The legacy blog, which always produced quality niche content, was launched very rapidly with little planning and design thought.

Legacy Blog Design:

With this opportunity, and a team full of ideas, we went through our standard process: identifying the blog’s goals, defining the audience, and documenting everything we felt could improve the blog’s performance.

Here are the key changes resulting from this process:

• Design overhaul to illustrate authority and importance
• Highlight featured posts to focus discussion around hot topics
• Place emphasis on blog contributors to build credibility
• Place more emphasis on comments to facilitate content creation and reader ownership
• Associate an image with each post to stimulate interest
• Simplify post categories associated for streamlined topic navigation
• Improve the blog’s structure for better search engine optimization
• Add social share options (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn) to improve reach

New Blog Design:

Only one month after launching the new blog, the number of pageviews had almost doubled, while visitors maintained a strong average time on the site. Even several months after the blog’s launch, traffic has been higher than ever before.

This occurred with no additional promotion, the same content contributors, and the same post frequency — the only change being the new design.  Now the AmericanEHR blog, which was once an undervalued area of the site, is one of the top performing and key selling features of the program, facilitating the community’s growth.

Groupon, the “big daddy” of group buying sites, currently claims they have over 40 million subscribers, and have saved their customers more than $800 million, clearly making them the largest market shareholder among similar sites in the US.

Resting under the big boys, the market is saturated with other, smaller, more niche coupon and group buying sites like AppSumo, GroupGolfer, and even Jewpon.

So where does Facebook Deals fit in? And how will it compete?

Here are a few ways beyond a user base of 500 million:

Social Reach: In comparison to other group buying platforms that utilize email, with Facebook Deals you will be able to “like” a deal, which will share it through your newsfeed, broadcasting the message to your friends. Group buying will be done among pre-established peer groups already online, where a deal or message can spread quickly, and organically. This is the reason so many marketers are already turning toward Facebook’s platform and establishing their brand’s presence through Fan pages.

Virtual Currency: Facebook plans to introduce a new payment system using virtual currency, which means users will be able to pay for Facebook Deals using “credits”. So whether buying a restaurant coupon, vacation package, or series of massage lessons, these credits will reduce the friction involved with online purchases, so users avoid pulling out their wallets every time they see a deal.

User Data: This is a big one, and the reason I’ll probably be signing up.

Facebook already knows its user base. They know your likes and interests. They know your age, sex, and occupation. They may even know your marital status and religion. With the recent addition of Facebook Places, not only could they know what city you live in, but also what neighbourhoods you frequent.

This personal data makes it extremely easy to connect users with advertisers. And Facebook has already proven this method by providing relevant advertising through their hyper-targeted display ad platform, which is expected to take the biggest US display ad market share in 2011.

Drawing from this example, it’s almost a sure thing this data will become a fundamental part to serving relevant, hyper-targeted Deals.

Of course, who knows what will happen in the end, but it could be just a short time before Facebook towers over platforms like Groupon, sliding into the driver’s seat of the group buying bandwagon. And if carrying deals so targeted that a mid-twenties ski bum in Vancouver can grab cheap ski tickets for the local mountains, I’ll be ready to hop on.

But it doesn’t have to.

In fact, more and more we’re seeing that with each of these dead ends, there’s almost always a unique opportunity to continue the customer journey.

What if, after your customer requests a quote, they are asked if they would like to join your mailing list? After joining your mailing list, what if they are asked if they would like to register for an upcoming event? And after they register for an event, what if they are presented with an engaging, relevant blog post?

Great websites do an excellent job of getting people to take meaningful actions in areas that may seem like dead ends.

Facebook invites people who’ve logged out to download their mobile application.

After purchasing a product on EBay, you’re asked to review the person who sold it to you.

And on a recent project we did for Slurpee Canada, after you sign up to receive a FREE SLURPEE COUPON, we ask you to join in on the conversation on Facebook.

Take a look at your website user flow, or see where your visitors are dropping out using your web analytics tools, and make a good list of all the potential dead ends. See if there are any opportunities for you to keep them engaged, and continue their journey. How far can you take them?

With that said, I’m not going to leave you with a dead end. How about talking to us about your marketing?

Chatroulette, being another one of these mediums, offers a truly unique experience.

By simply clicking the “new game” button on Chatroulette, you’re instantly placed in a face-to-face conversation with a random stranger who could be your next door neighbour, or someone on the opposite side of the world.

The website, which was developed by a 17-year-old high school student in Russia, has raised significant controversy, as much of the site’s content displays nudity, drug usage, and vulgar language. However, this hasn’t stopped both individuals and brands from engaging with the social media platform.

Take French Connection, which recently held a competition where they challenged men to “seduce a women” on Chatroulette for a chance to win a voucher for 250 pounds.

Or Ben Folds, who recently performed on the website during one of his shows in front of 2,000 people.

Note that over the course of only a couple days, this YouTube video went from 6,000 views to now over 600,000 views (update -> now over 1,300,000 views).

The social power in websites like Chatroulette is huge, and with future advances to the site, don’t be surprised to see added features like Facebook connect, geographic filters, dating services, and much, much more that will add value to the site.

But for now, if you can get past the constant cursing, unsubtle nudity, and the random individuals holding up their bongs saying “Wanna smoke?”, then I’d say Chatroulette is great tool to help individuals connect with each other, and help brands connect with their customers.

‘New Game’

We are excited to let you know that we just finished launching a brand new website for one of Canada’s largest chocolate retailers – Purdy’s Chocolates!

If you had ever visited the old Purdy’s site – you’ll notice a ton of changes. The design better reflects their branding, the navigation is much more intuitive, and there is more engaging and interactive content. Of course the focal point of the site, the online store, is completely revamped and we hope it makes your mouth water slightly when you browse it. What you likely won’t readily notice are the SEO and analytics techniques that we’ve also used on the site.

Yep – we’re definitely proud here. We feel it’s a great representation of how design and data-driven techniques can effectively converge in order to build a great site.

When you get a chance – check it out at www.purdys.com. And in case you’re wondering, no Hot Tomali did not put on an extra 200 pounds from taking our work home with us

Clay

I saw no big pushes from any Canadian party to woo voters with social networking, viral media or anything of an innovative/digital nature. With all of that being said, how is it possible that I’ve seen so much new media coming out of the United States as part of their presidential election? Sure, Barack Obama’s campaign has probably raised more money for marketing than all of the Canadian parties combined, but isn’t the advantage of new media that we can reach broader demographics without needing millions of dollars to do it? Sure Canadian candidates created Facebook groups promoting themselves and utilized their websites to get their messages out, but in reality the needle barely movedin terms of what was possible. Even up to the weekend before the election it seemed that I knew less about my own country’s parties and their positions than the highly publicised election happening in the US.

Part of the “Change” movement coming out of Barack Obama’s camp is a change in approach to attracting voters. In an effort to generate awareness amongst Internet savvy voters their online campaign has created highly polished web presences on Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn and other social media websites. They are also releasing campaign materials and news daily through online media channels like YouTube, Flickr, Digg, Eventful, and Twitter. This morning I was even forwarded an article that explained how the Obama campaign is dynamically targeting ads through the Internet and into EA’s Burnout video game.

Even John McCain, who admittedly doesn’t know how to use a computer, has a website featuring blogs, viral videos and photo contests to engage visitors (although their website is noticeably less interactive and lacks the polish of the Obama brand).

Clearly there is a thing or two that all marketers, and perhaps even Canadian politicians, can learn from the U.S. election. Integrated media is now fair game for even the most traditional organizations. Politicians, much like brands, now use new technology to build relationships with consumers and generate a two-way dialogue as opposed to traditional marketing messages that and canned and impersonal. Messages change organically as the markets turn, and nothing remains static. Their content is fluid as they jostle to gain the attention of their voters in any medium possible.

It’s time for more organizations to adapt to change and start being part of the conversation. Far too many companies think that posting their corporate videos on YouTube or creating a simple Facebook group “fan page” qualifies them as new age marketers. Clearly, as I’ve observed in the differences between our flat and largely uneventful Canadian election compared to the brave new grounds being explored by our neighbours south of the border, simply dipping your toes in the water does not qualify as swimming. Interactive dialogue needs to be a two-way conversation. Marketers need to look at how they staff their marketing departments and ensure that they have resources available to sustain that conversation between their brands and their customers on an on-going basis. Blogs, documentary style videos, Twitter groups and desktop widgets can all work to put a brand out on the new frontier. These tools are available to us all, it’s just a question of who decides to use them to their advantage.

The best marketing campaigns are always pro-active, and unafraid of change. When we embrace the unknown rather than shy away from it, we actually become part of the collaborative effort to develop and promote new and innovative ways of thinking.

Character Bud Fox (Charlie Sheen) received this advice in one of my favourite movies, Wall Street:

“When a man stares into the abyss and sees nothing but darkness, this is the time that he finds his character. And it is his character, that keeps him from falling into the abyss.”

Thanks to the judges and well done to all involved in making this website top-notch.

A Spry widget is a page element that combines HTML, CSS and JavaScript data to enable user interaction. The Spry framework for Ajax supports a set of reusable widgets written in standard HTML, CSS, and JavaScript code.

• About Spry widgets
• Before you begin
• Working with the Accordion widget
• Working with the Collapsible Panel widget
• Working with the Tabbed Panels widget
• Working with the Menu Bar widget
• Working with the Validation Text Field widget
• Working with the Validation Text Area widget
• Working with the Validation Select widget
• Working with the Validation Checkbox widget

I’m going to rely on the un-boring Google as my muse today. Last night as we were doing some search engine optimization for one of our clients Pardons Direct I noticed a little JPG image next to one of the search results halfway down the page. To my surprise it was a thumbnail of the commercial we shot earlier this year and posted on Youtube.

This may sound like an insignificant addition, but consider the fact that Google is the world’s most popular search engine and there are no other images or graphics aside from the Google logo anywhere on the Google search and query result pages. Now, with well branded and targeted YouTube videos marketers are able to draw more attention to their products and services.

The $1.65 billion dollar question is, why would Google finally decide to let images clutter up their almost trademark text search results? My response: who cares? Just get into YouTube and start creating some content if you want your website to win in the Web 2.0 race.