Below you can find photos and presentation slides from throughout the day:

Blue Fountain Media Founder & CEO, Gabriel Shaoolian delivers a presentation on PinPoint display advertising – an emerging search-retargeting platform.

Senior Business Consultant, Matthew Smith presents 5 Easy Steps to Revitalize Your Business

Chris Morgan from Google delivers his presentation

Joe DiNardo, a Digital Marketing Specialist from Blue Fountain Media’s marketing department, highlights new techniques for advertising on social media platforms.

Marketing Manager Ashley Kemper discusses how businesses can create real content strategies that work.

Marketing Director Alanna Francis presents new methods for using mobile marketing to drive new leads and sales

Advertising with Social Media by Joe DiNardo

Content Strategies That Work by Ashley Kemper

How To Use Mobile Marketing to Drive Leads & Sales by Alanna Franics

I recently attended Econsultancy’s JUMP Conference; a one-day event that expressed what I feel is the most important marketing lesson: in marketing, you have to be everywhere your customer wants to engage. In short, it’s not about traditional vs. digital vs. mobile vs. etc. (Et cetera marketing comes out in 2019). We must continue to reiterate that all digital efforts work in concert with all other appropriate forms of marketing for any product or service. This view point was driven home by Paul Price, CEO of Creative Realities, and here are 10 essential points from a digital perspective that I gleaned from our discussion.

1. Ecommerce -> Mcommerce

Mobile commerce already represents 15% of ecommerce revenue. Once the gateways to mobile commerce are opened further, this number will only grow. Just ask Twitter.

2. Demography -> Technography

By looking at what devices consumers are using, we gain wonderful insight on what is driving consumer behavior.

3. Communications -> Experiences

4. Awareness -> Interaction

While it is important for consumers to be aware of your product or service, that’s not enough. Consumers must interact with your brand.

5. Loyalist -> Producer

When people are exceptionally loyal, they are apt to become producers: consumers who produce their own content around your brand.

6. Content -> Context

As important as content is today, the context of that content is even more important in the consumer experience.

7. Content Push -> User Generated Content

This is an amalgam of points 5 and 6. Make sure to empower your consumers to produce content.

8. Target -> Geo-location

Who and where you are speaks volumes of the things that you are into. Ever-improving geo-location technology is helping us realize this fact and retailers are picking up on this idea.

9. Soon -> Same Day

We already live in a fast world. It’s only going to get faster.

10. Reactive -> Recommendation

While search is a great tool, even companies like Google understand the intent of people who are looking for top-notch products and services. Search will become more serendipitous. It’s not only about search anymore, it’s about discovery.

Please Note
As important as these 10 points are in today’s world, there are two more pertinent details that must be considered:

• In today’s world, technology should be the lead of your marketing strategy
• Mobile is the epicenter of digital marketing today.

These are the two chief aspects of any marketing initiative and should be viewed as such as they encompass and thing you can and would do from a traditional, technological or social viewpoint.

Now it’s all up to you to ensure that all parties are part of one common goal. It should be easier now after thinking of your customer in this light.
Have you noted any recent shifts in the online marketing sphere? Let us know in the comments below or by tweeting at @BFMweb

2013 is the year of more comprehensive analytics, mobile marketing-galore, and a shift to high-ROI activities. It’s never been more affordable to put together a highly effective online marketing campaign, given the tools that have been made available in the past two years.

Here are 13 online marketing trends that you should be ready to embrace in 2013:

1. User-Centric Analytics

In 2013, efforts to better track visitors across various devices and interactions will intensify, accelerated by an update to Google Analytics.


Photos courtesy of Jeff Sauer at Jeffalytics.com

• What is it? A way to track visitors more holistically, across devices and further through a sales funnel. Google Analytics just launched its beta version of what they’re calling Universal Analytics. It’s a much-needed and updated way to look at how we track Web users. It is expected to go live in early 2013.
• So what? Today’s Google Analytics gives us a narrow view of users: a cookie-based one. The big problem with cookies is that we lose them. We change from device to device, we go offline, we delete cookies, etc.
  Instead of relying on cookies, the new Universal Analytics will assign a user ID to visitors, to which information can be appended.

  What it will allow is for more comprehensive, user-centric data to be sent to Google Analytics servers from any environment. For example, imagine your website generates leads, which you then qualify and close over the phone. Until now, you’ve only been able to track those leads up to the point at which they become leads.

  With Universal Analytics, you’ll be able to send data from your CRM back to Google Analytics with information about whether that visitor who then became a lead, in fact turned into a customer and how much revenue they generated. There are many more applications of it. E-commerce websites won’t be the only ones who’ll be able to attribute an ROI to their marketing channels! Currently it is in beta and we’ve got our hands on it at Blue Fountain Media, becoming familiar with the new protocol. As soon as it is available for public launch, we’ll be using it wherever applicable.

• To learn more:
  • Paul Muret’s presentation on Universal Analytics at the Google Analytics 2012 Partner Summit

2. Content Marketing

There’s never been a better time to be a content marketer than 2013. The value of content marketing has increased tremendously as search, social, email, and display channels are all beginning to rely on content as a marketing tool.

3. Integration of Social and Search

Social media is now a must-have for search marketers that would not typically be engaged in social.

4. Backlink Clean-up

Have you been naughty or nice? Santa (aka Google) is coming to town. If you’ve been using some less-than-ideal link building tactics, you’ll want to clean those up, or else…

5. Remarketing

As pressure increases to improve marketing ROI in 2013, remarketing is a clear winner.

6. Responsive Design

You could drive yourself crazy by creating multiple websites for various types of devices, or you could create one to serve the needs of all device users, from desktops to small smartphones.

7. HTML5/CSS3 Usage

Increasing mobile Web usage and browser compatibility will make 2013 the breakout year for the widespread usage of HTML5 and CSS3 elements.

8. Web Videos

As production and hosting costs are vanishing for Web video, it’s becoming a cost-effective solution for many business going into 2013.

9. Mobile Advertising

Mobile advertising will go mainstream in 2013 as over 50% of the US adult population will own a smartphone or tablet.

10. Better Display Targeting

With emerging ad targeting technology that provides pinpoint precision and the opening of the Facebook ad platform, advertisers will be exploring more effective methods of reaching the right audience in 2013.

11. Email Remarketing Campaigns

Online retailers and lead gen marketers are coming around to the concept that abandons and bounces are part of the sales funnel. Email re-engagement has become easier than ever and represents a massive opportunity to take advantage of in 2013.

Mobile email use is continuing its rapid ascent and not showing any signs of slowing down. A recent blogpost from the email marketing service Litmus recently reported that email opens among mobile devices has increased by 123% over the course of the past 18 months.

With nearly 40% of email opens taking place on a mobile device, it has never been more apparent to marketers that they must adapt and optimize their email marketing campaigns for mobile use. But what is the best way to prepare your emails so that they are easy to use for smartphone and tablet users? The two best methods for optimizing email for mobile are Scalable Design and Responsive Development.

Scalable Email Design

Scalable email involves a single design that can be easily read and used in both large, regular-sized monitors as well as 480px wide smartphones. A scalable email is resized by smartphones to accommodate the phone’s diminished width, but can still be read with ease. The best way to make sure your email is still easy to use on mobile devices is to think BIG.

This means:

• Use big fonts so that your text can be read (iPhone’s minimum font size is 13px, but its best to think closer to 16-18px).
• Use big call to action buttons for your links so that they are easy to tap with your thumb.
• Make use of large amounts of negative space so that your main messaging stands out and that your calls to action are easy to tap without accidentally clicking on a different link.

In addition to following these scalable design guidelines it is also best to keep your overall design rather simple. Complex arrangements of content can yield intricate table structures that are difficult for mobile devices to properly resize.

Simple, proportional tables will maintain a consistent structure after being resized for smartphones. For this reason, any design structure other than a single column layout can prove to be troublesome.

Here is an example of a recent email from JetBlue that scales well from desktop to mobile:

However, scalable email designs are not true mobile designs in a sense that it relies on the device to restructure and resize content. As a result, scalable email can yield mixed and imperfect results when dealing with large amounts of content within your email.

Responsive Email Development

Responsive email development involves having multiple designs that can each be displayed depending on the size of the device that they are viewed on. By using CSS3 @media query tags, email marketers and developers can resize, reposition, and remove text and images from their standard desktop email design to create variations that are mobile friendly. The appropriate variation can then be displayed according to the device that the email recipient is using.

The following responsive email campaign from Playstation, recently cited by Marketing Land, is an excellent example of how you can restructure email for mobile using @media queries. In this instance, Playstation has limited the width of the email layout for users viewing on a mobile device and have forced a single column structure (rather than two columns for desktop users). Nobody likes scrolling side to side on their mobile phone, so Playstation has created a single column format that is easy to scroll through vertically.

Responsive design in email development requires a significant amount of time spent on relatively complex coding. Using @media queries to restructure an entire email can certainly be a bit tricky. However, the extra time spent on responsive email development results in unique variations of your campaign that are built, intended, and truly optimized for each device. Responsive email development will ultimately receive more clicks and interaction from your mobile subscribers.

Which Should I Use?

Your email content is the best determining factor when selecting the best method for your mobile email campaigns. If your email campaigns typically include brief messages that do not include paragraphs of copy, multiple images, or complex layouts, then a scalable design could be perfectly suitable for your needs without having to spend extra hours developing a responsive email template. For this reason, scalable design tends to work well for sales oriented campaigns that highlight a single promotion or sale.

However, if your email campaigns include informational newsletters that highlight multiple pieces of content and information, then a scalable design might not cut it. For long informational newsletters, it may be worth spending the extra hours to prepare a responsive email template for ongoing use. This will ensure that all recipients, including mobile users, can easily read and access each part of your newsletter.

Conclusion

Ultimately, when selecting one of these two approaches, you must balance the time you invest in optimizing your campaigns against the potential increase in results. Will the increase in mobile engagement justify the amount of extra time required to develop a responsive template? Or will a scalable design achieve similar results without spending any extra time on development?

 Any thoughts about scalable and responsive email design? Let us know, we’d love to get your take. Leave a message below or tweet us at @BFMweb.

“App Store Optimization” refers to the practice of enhancing visibility for a mobile application in the organic search results and categories of an App Store. A year ago, we published “A Crash Course in (ASO)” which, at the time, was accurately focused on optimizing textual ranking factors. While the presence of keywords still have a measure of influence, the search algorithms and subsequent ranking factors have significantly evolved.

App discovery startup, Chomp, was acquired by Apple earlier this year and was the major catalyst in driving both the usability and search functionality for the new iOS App Store.

If you’re  involved with an app development company below are some important factors to consider during your planning process.

Usability Tailored To Search

One App at a Time. The most radical usability change (adopted from Chomp) is apparent when viewing the app store search results. Search marketing firms will immediately recognize the benefits of how users are now shown one app at a time in a horizontal slide – making it less likely for users to scroll deep into the search results. This change makes ranking in the top 5 results significantly more valuable for app developers and marketers.

The “Genius” replaced “Categories” in the main navigation menu. The removal of “Categories” from the main menu is another indicator Apple is directing users away from hierarchical browsing while placing greater emphasis on search and its ability to recognize relevant applications unique to the user.

The New(ish) Ranking Factors

On its website (which now forwards to Apple.com), Chomp described its technology: “Chomp’s proprietary algorithm learns the functions and topics of apps, so you can search based on what apps do, not just what they’re called.” In other words, the iOS App Store now has a search technology that lets it more accurately understand an app and match it to the intent of a user.

Prior to the launch of Apple’s new App Store, many speculated that Apple was already employing the ranking algorithms of Chomp (or at least its own, evolved version). Whatever the timeframe, rankings in the App Store are no longer exclusively weighted on whether or not keywords are present. Instead, a new, more organic set of factors began influencing the top ranks of mobile apps.

Ranking Factors by Weight

Velocity of Downloads. The rate of which an app is downloaded seems to be one of the most influential of ranking factors. This was supported by a recent study from BTIG, showing apps that were in high demand were rewarded higher rankings. For instance, in a recent case for YouTube, the app was rewarded a #1 spot after it disappeared from users who upgraded to iOS 6 and was then, suddenly in high demand.

Ranking Tips:

•  Consider offering a Free / ‘Lite’ or iPad version of the app. Heavy adoption of these will help increase demand and search visibility for a paid counterpart.
• Cross promote and link to the App Profile Page(s) from your website homepage and other relevant pages.
• Consider integrating social sharing capabilities within your app and across digital marketing channels to help generate buzz.
• Look into strategic media buys or running ad campaigns promoting your app. Consider targeting your audience with ads on other mobile apps, search engines, and display networks.

Installation Base. A large amount of app installs suggests higher trust and leads to higher app store rankings. Conversely, the uninstall base is also taken into account. Apps that are often uninstalled can signify that users are not satisfied and therefore result in a drop in rankings.

Ranking Tips:

• Maintain above average user ratings (3+ starts) and seek to earn positive reviews.
• Provide app updates with improved features and quick solutions to potential performance issues.
• For storage conscious users, keep the size of the app under 300MB.

Social Popularity. Before they were acquired by Apple, Chomp publicized that its algorithms considered all the information available on the App Store alongside mentions and other actions on Twitter, Facebook, blogs, and websites. All of this data is used to compile complete descriptions of an app and relevantly rank it. Combining this with the newly integrated Facebook “share” buttons for apps in the App Store, Apple has another useful signal it can directly feed into its algorithm.

Ranking Tips:

• Monitor the sentiment of your app(s) on your social profiles and within your community. Seek to earn positive mentions and shares.
• Increase the likelihood of shares and mentions by adding social buttons on any internal web pages promoting the app.
• Facilitate social sharing by baking the capabilities into the app. For example, employ Facebook’s open graph.

Ratings and Reviews. An apps’ user ratings and reviews are also measured by search algorithms to understand what the app is used for and to help gauge sentiment. However, since user ratings and comments can be easily inflated, there is a fair amount of speculation that there is not as much ranking credit given. Still, with a holistic optimization strategy, good ratings and reviews can positively affect the app’s installation base, social popularity, and online reputation.

Ranking Tips:

• Strategically send in-app prompts to remind users to rate and/or review your app. These prompts can be scheduled based on the number of times the app is used, days between usage, or after a significant event.
• Consider providing incentives for leaving reviews. For example, loyalty rewards or a coupon.
• Turn negatives into positives and manage your store reputation. Listen to your users and address any concerns. Let them know you are working on it and then deliver with an update.

The Wrap-up

With the new release of iOS 6 came some heavy updates to Apple’s App Store. The new front-end design is intended to increase search behavior. In the same vein, search results are only viewable one at a time; making the top 5 results significantly more desirable among app publishers and marketers.

Search rankings in the App Store are now heavily influenced by download rates, installation rates, social popularity, ratings and reviews. So really, App Store Optimization became less about semantic keywords and more about the demand and quality of the app.

Any thoughts? Let us know below or send a message to @BFMweb or @jdelprete.

If you aren’t already, it’s time to start thinking about building out mobile platforms for your business.

The mobile market (primarily smartphones and tablets)  is booming, with over six billion mobile users worldwide. In the United States, which has a mature and steady market, 36.4 percent of the 234 million mobile users access the Internet from their phone, according to research firm comScore.

And this staggering growth is changing the way we access information:

• There are 1.2 billion mobile Web users worldwide.
• In the global market mobile devices account for 8.5% of internet traffic.
• And in the U.S., 25% of Web users access the internet through mobile ONLY.

That’s a lot of incentive to optimize the delivery of your content to mobile platforms.

The question remaining is not whether you should migrate to mobile, but how?

The two most obvious choices are mobile websites and native apps. While many people would have trouble distinguishing one from the other in visual terms, there are some very important distinctions that must be made between them when planning a mobile strategy. And, of course, you could try a web mobile app that may be just as efficient for your needs, but cost significantly less.

Mobile Website vs. Native App vs. Mobile Web  App

If you’re reading this you likely know the basics. If not, here is a quickie: on the most basic of levels, a mobile website is pretty much the same as any other website – it uses browser-based HTML pages that can be accessed by handheld devices and tablets. Unlike a website built for viewing on a desktop, the mobile site is designed to appear on a much smaller handheld display.

As for native apps, they are downloaded applications – from Apple’s App Store, Android, Blackberry App World, etc. – that are installed on a mobile device and can’t be accessed within a browser. Note: the name is derived from the fact that these apps are written in the language of the operating system of the device they are installed on.

And lastly, but certainly not least, is the mobile web app: while they appear similar to the native app, they differ in the manner in which they are built and rendered. These apps viewed through a mobile web browser are built in HTML/CSS.

Mobile Website

There are three ways to approach building a mobile website:

• Create a separate mobile website with its own URL that redirects mobile visitors.
• Instead of the redirect use CSS files to make the same desktop URL available to mobile users.
• Use responsive website design to create a website that adapts to browser window width by using CSS3 media queries.

Adding a mobile website will also improve Search Engine Optimization performance because your website will be placed in relevant mobile and local directories on search engines, which will increase overall visibility for you business.

Challenges:The need for speed.Even the best mobile website design is at the mercy of the networks being used to access it, and often network access and speed varies from location to location. Compounding the speed issue is the fact that mobile users are much more demanding than those accessing your site on a desktop. The latter tend not to be put off  much by an extra click here and there when a usability issue is encountered. On a mobile device, forget it.

When you need one: Almost every business needs a mobile website, especially businesses that consumers are likely to search on the go: restaurants, retailers, entertainment, etc. There are exceptions, which we will see later with native apps. Remember, if you have a website, people can already view it on a mobile device, it just doesn’t look too good.

Mobile Web  App

These mobile web apps look very much like native apps (see below) but can be built at a much faster and cheaper rate in HTML/CSS. In fact, a mobile web app can be launched just as quickly as website.  Because most Android-based products and iOS (iPhone and iPad) leverage sophisticated mobile browsers (ie. Mobile Chrome and Mobile Safari),  mobile web apps are a great alternative to the much more expensive to build native app.

Advantages:The planning and launch of a mobile web app is similar to the average custom designed website, and ultimately produces a look and feel like the much more expensive and time-consuming native app. For the most part, it performs and functions just like a native app, only it is rendered through a mobile browser. Once a mobile web app is launched, it’s also easy to make edits and changes that are immediately available to the user.

Disadvantages: While overall, a mobile web app is usually the best bang for most business’s buck, there are some drawbacks to consider before going that rout;  namely it provides access to only basic device functions,  such as location and media files. However, at least with Apple’s latest update – iOS 6, this appears to be changing. The new iOS 6 update now allows  mobile web apps to access geolocation and camera features of  hardware on the iPhone and iPad.  As of this report, the same couldn’t be said for Android devices, or earlier iPhone/iPad additions. It’s important to note that  many, many people will never upgrade there OS until they purchase a new smartphone.

In addition, the browser can take up a bit of space on an already limited size display. Speed can also be an issue.

While this shouldn’t be a deal breaker for most businesses, it is reasonable to consider.

When you need one: The mobile web app differs from a mobile version of a website because it is designed specifically for the mobile platform. If you already have a website, a mobile web app can be built relatively easily using much of the same code.

Native App

As we’ve mentioned, the native app is written in the language of the operating system of the device it is installed on -Android, iOS, etc.  These apps are usually downloaded through an online store or marketplace – The App Store or Android Apps on Google Play- and installed directly onto the device.

Advantages: The native app can interface with the device’s native features, information and hardware (camera, GPS-location, etc.). Typically native apps perform faster than mobile web apps.

Disadvantages: The native app is costly and can take a good deal of time  to develop.  You’ll also have to create a different app for each operating system you want it to work on  because each must use the native programming language of the device: Java (Android), Objective-C (iOS), and Visual C++ (Windows Mobile).

Other long-term drawbacks include the app store approval process designed to assure user quality and safety can be cumbersome;  and the manual downloading and installation of  the apps means that many users will be operating on different versions.

When you need one: If you’re developing a game (Angry Birds, anyone?) or an app that fills a very narrow niche like a weather app, than  the native app is ideal. The bonus developers receive is the ability to charge a download price, with the app stores handling the payment process – for a fee, of course.

Conclusion
The decision to go with native app, responsive design (that is the best mobile website option) or a mobile web app really depends on many business factors: objectives, target audience, technical requirements.

Of course, you can chose not to decide and build a native app and mobile web app. Remember, that’s what Facebook did. However, businesses with more modest budgets may need to chose an option and go with that one. Whatever you decide, it’s pretty much a forgone conclusion that the future of mobile is here.

Any thoughts? Let us know below or send a message to @BFMweb or @tngray99.

It seems like the more things change, the more they stay the same. Many of us have said this at numerous points of our lives, but in this particular case it is happening in our virtual world where Twitter has just introduced new pages that many liken to the Facebook Timeline. And, since these changes will be mandatory at some point probably within the next few months, we feel this is a good time to look at them and the opportunities they present  for your brand—whether personal or business—so that you can be ahead of the proverbial curve.

It always comes in 3’s

There are three major areas of one’s own Twittersphere that are important to identify when it comes to our online marketing and branding opportunities:

1. 1. Background photo;
2. 2. Header image (new); and
3. 3. Photo stream

These are three areas where we have certain levels of control and with a bit of strategy, some ingenuity and full on smarts, we can (and should) use these areas to our advantage.

Your background canvas

Thankfully, the background image is the ultimate constant on your Twitter page. While absolute control is still, for the most part, in the 300 pixel wide area in the upper left-hand quadrant, you should also be able to communicate your message here – whether it is contact information, a tagline, or some sort of comedic version of either  as in the case of my personal page. Be sure to use this area.  It is certainly one that people notice and lends credibility and trust to your Twitter profile.

Where have I seen this before?

Twitter’s new header photo is the one object the social media company changed that marketers are referring to in their comparisons between Twitter’s and Facebook’s profile pages.

This intriguing feature of the new header photo should be a minimum of 1252px in width and 626px in height (and 5MB maximum in size), according to Twitter.

However, on a Twitter page, the picture is scaled down to approximately 522px x 261px. It’s certainly an interesting way of doing things, but the opportunity avails itself for creativity and fun with this imagery.

Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life us but a stream

There has been an extension from three to six photos in Twitter’s photo stream and it has been raised to a more prominent position on the desktop page. This new stream is a huge opportunity to develop a strategy for image related contentent  for your brand.

In the same way Facebook introduced Timeline to highlight imagery, Twitter has taken a step towards doing the same only in a more subtle manner. Users can still take time to tell a story effectively in a series of one, three or six pictures. Another way to use this section of your page is similar to your Instagram feed. Stunning imagery will always catch a user’s eye and don’t forget, hashtagging these  images within your tweets helps organize and curate your imagery in another manner for people searching for certain subject matter.

New Twitter on the go

 As of the time I’m writing this article, the mobile edition of the new Twitter is where things are getting interesting in a visual sense. In the world of mobile apps, everything on Twitter appears to run smoothly from a visual UI standpoint.

The application integration is smooth and works along the lines of the new design. The one thing that is up in the air at the moment is with Android tablets. On Android tablets you are sent to Twitter’s mobile site which looks something like this:

This view seems to take away from the new look for Twitter because of restraints and image quality. We wonder why they didn’t use responsive design or what limitations exist for them not to have gone with this approach for the new UI.

This snag in design notwithstanding, the time is now to take a look at your brand and figure out how best to strategize your visual attributes to go along with this latest version of Twitter. Remember, they will be switching EVERYONE over to this version eventually so be the first to take advantage and get a leg up on your peers and/or competition.

Any thoughts or ideas how to best leverage the new Twitter? Let me know at @Mr_McFly or leave a comment below.

However, for some retailers, mobile devices are making business more challenging, but those embracing technology are capitalizing on a chance to build a stronger relationship with their customer.

Research suggests that consumers are begging businesses to better integrate mobile devices with the shopping experience, but stores are not jumping on board fast enough. In a Mercator Advisory Group study, 55% of consumers express an interest in mobile coupons but only 10% have actually received one from a merchant.

Whether you are an established brick-and-mortar store with a loyal following or a new website focused on using e-commerce to sell the hottest the product on the market, you need to embrace mobile commerce. If not, your business could become as antiquated as the landline telephone.

Here are a few ideas to consider when making the jump to mobile:

Brick and Mortar Retail Businesses

• Understand that your customers are using smart phones to compare pricing while they are shopping in your store. Pew American & Internet Life Projectindicates that 52% of adult cell phone owners used their devices while in a store to get help with purchasing decisions and that number is only growing.Make sure you clearly explain your pricing strategy and illustrate the authenticity behind your product. Highlight your product expertise or return policies to help compete with online merchants who may be undercutting your prices.
• Use mobile coupons. The consulting firm Accenture found that 73% of consumers find it useful to receive an instant coupon as they pass by an item in a store. With apps like Yowza, you too can compete with the big box retailers. Yowza enables stores to promote their mobile coupons to shoppers who are nearby. Use mobile coupons to attract new customers with location-based promotions and incentivize shoppers to spend more.
• Re-target customers who may not be ready to buy. Internet retailers have profited tremendously from re-marketing – showing ads for their products when a user leaves their site. Bring the same sales tactic to the real world. When a shopper walks into your store, capture their information by signing them up on an in-store Ipad or re-direct them to your mobile-friendly website to register for your newsletter. Armed with their email address, you can now reel them back in at a later date with seasonal sales or preferred customer invite-only events.

E-Retailers

• Use responsive web design.Many businesses have never seen how their website looks on a smartphone. Many times a site can look normal on a computer and then appear disorganized and challenging to use on a much smaller screen.
  Make sure your website is legible and easy to navigate on a mobile device.

  Simplify the checkout process and use large buttons to assist with selecting products. Ipsos found that 60% of mobile buyers make purchases from the comfort of their own home, not on their computer.

• Go head-to-head with brick-and-mortar stores. Knowing that consumers are using their mobile devices to look for deals while they shop, make sure you show up when someone searches for a specific product. Add product names, SKU numbers and other detailed information to your mobile website to help you show up with a better placement on search engines. Also consider registering as a Google merchant.

Google finally this week broke its long silence when it comes to suggesting best practices for mobile SEO. The company’s Webmaster Trends Analyst announced a series of new guidelines and recommendations that suggest responsive design is the best rout traveled when building out websites for smartphones.

However, Pierre Far, Google’s Webmaster Trends Analyst, says the use of device-specific HTML is still effective as long as designers follow steps to communicate when using device-specific HTML.

Why responsive design?

Because a design that serves all devices on the same set of URLs (Responsive) makes it easier:

• For users to interact with the website.
• For Google’s link algorithms to function.
• For Google to crawl more of the website.

The three primary configurations for smartphone-optimized websites.

1. Sites that use responsive web design – Google is recommending this approach because these sites serve all devices on the same set of URLs (each URL serving the same HTML to all devices) and only requires CSS to change how the page is rendered on the device.
2. Sites that dynamically serve all devices on the same set of URLs, but each URL serves different HTML (and CSS) depending on whether its a desktop or a mobile device.
3. Sites that have a separate mobile and desktop sites.

A bit about responsive web design.

Essentially, responsive web design is a technique to build web pages that alter how they look using CSS3 media queries. For web designers the concept should be pretty straight forward: It is the method of developing a website that allows the layout to change along with a user’s computer screen resolution.

It affects:

•  Layout (including menus).
• Image/video size.
• The amount of text that can be viewed on a page as the browser size is reduced.

The result are sites that aim to keep the most important elements on screen and prioritized regardless of the browser size and orientation. This is why it is so important for use on smartphones.

For using device-specific HTML.

It won’t always be possible to deploy a responsive web design. In that case, Google suggests having websites serve equivalent content using different, device-specific HTML that can be served on the same URL (aka dynamic serving) or different URLs.

Way back in 2011 (this is web design we are talking about), Google introduced a new mobile user agent for Googlebot-Mobile Smartphones designed to detect mobile content.
Because of this, if your website uses a dynamic serving configuration you should:

• Use Vary HTTP header to communicate to caching servers and Google algorithms that the content changse for different user agents that are requesting the page.

If your website is employing a separate mobile site configuration:

• Google recommends annotations to communicate to Google algorithms that will signal your desktop and mobile web pages are serving the same intent.
• These annotations signal the algorithm that they should be treated as a single entity with each alternative targeting a specific class of device.

This is going to allow Google to more efficiently crawl your website and, in turn, increase your mobile SEO.

“These annotations will help us discover your smartphone-optimized content and help our algorithms understand the structure of your content, giving it the best chance of performing well in our search results,” wrote Far on the company’s blog.

What do you think? Let us know if responsive design is the best answer when it comes to optimizing for mobile SEO. If you have any questions, please comment below or find me on Twitter @tngray99

If we reconsider our approach we can help to shape the Web of the future.

In the last few months, there have been several articles on the evolving nature of the Web: from responsive design to new terms like future friendly. All of these articles point to a central thesis: the Web is becoming a more fluid, adaptable place where content is going to be consumed in every format imaginable. It’s only a matter of time before this becomes a reality. As such, we as designers will be looked to more than ever in influencing the lifecycle of products as content is accessed across multiple devices.

The Web is changing and designers can help change it.

Here’s a few ways how.

1. Get Involved in Planning

Much of the fate of a website’s success is determined in the planning process. Designers, and the project, benefit immensely from involving themselves as much as possible during this phase of work to iron out goals, desires, expectations and other variables. Designers adept at creating visual order out of a mess of information will be the most successful. We are, by nature, problem solvers and by being involved in planning designers can help focus the project so that it delivers the best solution possible.

Let’s face it; we often know exactly what is needed to move a project forward.

So, in this sense, being involved in the planning process from the beginning allows clients to get on board with the designer and share their vision in the earliest phase of the project, establishing a clear communication and exchange of ideas that is beneficial to all other  team members.

Designers must be proactive about involvement in planning, not only to educate the client about the process, but so they can make better decisions and learn from other team members.

2. Do Research

As nice as being a part of the planning phase is, it doesn’t always happen. When this is the case, designers should perform their own research in order to truly understand how to best execute a design successfully. As part of a collaborative, specialized team, it is the designer’s responsibility to know what works best visually. This means performing due diligence to understand the competitive landscape of their clients. Your research should uncover insights into what other sites are doing so it can be matched, and what they do not so it can be surpassed.

Also, meet with those stakeholders in order to solidify a unified direction on projects. This kind of approach will help narrow the field of variables while creating a design. It also allows the designers to make decisions based on facts and helps keep the project focus on meeting business and client needs.

3. Justify Decision Making

While this is an obvious point, it can be easily overlooked. It’s easy to forget that, as designers, our work should be end-goal and action oriented as well as beautiful. Design should be purposeful and powerful.

Designers must be prepared to justify design decisions, and the deeper the justification the better. As an example, consider how Sabina Alder, in an article on Designing Emotion into websites, lays out clearly how people experience websites based on levels of consciousness. This is a relatively new approach also practiced by Aarron Walter and Don Norman and is helping to arm the design community with ways to satisfy client needs and creative urges through an understanding of human psychology and decision making.

It points out that well designed websites have elements that serve specific psychological needs for users that we should always consider in order to make better products. Approaches and frameworks like this – or others you may appreciate in your own process – enable us to check work against specific goals and benchmarks. Remember, while we are paid for our creative capacities, the client wants that creative output to produce some sort of ROI.

4. Think About Content

Content will always be king. Websites cannot exist without it. One of the major trends of the moment is a move towards “future ready” Web design practices where we fully acknowledge that content will literally go everywhere there’s an end user waiting to consume it. Strategists are pushing ideas such as content like water, where content is so fluid and malleable that it can easily move into any glass (translation: browser or device) that the user is operating.

A great example of this is the NPR Music experience. Their content is accessible via website, smart phone,  iPad apps, newsfeeds, podcasts and traditional radio. There is a seamless experience across devices. How content would be shared across these devices was clearly an up-front consideration for the NPR design team and the result is one of the best content driven user experiences I can think of.

It’s obvious the designers really thought and researched how their work supports content in a very contextual and specific manner. This is a great example of how designs can be truly strategic instead of being developed with generic content in mind. Instead, it is dependent upon and influenced by the content that lives there so as to never constrain it. It supports and makes access to content easier.

Design is all about assets and content is the most important asset of all. The earlier this is discussed and formulated, the better the design will be. The last thing you want is to spend weeks on an aesthetically inventive, beautiful looking site only to have the client’s demand a redesign because it didn’t get their desired results.

Conclusion

As we can see, the Web is changing. It’s going to be everywhere before we know it and there is an opportunity to be involved heavily in steering it in the direction we want it to go. As designers, doing this means contributing beyond the aesthetic level and thinking about the full lifecycle of products. There are a myriad of ways for us to work more strategically and I have only scratched the surface here. However, this proactive design attitude is good not only for  a designer’s careers, but will lead to better client/agency relationships, and more successful projects with higher rates of ROI. It will also help facilitate a more successful online experience for everyone. Not to mention, a more strategic approach will position designers to become more influential in the decision making process, and conversely the future of the Web.