers Circular Keystone and the other over at Women’s Watch: Girls Gone Wired.

You might argue that our redundant and overlapping navigation systems, i.e. task, audience and search; provide sufficient opportunities for hunters and gatherers to find what they need. But that’s like saying I write well so Google and Yahoo! should rank me well. I’m not talking about providing information so others can find it.

I’m thinking of a conscious effort to optimize a specific click path for males-and those women who tend to shop like males; and one for females-and those men, like me, who shop more like a female. (Ask my wife.)

And when you have a marketplace that is clearly dominated by the decisions of one gender, such optimizations could override the preferences of other genders. “What!? Alienate half our customers?” No. Optimize. Don’t exclude.

Dimitri pulled it off BarcampBirmingham and has a couple others up his sleeve.

And now BarCampOhio will attempt lift-off.  Wish us well and sign on if you’re an Ohioan.

More to come!

Blogged with Flock

I just received a spam e-mail with the subject of “buttercup taxidermy.” I love it! Reminded me of all the random band name, song titles, mission/vision statement, etc. generators that polluted the ‘net for years.

“Buttercup taxidermy.” I just love it. That’s my new tag for all the miscellaneous detritus that clogs my head, the ‘net and this blog.

One of these things is not like the others.
One of these things doesn’t belong.
Can you tell me which thing is not like the others before I finish this blog?

• Gonzo Marketing
• Pinko Marketing
• Open Source Marketing
• Active listening
• Gorilla Marketing
• “Flipping the funnel”
• Reality Marketing

I jumped the Cluetrain early on and hurt my neck nodding as I read the Gonzo follow up. I like the penguin. Love the gorilla. And I’ve read a bit of the gurus stuff. I’ve been the victim of reality and I signed on.

Through it all I don’t think anyone has heard a damn word I said because they have all been too busy talking.

Marketing is marketing. Pink, black, straight, crazy, red, white or blue. Doesn’t matter. Marketing is marketing. People are people. Effective marketers know that and make the most of it. With or without a book deal.