How to use house ads

In our newsletters this month we've been addressing ad placement and formats. One type of ad that is frequently overlooked is the house ad - an offer from your company.

The house ad began - and is still used as - a "filler" when ad sales had not been sufficient to fill available space. Typically it's used to promote the company, an ancillary product, or an event, such as a conference.

The shift in user perception of ads post-Web (can I trust this site? Can I trust this ad?) makes the house ad more powerful than ever. The key to success: Creating a close visual/messaging identification between your house ads and your primary Web brand. Why? Because your users came to *you*. They trust you.

Many site publishers err by thinking that they should make a house ad look like a third-party ad so "people will look at it." The sad truth is that people *will* look at it - then immediately dismiss it as an irrelevant ad.

Keys to success with house ads:

• Clearly identifying the house ad as part of your company - retain logo, fonts, visual design
• Labeling the ad "Offers from our company"
• Labeling third-party ads as "advertisement"
• Linking the ad to valuable content
• As with all ads, contextual placement wins.
  

PROVIDE VALUABLE CONTENT

Link your ad to valuable content to generate traffic - but make sure it's branded as you. Above: What looks like a third-party ad is really a house ad for a useful service to locate a cigar retailer in your area.

CONSISTENT STYLE

Keep house ads consistent with overall branding in terms of color, font, style. Above: An example from TIME.com.

LABEL HOUSE ADS

Clearly identify the house ad as coming from your company as opposed to a third party. Above: Examples of clearly labeled advertisements and house promotions.

The GOP Facebook Friendship Fairness app: Funny, or scary?

The new GOP.com has been thoroughly "reviewed" by the likes of Jon Stewart, who of course has comments outside the domain of this blog. The feature that captured my attention was the so-called Facebook Friendship Fairness app. From the site:

"How much longer will it be before you get the following notice from the new "Friendship Fairness Czar?

"Official Notice of Violation and Assessment of Friendship Tax:

"An audit of your Facebook account shows that your total number of friends is above the average of 120 friends for all Facebook users. The Friendship Fairness Czar has determined that you have an excessive and unfair number of friends and has devised a solution to spread the wealth of friendship. Please click on the Friendship Fairness Czar Facebook Application to be assessed your tax and become a fan."

Now, I know this entire site is attempting to present - literally - a new public face for the Republican National Committee. If that is the case, do they really want to lead off the Facebook initiative with the implication that they have snooped your Facebook account?

Privacy came to the fore in the last few years as social media collided with the "War on Terrorism." My take: If the RNC wants to create a new perception of itself - and this slick Web site starts to move it in that direction - maybe joking about privacy isn't the best way to go.

Just a thought.

How "nimble" should a Web site be?

Talking through Web strategy with a client today, we consider just how "nimble" a Web site should be - how frequently should a Web site redesign, based on changing mission priorities?

This is a particularly difficult question for large organizations with so much to say and no easy way to say it. Web sites that bend too far in the direction of the mission du jour may neglect content that is not part of that mission. The result for unsuspecting users may be "information paralysis," an overwhelming amount of content that could have been useful - had the user route been planned for those residing outside of the current mission priority.

Large associations and nonprofits frequently struggle with the challenge of meeting the needs of multiple constituencies. The solution is not to change the entry experience every time the organization takes on a new initiative; the solution is to create an information architecture that will continue to support known and ongoing constituencies, while creating a structural option that accommodates the changing initiatives of the future.

The time for "nimble" is in the planning and prototyping stages.

Least effective methods of online advertising

Online advertising felt the bite this year, with spending dropping in most areas. When budgets drop, it's even more important to spend limited dollars where you'll get the best return on investment. Below are a few of the least effective methods of online advertising.

These recommendations are based on best practices and current research. However, guidelines can't substitute for identifying and understanding your specific audience. Once you understand why the users are on your site and what they want to do there, you can provide better service and relevant, successful advertising that helps support your site.

Find out more about Interface Guru's user profiles and personas.

SIMPLE FLASH

Ads that use Simple Flash prove to be ineffective at driving purchase intent. A better choice is using rich media with video, which consistently ranks among the most successful methods at driving purchase intent. Above: Several simple Flash ads within the same page.

AD AS FRAME

Users have trained themselves to ignore ubiquitous ad types that frame content (banner ads, skyscrapers) - especially if they're animated. Above: A re-sized browser window would allow user to completely ignore the framing ads.

DELAYED BRANDING

Don't make users wait for it... they won't. You have mere seconds to resonate with the user, your message should be clear all the time. Don't play hard to get, hiding your brand and message until the end of the ad. Above: Company name is invisible throughout more than half of the 10 second ad.

Here are a few more resources to find out more about effective advertising:
• Google Analyzes Rich Media Ad Effectiveness (WebProNews)
• Online Advertising Spending Expected to Be Down for 2009 (AdAge and eMarketer)
• Video In Rich Media Ads More Likely To Lead Customers To Purchase (MediaPost)

Great ad - it's about relevant placement

Previously we talked about how important placement is in online advertising and how poor placement can make any ad bad. Now let's talk about which ad types are the most effective and bring the best return on investment.

NON-INTRUSIVE

"This could be good"
Ads that don't intrude on requested content don't annoy users. Text overlays on video windows take advantage of the un-used space without detracting from the desired video.
Above: A text overlay ad displays across the bottom of a video window without obscuring the content.

CONTEXTUAL

"I need one of those"
Users with "banner blindness" still respond to contextual advertising and good SEO. Users blind to popups and interstitials will still click on an ad when it's relevant to what they're already doing.
Above: Chart depicts ROI success per ad type.
(source: Marketing Sherpa and Ad:Tech survey)

RELEVANT

"It applies to me"
Online articles that include related brand information work well on younger users, who view them as more trustworthy than random banners. Advertisements relevant to what users are already looking at are more likely to get traffic.
Above: Graph depicts which ad formats users are most likely to respond to.
(source: ARAnet AdFusion survey)

Agile development and UX: The heart of the matter

Re my recent post on developers and usability:

If the user experience practice in your company was weak before Agile, Agile development isn't going to help things.

If your user experience practice was strong before Agile, it'll remain strong after Agile, and evolve to adapt.

So says Jeff Patton, and I couldn't agree more. No matter how you approach user experience, you must set aside time and resources for it. It has to be in the company DNA - even if that value must be ported from an offline discipline.

Agile development provides fertile ground for user experience design. It may not provide as much support for usability. Regardless, user experience design - most notably including user-facing information architecture and usability testing - must be accounted for in budget and schedule.

When user experience meets advertising: Are tradeoffs worth it?

The average American consumer is no longer. says Peter Francese, a demographer at the ad agency Ogilvy & Mather. No lie. Without even beginning to delve into the many facets of that statement, we can tell you that the sawed-off shotgun approach to advertising is dead. At a minimum, placement and context for advertising is key. Permission - anticipating the user's receptiveness, and when it will occur - is an under-served art online.

The power of data visualization

Great examples of data visualization ( telling the story in images, folks) at io9.com... using science fiction and zombies as accessible pop-culture data points, these information graphics provide excellent examples for reuse in business. Science with a sense of humor. For a more serious take, see C-SPAN's visualization of participation in the presidential debates.

Why are we writing about this? Because in the age of infinite channels, visuals offer an immediacy that words cannot. Saying "the United States is polarized" does not have as visceral an effect as viewing a daily visualization of polling data.

Visualization takes on new power in the torrent of information available to much of the world's population today. Our recent usability testing has shown a predilection towards visualization among younger users; this may indicate a different yet sophisticated way of thinking. Government and military are developing greater visualization capabilities into computer support for emergencies and deployment. Complex sets of data challenge the best and brightest, who see the value of creating visual systems to contextualize the meaning of data.

Consider doing the same with business data, especially online.

Bad ad - it's all in the placement

In our view, good advertising doesn't turn off your users and drive away traffic. Don't bash them over the head! Attract users with smart ad choices that make it clear you value them as much as you value advertisers.

TAKEOVERS

"Who are you?"

Would you plaster a billboard over the signage at your company's headquarters? Keep your masthead visible so users know who you are.

POP UPS

"I didn't ask for this."
The ad shouldn't be the first thing seen on your site. Once users have enjoyed your unique content, they're more likely to respond to relevant ads.

POOR PLACEMENT

"Where can I go?"
Obscuring navigation implies that ads trump your original content. And it prevents users from reaching what they came for.

Do bad things happen when developers design user interface?

We work with some incredibly talented development teams around Web sites, Web applications, and software projects. Unfortunately, teams missing a user experience specialist often find that they cannot come to consensus on what the user interface should look like, or what it should do. This leads to a sub-optimal user experience, with the common result being that powerful software functions are invisible to the user. That wastes money - and obscures the excellent work of your team.

The cost to business of skipping the critical planning stages - which include user profiles, usability testing, information architecture, user interface design and task sequence design - is incalculable. Skipping these steps means endless hours of expensive meetings where everyone has an opinion, but few have real data.

Stop for a moment and consider the areas of expertise your employees own today. Is there someone on staff with formal training in user interface design? Information architecture? Task sequence design? If the answer is "no" or "sort of," it's time to start adding up the cost of all the hours spent in meetings with no consensus, so you can reallocate those funds to usability training or professional services that will bridge the gap.

Relationships, ethics, and collaboration

Are attitudes about ethics and relationship changing - or are they just more visible in the Net-enabled world? Take this quiz and see how you score. In my world, relationships must be based on the presumption of ethical behavior. You may say I'm a dreamer... but there is a business consequence to ethics or the lack thereof.

DARPA and the Internet, official version

Awesome 1969 drawing of the ARPA network, which became the Internet... Since we were on the topic of DARPA... of course the history of DARPA and the Internet is in a PDF... but you've got to love the simplicity of this sketch.

Jay-z a Masonic initiate? The power of symbols in paranoid times

I must confess I was surprised to hear NPR cover the "is Jay-Z a Mason?" story in conjunction with the current Dan Brown frenzy. I'm not a fan of Brown's, but he is to occult tradition what Carl Sagan was to astronomy - not the greatest scholar, but the most effective popularizer.

The Freemasonry allegation, which has surfaced before, is that the imagery used in the "Run This Town" video directly alludes to the influence of that secret society. Vigilant Citizen offers a visual discussion of the topic, and the comment that the lyrics imply "an imminent change that might terrify or enrage some people" is of interest in light of the recent Town Hall hysteria. What might that change be? A perusal of the blogs confirms that the terms "Freemason" and "Illuminati" are hopelessly confused in the public mind, which does not of course preclude wild speculation and ridiculous conclusions. What we can state with certainty is that when times are hard, people look for a reason; the notorious All-Seeing Eye and pyramid, passed daily on our very own dollar bills, remains a powerful symbol that can represent paramount understanding, or the ultimate in conspiracy. How we choose to use it at any given point in time is a clear mirror of our collective hopes and fears. The use of the eye and pyramid in the Total Information Awareness logo was disturbing enough to put the brakes on the Bush administration's then-unstoppable snooping efforts, as detailed in a memo from DARPA. There is something so potent about the symbol that it calls into question any who adopt it. So what does this mean? The idea of the ultimate conspiracy - the entrenched refusal of the powerful to collaborate with the powerless - could certainly be credible in light of current news. Yet this suspicion on the part of the less fortunate - that the deck is deliberately stacked against them - has survived many eras. The pity is for society, which loses when its citizens lose faith.

CDC test of social media: Complexity makes usable design a challenge

Check out the concise summary of "social media usability testing" conducted by the CDC. Covering MySpace, blogs, widgets, e-Cards, and podcasts, the study points to the unsurprising conclusion that complex products - such as widgets - must meet a higher standard of usability and credible user experience.

I'll bracket that statement with two statistics from the study. First the e-Cards: "100% participants worry about viruses/spam." Which, of course, influences the decision to open the e-Card. This is what our Usable Times 5 methodology would describe as a Permission issue - as in, "I did not give you permission to send viruses or spam to my computer." Of course the Web site does not explicitly say it will send viruses or spam. But it doesn't reassure users that they won't have to worry about them, either.

Second, the widget, which only 45% if respondents were able to share and download, caused users to "struggle." Again, a reduction in usage, for different reasons. The loss here is in the development time for that widget, which is then under-utilized due to poor task sequence design. The presentation of user interactivity required for interaction with the widget is not straightforward enough for this user base. Interactivity is another Usable Times 5 factor.

The usability test report also discusses problems with adjacency of controls (instructions for use of podcasts too far from the action button, counter-intuitive "save this file" labeling). This is a common problem easily revealed in usability testing, and solved in user interface design.

The best news: "Visitors who use our new media products are more satisfied
with their visit to CDC’s Web site." That encourages all of us to continue the development of the many diverse expressions that currently fall under the rubric of social media. But these findings also point out the significant gap between the products we create and the user's ability to understand them without us there to explain them.

The need for information design on all digital products remains unmet.

The study, created by Sarah Greer, Catherine Jamal, Mike Peltz
and Cari Wolfson of the CDC's Division of eHealth Marketing, gets kudos for its frank look at CDC's current usage of media tools. No surprise to find FDA's Sanjay Koyani thanked at the end - he was among the first to create Web user experience standards in 2003 with the Research-Based Web Design and Usability Guidelines.