So, the last 12 months have been a cracker. Tomorrow my daughter turns one, a fantastic milestone. I’ve learned more about life, health, and the effects of sleep deprivation in the last year than I ever thought possible, and have well and truly had my hands full. But the last year hasn’t just been about change on the home front – it’s also been about continuing to find places to challenge and grow in my work.

About this time last year I ramped up my freelance consulting alongside my DNA work, and enjoyed an extremely busy year, but after five years at DNA (initially full-time and then part-time alongside my freelance work) with the fantastic Grenville Main, as 2009 came to an end I decided the time was right to make some changes. After looking at a number of options, I agreed to join the Clemenger Group in Wellington as the head of digital strategy there.

Never waste a good recession.

It was this phrase from my new-boss-to-be that grabbed my attention. You see, I think the ‘digital’ space, particularly vendors/suppliers/consultants is evolving quickly and needs to do some serious adapting in the next couple of years – but has actually been reluctant to do so for a few years prior. Digital businesses, even digital native businesses have been so busy fighting the for 1.0 version of their digital offer that they’ve been creating silos and not planning ahead. Each business has been banging on so hard about their particular strengths (be it user centered design, interaction design, big ideas, agile development etc) that they’ve forgotten that what they do is just a little part of what their clients need in the digital space.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for specialist skills, but I believe the digital services offering in the New Zealand market is overly fragmented and ripe for some smart services redesign. Businesses don’t want to have to gamble or juggle their budgets on the various bits of their digital channel, hoping that a series of disconnected pieces (online advertising, social media, campaign content, core site content) all come together nicely. Apart from a niche breed of client-side DIYers who love to tinker with their digital jig-saw puzzle – most want the whole digital gig to just work effectively together.

One problem’s been that until the recession, many service providers were head-down busy building their niche skills (getting good at ‘something’), and many client’s were going scattergun trying to do a bit of everything without caring too much about what was working (just get that site up, just run that campaign etc).

Thanks to the tough times, there’s a very strong new focus on leveraging limited resources for maximum effect in the digital space. There’s an influx of budget repurposed from other chopped areas, and naturally there’s also a fresh interest in data, measurement, insights and optimisation.

The fun part is that the sleeping giants have woken up to digital. The old dogs are barking, trying to learn new tricks, and even the more digitally savvy service providers are seeing great potential to grow and improve their offer. This is interesting, and in the next few years we’ll see who is paying lip-service to the opportunities (and threats!). It’s game on.

For me personally, I believe that the keys to overhauling the effectiveness of digital service providers lie in wrangling and aligning the data, measurement, consumer insights and optimisation. For years I’ve a been vocal advocate for accountable digital design and development, and in more recent years, digital marketing. I want to see a business outcome, not just a marketing outcome; I’m convinced this is not done nearly well enough in the current market (especially with the social media hysteria).

In my new role, I am right in the thick of working with our business to evolve what we do. I’m looking forward to leveraging my experience in brand and marketing strategy, web design and development, with the powerful ideas and creative execution of my new colleagues. I don’t know how we’ll get on, but right now I’m enjoying it. I’m lucky enough to have some fantastic clients who are every bit as hungry to mature and evolve at their end, and some savvy motivated colleagues. We’re doing some really good work.

So what will digital agencies, designers, developers and the burgeoning group of so-called experts look like a couple of years from now? I have no idea, but I suspect (hope) there will be sharper results, less hot-air, better creative execution and improved accountability.

For briefer, and less ranty content, say hi on Twitter. To indulge my content sharing habit, say hi to my shared links feed. You can even say hi in in plain old email if you like.

On a personal note, here’s my new baby girl Vivienne:

One graphic-design ‘situation’ that gives me a great laugh, is this. Every year, about this time, various people who claim to know about these things spend some time stating what they believe are going to be the graphic design trends for the coming year. This is often web design trends, since it’s a rapidly changing and easily changeable space (I guess), and ends up being a blog post linked to from all over the place by everyone.

It gets funny because what’s happening alongside this, is that every single graphic design practitioner is readying themselves for the moment when someone like me sends them the link to said review. They, without exception, never, for any reason, ever, accept any suggestion that they produce fashionable design, that they are in any way influenced by trends or the (dare I say it) ‘mass movement’ of the design trends predicted.

There is an animal reaction. “Don’t be stupid” “Don’t be naive” “You have no idea what you are talking about” etc are the typical responses, and they come mounted on flaming arrows. Somehow suggesting design is subject to fashion, or trends, infuriates a designer’s need to feel like they are constantly crafting unique results. This is much less so with print design, where those genres and trends have been established over many years and seem to be more acceptable.

The brilliant thing is that also without exception, those trends always, always, always make their way into what is produced by those designers – just as predicted. There just seems to be this inevitable evolution of design, this sort of herd-like migration of styles from one genre to the next. 

It’s a beautiful thing to watch, and funny to be in the middle of. And essential to deny. But also essentially harmless. Maybe it’s my underlying lack of ability to discern the subtle differences between instances… but somehow I don’t buy that.

What graphic design styles would you like to see more of in 2009?

I guess we all have to make decisions about what we can, can’t and won’t do, and of course those decisions define what we ‘do’. The interesting thing is -when- you decide.

Brand theory, for example, is based on the idea that consumers can decide to buy your stuff before they’re even in the market. Take your preferred taxi for example, most of us have decided long before we need one.

When I saw an interview recently with the writer of the movie ‘Yes man‘ who in his own life realised he was in a rut of saying ‘no’ to everything, I started to think about all this. And here’s the thing: if you’re a person who has (for whatever reason) become an “I can’t” person – and that’s your default – then you stand to miss a tonne of opportunities in life and work.

Here are some of the rubbish examples I’ve heard this year (believe me there are a hundred more – each with a brilliant story):

• I can’t now, I can’t later, I don’t have time, and I can’t tell you when I will.
• I can’t read up on that, I don’t have time, but I would have loved to.
• I can’t see a better way, and I don’t have the time or interest to find one.
• I can’t see him changing any time soon, no point trying, so I’m going to shut my mouth.
• I can’t really be bothered putting in the work, what I’ve got suits ‘me’ fine.
• Can you do it, I can’t, I didn’t stop to learn that earlier with the rest of you.

What’s sad is when you actually can, but you won’t, when you could if you really wanted to. What’s dangerous is when you ‘can’t’ without ever thinking about it, when you’ve given up before you begin. If you can’t do just about anything, how will you develop? How will you not slip back?

One of my new year’s resolutions (a bit soon I know) is to rethink my own can’ts. I’ve landed myself in all sorts of grief over the years for challenging the can’t-doers, for pushing them and offering alternatives, but I think the christmas break is a great time to assess where I myself am on the can’t scale in general. Will you?

Sometimes the best approach is to not keep your lips-sealed – and these ‘signs’ (especially if you can spot-em early) are great opportunities for a good honest chat… hard as it can be sometimes.

http://www.todaysbigthing.com/2008/12/09

Thanks Donal.

What the hell is a landing page? For those who don’t get it.

I won’t get into the semantics about the difference between landing ‘pages’ and landing ‘experiences’, but after getting an email today and seeing that the email had been sent using a list-management service, I typed the URL of the tracking link into my browser to see how good the service was (I’m always on the look-out) and:

• http://list-manage.com/, which was the relevant bit of the URL I was looking into, redirected me to: 
• http://www.mailchimp.com/mcsv.phtml 

Now clearly someone at MailChimp thought about creating a landing, and indeed ‘conversion’ experience for people exactly like me. So that’s what a landing page is if you didn’t know.

That’s a great example of when you might use one. And an example which makes it easy to see how they often don’t exist, and get overlooked in ‘one site fits all’ architectures that presume all users will start their visit from the main home page, or top level section page. This is also a good example of how landing pages are useful in situations other than for hand-shaking a visitor who arrived from a TVC, or Direct campaign.

Folks like this make an art out of this: Do you care?

Here’s an example of why planning these things requires some thought:

The almost identical service provider I currently use, Campaign Monitor (which is in my opinion one of the best) hasn’t done the same thing. They do much the same stuff and also sell their service as a ‘white label’ service, which means they really try to stay hidden from the end-recipient throughout the experience. From this they’ve taken the view that if someone is snooping at the URL, that they should still not reveal themselves (since they should be hidden), and since they can’t tell which user account this visit has originated from anyway (if a user like me has stripped the URL to the basic domain only) they do this:

• See “createsend dot com” (one of their base service/discrete URLs which are used in the emails they send, I’ve not linked it so as to not interfere with their search associations)

Which approach is better? Are they both perfect considering their subtle differences in offer? What are your examples? I love this stuff.

Sorry if it nearly bored you to death (Gibbo).

Update: Un-linked the Campaign monitor URL

Just a quick note to let you know I’ve updated my almost hidden ‘About me‘ page.

There are a few ways to follow what I’m up to – links are all on the About page.

Keep in touch.

The Gap

Nothing’s ever perfect or completely finished online – there’s always room, and the opportunity, to improve. Unlike offline we don’t need to get everything perfect upfront, but we still waste time trying. Creating an approach based on systematic, continual improvement is luxury of online that we shouldn’t ignore – rather we should constantly look for ways to leverage. Establishing site goals are a good way to drive this.

Let’s say a website is clearly in need of an overhaul. It needs new content, functionality or input from within the business. We’ll spend a fortune planning the detail of what is missing, what the needs are and then carefully craft a solution. Thousands and weeks are spent debating content, design, technology, process etc, and when it’s all done, after all the cramming, boom, the changes go live…

What are the chances the site couldn’t be improved somehow? At launch you really have no idea how it’s gonna roll – it’s the moment we’ve all been planning for, but what about when the stats come in (you’ve organised that right?), user feedback drops into the inbox, or when you ask users how they found it? Did sales change? Are conversions up? Is absolutely everything that could be improved all improved – is it completely, and totally ‘peaking’? No, of course not. It never is. You may have run out of time, interest, budget, or ideas, but chances are there’s still room to improve, not to mention that people’s needs also change over time.

The Gap between where your site is today, and where it ‘could be’, always exists. I call it: The Gap.

As your site improves, you’ll reduce The Gap, but it will always be there. Don’t panic, no matter how great your current ‘project’ there’s always room to improve. Silver bullet projects, can only take you so far: acknowledging The Gap is the thing that fundamentally refocuses you on ongoing improvement, not the ‘fix-all’ initiatives we all too often embark on.

‘Projects’ are the fad-diets of the web management

We form habits from the way we work. If all we do is run big-bang projects, then over time we lose site of the (also) important little things, in time, you can’t see the little things anymore, that’s when they’re really dangerous. A project may improve ‘success’ post-launch – but how long will that last? Will The Gap keep getting smaller if nothing else happens? Will you just wait a while for another big saviour project to play catch-up on The Gap a few months from now?  There’s more to being successful than only doing something big – every now and again (Tyson learned that the hard way).

Little things are important too, the things that would take 20 minutes each, and there’s no shortage of them waiting in the wings. The analytics, the quick website promo implemented on the back of an unexpected spike in traffic, etc. Sure these are just a couple of weeny things – but the point is if you train yourself and your team only to manage in sanctioned chunks, you are also teaching everyone that the other little non-project things aren’t important, before long, you can’t see them anymore, or start to forget how powerful they are.

Whose job is it to pick up the little things and get them sorted? Who’ll come to a review and say “Actually I didn’t do anything huge this period, there were a tonne of teeny things that were more effective overall”. I guarantee nobody hired to ‘manage big things’ ever would. Who should then?

This isn’t a rant about the value of the little things per se; but the need for a management mindset that isn’t scared to zoom out from a project mindset and consider the broader set of activities that make websites successful – big or small.

The ‘Gap Aware’ leader should let projects deliver the chunks (of improvement) but be sure to surround them with lots of ‘business as usual’ improvement activity. They’d implement a system whereby they’re totally aware of what’s improvable today, and what will be addressed later, and why. They won’t let one activity, or the focus on ‘big projects’ consume all their focus.

Without awareness of The Gap we’re all too likely to ruin project budgets and timelines trying to get things that little bit better… cause we know it won’t happen later. Offline that’s more normal, there you get one shot, once a year to improve the most you can.

Use The Gap concept to remind yourself that everything you do can, and should still be improved in future. Educate your clients or peers to understand that a constant improvement mindset is more effective and less risky than just a one-punch Tyson approach. What we do now needs to be great, but never perfect.

Can you see The Gap? What’s your strategy for closing it?