2016 - Weforge
Weforge offers support solutions for project leaders and young companies , which share a digital approach to their craft, and implements the working conditions of their own success. Reforge hosting companies and independent in over 800m² in the center of Angers, in France , thus encouraging synergies and networking. Sharing offices involved in breaking the isolation of young companies , with a dedicated place to work, meet customers , meet partners and exchange .
Website : http://www.weforge.fr
Facebook : https://www.facebook.com/WeForgeBANZAIII/
Twitter : https://twitter.com/We_Forge 1/26/2016
Web Design and Customer Experience : Spotify (again)
Today , as the title said, we are gonna talk about the customer experience and trying to answer the question : How to make a website attractive ?
What's the web design ?
The web design can be defined as the shape of the web interface : the interactional architecture, the organisation of the pages, the navigation in the website etc ... The design conception takes into account the specific constraints of the internet support, especially in terms of ergonomics, usability and accessibility. In this blog post, i've choose to talk about Spotify because the brand is nominee for the website best visual design in the aesthetic category Webbyaward. You can see the website here, and the "Spotify Year in Music" campaign here.
To highlight the customer experience in Spotify, we have to look at the presence of the brand on internet both via a laptop and a mobile device. Let's take a look at this infographic i've done :
Has the company followed good web design principles ?
But what is good web design principles ? Here, there is a non-exhaustive list of the things brands have to think for their website interface. These principles have to be looked as an initial base. I personally think that the interface have to be the more creative, personal and have to follow the image the brand want to be referred too.
1. PURPOSE
Good web design always caters to the needs of the user. Are your web visitors looking for information, entertainment, some type of interaction, or to transact with your business? Each page of your website needs to have a clear purpose, and to fulfill a specific need for your website users in the most effective way possible.
2. COMMUNICATION
People on the web tend to want information quickly, so it is important to communicate clearly, and make your information easy to read and digest. Some effective tactics to include in your web design include: organising information using headlines and sub headlines, using bullet points instead of long windy sentences, and cutting the waffle.
3. TYPEFACES
In general, Sans Serif fonts such as Arial and Verdana are easier to read online (Sans Serif fonts are contemporary looking fonts without decorative finishes). The ideal font size for reading easily online is 16px and stick to a maximum of 3 typefaces in a maximum of 3 point sizes to keep your design streamlined.
4. COLOURS
A well thought out colour palette can go a long way to enhance the user experience. Complementary colours create balance and harmony. Using contrasting colours for the text and background will make reading easier on the eye. Vibrant colours create emotion and should be used sparingly (e.g. for buttons and call to actions). Last but not least, white space/ negative space is very effective at giving your website a modern and uncluttered look.
5. IMAGES
A picture can speak a thousand words, and choosing the right images for your website can help with brand positioning and connecting with your target audience. If you don’t have high quality professional photos on hand, consider purchasing stock photos to lift the look of your website. Also consider using infographics, videos and graphics as these can be much more effective at communicating than even the most well written piece of text.
6. NAVIGATION
Navigation is about how easy it is for people to take action and move around your website. Some tactics for effective navigation include a logical page hierarchy, using bread crumbs, designing clickable buttons, and following the ‘three click rule’ which means users will be able to find the information they are looking for within three clicks.
7. GRID BASED LAYOUTS
Placing content randomly on your web page can end up with a haphazard appearance that is messy. Grid based layouts arrange content into sections, columns and boxes that line up and feel balanced, which leads to a better looking website design.
8. “F” PATTERN DESIGN
Eye tracking studies have identified that people scan computer screens in an “F” pattern. Most of what people see is in the top and left of the screen and the right side of the screen is rarely seen. Rather than trying to force the viewer’s visual flow, effectively designed websites will work with a reader’s natural behaviour and display information in order of importance (left to right, and top to bottom).
9. LOAD TIME
Everybody hates a website that takes ages to load. Tips to make page load times more effective include optimising image sizes (size and scale), combining code into a central CSS or JavaScript file (this reduces HTTP requests) and minify HTML, CSS, JavaScript (compressed to speed up their load time).
10: MOBILE FRIENDLY
It is now commonplace to access websites from multiple devices with multiple screen sizes, so it is important to consider if your website is mobile friendly. If your website is not mobile friendly, you can either rebuild it in a responsive layout (this means your website will adjust to different screen widths) or you can build a dedicated mobile site (a separate website optimized specifically for mobile users).
Honestly, Spotify is following perfectly these instructions. I can't make any more advice for Spotify.
My Google Analytics :
This is a global view of the statistics concerning my blog.
Basically, the largest part of my traffic comes from the U.S. However, my traffic decreased during the update of the HTML code. So, to earn more visitors, i've put new meta data as you can see here (keywords).
Now, i've have to wait for the results. Thanks for reading.
Sources :
www.blogduwebdesign.com
www.webdesignertrends.com
- Jean-François Nogier (2008), du logiciel et design web : Le manuel des interfaces utilisateur, 4ème édition, Junod.
Advertising placement/Brand Message
Hi, today let's talk about digital advertising. Internet usage is turning forward some new web-features which provides more and more interactiveness and easiness for the target market experience. The three brands i'm following (Spotify, Asos and Withings) are doing really a good retention strategy in their owns websites. But, the other side of an effective marketing strategy have to go trough the acquisition process. The website here gave us an idea of what is customer Acquisition and what are the tools to provide it. We can remember on sentence in this article : "the primary goal of customer acquisition is to do the least amount of work, and spend the least amount of money, to get as many customers as possible into the fold". One of the best tool on internet to promote brand is to place advertising, whatever the amount, the shape or the design, Brands have to promote their presence on internet. So, the question i'm asking is naturally,
How brands are promoting on internet ?
I went to several web pages and digital media sites and looked to see what ad formats are used. It was really to find advertising by going in random websites. But, i've found some website who's promoting the brands i'm looking for.
1. Spotify.
Spotify has a lot of sponsorship. Bose, Noisey, The Guardian ect .. So, It was where i've first looking for. I've finally found Spotify advertisings in the The Quietus, a British online music and pop culture magazine, focusing on arts news, reviews, and features. The site is an editorially independent publication led by John Doran and a group of freelance journalists and critics, some of whom have worked for other media outlets. The Quietus is entirely funded by advertising, with no corporate backers, investors or other means of support.
This is the Spotify advertising i've found on Quietus.com :
This is the Spotify advertising i've found on Quietus.com :
The magazine is providing some Spotify playlist through some article post. Here, Spotify has his own tag that is make it really interesting for Spotify in an Acquisition point of view.
About the IAB guideline, Quietus said "We run standard IAB ad sizes as follows: leaderboard (728x90), MPU (300x250), half page sky (300x600) and a variety of hero (952/970/1000x250) sizes. We do not do reskins as they look appalling with our design, but are able to offer site roadblocks and takeovers"
2. Withings.
Withings is specialized in connected object. Recently, Amazon.com opened a new category called "Wearable Technology". When i went in this category, on the first page, this is what i've seen :
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| In the center, A Withings Activite Pop (connected watches) advertising. |
Amazon has a really strict IAB politic, for the sake of space, I will not describe all the guideline here. But i'm inviting you to take a look at this link for more information. It defininitely respectes the IAB guideline.
3. ASOS
As Spotify, I didn't found a real advertising (midroll video, audio, display, interstitial, homepage banner, advertiser page ... ). But a sponsored article from Mirror.com (the website version of a Britain's tabloid called "the daily mirror").
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| "ASOS black friday deals UK" : A good way to promote your brand through article. |
Conclusion :
Spotify, Withings and Asos are clearly using strong tools to promote their brand across the internet. We are obviously here in an affiliate programs business models which is a relatively low-cost customer acquisition technique. Business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought by the affiliate's own marketing efforts. Here, the industry has four core players: the merchant (Spotify, Withings & Asos) , the network (that contains offers for the affiliate to choose from and also takes care of the payments), the publisher (The Quietus.com, Amazon.com, and Mirror.com ) who is earning money by the Cost per Click process, and the customer (you and me). The market has grown in complexity, resulting in the emergence of a secondary tier of players, including affiliate management agencies, super-affiliates and specialized third party vendors.
Is it the same conclusion using mobile website or app ?
Yes, for these three brands, its the same. So, to explain the difference of advertising placement between two different devices. I will check these websites as publisher.
First, we have to understand the concept of "rising star ad". Let's take a look of this infographic :
Spotify, Asos and Withings rising star ad.
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| Asos : On the left, we can see that Asos is using an adhesion banner. A banner that adheres to its start position when device is rotated or when content is manipulated. On the right, the same advertising is not using an IAB process. |
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| Spotify : On the left, Spotify is using a Pull banner that becoming fullscreen if you pull it or click it. On the right, the same advertising is not running an IAB process. |
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Withings : Withings don't have an app version for his website. The consequences are that Withings can't provide any advertising on his mobile website because the global shape can't handle it. The computer website doesn't provide any advertising.
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Is it effective ?
A marketer has to be aware of the challenge he has to face :
- How do you grab and hold the attention of a mobile audience?
- How do you deliver rich creative ad experiences that inspire interaction?
- How do you prove mobile is working?
- Mobile Rising Stars Ads Inspire Users To Interact with the Ad
Generating nearly 2x the interaction
About 9 seconds faster than standard mobile ads
Are 18% more likely to recall the brand name and 23%more likely to recall the brand message advertised vs. viewing a standard banner ad. Interacting with Mobile Rising Stars Ads Increases Positive User Perceptions of Mobile Ads
- Ads are attention grabbing
Enjoyable/fun
- Better than other mobile ads
- +43% higher +38% higher +22% higher
- Better than other mobile ads
- +43% higher +38% higher +22% higher
How these companies can reinforce their brand image ?
Asos, Spotify & Withings should provide more videos respecting the IAB guideline. Then, i advice to these companies to follow these online advertising strategies :
Strategy #1: Pay Per Click Advertising
This proven online marketing strategy allows you to have control over your marketing campaign as you target specific traffic based upon the keywords that you choose. Google is the top traffic source for this form of marketing. However, you should know that you are going to have to pay for every time that someone clicks on your ad.
Strategy #2: Blog Posting
By creating an informative blog about your product or service, you will be able to target specific customers. In order for this to work, you will need to make sure that you update your blog on a regular basis.
Strategy #3: Video Marketing
This is a relatively new online advertising strategy. Whenever you choose to use it as a part of your marketing campaign, you will want to make sure that the video is either entertaining or informative (so that people will continue to pass the video on to other people).
Strategy #4: Article Marketing
By writing and submitting informative articles to different online article directories, you will be able to attract traffic to your website through the resource box at the end of your article. This can have a positive long-term effect upon your business. By writing about your products or services, you will be able to establish yourself as an authority. Furthermore, these articles will also be able to draw search engine traffic to your website.
Strategy #5: Forum Marketing and Social Networking
Whenever you are at a forum or a social networking site, make sure that you have a link to your website in your signature. As an active participant in the community, people will begin seeing that you are sharing valuable information. They will then want to see what you have available at your website, and thus click through your signature to check it out.
Strategy #6: Viral Marketing
Through viral marketing, you can drive targeted traffic to your website. You will either want to hold a contest or make sure that you have valuable information available. Whenever this is the case, people will tell others about your website, and word-of-mouth advertising will kick in.
Strategy #7: Traffic Trading
Take some time to find relevant websites, directories and forums where you can list your URL. This will help to increase your visibility. However, you must understand that the links' quality is more important than quantity here.
Strategy #8: Press Releases
Every time that you launch something new, make major changes, or update your business, you should write a press release to send out.
By using these marketing tips to promote your work from home website, you will be able to increase the amount of targeted traffic it receives. While this will take some work, over time your website will be successful.
Sources :
"Marketers Focus on Making Attribution Data Actionable: Industry experts discuss real-time optimisation of cross-platform attribution findings". emarketer.com. Retrieved 7 September 2015.
"IAB internet advertising revenue report: 2012 full year results"(PDF). PricewaterhouseCoopers, Internet Advertising Bureau. April 2013. Retrieved 12 June 2013.
"Is CPE the Best Way to Quantify ROI?. Mashable. 9 December 2013
"Is CPE the Best Way to Quantify ROI?. Mashable. 9 December 2013
"Marketers Focus on Making Attribution Data Actionable: Industry experts discuss real-time optimisation of cross-platform attribution findings". emarketer.com. Retrieved 7 September 2015.
"Super Bowl Social Media Marketing: A Detailed History". Social Media Today. 1 February 2013. Retrieved 14 June 2013.
"Facebook News Feed Ads". Facebook. Retrieved 1 May 2015.
The World of Search : Spotify SEO and PPC
The process of getting listed on search engines so consumers can find you is called Search Engine Marketing (I’ll use the acronym SEM in this article). Basically, SEM is a form of internet marketing that seeks to promote websites by increasing their visibility in search engine result pages. This process have to go trough 2 different concept : The search engine optimization (SEO) and the Pay-Per-click (PPC). As a good example to explain and discuss about the SEM process, I’ve choose Spotify because It cope with a tough competition as Deezer, Google Play or recently Apple Music. It’s a reliable way to see if Spotify use SEM in a way that sets it apart from the competition.
First of all, let’s check the Spotify’s natural search engine rank.
We will test the visibility of Spotify in 4 most popular search engines, (obviously) the american Google.com (65% of the global research comes from Google), but also, the Chinese Baidu (8,2%), Yahoo (5%) and the Russian Yandex (more than 4%)
What can we say ?
First of all, we can notice that the global shape of these different Search Engines are not the same. Some of them have image or logo, (Yandex and Google) and the other part just have text. Considering the research, i’ve put « Spotify » in the research bar, and i didn’t have to correct something except for Baidu who’ve proposed to give me the Mandarin writing of Spotify. That’s one of the keyword aspect i would like to point, the name of a brand is a major element of the SEM because the name don’t have to be mingled by the search engine with another name which has nothing to do with.
I’ve colored in red all the social media redirection of Spotify. There is a huge difference between all the Search Engine. Google didn’t proposed that (Just if we look at the first page without scrolling down, but it’s there where the user attention is focused on) Baidu and Yahoo propose 1 website, Twitter or Facebook and Yandex is the most « socially aware » with four site available just in the first page : Twitter, Youtube and Reddit.
To conclude, Spotify is relatively well represented in the Search Engine and social media, with the keyword Spotify. But what it will happen if we ask to these engines to look for the most important keywords for that company : « Streaming Music Player » ? The rank of Spotify will move ? Let’s see.
Things have changed, Spotify now rule the concurrence (Deezer, Apple Music) on Google search engine, but it’s not the case anymore on the others search engines ! Notably Pandora and others websites are erasing Spotify of the page. Social Media are not represented anymore.
So what improvement can be made for Spotify.
I think that Spotify is doing well. Spotify is the first brand according to the « streaming music » research on Google, and, from my point of view these keywords are the most employed by users to research what Spotify can give. Moreover, Google has the largest part of users in the world. But, Baidu is also important, so, Spotify should improve his algorithmic search by creating keywords in Mandarin for example. About the Pay-per-click process, we have seen the presence of Spotify in Baidu Search Engine. I suppose that Spotify is already trying to export its brand over Europe and United States.
In other words, here are the steps I recommend to Spotify to improve its SEM model :
- The importance of Meta-name.
Search engines are focused on the HTML code, Spotify should index some metaname in an other language to target the Chinese market.
2. Follow the White Hat Method.
« In search engine optimization (SEO) terminology, white hat SEO refers to the usage of optimization strategies, techniques and tactics that focus on a human audience opposed to search engines and completely follows search engine rules and policies.
For example, a website that is optimized for search engines, yet focuses on relevancy and organic ranking is considered to be optimized using White Hat SEO practices. Some examples of White Hat SEO techniques include using keywords and keyword analysis, backlinking, link building to improve link popularity, and writing content for human readers. »
3. Use tools for keywords selection
As keyword suggestion tool for Google AdWords, research suggestions from engines and tools like SEMrush.
4. Content optimization
Regarding the content of the websites , the trend is oriented toward semantic search that Google plebiscite because this research method is suitable for the formulation of questions from users on the Web, especially with voice queries made from a phone.
Brands and Direct Marketing
Today, we will discuss how these companies keep the customer in contact via the alerts and the promotion that customers (or future ones) are following and how they are applying their Direct Marketing Strategy to maintain their expansion in the targeted market of each.
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Frequency of Newsletters and Google Alert received in my own mail box since September 2015 |
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| Frequency table for each brands i'm following (From top to bottom : Asos; Withings; Spotify)
What these data tell us
First of all, we can see that there is a gap between the amount of email i've received from Asos and the two other companies. With 48 email, Asos and Google sent me nearly the double of what Withings sent itself, and, 5 times more than Spotify. For me, the reason is quite clear : Asos have the advantage to follow the clothes fashion trends. Everything is a plea to send email. New trends (always moving), seasons, recurring events (New Year, Thanksgiving, Halloween, Holidays, Back to School ect ...) and the most important of all : Winter and Summer Sales. Each period of the year could be the perfect time to have a new look. In term of email design, Asos also the trend. Colored, simple, with a catchy slogan and highlighted information.
"Winter is coming" Below, one of the discount to "fight against cold" i've received from Asos Newsletter. (Sorry it's in French)
Now the question i'm wondering is why Spotify didn't do the same ?
Here is the typical exemple of what kind of email i've received from Spotify :
Spotify ® is focused on three types of email promotion :
Spotify Premium ® : Spotify operates a freemium model. It's means that Users subscribe for free get ads between tracks which are part of the Spotify revenue model. Users of the free service encounter audio ads every five or six songs, or approximately three minutes of advertising for every hour of listening.) The mail i've received promotes a free trial for Spotify Premium including no ads, a better quality, and a "offline mode". Spotify Premium is $9,99 and represents the other part of the Spotify Revenue Model.
Partnership : Spotify & Chromecast. Spotify is sending messages about some new features from a recent partnership made. With Chromecast, Spotify is now available on television and THAT is making the experience much more attractive for users. We can also mention Bose as one of the partner of Spotify, Starbucks, SFR (in France) and recently Spotify made a partnership with one of the company i'm discussing in this blog : Withings ! (Click on the links to learn more about these partnerships)
Personalized marketing or One to One marketing : Whereas product differentiation tries to differentiate a product from competing ones, personalization tries to make a unique product offering for each customer. This is a form of marketing who's becoming more and more develop. Spotify uses your personal information in order to spot which artist you like, which band it's been a long time you didn't listen, your country ect ... Does Spotify have the right to use my personal information to spot the most effective promotion for me ? Yes, it can
In term of quantity, it's obvious that Spotify have the "worst" score of promotion sent, but, for me, the direct marketing of Spotify is the better in term of quality. The information that Spotify promotes have a real influence in the customer behavior.
Moreover, i've got the personal feeling that people are more able to read an advertising which is more rare, than one which often repeats.
Now, lets talk about Withings Direct marketing strategy.
 About the CAN-SPAM
Note : While the European rule is based on the opt-in , meaning that it is imperative that the consumer has given permission for it to receive emails for commercial characters. The CAN-SPAM Act requires senders to unsubscribe (Opt -out ) an email address if the user requests it . This means that in the US , companies have the right to send commercial email to anyone until it objects.
I 've tried to find policy information about these three companies, and, it seems that they are all using the European rule (Opt-in) even for the US website, for example, for Spotify (who's a Swedish company) you have the choice to check or not if you want to share data for marketing purposes : Spotify French registration page  
To conclude, I think that these emailing strategies are quite efficience, they all have a good esthetic shapes in the era of time, they are really well focused on what the user expect to have as information, at the right time we wanted to have these information. They are using NTIC to develop new model (One to one marketing with Spotify), I think that Withings have to be a little bit more present by emailing, because, the blog don't have enough visibility to be a real, and efficience way for Direct Marketing.
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