Montgomery Scott, from the Star Trek fan site.

You remember when Scotty, the engineer on the Enterprise always came up with a solution to catastrophic damage to the ship in a third the time he told Kirk it would take? Or that he was “givin’ it all she’s got” when Kirk asked for more power and found just enough to save the day?

You can do that too for your users/customers. It’s all a function of expectation and perceived delivery. It goes something like this:

Customer Satisfaction:
Perceived Delivery = Expectations: Satisfaction
Perceived Delivery < Expectations: Dissatisfaction
Perceived Delivery > Expectations: Delight

So it’s fairly easy to manage your customer’s/user’s expectations and then exceed them as long as you make both propositions reasonable and that you deliver a quality product/service in whatever time frame you set.

Let’s say that you can build a site in 3 weeks and you tell your customer that it will take you 6. If you deliver something stunning in 4 weeks, great. But if you deliver something shoddy in 4 weeks, not so great. I’m sure that to get the business, you, your portfolio or your website made promises on your behalf regarding the quality of the product or service that you wold perform for them. Remember that expectations contains many dimensions.

A variant: You deliver a site in 4 weeks when you said it would take 6. Now you customer may have doubts on the value of the product that you delivered, thinking it was something you cobbled together. This is when you’ll have to defend the quality of the product and get them to refocus on the positives of being ahead of schedule.

It’s best to use this practice judiciously as you will have set a precedent for future interactions. The client may be inclined to give you less time to complete a project because you did such a great job beating the last deadline. Take care not to put undue pressure on yourself and your team to exceed their expectations again. You merely have to deliver when you say you will and the result will still be a net positive.

Does anyone have any examples when this worked or backfired?

Within its cardboard goodness contained four titles from the good people at HOW. I took advantage of one of their incredible sales. I strongly recommend signing on to their email list.

Anyway, one of the titles that I purchased was The Essential Principles of Graphic Design by Debbie Millman. The title is somewhat misleading; it is a compilation of case studies by some great designers and strategists. They write about projects and give insight into their process which is always welcome information. On the whole, it’s a fantastic book, even better at only $9. She’s aces in my book; her favorite design color is orange.

One of the contributors, Hillman Curtis, wrote about his process for creating the design for the  New York Metropolitan Opera website. One of the points that he made was to design/wireframe the sub pages first and  do the home page last. His reasoning is that through small design changes on the sub pages, the character of more important pages will be more clearly defined. He has a point and I am expanding my rationale for doing so.

I am now a convert because I’d like to devote more design and strategic energy to the pages that people actually use. When those pages are perfected, then the kicking it up a notch for landing/home pages will be much easier as the personality of the site has already been established through the sub pages; color schemes, font usage, proportions, etc. will tend to reveal themselves.

Another benefit of this “reverse engineering” is to create a site where content is paramount. Pages are designed to fit their content, not to fit a style established by a  tricked-out home page. Secondly, the home page design will reflect the actual content and the navigation can be built with that consideration in mind, not just the  aesthetic.

If anyone designs this way or adopts this method, I’d love to hear from you.

Seriously.

It’s cool to take a design and develop a system around it. Right now, I am working on brand guidelines for a client that is undergoing a complete rebrand. It started innocently enough…”Hey, can you whip up a sales video for us?” “We need a new white paper design, can you help?”

Before too long, a style developed and the client decided that it was the look of their new brand. Most times, with bigger entities, there is a more prolonged process to defining the look, feel and voice (yes, voice) of a brand before it is deployed.  Small businesses tend to wing it just a little more. With the proper documentation of a project, you can define a brand based on the project at hand.

Many times, a new project helps the business owner(s) define what is important and what their brand actually stands for. When you have that information, it can be fairly easy to extrapolate to a brand standard. So it is with my new medium-sized client.

Todd Moto's Bulletproof Brand Identity Guidelines

Thanks to Todd Moto‘s posting his Bulletproof Brand Identity Guidelines, I have refined my brand guidelines to an easily digestible document that makes brand stewardship approachable and easy to comprehend.

One thing I learned early on is that the brand guidelines or style guidelines document should epitomize the best case scenario of use of the brand. Keep that in mind when you are creating a style guide. Something über modern, cool and sleek like Todd’s might not work for a more conservative organization, so keep that in mind as you are creating your document.

Something else I want to note…brand guidelines are just that. While in the corporate arena, I made my bones pushing, stretching and making the brand go places that it had not gone before. It’s a living document meant to foster creativity, not inhibit it.

I’ll post an image when the document is approved.

I got a call out of the blue from a prospective client that found us on The Google. I love it when that happens. One of the most important conversations you will have with a client is the first call. Like a date, this is where you can determine whether there is compatibility between the two parties.

Here’s what I did:

Let them talk. One of the best things that you can do is listen. Most of my clients are owner/operators and have a lot of emotion wrapped up in their businesses. When you are actively listening to them lay out their business needs, you are also personally validating them. That goes a long way to establishing trust.

When you do speak, couch everything in terms of a benefit to the client. This is the time to process what the prospect has said and turn it into possible solutions. When I asked my latest prospect what his goals were, he said “I need to get some money coming in the door.” This tells me that he is price sensitive and that he is on a pretty tight timeline. I mention that the site that he has in mind is a simple brochure marketing site that will help people find him and pick up the phone to call him. I also said that based on the simplicity of his site (make sure you don’t use the word simplistic), he can be up and running fairly shortly. I also told him that part of building the site would entail search engine marketing which can help drive traffic.

Only promise things that you can control. Too often to get the sale, business over promise and then inevitably, under deliver. Make sure that you don’t fall into that trap. Tell him about your experience with similar clients. Tell her about the results of the project in emotional terms “You’ll have a site that you can be proud of”, “you’ll be well-represented on the web”. Specific numbers or results or dollar figures are out of your control and you’d best avoid giving them any specifics there.

You can offer information about past projects, but be careful to inform them that their results may vary.

Take them through the process. Your diligence and thoroughness as a creative professional is an asset. Briefly take them through the process and let them know how much thought will go into producing their web presence. Communicating your understanding of strategy and audience sets you apart from the run-of-the-mill designer.

Don’t weaponize your knowledge. Using acronyms, professional terms or idioms will only alienate your client, especially over the phone.

Give them a ballpark price. That’s the real reason that they called. The whole time that you’re talking, they are thinking, “This sounds great, but how much will it cost?” Prepare their expectations for what’s to come. If they want a proposal, then you’re looking good. Why blow it with sticker shock? Give them a ballpark and let them know that it is a ballpark figure. Chances are while you were talking, you had already formulated a price in your head. : )

Avoid yes or no questions. When I gave him the ballpark price, I asked, “How does that work with your budget?”. It implies cooperation and doesn’t put him/her on the defensive. Open-ended questions require more thought and you’ll get more information about how this project is going to work for both of you.

Recap and thanks. Tell them what to expect next and do it. Then thank them for calling and smile when you do so!

Hopefully, you can work these principles into your next First Contact conversation and generate a very favorable result.

So let me give you a little more background: The user is presented with a Facebook ad that directs them to a landing page within the site. It is not a dedicated landing page per se, it is a page within the site that is germane to the ask in the ad. The user is instructed to read an excerpt from the author’s latest book. When a user clicks on the excerpt link, then we consider that a conversion goal achieved.

Landing Page for Facebook ads

This is a landing page screenshot for Cal’s Facebook ad campaign. In an effort to boost conversion rates, I added the badge on the first read. So far the numbers have gotten a small boost, running at about 11 15% since implementation. Actual landing page.

Conversion rates have been running from 0% on some days to over 20% on others, coming in at around 11 15% on most days. The research that I have done has indicated that I might be in the right range, although this is not quite a sales pitch nor is it an opt in. What I have noticed is that users are exploring the rest of the site which is good for brand engagement.

Email marketing opt-ins are coming in steadily at 1 per day, so a nice little audience is building which will make future marketing efforts that much easier.

More to come!

The smaller the audience, the more specific and compelling the marketing message can be. The practice of delivering messages to very small audiences is called microtargeting.

As a marketer that serves small businesses, I rely on Facebook’s ability to make microtargeting easier. I am currently working on a second round of Facebook ads for my client, author Cal Smith. With some research, we were able to microtarget based on similar authors.

Originally, we lumped all of those people together and delivered a fairly generic message. The ads performed fairly well, around .028% CTR. But the cost per click began to rise steadily and conversions are very low. So once that campaign ran its course, we looked at new ways to reach that market.

We broke the larger group into smaller groups, groups that centered on one author, not all of them. We selected the three authors that are most similar in style to Cal and created targeted messages that let the reader know why they were seeing that message.

So far, the ads are performing splendidly. CPC is extremely low and the CTR is close to .16%! I’m sure that it will level off, but so far, Cal and I are pleased.

Check back for updates!

We created a generic branded QR code that will take the mobile user to a special landing directory that can be changed up whenever the client chooses. So if he’s running an acquisition special, let’s say, that landing page can serve up the content without having to create a new QR code for that special occurrence.

Tracking will be easy too, as the landing page can then redirect to  a sub-page. Not only does this aid in deep-link tracking, say to prevent someone from stumbling onto the page accidentally, but content can be recycled just by changing the re-direct. Fun!

Here is the working (test) QR code:

Branded QR code. Set the Error Correction Capability (ECC) to high (30%) and a branded element can be added without loss of functionality. Please note that this is the test QR code.

If you’ve hung your own shingle or part of a small firm, you know how limited resources are for the latest and greatest gadgets, programs and literature. I was recently at my local Borders picking over the carcass, and damn! Design book are EXPENSIVE.

Not that the authors don’t deserve it, they do. But sometimes, I can’t drop $200 on books every time something changes in digital design.

Enter AppSumo. AppSumo is a Groupon for digital designers. Once you sign up, they send you emails (about 2x/week) about all sorts of deals that they have going on. Books, training, software, you name it. And it’s usually up to half off.

One reason I like it is that they provide most of their deals on digitally delivered products. Seems to me that the producer of the content, since it is digital, is not taking the bath that the restaurant owner or bike shop proprietor would be for hard goods.

I just bought a book from SitePoint (LOVE those guys) explaining the principles of good web design that I intend to share with my class. The price of the book at Borders was $39.99. I got a digital copy for $19. A searchable digital copy that I can have forever and it takes up no room in my tiny office.

Anyway, this is a good use of the Groupon model, it seems like no one is getting hurt in the deal. So check them out and let me know what you think of the site and the deals contained within.

If you missed my first posting, I hypothesized that icons may do better in attracting attention and boosting CTRs than a traditional image due to image fatigue on Facebook.

So here is the setup:

3 sets of A/B ads, one with an icon, the other with an image. The copy will change slightly between them, but the general tone will be the same. One set will be a national campaign to generate fans for the client’s person page, the other two will be limited to geographic locations, in the Northeast and the Mid-Atlantic region. I’ll be reporting on each of the ad’s performance and the loser after 10 days will be dropped. Stay tuned for the numbers!

UPDATE:

Creative Face-off (A/B testing results):

The ads are performing remarkably well, and of course, the results are inconclusive about what is drawing more attention. A well-shot (thanks) photo of the author for the fan page is going like gangbusters and beat out a graphic of the book.

A graphic of a skull rising in the Carribean beat out a picture of a nuclear explosion for the ad meant to get people to the main brand site to buy books.

Change in strategy:

Originally, the book ads were concentrated in geographic locations known for sailing. We targeted the area around Providence, RI and Annapolis, MD. While the ads performed fairly well, we noticed a high bounce rate on the landing page.  We’re pretty sure that the landing page is not the problem, since there is only two CTAs on the page. We traded demographic segmentation for behavioral segmentation.

We re-aligned the ad to the same population as the fan acquisition ad and so far, CTR is improved and visitors are responding better to the CTAs on the landing page. Hopefully those hits will turn into sales, but there, only time will tell. Stay tuned!